Special Guest Brian Stevens
Tony Ray Baker:
Okay, so business cards. These are done by moo.com. Feel them, they’re thick. They’ve got rounded edges if you choose, and they’re MOO, M-O-O.com. MOO like a little cow sound. Exactly, perfect. Moo.com. Here’s why I love these.
I can print a hundred, and I didn’t do it on these, I can print a hundred of these cards with the same front, and I can have a hundred different photos on the back. So I would have 100 different cards. Wait, think about it. What can we do with that?
Speaker 2:
Advertise.
Tony Ray Baker:
Some really cool stuff. So if you buy a pack of 100, for example, and you have different photos, maybe you have different niches that you… Maybe you attend two different networking groups. One is wine drinkers and one is puppy lovers.
Wouldn’t you have a puppy picture on the back of this one, and a glass of wine on the back of this one? Well, let’s get even more creative and hopefully your juices will start rapid flowing around this one. Ready? When we didn’t have internet, I had to figure out viral without internet.
Somebody tell me what viral means.
Speaker 3:
Something that’s streaming frequently.
Tony Ray Baker:
Streaming frequently. It’s something that’s spread, right? Without you having to do it anymore. You do it once and it goes out. So we didn’t have… In the 90’s we didn’t have internet, right? So I had to figure out viral.
And viral made sense to me when the internet came around and Facebook went live and we had the power of 100 and viral. That all made complete sense to me. It was a no brainer because I had been doing it all my life.
Tony Ray Baker:
You take these little cards, you get a product called Listing Booster, which we’ll talk about in a little bit, and you build a website. Actually, you don’t build it, it does it automatically for you. The website is built for you on the new listing that you just took, and it gives you a URL address.
So you’re going to take these business cards and you’re going to put the URL address up there, and at the very top you’re going to write, “Now exclusively offered for $1.1 million dollars.” And here’s the URL address, you write it there. And then you put your information at the bottom. Tony Ray Baker, Tierra Antigua Realty, call me at this phone number. Right?
Tony Ray Baker:
On the back, I usually print four or five different cards with my favorite pictures of that house. So I have a million dollar listing and I print five of these, five cards, five photos on the back. One’s of the beautiful kitchen, one’s of the amazing view, one’s of the great room.
I pick the four or five photos that I think are the most interesting to people and then my information is the same on the front. I buy a pack of 50. Now, how do we make it go viral?
Speaker 4:
Throw them everywhere!
Tony Ray Baker:
I throw them everywhere, just like this. I actually go hire a seller and take them to the seller, the owner of the listing, and I hand them the pack. Mrs. Seller…
Speaker 5:
I love these pictures.
Tony Ray Baker:
I do too. They’re your house.
Speaker 5:
This is my house!
Tony Ray Baker:
You’ve done a fabulous job!
Speaker 5:
Wow! I’m going to pass it out to all of my friends and family and everybody else I know.
Tony Ray Baker:
You are. Because it’s her house. I just gave her, her house, her website in her hands. And I’m going to tell her… One of the things we know in Tucson especially, and I’m pretty sure it works in most cities, is that the buyer is typically less than six degrees of separation from her.
Usually a friend of a friend, or a friend knows who is buying that house. We’re all that connected. So when I tell that story to my seller and I explain to them it’s imperative that you get these out and give them to anybody you come across and tell them your house is for sale. What is the seller doing?
Speaker 6:
They’re advertising for you.
Tony Ray Baker:
And marketing me. I just went viral. Really super inexpensive. I don’t know what they cost, 30 bucks, something like that, for a pack of 50. Here’s the other cool thing. You only have to buy a pack of 50. Don’t have to buy a thousand cards. You buy just enough for your listing and you go give them to the seller and the seller helps you sell. Right?
Speaker 7:
What was the website, or the…?
Tony Ray Baker:
Moo.com. M-O-O, like a moo cow, like the sound a cow makes. And little baby moo cow will update you as your cards are being processed.
Speaker 8:
And you said they make a website for the actual listing?
Tony Ray Baker:
So, Listing Booster, a product we’re going to talk about in a little bit, actually makes a website for you, and I’m going to tell you about that in a little bit.
Tony Ray Baker:
Right now, because we have Brian here, I’m going to give Brian, I want you to get the gift of Brian. We met a year ago. Brian did not know when we met a year ago I had been watching Brian for the last ten years.
Brian’s show was really focused primarily for loan officers and lending, originally. And then Brian and Frank actually started adding more and more content that sucked me in, which was marketing and real estate.
The cool thing was, is I started to really understand lending more. And the more I started understanding lending, the better I became as a realtor to help my clients to make sure they understood what they needed to know about lending.
I’m not a loan officer, but now I know how to make sure they get the right experience. And I know how to plant seeds with them about lending to make sure they ask the right questions. So Brian’s show really was imperative.
Tony Ray Baker:
So Brian for me was, and is still today, my real estate celebrity idol. When he sent me a message that he was coming here for this class, it was not pretty around my house because I think probably Darren, who had to leave, was probably ready to kill me because it was like, “He’s coming to Tucson and he’s staying with us.”
I was like having a heart attack. Like literally yesterday, we kicked my mom out of her house, we remodeled it, put in new carpet for him to stay. Kind of, almost. We seriously did everything in two days to get a house ready for him and it was hysterical.
It was the house my mom was living in and she moved into a new home. But we literally moved her on Sunday and took out all the carpet and remodeled the house and got it all ready for him to come into the house. This is how excited we were.
Tony Ray Baker:
So with great respect and love, I bring you Brian Stevens, and he is going to talk to you right now about some video. And if you would, can you-
Brian Stevens:
I can do whatever you want.
Tony Ray Baker:
Talk about authenticity, because Brian is the master at authenticity, which is one of the reasons I was so attracted to your show. And I’m going to leave you with that.
Brian Stevens:
Authenticity. Well, I could buy a real estate contract for $1.25 down at Staples, fill it out, and it’s a binding contract.
Tony Ray Baker:
Yeah.
