#435 – The Mail-Right Show: We Discuss New Construction Marketing For Agents

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New Construction Marketing For Agents With Special Guest Eric Preston From AgentLaunch

With Special Guest Eric Preston From AgentLaunch.

At Agent Launch, our mission is to accelerate the growth of the new home market. We believe new home sales drive housing affordability and the growing supply problem, and we want to be a part of that.

#1 – Eric, can you give the audience some background information about you and AgentLaunch?

#2 – What primary needs do you feel AgentLaunch helps agents with?

#3 – What are some of the most significant differences agents need to understand regarding new construction online marketing?

#4 – What are some of the biggest and regular mistakes you see agents make regarding online marketing and lead generation?

#5 – How will AI change real estate online lead generation in the next 18 months?

#6 – If you had your time machine (H. G. Wells) and could travel back to the beginning of your career and business journey, what essential piece of advice would you give yourself?

Episode Full Show Notes

[00:00:08.770] – Robert Newman

Welcome back to the middle right podcast. Today, we’re super excited to have our first guest in many, many episodes. But before I get into that, it’s episode number 435. The special guest today is Eric Preston, who has a very oddly similar history inside the real estate industry, as I do. But we’re going to let him get into that, dive into that, and cover that himself. John, since Eric is new to us, I’m going to ask him to go first because we do this every week. So, Eric, why don’t you go ahead and do us the courtesy of introducing yourself to our audience?

[00:01:01.850] – Eric Preston

Sure. My name is Eric Preston. I’m the founder and CEO of Agent Launch, a real estate marketing agency that focuses on the new construction side of things. You can find me on YouTube. I post a lot of helpful tutorials, and I think we’ll probably get into a little bit more about me throughout the episode.

[00:01:19.120] – Robert Newman

Perfect. John, why don’t you introduce yourself to anybody who may not be familiar with you?

[00:01:24.390] – Jonathan Denwood

Oh, thanks, Rob. I am the joint founder of Mailwright. We build beautiful websites on WordPress and provide a CRM landing page, email, text, and a lot more in one great package. I’m back over to you, Rob.

[00:01:41.040] – Robert Newman

And I’m another founder that focuses on SEO. I’ve been doing it a very long time, so if anybody’s interested, just go to inboundrem.com and you’ll learn all about me. Let’s dive into it. Unfortunately for all of you listening to the show today, I am the captain of this particular episode. So buckle up, buttercup, we’re going to have a lot of fun. Eric, the reason that I usually do a two-second dive, John knows this, and I usually tune out just complete honesty, because oftentimes I’m not finding anything that I relate to. There you go. But with you, it was interesting because we have a similar history. We were both doing other things. I was running massively big call centers for very, very big brands. That’s what I was doing. And then you seem to be like a nightlife person, but entrepreneurial in nature. I actually looked up the restaurant that you opened. It still seems to be in business and doing extraordinarily well. So I was just automatically ears perked up because it’s a hell of a thing to transition your career into that, into marketing. So, if you don’t mind, John has a series of questions, and we’re going to stick to his side of it.

[00:02:55.380] – Robert Newman

But I’m just going to ask because it’s my burning question, what inspired you to make the change to go from that kind of pedigree and the amount of work it takes to open up a restaurant into digital marketing?

[00:03:13.110] – Eric Preston

You know, it’s funny you ask, because you’re the third person this week that’s asked me about my origin story a little bit. So, um, but you’re going back to the restaurants, which is, which I haven’t had yet. So, yeah, I think, I think when my early twenties, I started bartending, and that felt right at the time for me. I was in a phase of backpacking the world, traveling, bartending, and just having fun. I felt like I needed that experience to kind of come out of my shell a little bit socially. And so that was great. And then that hit a point where, you know, I, I had helped open, I think, four different bars and restaurants, and it started to lose its allure for me, and I just didn’t feel like I was in the right place in the world anymore doing that. And so I wanted to do something with a bigger potential. And all I really knew at the time, to be honest, is I wanted to do something digital. I wanted to be in, like, tech. That’s what I said. I wanted to be in tech. So I was, you know, I went through this six or seven stage interview process with this actual, actual sales prospecting company where they teach businesses this, like, specific outbound method.

[00:04:22.370] – Eric Preston

And I was really excited to join this company. And then Avenue reached out to me on LinkedIn the day before I accepted the, I think it was the day before or two days before I accepted the job. Got me on an interview the next day. I went and interviewed them, as the best interview of my life. I felt super aligned with them. It just came out of nowhere, too. I don’t know what, I don’t even know why she reached out to me. Couldn’t tell you. I didn’t have a specific profile. They were like, yeah, we’re looking for salespeople. You seem perfect. I’m like, I don’t even have that much experience unless you go back to my, you know, apple days or whatever. But, um, yeah, she reached out to me and had an interview. They offered me the job the next day. I took it the other, the other company was pretty upset. But, um, so that’s how I transitioned from that world to this world, was I knew I wanted to be in tech. I liked marketing. I knew I wanted to be somewhere in that world. It just happened to be a real estate company.

