No Broke Months For Salespeople - Earn $20+ Million in Sales Yearly by Generating Leads Using Facebook Groups - Laura Griffin

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

Laura Griffin is an expert at leveraging Facebook Groups for lead generation in her real estate business. With over 15+ years in the real estate industry, she has leveraged the power of her local Mom Facebook Group with over 10K moms into her primary lead generation source, creating over 20+ million dollars a year in sales. As a result of her Facebook Group, she has been recognized as a Top Producer in the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors® year after year. She now teaches other agents how to use the power of Facebook Groups as a FREE lead generation tool in their business by coaching other agents and her course on Facebook Groups.Join us this episode afternoon as Laura discusses how you can leverage free Facebook groups to get $20+ million in sales yearly. Here's a link to Laura's website: https://lauragriffincoaching.com/ To find out more about Dan Rochon and the CPI Community, you can check these links:Website: No Broke MonthsPodcast: No Broke Months for Salespeople PodcastInstagram: @donrochonxFacebook: Dan RochonLinkedIn: Dan Rochon

The group is its own thing. It should be its own name. It should be its own brand. The banner should not be real estate or the description will say, this is a group by Laura Griffin Realty and I'm the best real estate agent in this area. And you need to not come forward with real estate

because people aren't gonna join. They're gonna be like, I'm gonna get spammed with this lady who's a real estate agent. By not posting real estate forward content and being more genuine and building those relationships is how you'll get leads. Welcome to the No Broke Months for Real Estate Agents podcast.

Working as a real estate agent can be incredibly rewarding and fulfilling, but it can also be frustrating if you aren't making the money you deserve. So if you're ready to end the stressful cycle of working hard for no results, then get started with a proven step-by-step system so that every month is no broke months. Laura Griffin is an expert at leveraging Facebook groups for lead generation in the real estate industry, she has leveraged the power of her local mom Facebook group with over 10K moms into her primary lead generation source, creating over $20 million a year in sales. As a result of her Facebook group, she has been recognized as a top producer in the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors year after year. She now teaches other agents how to use the power of Facebook groups as a free lead generation tool in their business by coaching other agents and her course on Facebook groups. Join us this episode afternoon as Laura discusses how you can leverage free Facebook groups to get $20 million in sales yearly. My name is Dan Roshan. I'm the host of the No Broke Months podcast, which is a show for real estate agents

to help you have no broke months. Thanks for joining me. Enjoy the show. Today, I'm really, really pleased to be joined with Laura Griffin, who's going to talk to us about how you can use Facebook groups to generate more than $20 million of sales each year. So Laura, welcome. Thank you for joining me today. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Right.

Well, I'm glad that you and I got it. We are in the same general market and we haven't had a chance to meet before. So I'm grateful to meet you. I know. I don't go down your window. I stay in my little bubble. I got you. I got you.

So Laura, so tell me before we jump into the Facebook groups, tell me a little bit about Laura. Who are you? So I'm a mom of two. My husband's an Air Force veteran and we moved to Northern Virginia from California about 13, almost 14 years ago. It's been a lot longer than I anticipated that I was told when we moved here. It's going to be two years and 13 years later, we're still here. I'm getting out of the air force. We're only going to just take this government job. We're just going to be here for just a small time.

And then now we're here. And I hear now since we've got a 2% interest rate, we're going to die in this house. That's what he keeps telling me. Like you're staying put. Got it. Or until we get rid of the kids. And then I've got a,

my dad will be 11 in just a few days. And then I've got an eight-year-old son. And yeah, I've been in the business about 15 years. Prior, I did a lot of mortgages, HOA management, and then practicing real estate for about 11 years. And for the last two years, I've been a real estate coach

helping other real estate agents with their business. What was your early career like? In real estate? Yeah. As an agent? Real estate career, sorry. Yeah, as an agent. You know, it was hard.

