What To Say Now

Cutting Through the Noise: Effective PR with Audie Chamberlain

• Dan Stewart • Episode 4

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It's easy to get lost in the buzz of the real estate world, but effective public relations can set you apart.

In this episode, we break down how PR can help agents at every stage of their career. Whether you're just starting or already have a solid referral business, there's something here for you.

I'm joined by Audie Chamberlain, the brilliant mind behind Lion & Orb. Audie's been in the PR game for years, working with everyone from newbies in the real estate market to seasoned agents with massive referral businesses. 

We talk about the power of personal introductions and referrals, the necessity of a solid online presence, and the importance of strong brand identity. We also delve into leveraging local news outlets, working with platforms like Google News, and the importance of community involvement for positive PR.

Listen to this episode to understand the impact of effective PR in the real estate industry. Don’t miss out on Audie’s invaluable insights!

Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:

  • The importance of investing in databases and predictive analytics
  • The ongoing need for coaching and community support
  • Practical tips for quick listings and leveraging buyer leads

Links from this episode:

Happy Grasshopper helps real estate agents and brokerages grow sales and recruitment. To schedule a call and learn how we can help you, visit https://happygrasshopper.com/tour

Happy Grasshopper utilizes best practices to deliver emails, text messages, voicemail drops, and handwritten notes in order to help real estate professionals succeed and convert more leads to closings by building relationships through conversation.

Audie Chamberlain [00:00:00]:
PR is really, in my opinion, one of, if not the most overlooked things in marketing when we talk about the disciplines and practice of marketing for a real estate professional, because where's everyone's attention leads. The problem with that is you're just noise. I would think that PR and your image and your reputation would be much more of a priority in our industry. We're actually in a PR crisis for an agent, an agent right now, today. If you look in real estate industry, even as a whole, this is an image problem because you need to be able to communicate your value, and nobody's been doing it for real estate over the past few years.

Dan Stewart  [00:00:47]:
Hello and welcome. You're listening to what to say now, which is a podcast dedicated to helping real estate professionals do a better job communicating with the people they serve. And today I have a super cool guest, everybody. You're not going to believe how awesome this guy is. No pressure, Audie, but you're freaking awesome, man. I'm just going to tell everybody upfront. So, ladies and gentlemen, you got to know that in life there are people you have to know, right? If you're here and you want to go here, there are some people can help you get there much more quickly. And Audie Chamberlain is one of those people, right? If you have any need at all, if you think it would be useful for your story to be publicized, if you think your business would benefit if more people knew about your business, you're going to love today's session.

Dan Stewart  [00:01:42]:
You absolutely are. So, Audie, thank you so much for joining me. And also thank you for the work you've done for us at Happy Grasshopper these past several years. It's been fantastic.

Audie Chamberlain [00:01:51]:
Yes, thank you. Thank you, Dan. It's so exciting to be here. And being a partner of yours has been incredible. I think your service, where you fit in the funnel, it's just, it complements the PR work we do for the top higher up in the funnel before they're engaging, but like you said, just reaching those mass audiences. So we really do complement each other well.

Dan Stewart  [00:02:21]:
And you know what? We're still just warming up, too. As much great presses we've had, there's still more great press to come, for certain.

Audie Chamberlain [00:02:28]:
Yeah. You know, I have a friend who always compares it to, like, the needle in the haystack, right? There's. There's just so many options out there, and it's in everything. It's not just real estate, it's in every, you know, area we live in today. There's so many options and so you become that needle in the haystack. And I think where PR really comes to play is getting you out of that haystack and that digital haystack and getting you right in front of your target, right in front of those people who can really gain value from that relationship.

Dan Stewart  [00:03:06]:
The needle in the haystack, I love it. I want to kind of reel back in time, right? Because more or less, you and I have had some similar life experiences because we're about the same age, right?

Audie Chamberlain [00:03:17]:
Yeah.

Dan Stewart  [00:03:18]:
Some people, like my adult children, they've never been alive at a time where they weren't having stuff fired at them. A million miles an hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Right? They're a cacophony of information that's coming at us every moment of our lives today. And the value, I think, that a great PR approach provides is it creates some signal in that sea of noise, right? It's a chance for people to actually hear the message in a place that they choose to consume it.

