KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Jump Starting Your Real Estate Business When It's Flatlining

Episode Date: June 14, 2024

Are you ready to generate way more leads with way less struggle? I have great news for you. I'm now accepting new students into high performance agent Academy. Inside the Academy, you'll get eight months of customized support from me and get access to my entire playbook. Sales, marketing, social media, systems, all of it ready for you to copy and paste right into your business. Check the show notes for the link to learn more. We start on May 1st. Hey, my name's Tina Belavow 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 400. million dollars 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. I'm Tina Bellabone and here with Laura Malick. Hey, hey. And we are here to talk about jumpstarting your business. Laura, what is the genesis

of this episode? Fill us in. Well, it's not even just jump starting your business. You can be a seasoned agent and you're feeling like it's a little slow and you want to jump start it. And then that's like me. I've been licensed for nine years. Things have been flowing. Twenty-twenty-three, you know, as a down year, less business. And then right now, my pipeline, if anyone else out there, feels like me, is just sitting there. I have a lot of buyers and sellers that they're the two for one, you know, like they don't want to buy so they're not going to sell because they don't know how to do both at once. And all of a sudden, I was like, I don't really, I don't like my, like what's coming in for commission in the next, you know, month and the second month. And I was like,

I really, I need to get some now buyers. And I thought, I thought, out of you because I was like, I know, I know to host the open house. I know I don't mind door knocking an open house. I'll do that. I know to maybe reach out to my database, but I don't think I know how to do it that purposely to find the business. And I was like, but what else can I do that could really, really get me going? Yeah. I think this is such a great topic. It's funny because when I call it jump starting your business, I assumed that it was just jump starting an existing agent's business too of like how to just rev the engine when everything is just feels dead. And it's because when you, this came from a voice memo that you sent me. And I was like, well, Laura,

don't you remember that when you took High Performance Agent Academy, there was a bonus training called Jump Starting Your Business. And I was like, oh, let's kind of like go over the high points of that for this episode. So I will give credit to one of my old mentors, Vlad, for kind of like my starting point with this. One of the things that he, because it's funny, like when I got into real estate, I didn't have any sales training. I didn't know about scripts and like best practices with late conversion. And he kind of has a brain that's like more wired for that. So one of the things he, I can hear him in his like Russian accent in my head right now basically, and I'm not going to try to emulate it, basically saying like the best way to get a closing right now is to convert a lead you already have

because you already have them. And like that's generally like a duh, but like I'm sure you're like, duh, yeah, like these people on my pipeline, I would have sold them. the house if I could find the inventory. And there's like a lot of directions we could go with that. But I think when I need a business jump start, there's a lot going on with me psychologically that is often needing like attention and nurturing because generally when my business isn't going the way I need and want it to, I start to not feel so good. My energy goes low. And then when my emotions and energy are a little bit clouded, I don't necessarily even see what's in front of me with the clearest of eyes. And I've seen this running a team whenever I've had someone work for me who's

kind of in a bit of like a doldrum's place, if I go in their pipeline and my CRM and actually look at it, I can see that even if they don't have as many leads as they want, they're often not even talking to those leads as much as they should. And this is not like a character assassination at all. It's like it's happened to me. It's happened to people who I've observed is kind of the point of what I'm saying. So it's sort of like a gut check of your best opportunity to make right now money is to convert who you have. So is there any way that you can kind of revive your own energy and revive your contact with them? Can you look back at your most recent outreach if you've made it? And is it time for a check-in? Is it time for a new tactic? And pipeline reviews, and when I say that,

like the way I was trained to do that when I recruited for a brokerage was that I would sit with that mentor of Ladd and I would talk to him about everyone on my pipeline and we would brainstorm and mastermind how to move them forward in the recruiting process. And there is something about conversation. And that's, again, why I love our podcast format is now conversational versus me just talking to myself. Conversation is transformative. Conversation is magical. In talking to him, sometimes he had great suggestions, but sometimes as I was talking, I would actually uncover what I needed to do. I would say, oh, Laura Malick spent on my pipeline for three months. She came to such and such event. She didn't return my last three texts. And then it's like your brain just

literally turns on. And then I'm like, but you know what? It's really time that I X, Y, and Z. So my first tip for jump starting your business is to look at your pipeline and review it with someone and start talking out solutions and ways to move the needle on anyone who has potential. I think sometimes we have like really like dead leads that they're just totally unresponsive. They're probably not worth any personal outreach anymore and they're best to do. just put in some sort of automated system. But people where they have the capability to buy himself, but they're just stuck because of some logistic or dynamic going on, there's often an opportunity there of, hey, is it time to circle back to them and do enough? It's been two years.