[00:05:14.560] – Eric Preston

So I kind of happened upon it in that way. And then. Sorry, go ahead.

[00:05:21.860] – Robert Newman

I just wanted to say what you described. The reason I asked you the question is because I actually have already seen some of those interviews that you’ve done and saw a lot of the information about Avenue. What is just blowing my mind right now is you and I had an identical experience. Like, I wanted to get out of the call center stuff. I wanted to get into tech. I kind of, like, vaguely knew that I wanted maybe to be an SEO, but, really, in my mind, it was like digital marketing. I was done with, like, traditional reaching out, chasing you down marketing. I knew I was tired of it. So maybe a little bit towards inbound, but. But it was all unformed. And the first company in 300 bloody resumes I sent out. You are obviously much more packageable and sellable than I am. And I had to try so hard, which was staggering because I was running an operation at the very top with, like, a $7 million budget, and yet I could not get somebody to give me a starting position in tech. So, the first person who did a real estate company, and here we are.

[00:06:37.290] – Eric Preston

There you go.

[00:06:38.260] – Robert Newman

Agent image. All right, before I just monopolize, I was just so, I get curious every now and again, and I was just so deeply curious, I was wondering, I wonder if his reason will be similar. And it was exactly the same. It wasn’t. I didn’t choose real estate. It chose me.

[00:06:52.510] – Eric Preston

Yeah.

[00:06:52.780] – Robert Newman

All right, John, you have this beautiful list, as usual, that you’ve produced. Why don’t you go ahead and, like, honor our commitment to Eric and stick to the list?

[00:07:08.390] – Jonathan Denwood

I could respond to that so much.

[00:07:10.960] – Robert Newman

Robert.

[00:07:12.310] – Jonathan Denwood

I’m not going to Robert. I’m not going to Robert. So, you know, agent launch, you know, you’ve got a lot of experience in the real estate. What is agent launch and why? What does it do in your own mind for its target sector? Eric.

[00:07:34.570] – Eric Preston

Yeah, sure. So agent launch has evolved over the years. I mean, talking about in the early days, after after avenue, I mean, we got into, you know, info products, selling courses on Google Ads, and I kind of became known for that. So that’s how agent launch started, was generally running Google Ads for agents that evolved over time from a variety of different things, solving more problems around that. So helping people with their CRM system, their sales system. We did YouTube coaching and video editing for some time. And it was about a year and a half to two years ago, we started building landing pages for new construction, and we had some clients who really wanted to focus on that. And actually, I just did my first podcast episode of ours earlier today with that exact person that we started this with. And so.

[00:08:29.590] – Jonathan Denwood

Oh, you don’t want to do podcasting. It’s just depressing.

[00:08:37.110] – Eric Preston

So we got into doing this, and we didn’t really know at the time how it was going to go, but it started going really well. And so over the last year and a half, we’ve been doing more and more and more of it, and it’s worked better than anything else we’ve ever done. And, you know, last year was a tough year for everybody who’s pretty down here in real estate. And we got creative and we launched a new offer, helping people run webinars. And we did all this really cool stuff. But the fact of the matter is that this one single thing was working the best. And that was a specific funnel we have that targets people who are looking for new homes. And I just found out today, because my guest earlier shared this with me, that there’s a record high number of new construction homes for sale in the United States right now. Actually, one third of homes for sale are new construction, which blew my mind. And so I didn’t even know that. But anyways, we were just on our management retreat back in Canada, and we decided that we wanted to go all in on this because we didn’t need to rely on an IDX.

[00:09:44.450] – Eric Preston

The lead quality we’re getting was much better. And the build of the funnel is, it’s a lot more streamlined for us in certain ways. And we were just like looking at the writing on the wall. We’re like, guys, I feel like this is where we need to be, and all of our best clients are coming through this. And the funny thing is, so, getting back to your question about what we do, we help agents build lead generation and conversion systems around new construction. We also work with some builders, and we’re actually trying to grow that side of our business as well. We do have coaching within our program where we coach agents on the sales process. We have some of our top, top clients do that with us who are doing hundreds of sales a year. So they come in and help work through the sales process. Bottlenecks what to say, how to say it. We help build our clients CRM systems. We build their lead generation, their funnels, and the goal is to just deliver them a steady stream of leads and make sure they’re equipped to take care of them and convert them.

[00:10:40.370] – Eric Preston

So that’s in a nutshell, what it is that we do. And it was a recent change where we started focusing more on what was just working best for us and our clients. And that’s just really dialing in the new construction world.

[00:10:53.130] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s fantastic. Over to you, Rob.

[00:10:56.610] – Robert Newman

Why? I kind of, I have a curiosity question. How did you find the Mailrite podcast?

[00:11:04.250] – Eric Preston

My team did.

[00:11:07.170] – Robert Newman

Got you. Okay.

[00:11:08.930] – Eric Preston

So I don’t know.

[00:11:10.410] – Robert Newman

So the truth is you. Okay, fair enough.

[00:11:14.410] – Eric Preston

That’s my honest answer for you.