Brian Stevens:
I actually sold the house to my old broker and I live in Vacaville, California, that translates to [Calto 00:07:46] California. You know not everybody in California is Jeff Spicoli from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” it’s like we literally are in a small town but I sold my house to my then boss in the mid-90’s on a napkin and it was a binding contract and we never pulled anything else but that.
My point is this. It’s not to diminish what a real estate agent does out there. On the contrary I think that you guys are more important in the whole process now more than ever but the only commodity that you have, not your biggest commodity, not your best commodity, but your only commodity is you.
Brian Stevens:
It’s the same thing for lenders. I mean, you guys all get lenders are all hitting you up for your business all the time, don’t you? I can do everything, I’m a great communicator, I’ve got Eddie, Freddie, Jenny, I’m a direct [inaudible 00:08:28] lender.
What the hell does that mean and who cares? Right? Everyone’s selling the same product for the same price and promising the same things if you’re selling real estate or lending.
Brian Stevens:
You’re only commodity is you. That’s it. It begins and ends with you. Now one of the things that me and Tony [inaudible 00:08:45] is we like to pile on Zillow and stuff like that. I’m very proud to say my little silly blog that I started a couple years ago, 10 years ago, I have over 200 million views on it.
I testified before Congress. I get asked to speak on all the national news programs as a real estate living expert and I just laugh my ass off. I’m like if you’re coming to me, this industry is screwed. [crosstalk 00:09:13] Absolutely do it.
Brian Stevens:
But me and Tony will rail on a lot of the people that you simply cannot compete against. You can’t compete against Zillow. You can’t do it. They’re buying and selling houses. They are in Phoenix. They’re opening up markets. You can’t do it.
They’ve got more money than you, they’ve got more reach than you. They have got more money than every real estate firm in the country combined. They’ve got better technology than you will ever have. You will never compete with them.
This scares the hell out of people. It’s the same thing with Rocket Mortgage. I talk to lenders all the time. They’re losing their mind on Rocket Mortgage and then you get groups like [inaudible 00:09:54]. They’re gonna get better technology and you’ll never get better technology than Quicken.
Brian Stevens:
It won’t happen. They’ve got more money than you. I remember before, Dan Gilbert invited me out to Michigan to go talk with him about six months before they lost [inaudible 00:10:08] and I said, “Oh, you’re trying to take over the loan officer job,” and he sat there and laughed.
I knew for a fact that he’s got 50 million bucks in the programming on that thing. It’s nuts. Nobody will ever compete against it. I’m being a pretty ugly pitcher, huh?
Brian Stevens:
Here’s the cool thing. If you see your job and your existence as an opportunity and you want to preserve it, you need to have that fight on your terms, not on their terms. You need to have it on your terms and that’s what I love about Tony Ray.
Tony Ray, I just started listening and taking notes about everything you said. I’ve got a whole bunch of great content to bring back to my people but it’s all about kind of what you do and your life and the first thing that Tony Ray does when he brings me down yesterday, he says, “Hey let’s go up this hill and look at the city.
I like to take my clients up here and I like to show them the overview, the physical, the manifestations of Tucson, Arizona. I like to show it to them and show them the different areas as I’m doing for you right now because then we can kind of target the areas that they want to live and we will take them on a tour.”
Brian Stevens:
I said, “So you’re only selling an experience.” That was my exact word to you. “You’re selling me an experience here.” What a great idea. Where’d we go to dinner last night?
Tony Ray Baker:
Senae Thai.
Brian Stevens:
Senae Thai. What’s her name?
Tony Ray Baker:
Dee.
Brian Stevens:
Dee. Silver hair, beautiful hair.
Tony Ray Baker:
Yes.
Brian Stevens:
You said she’s got a great, what’d you say?
Tony Ray Baker:
Beautiful energy.
Brian Stevens:
Beautiful energy. You go in there a lot, right?
Tony Ray Baker:
As much as I can.
Brian Stevens:
She knows you.
Tony Ray Baker:
Yeah.
Brian Stevens:
You know what’s kind of funny? We go in there. She comes over, she gives Tony a hug, and then she goes back and she cooks the food. She’s got a restaurant in San Francisco too.
Tony Ray Baker:
Yes.
Brian Stevens:
She’s quite accomplished. You know a lot about that place.
Speaker 2:
[crosstalk 00:11:52]
Brian Stevens:
Oh all of you guys know her? You want to know something? Zillow will never know that. Zillow doesn’t know that owner. Zillow’s not gonna take me to that hilltop and show me the town. Zillow aint gonna do any of that.
See, as far as I can tell you all have the same problem. You need to close one or two more transactions per month. That’s pretty much it. Theoretically you could talk to three people if you convert two every month to say yes and buy what you’re selling.
In our case that’s money and houses, then you’re going to win. Is that fair? If you added 24 transactions to what you’re doing, would that solve all the problems you have in real estate?
Considering your average real estate agent is closing under one side of one transaction every single quarter. Hell that would be a three to 400 percent increase in income for a lot of you.
Brian Stevens:
It’s really not much of a problem. You only need two people per month and this industry is just shoving all of this automation and macro down your throat. You gotta have bigger lists, you gotta get a billion views. No you don’t.
You need to slow down and get to know the people who’s business you covet and you need to let them get to know you because people buy from who they know they can trust and we all know that. So I go to my original point.
Not only is your best commodity you, your only commodity is you and here’s the cool thing about people. They’re actually kind of cool, you know?
Brian Stevens:
They’re really kind of interesting. If you sit down and talk to anybody, you’re gonna find they’ve got an interesting story but it requires you actually sit down and listen doesn’t it? And to ask those questions. Nobody likes to be sold but everyone likes to buy.
So we have to get to know people don’t we? I’m gonna tell you a little funny story and I don’t know what direction I’m gonna go in the next 15 or 20 minutes. We’ll talk about some videos and what you guys could do.
I have a very interesting story about my friend Linda Hall. She lives up in Phoenix. The busy city that never ends up the road from you guys.
Brian Stevens:
I went there and she took me to a coffee shop in the morning, kind of very similar … Not far off, Tony Ray takes me to a breakfast place, once again he knows everybody over there. You guys all have, you have spheres of influence don’t you?
