#204 Mail-Right Show: We Look Back At Some Of Our Best Shows In 2019

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In this week show, we discuss some of our best shows and guests over the past 12 months, and what have been some of the best insights we have learned from our guest.

This so far has been an interesting year with the rise of Opendoor and iBuyers from Zillow. However, I’m sure that real estate agents that really bring real value to the table of their clients

Jonathon: Welcome back folks to the Mail Right Show. This is episode 204. And we are going to have an internal discussion here with my great cohost, Robert Newman. And we are going to be discussing. It`s been over a year where Robert’s been my cohost and we’re just going to go over some of our most favorite shows during the past year. And emphasize some of the key points that you, a real estate agent should really know about and that will really help you build your business up in the coming year. So, Robert would you like to introduce yourselves to the new listeners and viewers?

Robert: Yeah, I would love to. So first of all, thank you John. I just want to let everybody know that John, this is his show. He established it and founded that he found me. He does all the outreach for all of our guests. He is definitely the power and the force behind the show and I just want to express my gratitude in a public way to him for a moment.

Jonathon: Thanks Robert. I think that was our agreement. I do. Because it’s called the Mail Right show so its Marketed for Mail Right. But I’ve been really happy with the quality shows that we’ve been producing. And I think from the feedback we got from our listeners and viewers that they really enjoy the discussions that we have. So I think we make a good team Robert.

Robert: So do I, I definitely do. And we both have some different thoughts on different things. And I think today’s show is going to really highlight that. Because what we’re gonna do is we’re going to go back through and we’re going to each pick some of our favorite shows from the last shows. We’ve got a catalog of almost 60 shows for about what will end up being about 14 months of having done this show together. So everybody though I occasionally ask this, I’m going to ask this today. If you have the time, please log on to the Mail Right website or my website. You can find the shows in either place or our Facebook pages and leave us some comments. Let us know what you think. I’m getting more and more feedback from people or more calls with that. They’ve heard the show and I’m really excited by that, but we’re still not seeing a lot of commentary on the shows themselves. And we’d love to hear your feedback. So with that, John cause I’m still posting the live feed to my Facebook page. Why don’t you kick off your favorite show first or one of your past favorites? I’ve got my first one picked up.

Jonathon: It’s a difficult one, isn’t it?

Robert: You want me to start?

Jonathon: Well I always destroyed his name. He was from the east coast, he was an agent. He was more a broker and I always destroyed his name. But we have to have him back on the show because I really enjoyed it. We had a couple interviews with him. We are going to ask him to come back because he is a very insightful individual. That had a clear understanding of how to run these brokerages and how to generate leads for his agents.

Robert: Yeah, definitely. Well, I think he had grown. So for those listeners who weren’t tuned in with this, and I’m looking back through our old episode so we can get you the episode number. And talk to you a little bit about this guy. But Guarav he was a Keller Williams. There’s a word for it that they use. It’s like a marketing manager or something like that. But anyway, he owns the Philadelphia main central market centers, what they call it for Keller Williams. He has 600 agents and they focus on all the real estate inside the city of Philadelphia. He was incredibly knowledgeable. He had come on the show with us twice. He was humble and seemed really interested in giving back to your average agent, like giving tips and tricks.

And we totally agreed with them. Both Jonathan and I did. We talked deeply about establishing a local marketplace and doing hyper local marketing. And he was 100% on board with that. He talked about specialization and some of the things that you should do and some of the things that he’s done inside his own marketplace. I couldn’t agree with you more. He was one of my favorites as well.

Jonathon: And Beatty, I like Beatty. He has been on the show about three or four times.

Robert: He’s an easy one. So here’s our show with Guarav Gambier is his last name. So it was one 176. Jeez John, that was almost 30 shows ago.

Jonathon: That’s gone on quick.

Robert: So the show was the good, the bad and the ugly. And we did two shows back to back with Guarav. We did like 174 and then 176. So if you want to look for that show, you can go onto the Mail Right website and it’s listed there under number 176. Strongly recommend that anybody that has the time that’s enjoying learning from us. That you do that. Guarav team is called the condo shop. And they’re pretty famous inside the real estate industry. Beatty Carmichael for those that may or may not remember who just did a show with John a couple of weeks ago. This would be the third show I think. Right John?

Jonathon: Yes he has been on three or four times.

