#322 Mail-Right Show Moving From Entrepreneurial to Purposefulness

With Special Guest David Mount thereduxgroup.com

Moving From Entrepreneurial to Purposefulness

https://www.thereduxgroup.com/

the same thing we were talking about different technology. And you were talking about things that you had looked at and you seemed to have a very dialed in numeric approach to looking at operations. Did I come away with a correct impression in your opinion?

David Mount: Yeah. I would say that’s definitely accurate and it’s grown over the years. Right? I feel like where I am now is vastly different than where I was a year ago or two years ago. A number of things have really changed the game for us that I think have helped me grow in big ways. When it comes to knowing the numbers, tracking systems, measuring ROI, as a small team, you don’t feel like you don’t have, a title or whatever your title is. It’s like everything in the kitchen sink because you’re a small team. So you have to figure it out and whatever’s urgent you have to go to it. And so I feel like over the past year or two, I’ve really started to think more like a director, than a, all in one, do whatever you can.

Because we don’t have a marketing director, I’m functionally the marketing director, before we didn’t have a recruiter, we just hired one a year ago. And I was functionally the recruiter and, Chris and I would determine which agents we would wanna make offers to, join our team. And so as we’ve gotten leverage from certain leaders, I’ve realized where the gaps are that I need to stay the marketing director and, make sure that our operations and marketing is really dialed in. And it’s caused me to have to take a step back a little bit and dive into spreadsheets. And really take a look at, okay, how much are we spending on this? If we talk about marketing, how much are we spending on this? What’s the ROI? What have we closed? What do we have that’s signed, but not on the market yet? What do we have that’s active and coming soon and what’s pending like projective revenue. So those things are really key, but honestly, I probably didn’t start doing that until under a year ago. 

So even at a team our size, it’s taken a while to get to the point where it’s like, as dialed in as it really should. It’s much easier if you start that way versus have to backtrack and go back six years.

 
Robert Newman:
 So, when you started creating, let’s just call it a process to look at the numbers, to come up with this data you were going back all six years in order to do that. Is that correct?

 
David Mount:
 We haven’t gone back all six years. No, I probably went back probably a year, two years for the marketing sources that we’re still using. Our marketing has changed over the years. So going back all six years, probably wouldn’t be super helpful, just because we’re not using those marketing sources anymore.

Robert Newman: Gotcha. And so you said that this last year has seen a lot of growth and change for you. Did you just tell us what that growth and change was or is there some other things that you felt were, so the way that I’m viewing this question is we’re talking to a guy who’s gone from let’s, whatever you did the first year, a hundred transactions let’s pretend that’s the number. It doesn’t really matter. But you’ve gone from certainly a much smaller level, of transactions all the way up to many hundreds. And so I’m thinking in my head, so what are you seeing like process-wise that you had to go back and reexamine as you’ve grown? Like what are those steps?

David Mount: Yeah, there’s a couple systems that we’ve implemented this year and, a lot of it has to do with people. Okay. So we hired, talent acquisitions manager. Who’s essentially our one HR person. And she’s amazing. She’s helped us systematize our recruiting and it helps honestly having a third person just having me and Chris was challenging because we talk every day, we think so much alike. I think Chris is in his forties, but we’re both close to the same age. We’re both white males. Like we think relatively similar. And so getting a recruiter who has been in the business a long time, she’s amazing. Like just having somebody to do like a lot of the legwork for us in screening candidates, she comes from that industry. It just helped level up our perspective. And our system absolutely when it comes to just even the one thing of recruiting, which is just one spoke in the wheel of, systems to improve the business.  So we’ve added a lot of people this year, not just agents, but also staff. And I feel like every time we do the next iteration is always better than the previous one.

 
Jonathan Denwood:
 Yeah. We probably need to go for a break. Rob. 