Audie Chamberlain [00:03:52]:
So, absolutely, we call them iPad babies, and you see them everywhere you go. If you're in a restaurant or you're at an amusement park, they're born with a device in hand. And I think when you talk about just glut of information bombarding you, you know, going back to where PR fits in, PR is really, in my opinion, one of, if not the most overlooked things in marketing. When we talk about the disciplines and practice of marketing for a real estate professional, it's so overlooked in our industry because where's everyone's attention? Leads? You talk about this all the time. There's 170 million leads being sold for 4.4 million trades transactions. And that's just growing and growing and growing. The problem with that is you're just noise, right? So everyone focused so much, they focus so much on the leads and they focus on things like retargeting. And what was everyone focused on last year? AI and building a personal assistant, a copilot.

Audie Chamberlain [00:05:03]:
And so. So I think where PR comes into play is you're building a relationship through these mass communication channels. So you're not the one out there telling the world you're the best chef, right? I've been using this analogy from the show the bear. My wife and I were really enjoying the bear, right? Well, if you tell me, hey, I'm the best chef in the world, that's marketing. And if you plaster it everywhere and retarget it everywhere and tell me you're the best chef, that's advertising, right? Now, if someone who, you know, is a fruity and someone, you know, loves food. And they come and they tell you, hey, this guy or this person, they're the best chef. That's pr. And we don't think about that enough in real estate because all the business comes from referrals.

Audie Chamberlain [00:05:59]:
Right. Since I got into the business 15 years ago, everyone's always talked about referrals. 80% of my book. Referrals, referrals, referral. So I would think that PR and your image and your reputation would be much more of a priority in our industry. And I feel like right now, as we speak, this time, this moment in time, we're actually in a PR crisis for an agent. An agent right now, today, if you look in real estate industry, even as a whole, if you look, with everything happening with the DOJ, the lawsuit, this is an image problem. This is a crisis right now for agents if they don't know what they're doing come August 17, this is why you need PR, because you need to be able to communicate your value, and nobody's been doing it for real estate over the past few years.

Dan Stewart  [00:06:50]:
Yeah, that's really a timely thing to bring up. And as we're recording this here towards the end of July, we know that on August 17, the settlement agreement that NAR entered into with the plaintiff's attorneys over the citizen Burnett litigation that is coming into place. Right. And some key tenants of that litigation include that selling agents will no longer be allowed to state the buyer agent compensation in the listing inside the MLS. So the knee jerk reaction, I think when you hear that sort of industry change news is coming, is, oh, my God, how's that going to affect me? Right. It's so easy to think about this. Like, how is it affecting us? Right. From a PR perspective, I think things get really magical when you can think about, hmm, how's it affecting everyone else? And how can I take this present scenario that's happening in the news and turn it into a vehicle to stand out and position myself more effectively against the competition?

Audie Chamberlain [00:07:59]:
100%.

Dan Stewart  [00:08:00]:
PR is so important for positioning.

Audie Chamberlain [00:08:03]:
In my opinion, it is literally our job to position you as the expert, and that is what PR is. So when you are ready for PR, you have to already have a sense of self, an identity. You have to have a brand. You have to have a personal brand. You have to have core values in place because it's like being in a pressure cooker, the Internet. Right? You don't know how to respond to a bad review. Like, as an agent, you're not thinking about bad reviews. Online, you're not thinking about that moment.

Audie Chamberlain [00:08:39]:
Someone's filming you throw a tantrum. There was someone who was recently let go from a brokerage in LA for throwing a tantrum and then being filmed while doing it, right? So I don't think, again, people think about PR. I think it's just one of those things that is sort of in the air and it happens everywhere. And you don't, you know, the most recent example was the debate, right, with. With Biden, right? And the debate was so bad that now he had to step out of the race, and that was because his PR people could not fix what he did in that debate. There was no PR magic pill to regain the trust and the confidence in his own party, right? So 30 plus people, you know, spoke out and wrote him letters and said, hey, pal, you've got to make a change. You got to step down, right? And that's a PR crisis for his team. And they've been managing that for two and a half years very well.

