No Broke Months For Salespeople - How to Generate Leads by Building an Online Community

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

Jess Cassity is the CEO of the Modern Real Estate Agent and the Podcast host of the Get Real Podcast. Jess is also a realtor/broker based in NC. In this Interview, Jess will share how building an online community could help you generate leads for your real estate business. In this Interview, Jess will share how building an online community could help you generate leads for your real estate business. -In this episode, Jess and I discussed the following: -The best way to reach Jess Cassityhttps://www.facebook.com/TheJessCassity-Hey, thanks so much for listening!If you enjoyed the podcast, leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts and subscribe to the show.And if you'd rather listen to the show on YouTube, check out my channel and subscribe there.-I'm a huge believer that when you're feeling your best, you can do your best. Check out some of my previous podcast episodes!Start Building Wealth Through Real Estate InvestmentWhy Passive Income Is Important for Real Estate Agents4 Key Metrics to Analyze Business Opportunities--Stop 🛑 wasting your time ⏳ or spending too much money 💸not getting the results you want in sales, I would love you to join me for the upcoming 5-Day Listing Challenge.You will learn how to find YOUR Way to having closings every month.www.5daylistingchallenge.com---Get your free copy of the Real Estate Evolution here: bit.ly/RealEstateEvolution_GetYourBook. This book shows you the step by step on how to:Step 1: Believe in your unknown potentialStep 2: Deconstruct persuasion techniquesStep 3: Find a business and get hired consistentlyStep 4: Be proactive in the relationship with your clients.Step 5: Learn and implement the exact steps to hire, train, lead, and train virtual assistants so that they can build, support, and guide a winning team to scale.And if you’d like to have a consistent and predictable income, like this page, and don’t forget to join the Facebook group to network with the top agents: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thecpicommunity/ 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

You know, I actually help a lot of other agents to build their own online community because I really think that having your own community that you're in charge of, you can, you know, control the narrative of your online community. So that's basically, it's farming in a more modern, scalable way. 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. How to generate leads by building an online community. Jess Cassidy is the CEO of the Modern Real Estate Agent and the podcast host of the Get Real podcast. Jess is also a realtor, a broker based in NC. In this interview, Jess will share how building an online community could help you generate leads for your real estate business. 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 am joined, I'm really, really excited with Jess Cassidy, who is going to talk to us today about how to generate leads by building an online community. And Jess Cassidy is the CEO of the Modern Real Estate Agent, the podcast host of Get Real Podcast, and she is a realtor slash broker based in North Carolina. Welcome, Jess. How are you today? Hey, Dan. Thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited to talk about all the things we're going to get into today.

Fantastic. So, Jess, before we jump into building an online community, I know that you're a military spouse. Is that correct? Yes. And a military mom. Hey, okay. Military mom and military spouse. That's great. Fantastic. And how long have you been in real estate for? 10 years. Okay. Fantastic. And you do have a podcast called the Get Real Podcast. You've been doing that for a couple of years. And what's the, you know, if somebody was to switch off the No Broke Months Podcast and jump over to the Get Real Podcast, please come back. If they were to do that, what would they hear on your show? So we try and, you know, you know, just kind of keep it real about real estate,

the good, the bad, the ugly. We have a lot of guests come on and talk about specific areas to help real estate, the good, the bad, the ugly. We have a lot of guests come on and talk about specific areas to help real estate agents, you know, from anywhere of starting their own podcast to how to manage, you know, their Google Drive to, you know, pretty much anything, even, you know, staging listings. Got it. All right. Fantastic. So Jess, so tell me, building an online community, I'm assuming that that's something that you have a little bit of experience with? Yes. So I have lots of experience in this. And, you know, I actually help a lot of other agents to build their own online community,