I'm not going to lie. When I started, I had just had my daughter. She was maybe eight weeks old. I went to my first brokerage team meeting, brokerage meeting, um i was on a rainmaker team and i quickly learned after a few years that like billow and online lead gen was just not my thing i couldn't i couldn't pick up the phone at like you know eight o'clock at night i had a newborn um and then fast forward to two and a half years later i had my son so juggling two kids my husband worked some crazy hours with the government like it just wasn't i couldn't balance at all with doing like the online fillies. And it was rough. And I had that,

you know, up and down, like we all do at the beginning. No consistency. Many can, many can. And so you struggled at the beginning and you were doing, you know, with a team, Zillow and online leads, and you thought they sucked and, or they didn't work for you rather. I know you don't, you don't think they sucked and, um, or they didn't work for you rather. I know you don't, you don't think they suck. They're just, we all leads work. It's just, you know, which are going to work for you. Yeah. So you discovered that that wasn't the best plan for you. So then how long in your career, tell me about like, how long were you on a team? And then what did you do next? So I was on a team until Raiden was about a little over a year, maybe a year and a half.

So I've been doing it for probably three to four years. And I realized I was not doing well at this. My team lead was probably not happy. I always joke with that. I probably lost you hundreds of thousands of dollars in like, I joke about it. I don't know if he laughs as much, but I just, you know, he's now the owner of our company for you. No money for me. He's the owner of our brokerage. So, I mean, he still kept me around. So obviously it wasn't that bad, but, um, I realized I didn't like that. Like double tap people call it like

a thousand times in a day. I just couldn't do it. And it turned, and a lot of them would call like in the middle of dinner or bath time. And a lot of times it was just me at night, couldn't do it. And so I realized I had to do something else. Yeah. And I had gone to a mom and business conference in Sacramento, California, where I had been, where I used to live and was talking to the real estate agent. I was like, how are you doing it? Like you're number one. She's like, you've got to find your lane. And if online lease is not your lane, you need to figure out what it is. And so we looked at my business and she was like, well, you're doing a lot of people from your mommy and me group that you're like taking the baby to the hospital and meeting all these people. She's like, why

don't you just lean into being a mom instead of hiding it? I wasn't telling anyone. I mean, obviously people see at certain times, but I, um, it was that, it was that little attachment to you was the other piece of you that you know sort of gave it away yeah and i yeah and i was i didn't want to say anything and i would i remember one time it was snowing it was probably january and i had an online lead that it called me from zillow and madison was asleep in the car with the car and i was walking around the car going in the freezing snow going please don't wake up please don't wake up i just need five more minutes to finish this call. And I was like, I can't, I can't sustain this for much longer.

It just wasn't going to work for me. So then you, you realize that one way didn't work and you realize that another way could work. So then what did you do next? Um, I leaned into my mom's group. I went to every mommy and me play date, birthday, whatever. Yeah. And sort of having those

natural, you're like, what's the market like? Or I bought bread in my house. Can you help me sell it? And then fast forward about another year, I'd started a mom's group just because I needed more friends. We were new to the area and we had two kids and I was like, I don't know what I'm doing. And I need friends. And so dumped 10 of my friends into the group and I snowballed into, you know, hundreds of people, now thousands of people. And I started realizing that I was getting leads from that. If people would recommend you, people started to, oh, you're a real estate agent. I need to sell my house. Can you help me? Or they're recognizing me at Target and the baby aisle. And you're that lady that runs that group. Just happened the other day at the ice cream. My kids are just gone. Oh,

we just want to eat our ice cream. Could you just go away, lady? And this lady's like having a conversation, wants me to help her buy a house. But it just was these natural conversations that came up for me just running the group. That's a Facebook group, correct? Yeah. Okay. So you started with 10 of your friends and then grew to 100 and then grew to 1000. So how long was it? Was it 10 and how long did it take to get to a hundred? And like, what was the early days of the group? Uh, it took about a year to get

to that 1000. Um, once you get to about 500 Facebook things, you're legit and they'll start recommending you of course. Um, but it's taken a few years. We do get a lot of people that want to join the group, but I'm very selective. And so I do lead out a lot of, a lot of people. So probably could be a lot larger if I didn't. Who do you weed out? Well, men, cause it's a mom's group. So that's an easy weed out. That's why you rejected me. I got it. You're rejected. Real estate agents, lenders, title people in the area. I don't let them into my group. And then it's a little bit of work,

uh, running a group. Cause you've got to weed out the, we get a lot of like air deck cleaning people in park, you know, like the scammers and the people that are just trying to join the group to sell their, whatever their widgets or whatever they're selling. How active is the group? Uh, anywhere from 100 to 400 posts per day. A lot of both. Wow. And then how much of your time do you spend, you know, managing that or interacting with it? Um, you want to know the truth? When I was doing, when I was doing online leads, we were required to be in the office like three or four days, three or four hours a day to make dials. I'm spending about 15 to 30 minutes a night

watching Housewives of whatever, because that's my addiction, on the couch responding to things and being in my, and I'm still generating. And I'm not in the office three or four hours a day. Excuse me for interrupting my own show. You are freaking amazing. And because you're amazing, I'm going to ask for a quick favor.

