Start With A Win - The Evolution of the Virtual Agent with Tony Giordano

Episode Date: January 20, 2021

Our guest on this episode of Start With A Win is Tony Giordano. He is an author, speaker, coach, and realtor out of the Los Angeles area. Tony got into real estate at a young age, and he quickly achieved success. During the market collapse of 2008-2009, he lost everything—literally. In October of 2009, he decided to start back at the bottom and reinvent himself as a real estate agent, recognizing that sometimes winners lose games, but they don’t have to stay down. He started experimenting with building up his online presence in 2010, and he has never looked back. He says being a digital agent means looking at social media as the “new front door” where you will meet new leads, connect with people, and close deals. Two of the mantras of being a digital agent are “contacts = business” and “virtual = video,” meaning the more contacts you have online, the more business you will attract. If you are going to connect with people, you have to utilize video. You have to practice the habit of getting in front of the camera to create content and correspond with people over text and video. Regarding social media itself, Tony believes that you should be where the people are, having a presence on every platform but prioritizing where you spend most of your time and energy. Despite many people getting wrapped up in the technology and every iteration of changes to the algorithm, human interaction of social media never changes. Tony concentrates on connecting with people. He provides the example of being at the dinner table with a couple of people you know and a couple of people you don’t. If one of the people you don’t know says something funny, you don’t ignore them or try not to laugh—you react honestly and make a connection with them in the process. The same should be true on social media. Tony says he uses his tagline “like them, tag them, and add them” regarding interaction with new people on social media. Think of social media as a never-ending networking event, and you will succeed.Connect with Tony:https://www.giordano.global/https://www.risemastery.com/ https://www.amazon.com/Social-Agent-New-Era-Networking/dp/1466317272https://www.amazon.com/social-agent-2-0-update-evolution/dp/1982051833 https://twitter.com/tony_giordano/mediahttps://www.facebook.com/GiordanoIntl/https://www.facebook.com/giordano.globalhttps://www.instagram.com/tony_giordano/?hl=enhttps://www.instagram.com/tonygiordanoteam/?hl=enhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/thesocialagenthttps://www.youtube.com/c/TonyGiordano/playlistsConnect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/ https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos https://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ Leave us a voicemail:888-581-4430

Every day is filled with choices. You're here because you're choosing to start with a win. Get ready to be inspired, learn something new, and connect with the win nation. Coming to you from Denver, Colorado, home of Remax World Headquarters, Adam Conto, CEO here with Start With A Win. We have with us in the virtual studio today, Engineer James. How you doing, buddy? Hey, I'm doing so good today. Awesome. Yeah, nice to see you. So everybody that does not know, James is our behind the scenes guy. You know, Producer Mark, he's on all the shows, but we want to bring James in to drive the bus today. So great to see you. I see all those awards behind you, man. You're rocking

it there. Yeah. You know, those actually do belong to producer Mark, but I helped him achieve one or two. Right on. I love it. I love it. Hey, we have an amazing guest with us here today. Tony Giordano, been in the real estate industry over 20 years, passion for helping others build themselves and find success. I mean, through Tony's coaching, he helps many business professionals, companies, nonprofits, development projects, and organizations across many industries grow their brands and productivity. I mean, this guy is like a business coach extraordinaire and expert in the real estate space. So Tony joins us on this episode to talk about the evolution of the virtual agent, something we all want to know about because there's a lot of evolution going on in that.