because I really think that having your own community that you're in charge of, you can, you know, control the narrative of your online community. So that's basically it's farming in a more modern, scalable way. So typically what we do is creating Facebook online communities. and that can go just as simple as you know your neighborhood community facebook group or you know your town facebook group and just being able to control who's in there you know if you want to let other real estate agents in you don't have to okay and so um so you could do it for your neighborhood you could do it for your town you could could do it for your town. You could also do it, I'm sure, for like military spouses or military members. What other types of groups have you heard as like you're a book club, you know, if that's where you're into or equestrian, you know, if you're into horses. So just, you're just making your niche, your community of people that you want to be around, work with, network. And the greatest thing about

it is like, you're basically handpicking the people that you want to work with. Yeah. I'm sure you could do like an investor group. That would be probably pretty amazing, I would think. Yeah. Or, you know, even anybody who wants to get into Airbnbs or, you know, any type of short-term rentals in your area. And the thing is too, is it doesn't even have to be real estate related. You know, it can be like, you know, we talked about the book clubs and stuff, but it can be anything niched down to what your interests are and other people. And it's just another way to network. Yeah. I found like, for example, if you're using the military Facebook group, you're

not really talking about real estate at all. But what happens is the community starts to know you as the resource. And then let's say that you're specializing in the military, for example, and somebody PCS is in, you help them. Of course, you're going to invite them to join a group. And so then when somebody else needs help,

well, guess what? You got to talk to Jess. You got to talk to Dan. Yeah. And so the group will get you out there. So you don't have to be that billboard out there. No,

no. And the thing is too, is like, you just are the resource. Like people just come to you for all the information you can, you know, partner with other vendors in the area and promote that. One of our Facebook groups that, you know, we have for our local town, you know, we're promoting like, hey, the best sandwich shop, you know, whatever it is. It's just we're the people, you know, that have all the answers. So, you know, people are just constantly like, hey, I'm looking for this, you know, how can we help you?

What's the, what's the biggest Facebook group that you run today? Um, I have a one that has about 5,000 people in it. And I mean, they're local. How long have you been running that for? Uh, well, I have several local facebook groups um and some of them you know they date back to about 2014 okay several about how many is that um well just aimed at that um you know for lead generation and in the community and stuff, I probably have about six. Okay. And what type of business do you do from that? Well, I get about 20 leads a day, I would say, sporadically. And the thing is-

Hold on. Rewind. Rewind. Somebody rewind that. Somebody rewind that. 20 leads a day? Yeah. I got to go. I got to go.

I got to go start our Facebook group. Sorry. Yeah, you do. Absolutely. Well, the thing is, is, you know, promoting these groups for whatever they are, the real like lead generation is the questions you ask for the people to get into the group. Okay. Right?

Yeah. And so when somebody's entering into the group, then you're asking questions. So what type of questions are you asking? So it depends if you're doing, you know, like you're very, very niche group, that's really not about real estate. You know, that's when we're like, Hey, do you want to join our newsletter? You know, it's non-threatening, it's non-scary, but then you're, you know, developing a relationship to stay in their face. Right. Got it. So then if you have, um, another Facebook group, which I mean, if you're, if you're gonna, you know, do it for based on real estate,

I would definitely do one that's more based on one that you can do like, Hey, uh, uh, one of our groups is homes for sale and rent in X, Y, Z, you know? So our questions for them to join are like, Hey, you have to be local to the area or relocating here. Um, you know, and they check yes or no. And then it's, Hey, do you want a real estate agent to reach out to you to help you? And you know, then they say yes or no. And then the next one is, Hey, give us your email address if you want to join the newsletter. So if they say yes, that they want a real estate agent to contact them, then we automatically reach right out to them and say, hey, how can we help you? Hey there, it's Dan. Excuse me for interrupting my own show. I just wanted to do so because I

wanted to share with you, I was having a conversation with one of my buyer's agents, Lucia, the other day. And she was sharing with me, she had a client that wrote an offer in today's market on 12 different homes. And she did actually end up getting the last offer accepted. So they didn't go and rent. But maybe right now you may be in that same situation. And you in that same situation they did end up renting. And I know that that can be like that can just suck. Well, let me tell you, since 2008, there hasn't been a single month that I've missed a closing in real estate sales on an average of 10.

