EP 18: How to Turn Your Real Estate Business Into a Lead-Generating Machine

In Episode 18 of The Buyer’s Box Podcast, Andrew Burnett sits down with Ryan Fitzgerald, founder of Raleigh Realty, to break down how agents can turn their business into a consistent lead-generating machine — without relying on random prospecting or burnout. 

This episode reveals a hard truth many agents face:

You can be working hard… making calls… booking appointments…

…and still struggle to convert and scale.

Ryan shares how he went from cold calling daily with low conversion rates to building a system that generates inbound leads, consistent opportunities, and long-term growth. 

If you’ve ever felt like:

You’re chasing leads instead of attracting them…

Your pipeline is inconsistent month to month…

You’re doing everything yourself with no leverage…

This episode will shift how you think about growth.

Inside this episode, you’ll discover:

• How to transition from outbound hustle to inbound lead systems
 • The power of SEO and organic traffic for long-term growth
 • How content builds trust before you ever speak to a client
 • The difference between paid leads vs. organic leads
 • Why most agents fail at online lead generation
 • The exact mindset shift from “agent” to “business owner”

You’ll also learn how top agents build platforms that attract clients ready to act, not just browse.

👥 WHO THIS EPISODE IS FOR

• Agents tired of chasing leads and want attraction-based systems
 • Realtors struggling with inconsistent pipelines
 • Agents who want to scale beyond referrals and cold calls
 • Team leaders building long-term lead infrastructure

🎯 WHY THIS EPISODE MATTERS

Real estate success isn’t just about working harder.

It’s about building systems that work for you — even when you’re not working.

When your business becomes a lead-generating machine…

Growth stops being unpredictable — and starts becoming inevitable.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:11

All right, guys, this is Andrew Burnett here with another episode of the Buyers Box Podcast. Today we have Ryan Fitzgerald out of North Carolina on our show. You listeners, if you don't know who Ryan is, Ryan, can you tell everybody who you are?

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Yeah, sure. My name is Ryan Fitzgerald. Um I run Raleigh Realty up here in Raleigh, North Carolina. Uh we're a 40-agent brokerage. We've been in the business, you know, 10, 11 years at this point.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Nice. Okay. Um how did you start? Did you start out as a single agent on a team?

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Yeah, it's a great question. I started in 2015 with Keller Williams. Um moved down from Boston, actually. So I didn't know anybody. Just picked up, made the move, knew I wanted to do real estate, uh, went ahead and joined Keller Williams because I read uh Millionaire Real Estate Agent and thought, hey, I resonate with this book. I want to be a millionaire real estate agent. And it had great systems and processes in there that I was like, these make sense to me. Uh so it sort of had a recipe, a playbook for how to have success. I said, okay, great, I'm gonna follow this playbook, joined Keller Williams, and uh that's that's really where I started.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Okay. And fun fact, that's where I started too, believe it or not. Um read that book, read Shift, all the great books that Keller Williams had. Now, did you, you know, partnering with Keller Williams, were were you the single agent, you know, lead generating and doing everything on your own, or did you join a team that provided you systems and tech and all the other things?

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Yeah, looking back, I wish I had joined a team to start. I feel like the education process would have just been sped up immensely. Um, I also feel like there's just such a benefit to being on a team, uh, especially if you want to run a team one day, just learning, you know, how to do it. Um, but I ended up joining as a single agent, uh, was making a ton of cold calls because you know, the uh Keller Williams philosophy, at least back then, was uh, hey, call expireds, call FISBOs, call your sphere, call, call, call. And I was like, you know, I have no problem making phone calls, right? I think I was making 300 calls a day with the mojo dialer. Uh calling expireds, call on FISBOs. And in my first three months, I was getting a ton of listing appointments. Um these listing appointments, though, I realized I don't have a listing appointment setting problem. I have a listing conversion problem. And looking back on it, you know, I think had I been on a team, they would have been like, hey, this is how you convert once you walk in the door to a listing. Because I was tapping people on the shoulder saying, hey, how do you do listing appointments? And the people that I was tapping on the shoulder had only been on like two or three listing appointments in their whole career at that point. So I was, you know, getting the blind leading the blind at that point in terms of uh listing appointments. But uh certainly I went in there very confident, stuck with my you know, full, full commission, wasn't willing to negotiate, and uh ultimately I only got like one out of every ten listing appointments that I went on. So uh you know, looking back on it, I kind of laugh and stuff because I did all that work only to not convert. So uh Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

So Keller Williams, and where did you go from there?