Audie Chamberlain [00:09:43]:
You know, so, Audi, let me interject.

Dan Stewart  [00:09:45]:
Here, because we live in politically contentious times and what to say now does not exist to exert any sort of political, in a political opinion, political agenda. Not part of our jam here at what to say. So I do want to clarify that the real heart of what you're saying is have an excellent product, right? If. If you work on yourself, your business, to the point where you have a level of excellence, that excellence can be amplified by PR, right?

Audie Chamberlain [00:10:16]:
And 100%, you know, that.

Dan Stewart  [00:10:18]:
That old saying about there's no such thing as bad press. Well, gosh, if you get written up for having a tantrum, that's bad press. That did not help that agent's business, right? You got fired, did not help the candidate. There's a consequence for failing to operate at a level of excellence.

Audie Chamberlain [00:10:38]:
Well, and I'm glad you mentioned that because, you know, as a PR professional, we tell every agent, every prop tech founder, every broker, do not talk about politics, do not talk about religion on social media platforms unless you're willing to draw that line in the sand. If you're okay with that and realize you're going to lose business by drawing these lines, that's, you know, that's one thing. We don't recommend it because you're gonna have, you know, these contentious interactions online, but staying clear. And I said this on Inman's stage in January, you know, for 2024, you do not wanna talk politics. Now if we're talking about them as they apply to PR, and, you know, it has deep, deep roots PR in politics. So that's something totally different than. Than like, putting out a position towards any type of thing going on in the political world. It's just not professional.

Dan Stewart  [00:11:41]:
You don't have to be a sports fan to take away a lesson from how a coach won or lost a game. Right. We're just. We're using this political example as context to really drive home the larger point. Right. The larger point is you have to have an excellent product. The challenge I see is there are a lot of agents out there who've built an excellent product. Right.

Dan Stewart  [00:12:03]:
Whether they're a single agent, whether they're running a team, whether they're a broker, owner, even an executive at a brand, they've done the hard work to have an excellent product. They just can't get anyone to pay attention to it. They're not successful at capturing the volume of attention. They need to really turn that attention into revenue. So I'm curious. I heard it said once, audie, that attention is a currency that eyeballs on a screen have value. Whatever it is we're paying attention to, we're elevating the value of that thing. And I think that that's, for me, the crux of the value you provide at lion and Orb is you.

Dan Stewart  [00:12:49]:
You really gather up those eyeballs and direct them to a specific issue.

Audie Chamberlain [00:12:54]:
Yeah. And if you go back to positioning yourself as the expert, again, you can't be the person saying, I am the expert. You need that third force. You know, saying, here is an expert and here is the expert. Right. And once you're positioning yourself as that expert, now to your point, instead of reaching the, you know, a few thousand people, maybe on your email or people on your social echo chamber, they call it right now, you're getting this trust and credibility through trusted reporters. So now a third force, the reporter is talking about you to hundreds of thousands. Right.

Audie Chamberlain [00:13:38]:
I mean, some of the numbers are insane. Right? If you end up in that industry newsletter at the top, you're going out to 800,000 agents in one shot. And the article's getting ready by tens and thousands of agents and professionals in our industry. So, yeah, that gets the phone ringing, and that's what drives us. We want to get you out in front of the people, and then we want to get the phone ringing so that people are excited to learn more from those stories being published.

Dan Stewart  [00:14:06]:
Jeff. Okay, excellent. Yeah, excellent. There's something you're saying that's reminding me to something I teach a lot. I have this core belief that no matter how big our business goals are they're more easily achieved through relationship. And, you know, let's just kind of map that through here for the context of this conversation. We were introduced to one another through one of your existing clients, one of our long time personal friends, Peter, unpronounceable last name. If you're listening.

Dan Stewart  [00:14:37]:
Peter Schrave made Bravamare brave, made like Peter is known and loved all across the real estate landscape, literally around the world because of the work that he did at box Brownie and the work he does now as part of the NAR reach program.