And I want to share with you in the last one year, I've taken 79 listings by attending 93 listing appointments. I don't say that to brag. I say that to share with you that I know how to take listings in today's market. And I want to invite you if you want to learn how to take listings in today's market to join me at the five-day listing challenge coming up. You can visit www.fivedaylistingchallenge.com and learn how to take listings in today's market without having to cold call, door knock, or beg. That's www.5daylistingchallenge.com. Now, back to the most awesome real estate show ever, CPI Real Estate Podcast. How much interaction are you getting from, and how long does it take

if you're getting interaction on the group from other, you know, from the community? Like, how long does that typically take and how much interaction should you expect? So you should definitely, the best way to create that interaction is to ask questions. You know, if you're just posting all the information and people are just going to look at it, they're not going to, you know, interact. And then Facebook says, Hey, your group is dead. And then they're not going to like, nobody's going to see this stuff. But if you post questions that people can answer or the polls, like everybody loves those, you know, everybody loves to give their opinion. So if you post that stuff, that creates a lot

more interaction for everybody. What about somebody besides you? Like I get you're asking the question and you're getting interaction in that post. But what about other people asking questions? What's the expectations for that? Yeah. So, I mean, it depends how you set your group up because some people will set it up and like only allow approved posts. So they get submitted to the admin because there's so many spammers out there now. But a lot of people will allow other people. So

if you have a for sale or rent group, people will post and say, Hey, you know what, what do you guys have coming up in the area? Or I'm looking for, you know, three bed, two bath here. So it depends if you allow people to, you know, comment and create those posts, then others will see that and feel welcome to do so as well. Got it. And so what percentage of your time daily or weekly or whatever are you committed to this? So we pretty much set up all of our automations just like we do our social media and scheduled posts to go out and now you know facebook allows you to do you know the welcome um message automatically as well so we typically just pop in to check on things see if we can answer questions um approve people every day we just check for approvals and see if anybody you know has said hey i want a realtor you know to reach

out to me and we'll contact those people as well. Okay. I'm curious. Let's change the subject just a little bit. What caused you to get in real estate sales? You know, I'm a lot like everybody else and just thought it was going to be so easy to want somebody and not have to work at all. And that was a very rude awakening. I'm putting together a class right now, A day in the life of a real estate agent.

And we just finished this morning reviewing like the emails that are going out. And I realized the emails are basically saying like, what are you thinking? Yeah. Yeah. And you know, the big question is always like,

what is the one thing you wish somebody had told you before you got into real estate? Right. Let me ask you, Jess, what is that one thing you wish somebody had told you before you got into real estate? Right. Let me ask you, Jess, what is that one thing for you? I wish that, you know, somebody had told me like, Hey, you know, don't quit your job. Like it's going to be, you know, a hot minute before you start making, you know, a decent income or, you know, developing leads. And it's really expensive to get started. Like nobody tells you that. Yeah. Um, besides creating a Facebook group, what would you do on day one? Um, what I would do on day one is find somebody who is doing a really great job and just connect to them if, if they'll allow you. And if not, move on to somebody else. Find a really good mentor because anybody that's doing it and already killing it

is somebody that you need to be at least following along and adapting it for yourself. Don't try to do everything alone. Do you have, are you very regimented in your schedule? Yes, I am at the office by 8 a.m every single day monday through friday what time do you clock out um about three and oh are we past do we oh my goodness we gotta hurry up we got damn sandwiches to get to that's right it's sandwich and nap time no but that's like office schedule time you know and then you know showings everything. Everybody else is at work anyways, typically. So you're not, you know, showing houses and doing listing appointments that much during the day.

Okay. So eight to three is your typical day. And then you, and then like three to whenever, if you're showing homes. How many, how many, what percentage of buyers versus sellers do you, do you have more buyers, more sellers equal or what's that look like? So the last two years has really shifted a lot. buyers versus sellers? Do you have more buyers, more sellers equal? Or what's that look like? So the last two years has really shifted a lot. And I've had a lot more sellers, I would say, you know, 80% sellers, which I'm not upset about, but you know, reaching the longer you're in real estate, a lot of those buyers are now sellers. So it's just kind of transitioning over. So I've had a lot more sellers lately which you

know in this market you can't complain about that so this is uh so your sellers have basically been like like you started your business maybe 80 buyers yeah definitely and then through time that's sort of transitioned into 80 sellers because of the the resales and then the the the rest of it is just like new business. Is that about old referral business or whatever? Yep, exactly. Got it. What failure have you learned the most from? Or learning opportunity.

