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What successful reactors stopped doing in 2025? Avoid these 6 costly mistakes and unlock the secrets to building a thriving reaction channel.
In this essential video, we explore the six critical habits that reactors must abandon in 2025 to stay relevant and engaging. As the landscape of online content evolves, it’s crucial to adapt your approach for maximum impact. Join us as we delve into common pitfalls and provide actionable tips to enhance your reaction videos. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to elevate your content.
Fast & secure hosting for LMS & community websites with the best plugins & AI in one easy-to-use package
Fast & secure hosting for LMS & community websites with all the best plugins & AI in one easy-to-use package
#1 – Sending out boring and poor content newsletters.
a – Deal of the week
b – Local market reports
c – Local News
#2 – Posting the wrong content on social media (Quality)
#3 – Checking in with people the right way (Purpose)
#4 – Not having CRM and not using the DTD2 system
Use the DTD2 system
The DTD2 system, short for “Doing the Database Two”, is a contact management approach developed to help real estate agents consistently connect with their database. It involves categorizing contacts by the first letter of their last name and then systematically reaching out to two-letter groups each week. This ensures consistent contact with everyone in the database, typically within a 13-week cycle.
https://mapscoaching.com/coaches/steve-schlueter/
#5 – Not expanding your local network
#6 – Writing client questions and then also answering them online using social media
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the Mail-Right podcast. Today’s episode is number 483. And we’ve got a topic coming in fast for you, which is There’s six things you should stop doing as a realtor in 2025. One of the things you should stop doing is not commenting or sharing our podcast because we are one of the top 100 real estate podcasts that exist I’m absolutely certain that your friends, your coworkers, and anybody that’s even vaguely related to real estate will get some value out of listening to John and I because we are, after all, masters of the universe, know it all about everything related to real estate marketing and the people that you should bank your entire career on. All right, with that little piece of sarcasm, which you can thank John for setting the tone before we turned on the microphone.
I got to give you some pushback. You’re so dominant that I had to give you some pushback at all.
I’ve been told things like this before. All right, John, go ahead and introduce everybody. Among many other things, John is not a man you can push around. So explain who you are and what you do, and why you are the man that you are.
I’ll call that we can, I’d have no idea myself there, Rob. That’s very telling, isn’t it? But thanks for the intro, Rob. Basically, I’m the joint founder of Mail-Right.com. com. We’re a great CRM, and we’ve just introduced Rob. We can build your website in front of you using AI technology. If you want your website built in front of you with one of my success team members, we can do it and also show you everything else that the Mail-Right platform has to offer. Back over to you, Rob.
That’s fascinating. That’s actually something I may want to ask a question about sometimes, too.
All right. He’s waken He’s woken up, folks. He was-Oh, barely.
Today is one of those days I had to start at 07 00 AM, which we’ll explain both the dominance and the grumpiness all at the same time.
Oh, that’s really early for you. He’s a night owl, this guy. He’s up all night.
Yeah, it was a couple of hours of sleep is what that means for me. All right, so here’s the first thing on the list, which is we’ve talked about this before. I’m going to talk about it again, and I’m going to lead into the subject, really, really hot because I’ve got a very small candle today. One of the things that drives me crazy is when I’m opening up real estate, which John probably is, too, but I’m on about 30 or 40 realtor email lists. So this hits home when you add this subject to our list because I am legitimately a person who receives probably more- That’s probably one of them. Yeah. Hold on one second. I’m so sorry. Let me have to edit this. John, can you hit the pause button? Yeah, sure. I’m so sorry. Hey, this is Robert. Hello. Hey, Megan. Hey, Megan. Hey, I’m just wondering if you’re coming on. I have a schedule for two, or if there was. What do you mean you have a schedule for two? Let me look at my calendar. I’ve got a meeting with Hamilton Selway at 3 00. Wait, no, wait, that’s next week.
Let me look at today. Megan, I apologize. You didn’t make it into my primary calendar. We had a call scheduled for 2 00 today? I want to make sure I’m talking to the right person. Who is this, actually? This is Robert Newman. I think I have the wrong number. I apologize. Are you supposed to be meeting with Inbound REN? I’m not looking for Robert. I think I have the wrong number. Okay, copy you. Thanks, Megan. All right, bye. Okay, I am so sorry. Can you edit all that out?
Yeah, I’ll take it down from the live YouTube, and we can edit the podcast.
I am so sorry, John.
Well, can we start from the beginning? That’d be the easiest. We start from the beginning. So do your countdown, and like I say, it’s 483.
Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the MailRight podcast. Today’s episode is number 483, and we are going to talk about six things you’d stop doing as a realtor in 2025. First on the list is something I’m super hot about. But before we get into that, ladies and gentlemen, you probably know this if you’ve been listening to the show recently, but we are one of the top real estate podcasts in the world. You know what we’d like you to stop doing as a realtor? Stop not sharing our show. Please share it, comment on it. There are thousands of you that listen to the show and have commented on other podcasting platforms, which John and I never see. We never see it. What we would like you to do is to share it with some friends and email either robert@inboundrim. Com or Jonathan. Is it John or Jonathan?
It’s It’s Jonathan.
Jonathan, J-O-N-A-T-H-A-N@mail-right. Com. Let us know what you think because we don’t see your comments. Then leave us a comment and like the show, and share the show on the platform you’re listening to. We would greatly appreciate it. Now, without any further ado, my fearless, dominant dating partner is Jonathan. We’d go ahead and introduce ourselves, John, because I’m going more dominant your way. Introduce yourself right now.
I don’t know what you’ve been taking today, but I wish I had some of it. That’s all I got to say. I’m the joint founder of Mel-right. Com. We are CRM and a lot more, and we just got a new technology. Basically, we can use AI to build your website on one of our onboarding calls, and we can build the whole website in front of you and put content in. So it makes the whole process of getting your website live and getting the leads that you’re looking for really a lot quicker. Back over to you, Rob.
All righty. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to talk about bad content. That’s our first thing on our list, bad email content. Guess what? This guy, the guy that is talking to you right now through whatever you’re listening to, gets probably more email content from realtors than just about anybody. I’m on over 40 mailing lists as I examine content for clients that I’ve either consulted with currently or consulted with in the past, and about 100 other reasons that have put me on about 40 of these lists over the years. Now, if I’m on the list, most of the time these people are doing higher efforts. But of those 40 people, 20 probably send me what’s like canned emails and how or why anybody would ever open them is beyond me. Let’s a pushed forward email from coming in from an IDX provider or an MLS or something like that. This content is less. It does the exact opposite. Not only does it not engage your audience or create some meaningful connection between you and your audience, it actually does the opposite, gets you off their mailing list, makes them dislike your marketing efforts, disapprove of you as a human being, in some cases, depending on how strongly they feel about junk email, and for sure, does not accomplish the mission of getting you some phone call.
That’s what I’ve got to say about this subject right now, John. How about you?
Yeah, I’m really influenced with Jimmy Burgess and his YouTube channel because he really talks a lot about newsletters and what you can do, what you should put in them. He’s got some really basic ideas, but He’s totally spot on. He’s one of my more favorable. I really like his YouTube channel, and he’s been on the show a couple of times. I have to try and get him to come back. But he gives a lot of advice on how to avoid what you’ve outlined, Rob, and some of the stuff he talks about is like, you’re a real estate agent, so do a real deal of the week, something you’ve seen on the that you really think is a good deal. Talk about it, why you feel it’s a good deal. Market report, but not one that you are adding some value to, not some caned report. What’s really going on in the market that month or last month, and what you think, how it’s going to affect this month, whatever. Lastly, local news. Show that you know what’s going on, that you are in the community and promoting other people’s events, and that is a great way to build great goodwill, basically.
That’s what Jimmy talks about on his YouTube channel, Robert. I think they’re really great basic ideas, but so many agents, like you said, they’re not doing the basics, really, are they, Robert?
Not even close. I think that what Jimmy is trying to say, or at least here’s what I’ve oftentimes said to people when I’ve been a sales manager or a leader of very, very large groups of salespeople. I’ve always said, Hey, at a certain point, we all have to consider how a high tide raises all ships. If there’s a profession that has a terrible overall reputation for email marketing, it’s going to be real estate. Another thing that realtors are getting really creamed by in terms of a bad reputation is texting. Because you egregiously text during the sales process. Many marketing companies out there leverage AI text, and when it goes off the rails, it goes off the rails to the tune of 3, 4, 5, 6,000 experiences for different people. It very quickly eliminates large sections of the population that are ever going to sign up for lead generation for realtors. So email marketing and texting. You have to understand that if somebody gets really burned by the experience of signing up for these things, they’re unlikely to do it again in the future. Very similar to, I won’t walk back onto a car lot, ever.
I’ve just had too many bad high pressure experiences with salespeople there. I’m never going again. They’ve ruined it for me entirely. I will get on the phone, I will have a conversation I’ll have my car delivered. That’s it. That’s all they ever get. All right. Number two, here’s an interesting subject because it’s a vast subject worthy of its own podcast, which is posting the wrong content on social media. Before I jump into this one, John, what do you consider to be wrong content? Do you have some examples?
Well, I’m going to repeat myself a little bit. I was watching one of Alajim’s videos, and he was interviewing an agent called Tellehunt. She was new to the industry about four or five years ago. Now she’s got her own brokerage, and I think she’s got about 20 agents working for her. She built the whole business on social media and getting leads through social media. Really smart agent. Great story. I watched it all. It was a great interview. Too many agents are just putting on canned social media content. Content, either they’re getting a service, we offer it at Mailright, but we work with the agent, and if they’ve got the budget, we can do more individual. But we also encourage them to put their own content, and we have a mixture. That’s the best way to get results. But you’re seeing so many agents just really put really, really bad content on social media, and they don’t believe in social media, and they don’t believe they can get any leads from it. But if you watch this interview that Jimmy did have, and I’ll make sure it’s in the show notes, if you go to the Mel Wright website, I’ll make sure the links are there, folks, you’ll just be blown away that it’s the wrong attitude.
You can get some fantastic leads, Robert.
For those of you who are listening to the show, for you, John, we should get Taley onto the show if we can.
How are you going to say that?
Listen, I’ve heard her name before. I’ve seen her campaign. The reason her campaign has come up for me is because she’s one of the very few realtors that leaned into her own archetype. What What I mean by that is we all look and sound a certain way. John looks the way he looks, I look the way that I look. And so fixing a marketing message as you move into the new age of media where so much of it is going to be, you really have very little choice other than to get onto camera. So you might as well lean into whatever archetype you are. If you look young, go with tech savvy and speak fast, stuff like that. That’s what I’ve done. But Tali is a mother, and she looks very motherlike. She’s got a very wholesome look. Now, nobody can change the way that they look. Who knows whether she’s wholesome or not? I have no idea. I can only look at her. But what her opening line on her website is I teach moms how to make money in real estate. It is such a pure and simple tagline, especially when you look at it and you go, oh, I think you’ve- And it’s a WordPress website.
