Start With A Win - Interview With Bob Tompkins

Episode Date: May 29, 2019

Our guest on this episode of the Start with a Win podcast is Bob Tompkins, RE/MAX agent from Greenville, South Carolina, and marketing aficionado. In fact, in the week since its release, Bob���s music video parody of “Old Town Road” has amassed more than 800,000 views. Bob’s parents are both Realtors, and 3 years ago Bob got into real estate as well and he has found great success in the industry. Bob is an advocate of developing a strong personal brand to build awareness, and he has been able to let his customers come to him rather than using old school methods like buying leads or cold calling. By being a presence on social media and in the community, he is recognized as an expert in real estate in upstate South Carolina and remaining top of mind for most people in the community drives his business organically.He is one of the handfuls of real estate agents who have embraced the video platform and he uses a straightforward and genuine approach to educate and entertain his customers. He is proving that a well-thought-out and the well-implemented video does not have to be high budget in order to be effective, and while he has invested in some professional equipment in the past few months, the key with video content is to just get it out there. Video is a long game of consistently getting in front of potential clients until they are in a position to buy or sell a house and you are the first person they think of. Bob is inspired by Gary Vaynerchuk and Ricky Carruth when it comes to building his brand and focusing on relationships and by his dad day-in and day-out to be the best he can be. His latest endeavor is his podcast “Real Talk” which is growing and further building his brand awareness. Bob’s key to starting every day with a win is being the first call, text, email, or message of the day to your clients.Links:“Crushing It” by Gary Vaynerchuk: https://www.amazon.com/Crushing-Great-Entrepreneurs-Business-Influence/dp/0062674676Connect with Bob:https://www.facebook.com/BetterCallBobTompkins/https://www.instagram.com/bobtompkinsrealtor/https://www.youtube.com/user/bobtompkins93http://bobtompkins.greenvillemoves.com/ Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/ https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos https://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ 

At top of the 12th floor of the REMAX World Headquarters, you're listening to Start With a Win with CEO Adam Kantos. And welcome to Start With a Win. Adam Kantos here at top of the 12th floor of REMAX World Headquarters. With us here today, we have producer Mark. How are you doing, buddy? I am spectacular. Spectacular. You like that one? I love that. Did you, I mean, is that just instantaneous?

Yeah, just right off the top of my head. Right on, right on. So we also have in studio, amazing REMAX agent from South Carolina, Bob Tompkins. How are you, man? Doing really good. Thanks for having me. For those of you that don't know, Bob is like the kind of the universal celebrity here. One of the universal celebrities for Remax. I'm going to play the beginning of a music video that Bob just started here. For those of you who are listening, Bob made a music video, wrote his own lyrics about selling homes, being a real estate agent to the, uh,

to the recent, uh, country hit old town road, old town road, uh, country rap crossover. Yeah. Whatever you want to call it. Yeah. Country rap. I don't understand the whole country rap thing. It's weird, but it's fun. Oh yeah.

You know, I, I've, I've heard this song like 800 times cause I listened to Bobby bones in the morning and, and he always, you know, it's a country music. It's a, but anyhow, it's, it's it's a great song and it really, this in and of itself kind of demonstrates your marketing prowess. Yeah. Okay. So I mean, you're, you're a marketer. I like to think so. Yeah. I mean, that's what you do, you're a marketer. I like to think so. Yeah. I mean, that's what you do in real estate, right? Is 100%. But, um, but it really, what it does is it, it, um, personalizes you to the community. So, um, you know, speaking of personalizing yourself, tell us a little bit about yourself, Bob. Um, so yeah, live in Greenville, South Carolina. Um, been selling real estate for three years now, but grew up in a real estate family. So both my

parents are realtors and we don't need to mention the company they work for, but, um, but it will be remax soon, soon, soon, mom. There we go. But yeah, we're going to get them over here eventually. But, um, yeah, so grew up in a real estate family, started doing it three years ago. I was bartending before that. So, um, always been, or, you know, dealing with people, working with people. Um, so kind of followed my parents' footsteps, thought, always been, or, you know, dealing with people, working with people. Um, so kind of followed my parents' footsteps, thought, honestly thought I could be better than them at it. So that's why I took a crack at it. Um, and it's been good. That's awesome. Good so far. And you have no personality whatsoever, right? Not at all. None. No. Okay. Completely deadpan. Right. Okay.