SPEAKER_00 3:29

So after uh you know, doing the cold calls, making all the listing appointments, and uh going on them and just failing to convert, I just kind of thought, all right, how else am I going to generate opportunities, right? How else am I gonna generate leads? Uh and I said, you know what? I've had this marketing background, this SEO background since I was 18 years old. Let me go ahead and just build out a website and start generating leads that way. Uh so I built the Mali Realty website, um, started the content on the blog, uh, started building out the interior pages, and over time people started to reach out via the website. Um so after after Keller Williams, I said, hey, I'm I'm generating all my own leads here. I joined a paper transaction company for a year. Uh that was United Real Estate. Um, and they charged you know uh a pretty penny. But uh ultimately I said, you know, I want to go out and build my own brokerage. So once I was able to, because North Carolina actually forces you to be a realtor for two years before they'll let you have your own brokerage. Uh once I was eligible, though, I went out and just said, hey, look, we're we're building Raleigh Realty. Uh, and that led me to start recruiting agents.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

Okay. Sounds like a pretty good growth story. Uh, I'm sure somewhere in there uh you started thinking about a first hire to kind of help you do all this. Um what was your first pivotal hire? And um, if if you could look back and change that, would you hired someone different?

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Yeah, it's funny. The um the SEO on the website actually created my first hire, right? Because one guy just said, Hey, I really love using your website. My clients love using your website. I was just wondering, can I join your brokerage? And I was like, you know, I hadn't really interviewed or or really thought about, I don't even know if I had really planned to build a team. Um, but I said, Yeah, yeah, come on board. And uh, you know, we set up a little structure there. And uh, you know, I started giving them leads because I had too many leads, I couldn't handle them all. And um, yeah, we started working together and and it was great.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

You know, I think that's pretty pretty funny because I I think that's the experience for a lot of team leaders. Like I know early on when I when I said, Oh, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna have a team, as I just had too many leads. Right. Um, you know, and obviously I think at some point in time you realize that you can't convert everything on your own. So uh I think that kind of leads me into like online lead generation and lead generation and full is like you kind of shared how you started on the phones, which is obviously super great because a lot of agents are scared of the phones. Um where do you think, you know, if you just look at your guys' business now there at Raleigh Realty and say, you know, what percentage comes from what? Do you think you guys are most mostly online leads now, or do you think a lot of it's past clients, referrals, you know, sphere of influence?

SPEAKER_00 6:31

So for the first three years, you know, of my career, it was all online leads pretty much, you know, outside of the occasional uh, you know, listing appointment that I went on via those expireds, or you know, just a random friend reaching out. So nearly a hundred percent was coming in through our website. It was all organic traffic, too. So um it was all just people researching on Google, looking up properties, finding our website, having a great experience using it. They kept coming back to the website. Eventually they would fill out the form. Um I mean, some people would even they would they would just contact me while they were about to write an offer, right? That's how they were just so they were so bought into the website, they're like, when I write an offer, I want to work with Ryan. Um so they would be sitting at a new construction table and and call me and say, Hey, will you be our realtor? And so I was like, Yeah, sure. I think the online lead generation, once once you do build out a platform where uh you know you just have too many leads that you can't work them all, it's very natural that agents will then find you because it's almost like agents can kind of sniff out where the business is going and where it is. Um and those opportunities, if they if they align, you know, culturally and uh with with their values, they'll typically be pretty quick to say, hey, this is exactly what I'm looking for, uh, and then join join a firm like Raleigh Realty or or even you know your firm as well.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

So, you know, for the user that is just thinking about starting leads and things like that, um you mention organic. You know, someone that has no idea what that means, can can you maybe share?

