The Neighborhood Realtor

Why Your Clients Hate Your Marketing & How To Fix It — Chris Cusimano, FL

October 11, 2022 Matt Muscat
The Neighborhood Realtor
Why Your Clients Hate Your Marketing & How To Fix It — Chris Cusimano, FL
Show Notes Transcript

On this episode of The Neighborhood Realtor, Matt Muscat talks with Chris Cusimano, a top-performing Realtor in Boca Raton, Florida. Chris began in real estate in 2005 and emerged from the 2008 financial crisis a wildly successful Realtor and business owner. His business has been built by clever innovations and creative pivoting when markets change. Even after nearly two decades in real estate and a track record of successes, Chris finds himself driven by giving back & providing for his family.

Chris closes ~100 deals a year, but doesn’t keep track of his production. It’s not an important metric to him — rather, he loves the process, the grind, and helping people achieve incredible goals. Neither money signs nor production goals motivate him.

In this episode, Chris describes one of his most powerful secrets: the “Dream 300” client database. Since he started in real estate, he’s kept a list of 300 of his best clients, colleagues, and contacts 20 of them each day with a meaningful message: text, call, Facebook comment, anything. No spam. Not sales pitches. It keeps him in touch with his closest clients, all while building meaningful friendships and relationships — a recurring theme on The Neighborhood Realtor. Focusing on direct communications with his clients, Chris has kept his business out of the social media algorithm, which is a powerful tool & advantage in today’s digital world. It’s old school.

Chris hates boring marketing. It’s not effective, and everyone hates it, so why do it? Instead, Chris lives to give back, so he’ll load a Starbucks gift card and text it to a dozen people at once. He’ll buy a $500 gift card at a restaurant and pick up the tab for everyone there. He’ll send funny Father’s Day t-shirts to his Dream 300 database. It’s cheaper than Zillow ads, and it produces incredible amounts of business. People love it.

Giving goods is only one of the thing Chris gives — he also gives information! During the pandemic, Chris began a Facebook group for coaching real estate professionals, for free. It’s called Suit Up Agent, and every week he hosts a live stream to give away his best secrets. He gives away scripts, data sources, processes, marketing ideas, and more. It’s attracted an amazing following, created well-deserved national awareness for Chris’ business.

Chris is a wealth of information, and a joy to listen to. There’s no shortage of useful information in this episode of The Neighborhood Realtor.

The Neighborhood Realtor is proudly sponsored by Treadstone Funding and Neighborhood Loans. For more tangible tips in real estate marketing, check out Matt's book, The Tangible Action Guide for Real Estate Marketing available on Amazon.

Matt M.           Welcome to the Neighborhood Realtor podcast. With me, your host, Matt Muscat. This is a podcast for real estate industry professionals who are doers. Each episode will feature an interview with a top producer or someone who is doing things differently in an exciting way. For those who already know me or have read my books or blogs, my brand of marketing is tangible and repeatable because smart salespeople don't need to reinvent the wheel.

            

Matt M.           My promise to you is that in each episode you'll leave with one tangible idea that you can take to the bank. Hey, everybody, thanks again for tuning into the show. Really excited for real excited for my guest today. We had talked a couple of weeks ago when I was a guest on his podcast and I could not wait to have him back because he said things when he was interviewing me that I was like, Should I need to know more about this?

            

Matt M.           So today we're with Chris CUSUMANO in Boca Raton, Florida. Chris, welcome to the show.

            

Chris C.           Hey, thanks for having me, man. You're right. That was that was a fun episode you did on our show. So thanks for the swapping. We're swapping roles today.

            

Matt M.           Well, firstly, I mean, kind of funny for anyone who didn't hear that one. We had probably 20 minutes of fun at your expense because your dog chewed up your headphones and you were wearing your your daughter's headphones. And I just I related so much to that because I feel like between myself and some of our other top producers of The Office, we're like all functioning in real estate at a very high level.

            

Matt M.           However, we're all basically like working for our children, sometimes at their mercy. So for anyone else that feels that way, you're not alone. You can be a top agent like Chris, top mortgage professional like myself and your kids still rule the roost. So all in all.

            

Chris C.           100%. Like, as a matter of fact, right now, it's still it's summer break right now for another week or so. And I guarantee you, sometime in the next 30 minutes, you're going to you're going to hear some shenanigans.