Yeah. So that’s It’s something to do. So what you don’t want to do is don’t go against archetype. If you’re 80 years old and you’re trying to be on social media, don’t pretend like you’re the master of all things tech. Don’t post stuff that you don’t understand. Don’t go against who you are as a person. If you’re a dog person and you happen to be a realtor and you don’t care about real estate more than you care about dogs, stop posting stuff that you have no connection to. You won’t want to comment on it. Somebody eventually is going to lean into something that you don’t know on a social post. And the very minute that you start to be unauthentic, you can’t unwind it. These digital platforms control the message and response once you’ve put it out there. So you really don’t want to ever lean into something that’s unauthentically you. And if you can be authentic and also be true to whatever archetype you are, are you a lumberjack? Do you live out in the mountains? Do you raise horses? These are all archetypes. So if you raise horses, look like a horse person, and then talk like a horse person, and then post like a horse person.
And if you don’t understand what that is, look at other people in the space because you will discover, just like with Tali, That most likely they look and act a certain way. Certainly, this young lady, Tally. Is it Tally? No, it’s Tally. T-a-l-u-i. Now, here’s a fascinating thing, John. Despite the fact she is a millionaire, she’s obviously done quite She’s only got 110 followers on Facebook. Go figure. All right. Moving on to… Hold on, let me check the time here. You know what? We’re going to go to break, ladies and gentlemen. When we come back, we’re going to have more deeply fascinating information you just will not want to miss. We’re also going to do the courtesy of sharing our sponsors of the show with you and hammering away at our own personal message, which we know you care ever so deeply about, which is sharing our show and promoting us for free because that’s what we all love to do in life. All right, stay tuned. We’ll be right back. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It’s episode number 483 of the MailRight podcast. As promised, the sponsors of the show today are mailright.
Com. Mailright is moving the direction to only a small, nimble company like Mailright. Can they have an all-in-one CRM? And what’s more, they now have a one-of-a-kind AI a website building experience where they can build a website right in front of your eyes. If you have not seen that, heard of that, check them out. Go to mail-right. Com and hit the contact button. John, actually, once they’re on the site, how would you like them to reach out to you?
Yeah, just book a Zoom with us. It’s really easy. It’s right on the website in the top navigation. And either me or my partner, we do a live demo and we show you some of the great functionality of the system. Back over to you, Rob.
All righty. And the second sponsor of the show today is inboundrem. Com. You can check out everything you need to know about real estate marketing, website reviews, provider reviews, how-to reviews, how to do social marketing. It’s all there. If you are looking or aching to be an expert on AI or anything else related to real estate, you’re going to want to go to my website. Hey, if you happen to want a website or SEO services, hit my About page or Services page and reach out.
I just want to say, if you’re really looking to move your business, you’ve got a successful business and you really want to move it to the next level, you really want to win Robert up, and he’s just got a fantastic amount of knowledge. If you’re really looking to move your business on to the next level, Robert’s the guy to contact.
Much appreciated. All right, now, with no further ado, here’s what you- You can send me the check after the show, Robert. I absolutely will. $1 million, John and then Denwood. All right. Here we are. We’re at number three, four, five, and six. We got the vast majority, but we’re going to cover how you network questions and CRMs and how you do or don’t check in with people. Without Without any further ado, why don’t you go ahead and open us up to number three? Because you said staying in touch with people with a purpose.
I think if you’re utilizing what I call the Perthinean mythology, but there’s Kelly Williams and also talks about this through their trainers. I’ve been watching a few of their trainers who got some good content on YouTube. They believe in this. You need a date. If these morphologies really work with a database around 300 to 500 people, the bigger database, you got to divide it and use more marketing optimization. But a part of your database are the people that you should ring up. But just not ring up and say, How are you doing? You really should know when their birthdays are in your CRM, there should be useful information and you should keep it updated. If there’s anything around business that might help them, that’s a fantastic opportunity to give them a call and say, I heard this, I noticed this, I just thought you should know about this. It just builds an enormous amount of goodwill for you in your local market. Back over to you, Robert.
Checking To get in with people the right way is literally what… There was a recent show that we did, and I made the recommendation of reading a book called Swim with the Sharks by Harvey McKay. If you’re looking for a good handbook that has already been published, that has won every award there is to win by one of the world’s best relationship salespeople alike, probably the best since Dale Carnegie, you want to check out Harvey McKay’s book. You can probably buy it for less than $10, maybe even buy a used copy for $4. It will give you all sorts of reasons, but you really want to relate to a list that you have of interest this client has to check in with purpose. Their birthday is a good reason. Their dog’s birthday is a good reason. Something related to a transaction that you did is a good reason. Something related to tax changes is a good reason. Global reasons are good reasons. There’s all sorts of things like you can do a service call, like when taxes change, instead of worrying about how that impacts everybody, use that as a reason to call your best clients and say, Hey, I don’t know if you heard about this, just want to make sure you did.
Here’s how I would address it. You call them problem solution, problem solution, problem solution. It helps with purpose. All right, moving on. Not having a CRM and not using the DTD2 system. I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t know what the DTD2 system is.
Yeah, it’s Kelly Williamson really promotes it through their trainers. I was listening to an interview by Carla Higgins from the Double Duty podcast, and she was talking to Steve Scutchula. I think I butchered his surname, but he’s a chief trainer, one of Kelly Williamson’s chief trainers, and he thought up this mythology, and basically you just use the surname and you rotate it like A’s and C’s, and then you jump another three. It it works with a database between 3 and 500. And it just uses mythology to make sure you’re reading these people. And if you’re dealing with a database between 3 and 500, it means that you’re going to touch base with the people every 13 weeks. And he’s really pushed this. And I watched the interview that he was having with Carla, and I might do some outreach and see if it to come on the show because he really impressed me with his knowledge and really down to an enormously successful real estate agent. He’s a key part of the Kelly Williamson organization. If he is prepared to come on the show, I think it’d be a great interview, Robert.
It sounds like it. Failing to have a system and failing to have a CRM, really, I think a part of this It comes down to failing to have a marketing method in place. Now, ladies and gentlemen, we talk about this endlessly, and God, Lord knows, you do not need to do YouTube if you’re not comfortable. What you have to do if you’re going to be professional and decide that you are literally approaching real estate as a career, then you must have some marketing method in place. Letting somebody like Steve or any other human that seems to have a plan to make a complicated subject more digestible to you and is willing If you’re willing to give you some pointers, just pick a person and follow their advice as long as you can verify they’re successful. That’s my only condition. Just make sure that they know how to sell some houses. If they do, like Steve or Ricky Kharouhth or any of the other people that are out there, whatever help that you need, make sure they’re giving it. Do you need to see somebody doing something? Do you need scripts? Do you need whatever? Then you make sure that they’re available to you.
Another guy that might be good if you need scripts is Mike Ferry. And people like that, it just depends on what you need. But guys, make sure that failing to have a plan is planning to fail. And the plan does not need to be complicated. I hate to break it to everybody. You don’t need a CRM necessarily. Outlook would be a CRM if you need one. You can keep track of your contacts, you can create a task list. I mean, you don’t need fancy sophisticated tools.
I think it’s only when you got a very large database and you do marketing optimization. I think a lot of these other CRMs sell themselves on very complicated methodologies, and I totally agree with you, Rob.
Now, this next one is closely related to some of what we’re talking about. I’m going to jump out with this subject now. I’m going to give everybody an example. Here’s another thing that most realtors fail at, and you need to stop this. You need to stop thinking that you can be a sit-at-home realtor, a business card in your pocket, and that people are going to call you automatically. It simply doesn’t work that way. Maybe you all are like, Well, I know that. Okay, then let me take it a step further. You need to stop believing that you don’t have to have an elevator pitch, and you use it in every environment you possibly can. Hello, I’m so and so. I’m a realtor that services blankety blank, and I specialize in divorce. Literally, really five seconds, every single time you do. And so this subject is that you need to stop not building a local network. And here are three ideas for you to build a local network. Number one, John and I have said this so many Sometimes it’s stupid. There’s an automatic place that every single realtor with a license can go to build a network.
Every single one of you, no exceptions. And it’s one of the very few things that brokerages are decent for. You can go to open houses. You can offer to assist existing realtors, do their mule work, as Jonathan likes to call it. But show up, shake some hands, ask if it’s okay if you hand out business cards, and if it’s not okay, that’s fine. Still shake some hands, because if you happen to make more of an impression than the realtor who’s hosting the open house, you’ll still do quite well. You can also show up to other realtors’ open houses ostensibly to build a network with that realtor. But you can also, as you cruise in to shake their hand, you can start to understand how somebody who maybe has a lot of experience does their open houses. There’s never, ever an excuse not to learn, especially if you’re new to a career and failing to build a local network, failing to put yourself out there. Every single opportunity is literally probably… If I could, I would put it number one on the list because every single one of you needs to be comfortable walking out the door and shake a hand, and say that you’re a realtor.
You should introduce yourself to your neighbors. If you haven’t done that already, that’s where you start a local network, wherever you live, whether it’s an apartment or any other place else. If you’re an apartment building, I would use that as an opportunity to get my pitch down because, yes, apartment dwellers are not homeowners, but maybe they will be someday. And so you can knock on the door and practice your pitch and say, “Hey, I just got licensed or I got licensed a few years back for real estate.” I understand that you, just like me, live in this apartment building. And I just want to hand off my card to you. And if you know anybody he was looking for a house, like to suggest to give me a call. I promise you I’ll do a great job. And even though I’m just learning, I’ll work harder than the next guy. And then you hand off your card or however you’re going to do your pitch. But it gives you an opportunity to start building a network and understanding what you’re going to run across as you attempt to do that.
John, I know that we had a little bit of a dialog about this before-Yeah, I think you got some great points.
You’re not going to be successful in this industry by being the invisible agent. It doesn’t work. On the other hand, as I mentioned, I was listening to Steve’s interview, and he said that he couldn’t be this friend to everybody. It’s not in his personality type. But the way he overcame it was he wanting to become their trusted expert. He wanted people to see that he was an honest, trustworthy expert on real estate in this region. I think it was Denver was the area that he built up. He was a very successful agent. I think that is so important, but you’re not going to get anywhere by being the invisible agent.
Absolutely not. Last but not least, number 6.
Writing down clients’ questions and then answering them online. So you can use that through social media on your website. It’s just a great way. If you have any questions, there will be many people with the same question. And we’ve covered this before in other episodes, and you’ve We’ve talked about it extensively. Using Google to find questions to answer, it’s just a great methodology to also use on social media, isn’t it, Robert?
It is. So, not looking at questions as marketing opportunities is what you need to stop doing. That’s basically what we’re saying. You really need to hear us. It is one of the most… If you get lucky enough to talk to anybody, even somebody who’s very low on the interest level for real estate, and they ask you a few questions, that’s marketing gold. If they happen to be recorded when you’re doing it, if you’re doing any Zoom consultation with them, 10 times the gold, because then you can post a snippet of them asking the question and then answer it online. It seems like you’re having an interactive dialog with the whole world, especially if you have a good answer. If you don’t have a good answer, that’s what you practice, drill, and rehearse. The PDR used to have a system that was just like the DTD2. It was called Pedia Practice, Drill, and Rehearse. Practice, Drill, and Rehearse. Because if you don’t like your answer, if it doesn’t roll off your tongue, you just practice, drill like an answer until you do like it. And so somebody answering you, asking you questions legitimately in the field, as we used to call it, is one of those real opportunities to sharpen the saw, sharpen your skillset.