Robert Newman: Alrighty. Okay. Well ladies and gentlemen, we will be back. when we come back, I’m going to actually, you know what, I’m gonna, segue, saying what I wanted to say, which is this. so digital marketing, John and I talk about lead generation a lot, but digital marketing or marketing in general or building a team, in my opinion, digital marketing is actually just as relevant on the recruiting side. The building of the business, the building of the reputation so that agents wanna work with you. Oftentimes the agent’s first exposure to a brokerage maybe not in your case, David. In many cases, it’s gonna be, they see you online and they think that you’re moving and shaking in some way or another. So it seems the earth in terms of, if you got into a conversation with them, potentially it would be a little bit easier or at least they would know who you are. Maybe know what your mission is, how you serve your local market, things of that nature. 

So I’m sure that people are wondering why I ask you to come on the show because it’s a little bit outside our [inaudible] but, I don’t really perceive it that way. I perceive the whole thing as one big pie. My top clients are small brokers, just like yourself. And those guys are, just as concerned about recruiting as they are about getting the next lead or closing deals or handing off a couple hundred leads to their agents. Cuz that’s part of the business right. Growing. If that’s the track that you’re on. So anyway, so ladies and gentlemen, we’re gonna go to a break. We’re gonna dig a little bit more into that. I’m gonna give both John and David a chance to actually talk and we’ll see you back. Whatever platform you’re on do us a favor. If it’s someplace you can smash a like button smash, that like button. Do john and I that courtesy David as well. We would really appreciate it. We’ll see you in a second or you’ll hear us in a second. All right.

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Robert Newman: Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen to the mail-right show. We’re here with David Mount, who is an agent and the COO for a rapidly growing, brokerage, under the EXP banner in the Virginia area. I’m just gonna say area because you, you listed off all the places that you serve. We’re talking to him about how he’s, he’s maintained his growth. Now, David, I do wanna ask one question of you because it is a digital marketing show and we do focus on digital. You do actually use digital. It’s just not what you’re saying is the main driver of your growth. Since I happen to know that you’ve been using BoomTown for a while, because it came up in our conversation, I’ve just looked up your site. You’re still using ’em so I can verify personally you’ve been using ’em for at least six months to a year minimum probably much longer. So how do you leverage that? So you’re not doing traditional, but how do you leverage the digital that you have?

David Mount: Yeah. One thing that’s been really helpful for us and this is so basic for a lot of people, but as something as simple as having a Facebook group or a Facebook page and advertising our listings on there. we did a big push back when Facebook got a lot better organic reach back in 2015, 2016 to increase our followership on Facebook. And so I think we have something like 2,520, maybe 2200 followers on our Facebook page. And so I was just on a listing appointment even like a month ago where I was talking about the marketing that we do for listings. And he was like, oh yeah, I see it on Facebook. Like, we’re good. Like I’m glad you’re doing that. Like, we’re good. You don’t need to tell me any more about it. Like I trust you. So even something as simple as like having a Facebook page where we’re putting marketing out there, and our followers are seeing it that helps a lot, cuz he’s this sphere of influence person. So we’re connected on social already and it’s just further verification that they can trust us. So that’s one thing. 

Another thing that we’ve really made a big push for this past year is reviews on Google. So Google organic or, Google’s kind of taking over the real estate agent space, right? You Google a real estate agent, in Carlsbad, California, you’re probably gonna get a Google local services listing or ad that shows a top three agents. And one of the biggest ranking factors is how many reviews you’ve had on Google. And so we’ve made a big push this year to get additional reviews, from our past clients. And some of the things we’ve done just to incentivize that is giveaways. So we’re offering prizes to people who can honestly give us a five-star review, give them more entries into a raffle for a prize. And then also doing competitions with our agents saying, Hey, we’re gonna give rewards based on who gets the most, five star reviews for the company in the next month or two weeks or whatever it is. So we’ve done two of those giveaways and then two somewhat different competitions that incorporate the review aspect, to help us get more, Google juice if you will. 

Robert Newman: Okay. So that’s the action what’s the result then? So you’ve done two, two giveaways. You’ve really pushed for this. How, has that impacted your reviews.