Robert: So Beatty is really a wildly qualify direct mail email response expert. His ideas have been fantastic, which is why we’ve had him on the show three separate times. He claims and we believe him that with just 200 names on a mailing list. That he can guarantee get a listing or two listings, like a couple of sales out of this email list that you’ve got. And from what we’ve seen in the ideas that he’s discussed with this, which by the way, you can go back and find three separate shows. And some of these show he drops incredibly specific ideas. Unlike many of our guests who when we put them on the spot, they aren’t able to necessarily come up with something super usable. Right on the fly. I feel like Beatty.

Jonathon: You did interrogate him a little bit. Sometimes I think you are going to bring out the clippers of the search light. To say it’s a little bit intense is an understatement but there we go.

Robert: That`s very true. That’s a comment that I get both my personal life and my real life. I’m a very intense person. But Beatty Carmichael was an amazing cause. He’s intense to my opinion. He’s low key, intense, but he’s intense.

Jonathon: And fundamentally I think he is 200 to 300. Fundamentally it’s another form of the Pothini mythology. I call it the perfidy mythology. There’s a few and it works. You know, I think personally I don’t think he disagrees with this. If you can combine, which a lot of agents can’t for some reason. I think it’s a mindset. I have noticed a few agents. It also might be they are totally happy with the amount of leads that are coming through. Because they’ve established with the Pothini method. Well, I’m trying to get is I find a lot of agents that are embedded in the Pothini mythology can’t really cope that well with actually combining it with online lead generation. This is unfortunate because I think if you can combine the two together, you really have been a tremendously strong lead system. Haven’t you?

Robert: You do indeed.

Jonathon: I just know based on my personal experience that if you get agents that really been using the Pothini mythology for a long time. They find it hard to cope with the world of online marketing for understandable reasons.

Robert: I agree. I agree. Well there’s been a number of, of like marketing systems I’ve been exposed to over the years. One of the ones that come strongly to my mind, which will make a lot of people that listen to our show laugh, is Cutco. And once you get into a deep like successful string of referrals where you’ve got one person giving you three or four names. And you’ve really gotten your objection responses down. You can keep a list of referrals going for a very long time. It’s just another kind of marketing. And it is very similar to a type of cold calling or it’s just a little warmer.

You’re getting introduced to the call a little stronger and you’re having a long conversation introducing yourself to a lot of people. And, and honestly, once you’ve been doing that for six months, you probably have a very long list of people that you can just circle right back around to. And work an entire CRM based system off nothing but word of mouth referrals. It’s completely doable. It just is. You’re right. It’s very different. And if you get completely immersed in doing that, you will miss the boat on digital. This is another kind of marketing that I personally like more because it’s more attraction marketing.

Jonathon: In a way I think they do not understand. It’s really the sign concept really is fundamentally what you’re saying through lead magnets. And you are giving away information that your target audience might find useful. And then you just should be just keeping in contact with those people. Cause they probably at that moment they probably are not a buyer and seller. Some might be rightfully they are, but a lot of them won’t. But that doesn’t mean that depending on your marketing that quite a few of those at some stage won’t become buyers or sellers. You just got to have them a system and you’ve just warmed them up. It’s just a bit like having somebody refer you to somebody who is not at of the same quality. Obviously a fantastic referral or recommendation will never be out. Nothing can beat that, can it? But either way. But a lot of people struggle with understanding that. Don`t they Robert?

Robert: They do indeed. And this is a good time. I have something to say when we get back, but it’s time for us to go to break.

Jonathon: Is it? All right, we’re going to go for our break folks. When we come back and Robert will have some words of wisdom. Be back in a few moments.

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Jonathon: We are coming back. I guarantee never to have any words of wisdom my beloved listeners and viewers.

Robert: That`s too bad because my topic when we got back was to ask you a question. That’s what I want to do.

Jonathon: That`s my Englishness coming through listeners and viewers.

Robert: So you said that you liked Guarav, but you didn’t really mention why. You said, hey, I like this Guarav guy. And then I kind of took over the conversation, which is my bad. What do you like about Guarav? What were your reasons that you mentioned him?

Jonathon: Well he went into a few specifics but you could tell that he’d been through the wars. He had the arrows in the back. He has been in the trenches a bit. And he understood, I think there were two things he really understood. He understood the importance of systems. And spending the time on documentation and working out systems is a lot of agents won’t do it for understandable reasons. Its tedious. It seems a waste of time. It’s not directly generating leads. In the medium to long term it will be having inbuilt systems and having those systems documented will just repay and repay and repay. And secondly he really understood the importance of online marketing. Cause our thinking in the shows. He gave some figures that they don’t come straight to my mind. But he was spending quite substantial amounts of money on Facebook and Google Adwords. Wasn’t he?

