KGCI: Real Estate on Air - A Step-by-Step System for Converting Zillow Leads into Closings

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

Summary:Top producer Mike Hogan reveals the disciplined system he uses to generate a multimillion-dollar business from Zillow leads. This episode is a tactical masterclass that goes far beyond "call them fast," detailing his team's specific scripts, a "10-day blitz" follow-up campaign for new leads, and the business math required to ensure a high return on investment. Agents will learn the exact process for engaging, nurturing, and converting online inquiries into loyal, high-value clients, transforming a common agent expense into a predictable profit center.

I've told people from day one, I want to make everybody around me a million. I am going to do everything I can to make everybody around me as much money as I possibly can. And if you stick to a mantra like that, then your people are going to stay with you. Welcome to Uncommon Real Estate, where it's all about finding creative solutions for real estate agents and investors. In exclusive mastermind conversations with some of the brightest minds in real estate, you'll learn how to earn an extra six figures a year. Don't follow the herd. Be Uncommon.

Here are your hosts, multi-millionaire real estate agent and investor, Chris Craddock and Jeff Safright. Welcome to another episode of the Uncommon Real Estate podcast. I'm your host Chris Craddock, and we will be discussing how to make a lot of money in your real estate business. But then, please, please, please, remember, we're all about building wealth. Wealth is when your money works harder than you work. So no matter how hard you work, no matter how many deals you do, no matter how many deals you do, no matter how much money you make in this agent business, you are still in the hamster wheel until you buy assets until you learn how to build wealth. But with that said, your real estate

agent business is your cash machine, your investing business is your wealth machine. And that's why we talk about both. And if you do one without the other, it's going to be difficult. So with that said, I get the opportunity to talk to a friend of mine who I know is also an investor, but also has built a real estate agent business that has just done so many deals, made so much money, and just crush it. He's literally one of the best in the world when it comes to the online lead conversion. My friend, Mike Hogan, tell us about yourself. It's always so much so much stuff, man. I don't even know where to begin. I'm one of those weird real estate agents that don't like talking about myself. So I'll do what I can here.

All right. So, you know, Chris, you and I, obviously, we go way back. I started in the business around 2005 got license, did a few deals. Actually, it's funny. I got a license because I hate a worker with real estate agents. I was an investor before I was an agent and I'd pull up to a house this back of the day when you actually had a call, call the number on the sign. And I got tired of agents not answering their phones. So I said, you know what? I'm just going to get my license so I don't have to deal with any of those guys anymore. And the funny thing is, most of those guys are out of business today. But that being said, I got my license in 2005, I've worked it primarily from 2005 to about 2010.

I was working primarily just more for myself. I helped a few buddies and that kind of thing. But this big thing happened around the 2008 to 2010 time frame. The Great Recession happened. And flipping houses and buying rentals and things like that came to a halt, at least for me. I was, to put it lightly, I was cross financially during that. So I had to stop buying assets and start focusing on cash flow. I had to make money.

So that's about the time. then I really started diving in deep into sales and invested in my real estate business. And in 2010, I got introduced to this new thing called Zillow. It was a godsend to me. I bought a few hundred bucks, put it on a credit card, never told my wife. She would have killed me that I was spending money. A couple hundred bucks worked. And the next thing you know, okay, a couple hundred bucks worked.

So I'd spend a couple thousand dollars and I'd get a few more leads and I'd sell a few more houses. And just kept reinvesting all that back in. And then ended up building what I think is a pretty decent business off of that online lead market. So again, started a relationship with Zillow in 2010, started a second relationship with Rural2icom in 2014. Really started rowing the team in 2014. Basically, I just got to the point where I was doing enough business where I couldn't handle it anymore myself. I handed off the administrative part of my job, which I hated.

I handed that off first and then got some point where I needed to hand off some buyers and only work. with listings and so forth. And so 2014, hiring a couple of agents and 2015, hired a few more and a few more and a few more. And we got up to the point during COVID, I think our high was at about, we had about 125 agents on the team.

