Newsletters Unleashed
Tony Ray Baker:
Okay, so are you ready? We’re going to do content, the hardest part is the first page. Everybody with me? Who has their folded piece of white paper ready to go? Good. At the top of the folded white piece of paper, draw a square, a circle, draw something, make a headline.
It’s going to say, “At home with,” and write your name. Do not put mine. Oh now we’re going to that. I heard a little feedback. We’re good? If this gets bad we’re just going to shut this thing off, and I’m going to just yell loud.
At the top I want you to just make a line, it’s going to be a headline, whatever you want, get creative. You’re going to put, “At home with Michelle. At home with Suzie, home with Joe, home with Antonio.” Whatever your name is, put your name here.
Tony Ray Baker:
What does it mean to be at home with somebody? Invited in and what else? Comfortable. When you’re at home with somebody or you’re at home with something, you’re comfortable. It’s an old saying right, we’re at home with something?
Don’t you want your folks to be at home with you? Didn’t you help them get a home or you want to help them sell their home? It’s really a really perfect kind of statement to say, “At home with Darren and Tony Ray,” just don’t use my name.
Well you can, but it will be weird. Use your name, you don’t have to reinvent the title. “At home with,” says it all, you’re at home. Then what do I have there? It says, “News to help you save time, money and words to inspire.”
That gives you an open door to start putting really cool content in there. Who doesn’t want to save time and money? Anybody here would not want to save time and money? You’re cool. All the people getting this want to save time and money.
Tony Ray Baker:
The other thing about writing these, it actually helps keep you on track on what you should be looking at for content when you’re helping your consumer. They would like to save time and money.
You can save time by giving me a quick recipe that’s delicious, that only takes me 20 minutes to make for the whole family. You just helped me save time. Who likes food? I like it a lot. You can use all these words right here.
I would suggest you put your website on there, not mine, and then all I do at the top is I put January 2019 newsletter. Now that’s scary, because that means they expect what? It’s like when you don’t do February, you get like heartburn.
It’s okay, because I’ve discovered in 24 years of mailing these out, they don’t notice if you screw up. They’re fine, no, I don’t do volume one, two, three, four, five. Just put the month and put newsletter, January 2019 newsletter.
If you put one out in February or March, it’s going to say March.
Tony Ray Baker:
They’re going to assume they didn’t get theirs in the mail if they really think you’re supposed to be doing it monthly. They might even call you and say, “Hey, I didn’t get a newsletter,” which is a really cool call to get. Don’t worry about this, just get one out.
If you don’t do another one for four months, get back on track and do it again. Don’t beat yourselves up, you just do it. We have had times where I skip three or four months just because I was so busy.
I looked at the team and I said, “Oh my God, when was the last time we did a newsletter?” “Yeah, that was in April.” “Okay, well it’s December, let’s get back on it.” The clients typically call though, this is interesting after you’ve forgotten for a few months, they’ll call you up and say, “I just want to tell you I love your newsletter.”
All of a sudden they’re like, “I’m on the list again.” It’s really cool.
Tony Ray Baker:
I have had clients they’ll call me and ask me why I dropped him from the list when I went a few months without. I had to beg forgiveness and tell him it was all about me, so it does happen.
That means they’re paying attention and they’re reading your newsletters. We’re going to write a forward letter, all this is from the top down. This is how many words? Is anybody good at wordsmithing? Who knows words?
How many words do you think this is? Probably 300, but you’re close. I don’t know, I’d say it’s 300 is my guess, 300 words. All you have to do is write me a letter, and here’s how we’re going to write the letter.
Tony Ray Baker:
Who’s your most trusted person that would never judge you? Your friend? What’s your friend’s name? Your dog? The dog is a good one. What’s your friend’s name? Ruthie? Lorie, who’s that person you trust the most? Husband.
Would never judge. What’s your husband’s name? Brad. Somebody in the back? Ginny, who’s Ginny? A dear friend. Where I’m going with this is that, if you were to write this letter to Ginny, you’d be totally comfortable, wouldn’t you?
Ginny isn’t going to judge you and what can you put in this letter to Ginny? Anything, right? You don’t have to worry about what you’re writing to Ginny or your husband, a best friend.
You don’t have to worry about what you write to your dog, although my dog does a little thing like this sometimes. I don’t know, maybe they do know what you’re doing.
Tony Ray Baker:
My point is, is I want you to take a pic. If you have like this butterfly weird thing about writing this letter, because this is the hard part, if you get that feeling at all, just take three deep breaths. Do not call me.
Just take three deep breaths, and then I want you to think about Ginny or Brad or Ruthie or the dog. If you want to, put their picture next to the computer right here. When you’re typing on the monitor, you can be looking at them.
I want you to write with that kind of authenticity in this letter. This is the letter that cinches it all, giving back to them. This is where you write about your family, your occupation, your recreation and your dreams.