I love that you included this one in here, John. All right, we’ve hit the end of our time together. I know you all have been loving my repeated drumming of this subject, but hey, guess what? We are one of the top 100 real estate podcasts in the United States, and we would love to be number one. I am taking John with me on that ride. I want to be number one now that I know that we’re being ranked. So please do us a favor, share, like, or comment on whatever platform you’re on. If you’re so inclined, and if anything I’ve said or John has said, we’re going to give you the information that you need to reach out to us. So everybody grab your pens and a piece of paper, and John’s going to go first. He’s going to give you his contact details, and then I’ll go. John, how would you like people to reach out to you?
Yeah, but before that, folks, just leave us a review. If you’re using the iTunes or Spotify app, just leave us a review. It really does help the show. In the end, we will probably get into the top 10, and then Robert will promise not to talk about it anymore. Really, you need to go on the app and do it straight away, folks. But if you want to contact me, the best way is to go to the website and book a quick chat with either me or my partner, or you can email me at Jonathan, J-O-N-T-H-A-N@mel-right. Com. Back over to you, Rob.
All right, beautiful. Well, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Robert Newman, and I am one of the country’s best real estate SEO guys. As it turns out, a lot of the things we used for SEO are working really good for AI. If you’d like to know the secret to AI and SEO, book a call with me right away. You can either email me at robert@inboundedrem. Com or go to my website, hit the About page, and you can schedule into my calendar. Thank you so much, everybody, for listening to the show. John, whenever you’re ready, take us offline.
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Discover easy ways to stand out as a real estate agent in 2025 and boost your sales with proven strategies that attract more clients fast.
In a competitive real estate market, how can you ensure your voice is heard? This video explores innovative strategies that will help you stand out as a real estate agent in 2025. From leveraging cutting-edge technology to building authentic connections with clients, we cover essential tips and techniques to enhance your visibility and reputation. Don’t miss out on these game-changing insights.
#1 – DM people on social media
a – noticing personal events
b – local events
c – information that is in your CMS about particular people
#2 – Selfie video to past clients (using BombBomb)
#3 – Answering Questions on Social Media
#4 – Share Success Stories of Past Sales
#5 – Share Hot Properties
#6 – Share Helpful Content
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 482 of the MailRight podcast. I am just overjoyed to tell you that you have found the number 86-ranked podcast for real estate marketing in the US. And today, today’s exciting topic, today’s topic that you’re just going to be at the edge of your seat waiting to learn, joining Joining me and John, lapping up at the river of knowledge that we provide you is going to be easy ways to stand out as a real estate agent in 2025. Forgive me, that wasn’t the smoothest introduction I’ve ever done, but I am joined today by the master of all podcast production, Jonathan Dinwood. Go ahead, John, introduce yourself to the audience.
Thanks, Rob. I’m the joint founder of Mail-right.com. We’re a great value CRM with a landing page, email, text messaging, and a lot more. One embracing platform at a great value price, starting if you pay month to month. That’s slightly around $49 a month. Back over to you, Rob.
All right. My name is Robert Newman. I am a lifetime sales and marketing guy. I’ve run big call centers. I’ve done traditional marketing campaigns. I’ve been in charge of budgets as much as $70 million a year to do things like TV advertising and infomercials and things that don’t even exist anymore, yellow pages, and I can go on and on. Today, you find me as a real estate SEO guy who makes websites, does internet marketing campaigns, and focuses on lead generation using an inbound marketing strategy. Without any further ado, today, John and I are going to do our best to give you some ideas that you may or may not know, or you may just need to be reminded on how to get noticed as a real estate agent right now in 2025. I’m going to let John jump into number one. By the way, these show notes, if you like what we have to say, if you’re curious to see how If you want to see the in-print version, you’re going to go to Mail-Right. Com, and you’re going to look for the show notes number 482, and you’ll be able to see all the work that John has put into making notes for you.
Without any further ado, John, why don’t you go ahead and explain what number one is?
Yeah, it’s like what Rob said, our easy ideas to stand out as a real estate agent. Using social media and direct messages, people in your CRM. It’s something you want to block off a period of time every week and do it consistently. But what do you DM them about? Well, the stuff that’s in your CRM, anything that you’ve put in their personal events, their birthday, anything that you know about that person that you put into your CRM, can be a reason to hit them up with a direct message. Local events. And like anything about that person relating to other people, that’s in your CRM. This is one of the main reasons a CRM is useful: you can store this data, which nobody can remember easily, searchably, and then direct message people about it. It’s just like a hand up, putting yourself in front of them. Because it’s a busy world, and people forget that you are the real estate expert. That’s all you’re doing, really. What do you reckon, Robert?
We’ve talked about subjects like this in the past, and I’m going to go back to an old recommendation of mine, How to Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive. Harvind K is a master of building value by basically collecting information about a client. You can do that these days with research. Things like alma mater, favorite pet, favorite place to vacation, favorite place to hike, and favorite hobby. These are all really great ways to establish a connection with somebody. And so in the art of establishing connection, Harvind K is a master. He’s got 50 to 100 ideas about how you could theoretically establish a connection. If you were a pugilist, you could maybe talk to John about days, a long, long time ago, granted, but something that he used to do, that he used to do avidly. That might be an interesting way to establish a conversation because maybe he starts to talk about other things that were related to his youth, and maybe you can find something in your youth that connects to his youth. The next thing you know, you have a rapport with somebody, and that’s what really makes you stand out is connecting. Connecting, what you’ve got to do the way I’ve always thought about it is, let’s say you have 100 bullets in a magazine.
You want to fire as many of them as fast as possible at somebody and find out if you have any strikes, because the connection usually has to be genuine. You want to find points of similarity or points of historical relevance to you that match up with somebody, which I don’t do sports, I don’t ever talk to people about sports, but I do read a lot. I’ve written a lot. I’ve done a lot of… I consume a wide variety of media. I have certain art forms that I really like, like theater and similar forms. Music, I’m very, very… I’ve got a lot of great stories about Bings that I’ve seen before they got famous, because I’ve been looking at live music in LA for a long, long time. So usually, if you just search enough, you’ll find a point of connection that somebody really, really enjoys, and then you can create a report doing that. All right, number two, selfie video to plastic clients. So John’s idea here was bomb, bomb. All I’m going to say is the video is the wave of the future. I do video in my emails to my customers.
Live video is best, something that opens up inside the email. Bomb, bomb is a master of that. I think that you can’t say enough good things about the idea of trying to grab somebody’s attention in a different way using email. John, how did this make the list for you?
Yeah, well, remember we interviewed a while ago, Jimmy Burgess, I think, as it is. He’s the master of it. He selects past clients, gives them some local information about the property market, personalizes it, he sends it off to them. These are people he’s done business with. Like I say, it’s not generic, it’s personalized, and then he sends it out to them. It’s like a more targeted tap on the shoulder. I’m here, I can be a resource for you, and he shows his value by sharing the information he has with the client.
Right. And for those of you who might be big fans, and I say might, not making that assumption. Just pretend for a second that some of you have been following me and John for a while, and you’re big fans of us. Well, guess what? We have a video that we did with Conor McClusky, the CEO of Bombom, a long time back in the day. I think it was Conor. It was two founders for Bombom. It was certainly one of the two. We did an interview with one of the two founders of Bombom. You’ve got two separate ways that you could probably get more value from this podcast. One, you could use it absolutely right. Jimmy Burgess is an incredible guerrilla marketer inside the real estate space. He’s got a huge following of his own. When he was trying to get that following started, he came and visited with me and Jonathan on this show, and he was amazing. It was an incredible show. Then we’ve also got the CEO, Bombomb. If you have the patience, go to the Mail-Right.com website and look up some of these past shows. I think I have a couple of those episodes on my website, inboundrem.
Com, too. So either way, take a look for them. Just do the keyword search Bombom, and you’ll probably find the CEO. All right, moving on. Actually, hold on. Let me check the time. Yep, moving on. Number three. I like this one. So answering questions on social media. I’m going to follow you up on this one, John. How would you apply this yourself?
Well, it’s a bit like do some basic research, some SEO, Get a list up. Keep a list of questions that have been asked by clients or prospective clients. If you haven’t got such a list, you should develop one. But then also Look online. Do some basic searches, see what questions, what videos are being made on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, whatever social media platform you’re on, what are the questions have been answered, asked, and try and put your own spin on it and make some videos and answer those questions and tag them properly, and they should get some reasonable volume.
Social media these days also include sites like Quora and Reddit. When you wrote this down here on this list, John, the place that, strangely, that my mind went to is more like answering questions in long form on threads that already have a lot of eyeballs on them. Then what you do is you throw your answer in, and hopefully you have a more complete answer. Like Cora, I haven’t logged in that platform in a while. I’ve only answered two or three questions, but the last time I checked, I think I had 12,000 views on my answers. I probably spent about three hours. I got in front of 12,000 people. Doing answers or reviews, either way, are really great ways to get a lot of eyeballs on stuff that you’ve written or stuff that you said. I love this idea of capturing attention through… I’m going to take it a step further and say reviews also work. Answering questions in social media, that’s one way to do it. Another way to do it is, like I said, Reddit Corp or drop reviews in places that your clients exist. Mortgage companies, like reviews there. Anything related to real estate is probably at some point places that your consumers are going to research either services that they need, such as title or mortgages and things like that, or option B, developers, new home builders, stuff like that.
If you review these guys, you’re going to get in front of a lot of people that may be an audience to the service that you provide. All right, we’re blasting through this list right here, guys. Share success stories of past success.
I think it’s time for a break.
Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to come right back, and when we do, we’re hoping that you’ll stay tuned. But in the meantime, I’ve recently come into this incredible piece of information. You, all of you, may be listening to this podcast on a service such as Spotify or millionpodcast. Com. Wherever you’re For that, most likely you can leave us a review. Listen, I am begging for my 10 cents here. I am saying I’m holding up my little cup and I’m rattling it and going, please, please, please, if you enjoy the show, if you’ve gotten anything from it ever, ever, ever, ever, do John and I a favor. Give us a thumbs up, give us a like, leave us a review. We’d really appreciate it. It helps the show a lot, cost you zero amount of dollars, and it will satisfy my OCD in the fact that I think we should be top five real estate marketing shows, and we’re number 86. So please help us out. All right, without any further ado, we will be right back. We’ve got three more great, great tips for you. Stay tuned. Struggling today. All Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.
It’s episode number 482 of the MailRight podcast. We are super excited to bring you some interesting ideas on how to capture attention, how to stand out as an agent in 2025. So without any further ado, John, we’re going to talk about sharing stories of success. What do you got?
Well, I think there’s a way of doing this. I think there’s the wrong way where it’s all about the agent, but I think a more better way is to point out how you overcome problems, things that came up, how you helped the client overcome these obstacles, financial, if they’re okay about sharing it, and how You overcame these obstacles and you got the final success. They managed to purchase their dream home, or they managed to get the price that they wanted, and it allowed them to do what they wanted to do in their retirement, blah, blah, blah. This is really very powerful storytelling because if it’s done in the right way, it’s very relatable to the type of clients that you want to get.