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Absolutely. So organic traffic would be the traffic where uh you know you type in a certain Google search result. Let's say you're Googling like homes for sale Raleigh, uh, you know, you're gonna find our website is gonna appear at what top three, top four. Um, you know, people typically speak out the first local company too. So if they see a local company, they will typically click. Whether it's out of curiosity or what, I'm not 100% sure. But um and then once they you know make the introduction to the website or or visit for the first time, they'll make a quick uh decision on whether or not it's a website they like, whether it's a brand they like, uh, and that's all visually like what what type of user experience is it? Uh, you know, even the color scheme, even the logo, like what is this saying about the brand? So we really, really honed in on that. Uh that way when people would visit the website via those Google search results, uh, they would end up sticking. So, you know, just to go back to your question here, the the organic search is really anything that people are typing into Google that isn't paid for traffic.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Okay. Yeah, and and look, our team does a lot of paid for obviously something we're hoping to kind of shift in the future, but that's that's where we started 100%. So speaking of these leads, you know, bringing in leads, getting organic leads, you know, what do you think the biggest mistake agents make around online leads?

SPEAKER_00 9:44

I I think the biggest mistake agents make is not really uh understanding what it takes, right? Like I think a lot of people will go into uh a conversation around online leads and think that, well, if I just pay this company a couple hundred dollars a month, you know, I'll go ahead and rank number one on Google, uh, where it's like, hey, no, you you can you can build the foundation to rank number one on Google, but it's gonna take a lot of time because Google has to index the website. It's gonna take a lot of work, because people don't just come to your store unless there's a reason to come to your store, right? Like you have to give them a reason, you have to provide the value up front. And if you can provide enough value up front, people will keep coming back. Uh and what I mean by that is you have to take the time and put in the effort to create the content that interests people or provides value for people that makes them say, wow, that was really helpful. I've really enjoyed my experience using this website. They connect that feeling with your brand and they say, Raleigh Realty really helped me figure out what I was trying to solve. I am now looking at houses for sale on their website, and I'm having a great experience doing it. Uh so once you're able to provide that value, people keep coming back, and then Google is like, wow, users are having a great experience using this website. Let's move them up our rankings. So got it.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

Okay. Yep. What, you know, and this is kind of a spin-off question, but um most of the people coming to your website. I know you kind of talked about content, and I think most agents are like, man, what content should I write? And that could probably be a whole nother episode. But do you feel like most people visiting your site is coming to like a blog, you know, maybe learning about Raleigh, or are they landing on a list of homes for sale?

SPEAKER_00 11:49

Yeah, I would say, well, first of all, great question, you know, trying to figure out okay, what is the buyer's journey or even the seller's journey? What are they doing online? How can we reverse engineer their journey or the path that they're taking online so that we can be out in front of them, you know, when it matters most, and provide the value that captures them. So what we would do is we would say, okay, who are our buyers? What are their profiles? What questions are they asking? What are they looking for online? And what we found is many people want to know, well, what's the best location? Right? Where do I want to live? Like you tell me. So what we do is we craft a list of you know Raleigh's top neighborhoods, Raleigh's best neighborhoods, and people love to search for that. Uh or somebody who might be moving here for a job relocation, or or for any reason that they might be moving here. And Raleigh's a big inbound uh market. We would write an article on what it's like moving to Raleigh or what it's like living in Raleigh. Uh and these are the articles that people will be clicking on and really trying to gain an understanding if Raleigh is the right city for them. Uh, and then you can kind of say, look at all these pretty houses for sale in Raleigh. And then naturally they find themselves looking at those pretty houses and signing up on your website. And that's typically the way we do it, is just reverse engineer, provide the value, and then capture.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

And by capture, you know, like I know our website, obviously, because we're doing paid, you know, someone comes to it, they look at a couple pictures, and bam, there's a box. What's your name, number, and email? And look, that's worked for us for a long time. We've made a lot of commissions with it. I know a lot of teams have, but um, I know you're the organic guy when it comes to lead generation. So, like, what does a lead submission for Raleigh Realty look like, you know, when they're on your website?

