No Broke Months For Salespeople - Growing your Social Media Thru Organic Approach

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

Lynea Carver is the Founder of the Dream Method, an innovative solution designed to simplify the process of achieving your dream lifestyle.She is also a team leader, marketing guru, and teacher.In this episode, Lynea will share about Growing your Social Media through  Organic Approach. 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

When you talk about telling stories, first thing you do is you have to hook your audience with the emotion behind it. So when you're telling stories like that on social, you're opening the audience. You're basically telling your audience, hey, this is what I do. 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. Linea Carver is the founder of The Dream Method, an innovative solution designed to simplify the process of achieving your dream lifestyle. She is also a team leader, marketing guru, and teacher.

In this episode, Linnea will share about growing your social media through organic approach. 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. I'm joined with Linnea Carver and Linnea is the founder of the Dream Method, which is an innovative solution design to simplify the process of achieving your dream lifestyle. And somebody that I've known for, I don't know, maybe almost two years now or so, we haven't gotten a chance to really, really get to know each other well, but we definitely

know of each other. And I respect you so damn much, Linnea. I'm grateful that you're here today. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Feel much Linnea I'm grateful that you're here today welcome thank you thank you feelings mutual I appreciate that as well so um so the dream method tell us more about that well before you tell I'm sorry I gotta go back Linnea who the hell are you I'm Linnea I'll go so you just introduced me now um I am I'm here in the Seattle market, actually just south of Seattle. Tacoma is actually my biggest metropolitan area. But I've been an agent for five years. I started

in 2018. Before that, I spent 12 years in corporate America doing everything from sales and marketing all the way into item planning. So I have a big, big slew of business experience behind me. Before that, I actually did loans. I was in the mortgage industry as a loan originator from 2006 to 2008. And then I backed out when the market crashed because I was young. I had no money and I didn't want to go to school to get a license to be a loan officer because I didn't really love it and so that is you know when I when I decided I want to get out of corporate America I decided to get my real estate license because my mom had been in business she loved it she was

best followed she was on her way out of the business perfect timing Now that golden handoff sort of thing. And here we are. So today my team, I had a team of, we're small, a small but mighty team. There's me and there's two other agents on my team. And I have a support team of two VAs and an EA. So I have a willing, strong support team around me and we'll close just over20 million this year. Okay. That's fantastic. And you mentioned the golden handoff. If you're listening to this, check out the golden handoff. My buddy Nick Crowder is the author of that.

And it's a good, it tells you really how to adopt a retiring agent's business or be a retiring agent, having a great agent like Linnea to take over. So you got into 2018 and you had your first few years in business. Tell us about that. And I know that you had the pandemic, you know, in between there as well. So what was your journey at the beginning like? So I actually, I was a part-time agent for the first year and a half um and I had a six month I got into the business um and I didn't have any anything for six months yes even though my mom was retiring and whatnot like she didn't just hand me business and the only thing I had was Facebook it was really before Instagram was a thing and you know the only thing I had was Facebook and open houses.

So in the first six months of my business, all I did was post open houses. I just did open houses for other agents and post open houses. And I did a lot of organic stuff. I went to a party and handed out paper cards, that sort of thing. My first deal came, I think I closed January of 2019. So actually like six months after I first got it. And it was just nonstop from there. So the first year in the business, first full year in 2019, I closed nine deals. And I think I did like 91,000 in GCI, something like that. And at the time, I was also still a W-2 employee. So that was a really good extra income.

That income helped me pay off all of my debt and helped me put money aside for reserves and actually pay for a wedding. And then at the end of- So your own wedding? My own wedding, yeah. Hey, all right. So my first year, I did nine deals part-time. I was getting married.

I've also had a really, really, really demanding full-time career. I commuted three hours a day. So really the only time to do my business was at night from like 7 to 10. And then on the weekends, I got up at 7 a.m., go to the gym. I get home from the gym and it was like from like 9 to eight every weekend, Saturday and Sunday for about a year. That's all I did was open houses and whatnot. And until I had a hyper and built up. But anyway, so at the end of 2019, I had enough saved aside to be able to quit my job. And so I stayed for the end of the fiscal year, which was the end of January to get my bonus. I was like, I worked really hard. the end of the fiscal year, which was the end of January to get

