Simplify Your Strategy – Magnify Your Results Podcast
On each episode Brian Margolis helps entrepreneurs, sales pros and other professionals create a simple weekly strategy using The Pillar System. A system that's helped multiple individuals become 7 figure earners and is licensed by some of the largest companies in the world to help their teams grow through simplification Some episodes have a 2nd part where Brian helps guests review and refine their initial pillars and solidify the CAP strategies they can use to turn pillar execution into a habit.
Ryan has owned an independent real estate brokerage firm for the last 10 years. 2 years ago he went full time and now has 21 agents. His next goal is to earn 800K in commissions by adding more agents, helping those agents sell more, and increasing his personal sales.
These are the pillars we identified during the first call:
To hear other episodes go to https://productivitygiant.com/simplify-your-strategy-magnify-your-results-podcast/
Simplify Your Strategy – Magnify Your Results Podcast
On each episode Brian Margolis helps entrepreneurs, sales pros and other professionals create a simple weekly strategy using The Pillar System. A system that's helped multiple individuals become 7 figure earners and is licensed by some of the largest companies in the world to help their teams grow through simplification Some episodes have a 2nd part where Brian helps guests review and refine their initial pillars and solidify the CAP strategies they can use to turn pillar execution into a habit.
Ryan has owned an independent real estate brokerage firm for the last 10 years. 2 years ago he went full time and now has 21 agents. His next goal is to earn 800K in commissions by adding more agents, helping those agents sell more, and increasing his personal sales.
These are the pillars we identified during the first call:
To hear other episodes go to https://productivitygiant.com/simplify-your-strategy-magnify-your-results-podcast/
Brian Margolis (00:00:00):
This is Brian Margolis and welcome to the simplify, your strategy, magnify your results podcast. We're on each episode, I use the pillar system to help a sales pro entrepreneur or other results based professional, create a weekly strategy to run a simple, more lucrative business strategy. So simple. It can fit on an index card, but so powerful. It's actually helped create multiple seven figure earners and is now licensed by some of the largest companies in the world to create strategies for their teams. If you'd like a free copy of my book on exactly how to do this, or want to be considered as a guest on a future episode, head on over to productivity, giant.com, enjoy the episode a great way to start. Ryan is just tell me a little bit about your background, your business currently, and then, you know, employees are not employees, all that kind of stuff where you're at, and then kind of dovetail that into your reading of my book about pillars and how, you know, I can help you.
Ryan (00:01:06):
Sure. So I own a real estate, but independent real estate brokerage in Bristol, Connecticut. It's called tier one real estate. I started my company in 2009 and about two years ago up until about two years ago, I actually had another job in addition to the brokerage. So I wasn't really growth oriented relative to the brokerage. And then about two years ago, I gave up the other job kind of put myself fully into the brokerage. So at that time, two years ago, I had myself plus five agents that worked for me. And then over the past year and a half or two, we've built that number up to currently myself plus 21 other agents. We're selling this year, our goal is to sell 200 houses which we're on pace right now to do, just to give you an idea in terms of gross sales our target for the year is in terms of gross commissions is about 800,000.
Ryan (00:02:07):
Last year we only did 400,000. But we've had tremendous growth in terms of, like I said, adding new agents and some different strategies that we've used. So we did we're already at about 400,000 for the year through July at this point. So yeah, so making some progress, we're, we're very, you know, we're very geographically localized, meaning Hartford County pretty much is the only place we do do business. We're really not looking to grow geographically. Really looking to grow more in terms of doing more sales in the towns we're in and adding more agents in the towns that we're in. Got it. Okay.
Brian Margolis (00:02:55):
Okay. So, so kind of own the niche. So to that become the experts in that County are correct. Knowing, knowing what's going on. And if I'm understanding it correctly with regards to real estate, it's not what I do. You are the broker and is that correct? You, you yourself are the broker, the agents hang their hat, so to speak at your office. And then there, they act like independent contractors at that point, right.
Ryan (00:03:26):
That that's yeah, that is correct. Yep.
Brian Margolis (00:03:28):
They kind of eat what they kill and then anything that they do, you know, you get a piece of that cause you're brokering it and doing all that work. Correct? Correct. And then do you yourself sell or have you do less than loss of that?
Ryan (00:03:43):
I do. It's still an important part of what I do this the actual sales part. Okay.
Brian Margolis (00:03:48):
And, and is your hope to use pillars to grow?
Ryan (00:03:52):
Yes. My hope would be used pillars to grow both in terms. I guess there's two different ways I can grow. One is growing my own personal sales business in terms of selling, you know, more houses. The other is growing my brokerage by helping either my other agents to sell more or adding more agents.
Brian Margolis (00:04:13):
Okay. So adding agents and then helping agents to sell more, correct.
Ryan (00:04:26):
Okay. Almost like a coaching function.
Brian Margolis (00:04:28):
Sure. And, and you probably find that just like coaching, you know, it can be frustrating cause you know, you can tell them what to do and, and give them advice, but ultimately they have to do it. Right.
Ryan (00:04:42):
Yeah. They have, I mean, one thing that I've learned quickly managing people is you, you get disappointed with how many people are just not motivated. You know, they're motivated the way I would like them to be is probably a better phrase. It,
Brian Margolis (00:04:57):
Yeah. I always tell people, look, if you can show me how to motivate other people, I'll buy it off you and I'll sell it for a thousand times
Ryan (00:05:05):
Price. I mean yeah. You know,
Brian Margolis (00:05:08):
Or ways to help people to guide them to their own motivation, right. To fly, to find it, but yeah. To motivate other people on a day to day basis. Good luck. You know, when I look at a business like yours without, without hearing anything yet you know, in terms of points of leverage for growth, I mean, you know, 80% of the game when it comes to other agents is finding the right people, right. I mean, that's, that's an easier path to growth attracting finding and attracting good agents is a way better way to grow a lot less resource intensive than trying to turn agents into great agents. Right? Yes. Okay. I mean, obviously problem
Ryan (00:05:58):
With that approach is that the very good people usually are getting pretty good financial deals where they're at obviously. Sure. So it's, so there's, it's hard to lure people like that to your company, you know? Right.