You all have places and stuff that you do but anyways Linda Hall takes me to this coffee shop and we go there and she says, “Oh you gotta try these donuts.” I’m like, “I don’t want donuts.” She’s like, “You gotta try the donuts, you gotta try the donuts.”
Whatever, I’m just along for the ride. Okay.
Brian Stevens:
I go in there. There’s this 60 year old dude just strapping, way more handsome than I. He’s holder than me, he’s in better shape. I’m like I hate you. I walk in here and this big strapping older man goes, “Oh, I know you,” and I said, “Shit he knows me.
That’s kind of weird.” Linda’s convinced me I have to go try these donuts, she’s becoming an advocate for his business. Registers to me he did something to get her to tell me to eat them donuts. You need people to tell their people to buy houses from you.
It’s the same thing. One sells different things.
Brian Stevens:
Here’s the deal. These donuts, you go in there and he bought a little kiosk. He doesn’t even own the coffee place and these donuts they’re all drop out and the dough things and they flip over and they put them in the grease and they flip over and the drop out the other side. He made 1,500 little mini donuts an hour.
Then he puts the sugar or the chocolate or whatever you want. I was looking to buy some donuts. Great, fantastic. Even for that rare occasion where I want to have a stomach ache for the next three hours and I’m eating a bunch of deep fried dough with sugar on it, perfect.
Brian Stevens:
But anyways, it was fun. Linda Hall tells me, I’ve known Linda for 20 years. She’s like my sister. She goes, “Hey Brian. That guy there? He used to play for the Washington Redskins.” I said oh, that’s neat.
She goes, “He only played one game and he hurt his back.” That’s kind of a bummer. That’s a lot of discipline to get to that point and play one game. Can you imagine how horrible that would be? She goes, “Well it worked out really well for this guy ’cause people like to golf love me,” but apparently in Scottsdale there’s a lot of people that like to golf there.
Very peculiar for me from California seeing all of this green grass in the middle of the desert. I’m like don’t people know it doesn’t want to grow here. You’ve got more golf courses than anybody but in Scottsdale [inaudible 00:16:09] as a golf pro in one of these places, right?
He sits around and golfs all day. There’s a whole bunch of guys and gals in here who think that’d be their dream job.
Brian Stevens:
Linda tells me, she goes, “Oh yeah, he was a golfer over at such and such place. He made 350,000 bucks a year for 10 years and quit.” How did she know he made $350,000 a year? I know the guy back there knows.
Did his loans for the past 10 years, she’s seen his tax, his W2’s. Guy made 350,000 net and quit playing golf. Big ole’ handsome fella. Why the hell did you do that? You won the lottery with your job. You’re the envy of every other dude and lady. You golf all day.
You’re in the golf capital of the country. Why the hell would he quit? It was so funny. Linda told me, she goes, “Oh he said he couldn’t spend another day of his life dealing with rich people problems.”
Brian Stevens:
Isn’t that a part of everybody in here that just says, “Good for you, stupid move, but good for you for following your convictions in life.” Isn’t that great? He said, “I would rather talk to somebody about burning their lip on a hot donut than listen to some jackass talk about not having his Bentley and having to get a rental Mercedes for another week.”
It’s so terrible, I don’t have my Bentley anymore. [inaudible 00:17:28] And he quit. He quit.
Brian Stevens:
I said, “Linda this guy, all right he’s handsome. He’s totally engaging. He’s got an interesting back story. You know the guy. He’s got a sphere of influence of people where you do mortgages and sell houses. Why don’t you interview that guy?
Why don’t you sit down and talk with him? You know him, you know everything about him. You told me everything about him on the way over here. Why don’t you sit down and interview that guy?” Wouldn’t you love to hear that interview? I would.
I think it’d be super cool.
Brian Stevens:
Well here’s the deal. If she were to, I’m gonna make you all social media experts right now. Push one button, just go live. Done. Forget it, don’t listen to algorithms and all that other crap. Just push one button and go live.
Facebook’s gonna put you in front of 100 tons of people. That’s what they’re gonna do, you’re done. Go live, that’s all you need to do. What is your content? Witness content. Why don’t you interview this guy?
Why don’t you interview him about talking about donuts and his back story and how he got to this point? Other small business owners, the people in your database, not only past clients but your existing clients and even your future clients, are gonna find that interesting if only you had a way to convert them.
This guy’s got a built in story of entry. There’s your content.
Brian Stevens:
Here’s the real takeaway people. Who’s his sphere of influence? All them other suckers he got sick of listening to their problems about over at that country club who thought he walked on water ’cause he was an in-house golf pro.
All those people, his last decade he had building a database of people that are perfect for you. People with money, isn’t that nice for a change to have someone who has a 20% down payment?
Wouldn’t that be great? [inaudible 00:19:15] wouldn’t it be great to have someone with 20% down and 780 credit score every now and then? “Gee you’re back end ratio is 23, you got a 780 credit score. Yeah we can do this one.
Oh you have 30 day escrow too? Are you kidding me?” I can knock these things down all day long. He’s been building her database.
Brian Stevens:
Now if he does an interview with her, and she just asks her friend about how he got where he is in life, she is affecting her past clients, she’s affecting her existing clients, she’s affecting her future clients, but she is also taking on somebody else’s database.
I’ll tell you a good marketer markets their own database, a great marketer markets to other people’s databases. Who here talks about dogs? The dog person. Who here’s a dog person? My dog is my dog, I love my dog. Spoiled rotten but my dog is my dog.
He sleeps on my bed. My 11 year old daughter tells me everyday how she loves the dog more than she loves anybody else. I get it, my dog is [inaudible 00:20:10]. There are dog nuts out there, nuts. Have you ever seen real estate agents with a picture of arm around their dog on their business card?
Who’s got a picture of their dog on their business card? A professional picture? It’s always a lab or golden retriever, nobody’s got a pit bull cropped ear [inaudible 00:20:27].