my bonus. I was like, I worked really hard. I bought my extra corporate bonus, which was like a commission check, like a commission check. I mean, like I worked really hard for this corporate bonus, which is like, you know, now I can make like five times out of one month. And then I just went into it full time. February 7th, 2020 was my last day in corporate. It was my first. I had a closing that day. And then the pandemic shut down the industry or shut down the world like a month later. March of 2020 was when it got there. So that's like perfect timing. You're probably right around March of 2020. You're probably like, oh my, like, what did I just do I was like you know you would think that I was like what did I just do but more or less I was like okay well one thing I'm really good at is social media one thing I'm really good at is social media and I was like this is a better time than any than you know just yeah do what I do and you know run a business and um it took off yeah what did you do so when I

when I first went into the business, I keep kind of reference open houses. So I actually went to a free class on how to do an effective open house. It was run by an agent at, I think she was at Keller Williams. And I called her after the class and like, hey, can I talk to you for a minute?

I didn't know who she was. She had no clue who I was. She was like, absolutely. And I was like, well, is that your open house class? And I had a couple of questions for you. And she gave me some feedback. And I was like, cool. So what I did for the first six months, seven, eight, nine months until I actually learned more about lead gen, I would go through the NLS and I would find open houses that were sitting or houses that were sitting there for three weeks or longer and hadn't moved. They hadn't had a

price drop. There was nothing going on. And I did a little bit of research just to see if they had any marketing at all. Because you can usually tell if you search an address if there's any marketing other than the analyst. And so I would spend every Sunday, I would call agents and say, hey, I see you had a listing on the market for three weeks, five weeks, whatever. Would your sellers like to have an open house? And I got a lot of people who were like, no. Some people are like, yeah, whatever. And they were like, sure. Most people were like, sure. I said, cool, because I have this marketing plan that I developed that is all about open houses. Here's when my open house will be. I did them every Sunday from one to four. It was the only day I did them. And I said, that means I'm going to start

marketing your property tomorrow. So I need your permission in writing that I'm going to market your property. And so I would, from Monday through Saturday, I would market their property using Facebook, LinkedIn. I had Instagram. I wasn't too popular with then, but Facebook, LinkedIn, and Craigslist.

And I would do a series oflist. And I would do a series of door knocking. I would do a series of cold calling. I would go actually visit, I would canvass the neighborhood, did small businesses, pass out flyers. And that's actually what I did for a long, long, long time. And while I never actually uh anyone buying a house that like went to the open house my dad built so fast it was like people would just tell him i'd have him sign in i would offer a prize for them just for signing in as people right now are like you don't want to i would do little things like a wine basket chocolate basket was fun um sometimes i did like a i'd like stress balls um i did like you know pens like little like just i can't keep stress balls around the house they they for some reason

they just wear out on me i don't know yeah i wonder why and one time the best one i ever did was seeds for those an open house around around easter right right in the beginning of spring definitely received so i went to home depot and bought like 20 20 or 30 seat out of there like 50 cents each the cheapest thing i've ever done and i just fabled them together and handed i was out and people would sign up for that kind of stuff they like freaks up all the time yeah so the cool part was everyone would sign in so it's just filling the database. And then I would friend them on social media and send out a message on social media. And I'm just like, I'm seeing my content all the time. And one thing I knew was Facebook.

Hold on one second there. Because I love it. I just want to unravel some of that, right? There's something that you said in there that is something I've used in my business, but it's been years and years and years. And it was actually really effective when I began, but I'm curious, how did you use Craigslist? I would, so with Craigslist, a few years, but it was, I would post the open house on Monday. Where would you post it? Like at an event? On Craigslist.

I would go on to Craigslist and I would create and get pictures. I'd have the agent send me the pictures or get permission to use the pictures. But you would post it like at a Craigslist event? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would post it at an event.

But then I would post it twice that week. Two or three times that week, really depending. Because with Craigslist, the trick is you've got to be at the top. Because people, it's just like Google, they're not going to scroll all the way through. So that's how we would use that. And that, like my phone would ring, I would get emails. Sometimes I would like hang up, be like, hey, reach out to me on Facebook. Or there were just different ways that I would have people reach out to me.