            

Matt M.           I hope if your kids come in, they at least have a good sales pitch.

            

Chris C.           All right. They have their elevator pitch. They're lined up.

            

Matt M.           I mean, we all should be teaching them something. All right. So, hey, so for everyone out there who hasn't hasn't heard of me, somehow, walk me through how you've been in real estate, where you came from, where you are now. Talk to me about things like team size, where like what got you into the business and culture. Any pivotal moments that kind of shaped who you are now?

            

Chris C.           Well, I wanted to try to structure this. Where it's going to add the most value to the individual was listening instead of just giving, like, you know, my history. BA But basically, I mean maybe this will give you hope is that if you're struggling I was 19 years old and I didn't really have an idea what I was going to do.

            

Chris C.           I graduated college and basically I saw all those houses signs like we buy houses, cash signs everywhere. Right. And then I would call all of them and they just see like, what is this about? These people aren't in school. They're making money. Like, what is this about? No one would call back. And finally, one guy did. I was like, This, and I'm going to work for you for free.

            

Chris C.           His name is Alex Scharf, and he's actually does a lot of stuff out on Texas, Austin, Texas now. Anyways, he called me back and he's like, Yeah, I'll take some free labor. Sure. So I went out there and I worked for him and his wife for a couple of years flipping houses. His wife was actually worked at a Remax office in Fort Lauderdale, and I did her transaction coordinating during that time.

            

Chris C.           And that's where I learned paperwork and stuff like that and the real estate thing. Well, then I got my license in October of 2005 and that was really where the market crashed. They the flipping business dried up because there was no equity. Equity dried up. There was nothing to flip. So they moved on to doing what they were doing.

            

Chris C.           And I had my real estate license and I was trying to figure out this real estate game forever. I mean, I'm going to skip over most of the details of basically it led me six years later when my wife and I are pregnant with our first kid. And that's when I really started to get serious in industry in 2011.

            

Chris C.           And ever since then, it's just been headed down. Notes to ground pounding pivot figure in this game out building a foundation for an enjoyable business where I was just thinking about it now it's ironic. So even though every day I mean, I have that mindset of hustle, hustle, I'm a struggle. You don't want to be broke. You don't want to fail.

            

Chris C.           But then if you look in it, in contrast of most of the agents that enter the industry now, they probably look at individuals like yourself up and mean like, I wish I were in their shoes. And the good news is, is you can be and when you're here, you're going to wish you're going to be in your shoes later on anyways.

            

Chris C.           That's just a thought ever in like in my head.

            

Matt M.           Successful people always want more. So, you know, just before before I have like four questions to ask you based on what you just said. But what was it you got into the business around oh five? What was your production like in 2021, for instance, just to give people a frame of reference?

            

Chris C.           Oh, sure, sure. So I guess I can prelude to that the saying that I've never been one to really track the numbers or give a goal of a certain amount of sales or making an amount of money. That's never been my jam. I was just to work really hard and just enjoy the process in other things. But since I started getting into coaching and training and all that stuff, you kind of had to know those numbers.

            

Chris C.           So the answer you depending on the source is that you look at Realtor.com says, I did 92 transactions in the last 12 months. Callaway Arms Command says, I did 120 for the MLS as I did 86. So I guess if you take the average of 100 because I don't know, I don't count on myself.

            

Matt M.           Well, first of all, even the lowest of those numbers is still pretty bad, given that the average age in the U.S. closes seven deals a year. So if average is seven and you did 80 on the low end 120 on the high end, that's pretty awesome. Also really funny because the data in real estate is as much money as they're involved.

            

Matt M.           Data is just not that good. It's like, Oh, I'm like, I can go on Facebook and I can see every realtor in town is posting that by some measure, they were the number one agent. Yeah. Every single time, I just laugh because I'm like, Boy, I thought that guy was the number one agent. Yeah, that guy wasn't. They all use whatever source makes them say that.

            

Matt M.           It's kind of funny. Lenders are no better, but that's a huge amount of business, so congrats on that. I know you have a lot of systems that you influence. You get there. But a couple of things I want to point out to the audience. Number one, one of the first thing you mentioned is that you started calling in science to figure out what was going on.

            

Matt M.           And I think that curiosity of like, why are these signs everywhere? Clearly they must be working. Someone must be making money off of them if everyone's putting them out there. So I think for agents out there, when you see marketing, whether it's real estate related or something else, sometimes it never hurts to give them a call and to find out what the deeper thing is there.