Robert: Yeah, no, I think he was in the hundreds of thousands.

Jonathon: No, he was putting in this amount. And he was casing result. Wasn’t he?

Robert: Yeah. Yeah. So No, I agree with you. Yeah, it’s definitely running a team as large as the one that he has and it definitely gave him an interesting perspective. And what I liked about him was he was all very understated, very matter of fact, which is kind of the way that I look at marketing. You can have a marketing budget of $200 or $2 million and I’ve worked with all those monies. And you know what? You’re still looking for the same thing with either budget. You’re looking for good statistical ROI, no matter what it is you’re doing. If you have a very large budget, then chances are strong. You’re responsible for providing revenue, making opportunities for very large group of people. And that’s all the budget accomplishes for you. Are you getting those people in front of opportunities?

And that was kind of the way that I felt like Guarav talked about it which let me know that he really had a good understanding. It’s not important what the number is. It could be 2 million, 10 million, 20 million, and 100 million. It doesn’t matter. What matters is we are giving the opportunities that you felt were required to the people that you’re responsible for. And that’s what he talked about a lot, is responsibility for his team. A lot of people talk about the responsibility of the team to them. That’s what they infer. And that’s to me upside down leadership. That’s not the impression that I got from Guarav. It was more like I’m honored to be working with my team. I’m responsible for my team and these are the things I tried to do for my team, which to me spoke of good leadership.

Jonathon: And the last thing I think he had a total grasp, which would be my strongest weakness if I was in his place. Is that he had a total understanding of the actual, the figures, the mathematics behind his brokerage. I could sense he had total understanding in a financial way where he was with his business. I’m not terrible at it, but it is one of my biggest weaknesses.

Robert: I got you.

Jonathon: And it’s a weakness in a lot people. But I think once you are aware of your weaknesses there’s hope for you. It’s when you have no understanding of your weaknesses, that’s when you’re totally lost. Aren`t you?

Robert: I think he’s important to understand the things that you need to be working on. And I think all of us, just like our strengths should have a list of weaknesses. Things that we’re always going to be focused on working on because we understand that they may not be our strongest points. So I do want to mention two other names if you don’t mind. I want to throw it out two additional shows and two additional names. So I think I was a little more impressed with this. Well, let me rephrase. All of our guests are amazing and we appreciate all of them from being on the show.

Jonathon: Well, sometimes you show a little bit of boarder Buckeye usually, but depend on your mood. Doesn’t it?

Robert: Sorry. My gut, my instinct is to say that they’re all amazing. Maybe I don’t show that all the time because that’s just the way I am. There you go. That’s something I can work on is not letting whatever I’m thinking show right all over my face. Show number 191 with Lars Hedenborg. This was another show about systems and talk about a guy that I felt had the numbers down. Because that’s one thing that really shown through is that this guy was all about breaking his numbers down to the meticulous. It’s an old Brian Tracy concept where you keep breaking down your sales and your business mechanisms to the smallest individual poin.t and this guy was like, he was talking about how much he was trying to pay himself per hour, how many deals that had to be, what he was doing mechanically in order to get there. He had a real strong grasp of his businesses evolution, like even in the show notes here. We’re talking about 71 sales working 80 hours a week talking about a hundred million dollars in real estate. Selling $100 million in real estate and he talked a lot about something that’s very near and dear to my heart, which is a quality of life.

You know, if you’re just a person that likes to work all the time, that’s great. I’m not that guy. I used to be that guy. I’ve been that guy many times in my career and I don’t want to do it anymore. I want to work maybe 30 or 40 hours. So the question is how much can I pay myself in those 30 or 40 hours that I want to work? And he talked about the same thing. And the way that you get higher levels of income with lower levels of work is to input systems, systems in place, repeatable systems that you can teach and train other people to use. So that you can step out of the process yourself and basically free up your time. Why were you going to mention Lars?