I do say be careful about the occupation, it sounds like a sales pitch when you start talking all about real estate. Get personal.
Tony Ray Baker:
The very first newsletter I got… I was like a secret agent. I didn’t want anybody to know I sold real estate. It worked well, my first year I sold zero houses, because I was so secret.
I had this really weird thing about, when I started about not being good enough, not deserving the business, not being good enough because I didn’t know enough. Being green, being new, my reputation, I grew up in a family where reputation was everything.
The president of the United States gave my mother an award. My father and mother were always in the news. There was reputation around me all the time, so when it came to selling real estate, I was terrified of letting anybody know I was selling real estate.
Tony Ray Baker:
The first year I didn’t sell a single house. Rosey Koberlein, Long Realty almost escorted me to the door. She was very sweet, she said, “You’ve got to go honey, because you’re not selling.” She said, “You’re never going to make it in this business, you have to door knock and you have to cold call.
You see that big directory, you have to call every single person in there until someone gives you a listing.” No. Rosey and I had a conversation, it was very nice and I begged her to let me stay one more year. I said, “Rosey, I want to be treated like doctors and lawyers, and those guys are treated.
That you call up and you actually make an appointment and I say, “Yeah, I have availability on Wednesday at three o’clock. Come into my office and we’ll chat about selling your house.”” I wanted that life. Rosey said, “You get in the van over there, you drive down the street.
I’m going to drop you off and you’re going to knock on every door until we get a listing.” It was funny.
Tony Ray Baker:
Anybody else at the time doing that, back in 1990s? Does anybody remember those days of cold calling and using the calls directory? I’m getting some nods. Did anybody get dropped off in vans? Long Realty had nine vans I think.
We got dropped off in vans, yeah. A guy chased me down the street with a shotgun when I knocked on his door. I jumped in the van and never ever did it again. Yeah, it was the end of my door knocking.
We did that stuff in those days or have the power to advertise or market or get the word out like we do today. We didn’t have any of the technology that made that easy. Now it’s right here and it’s almost, this is almost free in comparison to anything else.
Tony Ray Baker:
This is like building a foundation to a house. In so many ways this lays foundation. It lays foundations emotionally for your clients. It lays foundation when it comes to thinking of an agent, all of a sudden it pops in their head they need to buy, sell or refer, this has laid foundation.
You’ve got to think of this like that concrete slab underneath that house, this is the foundation. We can buy leads, we can get leads from, what other areas can you get leads from? Zelo, you can buy Zelo leads or somebody else? What is it? Say it again? Referrals, we can get leads from them.
Where else can you get leads? Neighbors, open houses, cold calls. What’s the big thing right now that a lot of new agents and teams are doing? Where are they getting their leads? They’re buying them. They’re buying them big time.
Tony Ray Baker:
What happens when you buy leads if you don’t have a system setup to handle the leads? You didn’t make very much money, most likely you broke even, so you just did work for fun.
If you don’t have a system setup to follow up with the client, then why did you buy the lead? If I’m going to buy the lead, I have to buy the lead knowing I make zero dollars on the buy, unless they buy something really expensive.
Your profit margin I’m buying leads is super low. Why would you spend two years buying leads to get started? Because you have a system and a foundation ready to go, because if I start you, let’s say Michelle is my lead and I make no money, but she loves me.
She thinks I’m really cute and she refers me somebody, you didn’t even like nod or like a happy when I said cute. God, so she sends me a client, now I have a profitable referral lead. That’s different.
I work to make sure that I am accountable to Michelle and accountable to the lead, and they make them both happy and they both refer me another lead.
Tony Ray Baker:
This foundation here keeps going out every month to remind them that I’m here, but also that I am a human being that is authentic and that they get to know me. They get to know about my family, get to know that I took a trip to Paris.
Get to know that I just went camping in my new Retro camper. They get to know that I have a new Wheaten Terrier puppy. They can identify and relate to me, because I’m letting them see me.
This is the hardest part, you’re going to write these letters, and I’ll give you a story.
Tony Ray Baker:
My very first letter, I felt like I was going to throw up twice. I was such a secret agent writing the letter, oh my God, I can’t even tell you. I can feel it now. It was so awful, and this was like 24 years ago.
My business coach kept saying, “Just write the letter.” He’s the one who told me, he said, “Who’s the person you trust? Put their picture up beside the typewriter,” 1990, yeah, “and I want you to type that out.”
I didn’t do a newsletter on a computer back then by the way. I was really shifty, I knew how to draw a line with a ruler, so I drew one like to make this happen.
Tony Ray Baker:
He said to me, “Just look at your trusted best friend and write the letter.” I was really angst over it, but I wrote a letter about this person who walked up to me and she said, “Oh my God Tony Ray, you’re so thin. You’re so lucky. You’re so skinny.
I love you.” It was like somebody took a knife and started slicing through my body. It really hurt me, and it just upset me so much that I was paralyzed for a while by those comments. Now how many people love those comments?