            

Matt M.           You know, one of the things I do is I get probably on my rental properties. I have realtors, homeowners, random investors reaching out to me every other day, asking to buy my my investment property, not knowing that I'm in real estate. Yeah. So on almost everyone I reach out, I want to know like, hey, like what made you send this out?

            

Matt M.           What made you choose this verbiage? Like, what's your success rate? Like, what system are you doing are you sending this with? Because it's always fascinating to figure out like what people success has been. And some of the meetings I've been able to set up based on that has been absolutely huge, including some agents who I'm like, you know, you forgot to put like all legally required disclosures on this and you should probably fix this before your broker calls.

            

Chris C.           You know, sorry to cut you off. But, you know, on that note, it's it's a weird thing in real estate and maybe in the mortgage world, too. I know you come from that world that there's a lot of egos involved, too, with agents and what do I mean in my day out here in the office, like, oh, how come you're not going to this training?

            

Chris C.           How can we go to Oh, I don't need that. Oh, I don't need that. I'm like, Well, you don't even know what it is. How do you know you're not needed? I don't know what he has. And then I've heard people say that about like, oh, I've heard people say about mine, Hey, Chris is teaching a little bit.

            

Chris C.           You want to go? Well, I don't know what Chris has. I don't know. I don't. And so I think a lot of it's just ego. And that ego gets in a way, ironically, for them to make them feel, I guess, good. They're making they're making itself feel bad and even worse later, because they can't learn what they would have learned and applied it and made their life better.

            

Chris C.           So I guess you're right. Curiosity is seeing what works from other people. There's nothing wrong with that.

            

Matt M.           You know, I think, like if I was looking for like commonalities over the year or two, we've been running this podcast. Almost everyone on the podcast doing more than 100 transactions a year says that they got started by asking every single other producer what they were doing and then figuring out which strategies of those they would like to do doesn't mean you have to do every strategy, but you need to learn about it.

            

Matt M.           You need to know what's up. You need to know what the possibilities are because every transaction in real estate is so different and you're going to have a client where you might need that marketing strategy for them, even though it's not your general style. The second thing I heard you say and the last two podcasts I did, the same exact thing came up.

            

Matt M.           You started by by doing transaction coordination. And I love that because you became an expert on something in the business that you were getting paid for that transitioned you then into the rest of real estate, which is obviously the sales aspect or you know, and that's very much how we train. Also like we want our lenders and the realtors to train somewhere on a team before going out there on their own because when you do that, the failure rate is a lot lower.

            

Matt M.           It's also kind of like a two year long interview to make sure you like the industry. It's a little bit safer. It's easier to convince your spouse that you're taking some type of role rather than just jumping into commission.

            

Chris C.           So it's a job.

            

Matt M.           It's job, right? But it's a job that usually you can get licensed and then start doing some deals as they come in. When we talked last time, Chris, I was fascinated because you had just like such a great way of keeping your contacts front of mind in your database, but more so on your literal desk, and then time walking, time to reach out.

            

Matt M.           So could you share with everyone what that is? Because I think anyone who's not doing this is crazy, whether you do it your way or a digital way.

            

Chris C.           Yeah, sure. I guess the best way to say it is that it's funny that you remember that because it's on my desk right now again. So every day on my desk I have my action steps for the day. I call my daily BBQs daily homeless by Christie's my my team is called always my cruising that's what I ask and do every day and part of that daily is contacting a certain amount of people on social.

            

Chris C.           It's to up your algorithms and those platforms Facebook, Instagram primarily. And what you do is, you know, basically I know every day I have a page of people that I have in my thing called the Dream 300, my magic 300 clients. And then I make sure I will message a certain amount of all either posts on their page, a message to them or text them or something.

            

Chris C.           Just a page full of people a day. I cross them off, I turn the page and I do the next page the next day. And it just it's not that hard to do. It's rewarding and increases the algorithm and just life is good.

            

Matt M.           Okay. So number one, it's not that hard to do. So if anyone else sitting out there is wondering why they should do it, that's why. Number two, though, who goes into your dream 300. So I can see pictures on it. For anyone listening to this, Chris is holding up literal sheets of paper with options and names like How are you?