Gotcha. So it's speaking of no personality. I mean, you're, you're really active online, man. I try to be, I mean, that's you. Um, you just, you document your life and you come up with these ideas and you talk to people a lot. I mean, you, I mean, you, you sit in bars and podcast or broadcast or whatever with, with customers or restaurants. And I mean, you just, yep. I mean, I think you, you stay at this, you're, you're nearly a celebrity where you live or you pretty much are. Yeah. I mean, I, I don't want to call myself a celebrity at all, but I mean, people do seem, I mean, people know me. We'll say you're popular. I'm popular. Yeah. High school term. Hey, do you know Bob? Oh yeah. Yeah, I do. So, uh, I mean, what, how do you think this helps

your business? Um, exposure. I think the fact that people see me, they don't think of other realtors and that's, I mean, that's really the plan and marketing all along is that they think of me when they think about real estate. So the fact that I'm on their news feeds, you know, every day, every other day, I'm interacting with them on social media. I'm out in the general public. I'm not just closed up in my house. I think that those things really push the brand to where it brings you business organically. Right.

To where I don't have to sit at the house and cold call. I don't have to show up and knock on expired doors because I'm getting the exposure organically. So you're not, you're not going, Hey, can I be your real estate agent? People are coming to you going, Hey, I saw you on social media, or I know you've been around the community. Can you help me with this? I've never called an expired. Um, and I think in my first two weeks in real estate, I called like four or five for sale by owners and I haven't done it since. Okay. Yeah. So I, I very, I don't ask for business. Business tends to come through me or come to me through, you know, social media or through referrals. Um, I mean, pretty organically. Okay. So, I mean, speaking of social media,

um, what platforms are you on? Just, you know, break it down for us. Um, so, I mean, I'm, I'm on Facebook and Instagram. Um, I, I know Facebook best. So Facebook's where I really make my living. Um, Instagram, I kind of dabble in it. I'm trying to learn it more, but I mean, it's a big transition. It's a big step from Facebook because Facebook has become very much a video platform. Right. And Instagram is now becoming more of a video platform through live. But I mean, it's for the most part been a picture, you know, picture platform. And I don't know how to take pictures. You know, you know, we're on Instagram live right now.

Yeah, I know. Yeah. So I'm learning Instagram on the go. On the fly. On the fly. Yeah. Yeah. We got Kayla behind the camera here.

Hi, Kayla. Hi. Social media manager back there. Extraordinaire. So. All right. So I got another question for you, Bob. Okay. You know, I mean, we, we talked a little bit about this, you know, this whole online marketing thing. Right. Do you, do you think that you're inspiring others to do this? Have you seen any evidence of that? I hope so. I mean, with the music video, it was kind of obvious that I was,

I probably received around a hundred texts from different agents. That's for anyone who doesn't know the video has gone viral. Yeah. You almost had a million views right now. It's just North of 800,000. Yeah. Which is crazy. And how long has it been out one week? 800,000 views in one week. Yeah. So, I mean, it's crazy. We didn't anticipate that happening at all, but I mean, it blew up and yeah, I mean, I've had a lot of people messaging me, asking me for advice, asking me like, you know, what equipment I use to film my videos. And I've had to explain to them that one was professionally produced. Okay. But all my other videos, I have my own equipment that I do use, but I hope, I mean, I hope I'm inspiring other people. I try to be as much of an open book as possible to them.

When people reach out to me and ask for advice, I try and tell them what I know. It's funny to me because I'm only 26 years old. I don't expect people to be coming to me for real estate advice, but they are. Well, you know what you're doing. I mean, you've aligned yourself with a company that you got a brand.

You're building your own brand. Also, I mean, you've, you know, you've aligned yourself with a, a company that, uh, you know, you got a brand, um, you're building your own brand also. Um, I mean, you've already been on ESPN and, you know, USA today and all these other things for, for your, uh, your beer can tower at the Cubs game. But, uh, you know, I, I just think it's cool that you're, you're vulnerable, man. Yeah. Well, I mean, I just try and be myself. I mean, and I think that's the most important thing. I think so many people in real estate, it's kind of like the old school, like back in the eighties and nineties, how realtors, it was always in a suit, right. Address a certain way. I mean, I'm meeting the CEO of Remax wearing a hat. So it's like, I mean, I'm, I'm always myself. I'm unapologetically myself. So it's like the music video would have never happened if I had tried to align myself with old school business principles, because I wouldn't have done something like that.