How many people would love to have somebody run up and go, “Oh you’re so skinny, you’re so thin?” We all are like, “That’s what we want.”
Tony Ray Baker:
Back in the day I was a young, very young looking guy in real estate nobody would take serious, and I seriously weighed nothing. Right now I’m big, I’m huge, I’m like big dude right now. I was thin. I was eating Smack Ramen and I had no body fat.
For me it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t man enough. I identified that I didn’t feel like I was good enough or a man, because people were telling me I was thin and skinny. That wasn’t what guys wanted to be, guys still today are working out, trying to be bigger.
They do steroids to be big and manly, that still goes on. That’s body dysmorphia. I was really in touch with the fact that I did not like those words.
Tony Ray Baker:
I started working out and I started drinking little cans of Ensure. They had chocolate and they had protein and on between meals and I could get extra protein. I was burning calories so fast, you think my energy is high now, you should have seen me at 25.
Just burning energy, like just burning it, and I still burn it really fast, eat four meals today and not gain a pound, was just burning it. I was doing these little cans of protein and trying to gain weight, and I was trying to workout and I was trying to gain weight.
Thought I was looking pretty good, and this girl comes up and says, “You’re so thin.” She meant it with all the love in the world, and I understood that. I get that everything was great about what she said, but what else I identified was, is that I had a issue going on within me that needed to come out.
Tony Ray Baker:
Chose that as my first letter, wrote about this story and I talked about how being a young guy, how awful it is when people say, “You’re too thin or you’re skinny,” and what that did for me and to me.
I wrote the letter, I talked about everything and guess what happened, 28 phone calls within a week. I had women on the phone crying as I answered, and never knew the other side.
The stories coming out were that these women were telling me, they’ve experienced the same thing only they were accused of anorexia or being bulimic or being sickly. They were dealing with being too skinny.
Tony Ray Baker:
Now whoever thought this was a thing? That letter did two things, released a whole lot of negative energy from me and let me move forward in my life and never look back about being skinny.
It also connected me to 28 really incredible ladies, and all of these women are still in my life today. All of them read my newsletter every time it comes in. They look to see what they are identifying with Tony Ray.
I say that to you because there’s nothing probably that’s just, you can’t do enough. You cannot be authentic enough and you cannot be honest enough. I want you to write in these letters to your best friends or the people you trust the most.
Tony Ray Baker:
Is there anybody in the room who thinks they cannot write this letter? Let’s totally be honest, we’re totally okay. I want to help you through it. Okay, so all we’re going to do, if you look at the bottom half, look, I’m not even asking you for much.
I took up this space and I took up this space, so all you have to do is fill in this little bit. This will be the only thing that hangs you up. Michelle, did this hang you up or did you do this? How many people are doing keto or know what it is?
How many people know what keto is? Paley you’re on keto, a lot of people in the room can identify with what she’s writing about right now. Did you guys write about something personal in your first newsletter? Personal in the fronts? Nice.
Tony Ray Baker:
You hear what she’s saying, is she found something that she wanted to write about. What we would encourage you is to do, is to make it super personal. Why does this mean so much to you?
Why does it mean so much to you for the charities that you do give to or volunteer for, the charities that you chose? Someone died in the past, someone in your family has this disease.
Somebody is connected to you or you wouldn’t be connected to it. By writing about it, you’re helping all of us, because what we give out comes back. Be personal and get these letters written, and all of the rest of this newsletter is super, super easy.
Can everybody please just say, “I can do it,”? Thank you, who didn’t say that? I heard somebody not say it over here. I have good ears. Yes.
Tony Ray Baker:
The norm is it’ll probably take you three hours the first time. Actually it’ll take you probably more time to sit and ponder what it’s going to look like. You’re like, “Oh my God, I could go with so many things. I could go with circles and squares.”
There’s just so many ways to decorate this page, so don’t let that hang you up, just start with something. You can fix it the next week, add a second box or a circle or a triangle next week.
You can always add new graphics, which I encourage, but we are system right now, it’s the templates in our computer, our system takes us about an hour. Yup. Right, exactly what we do.
We go in and we save the template, and then we just go in and pop in the blocks. Ours are a little round block as you can see, you go into there, they’re little rounded blocks, I just stretch them however I need to fit the space and I just pop them in there.
Tony Ray Baker:
I want to go over this stuff that’s super important to be in the newsletter. All of the content that you want in the newsletter can be stolen from the web. All you have to do is give the author credit.
If Mary Sue writes a recipe, put Mary Sue’s name on it and put the website you got it from. From recipes.com, Mary Sue from recipes.com, so put that in the newsletter. Just give credit to whoever gave that out.
Tony Ray Baker:
If you want to be crazy like me, I actually wrote my own recipe one time, because everybody tells me to write my recipes down, which I never do. I’m one of those kitchen cooks that just throws everything in, and then people want the recipe and I have no idea.
