KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Marketing and Social Media in Real Estate with Will Higgins

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

Hey everyone, Glenn Sanford here, founder and CEO of EXP Realty and also the host of the expansion podcast. And today I'm excited to welcome Will Higgins from Chino, California to our podcast. Hey, welcome Will. Thanks, Glenn. Thanks, Glenn. How you doing, man? Good, good, good, good. Yeah, I'm excited about this podcast.

So you, I mean, you and I, of course, had just a little brief conversation. before things got started but you know a little less than two years got an organization that's growing quite well i think you really focused a fair bit on agent attraction you hit icon first year with expe and getting ready to build a team but you know maybe you could just uh i think you might have you know come out of a different industry not been in the industry too long but maybe you can give a little bit of the history how'd you get into how'd you get in real estate and then how did you make your way to EXP? Yeah, man.

So very interesting story. Well, at least I think it's interesting. But how I got into real estate, well, my story, I started in sales. So I worked at a company called the Union Pacific Railroad for 12 years. So, yes, I worked on the railroad. I worked on a railroad for 12 years, man. Did you say you worked in sales there? Yes, I worked in sales.

Yes, I worked in. So essentially, I sold space on the train. Okay. Yep. So I sold space on the train. If I need to ship something, it was like you were pitching me on why that made sense and why the price made sense and all that could stop. Correct.

So my customers when I left were I did automotive. So my customer was Tesla. So I imagine so Tesla would build in Fremont and then they would load those cars on the train and then those would go out to different distribution centers and then they'd be trucked. to their destination. Okay. Oh, awesome. Awesome.

And so you did that for a few years? Yeah, I did that for 12 years. I did that for 12 years. And just always had a passion for real estate. My grandfather gave me a property back like in 2004, 2005. I rehabbed it, rented it out. And, you know, and then eventually bought another property. So I came in on the investor side.

So I had a few rental properties and just had really great experiences with real estate and just knew it was something I wanted to do. So I remember like it was yesterday back in 2017, late 2017, early 2018, a buddy of mine, we were sitting at a Chipotle right here in Chino. And we said, you know what? We got a lot of free time on our hands. Let's do something. You know, let's try to get into real estate. And sure enough, we did. We got into real estate.

And, you know, I did a little more than he did. and unfortunately he didn't last, but I ended up doing really well. I got rookie of the year at my brokerage here in Chino Hills at Keller Williams. So I got rookie of the year. And I left my full-time job in 2019, became a full-time realtor. And things went really well for me there. I didn't have a sphere because I'm not from California. I'm actually from New Orleans.

So, you know, my thing was I needed to figure out how I could do. grow my business fast because I didn't know anybody. So I obsessed over Facebook, Facebook ads, social media. And my first year, I really learned Facebook ads before anybody was really doing them. I think I got over 2,000 leads that year. I essentially talked to more than half of them and started closing deals immediately. And from that 2019 set of leads, I closed deals up until last year. Oh, wow. Okay. So you really, you nurtured them, long, like kept them in your CRM.

What do you use, by the way, how do you, you're obviously a big social media marketing guy, but do you think about a CRM as being something you keep separate from, you know, managing it inside of the bigger social network? You know, no, the social media is integral to your success. So when I started, I used one called Lions Desk. And people hated Lions Desk, but I loved it. I loved it when I first started because it didn't have a lot of the restrictions that some of the ones have now.

So I could send a limited text and I could, you know, it was a little clunky, but I was able to figure it out and built out all my campaigns and it was great. But as of now, I use follow up boss. And it's been, it's been really good. It's been really good for me. I love how simple it is. I'm able to streamline and build out a workflow. So I essentially have built out.

I have a customer life for a, like I have stages that I take the clients through. So in the morning I wake up and I check. I have new leads. Then I have new leads that haven't contacted. Then I have my hot leads. I have my ones that are in escrow, you know. And then I have my after that, I have warm leads. and then code leads and then nurture.