And now we, that was the height up. We've since, I'll call it read size into the business a little bit more. Because with online leads, you've got to make sure that you have the right number of leads still into the right number of agents. So we right size the business because lead flows

dropped off over the last couple years. And today, we're sitting about 85 agents. We've been fortunate enough to do 1,000 plus deals every year for the past few years. We might dip below that this year. Not 100% sure. It depends on how the last few of the year ago. I know you don't like talking about yourself. Let me just, let me just repeat what you just said. A thousand plus deals. Okay, go ahead. Keep going. Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong. The last two years, it's been down a little bit from previous years, but we still maintain a thousand plus. This year, I think we'll probably be right at the thousand mark. We'll see. We may be 980 or something like that, but it really depends on how the

last few months of the year enough for us. But yeah, business has been good. Obviously, we've got some changes that have come apart recently that we're trying to to navigate just like everybody else. But overall, business is good, a positive on where things are going with the U.S. real estate market. I'm curious. This was not in our questions we were going to ask, but I want to pivot for a second. With being so Zillow and buyer focused on a lot of things, although I'm sure you probably are in the listing piece on that front as well. But with so much buyer lead stuff,

have you seen any change in the commission structure in the last couple weeks? And then I want to go on record online. Anything? No. Yeah, of course, there's some changes. The process is a lot less sufficient than it was a year or two ago. That's for certain. Have we seen any changes with commissions?

Maybe a little bit. We're seeing some advantageous agents that are taking advantage of the situation. We're seeing some advantageous sellers. But realistically, I'd say 80 plus percent of the deals that we've done over the past few weeks have been, buyers agents have been paid a commission. I think that's going to change in the future. Don't get me wrong. I think there's going to be some changes coming, whether regulatory or not.

But right now, I think 80 plus percent of it. of what we've seen over the last few weeks have been pretty much business as normal, with the exception of having to go to a few extra steps to verify what the commission looks like. Yeah, it's been really interesting because we're super listing heavy. And so we've seen a number of buyers only off buyers agents offering like one percent commissioned. But we're also seeing people like in our market was standard for two and a half. I was like standard. And we're seeing a lot of the agents offering like asking for three.

And so we're like, oh, they're asking for more than what they were before. So, like, it's, it's been interesting. It's a double-edged sword. If you make agents negotiate for their commission, I mean, they can negotiate up. And I'll tell you, agents who are good at negotiating have the opportunity to make a lot of money, even with these changes. So there's so good to be that out there. All right. So let's get into what I'm sure almost everybody wants to know, right?

online leads, when you hear people talk about them, they're like online leads suck. They're the worst. You can't convert them. It's a waste of money. But you doing about a thousand transactions and a big portion of them are online leads. What's the secret sauce? How do they work? And like what is the difference between you?

And obviously there's a big difference between you and the average. But what is the difference between you and the average person that has no success with the online leads? It's all systems driven. And 2010, when I started doing it, that was the only thing I had to make money. And I figured out a way I literally called people every single day, multiple times a day trying to get on. And it just worked because of that. Obviously, over time, we developed systems to help us with that.

But the end of the day, you still have to work. I think it would a lot of people, a lot of people go into online leads with the idea that it's not going to be that hard. Like people just automatically press a button on the internet and all of those people want buy a house. And unfortunately, that's just not the case. Realistically, nationally, only 3% of those people want to buy a house. And probably only 2% of them think they want to buy a house when they do. And the other 1% we talk them into it. But no, seriously, it's just having the systems in place to make sure that your follow-up is there. I always tell people all the time.

And I truly do believe this. It doesn't matter what the lead source is. If your systems are correct, the leads work. It doesn't matter what the lead source is. Now, some leads take a lot longer to work than others. A Google Lead or Facebook Lead, for example, takes a lot longer to work than Zillow League, because Zill leads are typically further down funnel than Google leads or even Facebook leads. But if you have the systems in place to work those leads, they do work. It may take a year.