Agreed. So another way to share stories of success. So one of the ways to stand out is you can share stories of case studies. You can do so on a blog, on your Google business profile. You can even do so. You can figure out a way to share these stories on Zillow by responding to reviews that other people have left for you. There’s always ways for you to figure out how to share case studies, and you really should. If you cannot advocate for your own fantastic results, who else do you think will? You must get out there and say… I understand. John and I are actually both allergic to the same thing. I get it. I don’t want to shout from the rooftop, look how good of a job I did. The problem is if I don’t do it. Nobody else will. I have to show my case studies. When you get ready to do that, as all of you in real estate already know, the bigger the sale, the more exclusive and private the client, making so that some of you are going to go, But, Robert, we can’t get this client to give the case study.
I’m going to tell you all something that is worth remembering. When you are dealing at a level where that logic makes sense to everybody, the person reading your review where you don’t disclose the name of your customer, you don’t disclose the exact sales price, you may not even disclose the exact location, it makes sense to that a specific audience. If you try to do that in a middle class market, nobody’s going to get it because nobody expects that exclusivity when they’re buying a $400,000 home in South Texas. They just don’t. They understand that Blue collar people are more inclined to loan you five bucks than a millionaire. That’s just the truth of it. So they’re more inclined to give you reviews and be transparent about the transaction. It makes more sense to them. It doesn’t at the highest levels of business. Like your billionaires don’t want you telling anybody that they bought the penthouse for $80 million and then never traveled to it, never even sat in it because they understand what the excess looks like to other people. They don’t It’s not going to be judged. But at the same time, you as the salesperson who might have done that transaction, you need to be able to tell the story.
You have to. So figure out a way to get creative about your sharing of this data. Another Another way to share this data without violating any particular interest or concern is you can put into your service agreements and contracts that you put sales data on your own website, which means that you would be able to report on your own past sales. So without the name of customers, but just the hard data of I sold this property for this much money in this area, and then let the consumers do the research themselves to find out that it was a monumental sale with somebody famous. That is another way to get around all the loopholes when it comes to putting past sales data on your website. I’ve seen people do that. I’ve helped people do that. It lies in the gray area in terms of information disclosure, but it’s pretty common that real estate agents report their own sales data on their own websites. It’s one of those things where somebody would have to require that you didn’t put the sales data of your own past sale on the website. If they did require that, there is a world in which you can up your commission, get a better deal with that person, negotiate a better contract with that person to get that privacy.
It’s all possible. All right, number 5, share hot properties. Okay, John, tell us about a hot property.
If you’re starting out and you haven’t got a lot of success stories. This is all stuff that we’re suggesting that you put on social media, and we’re providing this list so you have some strategies, some plan of action. And if you stick to this, we’re giving you loads of ideas, so there’s no excuse for not putting content on social media. Well, if you haven’t got a lot of sales, people are interested in interest in property. And if you can give information about this property, why it’s hot, why in a down market, this property is still probably going to sell for asking price. I’ve lived through about 2-3 down markets, and I know for a fact in England and in America that there’s been certain areas where They didn’t have to reduce the price. It had to be the market price, but it still sold in about a week, two weeks, because it was in a certain area where housing never came up on the market normally. So there’s always pockets, no matter how bad things are, and there’s always interesting properties to talk about and share. And it shows you as the expert. Over to you, Rob.
You raise a very good point, and I couldn’t agree with John more. Even neighborhoods like mine in Vanhies, which is extremely blue collar, and the homes are not sexy or fancy in any way, shape, form, there’s still a few here that would be extraordinary. I live right across the street from a school. A house next to a school where you can walk out your front door and walk into the school if you had a kid, that’s extraordinary to the eye of the beholder, number one. But there’s also extraordinary properties here that have been altered and modified in slight ways that are unusual for the area, such as hot tubs and pools and things like that. So even when the rest of the properties around the area don’t move, this property probably would. And case in point, I’m going to give you all an example of a case study. So I have two friends that, and this is true, every word is true. I have two friends that had a lawsuit that they settled. Vanuise is not a very nice area, but there was a big piece of property that came up at the end of the cold sac that was listed at $1.
8 million and has been on the market for over 100 days. The property has a huge yard, a hot tub, and a pool. Whoever owned the property really spent a tremendous amount of money renovating the property. Well, you’ve been there a long time because $1 8 million is about twice what a property in Vanuys goes for, like anything with the designation Vanuys. Then, eventually, my friends They just found the property, and it was perfect, and they bought it cash on the barrelhead. High properties are definitely in the eyes of the beholder. Anything that’s extraordinary or unusual in an area. Even though this property sat for a while, it was an extraordinary property for the area. If you are an expert in the area that you serve, you’re going to know, just like I know what’s extraordinary in Vanuys, the city that I’ve lived in for 15 years now, you’re going to know what’s extraordinary. You will figure it out over time, or you’ll figure it out through extensive research as you prepare to represent it. What’s common, what’s normal, what somebody’s done to upgrade a property that really makes it sexy for that area?
Those are the properties that you could feed to your audience. If they don’t already know that it’s sexy, you do what I just did right now and you tell them how sexy it is. You build a story around it and explain why it’s sexy. And that’s how you get attention using hot properties. I love this one, John. Really good find there. Share helpful content. That’s a little broad. What were you thinking?
Well, it depends, doesn’t it? It’s like point information. It’s somewhat related to answering questions, isn’t it? But the buying process, showing about getting a mortgage, how you should getting yourself in a good financial position. Reverse mortgages, if you’re in an area where you have a lot of baby boomers is selling, or they’re thinking of getting reverse. I know it’s counterintuitive because you want them to sell, but they might be considering a reverse mortgage or selling the property. If you talk about reverse mortgages, they might bring you up to have that discussion. Obviously, you want them to sell. I’m not a big fan of reverse mortgages. I think you are better off selling yourself. So, what helpful educational material on social media shows you’re the expert?
For me, helpful content is something that really addresses clients’ concerns. I might go so far as to find a couple of questions on TripAdvisor, post a question on my social media, and they will give me an answer. I would probably first answer the question on TripAdvisor, then I would either take a screenshot or copy and paste it and share it on my socials. Because, generally speaking, questions that are being answered in public spaces are also being asked by your audience. They just may not have done it on your social media platform. So you could double… I would view this as number 3 and number 6 combined on our show notes here. So if you don’t remember what number 3 was, ladies and gentlemen, it was about answering questions on social media. I think that sharing helpful content could be done by getting double the bang for your buck. You could answer the question, share it on your socials. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to finish a few minutes early today because we’ve just whipped through these subjects. We hope that you have gotten some value out of them.
I have been Robert Newman, the voice of the podcast. Jonathan Didwin is the producer of the podcast. Either way, if you’d like to look me up, you could go to inboundrem.com, look at my About or Services pages, learn about what we offer as a company, go to my blog, and learn everything you ever want to know about online marketing, all educated, given to you for free. All the reviews of all the major real estate marketing platforms are also there, done with a high level of expertise because I’ve used most of them. So much appreciate your boss today. Give us a like, give us a share. John, how would you like people to reach you or talk to you?
Sure. Just go over to the Mail-Right.com website, have a look at what we have to offer. Book a chat with me or my partner, and we’d love to show you what we offer. Also, as Rob mentioned, if you really want to support the show, you’re listening on your phone, give us a review on iTunes or Spotify. It really does help the show, and it means that more people will be able to get this knowledge, which I think we do a great job of, Rob. Back over to you.
Couldn’t agree more. All right, ladies and gentlemen, wherever you’re listening to this, thanks for giving us your attention. We know you have a lot of options. We appreciate your feedback and will catch you next time when we try to teach you something new about digital marketing for your real estate business.
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Learn why Google Business Profile is essential for real estate agents in 2025 and how it drives leads and builds trust fast.
In 2025, having a robust online presence is crucial for real estate agents, and Google Business Profile is at the forefront of this evolution. In this video, we explore how an optimized Google Business Profile can enhance your visibility, attract potential clients, and build trust in a competitive market. Discover essential tips and strategies to leverage this powerful tool effectively.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 481. And once again, I’m excited to tell you that you found one of the top 100 real estate marketing podcasts in the United States. Actually, we’re number 86, if I remember correctly. And we want to be number one. And you’re going to help us because you love us, and we know that you love us. So what we’re going to ask you to do is wherever you’re listening to the show before we even get started. Let’s assume it’s going to be awesome. Please leave us a comment. Please leave us a like. Please get involved in the platform that you’re listening to this podcast on and say that these guys are somebody that you should listen to when it comes to real estate marketing. Now, without further ado, today’s subject is why Google business profiles are quickly becoming one of the number one marketing tools for real estate agents in the United States. Before we dive into this delicious, meaty marketing topic that probably could change your business. We are first going to introduce the man who creates the magic of the Mailright Show.
He is my four-year podcast partner, an English bloke with the most Englishness that I know. Without any further ado, Jonathan Denwood. Go ahead and introduce yourself to the audience, please.
Oh, thanks, Rob. I’m the joint founder of Mel Wright. We are CRM to them, but a lot more. We offer lead generative functionality. We send out emails, text messages automatically. Got a social media calendar. We provide you a great-looking website, IDX functionality if you need it, and a lot more, and at a really affordable price, at around $49 if you pay month to month. It’s a great system. Back over to you.
My name is Robert Newman. I’m the founder of Inbound R-E-M. I’m a 17-year vet of real estate marketing, and I’ve been a real estate… I’ve been a marketer my entire life. We focus on SEO. I’ve worked with companies like Agent Image, Inbound, and Mfosa. For nine years, I’ve helped run and establish a leading real estate SEO company in the space. Check us out, inboundrem.com. We have tons and tons of free content that you can download and get involved with, including videos and information about the subject we’re going to talk about today, just about everything under the sun. And did I mention it’s free? There’s no excuse, folks. So let’s dive into it. Number one on our list today is going to be… Well, why don’t you talk a little bit about the evolution? Obviously, I’m going to add a bit of sizzle behind you, but why do you feel like Google business profiles might be important for a real estate agent 2025, Joe?
Well, because Google offers it. If you fill it in and do everything that’s on Robert’s site, and also, there’s information on the Melright website. We’ve both done individual videos on this, and in the podcast last year, we had a number of episodes, but I thought this year was the time to talk about it again, Robert. It’s owned by Google. It’s totally free. It’s something every real estate agent should claim, fill in, and promote. But only 20% of any agents do anything with it, Robert, and you shouldn’t be one of those. If you’re looking to do something that can really help your business, which isn’t expensive to do, this is one of the key things you can do this week, this month, that will really help your business. What do you reckon, Rob?
