KGCI: Real Estate on Air - This Podcast Will Either Explode Your Business or Your Brain

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

This podcast will either explode your business or your brain. Hey, look, I'm about to tell you something that only a small percentage of real estate agents understand and even a smaller percentage implement. You should be driving less and less the longer your industry. What? Yeah. So if you've been driving more and more further and further away from where you want to be, this podcast is for you. Welcome to the influential real estate marketing podcast, where agent entrepreneurs come to learn how to generate and convert more leads by using the latest in technology, social media, and lead generation systems. Here are your hosts, national speakers and veteran agents, Amber and The Rook.

Hey, hey, hey, hope your day is going well. Today's episode's being sponsored by Speer Influencer. the single most effective sphere marketing system to build relationships and get more referrals than ever before. Now, as always, if you want to get more information, you can go to getspereinfluencer.com. All right, so I'm just going to say it. You should be driving less and less the longer that you're in this industry. So if you've been driving more and more and you're going further and further and you're going to places that you swore you would never go to, then, yeah, we need to talk about this. All right, we just had this conversation with our sphere influencers and it even blows some of their minds.

how does an agent increase their business without driving all over God's green earth? And if you've ever found yourself saying, well, even though it was far away and not my ideal price range, it's better than nothing, we want to challenge you for just a minute. Is it? Right. And if you've been saying, oh my gosh, I do not want to deal with this client. Just get me to the closing table. Let me get something out of this. Guess what? This is for you too. Yeah. And by the way, there's no judgment here. We have all been there and done that as far as making this mistake. So it's important to talk about because as we adjust it, not only are we not missing out on business, we're actually cultivating even better business in its place. So let's get into it. Yeah, you never fault yourself for not knowing. All right.

So let's about to learn your something. All right. So I always want to start off with information. And according to the National Association of Realtors, check this out. The average number of miles traveled by a real tour each year is 20,000. That's why I got a new car all the time. And that is, that's just the, like the miles we report, like we remember to report. Because you know, some are like, I'm going to, maybe I haven't been awesome recording my drives and all that.

So here's another interesting fact because 20,000 is a lot. So the earth at its widest point is 24,860 miles around. What? Yes, you guessed it. If you're the average realtor, if you're driving over, you could be circling the globe every single year. That's how it's driving that you're doing. Wow. Right?

That is a lot. That is a lot. Now, if you think the earth is flat, then do me favor. Stop listening to our podcast because that's not how we roll here. Wow. That's kind of harsh. Kind of harsh. How do you really feel about that?

Okay, so we're about to go and take you through this process of understanding how can you drive less but get more business than you've been than you've ever had. And is this idea that we've kind of dubbed the geo fence? Yeah. Now, the geofense or the exercise that we're about to take you through should be in every business plan that you do. And when people think of a business plan, they typically think of, you know, how much volume do I want to do, how many transactions, you know, how many contacts do I want to make, what's my budget? And all that stuff is awesome. But in addition, you should be adding, you know, who are the team members, who are the missing people that I need to add to my team. What's my geo fence for me? What's my geo fence for my team members? Who is my ideal client? These are all things that should be added to, like your big why, to your yearly plan and should be revisited. And we're about to take you through what we call the geo fence exercise now and add this to your plan. All right. So the geofence exercise start with the one zone.

So let's get your mind ready for the one zone. Okay. Let's get your mind ready because this just seems to make people's brains explode when we start talking about this. And it's really something that people are actually very adverse to for some reason of thinking about these things. but it's actually going to make a massive difference on your business. So we want to just put you in the zone temporarily to think about what is possible. All right, I got to get my mindset voice on. Here we go.

Imagine your life free of stress. All your bills are paid for. In fact, even the utility bills are paid for a year at advance. Your cell phone bill paid a year in advance. All your retirement is taken care of. Kids college paid for. Your future is secure. Your real estate business, wildly successful.