Brian Stevens:
There’s dog nuts here, so let’s talk about [inaudible 00:20:35] video here. This is cool. Really? I have one guy in St. Louis, he told me, he goes, “Oh yeah, I raise Russian terriers.” Russian terriers? What’s a Russian terrier?
The dogs that are so huge it’s like genetically created during the height of the Cold War when Drago was fighting Rocky in 1987. These huge dogs with Kevlar vests on. [inaudible 00:20:58] he’s a real estate agent. I want one of these for my daughter.
My daughter likes to go running. I’d like to see someone try to kidnap her. Get some popcorn, this is gonna be great.
Brian Stevens:
There are dog park people out there. Let’s think, by the way, how many dog parks are in Tucson, Arizona? 24, I looked it up. Real easy when I was sitting here. 24 dog parks in Tucson, Arizona.
There will be a 25th because all you people are dog crazy. Let’s say you’re at a dog park, you decide to shoot a video and you’re gonna post it on Facebook because the only thing you need to do is press one button. One button, go live. You’re ready, you’re going.
You’ll be in front of 1,000 people. If you’re gonna do a video and say something like, “Hey this is Brian Stevens over here at ABC Real Estate and I’m in Tucson, Arizona. I don’t know if you know about this but they just opened up a new dog park and it’s located over here on [inaudible 00:21:54] and it’s open from sun up to sun down.
The weather is fabulous and I’m gonna be out here this week to walk my dogs. If you don’t want to watch 15 hours of reruns on A&E on Saturday, get up and see some sunshine, check me out at the dog park.”
Brian Stevens:
What a great little lesson. Oh shoot, forgot my call to action. Then you want to say, “And of course I do real estate here for 20 years in Tucson, Arizona. You want a great negotiator if you’re buying or selling, and I’m you’re guy.”
Not like that but you get the idea. I’m that guy, right? Now you send this out to your sphere of influence. Okay this table is your sphere of influence. It could be 10 people, let’s just say times a thousand [inaudible 00:22:34].
All right, so how many people are dog nuts here? One, two. How many people raise your hand no matter what? [inaudible 00:22:44] never mind. How many dog nuts? Okay, we got one, two, three, four, five. That’s all right, okay.
The other people, they probably have dogs but kind of like me I’m more worried about my 11 year old daughter these days than the dog. The dog is too more worried about her than me because he sleeps under her bed.
He will not come around me when she decides to go in her room, which is great.
Brian Stevens:
Okay so we’ve got five dog nuts here. Now, you just talked about this new dog park because this is what you like and people default to what they like to do … People default to what they like and like to do so your marketing, here’s the trick, it needs to be stuff you like.
Okay, now five people are gonna look at your video in your database. They’re not going to be offended by it, you know? They’re not gonna be looking at it like build the wall, build the wall. [crosstalk 00:23:26] You got a dog park, it’s got a wall around it.
[crosstalk 00:23:36] We have five people over here, who are cool with the message and you have your call to action. All you care about is your call to action because now you’re a database marketer and let’s talk about leverage ratios.
You want to call people all day long? Horrible. Horrible, horrible, horrible. Good, but not fun.
Brian Stevens:
Now you just cloned your message and sent it to 200 people. It took 15 minutes to do, awesome. Great use of your time by the way, high five. Now five people, they’ve got your call to action. That’s cool.
The other five people, two or three of them, are real dog nuts and they’re gonna send it to their sphere of influence over here but here’s the cool thing. You’re a dog nut and you have a higher concentration of dog nut friends. Now you’re saying, “Hey they got this new dog park over here.
Check out the video. This is our neighborhood. We see things that are very familiar to you.” Now I’ve got a bunch of people. Here’s the cool part, you guys [inaudible 00:24:28] does not know who the person who sent the Trojan horse over to you. You don’t know this person, right, because now you’re two databases in.
Brian Stevens:
You’re talking about dogs but really all you want to talk about is what you do for a living. It’s quite self serving. There’s nothing wrong with that. Great content but very self serving.
All of a sudden you like it and all of a sudden two or three of you share it and now you guys are over here, the next thing you know that little video has gotten legs that will go on forever. Forever and ever. Now we can be six, seven, eight, nine, 10 databases in.
Forget about the dog park, this person just heard that you’re the best real estate agent in Tucson, you’ve been here for 20 years, you’re a great negotiator and to contact you. Forget about the dog park.
Brian Stevens:
You are a database behind a database behind a database behind a database behind a database behind a database. God knows how many people of influence, I’ll tell you this.
When I started shooting my show 10 years ago was when the housing market really went bad and me and my business partner Frank Garay, we were just two dudes struggling with the same stuff you guys were. How do I make my house payment?
Here’s a little sales version, go get them. We get on this thing called YouTube that nobody had ever heard of, right? Have you seen this video thing? Can we shoot on them? Sure can, let’s do it.
We send it out to 15 real estate agents to try to stay in front of them and a month later we had 1,000 people watching everyday. We said, “How does that happen?” Tony Ray just explained it to me, you see.
I now know what a virus is, I think I caught one a couple days ago. You can hear it in my voice.
Brian Stevens:
I’m serious. So now 10 years later, we’re 200 million views in. Now not every lender watches my video in this country but I promise you there’s a lender in every office in every state in this country who watches my video. Little old fact. Isn’t that an odd thing?
I haven’t spent one dime on marketing, not one. This is what I do. I talk about dog parks and I let everybody else share my message. My dog park is mortgage and real estate industry and sales but I talk about the world through my eyes.
That is essentially all you do. Now what can we talk about? Tony Ray can talk about that fabulous restaurant we went to last night.
Brian Stevens:
Okay just if you want to, you don’t have to, but I have a whole set of slides on a Google Doc cloud flyer based PPT. What does that mean? I have all these different fabulous flyers that you guys can customize that are [inaudible 00:27:04].
I’ll send that to you for free. It’s cloud based, I’ll send you guys an email. You’ll get 5,000 different flyers that you can go ahead and customize with a couple clicks. Do me a favor, text ‘books’ … Get out your phone and text ‘books’ to 33655.