            

Matt M.           Who's going on this list? How are you choosing them? Are that clients or their friends or their Facebook friends? Who is it?

            

Chris C.           Sure. I mean, if you really if you do if you have 300 people in your database and you market to them in a very specific way with multiple modalities, you're pretty much guaranteeing yourself to make a half million dollars if you do it right every year, you only need 300. That's why I understand why people farm. And if you have to see mailers and buy leads and all that stuff, you only need to talk to 300 people.

            

Chris C.           Now, those 300 people who goes into it, you can. That's your choice. That's your choice. So what do I mean by that? If you are born and raised or you grow up in an area, you've been around in an area for a long time, I guarantee you can find 300 people that you like, that you want that want to know more or want to connect with in some way.

            

Chris C.           And you just simply put them on a list. And there's different strategies that I personally teach others how to do that. If you don't know 300 people well, there's other ways to learn how to do. 300 people, run charity events, do business of business networking groups, whatever, sponsor a kickball team or a whole kickball league. Anything you do just to get out there to meet people.

            

Chris C.           And I always say once you get the 300 people that you like, then you just put them in a database, create a system and market to them. And a half million dollars a year is just math, you know? It's just that.

            

Matt M.           It's so funny because like, everyone in real estate throws out different numbers. And the number I've been throwing outs people forever is I call it the 7% rule. And that idea is that you should get your database up to at least 250 to 300 people. So I started 250 and I tell people, a good realtor who's reaching out to these people with meaningful touches, not like a spam message.

            

Chris C.           No spam.

            

Matt M.           Email 8 to 10 times a year are going to close 7% of their database, 7% of your database of three people, 21 closings a year, average purchase price 350 that's I mean, that's some real money.

            

Chris C.           Well, it's a real number. You're at 7% by Keller Williams they say I think it's 6%. So it's very close. Six or seven. It doesn't matter. It's just numbers and putting.

            

Matt M.           Numbers, you know. And then realistically, every single year that you follow that same method, you were going to really snowball affect your business because it's not just the three people. The listing grows with quality and you get one referral I think for every three. If you're a good agent who communicates at a high level and people like you, you're going to get one or four, at least for every three deals you do.

            

Matt M.           So your first year you do 21 deals based on that math, the next year you're doing a third more. I mean, that's got a way for exponential growth to hit a half million dollars in five years. I don't know what it is.

            

Chris C.           It's the easiest way. I know it is because I've run their Y and all the other methods and it's just not that challenging. And the only challenge would be there are some agents out there and I've experienced this with my team firsthand.

            

Matt M.           We're just X I'm kidding.

            

Chris C.           Well, they just don't want to work with people that they know for some reason. Which is odd to me because it's harder to convert people to hire you who don't know you, as opposed to people who already do.

            

Matt M.           Work in real estate. You're selling two things. You're selling yourself in the house. Yeah, it's it's hard. It's harder to sell the house if they don't trust you and you haven't sold yourself yet.

            

Chris C.           Yeah, you know, that's it, man. No, it's a no like trust to remember. And people who already know and like you and mostly trust you, all you got to do is get in the ring. Remember you. But if they don't know, you first got to get to know you. Like, why are you adding all those extra steps? I don't understand it.

            

Chris C.           So I tried all the other methods my in my 20 years. The best way by far is the organized approach to my dream 300 method, systematic approach and reach out to them with unique and what you said meaningful touches.

            

Matt M.           So walk us through it. So walk us through some of these meaningful touches because I know I know the number one reason that people that agents don't work their database because they don't know what the hell to say.

            

Chris C.           They don't wanna be spammy to their friends.

            

Matt M.           Yeah. Or that this.

            

Chris C.           Sales is not spammy and sales is not selling. That's, that's their problem, the taking of it the wrong way. Sales is persuading and.

            

Matt M.           We're not selling like you can spam people when you're trying to sell a $3 Viagra pill on the Internet. Right. Like that clearly works for that. But you can't spam someone when you're trying to sell a $500,000 house that you're going to make no commission on.

            

Chris C.           100%. Well, provide a prime example of what not to do. I have these two lender buddies of mine who I love great guys, but I don't give them business because they're annoying. They're and this is what I mean by that they're they're they're touch is to me are always about how great they are at mortgages it's never about like how on the or even though when it when they do do that I know they're only doing it to open up a conversation about them.