One time I actually sat with my partner and made him write everything down that I did. Then it was really cool, because I showed up at a lady’s house and there was my newsletter.
She was serving dinner to a party, and my white, green chili recipe was in all the crock pots. We were having my recipe. It said, “Tony Ray’s chili,” on the crock pots. That’s what she was serving. It’s really cool.
That was my very first recipe and my last one I ever wrote, but I did do it.
Tony Ray Baker:
Has anybody in here written a recipe? It’s hard. You have to think like how to tell you to do it just the way I did it. It’s crazy. Okay, so you get the part about stealing content, right?
Okay, so here’s a couple things we’re going to talk about that are the must that need to be done to make the newsletter completely effective and do what you want it to do.
Tony Ray Baker:
I use yellow paper. The reason I use yellow paper is, because I’m programming the client. Yellow is the easiest color to see with black writing on it, which is why we use that for signs and not only your open house signs, and your yard signs.
How many companies do you see with bright yellow, but how many city directional signs did we use to have that were yellow and black writing? Curve ahead, you can see that in the night time, you can even see it.
Yellow is the best color, and what I’m going to tell you is, pick that color if you absolutely can’t do yellow and you pick another color that’s okay. I’m going to go with optimal, optimal is yellow.
You can only use the yellow that, thank you perfect. You can only use the yellow that the mail will allow you.
Tony Ray Baker:
You’re going to go to a company called Kelly Paper Corporation on Grant Road near Oracle. If you’re a nerd like me who likes office supplies, don’t go in there without a timer, because they’ve got 10,000 rows of every kind of paper and sticker and wafer.
Kelly Paper, you can get lost in Kelly Paper. Oh it’s paper palace really, it should just say paper palace. If you’re into origami, you’re screwed. Do not go to Kelly Paper. There is more colors and things in there than you never knew existed, they only have some of it in this warehouse.
Tony Ray Baker:
Go to Kelly Paper and tell them you want the 11 by 17, that’s the big sheet that I gave you, 11 by 17 yellow paper for the post office. It has to be one of their colors. Yes. 28 pound Canary, thank you. 28 pound, see I don’t even do this anymore.
It’s been that long since I’ve gone to Kelly Paper. You get 28 pound Canary yellow, and that’s what the post office will allow you to have. It’s going to look like what you’ve seen, because these guys have got it already.
Okay, so you’re doing yellow. Everybody with me on the yellow? Okay.
Tony Ray Baker:
What happens with yellow? My newsletter lands in the mailbox, they see yellow, they know it’s what? Tony Ray’s newsletter. If a whole stack of mail is in the pile, you see the yellow sticking it out.
I’ve got this yellow newsletter that sticks out every time they go to the mailbox they see yellow. I intentionally need to mail my clients something and I want them to open it, I use a yellow envelope and they know it’s from me.
Or you mail my clients something and by accident of course, you mail them something, you’ll be like not realtors. You’re all different businesses and you’re all mailing my clients something and you use yellow, guess who they thought of?
Me, ain’t that cool? I program them every time that yellow is Tony Ray, they know yellow. What’s really weird is, if things come in the house that are yellow, they might think about me as well. It’s really cool, it’s programming.
We’re programming the client, just like we’re using the newsletter to program referrals. Programming is huge.
Tony Ray Baker:
We plant seeds, we run around and plant seeds and as we plant seeds they grow and we nurture them and they grow. That’s what you do with the front page is you nurture those seeds. Yellow paper, that’s a must.
If you don’t use yellow paper, whatever it is, stick to the same thing at all times. Don’t veer from it, I want you to always get them to know it’s you coming in.
Tony Ray Baker:
The other thing we’re going to talk about that has to be done in here, is you have to get forward letters, you’ve got to get okay with it. You’ve got to get good at forward questions, because if you get good at asking these questions when you’re talking to people, you’ll get good at talking about yourself.
Yes. Really and you couldn’t say it yourself? They only allow like what, green and yellow and pink and tan. The post office only allows a certain amount of colors on bulk mail, so ask and see if that’s still the case.
I don’t think there’s a bad color that’s… I don’t hear anybody saying there’s a bad color. I’d still use yellow. Yes. Everybody hold on just a second because I want to make sure we can hear her. On the forward letter? Perfect.
Tony Ray Baker:
If it was me and I was forming to a neighborhood and it wasn’t my own COY, I’d probably one of you write the forward letter one month. Then one of you write the next, so they can get to know you, because I think to be authentic you really need that 300 words.
You’re going to start writing and you’re not going to feel good, and then it’s going to take 20 minutes and all of a sudden you’re going to get a few words out. Then you get into the zone, and then all of a sudden when you get into the zone in about 30 minutes, you’ll just start typing away.
When that happens, you’re in that zone.
Tony Ray Baker:
By the way, shut off your phones, shut the door, hang the ‘do not disturb’ sign, this is private time and you should be really focused on it. The only way you are successful in this business, is to make sure you’re careful with your time, and don’t let people interrupt you.