And that's how people are propelling their business today. So Tony, welcome to the show. Great to have you here. Thank you so much. I am personally live from Los Angeles in Beverly Hills, California. But yes, thank you very much for having me on the show. I respect this podcast quite a bit. So appreciate it. Thank you, Tony. And we've had Tony speak at our major events before. He's an amazing contributor to the Remax network and the real estate industry. And frankly, you know, to the people who are buying and selling houses out there because, uh, you know, through your, your television programs, things like that. I mean, you're like your, your house celebrity, man. And I mean, I'm, I'm some of the most major

networks in the world. So, uh, we're honored to have you on here. Always a guest, never a star. But hey, that's my life story. I love it. Hey, Tony, let's rewind a little bit because you went through some tough times in 08, 09. You know, there were a lot of crazy things going on in real estate, mortgage, things like that. Hey, why don't you take us back then and let's set the scene at this point. Perfect. Real quick, the five-hour story in five minutes or two minutes

is 20 years old, walked into a mortgage company to sell him a cell phone at the age of 20 in 1998. And the branch manager offered me a job. And just a few years later, I made my first million at the age of 26. Three years after that, I owned 20 offices of my own mortgage company with three partners, millions a year, every toy you could think of, houses everywhere. And I lost everything in less than 18 months in the 2008-2009 crash. And I can't go into details because of time, but when I say I lost everything, everything, all of my cars were repossessed, went from an 812 FICO score to 496, boats repossessed, foreclosures, laid off a hundred staff. It was horrible because it was a true crash and I crashed with it. Had to reinvent myself,

got tired of lending, lost my passion for it. So I walked, I already had a real estate license and I walked it into a real estate office. And I said, I'm a realtor now, October of 09. And within about 60 days of doing things differently online that no one else was doing, and still 98% of agents do not do correctly. I exploded and got luxury listings I should have never been getting with my inexperience of selling houses and became Rookie of the Year and a year from there and then became a national speaker quickly after that and started writing books and the rest is history. But yes, it's a story. That's for sure. I'll tell you that. I mean, it's amazing. The fact of the matter is that sometimes winners lose games, but you keep winning.

I mean, that's the reality here. I mean, you're somebody who has the tenacity. You don't stop. You keep going. You look at it and go, I got this. All right. I hit the bottom time to start climbing again. And kudos to you, my friend for that. You have to, there's no question that the, I believe, and maybe it's

a different podcast for another time when it's more of a mindset podcast topic, but that you got, you have to, you have to realize life. I mean, I'm a UFC fan. Life is life is five rounds in the cage and round one is the size up and how you're tested. And round three is heart and how you overcome. And it's like, you just have to be willing to fight and know you can rebuild, you know, no matter what happens to you. I love that. I love that analogy. There's a book in that somewhere, five rounds in the cage. I mean, don't, don't, don't share it yet. It's all right. No, nobody write a book about that. So, um, perfect. I love it. All right. You can't write a book about that folks. Um, so, uh, you know, during this process, you mentioned, you know, you got online,

you started doing things that people weren't doing. So, I mean, you, you kind of coined the phrase of becoming a virtual agent. Tell us, what does that mean to become doing. So, I mean, you kind of coined the phrase of becoming a virtual agent. Tell us, what does that mean to become a virtual agent, to be a virtual agent? So what I want people to know, because obviously the books that I write are called The Social Agent. I have topics called The Digital Agent. It all means the same thing. It's just a play with words. But bottom line is it's online presence. That's what is the most important thing to me. I don't like the word social media. I don what is the most important thing to me. I don't like the word social media.

I don't like the words video marketing. I have to use them, but it's about having online presence, influence. What are you doing to just be accessible online and not just to your friends and family, but open the door to countless people who now know you exist? The virtual thing that I'm talking about

now is because virtual is, I've been a virtual agent for 10 years. Like this is not new. Zooms aren't new. Skype isn't new. My first virtual listing presentation was for a $5 million listing in Costa Rica, October of 2010 in my rookie year, where I just found an agent there to do the groundwork. And I Skyped in and said why we were the best and we got that listing and sold it. So this is not new at all. If anything, it's old, but now people are being forced to it. So what I'm trying to teach people is when I say virtual, I'm not talking about Zoom. That's part of it. But I'm talking about everything we do is virtual today because we're online. We're meeting people online. We use Instagram after we meet somebody at a random barbecue.