            

Chris C.           So I purposely don't give them business because it's annoying, it's spammy. I'm saying you reach out to people with the respect expectation of nothing back, nothing to lead the conversation where you want it to go, nothing. It's legit. Relationships with 300 people that you like. Real quick, going back a little bit, you said that your when you do that, your your database actually grows.

            

Chris C.           But I do what's I top level off level I forgot the word level top of whatever where I get.

            

Matt M.           To the top grade, top.

            

Chris C.           Level, that's whatever you call it, where you simply plug in new, quote unquote better people and get rid of the bottom people out of that and you just get better and better. But anyways, my point is, it's like when you're reaching out to these individuals, it's solely not expecting anything back. For example, everyone on their birthday in my database, they get they'll either get pieces of cake, they're raps, you know, they always say, Do you want a piece of me where you got it?

            

Chris C.           Happy birthday. And it's just a birthday cake sent to them, right? I didn't ask for anything in return on Wednesdays. Today's Wednesday, actually, every day, every Wednesday at 4:00, our team does something that I think would be anyone listening. This could be this could be your nugget for the day, as simple as it is, every Wednesday at 4:00, we get on Google Meet and we do two things.

            

Chris C.           We have we watch market statistics on the screen, on one screen, and then on the other screen. We write personal notes or thank you notes to people in our database. And it it could be anything. So we'll go in the face of the guy or the dog got passed away. Then we'll write in a condolence note. If they got a new dog, I'm saying dogs because I know you like dogs.

            

Chris C.           Say congratulations. I need a new puppy. Someone graduated. Congratulations on your daughter's graduation. Whatever. The point is that we're just sending a handwritten note that they were not expecting, that we didn't ask anything for return to you in an organized, systematic way. And we make sure we time like that on Wednesdays while we're educating ourselves on the market condition.

            

Chris C.           So if our phone does ring and people say as the market, you actually know what to tell them.

            

Matt M.           Well, and that's a couple of things you said other super one, we do the same thing. So every Monday morning we look at the market and we pull a list of statistics that becomes our call fodder for the week. So it's like we have a list of like anything, any huge updates that like anyone we talk to, we want to get that update out.

            

Matt M.           So like this week with a two on buy down program and we can have the seller pay down your rate for the first two years. So that's like in every conversation we're having. So second is market stats like how many days or how many days are home sitting on the market, how much above or below asking price or home selling for?

            

Matt M.           What are the average prices in the three markets that we mainly work on? Because then if you work those into every single call, they know you're an expert in being an expert half the half the battle. I love that you guys are on the exact same page there.

            

Chris C.           There's a little bit of caveat to that. People also want you to predict the future for them, although you can't do that. We do talk about where we think the market is going and we do convey that to our clients when they call. But we I got to put this disclaimer in disclaimer, give them I don't have a crystal ball.

            

Chris C.           This is just how I feel. You know, throw that out there is you got you said the.

            

Matt M.           Market was going to crash and I took your advice and I lost.

            

Chris C.           A million. As I said, I think the market's going to crash.

            

Matt M.           Right? Right.

            

Chris C.           Anyway, so just a disclaimer. So I don't get sued.

            

Matt M.           When I think it's hugely important. So when so you know, obviously you have your top 300 and I love that you kind to keep the list at a level that you can manage and you figured out the level that you can manage. What you know, aside from that list, are you guys doing like events or are you doing any other any other forms of marketing or anything else really unique that's really working for you and your team?

            

Chris C.           Well, since COVID, we haven't done events, although we probably should start that back up.

            

Matt M.           Ordered, never got COVID. I mean, I'm just kidding.

            

Chris C.           Oh, that's right. We we, we, we had that. We led the country and just because we're number one.

            

Matt M.           Yeah, yeah.

            

Chris C.           It's so stupid. Anyways. So in addition to that, yeah man, you know, I don't, I don't share this little trick too often but it's something and another second nugget that you can I guess take is I think every real estate agent should be doing in lieu of events. We created a VIP Facebook group, Jacuzzi, Facebook group for our best of the best clients.

            

Chris C.           People buy or sell with us or refer people to us or cheerleaders or something like that. They're all in this group. And all it is is every month that we give away stuff, right? So this is a process through that. The first time you get everyone in there to the room, the first giveaway that you do, you kind of make a big deal out of it.