We'll just take you 30 seconds for you to leave a favorable five-star rating or review on your favorite platform. Then what I'll do is I'll enter you into a raffle where we can meet 45 minutes for a free coaching session. And I'll also give you a copy of the book, Real Estate Evolution, which is the 10-step guide to CPI, consistent and predictable income. Oh, by the way, I'm the author of that book. So if you'd like for me to coach you, give you some nuggets and help you in your business, go ahead and leave a review and you can enter into the monthly raffle to win.

Love it. And so you took you about a year to get to a thousand and you're at around 10 000 now is that right okay so then how long did it take from a thousand to ten thousand probably let's see it's taken about four years or so um we did have quite a bit of growth during you know covid obviously because people were trying to, you know, find a community and a connection place. So probably 2020 was probably our biggest year, the biggest step. And so that was a circumstance that helped you grow that, you know, if somebody was to start a group today, I still think, you know, it would be reasonable to say it would take maybe a year or so to get to around that thousand mark. Oh, yeah. I mean, the first, if you do it the right way, the first 500 is very easy.

Invite your friends, your family, obviously local. You want it to be hyperlocal. Invite your past clients. And then you can do different contests and you can do different things to get the members to start adding their friends and family and once people start adding just a few people they're really enjoying the group they will start to add in fact a lot of times when new people join they'll add like 20 friends and so all of a sudden we'll just have a huge jump as a couple hundred people like within a week what type of contests have you done for

people to join i I use a Chrome extension. So whenever someone joins the group, I can track who is joining, what questions they've answered, the entrance questions. And what happens is if someone recommends someone to join the group, that is also captured over in the metadata. So what we'll do is whoever invites the most people for the month of March or whatever month it is, gets a chance to enter, you know, a $50 Starbucks gift card, Target gift card, whatever it is. And people will do it. Like people love a $50 Target gift card, Starbucks gift card, whatever it is. Sometimes I've done a bigger push because maybe my lender, my title company or someone's done a sponsor with me or we'll do something like that. But that's been the easiest way to grow other than word of mouth. I

mean, obviously word of mouth has just been because our group there are other groups in my area but they're kind of a trade rep and there's a lot of drama and so our group is i shut it down really fast i think no drama for the mamas i don't tolerate like i got enough drama with two candidates i've got so much drama i have i don't need need it. No, I'm like to just, I'll boot people out. It's just, you know, there's no time for that. We're all trying to survive. So if you were to create a group today that was not a mom's group, what type of groups, what type of ideas for different types of groups would you, would you consider? I'd probably look at what the area, like if I had to start over, I would look and see what's popular in that area and what's already been used. Like I have one client who's down in

Florida and she had a name for a group. It was great. And I was like, well, did we research it? And there was 10 other groups with the same name. I'm like, wait, we can't do this. So it would either be a community group moving to living in, or even a parent's group. I find that is a very huge market. It's parents. You're my mom's and dad's. You're not, I'm excluding dad. But I'm relocating to a certain area. I have another client who's got a job group. And I was like, I don't know.

But when people are relocating or moving, they're the first place they join is a lot of these job boards too. The other spouse or the other partner is trying to find a job. So she's been very lucrative at that. Now, how do you leverage it into, you know, now you're known locally,

but how do you leverage it? Do you train your people to, you know, your past clients to help recommend you or refer you? And I know a lot of that's natural as well, but like, how do you get people to refer you in the group? So past clients refer me, I definitely send them a card with, you know, I, my kids always joke, I've always got Starbucks gift cards on my drawer. It's teacher appreciation

week. And I just whipped out a whole bunch of teachers, but five or $10 Starbucks gift card. If it's somebody I don't know, I will message them and say, thank you so much. You know, my business is all based on referral and by referring me, it means a lot to me. And it, you know, it means my family. And I'd love to send you a gift in the mail. And I will send them something. Buy $10 at Starbucks. Amazon is really easy because it can just get emailed over.

