KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Building Lasting Relationships and Creating Strategies for Meaningful Connections

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

Once you get to know me, you will realize I'm the queen of systems. I have my email marketing, social media, mail marketing, branding, events, technology, all of it locked in so tight. But none of that matters in the absence of doing an incredible job for your clients and building a meaningful, real relationship with your people while you're working with them. And today I'm going to unpack the top five things I'm doing right now to deepen my meaningful relationships with the people in my sphere. Hey, my name's Tina Belivo, and I am obsessed with all things real estate, growth, marketing, social media, technology, and team building. If you're an ambitious agent who's hungry to grow, work on your own terms, and build a thriving life outside of your business, this is the podcast for you.

I got into real estate when I was 18 years old and grew my business from nothing through referrals and social media. And since then, I've built a top performing team, and I've sold over 1,700 homes and 4,000. $400 million in sales volume. In this podcast, I keep it real, and I tell you exactly what I'm doing to sell tons of houses, lead my team, market my brand, grow my social following and database, and maintain incredible work-life balance. I'll never shy away from sharing my biggest mistakes, as well as the juiciest parts of my secret sauce. Pull up a seat and get ready to learn and be inspired. This is the High Performance Agent podcast with Tina Beliveau. Welcome back to the high-performance agent podcast with Tina Belivo. So glad that you're here with me. And I'm really looking forward to diving into today's topic. So first things first. Once you get to know me a little better, if we don't know each other already, you will realize that I am definitely the queen of systems, processes, automation, organization, totally type A, all of the above. I have my email marketing.

my social media, my direct mail marketing, my client events, all of my technology locked in so tight after a lot of time in the industry and figuring out what works and doesn't work for me. But also especially, I spent the last three years really focusing on modernizing and tightening up everything that I do in all of those realms. Years of experimentation and improving. And I just love to figure out the best way to do something. document it and then move on with my life and not mess with it ever again or for a long time. And I can't wait to talk about all of that in future podcasts. But today's topic is a little bit different

because the bottom line is that systems will not bring in referrals and repeat business in the absence of a real relationship. So I'll just say that again. Like systems are the most important second thing to have in place. The first thing to have in place, if you're going to be like relationship driven as opposed to like prospecting based or relying on different like internet lead generation sources, no disrespect to any of those approaches. I just, I'm relationship driven. And that is really the core of what makes the systems have legs and really do heavy lifting for you. So the reason I picked today's topic is, by the way, I have a Facebook group for real estate agents.

I'd love for you to join it if you're not in there already. It's called Relationship Driven Real Estate with Tina Beliveau. So you can search that in Facebook or I'll hopefully remember to insert it in the show notes. So I pulled, I have got like almost 400 awesome realtors in there as of right now. And I pulled them and said like, here are some of the things I'm thinking about talking about on my podcast and listed a whole bunch of different ideas. And this is the one that people overwhelmingly picked, which I don't know why it surprised me, but it did. but what I had written was I want ideas on how to purposefully connect with my sphere on a more meaningful one-on-one basis. So the people have spoken. So here we are. Hopefully those people are going to tune in now.

So we are going to save all of these systems and technology pieces for a bunch of future episodes. Although a few of those systems might get a little mentioned today because they are how I kind of keep things moving. But overall, this is really about what I'm doing right now from a relationship level. And I love talking about what's working right now because I have been doing this a long time. My tactics have changed a ton over the years. I mention this to people all the time when they ask about kind of my professional story. The biggest shift for me in the last three years has been this hybrid change of becoming a mom and that totally changing my lifestyle, my schedule, what I do when I do it, where I do it.