Maybe we need to redo the buyer consultation. Maybe now that I'm sitting and looking at that person's name, I'm thinking, you know, I do know five agents that might have listings in the neighborhood that they really want to be in. Let me do a little bit of extra work. Let me do a little bit of outreach. And I'm going to pause and take a breath here, but one of the things that I say to people is that for me, activity breeds opportunities. And when I start moving my energy and my focus in some direction that has at least some constructive reason for doing so, solutions start to present themselves. So that is where the pipeline conversation and the outreach and the brainstorming can start to actually manifest into

something that is like an actual business result at some point in time down the line. Thoughts on that. I love it. I already did some of it. So that was like good feeling. But I realize I, even like today I got the stuck email. They were concerned about the interest rate and I didn't even like respond yet. And today it's like, okay, well, it doesn't have to be on me. Let's, let's pull the lender and see where they're actually stuck at. Like, is it the interest rate or their monthly payment and digging deeper that I like that of like just going that two to three level deep of what can you do next to move them or make them feel comfortable because it might not just be the interest rate. It might be something a little bit deeper. Yeah. And I think sometimes there's

there's just nothing that can be done. But for me, there's that, okay, I did what I could. I gave attention. And then I just come back a month from there and then a month later. Those are the leads that I'm thinking about that kind of tend to not get the attention they could or should. The people who are really motivated and engaged, we generally don't need help with them. It's just things are kind of happening and maybe a little bit more of like an effortless manner. But I think in this low inventory climate, we all probably have a lot of people in the pipeline who would be a buyer and a seller. If only, they could find a house to buy, right? And that whole thing. So that's two of the fastest path to transactions is to convert what you have.

Another thing that is helpful to do is to call your old random leads. And I call it like digging for gold. So maybe there's someone who did ghost you five times. But if you have the time and energy to invest, maybe this isn't the time they answer. Or maybe you switch tactics. And I always tell people like stop sending emails. Maybe you text everybody and you actually get a response or maybe you switch from text to email and they click on that IDX link or that MLS feed that you're sending them. And you get an auto email kind of turned on or, you know, enabled for somebody because they were

wanting to take the bait and the bait is listings. Like that's the ultimate buyer bait. Buyers want to see listings and they want to see inventory. So for right now business, those are the two starting points. But if you're like, Tina, my pipeline sucks. There's nothing on it. Like, what else do you have for me? Yes. I want that. Like, I want to buy a house buyer. That's who I'm looking for right now. I'm ready to sell. In case you missed it, high performance agent academy is officially open for new students and we start on May 1st. Do you feel frustrating by making slow progress, sick of your systems and CRM being a mess, lonely and tired of figuring out how to grow your business on your own, and are you ready for a breakthrough in your sales,

marketing, and lead generation? First of all, you're not alone. I have been there, and I've blazed the trail to solve all of those problems. I've assembled every single system, template, and marketing strategy I use so you can copy and paste them right into your business. If you're ready to transform everything about your real estate business, this is your golden opportunity. I will walk alongside you for the rest of 2024 and help you plug these systems directly into your business. And we will customize every element to your market, your brand, your voice, and your goals. High performance agent academy starts on May 1st and I don't want you to miss the boat. Head to the show notes to get the link or DM me on Instagram at Tina

Bellevaux and I'll send you everything you need. See you in the academy. So that's That's where the immediate prospecting tactics come into the picture. And that is not my passion zone, but I've absolutely utilized it. We just talked in the episode we've recorded prior that I did use to call expires and withdrawals, especially if they met criteria for the area and or price point that I wanted to be working in. So that's where calling for sale by owners, expires, withdrawans, or whatever your MLS calls them. And open houses can be really effective because a for sale by owner expired or withdrawn wants to sell their house. They literally just tried, right?