The other thing that I decided to do this year is I’ve never read a sales book so I figured I’m gonna read all the good sales books. I formed a book club around real estate agents and lenders and we all video chat with each other and we’re gonna take and read 20 books for 2019.
20 of the best sales books [inaudible 00:27:35] of how this affects your business.
Brian Stevens:
Every week we get together on a private Facebook page and we do a Zoom video chat and we go talk about books and [inaudible 00:27:44] build your business, don’t worry. You’re going to have read more books. If you want to, it’s free of charge.
All you have to do is text ‘books’ to 33655. Now let me ask you, who here is not going to text that? I promise you I’m not going to say anything, I’m not going to point you out, I’m not going to ridicule you too bad.
How many people are not gonna text it and it’s okay, I’m totally fine. How many people are still not gonna do it? There’s somebody in here, come on. I know there’s somebody in here. I’ve never had 100% conversion. Who won’t, okay one person won’t do it.
All right, that’s fair. Who won’t do it? I got one, I got two.
Speaker 4:
How many other texts am I gonna get?
Brian Stevens:
Huh?
Speaker 4:
How many other texts am I gonna get?
Brian Stevens:
Oh that’s so funny, we got two people. How many people, I’m not going to spam you by the way. How many people? Okay, I’m not going to spam you but I could because what I just did if you texted that, I just captured your phone numbers.
I have a text code assigned to it, it’s ‘books’, a date and time stamp. I know where I am, I know who you are. I’m gonna put you on funnels, I’m going to put you on drip campaigns, and I’m going to clog up your email like nobody’s business. I am going to join the ranks of Norwegian Cruises on your email.
[inaudible 00:28:56] Diet plans, I’m going to [inaudible 00:28:58] you. I can also spam you on your phone. I can do this until you buy what I’m selling you or you turn me in. I’m not gonna do that but you could do that.
Now here’s the deal, everybody knows how to text don’t they?
Brian Stevens:
Here’s what the market is doing by the way, here’s my official market forecast. This is what I tell lenders too. When I go to speak to lenders I promise, here’s what’s happening with mortgage rates. Here’s [inaudible 00:29:21] stuff like that. Can we move on?
This is boring, it doesn’t affect us. I don’t even know, this is exciting. Hold on. Oh okay, I promise we’re gonna talk about exactly what you want to talk about. You want me to talk about but I want you here first. How much time do I have?
I’ll get off as soon as you say so … Just go get the hook and just drive me out [inaudible 00:29:55].
Tony Ray Baker:
Go for five more minutes and then I’ll wrap up the seller side.
Brian Stevens:
Okay, so the video is what you need to shoot. You don’t need to shoot a video people, you need to shoot videos. What you even talk about, look at your sphere of influence. Look at your ecosystem.
Go find your Linda Hall golf pro. Your Thai restaurant. Go to the breakfast place. Go to where you take your kids horseback riding, your dog parks. Find your people who do this stuff because everybody has a sphere of influence and you want to attack their database in a way that’s mutually beneficial.
You want to build an audience by doing this. Why are we simply building an audience if you don’t want to do something? That’s it. If you distill it down to it’s most concentrated form, it is get an audience just like you and compel them to do something.
Last I checked I got 99.9% of you to do what I wanted you to do and if I chose to, I could market you to death.
Brian Stevens:
Now we want to be responsible with our marketing but I knew I would get this response from you because I was up here in a position of authority, okay, and then I offered you something free of charge that I think is going to be of interest to most sales people and I knew I’d get a high buy-in because I thought this thing through.
Now all I did was tell you something. What if we could take the video that you’re going to shoot for when you have your text code over to this and talking to your Italian restaurant folks or your donut guy, have a conversation with him, Facebook will five you the audience, you need to have a way and a short code to capture that person’s information.
Brian Stevens:
I’ll tell this to you real quick. Let’s say [inaudible 00:31:21]. Not done here though. She’s really great, she’s a fantastic lender. This is her first video she ever did. I did an interview and we talked about boring stuff.
Real estate, real estate, boring, boring, boring, boring. Here are the pros of buying a house and getting refinanced. Do people really care about resell? Honestly. Boring, boring, boring, boring and then we produced a Facebook live and added a text code and I created one I called reveal.
My reveal is if you want my top home buying kit, text MONICA to 32655 and when you do that you’re gonna get something and you do.
Brian Stevens:
Now this is going on Facebook live. Remember I told you Facebook is going to build your audience for you if you go live. They won’t if you don’t. So in your [inaudible 00:32:05] you got 1.1 thousand views, pretty cool. I thought so. You converted about, oh here’s one.
The Seahawks are 734. That says April 9th at 2:11. Later on in the day it went up to 1.1 thousand views. It just keeps working for you. You’re cloning yourself. You’re working on your leverage ratios. What did she convert at? Here’s what she converted.
She converted, 93 people did that. 93 people wanted her top five home buying tips. Wouldn’t that be 95 great people for you guys to talk to? People who are tuning into real estate stuff and want to find out what your top home buying tips are. It’d be a pretty cool thing.
Brian Stevens:
Here’s a second video. [inaudible 00:32:44] News and notes, we got this thing going on over here. I was actually flying down to Phoenix, Arizona and I had this three hours later. Here’s a screenshot of our phone.
Someone I went to high school with watched and reached out on the videos and I said from the video she said yes I said [inaudible 00:33:04] we’re seeing how effective this would be. So how important is it for you to establish and really build your own identity and share with those people?
It’s not only a good thing to do, it’s the only thing to do particularly for what the market calls for right now when you’re looking at the mega automation machines and companies that are out there right now.
Brian Stevens:
As I told you you have a micro problem. You’re being sold a macro solution to your micro problem. Fight it on your terms. Leverage what you have. Your sphere of influence, share it. Go live on video. Get yourself a text code.
This is all easy to do and really if you think about this, let’s stop for a second. The only thing I’ve asked you to do is find the things that you like most in life that really reflect who you are and the people who inspire you the most that you run into from whatever it may be and have a conversation with them.