and working virtually and I'm not in an office anymore. I, therefore, that just changes the way I do everything. COVID also, like, there's still plenty to do out in the world. There's plenty of events to go to and people to see. But my lifestyle has changed so drastically that I have found in the last couple years that I did need to like really notice what the changes were and decide what I was going to do about them and make some proactive decisions about building new habits, trying out different things for relationship, building, meeting new people, or cultivating existing ones. Like, I think I just had

years of doing things a certain way. And really, like, COVID was the big thing that really changed it all initially. And then I had my son, I guess, a year and a half after COVID had kind of kicked off. And that just sort of fueled the fire for me of being like, I don't go anywhere anymore. So like, how am I going to continue to meet new people? Because in the game of real estate, it is important to maintain relationships, but also continue to like build your sphere, even if you're like super established, which is what I would candidly say about where I'm at in my career. Like, if you don't continue to build your database, it will just naturally degrade because people, a lot of my listings are people that like sold and moved on.

relocated to a new state for a new job or retirement. Some people pass away. Some people become real estate agents. So like there's just sort of a natural attrition that if you're not working against it and just maintaining what you have, it may not be quite enough. So all of that to say, I don't know if that resonates with anyone who's listening to what I'm saying, but essentially I just kind of wanted to touch on why it's been important for me to find some different ways to connect with people and to build habits around those things so that they're consistent. I always, people ask me all the time, how do I grow my database? And there's so many ways to meet people.

But what I found is consistency can be such a powerful thing. If you think about like the compounding of like habits and of numbers, if you were to add one person to your database every week all year, that's 50 new database additions at the end of the year. You do that for four years. You've got 200 more people in your database. than you did before that. Like that, those are numbers that start to be really meaningful. And if it comes down to how to meet one new person a week, that's a little bit of a challenge, but it's not that

challenging, right? Like, we could do that by doing an open house every weekend, by just being a little bit more, I'll speak for myself, being like a little bit more purposefully verbal when I go somewhere to like bother to connect with people, ask them about their lives. One of my favorite ways to just get to know people if sometimes you might like meet someone at a party or an event or a school thing. And it would be kind of weird to be like, can I have your contact information? Contextually. So I start by connecting with them on social media. And I usually don't ask for permission to send a friend request or to follow someone. I just, I get started there. And then that's sort of like the very top of my funnel to nurture the relationship and then build and build from there. So I want to get into the

need of what I want to talk about today. So there are five things I'm doing right now that I feel the most excited and passionate about that are helping me to connect with my people. And it's sort of a mix for me of who I'm connecting with. Some of them are past clients. Some of it's purely social. Some of it are people who are sort of in that like advocate space for me where they've referred me or have attempted to refer me, the kind of people that are quick to tag me in a Facebook post or notify me like, hey, I heard about something. Those are relationships that I try really hard to cultivate and also like reciprocate their efforts to the best of my ability because as real estate agents, we all have a lot of

resources, relationships, people that we can introduce each other to. I've just, I've repaid people's kindness in so many ways telling them about. my awesome painter or someone who just cannot find a babysitter who's reliable to save their life. And like, I have a whole list of babysitters that I've made in the last year. So I think there's a lot of ways to just create that like reciprocity and generosity energy. But for me, it tends to start with organizing or initiating something. So without further ado, I will give you the my five favorite things I'm doing right now to to build engagement. So, the first thing that I'm doing is what I am calling on this, just in my head, small batch charitable engagement. And what I mean by that is bringing small number of clients with me to go out and do something charitable. And the kind of the light bulb moment that I had about this was there, it started, gosh, a year or so ago, maybe longer, where our team volunteered for a nonprofit called Loven.

lunches in Baltimore. They have an amazing mission. You get together with them on an appointed Sunday morning, bring groceries and put together bagged lunches, and then with them you can distribute it to people that are experiencing homelessness. So our team did 11 lunches, like commitment on a given Sunday. And then I posted a picture afterwards on social media to let people know what we did and let them know about the organization. I think I even had a link of like, you can donate here if you want to support and I had a bunch of clients comment and say, oh, next time you do that, I'd love to come with you. So that was kind of what got me thinking of like, oh, what a great. And again, this was very much like a COVID-driven problem where I hadn't been doing as many in-person events or the events