It may take two years or it may take three years, but they do work over time. But again, it all just really comes down to making sure that you have processes and systems in place, whether that means. something to remind you to call them, whether it's something to do to use technology to help you get in touch with them. And obviously, we've got a lot of technology that's available these days. We've even got AI opportunities to help with lead conversion. So there's ample opportunities to develop systems to do this. But if I was single agent out there and I'm buying a few leads right now, I'm putting the process in place, whether it's my CRM is setting up an action plan that reminds me

to call them every day or I put it in my calendar or I have an Excel spreadsheet or whatever. I am doing exactly what that process tells me to do every single day. I love it. So one of the things that helped me years ago and then I got out of it, I actually just joined a fitness mastermind thing. I'll be talking a little bit more about this on the podcast here. But when I had gotten out of shape and needed to find something to get into shape, I loved P90X.

and I loved it because I literally could put the DVD in, I could press play and just do what it told me to do, and I had success. It was so good. Now that works. But if you didn't pop that DVD in every day and hit play, you wouldn't have achieved this success. You would have just,

if you didn't actually follow the plan and the process, you would have put it aside and say, you know what, this P90X bullshit. This doesn't work. And that's just not the case. Obviously, you're an example of it. Yeah. All right.

So give us like a playbook. You're saying follow the system. And also one thing I want any, I want you to hear this because he said this, but I think some people can miss it. When he started, he didn't have the systems. He didn't have anything. He was running out of desperation. He's like, I didn't have any money. My wife's going to kill me if she finds out I'm spending this money.

So I just called these people like crazy because this is what I had in front of me. and I was not going to let them off the hook. And now I'm interested to hear how you built a system around that because obviously you can't create that desperation for other people. I started my business out of a similar desperation as well, but you can't create that for people on your team. So how did you create systems that help people follow that model that worked for you? Yeah, so basically what I did,

it was out of a need for myself because I'm not very working. organized person to be perfectly honest. So I needed something to tell me what to do. So originally it may have been in a notebook of do this, do this, do this, do this. And day one, call three times, do the triple tap, call text email every day. But then as I was moving on, I was able to put that into my CRMs, my CRM, which is follow up, boss, that action plans. So I was able to take that and put it in terms of what those action plans are, which reminded me, because I needed the structure myself. So I put that into there. And then essentially, as I brought on agents, they all followed that same

structure. And that structure today is virtually the same as it was in 2010 for me. It's the same steps. A lot of the same messaging, the text messaging that goes out, the first text message that goes out from our system today that's an automated text message is the exact same text message that I was literally typing into my phone in 2010. And I use it because it still works. The difference of today it's automated and we don't have to do that. So it was really built out of necessity of taking what I was doing in real life and just put it into a process that reminded everybody on a daily basis. This is what you need to do.

And of course, now you've got your CRM will actually send out emails for you and they'll send out text messages. There's all kinds of plug-in services that you can use and AI bots that will reach out continuously for you. And so we've added and incorporated all of that as it becomes available. but really it was just out of necessity and it was again taking what I did in real life and just put it into a plan.

I love that. It's just like so many people don't realize they can replicate success. We met in Gary Keller's mastermind back when it was like the top 100 before it became like the top 1,000 or whatever it is now. But one of the things that I remember

hearing Gary talk about was like the problem with creative people and all entrepreneurs are creative, right? that they try to reinvent the same wheel that's been broken. The square wheel doesn't work. And I love the idea that if you want success, you should imitate and then innovate. And the cool thing is,

like you've built a model based on what worked. So you just, you built your model imitating what you've been doing. And then I'm sure over time, working to tweak and just make things a little bit better on different places. What worked in 2010 is now still working, today, which is call people, talk to people, remind yourself to be on that. So I'm curious, when you get on the phone with them, what is the first thing that you would

say to get people to want to have that conversation about real estate? Because nobody wants to talk to a salesperson, even if they're in the market for something. So how do you engage in conversation? Honestly, what I always did and what we have driven into our agents is when you get on the phone with that person, you're really have one priority. And that priority was to set an appointment to get in front of it. Because obviously over the phone, it's difficult to establish relationships.