Audie Chamberlain [00:14:54]:
That's right. Reach Australia and Asia. New Zealand.

Dan Stewart  [00:14:57]:
Exactly.

Audie Chamberlain [00:14:58]:
He's everywhere. Incredible.

Dan Stewart  [00:15:00]:
He's everywhere. And so do I as an entrepreneur, know the value of pr?

Audie Chamberlain [00:15:07]:
Sure.

Dan Stewart  [00:15:07]:
Yeah. I mean, it's one of the many things you could do in your effort to build a business. Right.

Audie Chamberlain [00:15:13]:
Right.

Dan Stewart  [00:15:13]:
Then I have a conversation with Peter and he says, dan, you need to talk to Audie. His work made a big difference for us at box Brownie. I think it can be a big difference maker for you, too. So that is a one to one relationship and media relationship is one to many. Right. You've got one reporter, one trusted news source, one trusted publication, channel, blog, whatever it might be, and then that person has all of these trusted people in their audience. Right. They are able to really influence this.

Dan Stewart  [00:15:50]:
So the reason I'm being so clear about wanting to iterate this is because it comes right back to having that excellent product. It doesn't do any good to shine a light on a picture nobody wants to see. Right. So you really have to take some time to invest in that. So I'm curious if you have any sort of recommendations about when is the right time for a real estate professional to engage a PR professional like yourself. What stage of their career do they become ready for you?

Audie Chamberlain [00:16:25]:
Well, that's a great question we've worked with. You know, I would say the whole range from folks just starting out and maybe theyve hit some sort of milestone, new listing, new brokerage, something big in their world. And then, of course, youve got the established, already built their business, have the big referral business, and theyre just looking to maintain their market leadership. They want to make sure that their Yden market knows they are still that top, top person in that market. It's very interesting because we were talking about that personal introduction, that personal referral, and that's so key to a real estate agent. It's so key to their whole business is that referral Peter gave you. But think about that referral you know, just a few years ago when you got a referral like that, you immediately called and hired that person, right? But today, what do you do? You still go for two to three weeks and search that person you got that trusted referral from. So now, what does that mean? So now Peter told Dan, Audie's great, right? But then you spend two to three weeks making sure your pal is still going to give you a good fit because the Internet knows more than even our closest friends in our subconscious.

Audie Chamberlain [00:18:00]:
So then you go to Google. And what happens then? So that's why if you're that agent working to get those referrals, what needs to be there is a paper trail, breadcrumbs, historical facts of you being the expert, you achieving expert results, you doing expert work, you having an expert opinion, you teaching an expert class, you being involved in your community. All these things have to be online as part of your personal brand. They can't just be in your head, they can't just be on your Facebook account or your Instagram account. They have to be in the world, they have to be, you know, real for people to go. And that's that two to three week zone. After we've been given the referral, we're still going to check this person, you know, out thoroughly. So if you're an agent, you need.

Audie Chamberlain [00:19:00]:
Right. It's so funny, I was on chat, GPT, and said, who are the realest top real estate experts in the US? Right? And there it was. Line in Orb was number one, you know, very, very, very respectable name for a company that's been around three times as long as it's from New York, showed up number two. And it was a very well thought out list of. I approved of the whole top five. But I mean, chat, GPT, Google telling us we are the number one expert in that vertical, in that space, that's when the deal, that's where it closes on the referral. That's where now we're partners. And thank you, Peter, for making that partnership.

Audie Chamberlain [00:19:39]:
So, because, you know, that's, that's what the agent needs to have when it's time for the referral, they have to have all of that in place. As far as, you know, the paper trail, the digital paper trail. Yeah.

Dan Stewart  [00:19:54]:
I think PR earned media definitely is a top of funnel strategy. And if we, like, imagine you're a real estate agent and you've never considered using PR before. I want to give a little context for that. They may have a great pay per click budget, they may be buying leads from portals they may have a bunch of other things that are going on. They just hadn't really considered. How can they make use of printhead in their business? How would you advise them? What sort of advice would you have for them?