[00:11:16.390] – Robert Newman

No, no, no. It’s. That’s, that’s brilliant. So just for the sake of. There’s another similarity between the two of us in that after 16 years, and I’ve been in sales since I’ve been 17, and I’ve been 16 years in real estate, always on the phone teaching and training other people how to be on the phone, I have focused my whole entire career on things like tonality and listening to uptones downtones, mirroring. And I can go on and on, like, big, big call center strategies and techniques and then using those, like, but like, in an elevated consultative way, and then Zoom has kind of changed the game where people can see you and I’m wearing my hat, but, like, I have multicolored hair, and that, that doesn’t really, like, didn’t really work for. Anyway, here’s my point. You and I have both do, like, I keep trying to offload sales. I’ve been trying for a long time. And the challenge that I have is that I like, even when I have fine people that can sell successfully, they don’t sell the way that I do. So the clients that enter our funnel, like our production process, they don’t end up being the right kind of educated or right kind of qualified to, like, use the system, because they didn’t.

[00:12:37.020] – Robert Newman

They weren’t sold the right way. So I have to go back to sales over and over again. I saw something where you said the same thing where you said that you were trying to escape sales. So let me ask you a question. From the perspective of being the guy that is selling your system to your prospects, from your perspective, what is the number one concern that agents bring to you when you’re actually in the sales role, not the founder role, not any of your other roles, when you’re on the phone with an agent or broker, what do you think their top few concerns are when discussing a lead generation system with you.

[00:13:15.390] – Eric Preston

Well, it’s interesting you say that, because you obviously have heard me talk about this, but it’s been the single biggest professional challenge I’ve ever faced is removing myself from sales and my own business. So currently I am very involved in sales. Our sales team is me and Lucas and so on, my team, and we work well together. And so, yeah, I’m very much on the front lines in that sense. And I think that gives me a lot of really good information as a founder to work with. And so even though it makes me busier, I don’t mind. I’ve accepted that I’m always going to be there in some fashion, and that’s okay. So, to your question, the things that I think that the number one thing I face is mistrust. I think that we’ve done a good job over the years of posting a lot of social proof online, building a lot of helpful videos, and a lot of people come to us and they do trust us, but there’s always that thought in their head of like, and I think we do very, very good work, and I stand by that. And I think we have a phenomenal team.

[00:14:27.010] – Eric Preston

And I think that there’s still this just looming, like, oh, I’ve been burned before. And the unfortunate part is most marketing agencies in real estate, I mean, probably everywhere, but in real estate especially, you know, they, they all go through these similar programs. You probably know the ones I’m talking about. They learn to build these big offers with big guarantees that they need because they don’t have any social proof, they don’t have a track record. So they need to throw together these offers, and they don’t actually know the fundamental first principles of the business. And so these, a lot of agents get confused. And fair enough. I mean, there’s so many people out there that are not legitimate that they should be kind of, you know, a little bit concerned. And so there’s that I think that we have to overcome naturally.

[00:15:17.010] – Robert Newman

Sure.

[00:15:17.350] – Eric Preston

Like, we’re not a cheap program. We don’t aim to be. I think cheap programs get cheap results, and there’s plenty of them to choose from if that’s your motive. We’re looking for the higher ticket people who are really looking to grow and invest in their business, and so is every other agency. To be fair, nobody wants to work with new real estate agents. I’ll just tell everyone watching that the truth is that every agency, just like every agent, has been burned by a lot of broke agents who will default. They won’t commit, they will be very flaky. So it’s frustrating for agencies too, but it’s also frustrating for agents because a lot of good agents do get burned, right? So I think that’s the big one. The second one for me that’s super frustrating is the IDX. So for us to do our job, we need our clients to have like a specific website provider. And like, nobody comes to us roaring to change their website. It’s like, like they’re like, why do I need this? And I’m like, I’m trying to explain to them, well, it’s optimized for Google Ads and it’s not an easy thing to explain.

[00:16:34.500] – Eric Preston

The site speed, how you present the information, the form field.

[00:16:37.280] – Jonathan Denwood

Do you mind me asking, which one do you work with?

[00:16:40.860] – Eric Preston

So part of our pivot in going into new construction is we don’t need them anymore. So that was an internal reason that we wanted to do this as well. I still think people need IDXs as far as the nurture process of a lead goes, because you still want to be setting, even if they come out through a new construction funnel. And I’ll get to your question in a second. If you generate leads who are looking for new builds, that’s just one thing they might be interested in at that time. And most of them are actually going to buy resale, like a lot of them will and a lot of them have something to sell. I shared this message on LinkedIn of a person who said, yeah, I’ve been doubling down on the new construction stuff, but it’s actually generated a ton of resell on a ton of sellers. And I thought that was really interesting. So doing this this way, we don’t need to rely on lofty real geeks, Sierra interactive to fulfill our clients. And I’ll give you a bunch of stories. Like, there was three that stood out in the last month before we made this change a hard line just a couple of weeks ago.

