KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Actually Using Your CRM to Make Money

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

Real estate rock stars, welcome Caroline Hobbs. Systems nerd. I don't think you use those words. Those are my words. But that is the gist. So could you talk to us about either the systems in your real estate business or how you built them, whatever comes to mind in regard to systems? Absolutely.

So I've been in real estate for about 15 years. And when I first started, I worked for an agent who was at the time ranked number one throughout all of Keller Williams internationally. And at the time, this was back in 2008, she had a database of over 10,000 people. And I mean, this is before most CRMs even existed. And so having a database that size was really unheard of. And it was my job to organize and kind of figure it out. Little did I know at the time that that training was going to really set me up for the rest of my career.

But yeah, so if you ask any top producing agent, your CRM is like your number one best friend in real estate. It keeps you connected with every person that you meet keeps your past clients organized and hopefully gives you opportunity to market to them throughout the year so that you can stay top of mind and earn referrals. So that's kind of what we focus on in our office and on our team and in the systems that we're building is how do we make it easier for agents to elevate the customer experience for their clients without adding more tasks to their everyday job? Because we already have way too many things to take care of. It is so true. And I know that like everyone listening, they're like, man, I know that I should be using my CRM. and I'm going to get to it maybe tomorrow, maybe next quarter, maybe next year because there's some like mental hurdle about it. And I think it's because a lot of agents, they're, you know,

intimidated because they don't really understand it. So I guess how does it work for the agents in your brokerage, who you work with in using their CRM? So we make it really easy for every single lead to just kind of fall in there. With the exception of the contacts in your cell phone. We are currently on follow-up boss, which is very convenient, has a mobile app. We are very high users of the Twilio company numbers that they have in there. That to me as a team leader has been such a game-changing feature. What do you mean by that? What is that? Okay, so there are kind of like these smart numbers that are automatically,

assigned to your profile. So as an agency owner, I have company numbers, and then each of my agents are assigned a phone number as well. We retagged the company numbers and kind of switched them up a little bit. So depending on the team that the lead was generated for, that phone number will be used on the marketing pieces for that. So all those team members can be either round-robin to receive the leads, or they can be, you know, first come, first or whoever picks up the phone first. So in a world where, you know, keeping up with your leads from the second that they come in, you know, how much of the time is speed to lead. So important.

You know, it really helps us capture every single opportunity as it arises. Okay. You mentioned how your leads essentially just like fall in there, except for the contacts on someone's phone help. How are things falling into my CRM? There's a lot of different ways. So, you know, it depends if we're talking about, like, different marketing companies where we're talking about realtor.com or Zillow or whatever it is. Followup boss has some pretty cool features built in where it'll actually scan your email address.

And so when it sees emails from certain addresses, it marks them as understanding it's a lead and then uses image placement tags to be able to read it and create the new contact in your database. Okay. So to confirm, so what we're saying is follow up as the CRM and the CRM is attached to multiple different lead generating marketing strategies. So whether you're paying for ads on realtorsuch.com or you use some other examples. But basically, it's connected.

And so when a lead comes in from that source, it is automatically added to followup boss and assigned to whichever user on the internal followup boss, like CRM side to action that lead. Exactly. Okay. Oh, nailed in. Yeah. So, you know, I think part of the problem why realtors don't end up using their CRM as, much as they should be, is right now you have to go into a lot of different places in order to even transact. You know, whether it's your MLS, your forms program, maybe your office has a different

CRM than what you're using or some kind of backlog system. People are having to go and duplicate efforts with putting different things in. So that's one of the things that we're trying to accomplish our office, I am a firm believer that if you're putting information into the system more than once, it's inefficient. And so there needs to be, and I think that's kind of one of the areas that's been lacking in real estate, is there's so much more technology that is so much more robust in other industries that just hasn't trickled into our industry. And so by looking outside of the box, we've been able to integrate and implement some additional tools that are really game changers and just are not

available through traditional software as the realtors find. Yeah, I totally agree. I think that the CRM would be used a lot more readily. You're right if it wasn't duplicating, you know, actions throughout different pieces of software. Are you using like Zapier to connect those systems to your CRM or what does that look like? Sometimes. It just depends on the program. Because we are actually building our own CRM right now from scratch, it's more of Native integration partners via API that we're using, which is kind of just a bridge over