But I just thank them. And people want to help you, right? And people feel good when they've recommended somebody and they're kind of helping further their business. And if you lean into that and reward them, they'll they'll be loyal to you. And some of them have never bought or sold a house with me. In fact, they bought and sold a house with another realtor. I'm the first one they recommend. They trust me and they know me.

Yeah, I've had that experience as well. So groups of leads. What is groups of leads? That is the course that I have for real estate agents. If you want to learn how to start a group, grow your group, and then generate leads from your group, it's a course all about that. We've got three different modules with everything that you need to know, plus templates and swipe files and worksheets, everything to get your group started. The foundational pieces to then generating and data mining for leads. Okay. And if I was somebody interested in that, how would I access that?

If you go to lauragriffincoaching.com backslash groups dash to to dash lead, that'll get you to the sales page for the course. And then if you do lauragriffincoaching.com backslash webinar, I do teach a free course on how to get your Facebook group up and running for just the first hour. So during the class, we get your group up and running

with a name and branding and everything. So at least you have part of the foundational pieces if you want to start a group. You mentioned earlier about doing it the right way. So what mistakes do you see that people do when they create groups that they should maybe avoid? Yeah. So I get asked all the time, can you audit my group where I'm not getting leads? Can you help me? And so I do do one-on-one coaching and I'll audit. And the first thing is like the banner says, you know, XYZ Realty Company, and this is the XYZ Realty Company community group. And I'm like, no, not so much. Take take it down the group is its own thing it should be its own name it should be its own brand it should complement the real estate because

you're like with colors and whatnot but it's the banner should not be real estate um or the description will say this is a group by laura griffin realty and i'm the best real estate agent in this area and like you now no you need, you need to not come forward with real estate because people are going to join. They're going to be like, I'm going to get spammed. This lady is a real estate agent. And then I've seen other people where they have really great groups and all of a sudden they change and all the content is just sold, just listed. Aren't I great? I have this open house and I'm sorry, but nobody cares. They really don't. Maybe your mother does, but they're not caring and they don't want to see these content posts. Aren't you great? I just listed a house. So by not posting real estate

forward content and being more genuine and building those relationships is how you'll get laid. You already know 87% of all real estate agents fail in this business. And you also know it doesn't have to be that way. If you're a real estate agent and you're looking for consistent and predictable income, I invite for you to get your free copy of Real Estate Evolution, the 10-step guide to CPI, consistent and predictable income for real estate agents. And you can do so when you visit www.therealestateevolution.com. I'll share with you your book that I authored to show you the way. Thanks.

What type of content do you post? I will post, I will, yeah, I'll weave my children into the mom's group so i will still weave in that i'm a real estate um you know like i was on my way to listing appointment and i stopped and had lunch with my kids somewhere or today i had taken my did a post to my mom's group i took my son to a doctor's appointment because it's spring to spit went back to take him to school. The school was on a lockdown. Hell no. And they're like, we can't take him.

You have to take him. And I'm like, to take him back? Oh, no. And so, but I had a buyer appointment. I had to just go show them a house. So he went with me. He got ice cream out of the deal. And we were, as soon as we were done with the buyer, of course, the school called.

And said, you know, you can come bring him back to us. We're off with the lockdown. But so, you know, you can come bring them back to us. We're off with the lockdown. But so, you know, I told that story to my mom. She was like, I had never experienced the school lockdown. And I didn't know they wouldn't come take your child. They're not going to open the school. So weeding that into it, I do a little bit of some tips and tricks. Like, you know, daylight savings time.

Don't forget to change your smoke detector batteries. And look at your smoke detector. Like every time I'm on a home inspection, I see that some are really old. Also what's been really popular for me right now is just short little reels, just like little videos about the new communities that are coming up. We have a lot of new construction and people want to know what's going on in the area. What's being built behind this store. What's going on over here.

What's the new restaurants. So just doing even some short reels showing that i know the area really well has been super that's great and so um what are the smallest or the largest size like geographically right like so if you're gonna do a mom's group in loudon county are you gonna do a mom's group in Fairfax County or whatever the case may be and these are two rather large counties in northern Virginia for the listeners that may not be aware of but the um so like what would be the largest sort of geography that you would recommend what would be the smallest so I would say pick your town or your city but make sure it's something that people know like I live in Dulles South. We're south of the airport.