Audie Chamberlain [00:20:25]:
Well, with a newer agent, I think it's going to go around a listing. Right. So we just had an agent from Orange county last year, had a significant listing. First time in their career. Agent named Abe reached out a referral through our friends at luxury presence. A word of mouth. Exactly. What we discussed about it was a referral.

Audie Chamberlain [00:20:49]:
He wanted a sense of urgency and he wanted his whole market to know he had gotten this listing right. And how are you going to do that without the LA Times publishing it right in their Orange county section special, how are you going to tell that story without it being in the robber port, telling the story with your name tied to the first paragraph? You're representing this product. Right. And in that case, we were very successful. The listing sold in 60 days. PR is contingent on a lot of other marketing efforts, a lot of other stars aligning to pull a buyer in that circumstance where typically they were lasting a lot longer on the market. But that's something. One of our very first clients, Matt Beale at Hawaii life, he helped us kind of perfect this, the sense of urgency.

Audie Chamberlain [00:21:46]:
So when the agent has something that they really need the market to know, or like corporate executives will call it, they want to shout it from the rooftop. Right? We've all heard that saying. This is the time for them to engage with a PR professional. This is the time for them to go out and get their name out there. When they're ready and they've got a product, they've got a milestone, they've got a move, a career move. They've hit some new record. Right? So reporters love superlatives. First ever sold at this price point, the most ever.

Audie Chamberlain [00:22:28]:
In this market, all the superlatives work very well. And that's the kind of thing we like to help agents learn and understand how to share their story.

Dan Stewart  [00:22:40]:
So let's take that and put a bit more of a tactical point on it. If the job of PR is to generate attention, the agent, the team, the brokerage, the brand, they must, as a prerequisite, have the mechanism to capture that attention. Right. For example, if Happy Grasshopper is featured in this great article, but they search for happygrasshopper.com and don't find anything thing that'd be a failure. Right. If our website weren't set up in the right way to convert visitors into, you know, some portion of a sales funnel. It wouldn't make sense to do that. So, you know, I know we've got a wide audience, people at different stages of their career, you know, so here's how I'd break it down.

Dan Stewart  [00:23:26]:
My recommendation, I'll let you throw rocks at this if you'd like to, audie. I think that if you go through the stages of growth in a real estate career, it's that stage where you're first starting to get referrals, not from your family. Right. But from a stranger that you served effectively that is now so confident in you that they're willing to tell other people about you and you work with them. That's like a baseline level of excellence that I think is a prerequisite to anything else. Like you must learn your trade, learn your craft, be capable, performing at a respectable level and getting that referral.

Audie Chamberlain [00:24:03]:
We can't position you as the expert if you are not the expert. So by default, you're not going to do well in that position. Being positioned as an expert, you have to be an expert in your. It may be a very small market. One of the best brokers I've ever met in my entire life had a very small market, Beverly Hills, and that was the only focus with one single office and built an incredible business, knew that every block, inside out, every single story of every single property for generations knew, had memorized. So you just have to be the expert. That's a prerequisite. And you have to have that sort of brand identity.

Audie Chamberlain [00:24:50]:
We worked with a brokerage in LA, well established, independent brokerage. They had no identity. All of their top agents were leaving and going to cooler brokerages that had come out and they had no identity. So we brought in experts who can help with brand identity to help them interview employees and really figure out who they were. They had lost that over a course of maybe four or five years. Sure enough, they were able to recapture that spirit when they had first launched and they were able to reinvent themselves and successfully sold the company to compass a few years later. So it was a great project to be a part of. I think understanding your audience is so key, and knowing who you are, you know, having that, being an expert is a prerequisite.