Wow. It was too edgy. So, I mean, where did you learn to do all this? Did somebody, did you read a book or did somebody come up to you and go, hey, Bob, you need to work on your personal branding? Or I mean, what was the trigger here that got this whole thing going? So I'll give a couple of shout outs because there's a couple of people that have absolutely been influential to me.

I mean, Gary Vaynerchuk is number one, as far as building your personal brand. Um, uh, Ricky Carruth is a big time influencer on me as far as, you know, being relational with clients. So I think really pulling from those two guys the most and learning like brand and relationships and mixing those together has been what has helped me the most. Wow. Awesome. And, uh, Ricky, uh, you know, just giving you a shout out there, buddy. Uh, I don't know. You were just put in the same, uh, um, you know, particular space as Gary V. So, uh, yeah, we just had Ricky on the show. So yeah. So at our four, the video summit, we sat next to each other and I told him he was going to be the Gary Vee of real estate. So I, I mean, I definitely think highly of the man. He's a good dude. He is. He is a good dude. I'll add a question because not only have you made this cool music video, um, but I've seen

some really cool showing videos as well, or you kind of show a property and, you know? Yeah. So, um, so that was an idea I had that, um, I think the more tech that real estate becomes, the, you know, less important, the physical showing is that people are going to want to look online, be able to see the entirety of the home. I don't necessarily love, you know, the picture walkthroughs. I don't think it gives you a full experience of the house. Um, so I kind of developed this thought process that was like, Hey, when I have my next listen, I'm going to actually walk them through and show them. Um, I'll give another shout out because Brian Tessier beat me to it. Um, I had the idea I was

going to do it. And then I'm on Facebook one day scrolling and there he was doing the exact same thing. And I was like, this is ridiculous. Brian's a good dude. He's great. I love, I love the competition that's going on here between you, you know, all, all the guys on and, and ladies, you know, all the, the remax people that are trying to push each other to do more with the video. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think competition makes you want to be better. Oh yeah. You know, so I see somebody have a great idea and I'm like, I kind of one up this guy, you know, I want to be that guy. Here's, here's the most interesting part about this though. So you're not, you know, when it comes to, you know, videotaping, doing the walkthrough and

things like that, you're not really stepping out of your way to do this. You're just documenting what you're doing. Exactly. Yeah. We, we basically just bring a camera along. And, and that, I mean, that goes back to Gary V's principles of, uh, you don't have to, you know, have a production studio and lighting and all this other craziness. Just pull out your phone and document what the heck you're doing. And people will go, all right, I get it because they want to see it from your perspective. Right, exactly. I mean, I think there has to be a level of professionalism to the video.

I mean, no offense live, but I don't love live just because I think that it's, I mean, it's in the moment and it's not as professionally documented as something like this podcast is a much higher, much higher level of production. And I think people enjoy watching that more. You get, you get more circulation on those videos. Well, you also, I mean, and let's be frank, you know, when you go look at a house the first time ever, when you're, you're getting ready to list it, things like that, there are some things that, you know, people leave, they have laying around or something like that, that they don't necessarily want the public to see before they've, they've been able to clean up their house and prepare it for the listing. Right. So, you know, you gotta, you gotta be respectful of that. You do, you do. But I mean, I'm not going to film the video until they've

gotten that out of the house. Oh, you forgot to empty the bathtub. Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. You know? Yeah. We, I mean, we typically, once we've got the house staged, we filmed those videos about three days before we list them. Okay.

Same time the photographer takes all the pictures. Oh, that's perfect. Yeah. He has about a, my videographer has about a 48 hour turnaround time. Wow. On his video. Well, he does it for me, but that's a quick video. Yeah.

Well, just, I mean, these are, I think for him, simple cuts. So he, he prioritizes, prioritizes them. Um, so, I mean, it, it works well for both of us. Okay. Right on. So, um, advice that you have for other agents, how can this help your business? How, how have you seen this help your business? Is it a necessity, you know, a table stakes, buried entry, things like that. If people aren't doing this, what's your recommendation to them? Well, I mean, I think that it absolutely is necessary. I think if people aren't doing it, they're going to see themselves kind of phase out of the business. I mean, it's a long-term game. What, you know, doing video is not going to bring you instant