Brian Margolis (00:06:13):
And, and when you do lore people, if we're going to use that word, I'm sure that's not the industry word. I feel like I'm in a white van
Ryan (00:06:23):
Recruit. Yeah. Yeah. When we recruit,
Brian Margolis (00:06:25):
W w when you, when you do recruit people what do you, what tends to bring people over to you? What do you hear from them? This is the reason I came over.
Ryan (00:06:37):
So my niche is related to social media. So I'm a very big believer in the power and importance of social media relative to growing your real estate business. I post I post daily videos. I post a lot of content on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and that tends to I think attract some agents who also are interested in that. You know, I think that's been my primary way to get some of the agents who, I mean, obviously there's two different ways, you know, you can recruit, you can have brand new agents, you know, and train them from the ground up or you can recruit others. And I think from, from a recruiting other standpoint, you know, they see, you know, some of the content I put out some of the things I have going on and to some people obviously that's, that was appealing and that's been a way that I've been able to recruit several agents.
Brian Margolis (00:07:39):
Yeah. And, and what was just that curiosity? What was the appealing part? Was it just the fact that they liked the person they were listening to? Was it the fact that they felt like this person could actually help me grow my business based on his knowledge? Or do they feel like you can help them generate leads with social media?
Ryan (00:07:58):
I think all three. Okay. I think, you know, I think you touched on a, you know, an interesting point of my specific situation, which is, I really think that a big part of where agents choose to work is just that they like their broker on a personal level. I mean know so that is one factor. I just kind of acknowledging that. So I think people see what I do on social media and they say like, Oh, he seems like a good guy, a good guy to work for. But I also post a lot of real estate content that I think they see themselves as being able to learn, you know, from me
Brian Margolis (00:08:39):
Do that themselves and also to learn from you.
Ryan (00:08:41):
Correct. Correct.
Brian Margolis (00:08:44):
Is what, one last question about the recruiting and then we'll move on to the pillar stuff. Cause all of this will, will ultimately determine what your pillars are. Cause if you, obviously you read it in the book, you know, we're looking for points of leverage, right. We're looking for those things that if you focus on will bring the, the, the biggest return on investment, right? Yep. Is there a price to pay for agents you bring over, but don't do much business. Is there a fixed cost to having them at any level?
Ryan (00:09:13):
There is, there's a, I mean, there's a fixed cost associated with having an agent at my, at my brokerage. Yes.
Brian Margolis (00:09:21):
Okay. So if someone's not doing what they need to be doing, then you actually, even though their contract 10 99 or however they do it in your industry, it's best that they're not there.
Ryan (00:09:34):
That's correct. But the overhead is pretty low. So to the point that as long as they're selling, you know, a couple of houses a year, I'm still probably making a profit on them.
Brian Margolis (00:09:44):
Oh, okay. All right. So, so, okay. So financially there's not much investment, right? Correct. It's but then from your own time, I guess, is the other, I was looking at it, but, but right now at the stage you're at, it's still PR if they're selling a couple of houses a year, it's still profitable. Yup. Okay. Fair enough. Yup. All right. So you read the book, right? You read the book now, did you actually try to figure out what your own pillars were or were you kind of waiting for this call?
Ryan (00:10:14):
No, I did. I put some time into that. I also is it okay to mention another author in this course? Of course. Well, I, yeah. I don't know.
Brian Margolis (00:10:24):
I tell people about other authors and stuff all the time.
Ryan (00:10:27):
Gotcha. Okay. So not long ago I read Mike [inaudible] books which is like the toilet paper entrepreneur the pumpkin plan. And one of the, so he, some of the thoughts, you know, in your book, there's definitely a connection between some of the things he had me thinking about already from reading his. So he calls, he calls it the queen bee role, meaning like as your, as the owner of the company, what are the things that you do that are the most valuable, the most highly leveraged, what activities? So I have put some thought into what those activities are, which I think are closely related to the concept of pillars. Okay. I did, like, there was some interesting differences. I kind of, which I liked from your book specifically, the way you tend to structure the whole pillar thing on a weekly basis. Whereas from the other book, it was more just daily. Like you're looking at like daily tasks, but I think I like the idea of looking at a whole week because you know, things come up or days not every day is not the same. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So so I thought that part was interesting about just about the structure of how you
Brian Margolis (00:11:51):
The other, the other part of week and a lot of reasons for weekly, but one of them also is it lends itself to batching, which most people find a lot more productive. Right. You know, so to do things that are similar on certain days of the week or at certain times, but so it lends itself to both things that get batched, but it also lends itself to, you can still do things daily. That's how you hit your pillars, but it's measured weekly. So, yeah. So yeah. So give me an idea of these activities or what you came up with.
Speaker 3 (00:12:23):
So I came up with posting a video or detailed real estate content posts on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. That's one pillar reaching out to two agents in a recruiting capacity every day. Okay. Reaching out to one of my own tier one agents every day as like a, you know, as a retention, kind of stay in touch with people, you know, kind of move reach out to two people in my spirit.
Brian Margolis (00:13:06):
Me, let, let me stop you real quick. Did you, you said reach out to two agents for recruiting every day, reach out to one tier one agent a day or two. Did you say one? One, okay. Yep. Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:13:18):
Reach out to two people in my sphere of influence daily.
Brian Margolis (00:13:24):
Okay. Well, hold on, I'm going to ask you some, some questions about that. Sure. So reach out to people in your sphere of influence. And I've heard that before, but I want to be one thing with pillars is we need to be crystal clear your, your words and my words don't have to jive, but you need to be crystal clear about what is, and isn't a sphere of influence. So, so I can help you tell me what you're considering a sphere of influence person.
Speaker 3 (00:13:50):
Okay. I guess a sphere of influence person could be really anybody. That's part of my social network that is not a real estate agent. Just very broadly defined, I guess.
Brian Margolis (00:14:08):
Okay. And give me the purpose of this pillar potential pillar here. So
Speaker 3 (00:14:12):
When it comes to my own personal sales, you know, my own real estate sales, I'm probably 80%, at least of my sales come from people within my sphere of influence, meaning people in my social network or past clients or referrals from social network or past clients. So staying in contact with people in that realm is my effort to try to keep, you know, top of mind. Yeah.