ZAPIR, so we don't have to actually go through that third party to complete the action, so to speak. In other roles, then, yeah, it is just a Zapier integration where you can have, you know, with Zapier integrations, you have less functionality than you would through an API integration. It's more of you can do these 10 specific actions and touch these 10 specific fields, but you can't, the customizations are very limited typically. Okay. I think something that might be helpful is to kind of,

like lay out, I guess, a pathway for the, hypothetically, the lead comes in. We can pick any method you want. Yeah. Understanding what happens in your CRM or just giving an outline of that. So that way listeners could try to duplicate in their own. Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, marketing to be successful has to be an even exchange of information. Nobody wants to just give their contact information away and say, please, harass me for the next 20 years. You know, it's they, they need to feel that they're getting some kind of value. So whether it's a showing request on Zillow or a seller guide download via social media or whatnot, they also need to know that you're a real person and not just a company. And I think that's

one thing that a lot of people forget when they build these lead funnels. and marketing solutions is that human touch is still imperative to the transaction. If you ask anybody with any money saved in the bank, 99% of the time, they're going to have a financial advisor. You know, yes, sure, there's Robin Hood and you can go on e-trade and create your own profiles, but is that really the best option with a large investment? And for most people, your home is the largest investment you have. So from the time a lead comes in, we actually have a action plan that's just for lead day one.

And when that happens, they're going to come into the database. They're going to be assigned an agent. They're going to be set up on a home search based on their criteria they were looking on or the property that they requested. They're going to get a call from their agent. And if they are not able to connect via phone, they'll get a text message from the agent introducing themselves and a call the next day. Days 2 through 24, depending on whether or not you made contact with the person day one or not, really is for providing information about our brokerage or services,

what you can expect from the home buying process, along with personal touches via social media. We friend request them on day one. and then do retargeting on everybody in the database as well so that all of our posts stay in front of our audience and we stay relevant throughout. I want to come back to this, but I just want to make sure I'm asking questions along the way that, you know, listeners might be thinking. So the lead comes in and they're automatically set up on, you know, that home search

based on whatever that criteria was. And the trigger that happens on the back end is it like alerts the agent it's been assigned to. And then that tells them to reach out. Exactly. Okay, gotcha. And that happens or doesn't happen. But then you said from day two through, I believe 24 was informational. And so is the majority of that through email campaigns or besides like the personal touches?

Like where is the bulk of that happening? Yeah. So emails will go out every four days just talking about the buying. process. The first email that goes out is a video email where it's an introduction of the assigned agent just saying, hi, I'm so excited to help you with your home search. If you have any questions, my contact information is listed below. Also is a link to my calendar where you can schedule showings with me. And the video, is that through follow up boss or is that like bomb bomb or some other app? It's an unlisted YouTube video. Gotcha. Okay. Go on.

Just make it easy. Yeah. So days 2 through 24, there's emails that go out, but then there's also text messages that go out, as well as scheduled phone calls. So right now with follow-up boss, anytime you have a task assigned to you on that day, it's going to come up on a hot sheet. I'll be building a similar functionality out online because to me, that has been such a game changer for my agents.

I tell them every single day. I'm like, don't worry, don't worry about anything else. Take a look at your hot sheet that's going to list everybody that has been opening emails, viewing properties that you're assigned to. It will also list all of your assigned tasks for the day. So every person that you're scheduled to call for that day is listed right there, making it really easy for you to just kind of go down the checklist and mark things off. Do they call with their Twilio number that's been assigned to them? I always recommend it. It logs the call better.

And with text messages and things like that, it logs the communication as well. You know, different brokers have different rules as far as logging communication throughout a transaction. Some brokerages will actually have you copy and paste all of your text messages into a file to submit. This kind of just keeps it all centralized. in like one location so you don't have to worry about anything being lost and it helps reduce risk in case of a lawsuit at some point down the road. Okay, gotcha. So from that first two through 24 days, there's a series of information, there's video, there's text, there's calls, you're friending them on Facebook, you're shooting them a DM, all the love. And using the hot sheet as the

reminder, it's all automated through follow up boss to provide the agent. This is what you need to do. your task list for the day. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Then what? From there, they kind of fall into a nurture area. For my specific, for my team, anyone that goes into nurture and hasn't like been followed

up with. After about three months, they go into a lead pond where we use those for new agents as they join the team to get them up and run. running. Yeah, make some calls. Yeah. Bring it in. Bring it in.