that I used to do that were really great. Some of them were still like two indoorsy or close quarters at the time. So it was sort of this aha moment of, oh, like, I could just get a couple people together, a couple chosen, like, high-quality relationships that I really want to engage with and do that. So the only kind of thing about that nonprofit is actually like their Sunday slots fill really quickly. And it was like, ironically, like, we just haven't done it a whole lot because every time I sign up for it, like you have to sign up three or four months out in advance. So finally, I just kind of came across the right opportunity at the right time. And that's something that I've learned about everything and like, whether it's just business and entrepreneurship or just life,

like when I have my radar, like when my antenna are up looking for a good opportunity, even if it's just like sort of very unconscious in the back of my mind, that's the first step to making things happen. And then when the right thing comes along, I can like identify it so much easier and be like, oh, well, this is this is the exact way to do that thing I've been wanting to do. But the pathway wasn't clear. So the way that that happened for me is a friend of mine invited me to come and cook at a local Ronald McDonald house in Baltimore City, where you bring a group in and prep a meal and serve dinner to people that are staying at the house. And the reason why that was just a little bit of a better fit is that they had way more

like openings. They're looking for someone to do it every month. And you need like six or seven people to cook dinner. So it just created this opportunity where I could always have sort of a recurring a recurring commitment and bring like three or four clients plus whoever on my team was available on a given night and go do this regularly. So we've only done it twice, I think. Yeah, twice so far, but it is so perfect. Like I've basically put some calls to action out on my social media, letting people know what we're up to. I tend to post before and then do a little recap after and just say, hey, if you want to get involved, let me know. And you can, I have like a little list of people that are interested. And at our second one, the first one, it was mostly just our team

trying to figure out, like, how to cook a dinner for a whole bunch of people in an hour and a half, which we kind of figured out our little, like, system and process for it. And then in the second one, I think we had three clients with us. And we got to chat with them, spend quality time, do some good together, be in person. And I have found there's just, like, again, because of like the post-pandemic world that we're in, sometimes there's just less going on. for people event-wise and opportunity-wise, and just kind of putting myself at the center of that and creating these connection opportunities seems to mean a whole lot to people. So that's my first tip is small-batch charitable engagement.

And we are going to be continuing that commitment for however long we choose to see it through, and I'm really excited about it. My second tip is kind of on the same note of nonprofit involvement. So I have always been someone that's been interested in giving back. I've been on boards for nonprofits. I've been on different committees. I've done lots of fundraising. And all of that has been very, very gratifying.

And one of the things that I started to feel like a personal craving and passion for was to get involved with a nonprofit that was way. more grassroots and just ground level than some of the ones that I've been involved in and just kind of feel like I was making even more of an impact. And sure enough, that was sort of in the back of my mind as like a passion that I cared about personally, not necessarily something that was going to like directly tie to my business. And one of my clients who's become a dear friend put this small nonprofit on my radar. They're called the Napkin Network. And they are And when I say they, it's like one woman in Washington, D.C. with a very small team of volunteers.

They basically source supplies and money for diapers, formula, and wipes and other essentials for moms in need who can't afford those things. Which, by the way, it kind of blew my mind to find out this little fact. Food stamps don't cover diapers. So there are people that are in like total poverty and can't buy diapers, which just is like mind blowing and hard. breaking to me. And that is really what spoke to me of like the need for that and not even, I can't even imagine being in a situation where I couldn't feed my baby, couldn't afford to feed my baby, couldn't afford to give him a clean diaper. So it started with a personal passion. But, you know, she kind of reached out to me just making me aware of it and sort of feeling out like,

hey, like maybe we could do something. And ultimately, we decided to launch a Baltimore metro chapter because up till now, that organization has been very, like, D.C. metro area focused. So as things happen, like one thing led to another. So we decided to launch a chapter towards the middle of last year and just kind of like take it one simple thing at a time. So the first thing we did was decide we're going to launch a chapter. And then the second thing was we said, okay, well, let's host a diaper drive and just see who comes. And I, will definitely talk about this in some other episodes, but I have a Facebook group for my past clients and advocates. That's like, I call that the TBG community. TBG stands for the Belvo