Let’s cover like the elephant in the room, first of all. I’ve been getting a lot of questions about people regarding Google search share and its relevance. Should they still focus on the Google business profile? Well, Google just announced its yearly numbers. Revenue is up by 13%. A lot of stuff is up by significant percentages. One of the facts that they stated is that search share has not been deeply impacted by ChatGPT. That does not surprise me in the slightest. Once they announced, Jim and I had had an integrated search and AI experience, and Google absolutely, once again, became the dominant player inside the search space. First and foremost, local is more relevant than ever. We now know that Google is probably not going to be deeply impacted by the whole AI revolution. If anything, they might take a leading role in it. Now, having said that, why is that so important? Well, Google business profiles are a free tool that’s free. They are a pain for real estate agents to set up, but they don’t cost any money. So it’s just time. And then once you’ve got that tool set up, it is not that complicated to understand how to rank the tool so that you get found for searches like “best realtor near me”, “realtor in”, “realtor”.
Basically, all service-side searches go into your Google business profile. That’s what gets to the top of the page, meaning that if you’re interested in people finding you for your profession, like realtor in Los Angeles, realtor in Vanhies, realtor near me, if you happen to be within 5-10 miles of an audience that you care about, in terms of your office or your home, these are all incredibly relevant ways that a Google business profile can and will drive you leads. We’re going to explain why. We’re going to explain why this is an all-in-one, baked-in lead generation system given to you for free.
All right. I just want to add, Robert, it’s a real way of competing with Zillowareer.com, with home. Com. These are big website portals, but really, Google doesn’t care because they can be enormous, but they’re nothing to Google, are they? And local search is really important for Google. If you do this right, you can compete when it comes to search with some of the biggest property portals out there, can’t you?
You really can. An interesting… One of the lists that John did for this particular episode, and I’m finding it really fascinating, John, is that while I think it seems likely that we were able to verify this number specifically, but what we know beyond a shadow of a doubt is that for all of you listening to the show, the vast majority of agents have not actually claimed a real estate profile on Google. That’s a fact. A fact I agree with. I don’t care what the numbers say. That’s what my experience shows me when I’m talking to real estate agents on the phone, the vast majority. Now, the sources that John looked at, which I will let him talk about, but basically it ranges from 20 to 60 % of agents haven’t claimed a profile.
Well, I did a general search, but also that’s on your website, Robert.
Oh, cool. Well, then Ben did the work. Okay, the head of my content team was a very thorough analytical guy. If he found that data, then it did exist. And it’s funny, guys, because I don’t know that. What I get my data from John is where Ben and I differ is I still talk to a ton of realtors person to person. And so what happens is I collect my data from actual live people calling me. Now, those numbers are slightly skewed because those realtors are often But I oftentimes have listened to these subjects and already believed in what the strength was in the profile, so they’re calling me. So I have probably about 70% of people call me have profiles now.
Yeah, I just want to comment on that because when you open the conversation, you said you were getting questions about, is Google search still going to be relevant? I found it fascinating because the reason they’re asking while you’re getting these questions is the average agent, the majority haven’t even claimed their Google profile, yet you’re getting these agents when you’re having chats with them, and they’re bringing up that question because it’s a subsector, isn’t it? Because they’re the type of agents that would ring you up, aren’t they?
Yeah, that’s very true. It’s a subsector, and everything you said is correct. People who call me are really proactive. They’re light years ahead of most real estate agents, really, honestly, John, because number one, you got to get through the resistance of calling somebody, and then number two, you got to be digitally savvy enough to follow me as a content producer. I usually don’t dumb my content down to the point that somebody who knows nothing can follow it. You’re already filtering out a lot. The bottom line here, though, ladies and gentlemen, is that despite how many times John and I have gotten on various stages and podiums and microphones and all that stuff to talk about this, the vast majority of agents aren’t pursuing this, which is great, because if you do, you’re not up against as much competition as you think you are. Guaranteed. Just not.
I think the other factor, Robert, why a lot of agents don’t do it is that this mythology, Google, which they made harder a couple of years ago, where they send out this card, you got to rein them up, claim it, and they send you a card. I link, and you got to have a physical address. I’m only surmising this, I might be totally wrong. I think it is a factor that puts off a few agents because a few years ago, you could just ring them, couldn’t you, and claim it. But now you got to go through this postcard business, haven’t you?
Very true. Actually, they’ve moved that to video verification. Oh, have they? Yeah, they put you on the phone with a real live person who wants to look around with you and see what your office looks like. There’s no way to fake this process out anymore, that I know of, at least. You actually have to have an office. You can… It’s no way. And that’s another thing that’s happening is as Google is getting bigger and growing in this space, the amount of agents that are trying who think it’s important but have signed up using bad details. When I say bad details, an agent decides they’re going to use a fake address, a workspace address or something like Well, guess what? Google is checking and rechecking all that data as the Google business profile stuff gets more popular. And that just means that they are actually taking down a lot of profiles. Anything that’s suspicious or shady in any way, they take those profiles down. So this is one of those things where a lot of people are not doing things the right way, and you can’t get away with cutting quarters anymore, John, not in any way, shape, or form.
And that, by the way, eliminates another 10 or 15 % of agents. So dropping the number down even further because the amount of agents that are organized enough to communicate with a big media company like Google and follow through. And if a problem occurs, it’s very minimal, like very minimal. You’re talking like eight out of 10 agents will not do it, even if they try to sign up.
So can I ask a question about this? So if you’re agent with a physical franchise or your established brokerage, if you’re in a shared office and utilize the brokerage address, is that going to work or not work? Do you really need a total individual address?
If you’re part of a brokerage and the brokerage has an office, that will work. If you are an independent, that’s where it gets sticky. If you’re an independent who works from home, things like that, That’s where the proof gets harder. Google now wants to see signage, proper signage, not a little sign that you posted on your door, proper signage. And so office space becomes an actual de facto office. Now, there are ways to get around that, and That is where you do a deeper dive into content like ours because it’s very individualized. Some of the time you can get an agent on the phone who will look at a sign that you made for your house or for your door. Some of the time they accept a incorporation documents. If you have an incorporation at this location and you can prove it in writing and show the agent on the phone, then verify your identity, all of that gets you through the door in terms of registration. It just takes a while to find an agent that spends that time with you, and then you get the address registered correctly. God forbid, should you decide to change it?
For those of you who are listening to this show, if you are extremely nomadic, this is probably not the strategy. So understand that while John and I are saying, Hey, this is a really important critical strategy, because it is, it is not meant for people that don’t have a consistent and very disciplined marketing mindset. If you don’t have a stable place to work from, if you can’t use your brokerage’s address, I can go on and on. Then this may not be for you because it might just be a lot of sound and thunder that ends up having you waste a lot of your time and Now, if you happen to be stable and have an address and a broker’s address and all those things, then because of everything we’re talking about, the difficulty of getting in, how many agents aren’t organized, how many agents just simply don’t do it, this is absolutely It’s really, hands down, the most exciting thing you can look at. No doubt about it. It is a low-hanging piece of fruit that for the right agents is going to be super easy to pick. Let’s move on to number two.
Sorry, go ahead. I think we need to go for our break, actually. We’ve gone through 15 minutes in the intro, but we have covered a fair whack of stuff, haven’t we?
Okay, cool. We’re going to go to break, and as I already said, we would love your help. If we ever do you a service, if we give you some information that you didn’t previously had that you think is interesting or is going to help your career in any way, shape, or form, I’m asking, may, begging for you to please hit that like button, share button, comment button, whatever the button is on whatever platform you’re listening to us, and help us become the number one real estate marketing show in the United States. John and I think we deserve it. No, I’m just kidding. We would love it if you’d help us get to as high as we can go with the information.
I think we deserve to be in the top 10, don’t we?
Yeah, probably. I do agree with that. We should not be number 86. We should be way higher on the list. All right, but without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, we’ll be right back. We really appreciate you giving us your earballs inside this podcast, and we’re looking forward to entertaining and bedazzling you with marketing information when we come back from break. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It’s episode number 481 of the MailRight podcast. You’ve got Jonathan Dinwin, you’ve got Robert Newman, and we are here to amaze you with the amount of incredible information that we have about using Google business profiles to propel your business forward. And by that, I mean make money, have ROI. So without any further ado, we’ve already covered number three, or actually, number 2. John, local keyword searches, finding an agent at growing an astonishing rate. And even though I know that I published a lot of information on this, why don’t you go ahead and lead us out on this topic?
That’s the topic. No, I need your help with this because this comes from your website.
Okay, so the numbers are 3-500%, local is growing at 3-500%. It is the fastest-growing category of search, bar none. It’s super… And it’s not just that the search is growing in terms of people using these keywords on cell phones. What is more amazing about this is that Google is getting better and better, and they may very well have applied an AI learning mechanism to this. And what they’re doing is they’re getting better and better understanding lifestyle searches that connect into local interests. And that’s why the search category is growing. What they throw into Google Google, local, and Google Maps is a growing pie of semantic-based keywords. We don’t know at the clip that they’re doing it, but my guess is they are literally adding 20, 30% of keywords into this pie because I don’t know about everybody else on this call or listening to it.
What do you precisely mean they’re adding the keywords to the pie?
Okay, so I’ll give this For an example, for those of you who can get to review the YouTube video, if you can, it’ll be on… Come on, got to be kidding me. It’ll be on John’s YouTube channel. That’s the mail-right. Com website or YouTube. All right. What I mean by local is or adding you to the… I’m pulling this up on my phone. Please forgive me, guys, I wasn’t prepared to do All right. So this, when you have a phone like mine, like this, this is my Google…
You can’t really see it, Rob, actually. I know.
I’m trying to… There we go. All right, can I see it a little bit? All right, this is my Google local on one of today’s really recent devices. So this would be the same view that you’d have on an iPad or any other device, okay? Where I open up Google local search. Now, what I mean is that when we say, let’s just say Venice Beach, let’s just say that we put in the search Venice Beach, which is a location in Southern California that’s quite popular during the summers. It’s a beach city. So if I was to just do the search Venice Beach off of traditional Google search bar, which is what I will show all of you, you’re going to see that it’s probably going to connect into a local search result. So I do Venice Beach, okay? Now what you get at the top is you get a lot of tours and a carousel Okay, there we go. All right. Kind of like this. All right? Yeah. And the reason that all of that is important is that believe it or not, those carousels and the whole search page, a good percentage percentage of it is local in nature.
What they’ve done is they’ve taken this search result that is based on an area, and they’ve turned half of it into a map-based result and half of it into YouTube videos. That is where all of lifestyle stuff is going. It’s becoming so population, things to do, places to stay, that’s all part of this search result, which you can’t really see on my phone. Sorry, guys. But all those things are hyper local or maps-based search results. Every time you click something, they take you into Google Maps, which is part of the local ecosphere. It just is a fancy way of saying that Google is figuring out more and more ways to slip people into the Google Maps function, the local function, because it all relates to what the usage is on handheld devices, which is going up every year. So the more that that cell phones dominate the search arena, the more that local becomes relevant. Does that make sense?
Yes.