Audie Chamberlain [00:25:50]:
So getting to that point where you understand your market, the market trends, where you understand your market, you know, as well as anyone, I think that's like a prereq, you know, to start with. Yeah. And then, you know, when you have milestones, when you have a career milestone, getting that out to your audience, to all of your friends and fans and past clients and what we call Publix, getting that out to everyone, just going to continue to create momentum for your business and you're just going to keep. I learned this from Jade Mills, a very, very successful, famous agent in LA. And every time she'd hit a new record for herself, a sale, she would just shout it from the rooftop. She would farm, she would use advertising to communicate to her hyper local market that she was doing these things. So very important to communicate these things to your market, to your audience, whether you're doing it through a big publication or through, you know, different levers that you have and you control, it's critically important that you're communicating that you know, that, that success that you're having, that, that business you're building.

Dan Stewart  [00:27:10]:
I'd like to put some tactical points around that. So let's assume this situation, right? We have an agent, a team owner, a broker owner. They've achieved that level of excellence, right. They know exactly like they're prepared to comment. That person should be building relationships with their local news outlets. Right. You need to be that local expert that can get tapped in a moment's notice. And I think we share a friend, acquaintance, Peter Shankman.

Dan Stewart  [00:27:40]:
He founded something called Harrow. Help a reporter out.

Audie Chamberlain [00:27:44]:
That's right.

Dan Stewart  [00:27:44]:
And many, many years ago, I was at a conference and I got to spend some time with Peter and we talked through one of the strategies he worked to really build his career. Now he lives in New York City. He's got access to be the guy who can show up in a moment's notice, camera ready, and give comment on news story, ABCD, and e just always being that guy.

Audie Chamberlain [00:28:09]:
That's right.

Dan Stewart  [00:28:10]:
So, you know, thinking about that from a local real estate perspective, real estate's in the news a lot. No matter what the market's doing, every single person we're ever going to meet has to live somewhere. It's a topic people deeply care about. And so the news is always wanting to have stories that connect to where we live or where we want to live or that place we're glad we don't live. Right. And if you can reach out to those people, build a relationship with them such that you're the person they call on, that's a huge advantage. I mean, a huge advantage.

Audie Chamberlain [00:28:42]:
That's right for them.

Dan Stewart  [00:28:43]:
So what would you suggest? How are the steps for someone to go about doing that?

Audie Chamberlain [00:28:48]:
I personally love researching back to the Google scenario where there's a tab inside of Google called news. And so what I love to do is start there. And this kind of never ending appetite for real estate, it really is a never ending appetite. Every single day, reporters, editors, producers, they all are looking for this type of content. Okay, so I can give you an example. You're an agent. You're starting out. You have a team.

Audie Chamberlain [00:29:23]:
Team. You can reach out to the associate editor at Inman, Dan, and you can start contributing, and they'll literally give you the topics that they're looking for to write about. You've seen that monthly calendar. It's wild. And you have all these opportunities to write stories. You can publish these stories yourself on LinkedIn. Expertise, pieces. You know, video is massive right now.

Audie Chamberlain [00:29:54]:
For agents, it's huge, whether it be YouTube or Instagram, you know, videos, amazing way right now to capture and to position yourself as that expert. So tactically, if we're talking about, okay, I'm trying to be positioned as that expert. I'm doing the DIy route. I want to build some relationships with the report. So we're going to start with typing in some headlines that are those stories that you want to be in. So if we're talking Tampa Bay real estate, we're typing in Tampa Bay real estate market, Google News. We're checking what comes up, and then we're looking for who those reporters are, and then we're going to become a source for that writer. So now that we've identified that local reporter who writes the stories that we want to be in, now we're going to reach out to that reporter.

Audie Chamberlain [00:30:54]:
You can invite that reporter to have coffee. You can give that reporter your brokerage, if you're an agent, your brokerage makes these beautiful market reports. You're going to take that. You're going to send it with some commentary. Here's the trend I'm seeing in this part of St. Petersburg is going crazy. Here's some things I'm seeing. There were 100 people at this open house.

Audie Chamberlain [00:31:16]:
Again, back to those things. I've never seen, the first time ever I've seen this kind of thing. You're going to send that to the reporter, and you're going to build a relationship because the reporter is going to see you as a source, probably short for resource. You're that source now who's providing information about the market. That's very granular. And that's how you're going to build the relationship. And then when you have legitimate story going back to Tampa, we worked with an agent there, a compass team leader, DJ Sousey, and we did a brilliant campaign where it was community based. So he partnered with a pet rescue organization and has a program where at every closing he's sponsoring adopted rescued pets.