So I have that kind of workflow that I get up every morning. I just kind of work through and it speeds up my day so I'm not, I'm not in the weeds all day. You know, I feel like if I've worked through from left to right, you know, I'm off to a great start and I can go enjoy life after that. Okay, excellent. You know, obviously a lot of fans of fall past, I've been hearing about it literally, I think,

first time I really heard about it as a plan. it as a platform is probably 2013. I remember the team I was talking to. But does it connect also to the social stuff? So you're able to connect with your, since you're doing the large social media piece, does it connect there as well? It does, yeah.

But I use a platform called Zapier, Zapier. I don't know what they call it, but I use that. And it literally connects everything. So again, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm fortunate that I came in and I adapted to and adopted tech into my business, but that Zapier, it's been a lifesaver. So it literally connects everything to anything. Now, do you build all your own jobs yourself or do you have a tech person do that for you?

I do. I like to tell people that I'm more of a marketer that just happens to have a real estate license. And I think that's, that's probably what's added to most of my success. So I truly believe it's not the best agent that wins. It's the best marketer that wins. So then it brings up a great question, which I think you may have already just answered, but where would you, if you were a starting real estate agent today, would you focus on your marketing skills first or your sales skills first? You know, they, They kind of go hand in hand, man.

When I think back to how I started, I started in the traditional model. So I had some great, great mentors. And one of my mentors, he was literally a cold caller, right? So when I started, I did everything, everything the traditional way. So I door knocked, I cold called, and I had success at all of them. But for me, it was really about finding out what I was more interested and more comfortable in doing and then doing more of it. right? Because every single thing works. So I did things his way, the traditional way, and learned. And then I added on the tech portion to it. So at night times, I would do Skillshare and all these

other training platforms. So I could learn that stuff. And I would start implementing it alongside of the traditional things. And then once I got comfortable and I saw the results of my work, I literally stopped doing all the traditional stuff and just focused on tech right right no it was great stuff you know i um you know i started uh more traditionally in sales um but if you think about it obviously the prospecting is marketing right it's yes the prospecting they're making the cold calls that's a it's not a very scalable way to market but it is marketing right and going into a neighborhood and knocking on doors that's that's marketing sales is when you're sitting with somebody to actually talk about the product or service in our case real estate about it from the perspective of actually doing a transaction and in walking them

through that process and and so in my mind you similar you have to learn both and to some extent And if you learn old school techniques and sales, it makes you so much better when you learn the new school techniques of marketing. Yes. And then you can go from 80% of your time prospecting, which is traditional old school and 20% of your time actually talking to clients. Instead, you're spending 20% of your time prospecting and 80% of your time with clients that actually can transact. Yes. And I think, again, as a new agent, why agents fail is because of obscurity, right? Like nobody knows who they are. They can't make the phone ring. It's always outgoing. But I was able to make the phone ring. And I kid you not, it was kind of scary at first because, again, I haven't been in the business a long time.

But that transition when the phone started ringing was a little awkward because you're used to so used to make an outgoing call. When people are calling you, it's a whole other experience, man. I just thought it was really cool. Right. And you actually have to switch your personality switches because you're no longer selling. You're just being of service. So the phrase is, if you call them, they're in control. If they call you, you're in control.

And when they're in control, you know, when they're in control, you know, We tend to go to more manipulative, tricky-based sales scripts. It's like we're using alternative choice closes and we're making sure we don't give them a question where if they give us a no answer, it ends in the end of the conversation. So you know, so you basically learn that. But once when they call you, they've already went through that. They've already chosen you. And as long as you don't screw it up, you're their, you're their guy or their gap.

Yeah, due to the Google age, people have already done their homework. That's why, so I'm actually leaning into YouTube now, right? Because we have a lot of guys that have had some great success with YouTube. So YouTube, Instagram, all of the social platforms, because even with the age and attraction, when people reach out to me, they've already watched my YouTube channel. They've already been following me on Instagram. They already feel like they know me. They're comfortable. They've literally made up their decision.