Brian Margolis (00:14:41):
Yeah. Understood. And when you reach out to them, you're, I'm assuming you're reaching out in some kind of either social way, like, Hey, how you doing? How are the kids? And I'm simplifying that. Right. You know, you're running any more marathons this year, Hey, here's an art. I just saw this article about whatever, you know, thought you might like it kind of thing, or you're doing it too in a more value way where you're actually trying to help them with their own business career life. Okay. Yeah. I would say it's the first [inaudible] okay. Yeah. I mean, one piece, one piece of advice, just as part of these reach outs. And again, we can put some criteria around it, but you know, a lot of times I'm guessing you look for reasons to reach out to people, right? Like what's a reason to reach out and the most, you know, the most valuable reason to reach out to someone is to actually be valuable.
Brian Margolis (00:15:38):
Right? Yep. What, what I call for some industries, a non-cell touch. So in other words, if, if you know that someone rides motorcycles, right. Simple, you know, you go ahead and you Google, you know, motorcycles, you know, best rides in Connecticut or whatever. And then obviously you're going to see some articles. You might say, you know, five rides in Connecticut to take before you die kind of thing. And you hit, you know, you grab that link, email it to them and say, you know, John saw this article, have you ever done any of these rides question, Mark? You know, just, just in a valuable way or, you know, if you have someone, you know, who's a business owner, right. And you read those books. Well, you know, you actually just telling them about the books. Like, Hey, I just got done reading these books and you know, you know, I know you're a business owner, whatever, you know, here, here's some links, I think, you know, you might like them kind of thing, or here's a video that I think you'd enjoy or would help you get more customers or something.
Brian Margolis (00:16:43):
Right. Yeah. I mean, I think I call those, I call those, I call those non-cell touches. But the key is, like you said, you're, you're talking about one a week or one a day. Sorry. you know, it's about being consistent with them, right. It's about, it's the compound effect, you know, 95% of them won't turn into anything and that's okay. Right. You're, you're, you're just giving people value. But you know, I was, I tell this story a lot, but I painted my deck a couple of summers ago or had it painted, I should say. And not long after I did a guy picked me up for a meeting, we were going to meet with someone. It was more of a personal thing. And he goes, and I was telling them how, yeah. The guy just finished up and he's like, literally I'm sitting in the car with the guy. And he's like, what are you talking about? And I remember that my friend painted, he had a painting company and I was like, Oh my God, how in the world? Didn't I think of you, like, I got some stranger who I ultimately wasn't even happy with. So top of mind is amazing. Like here I am, I know someone who does it and I picked a stranger. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. Alright. So, so reach out to sphere of influence. Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:17:56):
With an S T's. Alright, what else? And then I put so one thing I, I I had, I kind of have a goal of trying to set up one in person networking get together meeting every day. And I actually, after reading your book changed that to request one, you know, in person networking, meeting per day, because the pillars have to be within my control. And it's not my control if they say yes or not. Correct. Right. So yeah. So that's
Brian Margolis (00:18:37):
D again, D Def define that for me.
Speaker 3 (00:18:40):
Okay. So for example another business owner in the area who might send me referrals, I asked them to go out to lunch, you know that would be qualify to meet the pillar. Somebody I take out to coffee who might be a source of a referral, something like that.
Brian Margolis (00:19:03):
And are there enough of these people that you could literally reach out to five of them a week?
Speaker 3 (00:19:13):
I would think so. Well, I mean, does that sound, does that sound high to you? I don't, I don't know your network. Yup.
Brian Margolis (00:19:20):
I mean, so five a week is basically, you know, if you're working 45 weeks a year, that's, you know, whatever don't make, don't make me do the math was that 200 2200, 225 or something. Yeah. So that's, you know, that's, that's 225 reach outs. Now again, you could be reaching out to the same person twice. Right. True. Yup. so now you're talking, so you're talking about a network of about a hundred people, right? Yup. You know, it, is there a network of a hundred people and I'm only asking, I have no idea that twice a year, you want to be reaching out to them. It is the network that big,
Speaker 3 (00:19:59):
I would say yes. Okay. Without, without actually knowing the number, I would say yes.
Brian Margolis (00:20:06):
Got it. So, and, and what did you call that?
Speaker 3 (00:20:12):
I just said request one in person networking meeting. Okay. Okay. Right.
Brian Margolis (00:20:20):
Network meeting. And you feel like when you're in those meetings, good things happen
Speaker 3 (00:20:25):
Or that they lead to good things? Yes. Yeah. Okay. All right.
Brian Margolis (00:20:32):
Any, anything else on your pillars?
Speaker 3 (00:20:35):
I do have 30 minutes cold calling for sale by owner and expired. I don't know if I really consider that a high leverage activity. Does it at this stage of
Brian Margolis (00:20:48):
The game, does it result in a lot?
Speaker 3 (00:20:51):
Well I'll put it this way. It would be in the first few months of the year, I was doing it a lot and I got some results from it. And I've gotten really nothing from in the last few months, you know? So I'm kind of questioning whether it qualifies, you know, as a high leverage activity. Okay. Well,
Brian Margolis (00:21:13):
Well, here's, here's another way to look at it. So have you been doing it pretty consistently this year?
Speaker 3 (00:21:21):
I was more so earlier in the year. And I've been less consistent recently now.
Brian Margolis (00:21:26):
All right. So I'm trying, I'm trying to separate chicken and egg here. Why have you been doing it less consistently? Cause you feel like you're not getting the results or you're not getting the results because you've been doing it less consistently.
Speaker 3 (00:21:36):
I think it's the, it's the, it's the first, I feel like I've been doing it less consistently cause I haven't been getting the results.
Brian Margolis (00:21:42):
Okay. And now could that be a seasonality thing or no, because summer should be a good time.
Speaker 3 (00:21:48):
Well, it could be seasonal
Brian Margolis (00:21:50):
Matter. Cause if they're selling their house, they're selling their house. Right. Yeah. Right. Exactly. So it's getting, it's getting the listing. Okay. Let me ask you this. If you have been doing it consistently for the last seven months, that's how far into the year we are now, if you can believe it. If you've been doing it consistently for the last seven months, how many listings have you got even though they were front-loaded at the beginning. How many listings have you actually gotten from it?