But the people who are successful in this business, and I'm talking about in real estate, I'm not talking about just in the online lead world, but the people who can meet somebody in person and make them follow up with you in 60 seconds. That's what it comes down to. People buy houses from people that they like. And so one of the first things I always wanted to do was get on the phone with them and get an appointment right away.

In fact, my very first text that goes out says, I see you inquiring about 1, 2, 3 main street. Did you have a question about it or would you like to schedule a time to see it? And it was amazingly effective because people would automatically just respond and say, hey, I'd like to see it. And then usually through text message, we can set the appointment. Now, if I can get them on the phone, obviously it's a little bit better because I can ask a little bit more approving questions. But first thing is get the appointment. That is by far the first thing I want to do. Second thing after that is I know they're interested in that house.

But are there other houses that they possibly have that they might be interested in? Because a lot of these people don't realize as the agent, I can show them those houses also. So I want to ask them then, hey, are there other houses that I can show you? And if the answer is, no, that's the one when I've got, then I guess then I'll ask, well, if I can come up with two or three more that are similar to this one in the same area, would you have time to see those at the same time? almost 100% of people say yes. If you have any more that are like this, I would love to see it. Now, obviously, it's a little more difficult today with inventory levels where they are, but that is, that is the basic script.

And then after that, I really want to just find out, like, what's going on with them? Why? What's making them call me? Find out their motivation. Is there, do they have to move? Do they want to move? That type of thing. And then really after that, I just follow up one more time and just verify that we're meeting

tomorrow at noon and I will call and that's when I set up. my appointments, and then I will give them a call, I can just say, hey, I just let you know, appointments are scheduled, do you have any other questions at that point? But really, for me, it's all about getting the appointment, fine and out if there's anything else, I can show them other than the one house that they're acquired on, and they just finally know what their motivation is. Okay. So figure out their motivation, all that. So let's transition just for a second, and then we're going to come back. And I meant to ask this question earlier. We talked about the cash machine, which is this business and then the wealth machine. And I, and I,

Always want to, I never want to forget this. And actually, bro, I still quote you from you telling me, I don't know if you remember that night, we went out to sushi in Austin, but you talked about your- One of my favorite sushi restaurants, man, in Austin, Texas. Who would know? Oh, it was so good. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

It was, that was incredible. But you had mentioned something about one of the best investments you ever made was a mobile home park. And I actually, I'm about to, like I submitted, and they just called me and told me literally right before this call that they're signing my letter in 10 because I'm buying a mobile home park in Pennsylvania. So here we go. Congratulations. Congratulations. That's amazing. Super pumped. But do you mind just sharing about some of the way you think about investments you're in? Are you still in that mobile home park, by the way? I still in that mobile home park and it's still a cash go. Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I actually just

full simple a mobile home park, not too long ago. So, yes, I am still doing lots of real estate investing. I told all my investor clients, especially, look, I'm putting my money where my mouth is. Even with rates where they are, I'm still fonded deals up there and you can make deals work. You can make cash flow happen because I'm a believer that over the next five to 10 years, we're going to see massive increases in the values of home. I'm not one of these people who thinks that we're going to see another 2008 style crash. I think this balloon, if you want to call it, that continues to get bigger. And I don't even think it's a balloon. I just, think it's the real estate market naturally progressing and supply demand that it's best so yes i'm still

buying i probably have somewhere in the neighborhood of about 100 doors right now in my rentals i own i still own that one mobile home park i've owned that mobile home park since 2006 i bought it way back then with with partial owner financing partial bank financing and i think i'm actually i've got about two years left on that note and i'll own it free and clear so yes i'm a i'm a big believer in it and now i still believe in invest in other vehicles, but by and far, the biggest part of my wealth is in real estate. Cool. And just, I know we don't normally get into like the mobile home piece. And I, that's all I've been thinking about for this last week is I've been trying to

look at the numbers and make sure things are good. But I remember hearing somebody at a conference that was at talk about investing in that. And then I think it was two weeks later, you were the first person that I knew that owned a mobile home park. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Do you mind just sharing like how you think about that? And then we'll finish up with a couple more questions about online leads. Yeah.