It's up to me to screw it up at that point. Right. Yeah, no, for sure. And another phrase that I use quite a bit is, you know, nice is you need to keep your small promises in order to make the big deal. So a lot of times, you know, if you create an inbound funnel, a lot of times you end up with a lot more people in it than maybe you can serve. And so making sure that you love the ones you're with. keep your promises to the people that you do make promises to and then you start to and I suspect you've been you've been building a real estate team as well or working on it yes yeah yeah yeah yeah so I literally have just gone down this path of building a real estate team I love coaching and training it's just I was in corporate so long and you know I've gotten to the I've gotten into real estate a little later in life than some others. So I've always had this perspective that, you know, if if the people wanted enough, they'll become resourceful and seek out the resources

to be successful. But I'm learning that, you know, you have to do a little handholding is something I really didn't, didn't want to do. But now I'm stepping into that role of providing more support, a little more handholding and taking folks down the correct path that I wanted to go down to. And I'm excited about it. Right, right. So do you have, when somebody reaches out to you and you're doing YouTube and Facebook and those types of things, how many of them are coming in with an actual property in mind that they're interested in previewing is how much are coming through an IDX and how many of them

are coming direct to you to sort of help you through the, help them through the process? Yeah. So, you know, I, what I love about all the leads I got from Instagram is a lot of times they haven't even started searching, right? Or say they've thought about real estate. They know they want to buy. A lot of times they're already looking on, you know, redfinnerealter.com, Zillow, one of those deals, but they just know they want to work with me. So there's so much information out there. It's kind of information overload for them. So they, they want a. source that they trust to help them weave through all the information. So that's when they come to me. They basically already decided or someone refers them to me via my page. Hey, follow this guy, check this guy out. And what I've found is that, you know, your Instagram is kind of like back in the day, you know, what's your website, right? Now it's what's your Instagram or what's your YouTube? And I think that validates, validates things for them. And they'll be able to you'll be able to cut through all the noise and they'll come to you for all the information

and then you can put them on an IDX search awesome and and um just pulling it up so you've uh i've got a little over 8 000 followers on instagram um and uh and those are people who are following um a ton of your real estate content where else you said face facebook your yes i'm i'm on facebook but believe or not i've transitioned so i I haven't posted on Instagram as much. I've transitioned over to LinkedIn. And I've had great success so far this year on LinkedIn because as real estate agents, I feel like it's a underused platform.

All these people have jobs. And they're telling you what they do, where they're at in their career. They're listing all their accolades. And these are the people that we want to work with like this is. These are the A buyers and sellers. So I've actually been doing really good on LinkedIn. Okay, awesome. And you've got 1,800 followers, tons of connections. It just says 500 plus. I'm not sure what how many that is. So you've got a number of people. So you've switched yours to where people can actually follow you on on LinkedIn. So that's a different. That's that's somewhat new to Instagram, right, where people can follow people on Instagram.

Yeah, yeah. So I'm almost up to 2,000 connections on on LinkedIn. But, LinkedIn has this backend called the sales navigator, and you can build lists of people that you want to reach out to. So people that you have things in common with. So I've built a list of people that went to the same university as me, people in the same fraternity as me, you know, people, any profession you can think of, but you can build these lists, people that worked at the railroad or still work at the railroad, and I've been farming those lists of people.

Okay, okay, awesome. Well, and yeah, I've been hearing, a little bit more about LinkedIn as a platform. It seems like YouTube has got a lot of traction. Facebook got the initial big traction for a long time. Facebook course is changing up some of their stuff. I think because at the end of this month, you're no longer to be able to post properties

to your business pages on Facebook. Have you heard that? Oh, wow. Yeah, I didn't hear that. I knew they were getting rid of some of the, some of the audience selections, which is going to make it a little harder. But with all these platforms, I guess with everything in real estate, for me, it's like, I want to try to get into smaller rooms.

And that's why I got into YouTube and LinkedIn, right? You can poll 100 agents. And when it comes to long form content, you know, first thing you say is YouTube, they're going to cringe, you know, because it's, I don't know what to do. There's so many moving parts. It's long form. So that gets you into a smaller room. LinkedIn, that gets you into a smaller room, right?

Because a lot of agents didn't have professional careers beforehand. So LinkedIn wasn't always a big platform or a platform of choice. Well, when I worked in corporate America, LinkedIn was the platform of choice. A lot of people didn't have Instagram or Facebook or their Instagram was private, just family. But everyone's LinkedIn was open. Right, right. So I noticed on there just looking. at it, you've got actually a job and people can apply to, you know, to become an agent with your team.