SPEAKER_00 13:46

We have all the options, and I think that it's very important uh for a user or a team leader or an agent or really anybody to make sure that they are very flexible with the options they have on their platform, because you know, like if somebody comes to my website via Google, just an organic user, I want them to just have the most incredible experience possible. So I don't even ask them for their information. And I try not to be annoying with my little buttons either. Um but if somebody's clicking on a paid advertisement, and again, I lean on you for a lot of this too, because you have way more knowledge and skills than I do, but I'm trying to take a page out of your book. So when people do come to my website for you know pay or other reasons, I want to know okay, what type of experience do I want to offer this person? But also so that I'm creating some sort of return on my investment because I just paid for the lead, right? I just paid for the click. What I've found so far is forcing it right away. Um, just to see the photos of the house is typically you know the best bet because they might just be coming for that one property, you never know.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

Right. Yeah, I mean we we have ours set you know really quick. You know, basically as soon as they pop on the site, they click the first slide to go to the next picture. Boom. Box. Now and and then we coach our agents like, hey, as soon as that lead comes in, call them. They're on the website. You know, they're on the website, they're looking. You catch them in the act basically when their interest is at the most high. You know, and we found that that's lead to the most conversion. Now I I think there is a skill set that allows people to call maybe later on. And I should probably preface that this is for buyer leads. Yeah. Seller leads, we've realized that if you call them right away, you scare them off. Right? I don't know why. Uh I don't know if it's the rationale of oh my gosh, I'm putting in my personal information and then someone's calling me right away. But we found out I let them sit for a day. Hey Ryan, I saw that you're looking for value of your house, you know, a day or two down the road. Are you thinking about selling it? You know, what's got you looking? And and and asking prompting questions to get to get responses has definitely been helpful for us.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

I think a lot of that, and this is just me totally guessing, has to do with emotion, right? Like selling your house is kind of an emotional experience if it's not like an investment property. If it's your actual home home, it's like, wait a second, I have all these memories, I have all my stuff. What am I gonna do next? Where am I gonna go? I'm a little scared. Why did I fill out that form? Even you know, expired, it's you know, it's like you call them right when their listing expires, yeah. I mean, they could be feeling really bad, or or they could be feeling like, hey, I just want to get it sold. You never know. So I wonder how much of that is tied back to emotion. That's a good that's a good tidbit, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

Yeah, that that's a good thought. You know, we were at a a a friend's birthday party last night, and the one of the people there, they they looked at my wife and we're like, Oh, yeah, we're we're pretty well neighbors, you know, you guys are across the street from our neighborhood. And um she basically kind of started talking, and you know, my wife goes, Well, what floor plan do you live in? And then and she tells her the floor plan, and she starts saying, Well, da da da, it's this and the upstairs, downstairs, and she goes, Well, how do you know that? And she goes, Well, we're realtors, and you know, her very next question was, Well, why do you need to use a realtor? Oh, right, uh, and super quick, yeah, it really was, but super quickly, uh, you know, we said, Well, in what aspect is it to sell or is it to buy? And she goes, Well, both. And I said, she goes, Well, I've sold on my own and I've bought on my own. And I said, Okay, let's talk about that. And you know, the first part talking about selling, I said, Do you feel like you got the most amount of money when you sold? And she goes, Well, no. And I said, Okay, I said, and when you bought your new home, because you know, yeah, there was an agent on site, but they didn't work for you. I said, Do you feel like you got the best deal? And she goes, Well, no. And I said, Okay, well, to answer your question, if you're a seller, you should use a realtor to to make the most amount of money, and if you're a buyer, you should use a realtor to get to get the best deal. And she goes, Right, oh my gosh, didn't even think about that.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

It's like, wow, those questions really hit home.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