[00:17:41.100] – Eric Preston

And essentially a client was like, oh, I just want to get lofty set up before I just sign on the dotted line and pay you guys. And we’re like, done deal. This guy’s perfect fit. He’s excited, we’re excited to work with him. It’s like three, four weeks later and he says, still having problems with lofty, right. So now that’s out of our control. And it’s like there’s all these third party software providers that we rely on and some are better than other, like real geeks has always been good to us. Sierra takes months to set up. We found lofty support is, you know, abysmal at best, and so for us to build our business around that is challenging. We’ve done it for so long. But if I were to be honest with you, like, the amount of money I’ve probably lost and the amount of people I haven’t been able to help, because whatever we talked about and whatever excitement there was on that call three weeks later, that’s gone. And so it’s sad. And we just wanted to remove that bottleneck from our business and so far, that feels like the right decision.

[00:18:45.960] – Robert Newman

Wait, just gonna. We’re gonna go. We need 2 seconds to go to a break, Eric, and when we come back, you can wrap up that, the end of that question, and then, John, you’re gonna. John’s gonna kick off by sticking to the format. Eric, I’m the one who’s going to be throwing you the curveball. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we’ll be right back. Thank you so much for tuning into the mailwright show. We’re here with Eric Preston. He is the founder of agent launch and we’re deep into talking about hopefully what is resonating with all of you as concerns. And honestly, both John and I, though we’re probably not showing it to you, Eric. We’ve had similar experiences with similar providers and boy, oh, boy, could we go on one. But it’s good to hear. It’s good to hear another founder say the same thing. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we really, we really appreciate you tuning in today. We’ll be right back. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. We’re here with the amazing, the outstanding Eric Preston, the founder of agent launch. We’re also here with the amazing Jonathan Dinwood. For those of you that don’t know, Jonathan is a multi founder.

[00:19:55.490] – Robert Newman

He has more than one company, and if you want to know more about him, you should definitely look him up. He is a WordPress wizard and has another podcast that’s one of the biggest in his segment called WP Tonic. So go check that out if you’re exploring WordPress. Without any further ado, we’re back with Eric Preston. Eric, I was incredibly rude. I interrupted you while you were trying to answer the last bit of a question, which was, John, help me out. What was it? Who do you use to build your sites? And you were kind of in the process of saying the way that I interpreted your answer was, we would work with Sierra Interactive, real geeks and lofty, formerly known as chime, and you were explaining some challenges that you had, and then I interrupted you.

[00:20:45.730] – Eric Preston

Yeah, that’s all good, man. I think the, you know, we also work with, like, agent locator works. Most. Most of the people use that are in Canada. But I think it’s kind of frustrating because now agents have to deal with two companies, right, and they’re, you know, it’s just not very streamlined. And so we’ve kind of brought that in house by building landing pages and doing it all in house. And our time to get a client live is a lot less, like, there’s just a lot less friction. And so that’s, that’s one thing. And I think there’s, like, a bit of frustration, obviously, like I was saying, on agents side with agencies and agencies with agents. So there’s, like, this middle ground we have to find to meet at. But I think the advice I’d give to agents when working with any agency is, like, don’t buy into big guarantees so much. People say, well, do you have a guarantee? I’m like, no. Like, I don’t like, go. Go read our social proof. Read our reviews. Read it. If that’s not enough for you, it’s not a good fit, and that’s cool. If you want a big guarantee, you should read the fine print and know that it’s not as big as it sounds.

[00:21:50.020] – Eric Preston

And so that’s my feedback on that.

[00:21:56.990] – Robert Newman

Got you, John. What? Let’s get you into the mix, man. What’s. What do you want to ask Eric next? I have your list, of course, but I don’t want to spoil it for you.

[00:22:09.830] – Jonathan Denwood

So what do you think? What are some of the biggest mistakes you see agents make regarding marketing and online lead generation? I think, and we’ve discussed this on the podcast, me and Robert numinous times, is that I don’t think a lot of agents who are successful, but maybe not know that much about online marketing is they have a total misunderstanding of what the average online lead is. They, there’s a, what they think is an online lead, and what you or Rob and myself might consider online lead, not always been a lot of times, there’s a lot of education needed. So, first of all, how would you respond to that? And then secondly, what are some of the things that you regularly see?

[00:23:09.540] – Eric Preston

Yeah, that’s a good question. So there’s a few themes I want to touch on. The first being, I think that most agents are a mile wide and an inch deep. And I think that I talk about this a lot because you got to keep in mind as an agent, that and every agent knows this, there’s a million people trying to sell you something. And so just be careful because being everywhere isn’t a good thing. And I always say people are going to compare someone else’s fourth quarter to your first quarter. And if you see people like me or you see people that are like a little bit ahead on the content game. I have 30 some thousand YouTube subscribers. And so it was only when we got to close to where we are now, where we started doing a little bit of other platforms. And so most people become known for one platform. So you have to pick a social platform that you use and you like and you understand and just like become good at it. And when I say this, I’m also talking about lead generation. You don’t need to generate leads from ten different places.