In fact, you have so many leads. You have so much business that you're afraid to cough or sneeze because the phone's going to ring with yet another listing. That is the world we want you to be in. All right. Wake up out of that. So that's the mindset, right? Don't wake up.

Stay in that as you do the exercise, Jay. Well, in case they were like nudging off while they're driving and I want to make sure that we're awake. But that's the mindset that we want you to be in. When we talk about want, because the question I want to ask you is, what do you want? And I always think about the notebook, the movie The Notebook, if you guys have yet to see it, go check it out because it's amazing. But there's a certain scene in there where he is asking her, what do you want? What do you want?

What do you want? And he just keeps asking her over and over again. And she doesn't tell him. And if we could like splice that movie together. for a realtor right he's saying what do you want she if it was a realtor she'd be a buyer or seller no what do you want she'd say i just need a closing no what do you want because we don't just want a buyer or seller we don't just need a closing if we're that's what we are that's not dreaming big enough right what do you want who is your right yeah of course you need closings of course you

want a buyer and seller, but who's your ideal buyer and seller? What is your ideal zone to sell in? You have to allow yourself to business plan around that and quit saying the things that Ali was saying in the movie, yes, but this is happening. Yes, but, yes, but no, what do you want? So the want zone is all about you understanding that you absolutely can have the business that you want in this industry. That's probably one of the greatest things I love about the real estate industry is a fact that you can do and work with whoever you want to. Now, I got to start off this the right way is that we're not talking about the illegal side where you're like denying working with someone based upon like, I don't like the way they look or I'm not going to work

with this group of people. Or I'm not going to work with this price range. And we're not saying that at all. At all. What we're saying is your sphere, your referral, and your business is going to take you everywhere. Yeah. But the reason it's important to go through this exercise is because even though you're going all over, as you add to your sphere and any marketing you do outside of that should be geared towards your ideal one zone and your ideal client inside of the geo fence. It is not saying that you won't help anyone outside of that.

It's saying that the marketing that I'm going to do is going to attract this area because the marketing is in that area. So what is, how do we know what that ideal want zone is? So the ideal fence. So the geo fence, this is the best way to do this. All right. I want you to, you can open up Google Maps or whatever. But put your home address in there because guess what, I would love to be close to my house, right? And then you have a very real- Unless you think you're going to be moving soon. Unless you think you're going to be moving soon. I think based upon your office if your office isn't too far from your house. But I want you to think about this. If you had all the business. So you're actually,

you're just working in real estate because you want to, not because you need to. If you were to wake up and get in your car, how far north would you want to go before it's too far? And here is the first trap, you guys, is that in your head, if you immediately thought, well, I guess I'd be willing to go to, no, it's not what we're talking about. Your want. This is not willing right now. What do you want? We'll talk about what you're willing to do in a second. I want you to get stingy with this. I want you to get greedy with this. I want you to be in that self-preservation mode where you say if I to jump in my car in order me to get business that I am going no further than this and here's the trick to this do not use cities because cities are massive right they're drastically

different even the smaller cities could have a drastically different price name price range or type of home on one side of the city versus the other and again it's not a discrimination or saying that you won't help someone on the other side it's meaning the marketing you're doing is on your ideal side yes that is the biggest thing that you said yes it is the market focus. So what is that street or highway that is going to be your northern border, your southern, your eastern, your western, identify those things and physically find them on a map? Don't just say them in your head because when you take a look at them and actually need to place them on a map, you'll look at that and go, dang, that's a five mile, five square mile radius or 25 square.