Yeah, yeah. All right, so I know you're working on a super cool project, Agent Loft. Uh, if you kind of want to tell some of our listeners kind of what you're working on, and I'm gonna segue that to a next question, but uh take the floor.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

What is Agent Loft, Ryan? Cool, thanks for letting me chime in here. Uh Agent Loft is basically uh a platform that allows agents, realtors, teams uh to own their own traffic, to generate more commissions and to generate more leads. Um, really, what it's for is to kind of compete with the national portals. Uh Agent Loft gives those users your traffic, your clients, your leads, whatever, the type of user experience that's actually better than the portals, you know, based on my opinion anyway. But it gives them that hyper-local search functionality while still providing the speed and that user experience that portals use. Uh, it's also very much optimized for SEO for anybody who wants to create a strong foundation SEO-wise.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

Okay. So to kind of segue into my next question, you know, this is whether you're a single agent or maybe a small team that's growing, or you know, even thinking back you, maybe for starting, if you had a$3,000 a month budget that you could spend every month toward your business, how would you deploy that capital and how would you spend the money?

SPEAKER_00 19:49

Okay, so if I'm if I'm starting over and I have a$3,000 a month budget, I am absolutely investing in a website, you know, whether that's AgentLoft or another provider. Okay. The next thing I'm doing is I am going to find a way to create uh as much valuable content as I possibly can. Now I think with a$3,000 budget, I'm going to do the content myself. I might pay for somebody to do some some creative graphics for me. You know, maybe I'll go to uh Upwork or something and find a really inexpensive contractor. Um then I'm probably gonna spend uh a little bit of money on marketing, whether that's you know paid traffic or meta-ads or uh anything like that. Um and then I'm also gonna probably, you know, if I don't know anything about SEO, I probably would spend the money uh on SEO, because at the very least, if you do spend some money on SEO with somebody who knows what they're doing, you're at least gonna get an education on SEO so that you wouldn't have to spend the money anymore, and you could just do it yourself. So that's probably where I'm taking my 3,000, you know, just give it give it all to agent loft and just let them do their thing. Right, I love it.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

Um, so speaking of SEO, and look, I'm kind of asking this question for myself personally. Like I often tell agents if you're gonna be buying online leads, if you're spending on on my personal opinion, is Google's the the most highest intent. Um, I feel like Facebook is getting better. I mean, meta continues to invest a lot of money to continue to make their leads better, but I've always found that Facebook leads or Instagram leads tend to be not as high quality as a search lead, like um like Meta, or I'm sorry, like Google. Um, so I always tell agents at a minimum spend a thousand dollars a month on PPC. Yep. I tell them if they're spending less than that, they're realistically throwing their money away. Right. Um what is that bar, like that minimum entry to like really invest into SEO?

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Um see, this is where it gets a little if you know what you're doing and you want to do the work yourself. It's probably not worth investing much. If you don't know what you're doing, or or maybe you think you know what you're doing and you know enough to be dangerous, I would probably still invest if if you know somebody who really has already done it, somebody who knows what they're talking about. Um again, anybody who signs up with Agent Loft, I really just want to help them. So I'm willing to help in ways where uh you you wouldn't even have to pay a consulting fee or anything like that, because I will just give you all of my best tips and tricks. A lot of it comes out of the box with Agent Loft anyway, because we have stuff like dynamic page creation, and I won't I won't get into all the other SEO tricks that I have there, but um but yeah, there's a lot, a lot that already comes out of the box with Agent Loft. It's probably ten thousand dollars worth of SEO out of the box, if not more. Um but I would probably say that if if anybody was to come to me and say, hey, I want to invest in SEO, it would probably start around three, three thousand a month.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Okay. And with that three thousand that they're spending, how much of it is like page creation? I mean what what what's being spent with the three grand, I guess the best way to put it.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