David Mount: Beginning of 2021? I think we had something like 53 reviews on Google. And if you check it today, you’ll probably see 329. I think I saw this number about under a week ago. So 270 something new reviews, five-star reviews on Google in the past year. So it’s helped immensely. 
Robert Newman:
Has that impacted your ranking at all? Have you been tracking your ranking inside the local Search packs? 

David Mount: We’ve been tracking our leads. So our leads have definitely increased, from Google local service ads, since we have gotten a lot more reviews and typically what we see is right after we get the reviews, we start to get more leads. So it’s like, there’s a recency effect of you get more, you get more right away.

Robert Newman: Interesting that might be the very first time that anybody’s popped that idea into my head. That’s a really interesting number. 
David Mount:
 That’s what I’ve noticed. It’s not a hundred percent traceable, but it’s something that every time I know we, cuz I get all the notifications when we get five-star reviews. When I see those, I also see the leads coming in real quickly after that. 
Robert Newman:
 Okay. Well for those listening, a couple of points to this. So what David is talking about is the– many of you are still not familiar with the new sponsored ads that Google place, because there’s a whole bunch of different ads that you can do. You can do display ads, retargeting, you can do traditional ads. Google now has all these different ads. Well, they added in February of this year, a hyper-local search pack for real estate specifically that says, hey, I’m a qualified professional in an area. And it comes up over the local search packs over the organic search packs. And so you can put a sponsored ad in that pack. And if I’m hearing you correctly, David, what you’re saying to our audience is that every time you get a review on your organic Google, my business profile, it ends up it, which does link to your sponsored profile.

So your sponsor profile does show your reviews, but you get maybe 10% of the information as you would off your actual Google my business profile. That’s what they allow in the advertised sponsored pack, but it does show your reviews. It absolutely shows those. So if I’m understanding you correctly, you’re saying the reviews automatically propagate into my paid sponsored ad. Then I seem to get a flurry of calls every time I’m getting a new review off my sponsor though, is where, what you’re saying that you’re where you’re seeing those results, is that correct?

David Mount: Yeah, I would say every time there’s a big flurry of new five star reviews. It’s not usually a call right after just one, five-star review, but if we get like 50 in a week’s time period, then we’ll usually notice a bump right after that.

Robert Newman: Fascinating. Okay. John, I’m not gonna let you go through the whole, meeting without saying a single thing because we’re 25 minutes in. So this is the point where I say serve up a question, sir.

 
Jonathan Denwood:
 Well, I was just wondering, it was a consistent theme in our 2021 interviews, David, there were two things video and finding a niche, finding for a single agent or for a boutique brokerage. So it’s a two-part question. Firstly, how big is video or is video something you are really looking at in 2022? And secondly, do you have a kind of niche for your own boutique brokerage? Is there a particular client or a particular property or is it just generally property in your specific area?

 
David Mount:
 Yeah, that’s a good question. We started off, and that’s one of the other ways that we grew our team relatively quickly was through, marketing or prospecting a specific niche. So, Chris’s background, the founder of the Redux group. He was an investor for a long time and was knocking on doors for distressed properties. Making cold calls, connecting with people who, were underwater and who needed to sell fast. And so we started out on the real estate team by the time Chris opened the real estate team, really targeting short sales and distress sellers. So that was the beginning of our niche that really helped us start to grow. So it was myself I  personally didn’t play into that niche very much. It was Chris and then another agent on our team who listed a lot of those properties that ended up being short sales for the most part. And that was one of the big pillars of our business for a while. 

Now, since then, equity has increased immensely over the past two years. As most of us are, quite familiar with. And so we’re not seeing very many short sales and we’ve pivoted away from that niche because the market has shifted. And so that was one of the niches that definitely helped us, but we also had to be nimble and change course as market conditions changed.

Jonathan Denwood: The first part video, what’re your views around video. And is it going to increase or have you got new plans to utilize video? 
David Mount:
 Yeah, I think, video is a hundred percent the wave of the future. And I think that if any agent wants to, create a system for organic reach that goes decades in the future, like you have to be on video. Now I say that, but our company has not yet gone where I would like us to go when it comes to video. And I think this is important for people to understand too, whatever strategies you pick, you have to have the right personnel and the right budget to be able to go all in. And so I personally in our assessment and, in terms of strategy. Chris and I feel like we have to have a marketing director who can like be the owner of it. Create the video strategy, make sure that we’re following it, tell Chris where he needs to be and what he needs to say, so that he can, have some leverage on time.