That’s not so hard. That’s not hard at all. It’s the most effective thing that you’ll do that you can do.
Brian Stevens:
Anyways if you did text that you can get my book club. I will send you those flyers and I have a presentation that better explains the stuff when we have more time and I’ll make sure to send that over to Tony Ray and you guys.
That’s it for the few of you who’ve seen my show before. Super awesome, totally appreciate it. For those of you who don’t it’s nationalrealestatepost.com. It’s everyday and if anyone has any questions afterwards, I’m gonna be having around until tomorrow morning.
Thanks for your time, I appreciate it.
Tony Ray Baker:
Thanks B.
Brian Stevens:
Thank you.
Tony Ray Baker:
Awesome stuff, eh? Okay so I get 20 minutes to run through what we can do with sellers and how to use listings effectively. I promised you, you asked about the website because we’re talking about the Moo business cards.
The website, the company is called Listing Booster. Listing Booster, can you explain this to me? Is it your invention?
Brian Stevens:
Yeah, so Listing Booster is a product that was designed for real estate agents and lenders. We have a relationship with 800 multiple listing systems around the country, including all the ones in Arizona, and we have direct feeds from Real Team and a number of the big players out there and we have automation capabilities.
We do what a lot of people already do, we create single property websites, virtual tours, videos, short term [inaudible 00:35:47] properties. All the stuff that you expect.
What we do differently is we put a [inaudible 00:35:52] on every company in the country. We do 1.8 million [inaudible 00:35:55] every single day. We sweep 800 MLS’ on the hour every hour but the most important thing that we do is we take your listings and we put this thing called Recapture on it.
When you’re posting with Listing Booster on your wall and somebody says, “That’s a great house, I want to look at it,” and then they look at your listing and then they never call you because they don’t want to talk.
Brian Stevens:
Then somebody else is marketing and scares them, all the stuff that Tony Ray talked about. On Listing Booster it’ll gray out your single property website and say, “If you’d like to see this house, you have to log in through Facebook or give us your email.”
We won’t even show them your listing until we capture that [inaudible 00:36:31]. What we discovered frankly through the filtering process because [inaudible 00:36:38] lead gen, by capturing people interesting in the listings that you have in your local market absolutely just crazy.
Crazy. We lead generate hundreds if not thousands of leads on listings over the course of a week [inaudible 00:36:51] real estate agents.
Brian Stevens:
How do we capture? There’s a huge, huge benefit because now somebody just looked at your property, they’re gonna look and give you their information and that allows you to hunt them down so you can sell your listing for top dollar as quick as possible.
Tony Ray Baker:
Done. You get all that? Let me tell you the other side of it. Listing Booster is my always, it’s the thing that I do differently that gets me the listing against anybody else.
There’s two things that come with Listing Booster that changes my listing presentation and that is that I get to tell the client I’m gonna make a virtual tour for them and I’m gonna give them their own URL and I’m gonna build a website for them and I’m going to follow up with lead capture, people that could be interested that aren’t getting the attention they need and I’m going to present that to the client and are you?
Tony Ray Baker:
I just went up, there’s a little house on Swan Road for half a million dollars. Six interviewed agents, all of them in the top 100. All five brought in a book and they all put a book down and they all had a beautiful presentation of everything about them and their company.
That’s what they did. I walked in and this house had been on the market for six months and the house did not get but two showings in six months for $500,000 and they asked the owners, their last agent, asked the owner to drop the price to 475 and they did and they did not sell the house or get any more showings.
Tony Ray Baker:
Five books are on the counter when I walk in. I’m the sixth agent in and I took a piece of paper on a pad and I said, “Let’s talk.” He said, “Well where’s your presentation book?” I said, “I don’t do presentation books.” He said, “Why not?” I said, “That’s not about you, that’s about them.
We need to figure out what’s going on and if I can even help you because I don’t know if that’s the case. We might have a problem here that I can’t fix. So let’s figure out what’s going on and then we’ll fix it.”
We sat and we talked and I interviewed him and we wrote a lot of stuff down and when I was done, he said, “Will you tell me how you market?” And I said, “Not today. We’ll do that a different time.” I said, “You’ve got their books, I’m sure you know how they market but I need to put a plan together for you that’s specific to your house.
Let’s meet up and I’ll go over it with you and I’ll show you what we’re going to do.”
Tony Ray Baker:
I went back and I looked at the property and I raised the price up from 475 back to $500,000 and I gave them a presentation on a computer and what I showed them was a Listing Booster website that I did for another property and I showed them the colored flyers that come with the product and I showed them the text and the call capture and all the things I was going to do for them that was different from the stuff they already heard but I also told them, “I’m not running magazine ads, I’m not running anything paper because that’s traditional and that’s not where the buyer is.”
The other ones had promised them other media which was paper.
Tony Ray Baker:
They looked at me and they said, “No one’s even talked to us about this stuff,” and they said, “You are our agent.” We listed the property. I had them do their homework. We staged the house. We got a good photographer. Listed the property, raised the price.
We had 15 showings the first weekend and four offers. Different, right? Thank you. There’s two components to this is one, because I have Listing Booster I also have a product called Key Boom and Key Boom puts the listing with Listing Booster up on television.
Has anybody got a new TV? My whole system just went down, it was just joyous, so I had to go … have you had to go buy one lately? Oh. So I had to go to three stores to figure out how to hook up this to that to that and what goes together. I ended up buying some new fancy television QLED. Does that sound right? 4K. Four billion dollars, that’s all I know.
Tony Ray Baker:
I got the TV home and right on the TV is all those cute little apps and it says Key Boom right on my TV screen. I click on Key Boom and all my listings are right on top, right in front of the world. You just click on Tucson, Arizona and all these listings are there.
I have Listing Booster, I’m on Key Boom. Guess who the featured listing is? That’s a 1.1 million dollar property that I have listed in Sin Vacas. Shows up number one on Key Boom as featured ’cause I’m with Listing Booster.
Tony Ray Baker:
The product now becomes more for my seller when I’m telling them what I do for them. I have a two page list of everything I’m going to do for them when we market their home. I tell them this is my guarantee.