Speaker 3 (00:22:18):
Let's see. Five. Okay.
Brian Margolis (00:22:22):
So you've gotten five listings. Let's say you were doing it every, you know, 30 minutes a week. Every week. That would be about 12 and a half hours. You got five listings?
Speaker 3 (00:22:36):
I was doing it more than 30 minutes a week. I was more like I was doing it more like when I was really doing it a lot closer to probably two hours a week, I would say. Oh, okay. Okay. So,
Brian Margolis (00:22:49):
And when you were, when you were cranking on it, were you getting,
Speaker 3 (00:22:54):
You know,
Brian Margolis (00:22:55):
Would you say you were getting one listing every three weeks, every six hours of calls or?
Speaker 3 (00:23:00):
I would say I was getting about one a month. One a month. Okay. Yeah. So
Brian Margolis (00:23:05):
There's two ways to look at that one. Right? There's there's two ways to look at that one. One of them is you could do that yourself. Cause you're not, obviously you're not scared to do it. Right, right. But a more leveraged use of your time might be doing it with one of your agents who wants to do
Speaker 3 (00:23:28):
Doing it with them in the sense of sitting with them and calling or sitting either,
Brian Margolis (00:23:34):
Either sit, either sitting with them and calling if the, if they want to, or they can listen to you call.
Speaker 3 (00:23:43):
Right. Yep. In previous business, I
Brian Margolis (00:23:46):
Got a lot out of not, I would never cold call without somebody listening. Right. So one of my sales reps, I would never cold call. And then what I used to do is I used to, and I'm not saying I would recommend this for you, but I used to record them both sides of the conversation. Cause it was, it was legal and the kind of calls I was making, there was never going to be a personal interaction down the road. Yep. Right. So you might not want to record them, but I used to record them so that my team could hear me doing what I was suggesting they do and how to do it. Right. well I guess what I'm saying is, you know, you could consider letting them listen to you, right. As a way of leveraging it, like they hear you doing it, they learn how to do it.
Brian Margolis (00:24:31):
Boom. Some not some to think about. Yup. And so if you did that for a half hour a week, right. The longterm goal of them doing it on their own, you mean, is that that Oh, that's, that's exact, that's exactly it. Because I imagine there's a lot of them who probably don't like doing it and aren't comfortable doing it or feel like they might even feel like it doesn't work. And although it might not be the best use of your time. If it takes, look, if it takes you eight hours of calling to get one listing for you, that might not be a good return on investment for a newer agent or an agent whose full time gig is just getting houses. They're not brokering or anything, you know, eight hours a day, eight hours to get a listing could be a home run. Yup.
Brian Margolis (00:25:21):
Right. So some, you know, something to think about you know, I'm not sure how that would work. You'd I guess you could just put people on speakerphone as you did it. Right. Yup. And they could listen to you, but again, do you have enough agents that would want to do that? I don't know. Right. I don't know. So something that, some of the think about that, I don't know for you yourself though, that's the best use of your time. It could be wrong, but I'm going to call it, leverage Fs B O calls. All right. Go ahead. Keep going. Anything else you listed? That's it. Okay. Do you do any kind of marketing mailers? Anything right now? We send out an email newsletter once a month. Okay. But you don't do it. You don't do that thing. Like I get that the house behind me was just sold or right. Okay. Gotcha. And just to, just in terms of name dropping, have you ever heard of Dean Jackson? I haven't. So Dean Jackson, who he's now Dean jackson.com and he does a lot of stuff now. He's he's the, he's a marketing genius. Tony Robbins. I always joked with Dean that Tony Robbins interviewed him. He didn't, you know, he didn't interview Tony Robbins.
Speaker 3 (00:26:44):
But
Brian Margolis (00:26:45):
Jean started off as a realtor and he's got a lot of really good marketing stuff for realtors. Okay. And I remember I was at a, I went down to hang out with Dean for a few days. I paid some money to do like, you know, the sessions and all that kind of stuff with a small group. And I remember Dean talking about like, you know, and again, this is obviously I'm sure it's copyrighted, so I wouldn't go using it. But he used to put together things like, you know, he's just send these mailers, like your name, you know, the Smith's at 12, whatever your street is finally got what they deserved. And it's like, literally you like know these people, right. Or you heard of them or, you know, the address you're like, what do you mean? The Smith's got what they deserved? And then it's like, you know, we just sold their house for top dollar or whatever kind of thing. So he's, he's really creative guy. And he started off as a realtor. He does a lot with real.
Speaker 3 (00:27:41):
Okay. Gotcha. I'm always open to obviously, you know, your ideas.
Brian Margolis (00:27:47):
Okay. So what about, I didn't see, I didn't see anything here on helping agents to sell more and maybe that's just not something that you feel like there's something you can leverage right now.
Speaker 3 (00:28:03):
Hmm. I guess the only thing you could say that it's in that direction is making the one eight, you know, the one agent call to a tier one agent.
Brian Margolis (00:28:13):
Oh, I see what you're saying. So, so you kind of call them and check in and give me advice.
Speaker 3 (00:28:19):
I agree with you though. I guess I agree. It's not really wasn't geared in that way. Like that's not really the way I was thinking about it. So yeah, I would agree with you.
Brian Margolis (00:28:29):
Well, yeah. And you have to leverage something, you have to actually have something to leverage or else you're just multiplying by zero, right? Yep. So, so if you're doing training calls with them, but the training calls aren't effective, well then doing 30 training calls doesn't do much for you. Right. Right. think about in the past, and this would kind of go to question one of the pillar, the pillars is, you know, the first question, what, what is something you already know how to do effectively that if you just did more of a more consistent with would have the biggest impact on your business. And was there anything that you used to do effectively to help agents sell more that maybe you got away from that, but it was effective and now you could be more consistent or have you just never cracked that code? You've never really, there's never really been anything that was really that great at helping others sell beside, you know, giving them the resources they need.