Audie Chamberlain [00:32:07]:
And even if you don't want the rescued pet, you're still getting the donation in your name and beautiful program, beautiful community driven story, right. Not pandering, not doing, just coming from the heart and great response. Right in. I think it was like maybe real producer, top producer magazine was featured in a full story, framed it and the clients and the partner were all featured. So you can do these stories that are more organic. So if there's something you're passionate about. For years we've worked with an organization called Give Back Homes. Right from the beginning we started working with them and part connecting them with agents and brokers to do community engagement.

Audie Chamberlain [00:33:05]:
Right. So if you think about PR for the agent and we're tactics, we're talking about tactics, one of the things you can do is that community involvement. So PR, we're talking about you're getting published, your publicity, right. But then you're winning local awards. We work with this agent, we work with an agent team, lead broker owner in Palm beach and you know, we submit for humanitarian in the year award and Florida Realtors organization recognizes him as the humanitarian of the year. Yeah, right.

Dan Stewart  [00:33:43]:
Imagine.

Audie Chamberlain [00:33:44]:
That's right. And that's all the work you're doing because he's so involved and engaged in his community. Now what are we doing? We're just communicating what he's doing to, you know, magazines, newspapers, outlets and they're sharing it with hundreds of thousands, millions of consumers. So for his brand, that's worth what you would more than what you would pay in the advertising because beyond the advertising, it's going to live on those news sites forever.

Dan Stewart  [00:34:22]:
That's right.

Audie Chamberlain [00:34:23]:
It's going to continue to create long tail SEO. So, so you're.

Dan Stewart  [00:34:28]:
And don't leave out the credibility as well. Right.

Audie Chamberlain [00:34:31]:
And the credibility.

Dan Stewart  [00:34:32]:
Team owner, if I'm a broker owner, do you think it's easier to attract and recruit great agents when I'm continually being featured in the press? Of course. Right.

Audie Chamberlain [00:34:43]:
That's right.

Dan Stewart  [00:34:43]:
If I'm a broker owner and the brokerage gets recognized, well then gosh, you can take that piece, you can reproduce it and make sure that it's part of every single agent in the brokerages marketing approach. Help that agent win every listing with the credibility of what the brand has done, what the brokerage has done, what the team has done.

Audie Chamberlain [00:35:05]:
That little independent brokerage in LA I mentioned with the rebrand, that's what they saw as soon as we started the PR program, they were doing it right, they were communicating it right. They were getting out there into the PR, into the public's eye, the audience. They were getting brokers from all over the country saying, hey, I'd like to change my brokerage's name to your little independent brokerage in LA's name. PR literally will attract it's attraction magnet, whatever you want to call it. But we were putting that out there to where there were people raising their hands in the midwest or northern California, raising their hands saying hey, this is so good, I want to be a part of this. I want to join this brokerage, even if they already owned a brokerage. So that's the power of you knowing who you are, your brand, then communicating that and then having it communicated even to wider audiences. It's going to create this inbound marketing.

Audie Chamberlain [00:36:17]:
Another example, we work with an agent in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, put a listing out, put it in Manchin Global. It was featured in an outlet and he receives 14 inbound leads, buyer leads, pre qualified, filled out all of his intensive Internet forums and 14 or 15, I forget the exact number of full leads from one news story. And you can't do that with an ad for the listing. It's just not going to have that kind of impact as a full featured story. This reporter, Bill Carey has huge following. So it's just different. We've seen listings that get featured in print, that get a call from the actual future buyer the next day directly. So I think it's important, any stage with whatever price point you're in, identifying what's unique about it, identifying those superlatives, those unique interesting angles that make it a story about the community out the market.

Audie Chamberlain [00:37:33]:
I think that's really what you want to get out there for your name. You want your name out there as much as the brokerage's name you want out there and you're a part of that, you also want your name out there associated with the business you're doing.