You have a super cool assistant called voicemail, and it will take all of your calls for you. When you’re in that zone, you will start getting really authentic in your typing and so I really think you’ll need the 300 words.
I would say you do it one month, and the partner does it the next. If you’re mailing to your COY however, you might both need to write a letter and both you would use all the rest of the content, and then both put that in your letters on the front. Does that make sense?
Tony Ray Baker:
Now the cool thing about what Lori and Veronica are doing which is, they took this idea of doing the newsletter and getting help. They started a newsletter club, and so they have three of four of them now and they’ve got the template.
I think Lori did their template. Then what they did is now they come to the table with pieces that they want to put in, and then they can all just change the name or whatever they have to do and they can all send it out.
Tony Ray Baker:
It also causes, what I like more about it than the content, is the accountability. If all of you were to introduce yourself to somebody here in the room today, and hold an accountability newsletter party, you could all just have two or three people and you would hold each other accountable to turning content and get this thing out.
How many would get it done more likely? How many hands think they would be more likely to get it done if they had accountability? Right, so great idea that they came up with. When she told me I’m like, “I’m going to out them today.”
That’s why we’re doing, we’re outing their idea, and they said we could. That’s a super cool idea. How’s that working? You guys meet once a month or what? Nice.
Tony Ray Baker:
What I take away from this is, don’t think you can do it on your own or you’re not going to be accountable. It takes how many days to make a habit? Anybody know? 21 days to make a habit, and then how many months does it take to make the habit stick where it becomes nature?
It’s like three months, right. If you could get this newsletter out, if you could just promise to get this out three months in a row, you’ll probably start doing it forever. All you have to do is take a little bite out of this elephant and say, “I’m just going to do it for three months,” and get it going.
Tony Ray Baker:
The power of seven applies to this newsletter. It takes seven times to get people to get familiar with you, to get familiar with it and to start thinking of you all the time. They need to see seven of these and you need to get three so that it becomes natural for you to keep doing it.
If you need an accountability partner, I say get an accountability partner. My accountability partner used to charge me $1,000 and I charged him $1,000 if we didn’t perform. I say, I know right, pain. Well what’s pain for you, so is $500 pain? Or does $1,000 make you get pain, so you’ve got to figure out what that is, but that’s what we used.
We used money, and it went into the party fund.
Tony Ray Baker:
We’re going yellow, we’re going to do our forward letter, and we know how to scrape content off the web. Everybody learned that word, scrape? Okay, we’re going to scrape, is that word right James? We’re scraping content? You guys scrape content right?
You’re scraping content off the web, okay. This is Michelle’s newsletter. Michelle, if you could see this, and Michelle goes with cute little graphics, but Michelle has a little what? What is that? What’s it called? Her emoji.
What group loves this? Younger buys. They grew up on this. Who can text me a message right now and speak to me completely with emojis in this room? Right, I can do it too, I can talk back to you.
Yes, I know my emojis, I actually go in I’m like, “Oh this means this, this and this. Let’s see if they figure out the puzzle.”
Tony Ray Baker:
Now wait, remember the old days, the puzzles? Do you remember puzzles in the old days? They gave you a number and a picture of a bird minus three, and then you had to figure it out. Isn’t that what we’ve resorted back to as emojis?
We’re doing the same thing. Then we go back even further and it’s called petroglyphs, caveman, we’re just reverting, we’re just all confused. We think technology is going forward, we’re going backward. We’re talking in these little things.
Tony Ray Baker:
Michelle has these cute little, well, on the back you can really see it, this one’s really adorable. It says approved. That’s picture of her, so there’s a cute little way that’s a different take on this newsletter. It’s her way.
I will bet you most of her clients will respond to this her way and the way she wants them too because it’s her way. They already know her way. Same as Lori, Veronica and I don’t want to forget you, Gayle, thank you. Oh wait, who’s Gayle?
You’re Gayle, you’re the one, I thought it was her. When you pointed across the room I went to her the first time, and she just looked at me and went like this. I thought she had food in her mouth, that’s very funny.
That’s why I made waiter jokes and I wasn’t a waiter ever. This is really getting weird.
Tony Ray Baker:
Okay, so here’s theirs. You can see the front, I’m sorry I’ve got to go like this. Then they’ve got it blocked off in blocks more like mine is, it’s different. Which one’s better? Doesn’t matter, none of them, none of them are better. They’re all the same.
It’s just your way. Right, what do you see in this one? This one is my personality, it’s much more weird, because I like bubbles and rounded things, because that’s my personality. I make the boxes different.
I like to use hard graphics a lot of these little black and whites, I like to use those because they pop. Always use your graphics, that’s another thing. You’re going to use yellow paper, write a forward letter, always use graphics.