I don't want to say failure. Yeah. What learning opportunity have you learned the most from? So learning would definitely failing forward. So when I got into real estate, I had no idea that like the most lead generation and stuff was like cold calling for sale by owners and all that stuff, which I was absolutely petrified to do and actually pretended to do

everything else except for that. And still thought, you know, like I was, you know, going to be successful. But I would say that learning from that was to find what works for you. Like not everybody has to do the same thing. Like some people kill it at cold calling. That's not me. You know, mine was the

more introverted way of, you know, safely behind the computer screen of social media, which I think that a lot of new agents now have such an advantage because I mean, social media was not like a big thing when I first started in real estate. And so are there ways on social media that you're getting business besides the groups? So yeah, like outside of my own Facebook groups and stuff, the other groups that I'm a part of, like we talked about earlier is just building those relationships. So like commenting on other people's posts, talking to them and interacting with them and just basically becoming friends with them. And that goes outside of Facebook as well, you know, Instagram and stuff, just, you know, talking to people, commenting on everything that

they say, being there and being supportive. And then people want to connect with you. They want to be around you. They want to hear what you have to say. Then they're going to recommend you. What? So let's go back to the eight to three. You say you're super regimented. So within that eight to three, is there chunks of time within that? So I do not plan out the time blocking right down to that. What I do though is in the morning is write out my schedule of the priority items that I want to do. Or my mind is constantly rolling with new ideas. And I am still in production. I have a real estate team that's local and I train

over 2,500 real estate agents. So like my mind just does not stop of like all the stuff I got to do. So if I don't write it down, I will just sit here, Dan and do nothing. How much of your time is training? Um, so a lot more lately, you know, um, in our Facebook group and, you know, I have a, I have a couple of programs that we sell. So I'm constantly creating materials that are updated in there every month. So now I mean, I'm probably 5050 of being production in real estate day to day and working with other agents. What's the group if you're real estate, if there's a real estate agent watching or listening to this

right now? What's it? What's the Facebook group that you host and how can they join that? So it's the Modern Real Estate Agent. And everybody can come on in there and join us. We do tons of free training and just kind of talk about everything that's going on. There's lots of resources. So we'd love to have everybody. So we talked about the learning opportunity, but let's talk about like today, what's the biggest challenge today that you're facing, Jess? Uh, I will,

having time, enough time in the day to do everything, you know, and I know, and you know, real estate is just such a roller coaster life as it is. It's always trying to find the balance and the positivity and battling whatever imposter syndrome it is of that day or being on all the social media platforms you have to. So I think really just prioritizing the important things and the income-based items that you have to do. It sounds to me like you're... For me on social media, I would consider myself more of a producer. I produce a lot of content, but I engage, but I would say that that's ratio-wise a smaller amount. It seems like your engagement is probably much more than my like

maybe 50 50 producing versus engaging am i accurate in thinking that um you know i mean i produce a lot of content and stuff too but sometimes that takes all your energy that you don't have the time to go back and do all of the engagement and stuff too so i mean it is it is hard to find that balance of in there you know all of the platforms and stuff. But I mean, definitely, you know, engagement is, you know, where you want to be. And especially in the Facebook groups, like that's the main purpose. How much time are you engaging? Yeah, how much?