Dan Stewart  [00:37:51]:
So let's just recap here a little bit. Step one, become excellent. I mean, you got to have a.

Audie Chamberlain [00:37:58]:
Be an.

Dan Stewart  [00:38:01]:
Be someone that can offer value to other people before you offer that value. Absolutely prerequisite, right. And then understand how to leverage PR. I think before you retain someone like Audie, and again, I'll just endorse Audie Chamberlain and Lion and Orb. We've worked with them for many years now at Happy Grasshopper. Extraordinarily pleased. I've referred many people your way and will continue to do so I think you have to have an understanding of how to leverage the exposure that comes from pr. You've got to be ready for it, in other words.

Dan Stewart  [00:38:36]:
Right. There's no sense swamping the boat with sales opportunities if you're not prepared to convert. I think the third thing is to understand context. Right. You've got to really understand how your story fits into the greater narrative that's going on. Real estate exists in a very dynamic environment, and someone like Audie is expert at helping you understand the feature, the facet of your story at this moment in time, and why it's valuable. So, Audie, thank you so much for your help today. I really appreciate, I love what you're doing for the industry and of course, for Happy Grasshopper as well.

Dan Stewart  [00:39:18]:
Do you have any final thoughts you'd like to share with the audience?

Audie Chamberlain [00:39:22]:
Oh, you know, I've just had such a great time talking about this stuff, Dan. I'm so passionate about educating people, how this can help them and how it can help them grow and really want people to understand. You know, it's beyond social media. I think so many of us think we have social media. That's our PR, but it's just so much more than that. And a lot of executives think it's just a crisis or only in a time of a crisis. You know, the industry is in a crisis right now, we're in one. Right now.

Audie Chamberlain [00:39:57]:
People think we're overpaid. It used to be we were thought of as a used car salesman. Now I believe it's more like a reality tv star. This is the image the mass, the mass consumer has of the agent. And so it's your responsibility as an agent to project and put out an image that dispels that. And I will comment on this latest show. Ryan Sirhans owning New York on Netflix. I think they do an excellent job of showing that he has had a lot of struggles to get where he is.

Audie Chamberlain [00:40:32]:
I don't think anyone ever tells the story of how his agents. It's a struggle, a constant struggle. And I think people have totally false narrative when it comes to real estate agents that's out there, and media is part of the blame. And I'll just end it with saying how much I love working with you, Dan, and seeing what Happy Grasshopper does for agents and seeing how it just sparks so many conversations about listings and listing appointments and properties getting sold and buying and finding buyers and all of that excitement that you can't really do. We've had CRM customers in the past, can actually was a customer until they were acquired. We loved working with a CRM, but CRM is never solved for the problem of what to say and what to send and how to engage this audience and what Happy Grasshopper, the lane you have found, which is so beautiful, what you do for the agents and the team leads and the brokerages, is you get those conversations started so that now their CRM can actually produce for them. You know, I've. I've been wanting to use a CRM.

Audie Chamberlain [00:42:01]:
I had a CRM client, and I don't use a CRM. You know, it's one of those things where audit Chamberlain.

Dan Stewart  [00:42:07]:
Same on you, my man. We should talk. For sure.

Audie Chamberlain [00:42:11]:
But with.

Dan Stewart  [00:42:12]:
In all seriousness, I want to make sure that the audience knows how to get in touch with you. Where can they go to learn more about you and Lion Orb?

Audie Chamberlain [00:42:19]:
Absolutely. So we can be found@lionandorb.com. uh, it's spelled out the a n d, you know, is spelled out. So lion and orb. And you can also reach me on Instagram or any of the social platforms, LinkedIn. I'm there under Audie Chamberlain. And, you know, please do follow lion and orb. If you like to follow PR, I'd love that.

Dan Stewart  [00:42:47]:
Well, Audie, thank you so much. I really appreciate your help today. Today. And I know a lot of people listening here do as well.

Audie Chamberlain [00:42:54]:
Thank you so much, Dan.

Dan Stewart  [00:42:56]:
All right, you're welcome. Have a great day.