five, that's awesome. Or you might go the opposite and go, oh, holy crap, that's like an hour worth of driving in every direction that I'm willing to do. No. That is not want. That's not ideal. The importance that you need to physically do this, put your lines in the sand of want. That's the first step is getting those physical boundaries down of where am I going to be

focusing my marketing on and where do I want my business to come from. Now, we have some coaching clients. now that have a one zone of around a five mile radius, right? People might panic and go, that's too small. Again, we're not talking about what you're willing to do because they do sell outside that five miles. But if you can get it down to that, imagine how focused you could get on your marketing. For example, in that five mile radius, what are the challenges of the people in that five

mile radius and how do you fulfill that? What information do they want to know and how do you create content around that? what charities do they take part in? What golf clubs do they hang out in? What type of networking groups are in that five mile radius? I mean, do you see how specific you can get and focused to try to do open houses and be seen in that five mile radius, even if it's not your listing and you ask somebody to hold it open? But it's being seen and marketing to your ideal zone and getting hyper-focused will actually give you much more momentum than you trying to be the DFWX. or whatever city that you're in. Trust me, it works. So what we've got here, and if you're listening carefully, is you were asking questions to figure out your ideal client. Like who would I love to get up and work with every single day?

And when you start to figure out your ideal client, what's going to come out of that is finding your ideal price range that you want to sell to. And I want to say this again. Don't email us and say that we're violating HUD and all this stuff, because we never said in the exercise, who am I not willing, what person am I not willing to work with? We didn't say that, did we? Nope. We're identifying our ideal client and how to market to them and how do they think and where do they hang out.

So picture this. You've got your lines in the sand. You know exactly what highways, what streets are going to be your barriers. And then guess what? Inside of those barriers, you're going to start to figure out, man, who's my ideal client? because it also helps you market. If I know I'm talking to a Army veteran, I know how to talk to Army Veterans versus a lawyer versus a corporate VP person. I talk to all those people differently. So if I've identified my ideal client,

then my ideal client is going to buy a certain type of home. And now I know how to market to that home. So logistically, how easy would it be for you to go into the MLS system and draw a map using those boundaries that you just laid out and do a search for homes that's, sold in that price range over the last year. And you get that list and inside of that list. And yes, I know it's going to be a massive spreadsheet, but guess what? You could take out all the columns and only look at the subdivisions or the neighborhoods. And you now would know factually

what are the neighborhoods in the price range that you want to sell, where they located inside of your ideal want zone for your ideal client. This is another good example of why they wouldn't use an entire city because when you drew this out for Plano, Texas, because that's where you lived, what did you find? Okay, so wanted to focus on Plano. I grew up there, Plano, Texas. Woo-whoop, shout out to my Texas people. Inside of Plano alone, there's 403 different subdivisions ranging from 90,000 all the way up to 4 million. Kind of a wide range, I would say. A little bit of a wide. I mean, kind of not hyper-focused, is it? 403 subdivisions. So how could I, I'd have a problem, let alone call myself the D.F.

expert, the North Texas expert, even the Plano expert, really? I mean, come on. You're the expert of 403 subdivisions. I'm the expert of 403 subdivisions. Are you? Really? Are you really? So we wanted to focus on the price range of 275 to 325. Okay, we did some research. That was a good price range. That's what they wanted. My job as the marketer was to go make that happen. So even when I took that price range into effect inside of Plano, then you'd be surprised. is that I went from 403 subdivisions down to about 160, 167, I hope of being exact, 167 subdivisions, all right, stay with me now, 167 subdivisions that ranged from 275 to 325. That was our ideal want zone for our price range, and we knew our ideal client. So once we knocked that out,

then we started to really take a look at this. And again, visualizing it and looking at a map is so crucial because we're able to circle those neighborhoods, circle those subdivisions. It's like, huh, we could be going after one here, one here, one here. But look at this. There's a cluster of four neighborhoods all in the same price range right next to each other. And you've seen this happen. So what we started to do was to develop marketing to go out and showcase the businesses that are around those neighborhoods that cater to the same clients that we want to go after

inside of our ideal want zone. Now, were we still taking business from other places? Yes, every single day. Yeah, you still could drive through all of Plano. Yeah. Right? But as far as our marketing efforts and we were spending our time cultivating the right relationships was going after those specific neighborhoods.

So good. That boy good. That boy good. All right. Oh, yeah. What was that? Coming to America. Come to America.