Sorry to over talk you. How much time are you engaging? Like if it's a ratio, what would that be? So, I mean, probably like, you know, my social media tabs are like always open and I have a huge problem of being like instant response. So the minute somebody comments or responds to something or tags me, like I'm there, I'm on it. So it's probably pretty high, you know, response rate and on there a lot. And especially in the evening and stuff too. You know, you're just sitting there scrolling. I was asking those questions because I was curious,

because you're talking about imposter syndrome, right? You're talking about, do you get, I mean, does it sometimes psych you out a little bit when you're on social media and you're seeing like, ah, they got the perfect life. Every day. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And I think everybody feels that way no matter who you are or how successful you are or where you are because you're comparing yourself to

something else that's not real right right and even if it's israel who cares right well you know i mean i mean people i mean especially at the beginning of the year when everybody is posting you know their production numbers and everything and you, one of the big things is we tell all of our agents and I did a podcast episode on, I'm like, listen, you don't know their numbers behind that scene. You know, I'm like, they could be paying three admin and bringing home less than you are. Like you just don't know the whole picture. Yeah. Yeah. It's not about the volume or the units. It's about the profit. Yeah profit yeah exactly and that's not what anybody shows you you're you know you're not seeing their pnl you don't know the bottom line

yeah i'm blessed to be friends colleagues with some of the top producers in the entire country and um we have business conversations like that and i'll be transparent the the numbers are not as healthy as i mean some of them are, right? You know, but not everybody, not everybody. I know, I know plenty of producers doing 500, 800, a thousand homes a year and they're, you know, not making a lot. So that, and that's a risk, particularly when there's a shift in the market. Yeah. And I mean, especially, you know, a lot of people who get to that point, you know, they're spending a lot on advertising or leads or admin and, you know, all that other stuff.

And so sometimes it's like to make more, you're spending more. So at the end of the day, are you making more or not? We talked a little bit. We sort of touched on this. Right. But I want to maybe dive into a little bit deeper about like your sources of business. Yeah. Could you share with me with us, like, what are your sources of business? And how many different, I guess, funnels do you have where

you're finding opportunity? Yeah, and exactly what you just said with the funnels and stuff. That's like a big key is, you know, not putting, you know, all your eggs in one basket and trying to have them come from different streams. So we are really heavy on referrals. And I don't mean referrals from other agents, which, you know, are definitely have increased a lot over time, but referrals from our clients and our sphere and all that stuff. We have, you know, what we call, you know, our MVP groups, where we try to get love on, you know, our people that are close to us and prefer tons of business to us. So that's a big one for us. And then we do get a lot from Facebook as other people's Facebook groups, our own. And we run a lot of ads, too. We have a lot more success with online ads than we've ever had with Zillow or

realtor.com or any of that. Are you just advertising property? What type of ads are you advertising? We do a bunch of different ones. We target sellers and do what's your homework, want a free CMA, those sort of things. We do buyer ones that target new construction, open houses, or just, you know, homes for sale lists. We typically try to give them something in return for collecting their information. So some sort of lead magnet or something. I recently wrote the book, Real Estate Evolution, The 10-Step Guide to CPI, Consistent and Predictable Income for Real Estate Agents. I wrote this book because I have sold real estate since 2007 and developed an immense

amount of experience and knowledge. During my journey, I have witnessed hundreds and maybe even thousands of real estate agents fail in this business. I firmly believe that that's a shame. Real Estate Evolution, I will show you the exact steps that I have used as a real estate salesperson to sell 1 to 15 homes every single month for the past 129 consecutive months. It took me more than two decades to learn the sales and persuasion techniques and more than one decade to master the real estate sales techniques

to be able to produce the content that makes up this book. And it took me more than a year to write at a pace of three hours every single day. If you're a real estate agent and you're looking for consistent and predictable income in your business, I invite you to get the book, Real Estate Evolution, and you can get that by visiting www.therealestateevolution.com, and I'll even give it to you for free as long as you pay for the postage. So we're looking at the different ways of business. So you get a lot of referrals, your MVPs, you love on your MVPs. What do you do in your regimen?