If you don’t have a picture or a graphic with the story, you need to get one. Yes, and you can get graphics for free everywhere now. Get graphics on there. If you could use a real picture that you took, put it in there.
Tony Ray Baker:
One of the best newsletters ever I send out is when I go to Europe, because we travel. Every year we travel to Europe, and we go for 30 days and we see the country. By the way, it’s super glad we just saw Notre Dame and I took over 1,000 photos of that cathedral.
I sat one day in Paris, I sat there with the camera and decided, this is like ADD. I decided that I was going to get every gargoyle on that building, and I sat and shot every kind of photograph you can imagine.
When I heard yesterday that was happening there, it was like heartbreaking. Traveling, I got to see Notre Dame, I got to see it before it burned, and so that’s really cool, but so did all my clients.
Tony Ray Baker:
What I do is I do that white insert that you saw the Lori and Veronica did. I did the white insert in my yellow newsletter, only I printed it out in color on my little HP. I printed color photos of my trips, and then I can write a little story about trip to Budapest or Paris or wherever, and I can tell them about my what? Recreation.
I tell them and they get to see the colored photos and I get tones of calls off of those. Then they ask me to help them plot their trips. I just helped somebody actually plan their entire trip through Italy, because we had done it. Ain’t that cool, what a connection right?
Then when the family got back from Italy, what did they do? Called me to sit down and show me all the pictures of the family in Italy. Ain’t that neat? It’s constantly causing connections when you do this stuff.
Tony Ray Baker:
Okay, other thing I want you to know that you have to do every single time, is I want you to always try to get a welcome new clients box into this newsletter. If you do not have a new client this month, it’s okay, don’t put the box in.
As soon as you get a new client, I want that in the box. I want the box put back in. What we’re doing here, what do people love to see? They’re in print. Their names, it’s so cool. We say, “Thank you Susie and Joe for referring us to Mark and Samantha.”
I’m just running out of names and my brain is not working. If it’s coming in, the minute we get it coming in, we’ll actually put it in, because it’s a referral. By the way this is super important. Lori, I’m going to separate you two. This is super, super important for you to understand.
Tony Ray Baker:
You always, always want to thank them for the referral immediately, not the fact that it closed. I want to encourage behavior not the result at the end. Don’t want you to think about who you’re referring.
I don’t want you to figure out well this person’s, I want you just to refer every time. I want it to be natural. I’m programming you all the time on all my systems to refer me. If I’m doing that, I need to thank you immediately. I’m going to always thank you when you refer me.
Tony Ray Baker:
When our agents refer us from around the United States, we immediately send a thank you note out to those agents. We send a thank you on the email, and we update them as soon as we’re going through the process as to what’s happening with their client. Why?
They are hoping to get paid, and they’ve trusted us to take the client in Tuscan, Arizona and they’re in New York, and they cannot manage it or look over it. I’m going to keep updating that agent to make sure they know that I am thankful for them sending me that referral, and also that I’m taking good care of the referral.
Tony Ray Baker:
The same is when I get a referral from a friend, I’m going to update them, “Hey, thank you so much,” on however they came through. They come by text, I text them back. If they email, we email them back.
As soon as that referral and I make connection and we’re getting ready to go into the process, I’m going to update the client who referred them. I’m going to say, “Hey, just want to let you know we’re on the road to finding a new house for Suzie.”
Have I said Suzie’s name a lot today, because I don’t know why that name’s [inaudible 00:39:04] in my head, Suzie. Does that make sense? Okay, so we want to thank them immediately if we can.
Tony Ray Baker:
Now imagine you get the newsletter and it says, “Thank you for referring Joe and Jane,” I tried new words. You would see yourself in my newsletter. Ain’t that cool? You’ve already heard thank you from me, but I’m overly thanking them, making sure they see it.
Really quick by the way, has anybody heard my voicemail? Who’s heard my voicemail? What does it say on my voicemail? Right, and I thank you for the referral and I ask you who referred you. What I’m I doing? Planting seeds on my voicemail.
My goal is, I don’t know if I did it this last time. My goal is every time I change that message it says referral three times. Thank you for the referral. Please let me know who referred you if you were referred to me.
I talk about referral on my voice message so people go, “Oh that guy works by referral.” I’m planting seeds. Same thing you’re doing, building foundation, is you’re planting seeds by thanking people for the referral.
You can steal all the words and this box’s already done for you. I just did it. Look, “Hey, welcome new clients and thank you for the referrals.” Does that work for everybody? It’s done.
Tony Ray Baker:
Okay, look, all done. You can even steal the graphic, I don’t care. I want you to put their names in it, because if you use my client’s names that will be weird again. You can see that we actually even say where they came from.
We say they came from they’re a returning client, or they came from a website. It’s pretty cool when we started putting that people were coming from websites, it was very interesting because more of our clients started sending more of their friends through our websites. Who knew that would happen, right? This little box is magical.