Okay. So when you guys are thinking about this, think about it this way, everybody listening to the show, if you’re on your handheld device and you’re out there and you’re doing any searches, if it’s me, honestly, my phone is always on when I’m in the car, I’m usually mapping somewhere to go, things like that. That whole ecosystem as the mapping system grows better as Google continues to add features and functions like Waze functionality, the police are ahead of you, things like that. It’s getting to be a stickier and stickier environment, that local mapping functionality inside the phone. That is It’s the ecosystem that, by the way, if you’re already involved in your local mapping feature on the phone, there’s going to be a natural inclination to stay in that search bar and do a search about real estate. That’s what’s happening. Lots and lots of traditional searches are being thrown into the map search functions. For Google, it’s a separate space inside search. When you do a real estate search like homes for sale near me or homes for sale in City Name, but you do it inside local maps, you get local service providers as part of the search results.
It’s a very interesting and growing… I’m sorry, this is a very long explanation, everybody.
I think it’s It’s growing.
Local is growing at 3 to 500%, man. It’s insane. It’s growing in ways that people aren’t expecting. You can get your local business profile in front of a search like home for sale in Tampa as an example. You can do that. The volume on those traditional searches is still a little lower, but you’d be surprised how fast it’s all transferring. Why is Google transferring it? Everybody listening to the show, John, Google is doing this on purpose. This isn’t an accidental result. Care to guess why?
Well, I suppose they can advertise on it and monetize it more.
It is simply a fact that this part of the Google ecosystem is not going to be competed with by any AI company out there right now. That’s why. Because they have a satellite system in place. And the only other person that has a satellite system in place that’s even remotely close to equivalent to Google’s is Starlink, and they’re not competing with each other for search. So you’ve got no competition. And the only worry that Google has right now is that Elon Musk is going to rent his Starlink system out to a company like Apple and then compete. Because other than that, there’s not even the threat of competition inside this local space. Okay. And companies that are competing are like Waze and people like that, and they’re all using other people’s satellite systems in order to provide the results. The bottom line is that in terms of search, in terms of competition, in terms of everything, Google knows that where they lead and where they lead without even a shadow of a doubt is in this local mapping space on cell phones. So you’re going to see lots of moves for them to expand that lead, and part of that is driving more search into the local ecosystem.
All right, it’s totally free to set up and manage. We covered number three. I’m going to breeze past it if you don’t mind, John. Number four, GVPs are an evergreen lead generation strategy. So why don’t you cover the evergreen part, and then I’ll cover the GBP part.
Well, I think a lot of it, if you fill in the profile with all the correct details, a lot of that, unless something fundamentally changes, is, you’re not going to have to change all that regularly. I think uploading images and videos from your phone so they’re tagged, geo tag, is a great thing. And I think putting up some regular content is a good idea. But a lot of what you’re going to be putting up, you only have to do once. So that’s why it’s evergreen.
Very true. So profiles tend to be evergreen. The strategy is absolutely evergreen. Evergreen just means it’s going to last. And Google has been consistently one of the top lead generation mechanisms. You’ve got a couple of very big digital media companies that have changed the game. You’ve got Facebook and you’ve got Google, and Google is winning. And why do I say that? I’m going to share something with everybody, you included, John, that’s interesting. I just noticed it may have been present for a while, but I’ve just noticed that Facebook actually is now allowing Google to crawl Instagram. That’s the first. They’ve never done that, ever. I know that for sure. So all of a sudden now, Instagram posts are becoming present in Google searches. There’s really only two companies that are worth talking about. If you’re going to talk about a digital lead strategy on platforms that are free, that’s Instagram and Facebook owned companies, and that’s Google and Google dominated companies. And so when you look at these two These two strategies. Sorry to interrupt.
What about Reddit?
Reddit is, to me, just a subsection of Google. You find Reddit threads on Google.
Yeah, you got a point.
But you could definitely say, when we start getting into sub stack strategies, really small focus strategies, there’s a million of them. Homelight, Zillow, Tulio, all that. But Google controls the flow of traffic to every single one of these websites.
Yeah, I see your point.
All right. So when you say evergreen and Google controls traffic to everywhere and you as a user can get free stuff, free videos, free profiles, free everything, there’s really almost like… I consider Google to be much more evergreen than Facebook because of the way they design the service. So there’s a lot of durability in the strategy. You create a video on a Google business profile or something like that. It just depends on where you’re at and what’s going on. If you’re in a major Metro market, it’s unlikely that a single video is really going to move the needle. But if you’re a smaller market like Longview, Texas, we’ve got videos for certain clients in and around those areas that last for years and draw calls in for years. It’s just recently that a video I did nine years ago on my homepage and my website, stopped generating calls. It could be the market. It’s really evergreen. If If you do something well and people really like it, it can get you calls for a long time. All right. Number 5, they’re highly effective tools for achieving and for actualizing GPP potential. So I’m just going to jump into this one, John.
I’m going to say the tools that we usually use when it comes to Google are things that measure and analyze performance. What I use for local GPP is I use BrightLocal. There’s many other tools, they’re not the only ones. There’s Local Falcon, there’s Yext, there’s so many tools. Why do I use Bright Local? Well, they came up with the original pin drop thing that everybody uses when they do local. That was Bright Local’s idea. They came up with the best-looking way of showing distant-related searches from a certain start point, and they were the first to do it. I respect people that get out ahead of everybody else. It tends to impress me. There’s plenty of other companies that you can go to. There’s Darren Shah with Whitespark, and he’s got some cool tools that he’s made, but there’s lots of places to go. I would suggest if you’re looking for a generalized information about local, Darren Shah probably has been talking about local the longest and the best. I might check him out over at Whitespark. Does he know everything about ranking? No. I think he’s gotten too focused on building up a company because I’ve noticed his advice tends to stay in the generalized category, and I’m sometimes not impressed by his talking points.
But he’s definitely been doing it the longest. He has a great track record. He does say a lot of good things. So, Darren Shah. Jon, did I cover everything that you would have covered, or do you have some people to add?
I got a question. Is like Moss Local and submitting to all the directors directories, which is more outside the Google profile. But I do know the Google profile wants to see… Because there’s the world of the profile and filling it in, but When they look at your website, they look at other indicators to judge how active you are and how real you are, aren’t there? So is it important to still submit details to all these directories or not, really?
I think they’ve changed the weight. I think that the recent leak of data, like that talks about NAV boost, and we know they use NAV boost in local, which is click data. Fancy word for click data. I think they’ve moved deeply to making click data, let’s say 70% of your score. It’s like regular user time engagement. Do directories count? Absolutely, they count. They do count. I think that the way that Google has moved their ranking, what I’ve noticed is it’s like a gateway thing. If you don’t have a certain number of directories, they don’t rank you at all. But the difference between 20 and 200 directories is minimal. That’s my guess. It’s a very educated guess, everybody, but it is a guess. So just understand that. Okay?
Well, do you think they also… If you’ve got a half-decent website and you’re putting reasonable amount of content on it. Do you think they call the website and it affects the local?
Absolutely does. I don’t think I know. It does. Okay, it’s like 10 % of your score. You’re giving yourself about a 10 % advantage if you have just a standard out of the box website that mentions some services. If you actually have a website that’s designed specifically with local in mind, you’re probably actually adding about 20, 25% chance to rank. I’d have to go back through my case studies, but I created a website product for this. I don’t think that we’re missing anybody. I’ve noticed a much more rapid speed to ranking has been highly, wildly improved by these website products. Now, whether or not that’s consistent, I just don’t know because I only have six or seven case studies, so who knows? But so far, websites seem to matter more than I even originally thought.
Because I’ve got to tell you, I’ve been staying in an area where I bought some property, and I’ve made some new friends in the area quite rapidly, and they’ve been very helpful. But I’ve also having to hire a few local services. And basically, I use Google Local Search, and then people come up and I go to the website and I get 2-3 quotes. But it’s only the people that show up and that got a reasonable website. But I suppose I don’t know because I’m in the game, I don’t know I’m a bit more fussier, but I do expect I don’t expect a fantastic-looking website, but I do expect they have the basic contact details and they have a few reviews and they get to the nitty of what they’re offering, and they got the times when they’re open or when I can contact them.
Service lists, times you’re open and closed, and local area information as part of your website are all the things that Google really… I am 100% sure they look at them, John, in terms of ranking. If you don’t have a website, number one, you’re handcuffing yourself a little bit. Does that mean you can’t rank your local profile? No, it doesn’t. Does it mean that somebody else that has a website has an absolute lead over you? They absolutely do. No doubt about it, and it could be significant depending on what their website looks like. If it covers all these details like we’re talking about, if it has reviews connected to it, if it does a good job of giving you local information, they now have a significant lead over you. No matter what work you do on your personal profile, you might have a hard time catching somebody like that. I understand what you’re saying entirely, John, and I think that’s exactly why Google makes it that way. I think that people with websites provide more data, are more useful, and probably Google has a natural inclination to give them an advantage because it’s better for the consumer.
Last but not least, GPP is a fantastic way to generate seller leads. This is a thing that I hope John pulled off my website. If you didn’t pull it off my website. Okay. I did. So here’s what you all need to know about GPP and seller leads. There’s lots of services out there, Fellow and many other services that all basically target sellers. That’s it. There’s so many different things that talk about seller leads, seller leads, seller leads. Well, I need everybody out there in the world to use logic. The mythos is that Real estate marketers have figured out our magical creatures, and we figured out ways, things that you haven’t. For as long as I’ve been in this business, people have been using what is your homeworth lead forms to get seller leads. That’s It’s always been what they’ve done. It’s such a dry, tried and true strategy that people that bought or sold a home 15 years ago actually know what the strategy is. It’s so beating a dead horse. I’ve got no words for it. When people are talking to you about that strategy, you got to wonder, where are all the people that are sick of it going?
The answer is pretty simple. They’re just researching a really good realtor. They’re just saying, who is the best realtor in this area? Because I want a consult. Selling your home is different than buying. Buying usually on a timeline. You decide you’re going to buy, you start looking and go out and buy. Oftentimes, sellers are inspired into selling. They’re trying to time the market, they’re trying to look at these things, but they’re not usually under this huge hast. You should probably sell your home right now. It’s probably the top of the market. But we’ve been at the top of the market for two years right now. So there’s a bubble. John just sold his property.
Oh, no, I haven’t sold. I’ve just bought.
Okay, well, never mind.
But I bought in Kansas because I got a good deal offered to me, and I’m trying to mitigate my risk level because the prices in Northern Nevada over the last three years have gone up by 60 %. That’s what you call a bubble, isn’t it?
Yeah. And well, hopefully you’re writing that bubble. All right. So, in terms of this GBP stuff and seller leads, I’ve noticed that we get 50 to 70% of the calls from these profiles that are related to listing your home. In other words, seller leads, not buyer leads. This is one of the best things about these profiles. You’re attracting a lot of people who are local to you who are just looking to refresh their memory on what a good real estate agent is, and they’re going to ask questions about selling and listing their home. I would say that 60 to 80% of the sellers people that don’t have a professional real estate agent already in their circle of friends or family, they’re all going to local. I would like Google Business Local. Who is the best realtor near me? Who should I list my home with? These are all searches that somebody might list that would pull up this search category, meaning that it’s a fantastic way to get cell at least, if that matters to you. That’s all I got, John. How about you?