Man, that's a good show. How many people love that show? So good. I was about to quote something else in that movie, but that might be inappropriate. Right. I know. I'm saying.

I had to stop myself. Okay. Drop the mic. You know what I'm saying. That is the want zone. Okay. You, again, not what you're willing to do. We're about to go into that.

But if you could target your marketing to what you want your business to come from, this is going to have you driving less and less. That's our goal. I want you guys to, man, how great would it be for you to be operating in the neighborhood that you live in or super close by? And if you're considering doing a huge, farming, farm marketing campaign, Facebook ads, anything like that to a cold audience that's to a new ideal zone. You may want to consider calling the office and setting up a consultation. We take clients

through a really through an in-depth consultation to really nail this down. But you guys know where to start by listening to this podcast. So what's the next step? We've idealed our ideal want zone. What's next? The next step is the willing zone. You can all take a deep breath because they were like, oh, thank God, because that was hard to eliminate all those areas. Right. So if you're the ones that are going, I can't do that. I got to go out there. Okay, this is for you.

Honestly, if I take a look and if you really take a look at your business, you've been, like your entire business career, like has been in the willing zone. And we're about to shrink that down a bit. So you've identified your wants and where you want your focus, where you want your business come out of, we're going to be spending the majority of your time in cultivating and building relationships. Now we deal with the willing zone. And the willing zone is all about emotion, but it shouldn't be. What does that mean? Okay.

If you now know that your time, it will always be best spent inside of the want zone, then you need to be super selective of what pulls you out of the want zone and into the willing zone. It's really into that. Okay. Last time. Okay. And I think you're saying this because we hear so many agents say this, and I've been guilty of saying this. Yeah, but my sphere referred me to somebody.

And when my sphere refers me to somebody, I really feel the obligation to help them, even though that was 90 miles from my house. I need to take care of them because it was a referral for my sphere. How many right now can relate to that? Oh, God. You helped out a sphere person. And come on, honk that horn for me. yeah yeah that's me that's me okay so here's now this i think i'm going to claim this is this is where it's a benefit to be more logical than emotional all right so here's what i want to i want to

share this with you and it's the concept of you helping versus you handling okay so i want to take you through a scenario so i've got um i've got a sphere member that comes to me and says hey rook what's going on hey i really need for you to help my nephew um now Now, there's two decisions I'm going to make here. I'm going to go the wrong path. I'm going to go the right path. Or I would say the more effective path. The normal path is absolutely.

Yeah, be happy to help them. Yeah, give me their name. We don't know what the nephew needs. Exactly. I'm committed. I just committed myself. I would, yeah, I'd love to help them out. And we just committed ourselves, right?

And then we talk to the nephew and we find out that he's looking for like an 87 or 90,000 lease in a town that's a good 50, 60, 70 miles away. And he's not even pre-approved. And I'm like, okay. Well, it's not that he's not pre-approved, right? And it sounds more challenging. But we're willing to help him through that. But is that our ideal client?

Is that the best use of our time? Even if it's a sphere referral, here's what we need to understand, you guys. Not only is this not helping you, but let's look at this side. It's not helping him, that nephew. And I'll tell you why. Are you an expert at a city that's 90 miles from you that you don't normally sell in? No, do you have connections there? Do you know of coming soons that aren't even listed because you are friends with the agents

there? No, you are not. So a better way to handle this, right, is to absolutely take that referral and make sure you're using language of sales where you're saying, thank you so much for that referral. I'm absolutely going to connect with him right away. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you. Our business relies on referrals. And it's a privilege anytime somebody.

calls me, we're honored, we're going to call and take good care of him. If this is not, uh, and I don't, that was like rolled off. That just rolled off my time. Script. Amazing. There. And now we're going to get, get to know a situation and what he needs. And based on what he needs, I promise you, I will hook him up with the person that will best suit his needs. Now, if you find out later that that is not you and you need to refer it out, then that's okay. You'll make a referral fee. You call back your other person and let them know.