Those leads. Yep. And it's funny because it's, you know, depending on the lead source, kind of depends on how quickly that lead is going to transact. A lot of these new live transfers that like Zillow and Realtor.com are doing are really effective because of the fact that they've already talked to an ISA on the phone. they've confirmed that they're in the market, they've confirmed that they're not working with an agent, they're being passed off to you, and then, you know, your job is really just to set the appointment.

Right. They already picked out a house normally. I want to see this house. Okay. I accept. Great. I have the keys. Yeah. So, um, so, uh, Azillo League could convert, you know, one to three months generally is they're very quick to convert. A lot of pay-per-click leads are going to be closer to like the three to five month mark as far as transacting social media leads are usually going to take six months plus to convert into any kind of business transaction. So, you know, one of the things that is my mission this year is really measuring profitability and ROI depending on the lead sources. most agents probably don't do this, but I would implore that you do is making a business plan for the next year at the end of each year. We go start there and actually do it quickly. We review all of the programs that were signed up for.

Are we using it? Are we not? Is this dead weight? Is this necessary? And we kind of just take everything to the chopping block. Yeah, no, is you to spend money on, yeah, extra, extra programs. But I also am like a serial product tester. I sense that from you.

Yeah, yeah. So if there's a new technology out there and I haven't tried it, I generally sign up and get a demo and spend the time to try and figure it out. That's so cool, but also so exhausting. Like every single day there's a new cool app or, you know, AI or whatever and it just leaves my head spinning half the time. So it's it's interesting. I can see overlaps in people. You start to see trends and what agents are asking for as you start to see like the products

that are coming out. You also start to see like what's been successful with larger teams because they use all that market data to improve their products. So it's neat to see their roadmap also and like where they're aiming to get and trying to understand if it's a duplicate product or if it's, you know, is it a bell and whistle or is it something that is actually going to bring in more business or automate my business so I'm spending less time on meaningful tasks. What are your favorite things now? What's working now, Caroline? Open to Close is a transaction management software that we use at a very high level in our office. It does a great job at organizing our transactions and putting out dates throughout the transaction.

That has been a game changer for our business. Postcards for marketing. I send out these little plastic postcards that have a Starbucks card on it. I was trying to see if I have one here on my desk somewhere. You can send one to me. I will. I will allow it. But I, you know, I think that the last couple of years I've gotten about a seven times return on my investment with that.

So it's great. I mean, that's what we're all looking for, you know, is how can we, get the word out there about our services, spend less money, and keep the business coming in. And I assume that you're doing this also through your CRM because, you know, you have the clients and are you assigning them based on like all of our hot clients, the ABC, whatever categorization you want to do? And then you set them on a reoccurring Starbucks thing, or how does it work? So that is for mail postcards, mainly just for leads. So that's outside of the CRM.

However, we do use a dynamic QR code that lands them directly into our CRM as soon as they scan it. Is that a special app or how do you, how do I get a dynamic QR code? I have so many questions, Caroline. Yeah, yeah. I get mine to bring my printer. My printer is called dynamic card. They're out of San Diego. Ivan Farber is the owner of that.

So I use that. There's companies like thanks.com that also use it. A lot of people are using the flow code technology. Flow code is a QR code maker. I've spoken with their marketing department and CTO team in the past. You can get QR codes through them, but even on their highest plan, you'd be paying like a few hundred dollars and only get like 500 QR codes versus, I mean,

most people's farms are a lot more than 500 people. So if you go through a printer, it usually doesn't cost you anything extra. And on top of that, you'll have one for every single piece of mail that you send out. So if you send out 5,000 pieces, you have 5,000 QR codes and you're not being charged for it. So really it's better to partner with the printer that is on their enterprise plan. make sense. If you're doing like large volume mailing. Thanks.io also has it natively integrated. They are very inexpensive for a farming tool.