            

Chris C.           New via app page giveaway announcement on such and such that you create the event inside the event tab. You send an email out to all those people, be there on the VIP, they're an event, live event, blah, blah, blah. And that that will be a big giveaway, right? Something of a good high value ticket value, I don't know, four or 500 bucks something.

            

Chris C.           Right. And then you say, all right, in order for you to win the easiest raffle you ever have to do, all you have to do is go to your notification settings, hit, hit, whatever the group or whatever the settings are, and make sure that you get notified whenever we post into the page and set this and pin this group to the top of your groups.

            

Chris C.           And I walk them through the steps on my on the do them put the video on the screen. That way you created a home to buy a cruise or your VIP page of your people. You showed them how to make sure that this group, they get notified every time you post in that group and that they can't lose this group.

            

Chris C.           And that's the only way they get enter the raffle for this big ticket item. So now you do the raffle, you give it away, make it a big deal. Next month you post about your new thing and everyone sees it because they got notified, because they sent their notification signs up. Right? Yeah. So that's, that's one thing we do.

            

Chris C.           So every month we give something away. In addition to that, I randomly have a screenshot of a Starbucks gift card and I'm going to a probably doing the Dunkin Donuts. Some people like Dunkin Better Gift Card and randomly very controversial. Yeah, it is weird and I didn't realize it was until then.

            

Matt M.           And I'm a Tim Hortons guy, but I mean, Canada is pretty close to me, so that's why.

            

Chris C.           I never been to. Maybe it'll be. I think so, but. Well, Zain is in addition to that, the other I had the ah gift card that they you can screenshot and just get a free coffee with a certain dollar amount. So I'll put like 50 bucks on my Starbucks card, reloaded 50 bucks, get it before someone else does.

            

Chris C.           And all of a sudden you see the card balance go down and down and down and out and down, right? So think about it. Every single time you do that and your people are seeing it, not just people getting coffee, but every time someone walks by a a Starbucks or whatever, they're gonna start thinking about you. But like, is there any money left on the VIP card?

            

Chris C.           You know, let's try. Or, you know, I can't believe Chris buys all that coffee. Right. So that's another thing, I think.

            

Matt M.           I love that. Really? Well, it's funny because you're giving people something of value and you're not asking for anything in return, which so many people are, just don't get the concept about. We'll do something every once in a while or will go to a coffee shop or a restaurant. We'll just say, Hey, here's 500 bucks. Can you put the next 20 people's tabs on our bill and let them know it was us?

            

Matt M.           But you know, we're not asking for anything in return. We don't want their information, nothing like that. Almost every time we do it and then we post it on our social media. So at least our clients have the opportunity to go every single time. We almost get a thank you message from every single person that use it. It's very rare to not have someone reach out that used part of that money to say thank you.

            

Matt M.           And the business itself is usually through the moon. And we've done countless deals with employees of those businesses, other customers of those businesses, things of that nature. I mean, whether you do it online or in person, there's so many fun ways to to give back to your community in a fun way.

            

Chris C.           And it's fine. It's fun. And you're actually you're bringing joy to people's lives that they didn't have. And I don't know, I just I just love giving stuff.

            

Matt M.           Well, you mentioned that it's fun, right? Like so for everyone out there that does some form of marketing that you hate. Stop. It is fun. Necessary, right? Right. Like I talked to a team the other day and you guys like. Yeah, like my team. We do like we buy like $4,000 of tzolis and he makes me sit at my cubicle, put my headphones on and dial for dollars, and no one ever talks to me and like, it sucks.

            

Matt M.           And I want to like, you know, it gets pretty negative on it. And I'm like, dude, like, let's move it. Because if you spent a fourth that money on buying people coffee, pizza, beer, ice cream like.

            

Chris C.           Taking them to lunch whatever.

            

Matt M.           It is, it's like you to have so much fun and get more results. Not, you know, Zola's fine. There's lots of places that are fine, but if you don't like it, don't do it.

            

Chris C.           Dude, I just got two deals. Two deals? One is signing, probably two signed it, and the other one just closed from something I did last Father's Day. What I did in my dream 300. I actually signed it down to my dream 100 and I printed out Father's Day shirts. It said it says, Dads, if that I have it covered, whatever.

            

Chris C.           And it has like a grill thing and a tool in the back has a logo. And I just it and I just all I did was drive around in little bags. My wife put them in old bags and we just dropped them off to all these different houses for Father's Day. So now they get this shirt they weren't expecting.