and the same with the nephew, hey, we ended up referring him to a team member of ours that's out in that city. They are very versed on the real estate market in that area. So even if you reassure your sphere member that all referrals should come to you because you have team members all over the city, matter of fact, all over the country,

and you will always make sure they're in the best hands, whether it's you or someone else. So to keep training them, even when you refer it out, to call you. They're going to be great. when you tell him it's hey you know what I don't do that area that's not what you said you said I have team members that specialize and are well-versed in the real estate market there and that's who he's placed in the best hands he could possibly be in

do you guys see the difference in my scenario I was helping and I'm committing myself before I even know what's going on in my queen scenario she laid out she's handling it she's a professional and even though you weren't the one doing it you were the one that was responsible for making it happen and your sphere will be just as grateful. And so please don't think that it's got to be you or nobody because that's a limiting mindset. I'll challenge you right now. Now if at the end of the day, if you're like, I can't do that, well, let me tell you something. Can't lives on Wone Street. All right. So they're neighbors.

Right. So. Well, we kind of just led into the third one a segue because the first one was want zone. The second one was willing zone. But the third one was referral zone. We kind of just kind of dove right into that third one already by some of those people need to be in the referral zone. Yeah, but I want to go through what the willing zone should be. Like what should make me step out of my want zone. Now, we gave the scenario that's most likely going to have you stepping out. But here's what you need to ask yourself. You as a business owner, and I think we use that word too much, I think it's a little bit.

I'm going to talk in that language that set aside some criteria for you, like business criteria, black and white, write it down, type it up, put it on your wall. And it's, you know, three, five, give me an odd number. and I'll tell you why this makes sense, is that if I've got five criteria, whether or not determines whether or not I take something that from a referral, from my sphere, yes or no,

is it in my price range, yes or no? Is it, you know, five miles outside of my wand zone, yes or no, or whatever range I want to have, my gray area. But if the scenario that presents itself to me is three plus signs and two negatives out of five, I'm going to go take it, right? if it's two out of five, one out of five, or zero out of five, that is plain black and white business

sense that you should not be taking it. You should be referring it out to somebody. And so if you are going to make an emotional decision instead of a business one for your business, then you're going to find yourselves in your car more and more every single day. So you have a geographic area for your ideal want zone. Yep. And then you're setting a geographic area for this mean. be my ideal zone, but here are my boundaries for where I'm willing to go. Even as speakers, we have this, we know that there's only certain, for a local price, there's only certain

areas that we will go to before we get to a regular booking, speaking, keynote speaker price, because it's going to take up your whole day, right? Or same for you as a realtor. It's a business decision. Just like restaurants, when they open a business, they're not advertising everywhere because if their business is in Allen, Texas, does it make sense for them to advertise their restaurant and walks a hatchy Texas? No. But yet we don't think the same way when it comes to real estate. I don't understand.

Yeah. Yeah, I'll get it. Okay. So let's go back to what you were saying, is that you've got your want zone. This is where you're spending your marketing dollars. This is where you're trying to spend as much time as you get. And then your willing zone is a boundary that is the only thing that's going to pull you out of your want zone and into your willing zone is a set of business criteria that is void of emotion that you set up for yourself

that you set up for yourself and if it's three out of five you're going four out of five you're taking it five at five yes we're going to do it but if it's two or one uh i'm not going to do it and i think that's the easiest way because you're still going to help so you're not just ditching them i'm going to handle it i'm not going to help with it you know you're helping to handle it i guess is what i meant but you're right you're you're not helping them as a client you're handling it by referring it out And if it's not you, then we're going to go refer it out. And now that leads us directly into the furthest zone away from you, which is your referral zone. There has got to be a line.