Pretty simplistic. I do like the Canva interface where you get in to make your own designs and things like that. And they have that handwritten printing that people love. So you know, there's a lot of different tools. there again I think you're always trying to figure out how are you going to get their information and how are you going to let them give you your their information you know like what's going to entice them to do that

because ultimately you don't you don't just want a whole bunch of email addresses and phone numbers and stuff like that you want people who are actually going to transact does that make sense it does make sense I'm just trying to figure out how could you get give an example of a way that you are capturing in a way that they want to give you their information. Is it the Starbucks gift card? It's like scan this and then you'll get, okay. Well, so that's the thing on the Starbucks cards that's so ingenious is it's called, the call to action is a phone call. So they call the smart number,

which gets logged into our follow up boss. And we talk to them, we get their property address, and their email address, and we set up a follow-up appointment to give them a call back with the information they're requesting. So we get all of that. We set the appointment. We call them back at the given time, go through the comparables with them, and then we email them the Starbucks gift card, the actual Starbucks gift card. Okay, so the thing that they're receiving that prompts the call says what? It has a logo and it says, let's meet for coffee with kind of a Starbucksy logo on it. Okay. And then they call it and on the call is when they find out that they need to give the address and have a follow-up call in order to get the coffee. Yep. Okay. It's written on the card as well.

Okay. Yeah. With directions. It's funny though, I will tell you, a minimum of 50% of the people are like, I don't really want the Starbucks, but I do want to get my property valuation. Really? Oh, yeah. I mean, I probably, I sent out 7,500 of these every single month, personally. And just a few. Just a couple.

We usually get about 10 to 15 calls from that. And I maybe spend $60 or $70 on Starbucks cards. Yeah. How much is the, I guess I could math. $10. Yeah. So it's like, it's not like I'm sending it to like all $7,500 and I'm spending like tens of thousands of dollars. Gotcha.

So it's, yeah, it's like a coated paper postcard. It looks like plastic. It's not plastic. It's actually recyclable. But I mean, I get hate calls telling me how I'm killing the inviating. And I'm like, well, see little recycle symbol on the back. Not. Shame.

Shame on you. Yeah. Okay. That is an example of a reason why, you know, those people would be inclined to call for the Starbucks, but also for the information regarding their property. And then from there, I think it's really cool that the call directly feeds into your CRM. And that is that what is the, how does that work again? It's called a smart number. Yeah, I think a number of CRMs have them nowadays.

I think it's one of the underutilized tools within most CRMs. I think most people just can't understand why they wouldn't just have them call their phone. And it does call their phone just through the app. So it's like VoIP calling instead of having a cellular plan. But it works really well for us. It really has been a game changer because I'm in meetings. all day long doing software development stuff and, you know, working with vendors and things like that. And so it rings like my phone and my partner's phone for when we get calls for listings.

And so he can pick it up, get all the information, feed it over to me, and then I can jump on the call and take the appointment as soon as we have everything ready. Okay. I want to bring it back to make sure that we talk through the entire process, kind of like we talked about in the beginning. So, so the lead comes in through the marketing channel. There's that follow up process that happens for the first 24 days. There's a nurture process. But let's say that the person, they're like, hey, I'm ready to put it in offer. Can you take us through like the offer contract accepted until close? I know you mentioned open to close. But any systems feedback on that process would be great. So open to close is a form-based program.

So if you've ever filled out like a Google form or anything like that before online, it's very similar. So by filling out that information, it now has the information required to plug it in later in the transaction at different designated points. So if I was saying, for example, that we accepted an offer and it has a financing contingency, then it would ask what is the financing contingency removal date. And that would go into the calendar and it would send a email to the other side of the transaction the day prior saying this is just a reminder, your contingency removal is due tomorrow. And then on the day of it would say just a reminder today, your contingency removals do. Okay. So hypothetical, my offer gets accepted. Yay. I, the agent, goes back and I input via a form, essentially, all of the different pieces of the contract to close puzzle.

So really thorough upfront. And then the system intakes that information and populates it probably into a calendar that you can view that has, you know, the inspection dates and X, Y, and Z. Creates the timeline emails at the very beginning automatically. Okay. That gets sent to probably myself, the client, maybe the lender. Yeah. Okay. So do you still use a TC?

My assistant uses access TC for our whole office and uses this program. What we're building and actually are just in the ending phases of development on is actually a AI program that will read the purchase contract and fill in these forms for these trigger-based actions so that they automatically go out and you're not even filling out that form. You're more of just reviewing it, uploading any ancillary documents that are needed for the transaction, and then hitting submit, and allowing the system to actually process it, organize it. That's just a dream. You're teasing. Very cool. So open to close. Do you think that that's software that a solo agent who does maybe 25 deals a year, is that something that they should do?