Do you have an Insta? What's your Instagram? And what I call that is the modern day front door. What are you doing to keep the front door from not closing anymore? Because my front door says 24 mutual friends, seven similar interests, and you both have a dog named Roxy. The doors you're knocking on are the old school doors that get slammed in your face that say nothing about how you know each other. So it's using technology and information virtually today to just, and it's free most of the time, to just propel your contacts, which then propels what? Business. Because contacts equal business. It's that simple. Bam. That was a masterclass, folks. Go back and rewind that and listen to what tony just said i'll tell you what it's it's fascinating because you started with we're talking about video and i mean okay folks i'm gonna throw some cold water in your face here the first video call happened in 1964 yeah 1964 and now some people are just getting around to in fact uh what was it june 7 2010 steve jobs releases the iphone 4 that had facetime on it he made that we all remember that phone call

that video call he made to johnny ive and and they're still sitting there looking at each other smiling at each other going hey i see you and i mean this is 2020, I mean, 2021 now. So, uh, it's time to catch up. It is time to catch up people. Yeah. I was just going to say video, video or virtual equals video. That's what it is. You cannot be virtual. You cannot be digital without video marketing. But what I do in my virtual presentation or curriculum, because what I just said makes it sound easy. Oh, wow. I got to start doing that. The things that you have to implement and the action plans that I have for people to follow blueprints, that's how you're going to implement it. So I don't mean to make it sound so easy. There's things that you're going to have to do. But the one thing that's most important over anything right now is getting in the habit

of getting in front of your lens and all facets of video, live streaming stories, uploading video, iPhone video, production based video, where you hired a, green screen video. They all serve a different purpose, but it's communication. It's not for just luxury listings. It's for anything that is being expressed. That's the key is people prefer video. They want to watch what you're selling, the service, why you're great, testimonials, your database. When somebody sends me a text, I reply with a video on my phone. If I know it's going to be a long text that I have to text back, why not just record and say, so I hope that answers your question, send. It saves me time, but we don't think to do this. We don't think to use this technology like this right now.

Key point. Key point here. The two things that really we strive for in our business are time and money, and they help build upon each other. So why not make more time in your business by doing something like that? I mean, that was right there. That's on my diamonds right there, folks. Stop typing your text. Just shoot the video real quick and send it back. Stop typing anything. The only thing you should be typing today is the description of the live stream you're about to start streaming. Yes. Like, oh, what is this live stream going to be about? Oh, I'm going to be talking about this. Hashtag this, at mention this, boom, and then start live streaming. But these, I mean, I even

get paragraphs sent to me from clients. I'm still in the trenches. I still sell. So when somebody sends me these 10 questions, my Gmail or my email systems, I literally have a button to just record a video and it drops it into the email and it sends it back to them. What is that called? BombBomb. I'm pretty sure Remax knows about BombBomb and how easy it is to integrate BombBomb into all your email systems that allows me to just send a video back. So yes, video is everything, not just one thing. I love it. Shout out to our buddies down the street at BombBomb. They're just a little bit south of us in Colorado Springs here. We've been big supporters of theirs from practically day one.

So yeah, Daniel, Daniel Ramsey's the man or Darren is the man for sure. Yeah. Darren Dawson. Hey, shout out to Darren, buddy. Tony, you talk a lot about social media. I mean, we've just gone through a social media masterclass in the past few minutes here, practically. Why is social one of the most versatile tools in an entrepreneur's toolbox? I mean, give us a flyover of that.

The number one rule of lead gen or prospecting or sales, regardless if you pay for leads or you organically shake hands and go find leads, what is the number one rule of sales is go where the people are. And where are people today? Online. And what is the number one online source people are on? Social media. But there's so many different aspects to social media. So there's the organic, your personal friend pages, your personal Instagram account, your personal LinkedIn profile, your personal Twitter. But then there's the business pages. And so I, as a real estate agent, need my personal Instagram and my business page Instagram, my personal friend page of Facebook, my business page of Facebook. If I'm a team at Remax, then I need Tony Giordano's personal LinkedIn account.