            

Chris C.           They're going to rock. And a Father's Day has my logo anyways. A year later, one of the guys who got it, they just. I just sold their house in Wellington, Florida for like 500,000. Actually, I'll get it to sales because of that. And then the lady across the street was like impressed. I'm talking with her and that. And then for the person who got the shirt, their friend, their friend that lives down the street, not in the community, but down in the street there, that's what I'm talking with, whoever they might be having a listing sign today.

            

Chris C.           So that to me it's more fun for me to go, even if you do want to knock on the door. But I did. I knocked on the door. If they're like my head. Just got you some hope. Everything's well. Don't don't worry about. Here you go. And then that to me is more fun than calling people who don't want to be called I don't know, call me crazy.

            

Matt M.           I mean, 1,000%. I mean, just have fun with your marketing. Think about what gets you to laugh when you're seeing how other companies are going to market. I mean, like we had a couple a couple of years ago who branded herself as the city's official sponsor of Mother's Day. And it was like, guys can reach out and claim like a $10 flower gift card to make sure that, like, no, mom didn't get a bouquet of flowers on Mother's Day.

            

Matt M.           And you could just I mean, there's so many. I love that fun. Just got to do something. So I want to make another point because not everyone out there knows you and your senior stuff. But I'm looking through your stuff online and you know, you're in Florida, but you're not selling 90 homes that are $10 million apiece. You're you're hustling like the homes are selling are all different price ranges.

            

Matt M.           I've seen some stuff or 250. I've seen stuff for a million. But like you're working with a wide swath of individuals. And what I love about that is I think sometimes when people focus too singularly on the very, very high end, your database can end up dying because they don't move. Like they don't move up as many times.

            

Matt M.           Like you buy a $5 million house, you might not move as many times in the future as the people that are buying the $200,000 house than the $500,000 house, then the million dollar house, then the $2 million house.

            

Chris C.           And it's it's a lot harder selling $1,000,000 house than it is a $250,000 house. Because there's it's a niche market. It's a smaller amount of people can afford that. Prime example we have we have a 1.4 or $5 million house in the market now and then another one for 850 and it's crickets. But the ones that we are listing at 400, 300 350 like hotcakes.

            

Chris C.           So if you I said go get it, go get it for $250,000 listings. I rather have four of those and 1 million other one. I don't want to sell them all. A million and I might not, you know.

            

Matt M.           Well, the other thing too is like, you know, you know, a lot of realtors are kind of in that take what you can get mentality and you know, to a certain extent we have to be. But the other piece is that every single asset that you get, every closing you have, every listing you take is a piece of ammunition to get more business, right?

            

Matt M.           Like it's your sign in the yard that's branding. It's something you can market on social. It's something you can talk about in conversations. It's an open house you can do. I mean, there's just so many opportunities. And when you when you have more listings and total sales in a varying amount of price ranges.

            

Chris C.           No, you're you absolutely nailed it. I have a friend of mine, good friend of mine, and she only lists like multimillion dollar properties. And I checked her sales and I think it was like 20 transactions over the last four years or whatever. I'm like, Crap, I did that last month, you know what I mean? Like when it comes to unit unit gearing and her value price is up, she's out there working hard.

            

Chris C.           But if at the end of the day, I feel like, you know, you can kind of get stale in that market. You can't really expand and meet new people and know where they're where it takes you. I'm not saying it's wrong, it's just not for me.

            

Matt M.           Right. So, okay, so aside from the aside from your actual business, which you're crushing in, you also started a kind of like a real estate group for people that want to learn more. Tell us about that.

            

Chris C.           Well, you were in it. You were a guest host. So thank you.

            

Matt M.           So them about that.

            

Chris C.           I tell them about it. So yeah, you know it's funny, I never expected myself to be a coach or mentor or I even feel weird saying it now because that's not something I ever aspired to do. However, I'll give you a quick I'll give you a clip version of The Long Story. And basically I was approached by an individual who sells online courses, and he went to one of my trainings that I did for the agents.

            

Chris C.           He's like, Well, you need to sell this product anyways. So we went to go sell it and I liked it, but it just, it just didn't feel right. It wasn't my baby. It was more of a business than it was. Whatever it is, I didn't I was in it for the money, right? So we decided to just part ways, three different visions.