Speaker 3 (00:29:27):
Yeah. I would say this ladder. Okay. I don't think I have ever. It's interesting. I mean, this is why, like, this is obviously these are good conversations to have because like it's like such an obvious thing to say. Right. It's like, I don't even have strategy to
Ryan (00:29:42):
Help them sell more. Like that's I don't even, I guess I just don't currently have one. So that's interesting.
Brian Margolis (00:29:49):
Yeah. Well, nothing the multisite so if we jump to the second question, right? Yep. Which is what is, what is one skill that if I significantly improved in would have the biggest impact on my business. You know, the one for a learning pillar. Right. And so that's where I think there could be a lot of leverage here. Meaning when I look at you know, when I look at a business like yours, okay. Especially with the leverage of agents, I look at it the same way if it was just you, but especially with the leverage of agents, has that multiplying effect. To me, you will make, look, there's a certain level of competence and knowledge. You have to have to sell houses in your market and to give people happy experiences
Ryan (00:30:41):
And all that kind of stuff. Yup.
Brian Margolis (00:30:44):
But I'm guessing there's a lot of agents in the competition who already have that same level. Yeah.
Ryan (00:30:49):
Competence. Right? Yep.
Brian Margolis (00:30:51):
And so in business and marketing, we basically say, okay, there's a lot of people who can deliver, right. If somebody orders the burger, they can make and deliver the burger. All right. In your case, there's a lot of people who can deliver for the customer who can list their house, get them the right price, you know, do right by them, all that kind of stuff. So, so in that way, you're a commodity. Right. the, and I don't mean from a personal, personal interaction, but there's a lot of people who can deliver. And because of there's a lot of people that deliver, you know, we go to that thing in the book, I said, where, you know, there's a, you know, there's a difference between being good at something and being successful. Right. Yep. And you might be a good real estate agent and a good broker, but it's a different set of skills and focus that make you extremely successful, like a big practice or a big, a big agency. And I can tell you this, the thing that pops out to me is leads, right? Yup. Your ability to generate you will make more money and run a much more lucrative agency or brokerage or whatever the terminology is by becoming great at generating leads more so than by becoming the greatest realtor, whoever lived. Right. Who knows every block and every neighbor and every, you know what I mean? I agree. But again, there's a minimum level of competence you have to have, and I'm guessing you're there. Right?
Ryan (00:32:23):
You already have it. Oh yeah. 15 years. Yeah.
Brian Margolis (00:32:26):
Yeah. Right. And so at this point, it's kind of like, okay, you could become a better agent. You could know even more than, you know, but that's not going to have the return on investment. You're going to make more money, being a great marketer and lead. Then you will focusing on becoming an even better agent. Does that make sense? It does. Okay. And so the two ways you can look at that is there's kind of two paths you can go, one path is to say, okay, I have enough money coming into the business that I'm going to try to outsource that. Right. I'm going to pay a third party or someone to generate leads for me, which by the way, even be successful at that, it helps if you understand marketing, because you can spend your money on things that don't work. Right.
Ryan (00:33:13):
Yeah. We do do that to some extent. We, so I'm sure you're familiar with Zillow and so we do buy leads on a monthly basis from those two sources that I provide to my agents. Right. Okay. So what's out there.
Brian Margolis (00:33:29):
Yeah. So, so you're outsourcing some of that. And then the other part of it is, and I've always thought this is the, you know, unless you find someone that's amazing at it, the, the, the real path is you become a better marketer, right? Yup. Yup. Yup. And he's got, I don't know, for some people that sounds like a lot of time for some people, it sounds like not a lot of time, but for me, for you to dedicate 90 minutes a week, an hour and a half to just learning about marketing and lead generation for realtors. And again, that goes well beyond just people who, who write books and do videos for real estate agents. It's just marketing in general, right. Understanding the psychology, the technology, you know, all the things that go into becoming the effective messaging, effective copywriting, all that, you know, like I said, like you heard the thing I said with Dean Dean is a master copywriter.
Brian Margolis (00:34:28):
Right. And that's why, because he studied copywriting and doing all the things. That's why he can come up with a, you know, with a flyer like that or a mailer, you know, the Smith's got what they deserved. Right. Yup. And again, I want to be clear. I have no doubt he's copyrighted that for anyone listening. So don't, you know, but not, not that it's not out there, but yeah. You know what I mean? So to me, I'm looking at a potential learning pillar here of, you know, 60 minutes, maybe start off smaller 90 minutes of doing nothing but learning, not, not committing to anything, not committing to anything, not just learning, just if you're doing 90 minutes a week of this a year from now, you're going to have a lot of ideas. Right. And you're just going to have, you know, you're going to try a few things.
Brian Margolis (00:35:19):
Okay. I went down this road for a little bit and maybe that wasn't the right road or, well, you just need to find that one thing. Right? Yup. You just need to find that one thing. And I think most people understand this logically, but to be honest, getting better marketing, watching YouTube videos, whatever, you know, that kind of, that falls under the guise of, you know, when I have time, that would be nice. Right. Yup. But we don't think of it as work. You know, you don't, you don't think of learning. Most of us don't think of learning as work. And when I look at growing a business, I can't think of a better use of your time. Right. I'm been doing that and I could certainly, you know, offline, I can get, you started with some people and, and things like that. But so, so that's a potential pillar.
Brian Margolis (00:36:08):
If you agree with me is spending time each week, just learning marketing. I like, I liked it. I like it. And then the last question, and then we'll kind of take this jumble of your pillars and these question answers and put this thing together is the third question is, you know, what is something you could organize plan or create prior to taking action that would make the action much more impactful? And you know, what that, what I'm really asking there is what can you organize, create? What, what can you do strategically ahead of time so that when you do something else that something else is much more effective. Right? So, so for example, when it comes to recruiting agents, right, and I'm not saying this is true at all, but you know, if you put in some time doing a little homework, right.
Brian Margolis (00:37:06):
And kind of figuring out who the best agents actually are, even if your hit rate, doesn't go up, like, Hey, I talked to 30 for 30 agents who actually talk to me about this. Only one comes over. Well, yeah. But if you're talking to 30 of the best people where hate, then that one right. Becomes a better person. For some people, I mean, we have some funny ones out there. Some people it's organizing their office. Some people it's putting together their call list for the week. Some people it's, there's all sorts of ones. D did that question stimulate anything with you or when you read it,
Speaker 3 (00:37:46):
I'm not sure I can. I'm not sure. Can you did what questions?