Tony Ray Baker:
Now, I also throw a little box which isn’t in this one that says, “Hey,” it’s got a little map of the United States, you want to write this down. It says, “Hey, we can help your friends anywhere in the United States.”
Can you guys help somebody buy property anywhere in the United States? Yes, how are you going to do it? Referral out. We get traffic through our newsletter, because people call up and say, “My friend Suzie,” Suzie’s it today. “Suzie is moving to New York and Suzie needs a realtor.
Do you know of somebody?” “Absolutely, I do. Let me look in my database, I’ll call you back today.” First place I go is the crs.com directory right online, I look for CRS. Why do I go there? CRS are required to have an AVR, a GRI, they have to go through all the education of a CRS.
How many years of school is that? Five. They have a minimum five year requirement and they have to have turned in $5 million worth of contracts that show that they were single sided representatives, that’s a CRS. They are in business to be in business, or they wouldn’t have gone through CRS. CRS is pretty grueling.
Tony Ray Baker:
Back in the day when I did CRS, I had to travel to all different cities in the United States to get the degree. That was crazy, they didn’t have them in Tuscan. If you go to crs.com it actually says, “What city do you want to go to?”
It’ll show you all the different CRS, and then it’ll give you pictures of them. Now, I know my clients and I’ll tell you I had a lady call me. Said, “Can you help me in San Diego?” I said, “Yes, of course I can,” and I looked through the San Diego CRS group and I found this lady who looked like she was really fun.
I think she had leopard skin jacket on her or something that caught my attention. That kind of sexy leopard thing going on. I looked at her and I thought she looks fun, my client is very fun and peppy. They love their margaritas, and they like to travel. I just got this vibe from this lady.
Tony Ray Baker:
I pick up the phone I called her, it took me all of seven minutes to figure out she was a great connection just by talking to her. I spoke to her on the phone for seven minutes, turned the client over to her, and let it go.
About three months later I received a check in the mail, opened it up, didn’t even know what it was for. The client’s didn’t tell me they had closed on the house, they wanted it to be a surprise. The check was for $8,000 for a referral that took me seven minutes.
If you calculate that out, I probably made like $10,000 an hour or something.
Tony Ray Baker:
Think about it, how much money could you make if you were actually telling people that you can help them in any city? Does a client know that? No. Who’s job is it to tell your client what you do? Right. How do you do that with easy foundation?
You can tell your client anything you want. They’re a captive audience with this piece of paper, because it’s yours. Put a little map, a little map of the United States and put, “We can help you or your friends buy a house or sell a house anywhere in the United States of America.
You’ll get the level of customer service and trust you expect from us.” Put it in your newsletter.
Tony Ray Baker:
Now I have already solved two boxes for you in this newsletter. Plus, I’ve already got the front cover for you done. All you have to do now is scrape maybe two articles. It’s getting easier right? It’s very simple. Any questions so far? Yes.
Is this a question for you or for her? Nice. Good for you then. Have it here so that when it arrives it says, “[inaudible 00:45:09] Realty.” Then sometimes I have it in different spots depending, because I’ll move it around.
Yeah, it’s on the bottom bar [inaudible 00:45:22] Realty. No, broker is Tiara, yeah. I’m I in violation? I’m going back to becoming a secret agent like right now. If anybody knows that I am in violation, I would like to know, because I do try to keep up on it.
These things change and we don’t all hear about it, but yeah. I think it’s imperative to put the bar down at the bottom, because if I’m reading your newsletter, I want to find your information.
I don’t want to flip through the pages, so I’d make sure it says, your name, your phone number, and your by line and your company down at the bottom of every page, so it’s quick and easy to find.
Tony Ray Baker:
Last page, I have a story about what by referral only means, and it’s programming them to what? I’m planting a? Seed. I’m doing this by saying to you, look, if I’m not chasing leads, if I’m not working with that side of this business, how much more time do I have in a day to pay attention to you? A lot. Darren and I, so we’re going to go transparent.
Tony Ray Baker:
Darren and I did 15 million last year in business. We took six vacations, we did not work on Sundays, we barely work a half day on Saturdays sometimes. If I’m on a Saturday, I’m actually probably not with a client, I’m probably with Tom Heath brainstorming in a room, having fun, eating Johnny Gibson’s sandwiches.
I work Monday through Friday, usually shut my phones off at six to seven, so if you’re sending me an offer, I’ll respond in the following morning. I have a very balanced good life. We always go to Europe every year, we spend 30 days in Europe. Sometimes we go twice a year. Last year I spent almost 70 some days on vacation.
Tony Ray Baker:
I have three part-time people, James, Beth and Gonzo who do a world of stuff for us, we’d be crippled without them. They all work part-time for us on their schedules, whatever they want to work, they’re independent contractors.
It’s Darren and me, and I still do this newsletter. I also teach classes every month, I actually teach classes every week. I’m on the board for two charities, and I what? I vacation in Mexico with Kristi. I send out a magazine, we do other marketing and advertising, and I get it all done.