group, by the way. So that's like my, my past client group. I also have a Facebook group for the area that I farm digitally. I call it my digital geographic farm. That has been one of my really innovative lead gen strategies over the last couple years. And I run a group for that, which is local. So what I decided to do is say, hey, well, let's have a diaper drive at this store where I'm friendly with the owner. We'll just invite moms to pop in on a Friday morning. We'll have coffee and donuts. And they can drop off like a box of diapers or they can shop at the store and the store owner volunteered to donate a percentage of sales to the nonprofit, which was super generous of her and really amazing. So we basically said, let's just do this little event, no big expectations. Let's just get started, which is such a

a powerful mindset with these things because it can be so easy to talk yourself out of stuff or feel overwhelmed or question yourself. So starting small is always a power tip that I like to give people. And sure enough, it was a cozy small diaper drive. I've had some events that were super successful and very like shiny, flashy, maybe even of how big they were. I've had other events that were really small, maybe by some measures, not maybe the most like successful, not a hit for whatever reason. And I would say the diaper drive was small. And for me, it was not like blowing anyone out of the water, but we still managed to compile a huge pile of diapers. I think the store ended up donating several hundred dollars. And for the size of that nonprofit, like, that was a huge win for

them. And then there was someone who came to the diaper drive who I went to high school with. And we'd been connected on social media and chatted a tiny bit in our our DMs recently. But we really hadn't been in touch for about 20 years. But she came to the diaper drive because she had just had a baby and obviously felt some kind of call in connection to the mission. She also had some spare diapers to drop off. We ended up connecting in person. I believe this was in September if I've got my head on straight. And then in January of this year, she reached out to me saying she and her husband were ready to buy their house and we've since sold them a beautiful home. And I don't get a deal from every event that I do necessarily depending on the scope and the

target audience and all of that. But it's just like by putting something out there like that, you just never know what's going to happen. And I love that. I mean, it can be very confounding at times because it's not like, there's no guarantee of exactly what these kind of initiatives are going to yield. But what I've learned is if I keep doing the next right thing, stay in a place of generosity, giving and taking action and just being someone who makes a different. and helps other people, the business does always come back around. So that is just part of what we're up to with this nonprofit. And as things have evolved, I've just had other ideas. We do a client appreciation event every November. A lot of real estate agents do this, the pie party. If you've never heard of a

realtor doing a pie party, you will soon. But we always give pies away at Thanksgiving. And this year, we decided to do a diaper drive along with giving the pies away. And we just made it optional for people, hey, if you want to drop a box of diapers off, feel free. Otherwise, come get your pie. And what made it really successful was making it easy for people. I made an Amazon wish list with diapers where people could just order diapers. They were shipped right to my house. They didn't need to go to a store. They didn't need to do anything except click and ship. It was sort of like registry style. Super, super straightforward. We had the hugest pile of diapers at the end of our event. So just weaving those kinds of things into our client events, the people that I'm lucky to be around,

love to give and have the same priorities as me. And we have a ton of families in our sphere. And I'm sure when you understand the mission of an organization like this, it's just so natural. It would be like, of course I'll help. Of course I'll make a donation. So those are just some of kind of the success stories of how we've engaged people with this charity. we also make a donation to them after every closing and call it like our adopt a mom program. And I actually sort of on the tech side of things, we didn't really have a system in place to let people know that a mom had been adopted. And I just set up a really pretty email campaign in my email software. I love automation, by the way. So if you don't know what I'm talking about, just stay with me.

But we have a way where when I'm in my CRM and we use follow up boss, everyone always asks me what CRM I use. There's a thing you can do where if I tag them with a certain tag and follow up boss, I can connect it to this software called Zapier. And it basically zaps an order for an email to go out from my CRM to my email platform. And my email platform is Flowdesk. And now it's set up where after someone closes and we apply that tag to their contact in the CRM, it auto triggers an email that goes out to them and basically says, hey, like, we just want to let you know. Because of your transaction, we were able to adopt a mom through this organization. One more mom is going to have diapers for her baby.