Susie, I’m gonna do every item on this list for you and I’m also gonna do what I call guerrilla marketing. As we work together, I’m gonna find new avenues and niches that we’re gonna go after. Where do you work? Raytheon. Do you have break rooms?
Awesome, let’s talk about that. I’m gonna change their marketing but I do guarantee this list and when they see that I’m putting them on TV and I’m building a website and I hand them a business card with a URL for them to share with their friends, it’s the difference between me and the other realtor, right?
Tony Ray Baker:
My marketing is strong and then the other difference is that I sit down with them and I actually listen and what did we talk about before? They don’t care what you know until they know you care.
So I don’t tell them what I know ever until we get to that point and that point for me is when we get into what I call the red. If I’m having a conversation with you and we start breaking down the FORD sample there, we get going and then you start talking to me about pain.
You start talking to me about goals, dreams, issues that are emotional, I’m going in the red with her. When she breaks down and she gets to that point that she’s willing to go in the red with me, I’m getting her trust. I’m the one she’s gonna remember because we have a connection.
This is the same thing that I’m asking you to do with all your COI. You’re going to treat your seller the exact same way. We treat them with the respect that they are our best friend
Tony Ray Baker:
I have had people in front of me. We’ve gone into the red and I’ve had very emotional situations where we have people break down crying because we dug deep to find out what’s going on.
At that point I am better to serve them than anyone because know how to, right? That’s where Brian was talking about is we’ve gotta get back to this connection with people because when we give them that reverence that we sit down with them and we actually care enough to stop presenting all the crap we think they should know and ask them what we need to know, that’s different.
That’s a different seller, a different selling presentation. It’s not what’s happening out there and Brian always talks about when everybody goes to this right, you all go left and I hope you’ll start watching his show because you’re gonna see really fun stuff that he talks about daily about this stuff.
Tony Ray Baker:
For sellers it’s imperative to have this information on how you’re going to help them because when you present that in a list and you’ve shown them your marketing and you’ve shown them they care, I guarantee you you’re going to start winning more listings and the other realtor that you went up against will have no idea why. None.
Tony Ray Baker:
On the seller side I gave you an idea, which is the business cards, right? Then we have Listing Booster. Now Listing Booster, Brian am I right that they would talk to a loan officer?
Brian Stevens:
Yeah.
Tony Ray Baker:
Tom Heath, do you have Listing Booster product?
Tom Heath:
Here’s the thing. We had it, got rid of it. We’re getting it back because we were sold something that is not even close to [inaudible 00:45:18]. We thought it was gonna be better and we’re going back-
Tony Ray Baker:
So he tried a different product after Listing Booster and now he’s back to it and these two don’t know this. He doesn’t know this … Okay, you will call Tom and talk to him here. RESPA has a situation where you can’t pay more than he does for anything so Listing Booster has it set up so they share?
Brian Stevens:
Can I recommend, can I make it easy for everybody here?
Tony Ray Baker:
Yeah.
Brian Stevens:
It cost a real estate agent 80 cents a month. It’s like 10 bucks a year, so it’s nothing and it’s by design. I poke fun at the CFED quite a bit so we are very concerned about our position on compliance because they send us nasty letters so I kind of figured that they would want to come after our product.
We’re very, very concerned about compliance. We take a very compliant approach. We don’t break rules, we don’t bend rules. Now, if you’d like to be on Listing Booster count because we have to get it set up first, if you did text ‘books’ to 33655, if you do text that right now.
Don’t worry about the landing page what you’re looking at, but what I’ll do is that’ll allow me to capture everybody’s phone number here and then I will get you guys sent over invitations so we can get you guys all uploaded to the account.
We’ll just stack the account with everybody in this room and then what we can do is put together a presentation to show you how to use it more effectively.
Brian Stevens:
Instead of gathering cards and making [inaudible 00:46:52], we’ll just centralize everybody’s numbers and in one fell swoop jump you guys in the account so we can get you guys up and running next week.
Tony Ray Baker:
Wait, what I just heard is Brian’s coming back. This is awesome. What I’m hearing is we can do a class to help them understand this product. You guys can help, we’ll train them, and then you guys can understand all about how to take listings and create more business. That’s a whole nother class.
Brian Stevens:
Oh totally.
Tony Ray Baker:
That’ll be great.
Brian Stevens:
If we could do it two ways if you want to. We can certainly figure out how to get back here and do a deep dive class.
Tony Ray Baker:
Yeah.
Brian Stevens:
Because of time and we want to get this up and running sooner than later, I can send out a Zoom link to everybody here. We could do a video chat with screen sharing, with [inaudible 00:47:37]. Between Tony Ray and myself and all of us, we have enough support to make sure we get you guys all up and running.
Tony Ray Baker:
Okay, everybody, that’s awesome right? It’s beautiful. We’ll become part of Zoom world and Tom and Bryan will chat about this and make this happen for anybody that wants to get involved.
The other thing about having the Key Boom account I believe plus the Listing Booster, they both come together when you’re in Listing Booster. You get a flyer program on each, right? It’s different on each ’cause I remember-
Brian Stevens:
It is.
Tony Ray Baker:
I could never make up my mind. You get colored flyers already done. That’s another component. So if you have a seller in the home that can feed the flyer box ’cause we don’t go do that anymore, we have them do it, that you would be able to create the flyers for them.
You’ve already got full colored flyers ready to go. That’s another component of your offer to that seller. Does that make sense? Now you get to use your Moo cards and now you get to, I don’t want to go over your head too far on this but everybody understand what a Facebook audience is?
Anybody, who does know a Facebook audience? Okay, I got a couple of you. Basically a Facebook audience is this. I can go right now and I can get in front of my audience, which is my 100 people plus their 100, 100. That’s my audience. My tribe is on Facebook, right? Yours is on yours.
Tony Ray Baker:
I could also create an audience that says I want people who are interested in Tucson, Arizona that are also interested in real estate and they have … Well they don’t do that anymore. That you can, between the ages of 25 and 90.