Jonathon: Well, for the reasons that you just mentioned and it’s not criticism of him. Is that personally I think I just said it’s a weakness, so it’s properly connected to that. I just thought he took it a little bit too far. But he could say it works for him. He’s got tremendous results. Obviously it’s the long term is like most things. You can get enormous results doing something. And then as you move up the scale, you have to put in more, more effort and you tend to get less a return back through that effort. So there’s a sweet spot, he’s very focused on it. So he’s natural tendency is to really pushed that to the limit. I would suggest that if you timed it down a little bit because that last 10% of effort is probably not as much result from it then he thinks. But does that make any sense at all? Robert?

Robert: I understand the principle. I don’t know if in this one case that I.

Jonathon: But everything said about him I agree. He had a good fundamental understanding of where he’s business was, where he wanted to take it. And the figures supported where the business was and where he was. Because he had a tremendous understanding on the figures. He had a tremendous understanding of what had to be done to put the business where he wanted it.

Robert: And just to repeat guys for those that are listening and taking notes. Show one 91 is Lars Hedenborg. And also guys as we come down close to the end of the half hour. I want to let everybody know that Jonathan has created his own CRM system. And if you’re looking for something to manage leads and things of that nature. And you’re trying to find a creative tool or you’ve looked at most of the tools that are out there. I strongly suggest that you at least take the time to set an appointment with John and go ahead and see what his tool can do. If I was a real estate agent, I would take a look whether or not it’s gonna work for you is just like any other tool. It just depends.

Jonathon: We’ve been doing a lot. We’ve been working with a small group of agents. And I’ve been spending a lot of time with them. And because for the improvements and added functionality that we’ve added to the system in the past six months to eight months. And that’s been really educational. And we’re doing some more improvements around usability that I think I wanted to do, which was confirmed by working with these agents. So I’m still looking for a couple more beta testers if you want to come on board folks. But in the next couple months it will be a very refined system. It’s been a lot of work, so I think we’ve got a little bit more time. We’ve got five to six minutes actually. I liked Christie.

187 Christie. She’s a writer, a regular columnist for Inman. I think I invite her back. She said she want to come back on the show. Very different background because she’s from a copywriting, inbounds marketing, producing a lot of content for agents as a copywriter. But also writes a number of interesting articles from Inman. She’s a regular columnist on Inman. I think she had a really nice personality and she had some good insights about. It’s something that a lot of agents are really weak on is producing content for their websites. For understandable reasons. But if they really understood the medium to long term benefit in writing effective evergreen content for their website. And that doesn’t mean you are going to go write a ton of copy every week or every month. It just really means it’s more about understanding what your agents are really looking for. And providing some reasonably quality content. Isn’t it Robert? They really understood the benefits. They’d be up for it a bit more. Wouldn`t they?

Robert: Yes and no. Like, listen, producing great content is always like an amazing endeavor. But even on Christie’s website, the reason she didn’t make it to my list is that she had never studied SEO. She has great content on the site and she’s a good a content writer. But for all the effort that she spends, she’s getting a very minimal result. Because at the end of the day, you have to take the great content and you have to promote it correctly to Google, which is what inbound marketing or SEO, is. So you can take the world’s best content writer and you still can’t get a result. And I think that frustrates a lot of real estate agents because they produced this amazing content like they go, I know I just produced the best blog posts or market report on my area. I’m sure of it, but nobody ever saw it.

And I spent 15 hours on it. So now I’m done because I spent all that time on this great piece of content that did nothing for me. So digital, I agree with you. Content is an underleveraged, under-valued weapon, no doubt. But if you’re gonna throw your hat into that ring, unfortunately you either one have to contact somebody that knows what they’re doing, like a coach or somebody like me who does it for you. Or B, you have to take your time and follow like a guru like Neil Patel or somebody like that and figure out how you’re going to promote the content. And if you do those things, then yes, I couldn’t agree with you more. And Christie Murdoch really did know what she was talking about in terms of how to write a good creative piece of content for real estate. And I recall her and I remember her and I liked her. But interestingly enough, I did one show, two shows maybe in the last year. Folks where John wasn’t with me, he was traveling. He was in Europe. He was taking a much needed vacation. And I did a show 188 with a guy named Zach Hammer.

And Zach was a hoot. We were talking about my most favorite topic ever, which was Facebook marketing.

Jonathon: He is your favorite. Isn`t it?