But then my team, Giordano Group, let's say, if I was a team at Remax, because you have so many teams, Giordano Group needs a LinkedIn company profile where my staff, my EAs can say, I work for Giordano Group at Remax. And so everything needs its own social media, but then where it comes into play is just people. This is where people are. Stop thinking that it's something that it's not. We overcomplicate social media so much. And if I could answer it in the best way possible,

if you approach social media the same way and people within social media, like people you're talking to inside, typing, commenting, if you approach it the same way you would approach in person with that individual, watch what will happen. Example, if you're at a dinner table of six people and you only know two of them and those two people invited you to dinner and there's two people right there at the dinner table you don't know and they say something funny, wouldn't you say, that's funny? Well, then if you're in a comment stream of two people you know who posted something and you see all these people you don't know and they're talking and you're talking, pretend they're at the table with you. Oh, you're hilarious. Oh, I wish more people were like you. Oh, that's a great point. Then like their comment.

Then they like your comment. Then you add them as a friend. Then they accept your friend request and boom, contacts, audience, people, equal, sales. Now they know you exist. You couldn't have been more clear. I mean, walking through that story of sitting at the table, the comments, things like, I mean, listen to that, folks. I mean, it's a key point here. So I call it like them, tag them, add them. You like their comment, you reply to their comment, and then you add them as a friend, like them, tag them, add them. I love that. That should be part of everybody's social media strategy.

Or it's in the book. There you go. All right, let's jump into the book, man. So 2012, you published your first book, or I'm sorry, you published The Social Agent, right? The first episode of this. And then in 2018, Social Agent 2.0 update. What can people learn from the book? We got a little bit of it, some of the strategy concepts, but what should we look for in that book? It's just, it's the whole concept.

And then it'll give you some big takeaways of things to start doing. But when people say, oh, isn't it time to write another book? Social media always changes. No, there's only one thing that changes drastically all the time in social media. And that's the navigation aspect, the techie side of it. There's two sides to social media and we're all focused on the tech side. And we're learning social media by techies who have never sold anything in their life. Their job is to teach you how to do it or click this, click that. And that changes all the time, right? Instagram comes out with a new app. So my books aren't written on navigation. Plus who wants to read navigation? Who wants to read and then click the button on the right hand side in the top

corner? Are you kidding me? That's what YouTube is for. YouTube is to show you how to do something. How do I do demographic targeting on Facebook and watch a video, watch one of my videos. But the other side to social media that no one is coaching people on that is my passion is the human side. And the human side to social media never changes. So the 2012 book still sells more now than it did back then. And I've had to stop allowing people to buy it because I think it's old. But the one thing that never changes is the approach. I want you all to remember that if anything you walk away with today, it's the approach in social media, meaning why am I in here? It's to engage human beings. The same reason you went door knocking. Why am I door

knocking? Oh, to meet people. That's right. Because that's what turns into business. It's the modern day neighborhood. It's the modern day barbecue. It's the modern day networking events, the modern day charity event. Go in there and you can meet more people in a fraction of the time and get 20 times the ROI than any form of prospecting out there, any form. So just remember, there's two sides to social media, the tech side, which we all need. You got to learn how to do it. But then the human side of just building relationships with people.

So important. Tech side, human side. Speaking of tech side, and I want everybody to listen to where Tony says he is because you need to be in these places too. Tony, on all these different social media channels, and we have this multitude of them, a lot of it is overwhelming for a lot of people. Tell us where you are because I think that's where everybody that's listening to this needs to be as well. And tell us where you are, because I think that's where our, everybody that's listening to this needs to be as well. And, you know, tell us where you're at and where do you recommend that they begin if

this is where they're starting? Okay. So as I, as I tell people on stage a lot, when, when I'm speaking is approach it like you're in person, right? So everything that we used to do in person, do online. So if we used to force our postcard in front of people's mailboxes, then now we force our postcard in the modern day mailbox, which is the newsfeed of social networks, right? But now I know how many people liked it, watched it, tagged it, viewed it, shared it, how old they are, what their interests

are, where they live. I didn't have that in the old days. So that's the modern day. Well, to answer your question about where am I, I'm on all of them. But it doesn't mean I'm investing all my time in all of them. Just like you're in every city around you that you're willing to drive to to take a listing doesn't mean you're in that those areas all the time. You're usually in just a few areas really deepening the relationships. So important takeaway, any social network that has tens and tens and tens of millions of people, that means it has thousands and thousands in your little bubble in marketplace, which means you need to have an account. Yes, you need a TikTok.