I can make an audience and I can tell Facebook to send, I’ll give them five bucks if you send my little post into that audience, okay? Now with lead capture, every single email and lead that comes in, who likes to cold call them?
Okay, you don’t have to if you don’t want to. You should email, call them, something and make sure they don’t want help but the reality is I can now take all of that information coming in, I hand it to Gonzo, Gonzo feeds it back up into Facebook.
He creates our Facebook audience that’s called Interested In Buying a House.
Tony Ray Baker:
Every time I post anything that I want them to see, I pay five bucks to Facebook and I push it to that audience. They don’t really know me yet but they’ve seen my website on Listing Booster and they’ve seen my face a couple times somewhere and then all of a sudden no matter where they go on Facebook, there’s that freaking stupid guy with the iguana.
They’re following me around but I’m tracking them through Facebook. There’s really massive power on being seen over and over and over and it’s super cost effective and inexpensive. We tested out this algorithm the other day on Facebook. I had a post.
Tony Ray Baker:
Kids called me and said they were starting a kickball team and they wanted to know if I’d help the, so I created a kickball team post with Gonzo. We made a little headline and then we put the post up and I called three people and I said I’m testing the algorithm to see if it still works.
I want to know if we can organically get some reach and so I had three people jump on the post and talk on the thread. They had a conversation and by the following day, what did we have, 3600?
Brian Stevens:
Yeah.
Tony Ray Baker:
3,600 people on the post and 35 shares. I said to him, “Throw 20 bucks at it and see what happens.” He put a $20 bill on it and then we are at eight or nine thousand now?
Brian Stevens:
Yep.
Tony Ray Baker:
Eight or nine thousand people are on that post, two of them immediately spoke up in the post line and said holy crap, didn’t know Tucson had a kickball team. We’re moving there soon. So what did Gonzo do? Gonzo jumped in and said, “I have the best realtor for you,” and he put my name and information in the thread.
Two of them that came in, both of them have called me within this week. Both of them coming here to see us on a post.
Tony Ray Baker:
Viral and all of that fun stuff does work, it’s just a matter of playing with it and getting in there. Do you guys getting overwhelmed? I see the eyeballs are going down. I could go on and on.
We haven’t covered probably half and this is always the way it’s gonna be ’cause there’s so much out there. I do do just listed postcards. I do all that stuff. You can see what I do here. I would like all of you before we leave to look at the six marketing ideas.
Everybody, the email idea that I have for you to get in front of your clients and something that works is a product called Homebot. H-O-M-E-B-O-T. You have that? No? Huh?
Brian Stevens:
I didn’t hear you.
Tony Ray Baker:
Homebot.
Brian Stevens:
I have homebot.
Tony Ray Baker:
Homebot product.
Speaker 7:
She’s distracting me.
Speaker 2:
Sorry.
Tony Ray Baker:
Stop distracting him. Homebot is a product. Again it’s a product that you pair with a loan office. It is an email. It’s a leave it. You set it up and leave it. You upload your database and you put it in the email system and it emails them every month.
Does anybody know, maybe Brian you know, what the expected open rate is that is a good open rate on an email? What’s expected? What is it? 17%? [crosstalk 00:53:36]
Speaker 4:
I think you’re doing good at 17 probably.
Tony Ray Baker:
17 is high. So if 17% open up your email, that is great. We’re super excited ’cause our emails we get somewhere from 20 to 25% on my niche emails that I send out. Homebot. I started Homebot six months ago.
I send out the homebot, it does it for me. Every time we have a new buyer close, we put them into the homebot system so they then can monitor their house. This toy is amazing. Let me tell you six months in a row, 92% open rate. They don’t let it go.
They get into the Homebot system and they click on all these little toys. It says, “If you paid $100 more a month, you would save $6,000 and you would pay off your mortgage in 28 years.” They can click down the little thing. What if I paid 600 extra a month and it calculates it for them.
Tony Ray Baker:
It tells them, “Your equity position right now in that home is this. The value of your home is this. If you refi right now do a 15 year because you’ll save this amount of money. If you want to go Airbnb do this.
Want to go long term rental do this. By the way you can move out right now. You have equity.” It tells them everything about their house. One of my millennials just called me and he said, “it’s like the stock market every morning. When I get your email I open it up because I’m so excited to see what my house is doing.”
Tony Ray Baker:
I’ve never seen a product like this. I make no money to endorse this product. I will tell you right now it is the best email that I’ve ever sent. It is amazing. When they want any information they click a button that says, “Hey do you want to know what this is or do you want to dispute your pricing?”
They click it and it sends me an instant message. “Tony Ray, they don’t like their CMA.” What does that give me? Golden opportunity. Pick up the phone, call them, walk through whatever they’ve done for upgrades and send them a CMA.
It’ll send messages out to the loan office. It asks for pre-quals. It does everything and it let’s them play the whole time. Tom can show you Homebot for email, okay?
Tony Ray Baker:
What else do I have on there? Social media, we know we’re gonna post. That’s easy. Text, 12 times a year. I can send out a text and say, “Happy hour tomorrow night.”
I sent out 50 texts to my top 50 people, 48 showed up the following day. We had happy hour. I bought the appetizers so I wasn’t liable for alcohol. They bought their own alcohol, they stayed for three hours. I did it at the Aloft Hotel in their lobby area.
It cost me $100 to throw a party for 50 people and I did not cleanup the mess. Telling you, text messaging rocks. I text them on random weird holidays.
Tony Ray Baker:
I text out my top 100, just text them, text them to tell them I’m thinking about them. Whatever it is, I use text. I want you to make a plan for ideas around what you can text your clients and do it when you’re in the parking lot waiting for someone to come out of the grocery store.
We talked about phone calls and snail mail. How did we do today? Does everybody have some idea of what you’re going to do on that top six? Everybody good? How did we do? Yes?
Tony Ray Baker:
Okay, I’m gonna talk to the association and see if we can’t get another one of these together for you. We’ll do newsletters and anybody have any questions right now must have answered about marketing and advertising? Good? All right hope you all had a great time and have a great lunch.