Brian Margolis (00:37:51):
The, what would, you know, what is one thing you could organize planner create prior to taking action that would make the action much more
Speaker 3 (00:37:57):
Excellent. Got it, got it. Not off the top of my head. You know, I mean, I think just looking at my business at, you know, a higher view like a strategic, you know, time would, would help me to organize things when I get stuck in the mundane the day to day, you know?
Brian Margolis (00:38:25):
And I don't know, elaborate a little bit, give me an example.
Speaker 3 (00:38:30):
Well, you know, if I'm busy trying to provide know commission
Ryan (00:38:36):
Statements or you know, issue checks for, for closings and things like that that I can't spend time thinking about, you know, different approaches to lead gen God it's like that.
Brian Margolis (00:38:50):
Okay. So yeah. So, so we're actually, okay. That kind of stuff we can, we'll deal with probably in the next session on hitting your pillars. Okay, good. Cause what we want to do for the first part is say, okay, these are the things that if I do them every week, everything else takes care of itself. Then the S so we know what needs to get done. Right? I always tell people like being unorganized or being too busy in and of itself is not a problem. It's only a problem. If it keeps you from hitting your pillars, if it keeps you from doing the things that drive money. And sometimes it does for some people. And so that's what we'll talk about next time, which is, okay, now we know what you want to accomplish every week with your pillars. How do we do that? What do we have to eliminate?
Brian Margolis (00:39:35):
What do we have to batch? What do we have to schedule? What, you know, that's so, all right. So let, let's take what we have here. And I want to turn each cause I do like your pillars. I don't have a lot to, based on our conversation. I don't have a ton to change, but I do want to turn them into actual pillars. Okay. So when let's just talk about posting social media content, all right. When you post something, when you create social media content, do you then automatically put it on all of the platforms I do. Okay. So when we say social media piece of content, I know that's going out everywhere, right? Correct. Okay. So, and then do you also send stuff to, do you have, like you said, you have an email list, right? Yup. Who's on that email list. Is that former buyers, potential buyers
Ryan (00:40:29):
Primarily now it's the leads, it's the contacts from the people, from the leads that we buy. Right. Because it gets automatically integrated into our CRM. Got it. Okay. So that's primarily, who's on the email list. This is names and email addresses of leads that we've bought from Zillow or realtor.com.
Brian Margolis (00:40:48):
Got it. And, and, and so a lot of them, you know, you haven't heard from them and so maybe they already bought a house or something. Right? Sure. Okay. And by the way, you're going to, I think you're going to learn some stuff. When you, when you go through your marketing that pillar, I think you're going to learn what to do with those kinds of people. Right. and there's all sorts of words. There's something, again, going back to Dean Jackson with a realtor stuff, but he has this thing called a nine word email where any lead that's over any lead that's over 90 days. What, he'll, what he basically sends. He'll put their name in the subject line, you know, just John and then all he'll do, he won't say hi, John, he won't sign his name or all your right is, you know, are you still looking to sell your house at blah, blah, blah?
Brian Margolis (00:41:39):
Or are you still looking to purchase a house in the Hartford area? That's it? Yep. Are you still looking to do what you originally were going to do? Right. And you know, for, for people who have it, you know, it's the kind of question where it feels one-on-one conversational. Like you're dropping them a note and you'd be surprised how many people will come back to you and go, actually I am. Right. Yeah. Even though they've ignored everything else. So that, that just things like that you'll learn about through marketing. Okay. So when you post social media content, there's two ways to look at a pillar like this, depending on how your brain works. One way is to say, I want to create two postings a week. All right. Yup. Bye. Bye. I want to create two posts a week and again, creating a post could be you writing something, you filming a video, you whatever.
Brian Margolis (00:42:37):
Okay. Right. And that might be one, two, three. I don't know what your number is. The other way to look at it is to say, well, you know, sometimes Brian, I just have a lot to say, and I can get five posts off. Right know, and other weeks I'm spending more time. Cause I'm very careful about creating a really short but effective video that people will actually, you know, engage with et cetera. And so in that school of thought, you would say, I'm going to say, spend, you know, 90 minutes a week, an hour, two hours, whatever it is, creating social media, media content, knowing that some weeks that 90 minutes, and it doesn't have to be all together by the way it could be in, in, you know, broken up chunks, but that two hours or that hour or whatever it is some weeks that might generate a bunch of stuff other weeks, it might not generate much at all, but you're building toward a really effective one.
Brian Margolis (00:43:32):
Right. That might take you a little while. That's okay. I got you. So let's look at it as a, a time blocking for creating that content. Is that kind of good? Yeah. Correct. And not time blocking in the sense of Wednesday to, from four to five 30, but just each week, you're going to spend a certain amount of time creating social media content. Got it. And by doing that every week, I'm going to have good stuff coming out where, cause some, and again, it depends on how your brain works. Some people, when they say I got to post three things a week, they wind up posting garbage. Cause they just want to post something, they hit their pillar. Right. Yup. And so it's like, yeah, it's relevant and it's about real estate, but it hasn't really been thought through that. It's going to be the kind of post that gets people to engage or people to reach out to you. Right. Yep. So again, it just depends on how your brain works. Do you measure how many you put out or do you say I'm going to spend X time every week creating posting. Gotcha. So, so give me your thoughts for yourself.
Speaker 3 (00:44:39):
I think I like the number of pieces of content because it kind of forces me to try to come up with something. Okay. You know,
Brian Margolis (00:44:52):
So what does that number for you? What would you like to see going out every week?
Speaker 3 (00:44:57):
So five pieces of content a week. Okay.
Brian Margolis (00:45:02):
So can I suggest then we start with three? Sure. And by the way, three is a minimum, but when I think about pillars, I'm thinking about that week at the end of February, when you got a head cold and you're not exactly super motivated to be in the office. Right. And it's like, that's the week that the compound effect, I still need to put out three things. I still need to put out three things, but that's how I think about pills.