So for me, it's just like any other investment. I have a property manager who manages it. I've probably seen the park three times since 2006. It's not something that I want to actively manage. It's not like a single family property that's two miles from my house that I want to go and drive by all the time. Like I don't want to go to it. It works. I can manage it from afar.

It's about three hours from here. I don't really need to see it. And luckily, I haven't. and had to see it. I've gone a couple of times because we had some storm damage and that type of thing. But I prefer to stay as hands off with that business as I possibly can. But I will tell you, the cash flow is pretty amazing on those deals. That's awesome.

That's super cool. Yeah. And what I love about it is it seems like it is way more hands off than a lot of the other investments out there. So, yeah, I bought my first. There's very few truly passive investments in real estate. I know everybody talks about rentals being passive, but anybody who owns a rental property will tell you it's far from passive. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

All right, so let's finish up with the time we have left. If you were starting fresh, let's say you still live in Richmond or are you outside of Richmond there? All right, so let's say that we just took you out of Richmond and dropped you in New Mexico. And let's just pretend maybe you know somebody, but let's pretend nobody in New Mexico. And you wanted to build what you built in Richmond, starting fresh. What would be your path? I'm not going to lie.

It's a lot tougher today than it was in 2010. I'm not going to lie. But if I were to move somewhere today and start all over, probably the first thing that I would do is I would call every agent in town and ask them if I could do open house and swamp. obviously if I can get leads there that's great but I'm assuming that I don't have the ability to buy online leads maybe I just don't have the money to do it or whatever I would call every agent in town asking if I can do open houses for them I think that's that want to buy for one of the greatest ways to start to start generating some business that's a great way to start generating business quickly I would supplement that with online leads as I was financially able to do it and then from there it just you just grow on

top of that you look for other channels that you can have and I think I think I would probably look for three to four lead gen channels. One of them being online, one of them being open houses, one of them being, I don't know, new construction, one of them being investors. You name it. There's all kinds of ways that there's all kinds of channels you can go after. But I think agents sometimes try to do 15 or 20 different things and they never really good at one or two.

I think you pick two, three, four channels max that you can be an expert in and you do that. And then from there, you figure out what works for you. Like for me personally, I knew that I was never going to be good at being an agent if I was doing all my own paperwork. So one of the first things I did as soon as I could afford it, and actually before I could afford it, was I hired somebody to do all, take all that off. I hired a transaction coordinator and an admin to help me with the administrative piece of it, which freed me up to do everything else because I want to spend all my time on revenue producing things. That's all I want to do is focus on things that are going to make me money. and unfortunately filling out paperwork and verifying that the bank has everything right that they need for closing, that's just not revenue producing stuff.

So I would focus on that. And then as I continue to get more business and I needed more help, then I would bring in an agent, a buyer's agent to help me. I would have them work on the buyers. I would continue working on the listings because that's where I'm going to be the best at. And then from there, you just grow by necessity. That's too many people grow because they want them. grow. You grow by necessity. You grow because your business gets too big for you to handle it yourself. The people that get into this thinking, I'm going to start a team on day one and I'm going

to have 25 agents. They ultimately fail because they don't have the business to support 25 agents because you grow because your business grows. And that's how you, that's essentially how you grow a team. There's no magic formula to grow in a team or building a big business. It's really not. It's you figure out ways to build your own business as an individual, and you figure out ways to make sure that you're only focusing on the things that make you the most money, and you outsource everything else to somebody else. And that outsourcing is a TC and admin, a buyer's agent, then a listing agent. Then it's an operations manager and a sales manager. And that's all those things until eventually one day, you're selling a thousand houses a year or more. There's a lot of people out there that sell a whole lot more houses than I am.

And you've got a business that essentially is running in itself, but that doesn't happen overnight. and too many people get into the sink and it's all going to happen overnight. It doesn't happen like that. I wish it did. But I'm not here to paint that kind of picture for you. It takes work. It takes a lot of stick to it in us.

But you can definitely do it, no doubt. And let me ask this one last question because I want people understand just getting to a big, lots of sales is not the end-all be-all just because Mike and I are friends with a lot of the same people. Mike, how many people do you know that sell massive amounts of houses and make very little money.