And it was really effective for building that database. Okay. So, and then I'm going to ask you a question, go a little bit sideways with this, but it's going to tie into what we're talking about here right now. Before we started talking live, you were sharing with me really about the way that people use social media and how most agents don't use it effectively. Can you tell us really more along the lines of what do agents do typically that probably is not the best way? And then what would you recommend that they do do? Okay. So the first thing I would say that most agents do, if they like to say just listed, just pending or just sold. I first of all, I mean, cool. Right. But I, I'm the firm believer of if you have a

real estate license, like, right. If you have a real estate license, you were just like everybody else. If you can just list, just sell or make a contract going, well, make a, make a deal going contract. Right. That is what a job is. Um, but what, um, what I think people should be doing more of and what I, that's actually what I was telling you when I logged on was my, but what, um, what I think people should be doing more of and what I, that's actually what I was telling you when I logged on was my, my agent, she just had her third closing in 10 weeks with me, third closing. And she was telling the story of the client. She was telling the story of like our emotional state, kind of where they were at when she

met them, what steps we took, what we're able to accomplish for them. And we're putting that. So stories tell, right? Like, I'm sorry, facts tell and stories sell, right? And what we want is we want people to tell a lot more stories. And I mean, personally, when I'm looking at someone's content on social media, if I see something's just kind of like, I saw $18 this month. I'm looking at someone's content on social media, if I see something's just kind of like, I sold 18 homes this month. I'm like, cool. Cool. Right. But I let up where I want to know is

how did you sell those 18 homes? What did you do to get those? How long has it taken you to do this? I think that, you know, the more we can tell stories on social media, the more people want to work with you because you're like, it's kind of like that whole, let me like tell you about myself. You learn how I talk. You learn my mannerisms. You learn all those things.

So we tell stories. 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. It'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. What are the components of a good story like how do you walk us through the conversation we had with your agent earlier today what were you sharing with her well i mean everyone's gonna tell you i've been sorry you have to have a good hook right you gotta you gotta tell like the beginning right hook them in so i i started out with um have you ever played the like the the seven layers why have you ever done that like

seven layers why no like a deep deep like what's important to you all that what's important yeah it's more like okay so when someone we have a client coming to us we we part of our the first phase of our dream method that you kind of alluded to in the beginning is the discovery phase and so during that discovery phase that's when we're discovering. We're going into the deep layers of why. That's what we do is we start out with telling the why. Why are you talking to us today? Well, we want to buy a house. Why do you want to buy a house?

Well, because we're ready. Why are you ready now? And so we just keep going deep. And what we learned from people is there's always an emotional reason behind it. Always an emotional reason. But they're never going to start out with the emotional reason, right? They're always going to start out with the fact.

I want to buy a house. Why? Because I feel like it's time. Why is now the time? Well, interest rates are starting to go down a little bit. Well, why does that matter to you, right? And we just keep going deep. So when you talk about telling stories,

the first thing you do is you have to hook your audience with the emotion behind it. When I first met my clients two years ago, they were frustrated and distraught. Nervous, anxious, eager to get going. Nervous, anxious, whatever it is. They had tried buying a house two years ago. And at that time, the market pulled them. They had to write just teen offers and none got accepted. Because now you're like playing with emotion, right? So you got to hook in with the emotion. Be the first step of telling a story.

Then you're telling like the body of the fruit, the nuts and bolts of the story. That's when you have to go and kind of explain like the why behind they were feeling frustrated, disappointed. And then why is now, right? And then you got to close with like the wins. So it's the hook and nuts and bolts and the win. And the wins are that, yeah, we found them a house. Cool. That's a real city that should do. But you know what? We also got them $11,000 in closing cost credit. We negotiated with the fellow to do every single repair that they asked for. And we got them to build a little bit into their house earlier than expected. So when you're telling stories like that on social,

that's when it becomes, you're opening the audience. You're basically telling your audience, hey, this is what I do. This is how, this is what I do. And without saying, if this is for you, tell me, right? That's another thing I think people do wrong all the time. It's like, Hey, if you want more information, reach out or whatever. If you think I can help you reach out. And while it's okay to do that occasionally, it shouldn't be all of the content. And so the great thing about like the stories around just lifted or just sold is that you don't even have to see, you're basically like leaving it hanging.

Like this is what we're able to do for them i love this part of my job i love this part of what i do whatever these are attracting that audience attraction is the word that i was gonna what you're doing is you're getting people to chase you rather than you chasing them right because Because when they go through and your audience, you know, hears that story, when it's time for them, they're going to think of Linnea 100 percent. Right. And now it's like, hey, Linnea, would you be willing to help me? Right. I'm sure it's more of that than the other way around where. where we're Thank you. yeah um for those people i want to have you just consider that you're paying for our competitors put us out of business that's a high rate i will not go on today Thank you. More primarily Instagram today.