[00:24:21.890] – Eric Preston

Like, it’s good to have a little bit of diversity, but it’s more powerful, I think, to focus on one or two channels. So, like, if I were to fly home as a brand new agent, what would I do? I run ads on Google and probably new construction, and I would build a YouTube channel and I just put all my energy into that and make sure my online presence is tidied up. Because like, your point? I think there’s some really core principles with online leads that people miss. One is that these leads are early in their process or you wouldn’t be talking to them. People are like, I want sellers who are ready to sell tomorrow. It’s like, that’s not how this works. You. 67% of leads on leads online work with the first agent they talk to. As long as you don’t draw up the ball. This is about giving you that at bat. But also you need to understand with online lead gen that people are getting prospected by multiple agents. They’re usually on multiple websites. You have to win them over. That’s what this business is most of the time. People who are searching for properties, doing stuff online related to real estate, they’re getting captured as a lead in many places and they’re probably getting prospected.

[00:25:26.550] – Eric Preston

And you need to deliver more value than anyone else. And you need to make sure your online presence is clean. And what I mean by that is not. You need a $50,000 website that took you two years to make. You need like a good looking online profile in general and a clean Google my business. And you need to have some activity. But just being on Instagram doesn’t help you. If someone goes to Instagram and they see that you’re not posting regularly, I hate that term. Posting regularly but they see that you’re not interesting or you’re lazy. It’s not helping. You just be really good at one thing. And if they go to your one platform and you’re super active and engaged, that’s enough. Like, people aren’t trying to work with the most social media driven agent. And so I think with online lead gen, you just have to understand that these people are the same leads that are going to zillow, that they’re selling back to you. They’re the same leads that are going to realtor.com. and we’re just getting in front of those people with advertising that’s driving them to your website so that you can capture their information, so that you have the opportunity to prospect them.

[00:26:26.600] – Eric Preston

But it takes work. You have to put in the work. It’s not. Nothing in real estate is that easy until you’ve been doing it for so many years that you have a brand, you have a database, you have repeat and referral business, you have, like, you’ve grinded your teeth in this business for a long time, and you’ve got the reward of getting the easy business. And I know agents who are like, man, I’ve been doing this 20 years. I just take what comes to me and I’m happy, and that’s great. But most people aren’t there, you know? And so I think that online lead gen, the mistakes people make is going a mile wide, an inch deep. Because when you’re trying to convert ten different lead sources, you need a different process for all of them. If you just spend all your money in one that you believe in, you can recycle the same process and get really good at it, you know, same with building a YouTube channel or building Instagram or TikTok or whatever. By repetition, you will get good at that thing over a long enough time horizon, and you will not get good at ten things at once, likely.

[00:27:31.600] – Eric Preston

So that’s my take on online leads, is figure out the place you want to be, find a good provider that you trust, and go all in on that and follow the process. I think a lot of agents don’t follow the process. They sign up for something, they think they know better, they think they’re good at sales, and they have an ego. Instead of just listening to the people that talk to hundreds of agents who do this all the time, we’ve done this for years, who’ve put together something and put a lot of work into something to make it easy for you. Because we know agents, the average agent isn’t that smart. Let’s be honest. And good agents know this. Every agent I talk to is good is like, yeah, there’s a lot of, you know, those types in the industry. So like, let’s just accept that and move on and be like, hey, the smartest agents I know are the ones that are the most willing to follow the process. Actually, it’s the ones that come in with an ego who think they’re better than they are and they don’t follow the process and take the advice and they don’t, they aren’t the ones on the website as a case study.

[00:28:39.420] – Eric Preston

You know, they’re not the ones that make it there. So that was probably a very long.

[00:28:44.410] – Jonathan Denwood

Answer, but no, I agreed with every word you said there. Over to you, Robert.

[00:28:51.440] – Robert Newman

No, so far, Eric, you’ve been a ten of ten guest and I’ve, I’ve been loving every second of it. There’s, there’s a lot to be said about focusing. John and I each have different verticals. With agent launch, you’ve done something that I find to be personally fascinating. I, I had run across few years ago as a guy producing like some type of purchasable content. I wasn’t able to find it again before this podcast, but I could swear that I remember that being a thing with you.

[00:29:25.360] – Eric Preston

Yeah, it was okay.

[00:29:27.360] – Robert Newman

I usually buy other content producers content. Like, I like to know what people are selling. Like, I pay attention to it. I don’t know yours, but what I absolutely agree with 100% and that I spend most of my time explaining to agents in this really incredibly long sales process that I have, is that I go, it is so much better to be an expert in a small neighborhood than one of 20 that isn’t really more qualified than anybody else in a big neighborhood. Like, for instance. And so since I’m an inbound marketer, it’s about providing value in ways that people didn’t expect, like being able to really analyze an area or a lifestyle and dive deep into that so that you capture somebody’s attention and then they want to talk to you. That’s the whole form and function of inbound marketing. But what I don’t hear enough people talking about is the idea of specialty information, the idea of saying no. Like, I live in Los Angeles county. You don’t want to focus on Los Angeles county. As a matter of fact, if you’re going to focus, I live in Van Nuys, which is a teeny, tiny little, very urban pocket.