Thank you for supporting our team and being part of this. By the way, if you want to be involved in this organization in any way, let us know. So just really letting people know what opportunities they can avail themselves of because, again, we work with a lot of moms who feel very connected to this mission as well. And the last thing, and I'm kind of going deep on this small nonprofit thing just because it's been such like a passion point for me, the last thing is that we also recently sent an email out to our general sphere about the adopta mom thing. So now like we've sort of made a general announcement and then clients get that notification after settlement like on a one to one basis. But I realized like we just hadn't told the story of

what we were doing at all. But when we sent the announcement, been out to everybody. I included a quick form that I made in Google that just basically said, like, hey, do you want to get involved in some way? Let us know. And then when they opened up the form, it said, if you want to make a donation, check this box. If you want to help plan our next event, check this box. If you just want to make sure you get an invite to the next event, check here. So basically let people know of ways they could get involved. And I had a ton of responses on that form and I just love things like that where you just put something out there and see who's interested. I'm always surprised by who raises their hand. Some of the people who responded were

wildly unexpected. Like there was someone who replied who I really, really just was a great huge advocate for me for years. And he and I just haven't talked as much. He hasn't sent me a referral a long time, which is totally fine. But like, he responded to the form. And I would say our relationship has been in more of a disengaged than an engaged place. So it was just such a cool testament to creating the opportunity for people to raise their hand and engage. And then for me to be like, oh, hey, great. Let's talk about that some more. So that's my second tip is if there's some sort of small nonprofit sort of charitable thing you can get involved in. I know what I just described was pretty wide in scope, but that's evolved over the last year essentially of trying this,

trying that and just kind of figuring out how we can make an impact and have some systems behind it and have it be kind of sustainable. My third thing that I love doing is what I call a micro event. So that would be for me, an event for just a very small targeted group of people. This is something that I've played with off and on over the years. Back in the day, I did these events for what I call referral chains. So to me, a referral chain is when like buyer A refers me to buyer B and buyer or B refers to me to buyer C. And at some point you have this like pot of people that all know each other. I find it's often people who work together or friend groups, but it's, I've noticed it's definitely been a little bit more of the former. So that is something that I would do events more for a specific

group of people who all knew each other, which is really fun for them and just kind of more fun for everybody, a little bit more of natural like mixing together. But at the beginning of this year, I did a micro event for my clients. I basically invited a bunch of women who I thought would be interested in coming to a spin class. So one of my little, like, passion side hustles is I teach spin once a week at a local spin studio. So for whatever reason, I just had never done a spin class for my clients. Also because of COVID, actually, people were really weird about spinning for a while, understandably. So I felt like it was finally like a good time to do that. I put it out there and it was just really fun is the bottom line. So it was not like the biggest event I've done. There was no complexity to it

whatsoever. I just basically, I curated an invite list of who I thought would probably want to come. And sure enough, like, that was where I got the bulk of the response. I also posted about it on social and just said, hey, if you want to come, let me know. And I like doing things like that from time to time because there are people that will, again, raise their hand and let me know, like, oh, hey, I would like to come to that. And I'm like, oh, cool, we like never talk, but absolutely, come on out. Would love to get to know you better. And there was someone who came to my spin class, who I also haven't seen since high school besides a little bit of communication on Instagram at like a very low level. And she let me know through a form that I use for the RSPs that she's thinking about moving within the next year.

So you just never know. And I do find that doing these micro events is just a lot more intimate, which was the whole point of this like episode of how to connect on a much more intimate deeper level than being in a room filled with 100 people. My fourth tactic is surprising and delighting with unexpected gifts. There are two things that I do that, oh, I do a lot of gifting. That's like a whole other topic. But there's two things that I do that seem to just surprise and delight the most that both mean a lot to me for different reasons.