Or is this more of like for brokerages? So open to close is a very complex system. I wouldn't say that it's for everybody. It takes months to build out. And you have to be tech savvy in order to build it out. Good info. Yeah. It's not easy to build.

Which is one of the reasons why, like, after building it, we're like, oh, my goodness. Like, why is every single person have to continue doing this? I do believe it's on their roadmap to kind of have some templated builds in there for agents and teams to adopt on the spot. I think it depends, though, really on how many transactions per year you're closing. Are you closing 10 to 20 transactions a year? Are you closing 50 transactions a year? You know, it's because it is a financial investment, and I think it depends on what part of the country you're in. You know, how much are you actually making on every transaction that you're closing on whether it's worthwhile?

How much do you guys spend on it monthly? I actually have absolutely no clue. I think it's about $300 or $400 monthly because we're on the pro plan. Okay. But building it was significant. significantly more expensive than that. Took two people six months to do, like full time. Oh my gosh.

Yeah, I'm listening. I'm not doing open to clothes anymore. I'm not that one off my list. Here's the thing is it's like if you have a big team or like, it's worthwhile. For the long run, absolutely. It's one of the reasons why in the tools that we're building, we're rebuilding that kind of software technology into it. so it can all be included as a part of your CRM and transaction processing.

Gotcha. So your systems go from primarily follow-up boss, and then once it goes under contract, it switches to open to close. What are your other major systems that you guys use? That's it. I mean, we use a lot of things for like marketing tools and whatnot, but as far as our major systems go, outside of that, we don't need anything else. We have a way, and I go to glide for my forms.

We're out in California, so we still have access to that platform, but we'll likely be making you switch back to SkySloat for too long. Gotcha. Okay, so a lot of times when people think of systems, just like CRM, they kind of black out a little bit. They're like, man, I know that I need that. even know where to start. What would you say would be a helpful way to start building systems within your real estate business? If you're a solo agent and you're doing 25 transactions a

year and you have no systems? Pick a CRM. Pick an open API CRM. Follow up boss is very easy to build and inexpensive. It makes integrations really easy to add bells and whistles as you decide to grow. through your marketing and different tools and everything that you use. Get a CRM and use it. Set up the action plans and set up a phone number and just use it. Most people take a look at technologies and only utilize like 15 to 20 percent of the tools available in them. Just rip off the bandit, spend a weekend, put yourself in a hole and just watch YouTube videos. look at the capabilities out there because there's a lot of information and there's a lot of training

and there's a lot of agents willing to share information if you just ask. Would you recommend hiring it out? Like I hear this all the time too. People are like, I know I need campaigns. I don't want to take the time to think through what I want all these email messages to say, can't I just hire someone to write them for me? What are your thoughts on that? I think I've hired people to write them for me three or four times if that says something. At the end of the day, it's your voice. And the emails are going to be a reflection on you. So it doesn't matter what they say, but make sure that it's a positive reflection on you

and that it's doing business the way that you want to do business. Like, for example, I had an agent. I was interviewing yesterday to come on to our brokerage. And he goes, he was telling me about an email that his system sent out in April of 2020. And it was so, like, blind to what was going on with the whole virus. You know, that was while we were in lockdown and people were scared. People didn't have their jobs. Nobody knew how they were going to make mortgage payments.

Like, there was a lot going on. and their system sent out an email about saving money using us, get information from us on. And he's like, I literally watched 200 people unsubscribe from my mailing list that single day. Wow. Yeah. And so I think,

you know, it's great to have things easy and done. But I think there's also, you know, a balance. with that and making sure that the messaging is on point. So I caution against hiring and spending a lot of money on email templates of any kind. I think that one of the things that I do is I actually, every single time I have a different