[00:30:41.010] – Robert Newman

Not a lot of great houses in Van Nuys. My neighboring cities all have higher priced real estate. What Van Nuys does have is a ton of apartment buildings. I’ve thought about this many times, and I think if I was ever to actually hang a license and sell real estate, I would just focus on apartment buildings in Van Nuys. Like, that’s it. Probably would only do a sale of two year, but they’re millions of dollars. And then I just focus on that one particular client, like, what questions are they asking? And then I would go out there and get those answers and then start publishing just like you have on YouTube and things like that. And the reason I’m going into all of this is that what you’ve done with new construction and a lead generation system that’s focused very specifically on a niche and how you just talked about a lot about process and sticking to the process. Every single angle of my career, everything I’ve ever done, me being a founder for the 7th time, I got to tell you, most of what you do is you create a process, and then you get all your people to try to follow along with it.

[00:31:46.430] – Robert Newman

And I feel like I’m a dude with a hammer, and, like. And everybody else is kind of like, the nails, and, like, all I’m doing is like, okay, I hammered that over there, and now it’s coming out a little loose, and I got to go back and hammer it. But I’m not doing anything different. I’m just saying, just stick to this, to the thing that we created, because I’ve already tested it. I already spent two years, like, doing the whole thing. Like, please don’t muck around with it or change it or forget a step in the process. So, anyway, I guess this is just my really long way window way of saying, I love the idea that you presented about process. Besides the new construction bit, do you have, like, an aha moment for a process or something inside your. Your own business or maybe with a client specifically, like. Like, some really kind of lit you up?

[00:32:35.020] – Eric Preston

Yeah. So, before we go to that, I do have a good one, and I just wanted to validate what you said about niche marketing. I think people really underestimate it, and it’s this idea of, like, being a big fish in a small pond. And when you become the best at a very, as naval says, specific. If you have specific knowledge, you have very specific knowledge about a narrow topic, but you’re the best at it. That’s when you get invites from people to come on podcasts, to be a guest, to talk to, speak to, whatever, because you’re the best at that narrow thing, right? A good example is Levi down in Dallas who crushed it with YouTube. Now he has a YouTube program. It’s like people see him as like the best at that, right? And like people saw me as the best at Google Ads right in the beginning. And that’s how I started. I founded this business based on that and I’m not going to get into my niche in real estate, but it was a wild one, but it was a very narrow, crazy niche, but it worked extremely well. And so now I’ve taken that same philosophy.

[00:33:37.280] – Eric Preston

And the AHA moment that I had was, it’s funny, we made this decision before I found one third of properties were actually new construction right now. But that was super validating to hear nonetheless. But the big aha moment I had with this new construction was it wasn’t even the results that our clients were getting. It was the initial conversation that you have with a lead is just inherently different. So when you sign up with on an IDX site, you put in your information and you get access to properties. You get access to the exact same properties that you can get on any other agents website, Zillow, realtor, whatever, they have what they want, because people don’t care about agents, they care about real estate. Agents are just there to facilitate the transaction. Now when you sign up on these sites, then you start getting a phone call from an agent and you have to overcome these smoke screens and barriers to say, hey, I’m just here to help. I want to help you get set up on a safe search. And you try to move that conversation along. And this is challenging. And so this is what, because people throw you smokescreens, they’ll say, oh, I’m just browsing and not ready yet.

[00:34:47.720] – Eric Preston

But buyers are liars. They say they’re twelve months out later, you get deeper, you find out they’re ready to go in a month or two. And that’s the difference between like a skilled agent who works on their scripts and works on overcoming these objections and smokescreens, and the agent that doesn’t follow the process and never gets past that first step.

[00:35:05.360] – Robert Newman

Sure.

[00:35:05.700] – Eric Preston

And so that’s why we’ve built a coaching element to our business, is to help people get over that. Now, new construction, you sign up for early access or first access to units that they don’t have access to. So it’s like, hey, opt in for all of the latest new construction developments in, say, Babcock Ranch is the one I was just talking about with my client. And if you listen to that episode of the podcast, which will be out soon, he’ll tell you that builders will call him first with inventory because he has relationships with them. So he literally has access to properties that nobody else does, including the public. So your initial value with the lead, when you call them and say, hey, I noticed you sign up on, you know, Babcock Ranch, new construction.com, or whatever it is. Just wanted to see what you were interested in finding so I could help you. We have a bunch of units coming to market soon. I’m happy to tell you about them. The commerce, the value you have to that prospect immediately is way higher because they do not get exactly what they want right away.

[00:36:15.910] – Eric Preston

They actually need you to show it to them. And that’s how you can take that conversation for me. So that, that was the AHA moment for why we do new construction. It’s not like the lead cost is lower. It’s not the anything like that or what I talked about even before about the software. It was, the initial conversation is much smoother and therefore the conversion rate is much higher.

[00:36:43.490] – Robert Newman

Eric, you are just over delivering in every single category. I asked the question. That is an incredibly cool answer. And I am, as a call center.

[00:36:53.880] – Jonathan Denwood

Guy, you want to take that high prize, Eric, because Robert doesn’t know that.

[00:36:58.440] – Robert Newman

Well, you got my wheels turning, and I usually make other people’s wheels turn, and now you’ve got mine turning.