There has got to be a street, a road, a highway where you're like, I'm not going there. There's no reason for me to go there. And even if it's a sphere, even if it's this, you know, a million dollar lead, whatever, it's simple math. the time that it takes you to drive out to where you got to go drive back drive back out spend time we had we had one of our one of our influencers talking about that she had a scenario where she had to drive 90 miles one way because it was a sphere referral because it was a sphere referral and she learned probably won't be doing that again probably now we did have another person saying well it's better than no business even if you're driving 90 miles now is it is it because

let's start thinking like an entrepreneur here 90 miles away and you think about showing multiple properties is not usually all on one day there's multiple days involved there's lots of hours and contracts there's driving back and forth for inspections walkthroughs i mean you could have when you add this up over 20 hours or more worth of time spent driving and on this transaction and even though it's money let me ask you a question if you spent 20 straight hours lead generating and your ideal want zone. Could you get a new buyer or seller? Yeah. I could probably get more than one in that amount of time. Right. So this is how we have to think. We cannot think in the scarcity mindset of it's better than nothing. We have to think in the

abundance mindset of if I spent that time in my ideal zone, could I get an appointment, but at an even higher price point? Could I get an appointment, but somewhere closer to home where I want to gain momentum and signs in the yard? Yes, you can. I have talked to. two realtors, no lie, that they were marketing 6,800,000, but they were driving 40 to 50 miles to deal with a sphere referral for a $175,000 home. But they didn't have time to lead generate in their zone because they were driving. Exactly. That does not make business sense.

What is your line in the sand, guys? What is going to, if it's just within these, you know what, it's an automatic referral, but here's a cool thing. It's not that you're giving up business. You are opening up a world of possibility. all right this gives you the opportunity to figure out if I'm going to network with other realtors these are the perfect realtors how cool would it be that part of your day is finding someone that was in a city that you really didn't want to go to and start building a relationship

because I guarantee you this if you don't want to drive out there I guarantee you to find a realtor who doesn't want to drive where you are and now you are building a referral network Hey. There's a lot of value in referral networks, you guys, less than 1% of realtors market to other realtors outside their zone. Think about that. There's opportunities. Even if you're a bad agent, right? Let's say you're not closing a lot.

Let's say you don't have people skills. You can't even close a door. You'll get a transaction. It might not be as many as you want. There'll be few and far between. But guess what? You'll probably get one. But what we don't get back is time.

Time is going and moving, right? So that's what I want you to be super protective of. Not your, not your, the idea that I got to take everything. Think about it in time and your perspective changes. That I want to spend more time with my ideal clients. I want to go hang out where my ideal clients are. And the real truth, you guys, and I have felt this before. So I, let's get vulnerable.

A lot of times when we say things like it's better than nothing, at least it's a closing. when you're saying things like that, you're financially hurting. And I've been there. I've done that. And let me tell you something counterintuitive to what our emotions are feeling in that moment. You taking that because it's better than nothing

is actually what's keeping you broke. Okay? That is the truth. It's actually the mindset that's keeping you from building the business that you want to have. I went through that transition and you can too.

The power of no has been talked about in so many books, so many keynote speakers that we run into have always talked about the power of once you start saying knowing your business, what it can do for you. And you get so many more yeses because of that no. Absolutely. So let's start to, it's not about shrinking your business,

it's about focusing your business. Okay, I want you to not be a shotgun. I want you to be a sniper. I want you to dig your well deep, in the area where you want your business to come out of. You'll actually be so much more successful. So much more successful. And guess what?

You'll be closer to home. And who does not want to not have to deal with traffic, right? So that's where we're at, guys. So here's what I'm going to ask you. What are your boundaries? Where is your want zone? Who are the real tours that you're going to start networking to bring you more business because you're going to not want to go where they're at?

And they don't want to go where you're at. These are all great questions that we want you to ask. All right, we want to thank you for joining us today. And if you like what you've heard, remember, we're a new podcast. So subscribe to listen to future episodes. Leave us a review and make our day or share with a friend. All right, guys. Now, if you want exclusive content or free tips on the latest in real estate marketing and lead generation,

then join our Insiders email list by going to influentialagent.com.