I’m telling you this because you can get this done. If I can do it, a kid with no college education. I was a scraper, I had no money. We had to just do what we had to do. I became a sales person for commission right off the bat, I was selling electronics like crazy for that $10 commission, that was a big deal for me back when I was a kid.
Tony Ray Baker:
You can do this. You can put this together, you can do it, just have to schedule it and you just have to tell the rest of the world, “No, don’t touch me for three hours,” whatever it is, it’ll be the best thing you do.
I spent 60% of my life on my business and 40% in my business. If you read Michael Gerber’s E-Myth which he just came out with a new revised edition, which I haven’t read, you’ll understand the power of working on the business and how little you have to work in it when your systems are really clear.
It’s called E-Myth, E-M-Y-T-H, and he just made a revision and it’s supposed to be really good. It’s on every podcast right now, they’re talking about it so that’s why I know. Read the book E-Myth.
Tony Ray Baker:
McDonald’s whole business is based on it, but 60% of my time is working on business, it’s doing what I love. I get to create photographs and pictures and websites and marketing and social media, and go live on video and do really stupid things in front of people, it’s fun for me.
You can do that too. All you have to do is schedule. By referral is why I can do that, I don’t buy leads, I don’t chase leads. Leads come to us.
Tony Ray Baker:
Up until my websites until internet, we were 94% all referral generated business. Now I’m about 65-70% referral from my database, which is actually about 94% referral. I have a new division in my business, which is internet leads coming from websites that I built on my own.
I write all the content, James helps me write the content, he writes like me. He writes as if he is me, so he’s my ghostwriter. Is that what they’re called, ghostwriter? Dude, you’re a ghost.
Tony Ray Baker:
What we do is we put the content on and what I’m I using a lot of times on my websites, the same premise. People call me from websites and say, “Oh my God, can you help us buy a house Tony Ray? Our dog and us are moving,” and they act like they know me. Why?
Because it’s me, I’m authentic. I’m not a canned website that everybody has, I’m authentic. It’s messed up, it’s not perfect, it’s not great. The website is pretty most of the time, but there are places where there’s a line that’s a skew or there’s a misspelled word.
That’s normal and authentic, so don’t get paralysis with this stuff, be yourself and do this newsletter.
Tony Ray Baker:
On the back you cannot say by referral only, that is that line by referral only comes from a coaching club that teaches you how to do your business by referral. It is an amazing club. I’ve been with Joe Stump from Buyer For Lonely since 1995.
It was a slow way to learn, because I didn’t do the quick fast path to buying leads at the time we didn’t have that. Here I am today and I have a very well balanced life and I’m happy and I still love real estate and I’m not burn out.
In June is my 25th year anniversary in real estates and I still love it, and I get to do what I want every day.
Tony Ray Baker:
This is foundation to getting there. I’m going to end right now with questions and give you a break, because I really want you to get into listing. Any questions about newsletters? Yes, yes person who is not with them, what is your name?
This is the question, she says, “Do I post this on the website?” I have thought about doing that, I think it’s a great idea, you could send this out to everybody, you put it up on a website, you could put a link to it or something.
It’s not something to mail via email. I want to open your emails. I have email systems that they open, I have a 90 plus percent open rate on my emails, every month my clients read my emails. Yeah, I’m going to actually tell you about it in a minute.
This you do not want to send out an email. This goes out in the mailbox. By the way, when you get it, how many people are in your family? You, how many people are in your family Rosemary? Four, four people, all four people will read my newsletter.
They’ll read your newsletter. The kids actually steal the newsletter and they pass it to the parents. The newsletter moves around the house. I have found my newsletters in doctors offices. I’ve had doctors call me and ask me to send them more copies to put in their offices.
Tony Ray Baker:
It’s really awesome what this thing will do for you. One last piece, support your community through the newsletter. Michelle brought up a really great idea. We’ve written about Kristi Frank and American Family Insurance in the newsletter.
What does that do for you when you’re supporting Kristy Frank or you’re supporting your favorite businesses? It puts your team together number one. As many people as I have in our client database, the more of them that are with my team, the better.
We all can take care of them in the way we want them taken care of. As I’m supporting businesses in this newsletter, it also comes back, because it’s the law of reciprocation. It helps us all do business, it’s local, it’s a magical thing. This is like a unicorn right in the room right now.
Tony Ray Baker:
I really encourage you to do this. Any questions about newsletter before I let you have five minutes to get rid of water? Yes? You could do that, absolutely. You could start with one page, you would get to do this piece.
Have to do the back and something there. You could change this anytime and fold it over and send it out, so you could start with that. What I would encourage you to do if you’re going to go that far is just scrape some content and finish it out.
I really want those other components in there for you, which is programming referrals. This is about laying what? Foundation, so you really want all the pieces in there. Really what you’re writing is three pages each time. Okay, anybody else with questions on newsletters?