CRM, I download and I put into a file all of the email templates that they had preloaded into their system because you don't need to reinvent the wheel. Just make a file and then pick your favorites from it and then make tweaks to it. Yeah, exactly. It's all about the tweak. In the time very system, there's like a, there's a saying and it's called R&D rip off and duplicate. And I absolutely love that. Yes. Yeah. And I ask those questions because I hear, but like, okay, I've had that thought too where it's like, I could just hire someone. I felt the same with social media. I could just hire someone, but it's, I can't in a lot of ways because it is my voice and it is everything that comes out from me personally is an extension

of myself and if I just blindly throw money out a problem don't even review it it's the same thing with that guy that happens in the middle of COVID like that's going to happen and and it seems you know in a lot of ways your reputation and your personal brand are all you freaking have yeah so if you are quick to diminish that and you know it's just what else are you left with it's Yeah, I mean, for example, this particular agent is very much like a sphere marketing agent, where it's like he's built his reputation from his relationships around him. So people getting emails like, are you ready to buy? Are you ready to buy? Are you ready to buy? Over and over again are a huge turnoff? Like, are you ignoring my emails? Yeah. That's not a good, that's not a good way to get my friend to talk to me about selling their house. And so I think really, you know, one of the things, the first things you do with marketing is, what is your perfect client? Who do you want to be working with?

What kind of language do you use with those kind of people? I think before you write any content, you should always read Phil Jones. This is exactly what you say. Yes. Absolutely. Change the way your brain is thinking and come from a place of value. And I think you'll get much better response. rates. Okay, so we have, we have your marketing is pumping, you know, leads into your CRM. We have the

open to close on the back end. Are there other, any other primary, I'm trying to think about any other, what else do we, what do we miss? What is something that you think is really important for you in your business, your systems oriented that you would like to talk about? Honestly, it's just building the discipline to use the technology that you have. To be honest, I think that's people's number one struggle and to network with other agents, ask people what tools they're using, just like you're asking me right now. And there's so many things out there. And there's so many opportunities and there's more companies popping up every single day.

Not everything is going to work, but give any kind of marketing efforts that you're doing, at least six months. Otherwise, you're kind of, you're shortchanging it and not really giving it the opportunity. Most marketing does take at least six months to kind of pick up and start saying a return on. So give yourself that time to really focus, find your voice, and put out pieces that are more meaningful. I think time blocking is a huge tool that I use in my own calendar to make the time for those different efforts each month. Are you a Gmail? Where do you keep your notes, your tasks, your to-dos? Like, I use Notion or, you know, some people use Evernote or some people have sticky notes or maybe you don't have this at all. It's in your brain.

There's a lot in my brain and I kind of just speak out loud to like my assistant who sits kitty corner from me and it listens to me talk all day. But we also use Monday. I utilize tasks boards in Google. I really like those because you can assign dates onto calendars. So for like things coming up, trainings and whatnot with like subactions and things like that. It's kind of like a Trello where you get to move things from column to column. I love the move. I use Trello and it just feels so good to keep it progressing. Yeah. So, I mean, I think at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter what you're using, whether you have KB Core or Chime or whatever. I think that, I mean, I always have

a notepad with things that I'm like writing down so I don't forget. But it's more of just a reminder to put them back into my system. into a system. Totally. Yeah. So if it's written on the paper, before I leave, I have to have it in the computer. That's exactly how I am too. And like I will, my, my catch-all is my email. I use superhuman and I love superhuman. And so if I'm ever like out, I just like take a screenshot or like write myself and then just email it to myself. And then I know that it'll come back in and then I can organize it in Notion or put it on a Trello for my VA or whatever. So. Yeah, just sharing. Caroline, because why not? Yeah. I've never used to we're human. Oh my God, dude. I will geek out on that. So my question,

I guess for you, because I don't email through my CRM. I use go high level. And within go high level, I may mostly use it for there's so much it can do. But I, you know, store my contacts in there and I do all my notes and my reminders to follow up. But whenever I do need to send an email, I still go to superhuman just because of how amazing it is. But curious, do you send your email through your CRM or if not, what do you use? Well, funny to say that. So right now we're using constant contact for our like newsletters and things like that. We do send some email through follow-up boss, but I also notice that the deliverability rates are really low when you send through follow-up boss. So I don't love it for that. go high level is actually where we're building all of our new software.

No way, dude. Yep. It's that is a beast of a program as well. It is such a be. And that's the thing like you said, you know, we're only using 10 or 15% of its capability. I'm like, that's me with go high level, maybe. But that 10 to 15% of high level is like 40% of a regular CRM. Yeah, totally.