But I suspect that's also an agent attraction tool. How has that worked for you? Have you been able to get some agents to start the process with you? You know, I just started that last week. So I haven't had any success yet. But it's just, it's about planting seeds, man. And just it's like when people see you, they just need a way to connect with you and contact you.

That's why I've had so much success through Instagram. So I have had a ton of people reach out to me through Instagram. So I have a landing page on Instagram for people to connect with me and partner with me. That landing page has had over five. 500 people visit it. And out of that 500, I track, I track my numbers over 10%, so over 50 people have, you know, gone over to my schedule page and scheduled meetings with me. And that's been a big source of age and attraction for me, just that landing page because, again, people want to partner with you. They just want to do it on their term. So they're able to, they're able to

watch what I'm doing. They're able to, you know, take a look at some videos, go other places, do their research and then when they're ready to talk to me they can schedule a meeting with me oh wow no this is great you know it's it's interesting um you know i'm um i'm 56 but i really uh ended up nailing um SEO search engine marketing that was my that was how i cut my teeth and that's you know that so that's the playbook that i keep on on going back to mentally is yes is that is that and i talked to so many agents like yourself who have used um social marketing strategies which by the way you know in in 2000 2007 2008 i mean there really wasn't a social network unless you call my space a social network so so social networks weren't really a thing yet

when i was in in the business in 2002 three four five six but now it feels like like you know starting where you're starting starting with personal branding video and those types of things is probably the place to start first and then maybe back into some of the other other things because it will make that marketing spend just that much more effective yes it definitely validates everything everything you're doing you know there's a lot of vanity metrics and in social, but it also makes you look more professional. It makes you stand out when you do things like that,

like building your personal brand because people want to work with you. It doesn't matter what company yet. I say it all the time, successful people are going to be successful wherever they go, but they want to work with you. And when you can present yourself in a professional manner, bring energy, show your personality. That's what people. People want to work with real people.

And I think that's what the personal branding does. Cool. So what, what got you, what got you over to EXP? What, what do you, what were you, you know, what got your attention and what, what kept you like excited? Yeah, man. So when I think about what got me over to EXP, I think it's kind of where I started, right? Because I started in corporate America and I started buying properties and stuff on the, on the side. And I was a when I went to when I went to the other brokerage, they had something called profit share that I was very excited about. And I recruited some agents, the number two agent in my market and just never got anything for it, man. So I was at a point in my life where I was looking for more passive income. And after buying a couple properties and going through that whole renovation process, it just felt like a lot of work with not much in return. So this was, you know, 2021.

I was doing really well. I had spoke at Family Reunion. I had spoke at Megacamp. I was an ALC. Like I was being tapped to do all these things, but it just felt like a lot of work. And nothing, you know, nothing in return. A friend of mine who was another top producer down in Dallas,

she called me and she said, hey, Will, look at this video. I watched the video and I was up the next morning. And I found myself just thinking, well, and then I looked down. I was actually pacing with the dog pacing behind me. And it wasn't a week before I made the switch. And the crazy thing is my friend that told me about it, she didn't make the switch for another month after I did. Well, opportunity is never missed. It's just given to somebody else.

So you joined first. Well, this is. Yeah. Well, this has been this has been great. Will, thanks for taking time out to talk about your business. I know we kind of jumped into a number of different areas. I was, for instance, the purpose of Googling you and going to your Instagram and your LinkedIn, that type of thing, kind of learning stuff. But is there any last thing that you would want to share?

You know, I think there was a quote that I heard from a guy a long time that's that's kind of made me move the way I move. And it's what you don't know will hurt you. So I've always opened myself up to every opportunity. I'm always trying to learn because, again, what you don't know, there's an opportunity for it to hurt you. So the more you know, the further you can go. So just keep learning, guys. The more you know, the further you can go, love it. So hey, Will, thanks again.

And success leaves clues and again, some really cool ones here. And be sure to obviously check out Will on Instagram. It's at Will Higgins. I think was it underscore? Two underscores or one? It looks like two underscores. Two underscores. Yeah.

Well, I have one underscore one. You can have two. So until next time, thanks everyone for listening. and make sure. Thank you guys.