results because it's about, you know, developing a relationship online with the consumer. But if you're not doing it, then odds are you're relying on other avenues, which is you're probably buying leads or you're, you know, cold calling. And, you know, the more relational the business gets, I mean, it already is hyper relational. People already don't like cold calls. They already don't, you know, if they're, if you're cold calling them, they didn't want you to work with them anyways. Right. You know? So I mean that those, those business models aren't going to be as successful as we move forward. Um, and I don't, I hate buying leads because if you buy leads, you're dependent on another company to provide that to you. So if they ever go out of business or if they ever hike their rates up or the market crashes, you're, you're kind of left,

you know, with nothing to do. So you don't know how to fish if somebody keeps handing you a fish, right? Exactly. So I mean, and the biggest thing, I mean, with video, it's really not that hard. I mean, I started doing video probably a year and a half ago, but everything I did was on my phone. I just recorded from my phone. It wasn't until like January that I actually got professional equipment and start, I've seen a lot better results with the professional equipment, but it wasn't until then that, you know, I took that leap, but it was based, it was predicated on the success I'd already had just filming from my phone. So real quick, what kind of professional equipment are you using? You have a microphone and a decent camera. Yeah. So I have two audio technical mics that I use for podcasting. If I'm doing something for my house, I just use one of them.

I have a Sony Handycam. It's a 4k camera, but I mean, it's relatively inexpensive because it's a Handycam. And then, I mean, that's really about it. I mean, I've got, you know, I've got my computer. What are you, what are you editing on? What software? Adobe. Okay. I mean, it's, it's the simplest and I mean, it has the most, you can do the most with it. So Apple or Microsoft guy? Microsoft. Okay. Yeah. I mean, if I had Apple, I'd probably use a different platform. I'm just trying to answer all the questions for everybody out there. Okay. So you have a podcast also, which obviously we just recorded. Has that helped your business? And what kind of results do you see from that? Cause you do it right on the run. I mean, you, you go to restaurants and stuff.

I meet people wherever they're willing to meet me. So, um, I mean, I've seen good, good results out of it. I've noticed that the viewers that I get on it tend to be more in the market for buying a home. Um, they're more, you know, interested in that content, uh, where I do, I mean, I do other videos where I literally eat food on camera with a lender that I work with. So, you know, those obviously get much higher view counts because people want to watch it. It's enjoyable to watch, but I mean, I'm still seeing between five, 600 views on my podcast, which is, I mean, really incredible when you think about it. You don't, you don't expect to get that sort of viewership. What, uh, what's the name of your podcast? Where can we find

it? So real talk, um, on my Facebook business page, uh, it's at better call Bob Tompkins. So if, you know, if, yeah, uh, buy with Bob wasn't available. So, I mean, if you, if you want to look it up, you can go on Facebook. Um. I'm working on getting it on Spotify and iTunes. Okay. But for the moment, it's just really on Facebook Watch. Cool. Okay. Let's do the fast five here.

Let's start with the win fast five. How do you define starting your day with a win, Bob? Make the first phone call. I mean, it's to me the most important thing. Develop that first. I mean, whether it's a Facebook message or a text, you've got to start communicating with people. So start touching your customers immediately. Immediately. Okay. Immediately. Because to me, a lot of people have their phones on them before they get to work. So that seven, eight o'clock,

you know, they're, they're going to reply to text and a text isn't really that, you know, it's not in your face. It's not waking you up. So they just wake up, they see a text, they know that you care. And then you've kind of knocked that out of the, you know, knocked that out of the park to start your day. Yeah. I think most people check their text messages before their feet get out of bed. They do. That's, that's crazy. Yep. So if you think about that, you're in front of them before they're out of the bed. Yeah. Favorite book. I love crushing it by Gary V. All right. I'm going to give another shout out. That's a good one. I like that one. You know, a lot of good, uh, use of social media for success stories in there. Absolutely. All right. Um, you have a favorite quote.

So Vince Lombardi practice doesn't make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect. Okay. So you have to practice perfectly. I like that in order to do it perfectly in the marketplace. All right. And, uh, who inspires you? Um, I mean, that's a long list. Probably more than anybody is going to be my father. So shout out to dad. I literally have his initials tattooed on the inside of my arm. Very cool. Inspires everything that I do. Wow.

All right. Well, thanks for joining us today. Bob Tompkins. Absolutely. Amazing Remax agent from South Carolina. Today on Start With A Win talking about social media. So ladies and gentlemen, we will catch you next time on Start With A Win. Thank you so much for listening to Start With A Win. We hope you enjoyed today's episode.

Don't forget to go on iTunes and subscribe, write a review or rate the show. It helps us get the word out and reach more people. You can follow Adam on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. And remember, Start with a win.