Speaker 3 (00:45:26):
Yeah. Not only me, not when you're like the most excited and everything's going great. Yeah, I thought that was interesting in your book, you talk about, you know, not breaking the chain, right? Yeah. That concept of keeping the continuity. Yup. Yup.
Brian Margolis (00:45:38):
Okay. So three we'll just call it three social media posts everything's per week. So we don't have to say per week. Okay. But three social media posts. All right. And those are different pieces of content. That's not one piece on three platforms.
Speaker 3 (00:45:52):
Okay. Correct. Yep.
Brian Margolis (00:45:55):
Reaching out to two agents to recruit per day, which comes out to 10 a week right now, is that, are there enough agents out there is 10 a week, a predictable result? Can you, I mean, you control whether you do it, right. Yup. So is that just, is that just simply, it could be leaving a voicemail, shooting an email, connecting with them on LinkedIn, whatever.
Speaker 3 (00:46:17):
Exactly. Okay. And the way I look at that too, is you know, obviously, you know, I'm going to be circling back to some agents multiple times. Sure. So it's not like we need you know, 10 times 50, you know, we don't need 500 agents. We, you know, maybe you need 200 agents to fill that goal because a lot of them I'm going to go back to more than once. Got it. Okay.
Brian Margolis (00:46:44):
And so you keep kind of you, so you do you and you track that stuff. Pretty good. Like who you've reached out to.
Speaker 3 (00:46:50):
I have started doing that this year for the first time. Got us in a CRM.
Brian Margolis (00:46:55):
So really this includes follow up too. It's not just the first time, but it's the third time. The fourth time.
Speaker 3 (00:47:00):
Correct.
Brian Margolis (00:47:03):
Alright. And then you have reached out to five current agents a week, right? One a day, which means basically once a month, if you have 21 agents, right?
Speaker 3 (00:47:16):
Yep. How about, so
Brian Margolis (00:47:19):
Reach out to five current agents. And again, when you say reach out, you might not, these are not conversations are, you might not get them. You might text them and tell them to give you a call or call them or send them an email and they might not respond. Right. True. Okay. I just want to make sure we're measuring the right thing. Yep. So it's not scheduling conversations, it's reaching out. And again, that's something you want to watch for, like, if it gets to the point where reaching out, it's not giving you what you need to get, then we want to up it to, you know, scheduling one for the future every week or something. Okay. I'm reaching out.
Ryan (00:47:59):
That's an interesting idea, by the way, is the idea of scheduling like a call each period, like whatever it is, you know, once a month with each agent is very different than just saying I'm going to reach out to each agent. So yeah.
Brian Margolis (00:48:14):
Correct. Correct. And, and, and again, the way you need to look at it only, you know, you know, you know, better than I do, but the way you look at it is look at the end of the, at the end of the day, here's what you want to ask yourself with these pillars. You know, if I do a, B, C, D, E, and F or whatever they are, you know, is it just a matter of time and pressure, right. Until I hit those goals, things start moving. And if at a certain point you feel like just reaching out is not going to give you the compound effect you're looking for. Then, you know, now you say, okay, I need to, maybe I need to up my game a little bit. And I need to schedule every week. Not have, right. Not have, because you don't control that, but I need to schedule two current agent meetings per week for the future. Whether that future is two days later or whether it's two weeks from now. Right. Yup. Know, that's just something you're going to monitor
Ryan (00:49:08):
With your pillars. Yeah. It makes sense. Okay.
Brian Margolis (00:49:12):
The sphere of influence I'm so used to saying COI, you got me saying SOI now. But I understand why sphere of influence five of those COI was the sea. Some people call them centers of influence, but that's not, it doesn't really apply here. Got it. It's it's I understand what you mean. So do you want to say reach out to five of them? Or do you want to say, send five N S Ts or some kind of combination what's five and STS and STS would be sending them things like the motorcycle article, sending them things like, Hey, I just read this book. I think it could help your business. Right. Send, yeah,
Ryan (00:49:53):
I liked, I liked the idea of,
Brian Margolis (00:49:56):
Like, in other words, you're just re you're, you're not requesting a meeting. That's the next pillar in this one. You're just staying top of mind by providing them some kind of value or engagement, right? Yeah. In a non-cell way. So why don't we call it this five NS, Ts SOI and S Ts a week, right? Yup. Everything's a week, obviously we're being redundant here, but, and I think you were clear on what I meant by NST. Like
Speaker 3 (00:50:28):
What would qualify, right? Yeah. And again, if you know, they're a Lakers fan and the Lakers win something big or do a trade, then you, you know, reaching out to, you know, can you believe the Lakers or, you know, something that's going to get them to engage or thank you or whatever. Right. Going up, going above and beyond. Okay. I don't, I don't think you have to get in the business of sending them like physical gifts or anything. No. if this was a different kind of business, I might say, drop him a book in the mail. You'd be amazed. But now if you have some Primo clients that buy multiple things, investors, whatever, then yeah. You know, dropping them a drop, shipping them a book from Amazon or something could be a home run. Right. Yup. Yup. To really deepen that relationship. Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:51:12):
Then you have requesting a network meeting that's once a week or no, you have it as five times a week. Yeah. You think that's, I got the sense you thought that might be high? It depends, I guess it depends on your hit rate, right? Yeah. I mean, you know, if you request five, are you going to get one you're going to get to D attend to go five for five? No, I would say probably less than 50%. Okay. Yeah. So if you're doing less than 50%, then you're going to average around having two of these a week, which would not be a bad thing. Right. Right. Okay. So request five networking meetings again, you just have to request it, right? Yup. All right. Let's it, unless you want to, did you, I was going to say for now we could shelve the leverage cold calling.
Speaker 3 (00:52:17):
Yeah. Maybe that's something you want to think about. Maybe just that's something you want to do every once in a while when you have an eager student, so to speak, right? Yup. Something to think about then the, okay, so the marketing pillar, the learning about marketing, the, and by the way, learning, not just reading books, listening to podcasts, watching YouTube, whatever it doesn't matter. What do you think is a good amount of time? 60 minutes a week? You want to start off just with 60 minutes? Yeah, I think that's good. That'd be a good start. All right. And again, that's a minimum, right? So don't like when your timer goes off, don't turn off a, a tape. I'm dating myself. I'm about to say books on tape, right? Okay. So six 60 minutes. I'm going to call it marketing and lead gen research. Right. Okay. Marketing and lead gen research. And there's a lot of cool ways people generate leads these days. I mean, it is, you know the, the other thing, the last thing I wanted to ask you about your pillars here is I don't see anything on here about a followup pillar.