Yeah, and and just just to be clear, I wouldn't be keeping the three thousand, right? I would be going ahead and and building out those resources where uh I would be paying, hey, let's get a professional logo. Let's get if it's a new website with no logo, we would be using resources to get that professional logo. We would be get we would be getting the the blog content generated, uh we would be getting the foundational pages, like the main city pages, built out in a way where uh you know internal linking is very strong, uh you know, the readability and the crawlability is very strong. If you have uh any YouTube videos, you know, like I think that would be great to put on those pages as well, because that's just extra authoritative content. Um but yeah, that's that's definitely where I would start, is just building out as much content as possible.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

Okay, okay. All right, I got some rapid fire questions for you, and we'll kind of wrap up this episode. But let's go. Um Best CRM. Uh that's follow-up boss. Follow up boss, I agree. Yep, yep. What is the number one daily metric to track uh in your business, in your opinion? Ooh, okay. I track organic clicks, that's my favorite. Okay, okay. And I know you mentioned a book already, but is there any other book that changed your life, whether as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, as a father, anything like that?

SPEAKER_00 24:32

So, you know, I I personally really enjoyed Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. Uh, you know, built buying assets instead of liabilities. I just think that that book has really helped me sort of sort of shift my mindset around um you know where I where I use my money uh to invest, you know, instead of you know saving it in my bank account, watching inflation just eat away at it, you know, why don't I put that money to work for me, whether it's investing in rental properties, stocks, in my own businesses. So um, you know, I I I definitely sit on enough cash where I'm gonna be fine, but I but I smart I'm very yeah, yeah, yeah, where I'm gonna be fine in the event that something bad happens. But but certainly, like for instance, my rental properties. I just pulled out you know a ton of money from all my rental properties so that I could go ahead and invest more money into building Agent Loft.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

Okay. Do you cash out ReFi? Yes, I did. Yep. Yep. We do a ton of those. Those are those are a great vehicle uh fun things. Great tax strategy. Yeah. All right. Well, Ryan, last question for you. Um, what what is a good five-year vision for Raleigh Realty?

SPEAKER_00 25:47

And agent loft as a whole for you. So, you know, it's funny because we we started this and and I was thinking, you know, the five, I already know the five year for Raleigh Realty, right? It's 2030 or you know, I guess 2031 now, but uh we want to be at a hundred agents doing a billion in volume. Um yeah, so that's what 10 10 million per agent. Um, you know, and we're already at 40 agents, right? So I'm you know, we're we're definitely hiring slow, because we only say yes to about 10, maybe five to ten percent of agents that interview with us. And um I'm starting to think that we may we may end up closer to 150 agents, 100 and maybe even 200 by by 2031. Uh and then in that case, obviously the the average per agent would be would be significantly lower. But we we still want to stick to that 10 million per agent for those who want to hit it. Uh, but then again, you know, it's like not every agent wants to hit 10 million per year. They some of them are very happy at four or five. So uh it's just all about you know hitting hitting the hitting the mark where we're growing, we're bringing in enough agents where we can keep the culture very tight, very aligned, uh, but also where our agents are just like, I love being here. You know what I mean? So that's that's really where we're headed. And uh for agent for Ageloft, hopefully I've sold it by then, man. Uh, you know, I I don't know what's gonna happen, but certainly uh, you know, five to ten years down the road, I think uh, you know, a thousand users, two thousand users, that would be that would be a lot of fun. That'd be incredible. That would be a lot of fun, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:21

It'd be a whole nother like full-time job.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

That's exactly what it's that's exactly what it is already. Get to hired Ryan. I know. I that's the other thing is I gotta build out some more leverage. So that's that's where we're headed next. Yeah, we got a couple people joining the agent loft team who are very, very good, excited about that.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

Awesome. Well, Ryan, I really appreciate having you on the show. Uh, for anybody interested to you know, either partner with you at Raleigh Realty or interested in Agent Loft, how could they contact you or your team to get started?

SPEAKER_00 27:52

Yeah, RaleighRealty.com, AgentLoft.com. Uh, you could probably find me on you know Facebook, Instagram, uh, or just ask Andrew. Awesome. We'll definitely send them your way. Well, again, thank you so much. Talk to you soon. Thanks, man.