            

Chris C.           Great guy. Just different visions. And anyways, well covered in my my buddy Dan who's on all of our trainings, he reached out to me. He's like, Listen, I just lost my job. COVID hit. I'm just I need something to work on. I'm like, Well, we can try to build up another coaching program on the side while we figure things out.

            

Chris C.           So we did anyways. Well, that led to us and a couple other things led to us for free every Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. on Zoom, I'm sitting right in the chair, I'm sitting in now and we do a coaching or training this this particular month we're covering my real listing presented sessions and I gave people actual slides of it that they can turn and show them step by step where I get the data, my scripts, the process actually I'm looking at if I'm still here, the presentation timelines and my other screen right over here, and it's called a suit up agent.

            

Chris C.           So equity up agents, you can find us in the face to a group or suit up agent and Starcom and yeah it's there for you.

            

Matt M.           People listening to this can tune in every Tuesday at 8:00 for free.

            

Chris C.           For free.

            

Matt M.           To but if you're out there listening and you're looking for any information, I mean, that sounds like a pretty good deal. We got some pretty expensive programs out here. Free is a great, great price for everyone, especially for those getting started. A listening presentation. That alone sounds like a huge deal, but I'd want to learn more about.

            

Chris C.           It's a it's a 15 year experience listening presentation that I treat throughout my years on different industries in real estate. And I made what I believe I call the listing presentation so good. You'll be stupid saying no, and that's what I call it. So those are real quick before we move on so that Tuesdays are free, but then we record all of the trainings and they're in particular order, and then we put it in a platform like a library that's not free because that costs us money.

            

Chris C.           So the cheapest we can make that for people. And by the way, I should jump that price up. I think we'll go into but the least expensive I made, that was 67 bucks a month. So I mean, like once you charge a thousand upfront, I'm like, well, because a lot of people don't have a thousand bucks and they can do 67 bucks.

            

Chris C.           And if they feel like it's not their jam in three months, the worst thing they've lost was $180. You know, that's how I look at it.

            

Matt M.           I love that. I mean, again, with the minute you sign up for it, it's a repository. You have all the other videos. So I mean, you're not going to run out of run out of ideas. And that's kind of I mean, everyone needs to have stuff to go to when they have a down month. Even if you're a huge producer, one month might be lower.

            

Matt M.           You start to freak out. That's when you need to find something like this to kind of reinvigorate your juices again.

            

Chris C.           Yeah. No, you're right. You're right. I got my juice reinvigorated today with a new thing that I'm going to present to my team in a few minutes. But anyways, I'm taking over the show.

            

Matt M.           You know, if you're in a Chris, if someone wants to buy a house in Boca or get in touch with you, how do they find you? I mean, if they can't find you on Google, they're pretty dumb. But like, make it easy.

            

Chris C.           I'm going to put it this way. I'm going to say good thing you said that. I always say when people call me on yard signs today, they can't figure out the price. I mean, they can't figure out how to type in the website or Google or whatever. I don't want to answer that phone anyways. So if you can't figure out if I'm just kidding, but you know, you just Google my name.

            

Chris C.           Chris C-U-S-I-M-A-N-O. I’m everywhere. Facebook, Instagram, home spy koozie is our team name homie spicy us phone numbers all over that and connect or if you just want to call me and pick my brain or you want to jump in on our Tuesdays for free or join a free Facebook group or just hang out or jump on my iPad.

            

Chris C.           Cats, I just like meeting people and I'd like to meet you, too.

            

Matt M.           Awesome. Well, Chris, just want to say thanks again and we're looking forward to chatting again. Keep this going.

            

Chris C.           Thanks, man. I appreciate you and see you next time, brother.

            

Matt M.           Thanks for listening. And a huge thank you to our sponsors, Neighborhood Loans and Treadstone Mortgage. With offices around the U.S., their loan officers offer a realtor centric focus. First off, communication from real humans. Plus on time closings that frankly are faster than most of the mortgage companies want to be connected to. Grid Ello Message Meet your host for more information and I will connect you with a loan officer in your neighborhood.

            

Matt M.           One more marketing tips. Check out my book on Amazon. Tag The Tangible Action Guide for Real Estate Marketing. And finally, if you want to support the show and hear even better guests, leave this review on the podcast platform. The US Economy.