Robert: No, because it’s just a small mechanism. It’s a small tool. The Facebook marketing messenger is a really undervalued marketing tool. And I don’t want anybody to get me wrong. The response rate for Facebook messaging is like 80%. We could hire a guy right now and message all of our Facebook friends and get a huge response rate back to our Facebook page. But we have to have a whole little marketing system built up around that, a landing page or reason. And in my experience, once again, a multifaceted, you need a service like Zack to put that all together for you and make that valuable. And it’s not to say that it’s not valuable, it is valuable. But to say to hand it off as a tip to your average realtor, I think it is a little overkill.

However, if you wanted to learn about bots or about what you could do from the Facebook side, Zach was amazing. He managed the most active real estate marketing group of all the shows we’ve done. Nobody has driven more interest or more people to our tools than Zach did. I had like 80 new people hit my Facebook page within 24 to 48 hours of doing the show with Zach. His Facebook group, which he manages, was incredibly active. And so, and I think that what he does is he gives out free consultation too. His either the group that signed up with his website or maybe he just does it as a marketing tool. Either way. I mean if he’s managing it and basically consulting with a large group of realtors, he had a lot of good things to say. He had a strong marketing background that was focused on real estate. I highly recommend that you look him up and look to show up. And if you’re looking for some tips, you might even be able to get some good free ones from Zach and his Facebook marketing group.

Jonathon: Yeah. I have to have him back to the show. Cause he’s knowledgeable but also by very dynamic. Isn’t he?

Robert: Yeah. And he was fun too which is never a bad thing. We did the show out of his motor home which qualifies is the most interesting place I’ve ever seen somebody do a podcast from is in a motor home.

Jonathon: I don`t know if you are up for some bonus afterwards. But somebody not in the real estate area and that was Brad Sugars. The founder of Action Coach. That was 197. There’s not much about mentorship. The mechanics are running a business that Brad. Doesn’t know about and I think he showed in our interview he had a very keen business mind.

Robert: He did well from what I can remember of him, yes. But I think you recall that show a little bit better than I did. I’m desperately trying to pull it out of my mind right now. I don’t have the show notes up in front of me. What was the show number?

Jonathon: It’s 197 on the YouTube channels. You should match up on the website. But he organizes a number of businesses. He’s coaching business Action Coach. Brad’s coaching consultancy in North America and in Australia. It is the largest one at the present moment. And build that from the ground up and he has other multiple businesses. Very down to earth, very focused person. Highly intelligent. But not arrogant either. Pretty good individual.

Robert: Yeah. Brad was really fun and intense like to use your word from earlier.

Jonathon: That`s true he’s very intense. Isn’t he?

Robert: I’d like to share my thoughts but why don’t we do that in the bonus.

Jonathon: We are wrapping up. So Robert, how can people find out more about you and your company and what you’re up to?

Robert: Please for the love of God. If you have some information about real estate marketing and you want some free advice or you’re looking at platforms, you’re trying to buy a website. Like all of those things is what my blog was designed for and is there to help you. And I’ve spent hundreds of hours. I haven’t updated it in a little while, but I’ve done a lot of work on it over the years. I do actually I love children but don’t get me distracted anyway. I, you can find me at inboundrem.com. And how can people get in touch with you Jonathon?

Jonathon: Just go to the Mail Right website folks. Like I say, I’m looking for a couple of other agents to join. Basically they’re going to be coached by me about how to use the Mail Right system. They get it for free for life once they keep using it and keep giving us feedback about the system. You will have to pay for the Facebook advertisement, but the actual platform and the coaching I am going to provide. And the campaigns, we also going to supply the campaign. And set them up for you and run them for you. That will be part of the deal.

You will get that all free. You’re just going to have to add the Facebook budget to run those campaigns. But it’s a fantastic value and we’re just looking for a couple other agents that really want to put their business on the next level. To help us try all the new functionality that we’ve added to the Mail Right system for those 8 months. And Robert knows this that I’ve been consistently working on the system, improving it. And I’ve probably been also run another business. But I do feel that I’m getting it to stage now that it’s going to be a superb program. And I’m really happy with the progress that we’ve made. But everything takes a lot longer than you think. Doesn’t it, Robert?

Robert: It really does. Every time. I’d been working on my website platform for almost two years, and we’re still, we’re still working on.

Jonathon: It never ends, does it? It never ends. So we will be back next week. We’ve got some fantastic guests for August. They are going to provide fantastic value for you listeners and viewers. Our listening and viewing figures over the past three months have been fantastic. The show is being built in really well. And we’ll see you next week. See you later. Bye.