Brian Margolis (00:53:27):
Do you already feel like that's habitual? Do you tend to stay on top of prospects and agents and recruiting and all that?
Ryan (00:53:36):
I guess I kind of incorporate regarding the recruiting, the two reach outs a week. I mean a day.
Brian Margolis (00:53:44):
What about just potential clients like for listings or for
Ryan (00:53:49):
Whatever? I think that, yeah, you're right. I think there should be a followup pillar. I think that, I think that is an important thing. I mean, there should always be, even if it's only two follow ups a week, I mean, there should always be at least two people that I could follow up with that, you know, regarding a potential, like a touch point. Yeah.
Brian Margolis (00:54:06):
Yeah. Just to now what happens? How do you use your CRM right now? Does, do you, do you consistently record people like, okay, here's a lead for a possible listing or? I do. Yep. Okay. And does it then go into the black hole of the CRM or do you actually look at that? Do you Mark it as a prospect or market as something, and then you can generate a report from it? Like how does your CRM work?
Ryan (00:54:36):
Yeah, I mean, I can Mark it, you know, I can put any kind of tag I want on it and then, but are you, I tag I'm not doing a great job with that right now. Okay. Yeah. Good.
Brian Margolis (00:54:47):
You know, like for me personally, in my business, right, I'm down to three pillars right now. Now that'll change after my product is done, which this will be part of that product. But the, right now I have three pillars and one of my Keystone pillar, without a doubt that I've had forever is called ax. It's called XL follow. Right. And I literally have an Excel sheet of all the people that, you know, have reached out to me or I've talked to, or whatever about possibly hiring me as a coach or training at their event or whatever it is, any kind of corporate thing, whatever. And so once a week I literally go down that thing line by line and not everyone needs a touch that week. Right. But people do not fall through the cracks. Right. I stay on top of people. I move the ball forward until either they say, they're not interested or it's not going to happen, or it happens.
Brian Margolis (00:55:43):
Right. And then even after it happens, they stay on there because I'm trying to do more with them. Right. so, so for me, just by going down that list every week, sometimes I can get down that list in 20 minutes. Sometimes like today I actually did it this morning. It took me an hour and a half. I had so much going on, took me an hour and a half to go down that list and reach out to everyone who needed that next touch. Yup. I'm thinking something in your CRM where if you want to continue to use the CRM for this kind of thing, you know, you tag them as a, whatever, a lead pipeline opportunity. And then once a week you print that report. Okay. Or pull up that report. And then you go down at line by line and anyone on that report who needs the next touch point, whatever that is, whether that's a call an email, a, Hey, are you still alive?
Brian Margolis (00:56:37):
Kind of thing, whatever they get it. And those who don't don't that's fine. Yeah. I think that's a good idea. And I have always found that CRMs complicate things, but I've always kind of, you know, I'm a solo preneur right now. So it's different when you got all sorts of you literally don't use one at all. I do not use one. Got it. I find Excel is easier because the only, but the only thing I have to keep track of is my prospects. Right? Yep. I like now I have email lists, people join my email list. It's different. But I have found that most sales professionals do not management like CRM. So I understand why you would want to keep leads in there, especially from your agents. Right. but on an individual level, most people don't like using a Mo most salespeople. I have find the ones who understand how to use them, love them.
Brian Margolis (00:57:29):
If they're willing to get over the learning curve and actually know how to use it as a leverage tool, as opposed to a bigger tangled mass than they love it. But if you're not willing to get over that curve and automate everything and systematize it so that, you know, once a week you can just hit print and all your leads come out. Yup. I find that that, that Excel is the way to go. But anyway, you, you can decide that, but what I'm thinking is whatever that opportunity list is or follow up list or whatever we're calling it. I think maybe having a pillar of just reviewing it once a week. Right. Okay. I mean, some people do it twice a week, but just why, so why don't we call it this review? And some people make the pillar update and review cause once a week they go in and update it.
Brian Margolis (00:58:21):
So at the same time they review it, they also enter in any new names that they've gathered. Right. Yup. I don't know if that helps you or not. If you want to update and review it once a week or just to review it, update and review. I like that. Okay. So yeah. Update and review, you kind of look back at your, you know, the, the, the days that have passed since the last time you reviewed it and anyone that needs to be entered based on your meetings, your calls, your whatever, you put them in, in the system, right? Yup. So update and review. What do you want to call it? Your opportunity list, your pipeline, your followup. Your is good. Okay. Update and review pipeline list once a week.
Brian Margolis (00:59:05):
All right. So, so let me just run through these real quick and then we'll schedule a call for, you know, maybe a month or so from now. And then what we'll do then is we'll kind of go back over these, see if been hitting them, see if you revised them, change them, whatever. And then we'll put in any cap strategies we need to. So here's what I have three social media posts reach out to 10 agent recruits, reach out to five current agents, five sphere of influence and STS to send five serve, influence, and STS request, five network meetings, 60 minutes of marketing and lead gen research or learning, and then update and review your pipeline list once a week.
Speaker 3 (00:59:59):
Sounds good. That's what you have. Yup.
Brian Margolis (01:00:02):
Okay. Before we wrap this one up, any questions for me? Any clarity you need?
Speaker 3 (01:00:11):
I don't think so. I mean yeah, I mean, I think I have a pretty good handle on 'em
Brian Margolis (01:00:17):
What these pillars are now. You got to do the hard part and actually execute on them. Yep. And again, I want you to have that experience of trying to execute on them, whether successfully or unsuccessfully or somewhere in between that way, the next call will actually be more relevant. Thanks for listening to another episode of simplified your strategy, magnify your results. If you know someone you think could benefit from this episode, be their hero and share it with them. If you'd like a free copy of my book, or you want to be considered as a guest on a future episode, head on over to productivity, giant.com have a great day. And thanks again.