You see, yeah. Walk me through Instagram specifically. specifically, like if I'm starting an IG account today and I want to be able to build that 1800 audience and get, you know, repeat, not repeat, but consistent, predictable income from that database, what do I do? Walk me through that if you could, please. you Can you do, and I don't know the answer, that's what I'm asking, can you record like seven in one day and then publish them daily. Is that possible? you Is it 20%? you Okay. And so, um, so I'm very familiar with SEO for Google blogs, that type of thing. And what I found is the long tail keyword searches are going to be much more effective than the specific homes for sale, because you're not going to, you're not going to rank for those, but you will rank for something that is, um, you know, more of a long tail.

Is that true with Instagram as well? you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you but but you're paying attention and you're like okay could be one of these three reasons why that works so let's try reason a see what happens and then maybe you know it can be scientific but not as precise as some of the other platforms. Yeah. Yeah. OK. What type of content specifically? So the awareness content, for example. So that's 80 percent. All right. Before we get to the interest. What what do I do to get it to to get attention. you you you Most of the time, they want to grow their following as well as help you so it's easy to just add them as a collaborator and that's going to help boost that awareness so

it's actually going to help you bring in like grow your audience as well as get people who see you to like their audience become their audience as well so it's kind of a big share. 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's been your biggest challenges with implementing these strategies that you're talking about today?

Well, at first, it was getting it over my head and being very inconsistent. Because it's a great idea. It's like everything. Shiny update. Cool. Let's try it. Every idea is great. Every idea is great. Every idea is great.

The ones that work for you. But, well, every Lean Gen Source works. Everything works. Every coaching program, it all works. It's a matter of you. It's a matter of me and how much I can say. So I think the biggest challenge in the beginning was just trying to like say okay i'm just going to do this now i'm going to go out because lenaya said go post every day for the next 30 days and not have a plan make

it sustainable or long term and so i think um taking a step back and actually planning like okay this is what i want is what i want the strategy to look like and i you know i have a big support team so i delegate a lot of it but But, you know, here's what the plan actually is. This is how many pieces of content I want. This is what we're really talking about, right? I'm talking about my course right now, pushing my course. So all of our content is really around trying to get awareness around that piece. But the hardest part is just doing it without actually thinking about the why behind it.

I have this really good book right now. Hold on. i'm totally going to go on a little tangent for a second it's called the again the road less stupid are you reading you read that i'm just reading this i'm like i freaking want this he's like he's like we all we all pay a dumb tax and i'm like i'm paying a dumb tax i have totally paid a dumb tax And he talks about like planning, like planning, planning before you implement. Keith J. Cunningham is the author of that. I think that's right. And what I can tell you from that book, which I read a couple of years ago and I read it, it's a, it's one of a dozen or so that sits on my shelf here because it's it's a reread for me and um there's a series if you if you want to design a life it's about asking yourself better questions and thus far that book i i found has the best questions to ask and so uh not on a weekly basis but uh at least a couple times a month i I'll sit down and, and I'll just

open it up randomly and just ask, you know, go through and ask myself those questions. So I recommend that book as well. All right. So besides the road, let's, oh, by the way, I had asked for the, the book that we're less stupid from, for a gift from somebody. And instead of getting the road less stupid, I got the book won't be stupid. uh, that was the book that I got. That's a true story. And I don't know if it was a dig at me or not. What is that book about? Won't be stupid. Don't be stupid. Don't be stupid. Don't be stupid.

I'm curious now. I'm going to look it it up don't be stupid sure i did read it i'm sure i did read it um i'm not gonna you know or and at least open it up you know either way so lena you mentioned about your uh about your course can you tell us more about that what what is your what are you talking about when you mention that so i think that it's really easy to when you're when you're thinking about social media a lot of people get um I would say, limiting beliefs around social media because, A, they don't have a very big audience or they don't think it's easy. They don't think it's possible. They don't think they can make a difference. So a lot of limiting beliefs. Why people won't actually try to use social media as a tool.

Me, however, like I told you, I built my business with Facebook, right? And then now I'm really going after Instagram. And I have an audience on Instagram, like 1,800 and some odd people, but my engagement rate is about 7%. And just to like, give you like benchmark. Yeah. What's a benchmark? One percent. Like Kylie Jenner, who at one point, she doesn't anymore, but she had the biggest Instagram account on Instagram, the biggest account. She had less than a half a percent following or half a percent engagement rate. So people get a lot of limiting beliefs around social media. And I also think a lot of people do the wrong things on social.