Just because it has. has so many. It's been helpful consolidating because I used to use, you know, Jotform and then it would populate onto like a Google sheet and I would send it to a VA to like import to a CRM. And now it's like, you can build your surveys, right, and go high level. And the results automatically populate. It's just, it takes in like the landing pages. It just takes a lot of things that were separate before and puts it into one platform, which is so nice. Yeah, I think for anyone listening, it's really important to know like go high level as a sales and marketing platform so it's used primarily for SaaS businesses it's not a real estate CRM real estate here good point it's not right now I'm

building it to be but it's it is very much not a real estate CRM so it has while it has a lot of capabilities for marketing and reporting and things like that I think follow up all is Especially if you're not listeners. Yes. Uh-huh. Exactly. Like for getting started and getting onto a technology that you just need to use, look at follow-up boss.

Yeah. It's funny you say that. That's also the one I recommend because, you know, agents all the time will be like, she'll be what CRM are you using? And I'll be like, well, go high level, but you should probably use follow-up boss. Yes. So we're building it out to be a lot easier for agents to use. and bringing in a lot of those outside components into follow and to go high level to create

kind of like a super system where you can write contracts, view stats on your team, do marketing and you know, yeah. Yeah. The other day and I have not found this yet. And I don't know if they're talking about like opportunities where you can move contacts like in Trello kind of that. I don't know if it's that, but they said that there was like a Trello feature in there where you could do like tasks and build that, which I don't know. Do you know that? Is that possible?

Yes. Yes. Great. More to learn, Caroline. You know, it is complicated in there. The pipeline versus the opportunities and contacts and how to differentiate them. There's a lot of little nuances and I have two different sub-accounts that one, I'm building them out as contacts and one I'm building it out as opportunities because I have no clue which is the right way to do it. So I'm like, well, we will build it both ways and see what happens. No better way to learn than to just throw it out there. Okay, so you have, you have followed boss for now soon to be go high level, which I'm sure, you know, you're going to be able to sell in the future to agents who are interested. So agents that's coming soon. But right now,

you have follow boss, you have open to close, you mentioned Monday, because that's the other thing, too. Like, there's a very clear flow, you know, from lead until closed. Like, that makes sense. But there's all these other miscellaneous tasks within the agent world where it's like, only focus on, you know, generating business. But also, wait, you also need to be a content creator. And also, you need to build relationships with vendors. And also, you know, so it's just, it's a lot muddier than people like to say. 100%. Yeah.

That's one of the things where I've been taking appointments with companies looking to become like a native integration, whether they're a creator of templates or a creator of, you know, seller valuations and things like that. Just trying to equip people with the best tools that I can put into like a single program. And the more I can build in natively, the better. but so there will be up charges and things like that for specific tools. But as you know, you know, it really, they make it easy for developers to build really awesome things on their platform.

So it's exciting. It is exciting. Okay. And before we had to wrap up, is there anything specific that we didn't touch on that you would like to? Get a system. Stick to it. Just use it.

upload start by uploading your holiday card list. If you're a new agent and you don't have a whole bunch of clients to fall back on, put in all your friends and start talking to them. Start learning how to build these systems, talking to people and staying top of mind. Because, you know, as much as your friends will know what you do for a living and whatnot, timing is everything when you follow up with a lead. And so staying front of mind and staying prevalent and building that connection in people's brains between you and real estate is really important to generate those referrals. Totally. And no one's going to do it for you. There's this, there was this like thing in my head where, you know, I hear I talk to agents all the freaking

time, not just on interviewing, but it's literally all I do is talk to agents. And I feel like there's this this thing in their head where they're like, well, man, I feel like someone should just be doing this for me, whether it's my brokerage or whether it's my team leader, whether it's like, Someone should be, and I'm like, no one is coming to save you. You have to save yourself or get off the freaking shit now, dude. We don't want you here. This is a commercial only business. I'm not sure if you understood that.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Okay. Well, Caroline. So it's so much fun. Yeah. No, I have a couple questions for you. Can't let you escape just yet.

And if you want to hang out with me and the owner of the show, you can find us on the Graham, too, the Shelby Show. Aaron and Mucustagi, hit us up. We always want to hear from you. We've been hearing more and more from you, which is amazing. Keep it coming. Chatty is perfect. Okay, Caroline, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Thanks for having me. All right. Real estate, Roxas, thanks for listening.