You want to No, let’s wrap it up, Rob. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to the show. John and I, I’m going to say this every single time you listen. I hope you understand why we are number 86 in the United States, because many people have liked what we had to say. A shocking number of you actually liked or shared our stuff on platforms that John and I, frankly, had never even heard of. When we found the list on Million Podcasts and that we were up there, I have a competitive streak. John is not quite as insane as I am. I’m insane. I want to Number one, I would love it if you do us a favor and help us. I will help you. If you go to inboundrem.com, you’ll get all this free stuff. If you want to reach out to me at [email protected], I will help you answer any questions you may have. But in the meantime, help us. Help us sponsor this show. Help us keep the lights on. Help us stay in business. Help us grow our businesses. Like and share the podcast.
You don’t need to give John and I any business. We’d really appreciate it. It would help us a lot. John, over to you.
Yeah, and the great way of doing that, folks, is to go to iTunes on your phone, use the iTunes app, or if you’re listening on Spotify, use the Spotify app and leave us a review. It just takes you a minute at the most. It’s really easy on the iTunes or the Spotify app on iOS or Android, and it really does help us. If you could do that, both Robert and I would be really appreciative. Over to you, Rob.
All right, that’s it. That’s our show. John, how do you want people to reach out to you, man? You didn’t cover that.
Just go to mail-right.com and have a look, and you can book a chat with me or my partner in crime.
John, in terms of conversations, John has an expensive tool, a deep knowledge of what’s available in the WordPress world, a partner who is a Facebook-like expert, and his own incredibly deep toolkit when it comes to such a wide variety of subjects related to digital. I don’t actually have time to list them all. If any of you are looking for an inexpensive tool or you’re trying to bat down your budget while the market is going fucking south, then you can call John and get some good advice and take a look at his toolkit because it’s a pretty good one and certainly cost-effective. All right. I’ve been Robert Newman. I’ve been the guy talking more than the other guy on the show. The English folk has been Jonathan Dinwood. We both appreciate your time today, your earbuds. Thank you so much for listening to us. You are the very best. John, whenever you’re ready, take us offline.
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Realtors: Avoid the biggest mistakes in 2025! Discover key tips to boost your success and stay ahead in the market.
In this insightful video, we dive into the top mistakes realtors should avoid in 2025. As the real estate landscape evolves, understanding potential pitfalls is crucial for success. From mispricing listings to neglecting digital marketing strategies, we cover it all. Equip yourself with the knowledge to navigate challenges and seize opportunities in this dynamic market.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It’s episode number 480. That is 480. You’ve found one of the top 100 real estate marketing podcasts in the United States. I am super excited to be in every single episode, which, according to our listeners, is you. We are one of the top real estate marketing podcasts available. So thank you so much for making that happen. In the meantime, though, let me introduce you to my amazing co-host. His name is Jonathan Dinwood. He is the founder of multiple small businesses. He has been a WordPress developer hero, a superhero even over the last 10 or 15 years. I actually don’t remember, honestly. He’s also founded a real estate marketing startup called Mail-Right, which he’s been focused on for the last four or five years. They offer an all-in-one system, along with a website, at a slightly lower price point than many of their major competitors. If you are in the market for such a thing, you might want to check them out. Jon, please follow up with an introduction. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself that I haven’t already covered?
Oh, thanks, Rob. You did a fantastic job. I’m the co-founder of Mel-right. Com. We’re an all-in-one platform that provides a CRM, email text, campaigns, a social media platform, and a beautiful pre-designed website template so you can get your WordPress-powered real estate website up and running really quickly. And you get all this if you pay month-to-month at $49, or if you pay annually, $39. Back over to you, Robert.
Beautiful. All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, today we’re going to talk about some mistakes to avoid in 2025. The title of the video on the podcast is going to be ‘The Biggest Mistakes.’ It’s a bit tough to say which will be the biggest mistake for anyone ever. However, we will attempt to address some of the major roadblocks that realtors often encounter in their own career paths. So, buckle up if you’re interested in knowing what to try to avoid. Take out your pen and piece of paper, start taking some notes, and see if your business plan includes or excludes some of these things, as the case may be. First on our list is not having a lead nurturing strategy or platform for lead generation. I think this is a bit tricky myself, and I believe it has a lot of flavor and detail in the subject matter. But, John, why don’t you share your thoughts about what you were thinking when you added to the show notes?
Yeah, I think a lot of people, especially in the digital lead generation area, they think a lead is somebody that’s land on the landing page, or if you’re using something like Facebook and you’re using their directly generating platform, that the lead is there to buy almost straight away, and most of them aren’t. It’s really that simple. If you’re using Google AdWords, whether local or regional, the call to action increases the likelihood that the prospect is ready for action. However, this still applies even if you’re using the Google platform, as many of these leads won’t take immediate action. And if you don’t have some form of keeping yourself in front of them, through email, text, and that, your conversion is going to be terrible. It’s really that simple, really.
Agreed. So you spend… Many agents spend a lot of time and money gathering a name and number, right? But we don’t know where they are in the buying cycle. We don’t know where they are in the selling cycle. They could think that they have urgency, and then something could change, and they become dormant. And all of those possibilities lead to the need to, if you’re not going to lose all the energy, effort, and opportunity that you thought you had in the first place, obviously, you need to follow up, get in front of them. There are several ways to do that. That’s the minutia I mentioned, because as an inbound marketer, we try to get people to join groups, places they’ll visit repeatedly, and provide a lot of value, such as websites. They will come to them organically. You’re going to email them. You’re going to drop notifications off, similar to Facebook or YouTube, letting them know that you’ve added a piece of content. The idea behind being inbound is that you’ve provided something of value, which makes them interested in checking it out, and they’ll come to your site.
I still go to Neil Patel’s site. I still follow other people who are excellent inbound marketers. They provide a lot of value. The only thing that I would say is that lately in my own career arc, I tend to drift towards content that’s on video. If it’s just a written blog post, I don’t read them as much as I used to, not even close. So you need a… One way or the other, though, what I interpreted when John put this in the show notes is it’s absolutely critical that you have a strategy, some strategy, whether it’s the ones that John mentioned, whether it’s the ones that I mentioned. You want to have a strategy in place to make sure you’re staying in front of people. If you don’t, it’s like you’re losing 80% of the value of any lead generation you’re doing. Literally that big of a number, because if they don’t close immediately, you lose the value. That’s crazy. That’s crazy. All right, number two on our list is Cold calling and door knocking without a clear strategy. And that could be scripts, or a plan, an organizational plan.
When I was doing a lot of door knocking and running canvases and crews, we would create graphs and charts for every block or every neighborhood that we’re in. We would basically take a city map and then create a house on it. And then we would hand that city map out to door knockers, and they would have to make a designation on every single house. So that when we went back to the neighborhood and they turned their clipboard into us at the end of the day, so we knew which door had been knocked on, had they answered, had a presentation occurred. That was all done via those pieces of paper on that clipboard. We had a really strong plan in place every time we were working a neighborhood. And the funny thing is, is that the more you worked on a neighborhood, the more you got your initial responses, the more value that the remaining doors that hadn’t yet answered had because you would have somebody four houses down that had made an appointment for whatever your service was. So now that in those remaining door knocks that might lead to presentations, you had a stronger pitch available to you, such as, did you know that John, four houses down from you, is going to get an alarm installed on Thursday?
And once these signs start going up, the house is without signs, without some security protection, because that’s what I was doing at the time. I was working with They’re going to become more vulnerable. So now you’ve got fear of loss, keeping up with the Jones, four different psychological sales mechanics in place inside of a 22nd door knock script. So you’ve really got this incredible opportunity when you have proper notes about how you’ve done your door knocking because it builds. And the same thing is true of circle prospecting, which is cold and using Ricky Karruth, because you do the same thing with the CRM. If you have a building with 363 units in it, and I was cold calling it, I would make notes on every single unit. I would add them to a CRM. I would say the name and the unit number on the CRM so that I could filter by the unit number. I’d say the building name and the unit number so I could filter my CRM based upon that building. Then I would go down that list and call every unit on there and make my notes for every single person that I talk to, because by the time you’ve talked to 30 people in the same building, all your remaining calls are 10 times more valuable, 10 times more likely to close, 10 times more likely to yield you an appointment because you have all the data you collected from your first 30 nos, and they probably told you stuff about the building.
They told you about who the local realtor is in the building. They’ve told you how many units they think are available. They’ve told you what the pricing is. If you’re a decent salesperson, they’ve done all If you’re inquisitive, if you understand how to… If you have a plan in place, just like John said, if you have a strategy in place and you are following it diligently, what generally happens is your first calls are the highest resistance, but you learn more. You’re not going to make any sales or appointments most of the time, but you collect your objections, you figure out what the concerns of the people in the building are, and then you have that in your ammunition when you walk into the next call. More likely that you’re ready, prepared, able to handle the objections. And so all your calls get more effective as you’re moving down your list. So I love this addition, John. It’s incredible. What were you thinking when you put it on here?
It’s slightly different. I think you got to really have a reason for knocking on somebody’s door. Like you’re doing an open house in the area, or let’s say you’re having a party and you invite the neighbors because a neighbors leaving the area, or you’ve got some social event that you’re running for a particular area that you have been canvassing for a while and you just invite them to re-event. I think you’re going to get a much more… Engage in more natural conversations, and you’re going to get a better response if it’s around some event.
Awesome. Well, number three on our Our list is, and likely we’re going to go to a break after number three, ladies and gentlemen. So number three on our list is general marketing stuff like Happy fourth of July email. So as part of a business plan, the way that I perceive this comment, and I have no idea what John was thinking when he put it on the list, but when somebody says to me, do you have marketing in place or what’s your marketing in place? There’s so many different things you can do as a business owner. So many. I could marketing assets like pens, pencils, mouse pads that have my logo on it and send them my clients. And there’s a really good reason that you might want to do that. But you can also do giveaways or trips or you can do… There’s a thousand marketing things you could do. Here’s my advice to everybody listening to the show. Do not worry about the thousands of things. Do not get lost in the sauce. Try to pick three things that link together. Start there. If you don’t have a couple of little marketing things you that are cheap and expensive and maybe help you stay in front of your clients, like promotions, find three small ones that fit your budget, the time that you have available to you, and maybe you can link them together.
An example would be like a pin like a mouse pad and something else, like a notepad, like a physical notepad, something like that, like three little marketing promotion pieces, and then send them all the people in one kit, and then use them individually or a magnet and a couple of other things. Or you could go with traditional marketing, such as drop them in a postcard. Thank you for your business. Thank you for taking my call. I love taking opportunities to thank people. It puts you back on the radar. It is marketing 101 that you say thank you to people. So if somebody just did a pitch with you, like a conversation, had a long conversation, send them a thank you, a note by email, a physical postcard, which would really set yourself apart. And then you’d link that into maybe a QR code on the a postcard for maybe a giveaway that you have on your website for a lunch or something, something very small, inexpensive, but gives them a reason to go to your website. That’s failing to have little additional marketing things in place, like emails as an example, which is what I think John probably meant by this, is honestly failing to take advantage of the work that you’re doing in other marketing verticals.
Now, that was my interpretation, which I think I got wrong. What did you mean when How would you put it on your list?