If they're spending money on ads, they're putting money behind the content that's not working versus actually putting a lot of money behind content that's not working. You try to push that out to an audience and it actually starts annoying people and turning people off of your audience. So it actually lowers that engagement rate versus focusing on putting a little bit of money or no money behind content that is working because it's already proven to have better engagement and higher engagement. So what I talk about in my course is the funnels, right? The four layers of the funnel, the five pillars of content, how to put it out, how to create it, all that stuff.

But the most important piece in there is really what is the bottom layer, which is that conversion piece, right? So a lot of people know how to put out content. That's probably not a lot of people's problem. But I would say we lose the ability to actually convert people because we just, we don't have the strategy behind the content that we're putting out. We don't have the right calls to action. We don't have the right systems in place to be able to go in and actually look at that database of 1,800 and some odd followers on Instagram and say, okay, from this 1,800 and some odd followers,

I know I can get 10 deals from here. I know there's 10 clients waiting here. And so that's what I teach in my course is how to do that. Like the math kind of behind how that works, how to put out the content, how to stay consistent with it and how to implement systems to honestly automate a lot of the conversation. We use AI to have a lot of conversation, but also how to have a lot of those manual conversations and how to actually

like, like engage your audience. So you can have that high engagement rate. So you take them really sort of a scientific method of, you know, you, you, you do, you know, these three actions, one, two, three, and now here should your return that to expect should be this. Right. And so it's really about teaching a recipe of, you know, more of what we're talking about today, but putting into a system of action and activity versus expected result, return, et cetera. you want, you know, I want to, I'm going to help X amount of sellers sell their home. Then you just backtrack it to how many, you know, actions would you have to take in your

social media, et cetera. Am I understanding you correct? Yep. Yep. So there's really, there's like a formula for it. It's just, it's just a map. And to be quite honest, like we all, well, I shouldn't say we all, I'm going to take that back.

We should be, we should be tracking our conversion rate. We should be tracking how many phone calls, how many dials we have to make, be able to have a conversation, how many conversations, be able to have an appointment, how many appointments I feel to sign a contract, right? We should be tracking those things. But I can be real honest with you. I don't really like phone calls. I don't mind being on the phone with people that I know,

but I don't like to call a lead that is not expecting my phone call. It's not friendly and definitely give me warm and fuzzy. And I know I'm not alone in that. But what I do like to do is I do like to be on social media. And I do like to have conversations with people that have already shown me the other response to the content that I'm putting out that they love, they want to talk to me. And the other great thing about, um, about using social media as a prospecting tool, which is really what it is. I prospect read a board hour a day. I prospect on social. Um, so prospecting, uh, social media prospecting that's cool about it is that like you can, there's no, it's all this person in 15 minutes, else they're going to run away. That doesn't exist on social media.

So it kind of takes a lot of that pressure off and allows you to really attract people into your life or into your business that you want to be here. And it opens up a lot of time freedom. Love it. And I know that you are, you're more about putting this stuff out there and sometimes without the call to action yet. Yeah. How can somebody find out about the course? Well, there is a link, but it's go to my stand store. It's stand.store slash Linnea Carver.

You can also follow me on Instagram at Linnea Carver and just go on any of my posts and type in the right systems and I'll send you the link right there or workshop, whatever you want to do. But that's a way to find out. I want you to go into our post and say, Dan is freaking amazing. Thanks for introducing me. Say something nice about me. When in doubt, just say that. Thank you so much for your time today and for your insight and for helping us really understand this. And listeners and viewers, if you want to know more about how Linnea can help you, go and find her on Instagram, Linnea Carver. And you can just like she said, write in systems or workshop and she'll get you all the information. Until next time, have the best day of your life. Be grateful. grateful make good choices go help somebody and go find a listing god bless you

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 you'll find a listing hey i just had the best 45 minutes interviewing dan roshan he's from virginia right outside the dc area he's been in a stable market for a long time within 18 months he created so much success where he was actually able to buy the brokerage as a real estate agent. Dan is a leader of vision, focus, and passion. His enthusiasm is truly infectious. He just came out with a book for real estate agents to kind of help people pivot. We went through and talked about how to succeed in adversity, some of his big traits out there.