So I'm going to assume that you probably have some sort of system. Yes. What do you do to love on your MVPs? Yeah, systems are key for my life. I do not function well without them. I'm the type of person that has a checklist for my checklist. So when it comes to our MVP is typically what we do is like, you know, a lot of real estate agents, they do, you know, your typical pop buys every month and that sort of stuff. So we do reverse pop buys where we create a bunch of

stuff at our office and then everybody has to come and see us. So we're utilizing our time better. We also try to do a monthly giveaway basket or something and we can partner with our vendors. And then it's just getting our MVP people involved and commenting and just drawing names and stuff of who wins you know that basket how often do you do like the reverse Popeyes how often you do that oh we try to do it once a month just kind of theme base it off of a holiday or time of year wow that's pretty intense I do four client appreciation events a year. And I find that from what I find is that it doesn't even matter if they show up or not, because it's about making the offer and it's about making the connection to invite them.

And hopefully they do show up, but it's still what they want to know is they want to know that you care for them. They want to know that you value them. And so you could do an appreciation event and maybe 20 people show up, maybe 50 people, maybe 10 people. But you can invite 200 and not all 200 are going to show up, but who cares? Have you had that same experience? Yeah. So we have not done a lot of big client events like outside yet. It is on our plan to do this year. But typically we do so like, you know,

in November, we do like the pie event. So we send that out and everybody has to reserve it. So we know how many people you know, are coming and we make custom, you know, labels and, and do all the fun stuff. So I mean, yeah, definitely not as half of the many people come that you think well, especially even when you're giving them free stuff. But like you said, you get to it's a, it's a connection point. So you know, like our big thing is coming from a place of value. So we're reaching out to them like, hey, we want to give you a pie. Do you want apple or pumpkin? You know, even if they're saying,

no, I don't like pie, they're still like, oh, thanks for thinking of me. That's so nice. Yeah. Yeah. It's like when we do our Christmas event, you know, we have a lot of non-Christians

and or a lot of people, you know, we'll invite them to come visit with Santa Claus, right? But hey, by the way, if, you know, we're doing a Toys for Tots, and you know, if you're not into Christmas, completely get that we'd still love to see you, you know, I mean, it's just, you know, making it work for different cultures and different,

you know, groups of people. What's your what does your team look like today? Like, what's the structure of your team? I know you have like a larger team. And then you have a smaller team, right? Is that correct? The way I just yeah, yeah, yeah. What's the smaller team look like? So my small team is there's five of us and we are completely not a normal team at all. We're completely informal, because of course, I just can't, you know follow the the straight line at all um you know I've been on a team in the past and for me it just I just could not get past the concept of the one person being the rainmaker and taking all the money and you know and the whole process just did not sit well at all so I my team is much more about collaboration and, um, just working

together. We can use the same branding, but everybody's kind of, you know, on their own, um, independent and there's, we don't have any team splits. Um, but I do give out leads and then we do a small referral fee for it. Got it. Got it. And is there any administrative support, anything like that? Nope. No. Well, I mean, I would say like I do a lot of admin support. Yes, it's me. Yeah, it's me. And I am the problem too. But yeah, I mean, no, I mean, as far as like TC stuff, they definitely they do their, their own stuff. And I mean, you know, they're not really at a volume where they would need a TCA. And even at the end of the day,

I'm not taking 50% of their income. So if they wanted to pay $250 to a TCA for every transaction, they'd still be making a bunch more money. Yeah, I got you. I got you. All right, tell us what part of North Carolina you're in. I'm in New Bern, North Carolina on Eastern.

So if you're a real estate agent, listen to this, and you're not in New Bern, North Carolina, and you have a referral, how could somebody get that referral to you, Jess? Yeah, so they can find me at jesscassidy.com. They can find me on Instagram. My last name is with a T, Cassidy. So I'm very easy to find. And I would

love to help anybody with their referrals. We have tons of military bases around us too. So send them our way. I'm looking at the spelling of your name. It's almost like Mississippi, right? It's almost like, like I have to put the cricket letter. So Jess with two S's, Cassidy with two S's and a T. So Jess Cassidy. Make sure we get that out there right. Jess, thank you. God bless you. Thanks, Dan.

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. I'm a seasoned agent, but I've certainly had some months with no business and some cash flow issues. Dan's opened my eyes to a lot of things and taught me things that I just haven't been able to get anywhere else. So learning his methodologies has been really helpful to me in my life and very importantly, in my business.