[00:37:04.620] – Eric Preston

I can feel that. As I was saying it, I can feel that one.

[00:37:07.360] – Jonathan Denwood

I want to say that when Eric’s team approached me to come on the podcast, I’ve been watching Eric’s YouTube videos for quite a while.

[00:37:18.380] – Robert Newman

Okay.

[00:37:18.780] – Jonathan Denwood

And I knew Eric, and I knew he would bring a lot of value to the company. And you’re very down turf, Eric. Something that’s greatly missing in the real estate market.

[00:37:32.440] – Eric Preston

Not mentioning names.

[00:37:36.160] – Jonathan Denwood

To say the least. I’d like to go on with another question. So, AI, how do you see this affecting real estate and the Pacific real estate marketing? I’ve invested a lot of money and I use it daily, but I also see it being really abused by certain companies in the real estate marketing area. Really brutally, I mean, really brutally outrageous statements and all sorts of stuff. But I buy, use it daily and I’m committed to it. So I don’t know where it’s going to go in the real estate industry. Got any faults about Eric?

[00:38:27.720] – Eric Preston

Well, I think in your space, like SEO and stuff, copywriting, like, obviously there’s quite a use for it. And I think for agents, too. I feel like you always got to dance around this one because you never know how people feel about it, but I think it’s a, right now at least, it’s a big negative for a lot of agents. And the reason is what you said about it being abused, is that it’s very sellable right now. So AI is all the rage, right? Everyone’s like, yeah, I got to AI. Everything got an AI. My bed and my house and my. It’s just like, everything needs, like, a splash of AI. It feels like online. But what I think happened was people got obsessed with AI. People started buying into AI, and of course they want to use it for the things that they’re either not good at or don’t have time for. So one of those things is the conversion process. So how do I use AI to prospect? For me is the question that a lot of people want answered. And, like, Robert, you’ll know this. There was a time in our business where we helped hire and train isas.

[00:39:32.740] – Robert Newman

Yeah.

[00:39:33.230] – Eric Preston

And what we realized in doing that is most agents are not ready to be a manager of a. Another human. And we would hire is as on teams. We give them all this infrastructure, we train them, and then we talk to the agent, and we give them sops. And it was like, they’re like, yeah, like, I don’t know. I just haven’t talked to my idea in a couple of weeks. And I’m like, what? You should be talking to them every day, every morning, like sales huddles. Let’s go. We teach this, we coach this, like, and it was kind of funny, but not at the same time, because there were, like, these, these beautiful people we were hiring and training, and they just weren’t led very well. And honestly, we’ve hired lots of isas that are still with their agents and doing great work, too. But the point is, an agent will do anything possible to not have to make the phone calls, and AI is just another reason for them to not have to make the phone calls. And so what happens is you get these kind of somewhat robotic voices, texting and emailing or whatever they’re doing leads.

[00:40:29.760] – Eric Preston

And can it work? Sure, of course. Will it get better over time? Of course, it will. But what happens is something I call the authenticity gap, which is someone decides to not work with you because they felt somewhere in the sales process that you were not authentic and you are not aware of it because they didn’t talk to you, they didn’t reach out to you, they wrote you off. They might have unsubscribed or whatever, but you never know how many people you’re losing from sending an impersonal message. So we kind of went the other way and we got into more personalized video because I think in the age of AI, what people really want is personalization of the sales process. They want to be working with a human being. There are all these memes online of people dealing with AI, like phone people and phone bots, and they’re getting very good, don’t get me wrong. And I think there’s probably some utility. It’s not what we’re going to really niche into and sell. I think it’s people just need to be very aware that it’s very sellable right now. But the way you convert a real estate lead is through creating a human connection.

[00:41:36.100] – Eric Preston

And I don’t think AI is a good way to create a human connection. I think it’s potentially a good way to qualify a lead a little. It’s potentially a way to nudge someone a little. But you’re never going to sell someone over text. You’re never going to sell someone with AI. Think so? I think it’s hurting people that are buying into it too much. And what’s going to happen is they’re going to be like, oh, I signed up for this AI program, and over the next four months, they’re going to stop prospecting. They’re going to take their foot off the gas and realize their conversion rate went way down and they’re actually missing a lot of business. So that’s my take on it. I think for other things, like helping with copy and helping with property descriptions, there are some pretty obvious use cases for it, but I just don’t know if sales is the right one. I think the right agent with the right tool could probably do some damage with it, but I think for most people it’s not quite there.

[00:42:39.890] – Robert Newman

Wow, another beautiful answer. That’s probably going to do it for our show, John, unless you want to add maybe one more minute of stuff.

[00:42:48.530] – Jonathan Denwood

I think it’s a great place. And I just want to say, folks, I really highly recommend Eric’s YouTube channel, and I’ve learned a lot from it. Like I admitted to Eric, and he grinned. I’ve stolen so many of his ideas over the last couple of years. But you seem cool about it, Eric. There can only be one Eric, can they?

[00:43:11.020] – Eric Preston

I don’t have a scarcity mindset about it. Use it. That’s why it’s there.