And for open houses, not everyone who comes to an open house is a real buyer, but a lot of them are. And then some of them are neighbors, and that's the more like passive database building opportunity. And its activity, like you said before, too, like that open house is giving you activity and fueling you. Yeah. And there's something to this that I feel like is helpful to say,

depending on your need and your Wad for right now business. So I'm going to just make an assumption, Lauren, you can correct me if I'm wrong. You're at a point where you would like to grow your business, but you can still pay your mortgage next month if things don't immediately course correct. So you may not feel as motivated to do these prospecting based activities if they're just, they don't bring you any joy or energy or not enough to continue to do. that long term. Because the challenge with those kind of activities is to build your business model off of them. You have to keep doing them. Like you don't do open house this for two years and then quit and continue to see business from them unless you've also done the longer tail relationship

and or system driven activities to build it. So there's sort of like a gut check question here of like, do you want right now business or do you need right now business? There's no wrong answer. It just really helps to be clear on what your wants and needs are so that you can then take actions that are really in alignment with that. So I am not the guru on FISBO expired, withdrawn, an open house strategy. Like we've said before, there's a million people that do teach that stuff and so many great tips and thought leaders on social media. But those would be like the really fastest, like people who are actively trying to buy and sell a house right now and they're either unrepresented or maybe open to different representation or whatever the case may be.

So if we want to put all of that on a shelf as I've tried that and or decided certain things in that list are not for me, then we get into the stuff that's more attraction based, where there's being attraction based and passive and kind of slow. And then there's attraction based, but being in very serious action, but just doing it from a place of this is what I like to do. This is how I like to do it. this is where I like to do it. And you said something to me before we started recording, which is, I only want to do things that are from home. Yes. You look a little embarrassed.

I'm like, no, you're like preaching to the choir. Like, do not make me leave my house. I came to an event for you last week and I felt like an alien. I was like, I never go anywhere. Only because I love you so much. Should I come out of my house to do anything? So that has been a huge part of my journey in these last four years, having two kids, embracing work from home life and also kind of recovering from burnout and not feeling willing to do all the prospecting things that I told you. I spent three years hardcore prospecting two hours a day, five days a week, recruiting agent, and it burned me out to the point that I'm still getting over it. So I do have strong feelings and opinions about that. So for me, it's been really important to figure out,

like, what can I do that is going to work for me and not tap me out and not kind of succeed now, but pay the price later. Like, it's just not, it's not worth it to need to work that way anymore. So the, you know, really basic real estate 101 is like, have you called your database? So let's talk about that. You can call people from anywhere. And I think it's very similar to the pipeline question, right? Like if you said, look at your leads and say, what's the last time I actually called them? Or made us a personal outreach. And then it's the same thing for your database overall, right? What do you want to say about that? Well, both. I, you know, I'm similar to you where I'm like I text and I understand, I understand keeping in contact with your database and doing

reachouts. And I'll be quite honest, like this first quarter, I've been not wanting to necessarily do it. Like, even if you follow the two letters of the week, like, I do try to like look at it to see who do I need to make contact with. And so I actually just had huge success from this database touch was I decided to do, I call it a reverse prospecting, but I don't think it's quite called that. Maybe you have a name. But I wanted to support my daughter's old Girl Scout troop. And so I sent down an email to my prospects to pass clients, to my BIPs and to anybody who I wanted to maybe get cookies on me. And so not everybody got a cookie, but they got the email and they had to fill out the form to get the cookie. And in there, and like I pulled from your playbooks of your

giveaways, I asked if they had any real estate needs with a couple different answers. And then I asked if they had a referral. And what happened was I resurfaced three leads that like had been kind of dead. They resurfaced and like we're chatting. And then I got two buyer referrals out of it. And I think for me, it was like 125 contacts. I had about 50 conversations, 35 boxes of cookies. And then I got five pieces of business from it. And that was just last week. And I was like, oh, that felt good versus like following the letters of the week, which I know is really important. But I was like, I'm just looking for something a little bit more fun and different. And I know you have more tools too that we're going to get into. I'm sending it out. But that was something that worked for me. Yeah. And