One of the guys that, that I really respect on video a lot is Kyle Whistle, out in California, I think he’s in the San Diego area. he does an amazing job with video and, I think he even has some courses, like a coaching product that he sells on it, I’m sure we’ll buy, whenever we get to having the bandwidth to be able to do that. But as a team, I think especially for an individual agent, it’s much easier to just like jump on it and create a system for yourself. As the organization gets larger, it requires more personnel, more expertise, and leverage to be able to do it. Cuz our leadership team tends to get stretched in a lot of different directions and managing a lot of different, priorities. 
Jonathan Denwood:
 Yeah. I think we need to wrap out the podcast part of the show, Robert, and then go into bonus this content.

Robert Newman: Beautiful. All right. Well, for those of you, who’ve tuned in, I’m gonna, I, I do have a closing thought. So if you haven’t already checked him out, he’s in your own environment, Kyle Handy is also real good with video and he’s part of the EXP. EXP to me is, one of those companies that is helping a certain percentage of the real estate industry move over to a different concept. And he’s right there with you and he’s leveraging video heavily as his whistle. So he’s another person for you to check out. He’s, probably a little bit less polished, but I think his information is bar none like in terms of what he provides informationally on video and we’ve had him on the show I think. so I think he’s pretty amazing and you might wanna check him out and for everybody listening, I think you might want to check him out because he’s just doing some cool things with video that’s it.

And I like him because he’s nuts and bolts. He’s not like a video editor, maestro or anything like that. He’s just a guy with a camera that, tries to give good messaging, which I feel like anybody could do. I like low barrier of entry, like strategies where you just say, okay, I sit down at my desk and I say something that’s as low as the barrier can possibly get. All right. So for those of you, who’ve been listening to our show via, podcast, please, if you’re on Apple, give us a review on safari, if you haven’t done so already, we would really appreciate it. I don’t know where the rest of you might be. You might be on my website, you might be on the mail-right website, if you are on either one of those platforms and it occurs to you, we’d love a comment on the place that the video is or the podcast is housed. And, if anybody would like to give you a little bit of accolades or push any of your digital stuff as a way of saying thank you for coming on the show and sharing your knowledge, David how would they do that?David Mount: If anyone wants to, reach out to me or are you saying-

Robert Newman: How would you, how could somebody get in touch with you? All right. Let’s do that. 

David Mount: Email is, the easiest, David@TheReduxgroup.com.  
Robert Newman:
 Awesome. And John, how would you like people if they were so inspired to, reach out to you? 
Jonathan Denwood:
 I think the main thing is if you really wanna leave a comment and be more involved in the podcast is to join the Mail-Right Facebook page, just like it and the videos, our live interviews are posted on the Facebook page and you’d be notified. Otherwise just go to the Mail-Right YouTube channel. And we’ve got a lot of extra material on there back over to you, Robert. 
Robert Newman:
And if anybody would like to, reach out to me, check me out, contact me, you can do so on inboundrem.com. The channel that I pay the most attention to since we are talking about video is I pay a lot of attention to my YouTube channel. I probably interact with my audiences more on that channel than any other channels that I have. So we are gonna be moving into bonus content here. There will be a video that will go along with that. That’ll get posted to the Mail-Right YouTube channel. John is usually kind enough to, make some mention of me or link somewhere in there. So you can also find me that way. And even if you can’t, it doesn’t matter to me like, comment on the video, let John know that his hard work is, appreciated. 

David, are we gonna be able to keep you for maybe five, 10 more minutes? All right, John, are you, are you down for that as well? Yeah. Okay. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for tuning in. We really, really appreciate it. We’re hoping that you were off to an amazing start for your 2022. I know that I am. We’ll talk to you soon.

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