No one knows this is Dulles South unless we go to boat or school. You know, they're redoing the school boundary. So pick the name of the area that is its real name. Like don't pick, you know, northeast and something when that's not. So when people are relocating, they can find your group. I would say a minimum of 10,000 people. That's why I don't recommend a neighborhood group. Like I live in a large community of 2,700 homes, but I would not run a group just for my neighborhood

because I can't exclude real estate agents because it wouldn't be fair for your neighborhood because there's a lot going on with the neighborhood and you don't want to be explicit there. But that's just too small. There's not going to be enough people. So you want to think probably 10,000 plus. Minot County has just shy of 500, but when people are relocating, our county name just has a lot of, if you go to askthepublic.com, you can see what people are looking for in your area when they're relocating and moving. And now the Loudoun County was the biggest thing, which is why I picked it because it was the most searchable thing. Like people weren't picking the little town names like Ashburn or Leesburg. They were looking for Loudoun County location. Okay.

So make it large enough that you're going to be able to get into, but what would be too large? You know, I, one of the people that takes my course has a county in our area and it's very large. I mean, it's from, I don't know, like Woodbridge up to like where I am and Aldi. It's really big and it's expansive. If you were to do that, I would recommend having multiple. And if you're going to do it as a real estate,

I would have multiple people like on a team where each person covered that specific section, because I don't think you would know hyperlocal if you're drawing, you know, if it's an hour across the county, you're not going to know what's going on in every little section. So having multiple people, I think if you had a bigger team, you could totally do it. If it was just one of you, it might be a little bit of a stretch. Got it. All right. So make it manageable so that, you know, the location it's, it's, it's going to be local enough that, you know, the ins and outs of it, but, but also big enough that you, you've got an audience. Is that what I understand you're saying? Yeah. And you don't want it too small, but you don't want it mammoth unless,

like I said, you have enough team members to kind of help you with sustaining it. What should I know that we haven't talked about today? The one thing actually that one agent I was talking to the other day was kind of interesting. They were going to start a Facebook group and we were talking about it. And they've been buying leads for one of those predictive selling companies. You know, like every time you go to the Home Depot and you're buying paint and carpeted, it's gathering all that data on units, predictive selling, like, oh, Laura's going to sell her house soon.

And they were spending like $4,000 a month on this predictive selling, which is super cool. Like I, however, that all works predictive selling, which is super cool. Like I, however, that all works in the back end is really cool. But what I was showing that was in my group, I can do predictive selling too. I can data mine my group by posting different content. I look at what people are asking by going to the back end of it, of who's in my group. I have predictive selling of 10,000 people. Like I know what's going on. And so I'm able to use that, but not spend the 35. So if you're thinking about

buying some of these expensive lead sources, that might be a better option for you. Or if you don't have the budget, like I, when I first started, I didn't, you know, I wasn't going to spend 35, 3,500 a month on a lead gen source, just didn't have it. So by using something else that's free, you can definitely tap into some of the, some of the other ways of figuring out where the buyer, where the buyers and where the sellers are. Cause I think everyone now is kind of moving toward more sellers. It's the market ship. Laura, thank you so much for, for sharing your, your wisdom today and your time. And, and I I'm really grateful to be able to meet you and hope to be able to support you as well, groups to leads and everybody.

Thank you so much for watching and listening today. I'm going to wish everybody to have the best day of your life. Be grateful, make good choices and go help somebody. God bless. Goodbye. Thanks so much for listening to the No Broke Months podcast today. Until the next show, I invite for you to be grateful, make good choices, help someone, have the best day of your life, and go find a listing. Dan, you are such a fascinating man. I mean, he has this purpose in life to help people achieve their dreams, their greatness. And he doesn't just say it. He actually has steps and mythologies

in order for them to follow. Our very special guest in Featured Time of Your Day, I cannot even sit in my chair. I'm so excited. Dan Rochon, all the way from beautiful Virginia. Dan, it's an honor to have you on the show. Thank you so much for taking the time. And what I'm encouraging for you

is to focus on who you're being because that's your foundation. And when you focus on that,'re going to find that you do activities that are going to lead to the outcome of having whatever it is in this life that you're looking for.