Through that, I've had years where I've sold a ton of houses and I looked at my profit. I'm like, my God, I was way more profitable as an individual agent. I made more money as an individual agent. So you can definitely get into that trap of selling a lot of houses and not making any money. But the thing is, would you also have to balance that width is how much work are you actually doing to make that money? If you're making as much money you did as an individual agent, but you're not having. to work for it that you've got a team that's doing it for you, then there's some value in that. I used to figure out what you really want.

But yeah, I know a lot of teams out there right now that make absolutely no money. They look good on paper and they look good on social media and they talk about how many houses or someone. Oh, there's agents to do that, individual agents. But yeah, there's a lot of people that aren't making money in this business. Yeah. So just I just want everybody to understand as you're growing, as you follow Mike's plan, just remember the idea of just throwing more money at it that eventually you'll become

profitable, like build like Mike's talking about and make sure that's good. And I do think the other piece is really good. Actually, that was one of the, when I got into like with, there's a friend of mine, Lars Heddenborg, and I really love Lars. And the thing I love about Lars, I have a very high net every year. And I netted more than Lars has for for many years. But Lars would literally work about four hours a week on his business. And he still made over a million dollars a year take home. And I was like, okay, I make really good money, but I don't work four hours a week. There is something special about how he thinks about life, right? And so I just think that's-

Go ahead. Let me add one more piece to this because the whole thing about building a team, it's easy to think about, okay, how much money I personally go into net? But one thing we've got to remember is the only way to build a team and sustain a team is to create value for the people that are working with you. because if those guys aren't having the same level of success you are, they're going to leave. And you're not going to achieve the kind of success that you want

if you don't have loyal people that stay with you. And let me tell you, if you're facing your entire value proposition on leads, there's a million other guys out there that can provide leads to your agents. And if that's the only value that they're getting for being with you, then that's not going to be sustainable. You've got to create value in other ways. And I can't tell you how to do that.

I've done it for myself and everybody has to figure that out on their own. But you've got to create value for them. And you've got to make it your sole mission to make them as rich as you can possibly make them. And that's honestly the way I approach it. I've told people from day one, I want to make everybody around me a million. I really truly do. Some will, some won't. Some don't have it.

Some do. But I am going to do everything I can to make everybody around me as much money as I possibly can. And if you stick to a mantra like that, then your people are going to stay with you. And that's ultimately what it takes to be successful. Guys, Mike is the real deal. Mike, where are the locations that you're active? So if somebody wants to send you a referral and also how can they, how can they reach out if they want to send you anything? So our primary office is in Richmond, Virginia.

And then we also have an office in Charlottesville, Virginia. We're the largest team in Charlottesville as well. We also have an office in Williamsburg, Virginia. but we have agents that work all throughout the Northern Neck, Northern Virginia as far as Fredericksburg, and then all the way south down to the North Carolina border. So we handle a big, big area. We have great agents in all these locations.

And if you want to get in touch with me, honestly, the best way to get me is to shoot me a text. But I'll give me my personal cell number is 804, 5030811. You can look me up on all the different socials. I'm everywhere out there. It's not hard to find me. And here's here's the last push I'm going to give for everybody is when I started in this business, I literally, whenever I listened to a podcast where I heard somebody that I felt like was the real deal,

I would work as hard as I could to reach out to him. And a lot of times that took a long time to figure out how to get to them. And people were so generous with their time. Mike just gave me a cell phone number. And he's like I know he's a generous guy with his time and expertise and everything else. So just know that that is out there for people that are looking to level up. So anyway, Mike, thank you so much for being here. This was really good talking to you, man.

Bro, anybody that listened to this and didn't get massive value was probably doing something else on that penitism. This was great. So you're the man. All right. You've seen you, man. Take care. Till next time. Go crush it.

Later. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Uncommon Real Estate. Subscribe to the podcast to stay up to date with the love. latest mastermind conversations from Chris, Jeff, and other uncommon real estate industry leaders. If you love this podcast, please write us a review. And to fast track your real estate career, go to chriscratic.com.