So the first thing is I have this really cool software I use for a lot of my mail and gifting. And there is a way where you can basically upload a picture of anything to the platform and it will mail them an ornament. That could be a Christmas ornament or it could just be something that you would like hang up in your house and put it wherever you want. And I just kind of, it was sort of a risk I took at the beginning of doing an ornament when someone had a loss, whether it was like a family member, like a person or a pet. But now whenever someone in my core advocate group posts on social that they lost a pet or they lost a person who's important to them. And people will often post these beautiful, like, high resolution photos and memories of the person

or the dog or the cat. So I've just built a habit of downloading this pictures and ordering ornaments. And I cannot tell you how much it means to people. And it's just this last week, I got two over-the-top appreciative thank yous from clients and friends of mine who had lost a pet in both cases. And the gift just touched their heart in such like a memorable way. And that feels so good to me because I just, I've had some losses, one major one a year and a half ago. And I will never forget that people who took the time to let me know that they cared and to do something, to do anything, whether it was just sending me a handwritten note. But I remember there's a specific person who wrote me the most beautiful letter.

there were two other people who sent me wind chimes in memory of my sister. Oh gosh, I didn't mean to get emotional. That was not on my plan. But I know how that made me feel to feel like someone took a minute to go above and beyond the like, sorry for your loss type of dialogue. So that's just one of things. And I don't do it for the thank yous, but like hearing from people, like I just know like what a big impact that that can make. The other thing is in a totally different category. Once I got involved with this software where I can like automatically order gifts through the same thing I kind of outlined earlier. I can put a tag in my CRM and it will literally zap an order to the gift software. I had this thought. I think it was during COVID when transactions started to feel even more

stressful than they had always felt. And I was like, wouldn't it be cool if people got a little surprise gift once we were under contract? And kind of the way that it times out is they always tend to get this gift right around the home inspection, whether we're in the thick of it or just resolved it. So it has this like extra celebratory effect. So basically we have this little under contract surprise gift. They have no idea it's coming. It's basically caramels or chocolate truffles. I've done a little bit of both depending on what my platform has at a given time. We get the most lovely thank yous about it. Not from everybody, but from a lot of people. Enough for me to know that people are like surprised and delighted. Like I just did not expect you to mail me candy in the middle of the

transaction, like, thank you. And it just sends a message that we care, that we value them. And it's just something that I love to do. It's also a reasonable cost. So it's just like a simple, loving thing to do. And I just love things that are simple and loving. And my fifth tip is kind of in that similar ballpark. It's a little bit less specific. But it's kind of building a habit and a mindset of using social media posts to start direct conversations. Like, it's nice to like someone. one's photo. It's nice to even comment something a little bit generic, but I really work to use social media to connect with people for real, the people that I want to connect with for real. So I've just sort of built a habit of if someone posts an Instagram story, I don't just tap the like or that

little heart button in the lower right hand corner. Like I will actually write back to them and say something thoughtful. And I just, I start a lot of conversations in the DM box is what I'm, I guess, getting around a saying, I try to write thoughtful comments when I comment on people's photos. When I have time, I don't always. I mean, sometimes I don't do anything at all. But when I'm able to, I just make an effort to use my social media to connect and not to just like check the usual boxes of like liking and hearting and whatever. So that's just maybe my least specific tip to end with. But I think it's the most powerful one in a lot of ways. Like the ornaments that we order are kind of a reflection of that of taking what someone says on social media and then using those opportunities

to try and be impactful in their lives, show gratitude, send them a little bit of love, acknowledge major milestones, you name it. So those are my top five tips of what I'm doing right now. I think I'm doing a lot of other things, but those are the things I feel most excited about. And I would just love some feedback from you. I just want to kind of reiterate, come join my Facebook group and tell me what you do to engage with your. people and what's lighting you up right now? I want to know like what's making you feel passionate and excited. Let me know. Search for my group called Relationship Driven Real Estate with Tina Beliveau. And let me know. I'd love to hear some feedback. And I look forward to chatting with you again

soon. Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the High Performance Agent Podcast. Make sure to subscribe by hitting the follow button so you don't miss the next episode. And check the show notes for links to all of my goodies, including my newsletter filled with tips for ambitious agents. You can also find me on Instagram at Tina Bellevaux. Talk to you soon.