And it's funny, I've never followed the letters of the week. And if anyone is like, what are they even talking about? That's this like theory that like you call everyone who's last name begins with an A this week and then B and C or there's that's generally. There's 26 letters. So over 30 or over 12 weeks, you'll hit the whole alphabet. And there you go. They combine two letters so that it's not like if you had M and N, you would have a gazillion. So they combine like A and W, which gives you a certain amount. And then you're touching your database once a quarter. It's a brilliant system. It works. but I also get bored from it. Yeah, and I think where I struggle is when I have to manufacture a reason to reach out to people that isn't super authentic. So that's where things like the letters of the week can feel challenging. Yeah. And that's the downside of it. The upside is when you have such a simple system like that and you can just follow it and not constantly be like looking for a new. I have a whole idea.

So I definitely try and kind of pick my poison of when am I going to be more like curating exactly what I'm doing. but I've struggled. Like, if I'm going to call you on the phone, like, I need ever reason. Like, it is not my idea of a good time to call you and be like, hey, I'm just checking in. Like, if someone called me that, who I barely talk to, I would be like, I got. I actually, I usually go to social media first and like engage a conversation there. And then I text, like, I know both you and I, like, we don't do phone calls. And I usually just say, hey, how are you?

How have you been? And it's worked really well. Yeah. And that does why. Yeah. And I think there's three tips I give people if they're in a place where they're like ready to, like, get on. the phone and dive in with people, start with the relationships where you're most likely to get good vibes that help you keep rolling and or referrals or connections or whatever. So there's

three places I look for that. Number one, everyone that's referred you in the last couple years. So those are your people that are most actively supporting you right now and are most likely to continue supporting you. I do have people that refer me once in a while over the years, but one of the things I've learned in 20 years of working by referral is I tend to kind of have a hot streak with people where maybe they buy or sell and they're like all about Tina, all about the Bellevue group and they're kind of sending their friends. And then it just sort of wanes because they move on with their life and maybe it's funny. I feel like when you do a transaction with someone, you're like really close contact and the rapport is like really, really high. And then as time progresses,

the rapport can tend to just sort of settle into like a more normal level. So I find that the people who refer me most recently, they're the gold mines where there might be, that's a weird way to term people, but whatever, I said it. There's a gold bind there to kind of happen to a little bit more. So that's one thing. The second thing is just everyone you've represented in the last couple years. Back to what I just said, the more recently we worked together, the more recently you've maybe felt the magic, felt the connection, felt a desire to reciprocate my work and my team's work for them with a referral. So those, and again, it's for me, easier to to reach out to those people sometimes than the people where it's been so long that I have to maybe

manufacture the rapport a little bit more. It can be done. It can be done by checking their Facebook or just sitting and really like trying to remember a lot about them and generate the conversation, but recent really helps me. And then the third thing is to call the friendliest, most supportive people who give you energy and who are making efforts to support you. And maybe it hasn't manifested into a referral, but they're introducing you to people or they're tagging you. They're including you in things. They're cheering for you. They're liking your stories.

Those are the people that remind me of like who I am. Because I think one thing that I started off by saying is when my business is down, like I can forget who I am. I can forget how powerful I am. I can forget how accomplished I am. I can forget how much I have to offer because I'm maybe just in a mindset where I'm looking through myself of a kind of a different prism of perspective. the people who bring me back home and myself, that can be very, very powerful to tap into.

Don't forget who you are. Don't forget. I mean, seriously, I love what I. You're like speaking to me right now. I'm like, yep, yep, yep, I am powerful. You are. You are so powerful. Yeah, and I think, you know, it's just easy for our thinking to kind of get the better of us.

That's why real estate, like mentally you need to be surrounded by like-minded real estate agents and having these conversations and knowing that it's normal. like both of us have felt like this before. I'm currently feeling it. And you're able to help me get out of the little funk that I'm in. Yeah. And I kind of said that to you before we started today. I said it in different words where I was feeling my manifesting generator energy. But I feel like I'm like, no, this is who I am. And I think it's easy to shrink for me. I'll speak for myself. It's easy to shrink back when I am in a season of I've been planting seeds and not seeing anything sprout yet. And then there's this obnoxious extra thing of like, and then if you're on social media, watching other people and sort of, and I'm comparing myself, I can, I can forget who I am. And I can forget what I bring to the table. So I've been sort of, I haven't been hiding, but I've been not merely as like just out there with what I want to create for myself for a bunch of reasons. And now I'm like, oh, no, I'll make the trending real. I can do that.