[00:43:16.820] – Robert Newman

And from my end, I had run across your content a little bit here and there. And like what I’m struck with here and I’m struck with within. Your offer is, I will say, I think that debt, like, there are two very rare combinations inside the real estate founder section of real estate marketing, and that is a data-led company and radical honesty in combination with each other. That is what really impressed me about you. It’s, I don’t really have necessarily a tried and true silver bullet. What I have is I have data that I look at with like, like Google Analytics accounts. It’s part of my love. I’m fascinated by big data. And I go in and I literally look at my hundred plus, you know, whatever it is, accounts at least daily, sometimes every other day. But I’m always looking. I’m looking at how user behavior is changing on websites. The answer to conversion is usually where the audience’s attention goes. That’s where kind of like you want to present data, right? So, I have a data-driven approach and do not like a hard system. I build things around where people are going and what their interests are.

[00:44:36.400] – Robert Newman

And the truth is that changes. Sometimes markets change. We’ve had a pandemic and we’ve had a once-in-a-lifetime real estate market directly after that. So I’ve been dealing with a lot of change, which means that the silver bullet has been changing because the industry has been changing. And that’s something I’m hearing you say with this new construction system and going from selling coaching or, you know, courses and then moving into like, you’re following along with the data, you’re stumbling across it, you’re looking at the results and saying, this is really productive. And I’m going to build up like a system and a process and a business around it and then you’re selling that. And as far as I can tell from everything I’ve seen, everything you’ve shown us today, you’re just really transparent about it, which I really like. It’s really incredibly rare. Like most people want to sell bait without the data, they just want to sell you on something. Especially real estate marketing company was covered early in the show. And ladies and gentlemen, I’m just going to, I’m going to close my end out. You can find me@inboundrem.com and see a lot of this stuff online.

[00:45:43.460] – Robert Newman

I’ve got hundreds of videos and hundreds of pages on my website. And I’m just going to say this, beware what you buy. It is almost always stuff that serves the person selling it to you far better than it serves you. And we can go through the entire list. Very few real estate marketing companies are taking the time, like, Eric has to present enough data online to give you enough perspective where you can buy a system or buy a service and be properly educated before you do. It’s not that one is better than another. It’s which is best for you. Who’s put the data out there to say, give you enough research to say, this is going to work with my personality type. Like, you covered it earlier, like, will you make phone calls or just, will you never, ever, ever pick up a phone? Well, that’s probably, you know, if that’s going to be the case, you don’t want to go with a system that relies heavily on you or somebody else picking up a phone. Are you going to manage your ISA team? It’s crazy what you said, but of course you’re right. Like, you’re absolutely 100% correct.

[00:46:51.680] – Robert Newman

Like, my biggest frustration is finding a world-class, like Argentinian or Filipino. And I’ve been to these countries, and I like to meet my teams. They’re just people to me. They’re just in a different place. And so I go, and I meet them, and I train them up and, like, and do all this. And some of them are the most beautiful humans you’ve ever met in your life. And then they can’t get their client to talk to them. And I’m just like, I just want to throw myself out of fucking window. All right, so I’ve said my bit. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Eric, how would you like people to find you? What would you like to, like, kind of point at? At the end of our time together today?

[00:47:34.470] – Eric Preston

Yeah, I think if you’re interested in working with us using our service, you can go to agentlaunch.com and fill out our form. You can definitely follow me there. Preston, on YouTube. That’s where we’re going to be dropping a lot of value and putting our new podcast, which is called Build and Sell, which is all focused on the new home market, so make sure to follow along. And on agent launch, we’re going to be making a lot of really fun content coming up, so stay tuned for that.

[00:47:57.070] – Robert Newman

Super cool. John, how would you like people to? What would you like to point out as we wrap the show-up?

[00:48:02.230] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, sure, Rob. Just go to the Mail-Right.com website, where we combine WordPress with Facebook—a winning combination. Over to you, Robert.

[00:48:13.460] – Robert Newman

And I said it once, I’m going to steal the microphone for a second. Just say, go to inboundrem.com, look at my about or services pages. If you want to learn more about me and if you want to learn more about just real estate marketing, SEO specifically, I do exactly what Eric said. I’ve done it for a long time. I focus on only search engine optimization for real estate and residential real estate agents. It’s what I’ve been focused on for 16 straight years. You can learn a lot if that’s in the interest of yours on my website. Thank you, everybody, for joining the show. Thank you, Eric, for allowing your team to book the appointment with us and deciding to show up for the podcast. John, thank you, as always, for setting this all up and doing the production on the show. Everything, the acquiring of the guests, the being on time, all of that is John, so deeply appreciate you, my man. That’s it. Take us offline.

[00:49:04.520] – Eric Preston

Thanks so much, guys. Appreciate it.

[00:49:08.120] – Robert Newman

Sorry, I just kind of like random.

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The Hosts of The Mail-Right Show

Jonathan Denwood

https://www.youtube.com/@MailRight/videos

https://www.facebook.com/mailrightusa

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Robert Newman

InboundREM

https://inboundrem.com