Yes, you need a Snapchat. Yes, you need a Pinterest. You need all of them so that they can organically grow because that might be someone else's thing. See, Adam, you might be all about TikTok and hate the other ones. And then you might have been referred to me by your brother and said, you got to call Tony if you want to sell your house. And then one day you're in TikTok looking at your friends and family dancing to music. And then you see somebody say that

they're going to sell their house and you're like, oh, shoot, I still got to call that guy, Tony. Oh, I wonder if he has a TikTok, Tony. Oh, yep, here he is. Because that's your thing. So I need to be accessible in anything that's popular. However, to not make you all go nuts. Now let's condense it. You have to have one. But now where am I going to spend time and energy? Where's Tony going to focus on helping my business grow? If I was in his programs or something, then you have to realize it's going to be in the giants, the ones where you really truly build contacts and people for growing your business, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Google owns YouTube. So it's automatically part of that in all of the efforts. Facebook owns Instagram. So those two are there and LinkedIn is right there. Yes.

Twitter, TikToks. Now they all serve a purpose, but that that's where the four main, main growth aspects are for right now. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much for that, Tony. Uh, everybody wrote that down. I'm going back to, to refresh my, uh, you know, make sure I'm, I'm doing what I need to be doing where I'm doing it. So Tony, um, we, I know we can find you in all those places. Just, uh, search for Tony Giordano. Is that what we're looking for? Yeah. So most of my user handle names, or at least for, so Instagram is Tony underscore Giordano, Tony underscore Giordano.

Uh, you'll see it pretty quick cause it's got a blue check Mark, So Instagram is Tony underscore Giordano, Tony underscore Giordano. You'll see it pretty quick because it's got a blue checkmark, but I'm right under Tony Robbins. Unfortunately, still, he's kind of more popular, I guess. But I think I'm the second most famous Tony. Then Facebook, my goodness, LinkedIn, just you'll you'll see my bald white head. And that's usually the correct one. And then my website that you can find most of my information or information about my coaching is giordano.global or risemastery.com. Risemastery is the actual coaching site. Awesome.

Everybody, make sure you check out Tony's book, The Social Agent 2.0. Talks about the evolution of digital marketing and was an update to his original book. A lot of great information in there. We appreciate all that he is doing for the real estate industry, really for business in general. Tony's a great coach, mentor, speaker, author, and really a participant in this social evolution. So Tony, I have a question that I ask everybody that is on Start With A Win, and we get some amazing answers out of this, and you're just an incredible person. So I'm sure we're going to have something good from you. Tony, how do you start your day with a win? You know, I've always had a big passion for the big why, you know, like Simon Sinek says, your why is your why.

So I try to start my day with that thought in my head where I say, stop trying to focus on proving the wrong people wrong and change your focus on proving the right people right. We tend to always focus on proving people wrong. We already know they're wrong about us. Prove the people who are right about us, who believe in us. Keep just focusing, proving them right. I love it. I love it. Tony Giordano, thank you so much. There you go. All right. Awesome. Tony Giordano, thank you so much. You made your bed. Oh, there you go. All right. Awesome. Tony Giordano, thank you so much for being on Start With A Win. We appreciate all you do, man. It's great to see you again, my friend. Adam, you're the man. You're an amazing CEO. Thanks, buddy. And don't forget, Start With A Win. Start With A Win.

If you'd like to ask Adam a question or tell us your Start With A Win.