I can do that. And so can you. Right. So, okay. So I want to go. That goes to what I want to say. Yeah. You go. Okay. Fine. Fine. I go and then you go. That was my next tip is starting a visibility challenge. Oh. And getting active on social media. Yeah. Where were going? I wanted to go to the tactics of like adding the like the purposeful value that you did and your emails of like really trying to like see if they wanted a market value or like, adding in like I know you have HomeBot and stuff, but like being purposeful for the email like, hey, did you know you've been in your house this long? Like you, you had some really interesting emails that I thought were really helpful to that like one, I felt like it made me, it was giving me that activity. Like I'm in the MLS and I'm looking at recent, you know, sales. It gives me kind of

stuff to talk about. And then I was like sending that over. Do I can go back to your tool, your toolkit too, but some of that. I actually, I want to maybe shift a thought for that. I feel like when my business needs stirring up, and when I say stirring up, I mean like intensive, email is not the place that I go. Oh, fine. Yeah, I know. I wanted, sorry. I got my answer I wanted.

Did you think that was the easy button? I think there are ways to use email to reengage people, especially when like that's the medium that I know that they like, like certain personality styles. I know they wanted email. They don't want me to call them. And they're definitely not even on social media or they got rid of their profile, you know, six years ago. So I think email for one-to-one engagement, but when you need to like stir your business up,

like hardcore, that is where that like activity breeds opportunity mindset kind of needs to come in of like bringing yourself forth in some way that works for you, whether that's on the phone or the prospecting activities or getting super visible and activating your social media at a new level. And one thing you and I talk about behind the scenes a lot is like everything with social media is temporary, right? I can ratchet my social media up really aggressively for a few days, weeks, or months because I'm relaunching my course or launching my podcast or reviving my podcast after an enormous break or whatever the case may be. And then there are times where I'm dormant and like no one's like knocking on my door going, where'd you go? Like no one cares. Right.

So I think the benefit to that is if you choose to kind of ratchet activity up, like you can kind of self-modulate that to like whatever level that you want to do. But I think there's something to be said for creating activity, creating connection, creating conversations that will then yield referrals and or introductions that lead to business. And email is not a great conversation creator. I think email is great for branding. It's great for being remembered. It's great for a little bit of passive engagement if people have things to click through and look at. So it's ways for people to basically not forget about you. And it works to get people to do things. But when we're talking about real estate sales, it's not like selling a product, right? It's not like, hey, I'm

going to put all of my widgets on sale and send it to my list. So like, if only we could do that in real estate. Like it's a very different approach. We don't necessarily have control over those things. So that is where I would take you with a visibility challenge of, you know, committing to getting really active on a social media platform of your choice where you pick a timeline. I think 30 days is a really good kind of baseline for that, just long enough to get momentum, but not making a lifetime commitment because lifetime commitments make me tired. So something like that. And I actually created a 30 day challenge for this. If any of you haven't heard some other episodes of mine or seen this. In 2020, I was reviving my D-to-B. I was coming back

from almost four years of brokerage management. I was re-engaging my past client. It was peak COVID, and I was recovering from burnout. So I was obsessed with how do I create energy from a computer from technology? I can't even have an event. It's just too complicated and difficult and risky. So I birthed this 30-day challenge of all the ways that I shouldn't use the word birth, should out. It's your baby. Listen, that challenge was a lot of work to create. I know. I know. And it's really great. You actually like, when you have a lot of tools that we use and I'm like, I should just redo that. I need that energy. I need that daily thing that like tells me that creative thing that I can do. And it's also fun. And you're not just telling me to call a letter. You're like, hey, called an old business owner. And

here's what you say. Like, your challenge is phenomenal. So thank you for birthing, Matt. Okay. You're so welcome for birthing, Matt. Okay, we'll stop with the birthing. And thank you for being kind about it. But I think part of what was at the heart of that challenge that felt really good to me was it was very focused on how can I serve others. How can I make people happy? How can I make them feel good? How can I show up for them in a way that helps them? You brought up the business owners. There were a lot of like assignments where it was like, hey, why don't you like all, most real estate agents have marketing and business expertise that other more fledgling small business owners do not have. So sort of like, how can I be someone that makes someone else's day? And by the way, there's

that like deposit in the relationship account where there's a good chance they will pay that back to me in some way with support, a referral or a connection that changes my world. It only takes one connection to change your world. My team, the Bellevue group, we're in the middle of a run of 68 transactions. from one relationship. I met him showing a really dingy house, I think in 2010 or 2011. And it was an investor. And we've built a very, very strong relationship.

And about five months ago, he came to me about selling off two different portfolios of rental properties that he'd been holding. And we now have, I think, 59 of them under contract with like the last batch coming to market. That one relationship is received. responsible for us having the biggest first quarter that I've ever had in my career. That's amazing. So, and you never, and I think the, the kicker of it is we won't know what relationships are going to hold. But when we invest in them, we create the option for that to happen. One, I think it shows the power that, I guess it kind of gives me motivation that even if I am just meeting one or two new people a week, that's actually really impactful, like long term.

Yeah, 100%. And not only are you meeting those people. And I know your habits are really on point, but this comes back to real estate 101, which I think whenever our businesses are starting to not go the way we want, that's where it really helps to zoom out. And again, look at things with clear eyes like, okay, am I really needing a few new people a week? And if so, am I getting their ideal contact points, name, email, or the big two, followed by address, followed by cell number, in my opinion, because of the systems that I use? Am I actually putting them in my database? and then am I sending them anything? And I feel like this is like a perfect full circle to where I started, which is if you want to build a prospecting based business, that is fantastic, but you have to keep doing the

prospecting activity forever. When you build a database-based business and you keep adding relationships and depositing in the relationship bank and building elegant systems that market and do the email so they don't forget about you. You get to a point where your business really, not your business runs itself. because that's a joke and real estate is hard. But your database feeds you everything that you need in most cases. And at times we might need to ratchet activity up to kind of meet those goals.

But I'm in a point where my team is going to sell 50 to 80 homes per year every year from relationships as long as I maintain my CRM, maintain my marketing system, and maintain the caliber of people who work for me. All of that is way easier said than done. but it is nothing compared to how hard I worked building relationship by relationship by relationship for the first 15 years when I was very active in the field. Do you have time to end with referrals? I do have time.

Oh, yeah. Because I kind of talked over that. I feel like it wraps it all up together. So I understand, you know, the FISBO's open houses, great. I understand looking at my pipeline being even more purposeful, really what's going to move it. Then we did talk about the database, like what could you revive and you could do your 30-day challenge of how to find new people, get visible, get in front of them. But now you said you had this little gold of like, am I asking for the business? You have to finish there. And then I think I can go

run and do it all. Perfect. Okay. I love it. Yeah. And what I was wanting to say about referrals is, and it's again back to kind of real estate 101, have you gotten rusty and or timid with asking for referrals. Or have you never created a habit of it because you don't want to ask? And believe me, I understand that feeling so well. It took me so long in my business trajectory to even verbally ask for a referral. It started with I was okay putting it on like my branded stuff. So yeah, it was on certain things, right? Like I even had the old buffini stickers. Have you seen those gold stickers that say, oh, by the way, I'm never too busy for you. Oh, yes, yes. Yeah. I don't know what to say about that phrase. I know why Brian Buffini used it and uses it because he got successful enough that

people started to think he was too busy for their referrals. But in the beginning, that wasn't even an authentic thing to say. I wish I'd had me talking to me way back then, but just to say, like, I would really appreciate your support. I would love an introduction if you meet someone who needs a real estate agent. Like, very simple. I love your health. I'd love your support. I would love an introduction. And there's nothing wrong with the word referral. But I think my like consumer isn't walking around going, I wonder if I can find a referral for Tina.

There are people like that. But they're like, I don't know, 10% of people who are really into that. Like I'm naturally like I like to influence and refer. But partially because that I've realized how magical that is for my business. But I think it is more intuitive for a consumer to just think, oh, that could be a good connection. That could be a good introduction. So those are words that I really like to use. Is there anyone you can connect me with?

Things like that. So coming back to where I started, have you ever done it? Or did you used to do it and stop? Because you got rusty or sloppy. That was something that I identified in my big reboot starting in 2020 was I just had been sort of out of doing that enough. Or does it freak you out and you need to kind of find a way to do that? And hopefully some of the verbiage I've given is a starting point. So I think it's just that I would ask for a.

a gut check. Are you asking for referrals? Are you letting people know that that's how your business works, that it makes a difference, that you appreciate it, that you need it, that it's helpful? I think there's so many ways to say, like, you could say all the versions of what I've said slowly over a period of time without even really repeating yourself and just educate people, like, this is how my business works, this is how I love to work. It matters to me. Something I talk about a lot is anytime you refer the Bellevote group, you're supporting a whole team of moms who are supporting their families. And I think driving the point home of your referrals matter, your introductions really make an impact. People want to make an impact. They want to help. They want to make a

different. That's how we're wired. So creating that kind of awareness and that kind of mind share can really be powerful. It just needs to be said. If you don't say it, they're never going to be thinking about it. Right. So for it real quick, for the agent that is maybe a little bit timid or doesn't know how, like who are you, are you always just doing this with past clients? Are you trying to ask people weekly? Are you trying to reach out to your database? And then if like, you know, I feel like a lot of times even when you just say, hey, how's it going? People end up asking about real estate anyway. So is that my opportunity to also say, I'd love an introduction? Like, is there any kind of tidbits you can help? Because that's, that's where my brain goes. I'm not the best at asking it. So I'm like, but what's that conversation before that led you to say, you know, I'd love an introduction. Yeah. So. There are always these moments where I'm like, that's exactly why I created the academy. Because part of what I have done is I've woven those kind of words and thought processes into every aspect of my materials. So when people first have contact with my team, they see it on Instagram.

There are section. We literally have a section on our website called referrals. We have a section dedicated to reviews and testimonials. We mentioned that we work by referral in our collateral. for the listing presentation, for the buyer intake form that they fill out. It's often covered at the consultation. It's covered in our contract to close weekly email that our transaction coordinator sends. So if you are not loving saying it, there are so many places to put it in writing.

But the real supercharge to your business is when you find a place to say it. And I have some really great tactics for that. So I would say the big answer to your question is it's inside the academy. me. The micro answer is everything you listed. Those are all places to do it. So I think it would be thinking of, I'm like, where's the low hanging fruit that I could get going right away? Is it that I just need to start asking a little bit more often? Is it that I need to just go hit up everyone who's under contract? My recent closing. I think it's appropriate at times to say to the right person in the right context, hey, I'd love your support. Last year was a funny year in the

real estate industry. Interest rates were crazy. you might, so I'm kind of speaking to anyone who's more experienced like me and like you to reach out to your top 10 past most recent referral relationships back to the calling thing and say last year was really funky, rates made it a tough year. I would love your support. Just keep your antenna up. If you know anyone that mentions moving, I would love for you to try and introduce us. It really helps me. And now's the perfect time to ask because we're right getting into the spring market. Yeah. And there's always a perfect time to ask because I think we need that mind we need to keep reminding people and educating them, but not in a way that is obnoxious, overdone,

were unwelcome. So I just look for the avenue. I love that. I think, yeah, jumpstarting your business. And there's a lot of other things you can do to get active and to let that activity breed opportunities. So I would say if you're feeling kind of some alignment with the social media strategy, you might want to check out the 30-day challenge.

We'll link that in the show notes. And otherwise, I would tell you. say there's a lot of gut checks here with like real estate 101. Is there anywhere where that you can just sharpen what you're already doing and just get more effectiveness and results from that? I love it. I'm ready. I'm ready to go. Okay, great. So we'll stop here. Thank you everyone for listening and we'll be back soon. 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. can also find me on Instagram at Tina Belavow. Talk to you soon.