I mean, sending these can that mostly come from your broker’s marketing platform that they’re charging you to use, and you’re sending it to your database Happy fourth of July or Happy Christmas, and it’s come from the broker’s marketing CRM. I just don’t think it’s providing any value, and I think will mostly end up in people’s junk folder, or it’ll get deleted straight away. I just don’t think in 2025, that’s really going to pan out for you.
I would agree. Well, we’re going to go to our break a little bit early, ladies and gentlemen. It’s about 30 seconds to 45 seconds early. For those of you who are listening to us in any of the big podcasting platforms, of which I’m going to, at some point, have to get myself a list, but hopefully you all know what it are. Million podcasts. Oh, what’s that huge one? Spotify. Wherever you’re hearing us right now, if there’s a way for you to like the show, give some social acknowledgement. If you’re liking what John and I are providing value, maybe you’re a long-time listener or long-time follower, please do us a favor and thumbs up or like the show. I had no idea that there was ways to collect that data for podcast trackers. They do collect the data and they do track your rank. And so I would love it if you’d help us grow a little bit in terms of our placement. We were number 86. I’d love to be number 50 next year. If you help with that, I will be eternally grateful, and I’m sure that John would be as well. All right, we’ll come back.
Stay tuned. We’ve got some great stuff for you after the break. We can’t wait to share it. We’ll be right back. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It’s episode number 480. That’s 480. You have found the second half of one of the top 100 real estate marketing podcast in the United States, maybe the world. Congratulations. We’re so happy to have you. Thank you for listening. Today, what we’re talking about is big mistakes that you can avoid as a realtor in 2025. So postcards with no real story is number 4 on John’s list. Now, I’m liking this thing where I look at what he’s got posted here and I interpret it. And so far, the I’ve gotten really wrong. That’s not what he really meant. So I’m really enjoying this.
Let me do the intro because. What I meant by this is I think postcards that really promote how you helped one of your clients are great. I think postcards can be effective, but they shouldn’t be about the agent, about I sold. I’m a top producing agent in Kansas or California. But if you got a postcard that put on how you helped a specific client and it shows that you gave some real value, I think that’s a better idea. Over to you, Rob.
Got you. So I’m going to make a rare recommendation for somebody that I follow that is my number guy who provides a massive amount of value if you happen to sign up for his email marketing list. You want to see somebody who does email marketing right, who tells stories in every single thing. All these stories can be applied to postcards, by the way. So it plays directly into what John is saying. His name is Bill Mueller, M-U-E-L-L-E-R, and he runs a website called Story Sales Machine. I’ve talked to him personally. I’ve been part of his email threads now for years, about three Three or four times a year, he sends me a professional marketer an email that is so good, I stop in my tracks, read the email, message him back, and say, This is pure genius, and I deeply appreciate you, and he’s giving you those ideas for free. There’s no charge to this. When you subscribe to his email list, if I, as a lifetime marketer, am picking up value from it, I’m almost 100% sure all of you will. Follow Bill, and if you feel so inclined, tell him that Robert Newman sent you or that the MailRight podcast sent you, either way, and see if you get the same value.
But it should cure this number four on the list. Number 5, John, and I’m going to let you pick it up and do the same thing that you did with number 4, is video content that isn’t searchable. Why don’t you go ahead and intro Yeah, well, people are going to find your email because they’re going to be doing searches on YouTube or some other platform, but I’m concentrating on YouTube.
You’re probably going to have a local area, so you’re going to have to make your video searchable. So that’s what the title is about. That’s what the title is about, that’s what the meta description, that’s the tagging you’re going to use. And if it’s about these four subjects that I’ve Subsections. Geography, relevant content, i. E, around housing, ones that you’re just marketing, attractions, what’s going on in your area, what? Pacific, like zoos, people that might be moving from outside the area to the area. So they’re looking at Pacific, what goes on in the town or city. Business stories, what’s going on in your town when it comes around business. If you keep to these four subcategories and tag them properly, they’re going to be found much more easier and they’re going to show up and you’re going to get a lot more traffic for your videos.
I agree. So John covered that pretty well. Everything he said, I agree with. Youtube is one of our core services that we offer at Inbound RIM, YouTube optimization. It is a skill, it is an art, and It is becoming more valuable every day. It is something that you should focus on yourself. You should sign up for whatever. There are a couple of websites that provide a lot of value to the average user and do so at a very low amount of money. That’s VidIQ or Tubuddy. Either one has good content. I use VidIQ, and I’m not shilling. I’m not asking you to use my affiliate code. None of that. I’m telling you just to go there for $10 a month and get huge value and learn everything you need to know about optimization optimizing videos, and then you’ll call me because they take a lot of time, and I will do it for you. However, you really need to make sure that your video content has been posted with a minimal amount of optimization or your video It’ll never get found no matter how good it is. What John basically said, I couldn’t agree more.
I cannot believe how many videos I see that have been produced using thousands and thousands of dollars of time, equipment, and then nobody optimizes the video at all. You’re like, I don’t even understand. Why did you just spend all that time and money to make it not findable? It’s crazy. All right, next up on the list, number 6. Totally Canned and Boring Month Well, it’s probably newsletters that are produced by your broker. Now, I think I understand this one, but, John, why don’t you take it away and intro it?
It was a bit like point three about the fourth of July archetypal emails. I got quite a few from agents about the fourth of July. Obviously, it’s a bit tricky because I’m English, so it’s not a date that I really derivate. No, I don’t believe it. But when it comes… Come on, Rob, that was a good one. I’m totally So we can’t. It’s the same thing that applies to this, Rob. These boring monthly newsletters that come from the broker’s marketing system which they’re charging you for. So you think I’m paying for it. So let’s use it. And so they push them out, and they’re soulless. Yeah, they’re not going to get much response in 2025, in my opinion, Rob.
So here’s a crazy thing. There have been countless, and I mean countless marketing systems that have done like crafted emails, such There’s a really old one out there that has a million people still using them, and I forget what they are. It’s a white something or another. Anyway, there’s them. There’s Easy Agent Pro. There’s all these people that do emails. And here’s the idea behind it? The agency RE, these big marketing systems, Compass. And here’s the concept. Somewhere way up the food chain, there’s a professional writer and marketer who writes a single email for 10,000 clients. It’s 10,000 agents. I know some of those marketing people, the people at the top of the food chain, sending out the messages to the 10,000 people. Before AI was prolific, they were oftentimes copying off each other’s work, just looking for somebody who wrote a newspaper and taking an article from that and then regurgitating a little bit and then posting it there, following their favorite blogger, regurgitating what they said, and then sending it out to 10,000 people under the guise of it’s just really well thought out new content. The amount of the only people on the list that I just gave you all that I think were doing an interesting job was Mauricio Umansky over at the Agency RE.
He pays attention to some of the details of his business where he has a marketer writing custom-crafted stuff. Some of the time, they break it out by market. In other words, your market update that you’re sending to your clients might be designed for Los Angeles as opposed to one that’s designed for the whole bloody nation all at once. Why am I getting into this granular detail? Because some of the time you’re sold that you’re going to get this top-flight email system and email content, and you’re almost never given anything useful. Almost never, no matter how good the marketing company. Why? Because who is familiar with your market, like Wichita, where John is at. Is somebody writing John an email for Wichita? Is it relevant? Is it seasonal? Is it relevant for right now? Is it even… Like Wichita probably has… So the real estate market is very divided. I’m going to give one last example, I swear to God, and then I’m going to move on. So some markets are down by 60 to 90%. California is about steady. So you have some markets that are just absolutely dying in terms of real estate sales and production.
And you have other markets that are slightly up or staying static. If you’re trying to write a single email, HomePrizes just keep going up, but that listing that we know is going to fly off the shelves, you should get it out there. Well, that for 50% of the United States is actually going to be offensive. You will piss people off if you send that email. That is what I’m trying to say in terms of this email content. Be really careful with this monthly newsletter baloney. Number seven on the list, not calling people and keeping and building relationships. What were you thinking with that one, John?
Well, it’s the opposite of my statement around cold calling. Without purpose, is that I’m not against calling people, but I think agents call the wrong people. They don’t call people that they have done business with or they have met, because you definitely don’t want to be what I call the invisible agent. A lot of agents are. They’re in the wrong business because it’s about meeting people and having conversations with them. And the people that you’ve met, you should be out there meeting people and building up your database. And then when you got quiet periods and it should be scheduled, so you do do these calls, you It’s a bit like the Bafini mythology, these 300 or whoever you got some reasonable relationship, you should try and keep in contact with them. It’s not a hard sell, but just how you’re doing. I thought I I’ll just give you a quick call, blah, blah, blah. I think it makes a big difference. What do you reckon, Rob?
The more energy and effort that you can put into your sales practices, this is something And that, listen, everybody listening to this podcast, this is really just, John, one of the mistakes that people make, honest to God, is you just don’t make a commitment to being a professional salesperson. That’s basically what this whole list is saying. And what is that? Well, spend 10,000 hours in the mechanics of all the things that are involved in sale, introducing yourself to people, doing a presentation, gaging interest, getting to know them, trying to create some social equity so that you can continue forward a professional conversation without raising enough resistance from them that you lose that opportunity. That’s basically relationship building. All those things are part of sales. So becoming a professional salesperson is definitely 10,000 to 20,000 hours of work, no doubt about it. This whole calling people and following up thing, I couldn’t recommend it more. Keeping and building relationships, you should have your top 100 people in your social circle or the social circle that you want to create, and you should be on the phone every day all all day until you have a better sales pipeline in place.
Because if you’re going to become a real estate agent and you’re like, you’ve been a teacher and you ask me, what would my marketing plan be? I’d say, Take your top 100 parents that you ever dealt with and then call them and say, listen, I just want to let you know I’m retiring from being a teacher or I’m starting a second career. You know that teachers don’t pay very much. I just wanted to let you know I got my real estate license. Would you mind if I sent you my card in the mail? And if you have a good relationship… Sorry, go ahead.
I’m just going to interrupt, see how you respond. If you’re starting out and you haven’t got a lot of content and you’re going to all these business events, instead of sticking your card in front of people, take other people’s cards and then give them a ring and say, How can I help you?
That’s a brilliant idea. Yeah, that’s a brilliant idea.
Apart from some real gids, some real miserable buggers, most people are not going to respond negatively. You ring up, so I’m just giving you a call. It’s great meeting you. I just wondered, Is there any way I could help you? What are you going to say? They’re going to say, F off. I don’t think so, do you?
No. And then you’re right. That gives you a chance to practice your social interaction, specifically professional social interaction, which is the art of engaging in a conversation and getting your message heard. That is not an easy skill at all for those listening. Anybody who’s been a professional salesperson who’s listening to this podcast, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Takes you years to figure out how to gently introduce your offers into a conversation. Anybody can stop in the middle of a conversation and say, Hey, John, I’m selling a ticket to a show tonight for 49. 95. I’ve put one in your name. What’s your credit card number? Anybody can do that. It’s putting an offer on the table, and John says, Fuck off, probably. Then I go, Hey, I hear you, and your fuck off is very valid, but did you know that the show is Mariah Carey, and don’t you think she’s hot? Yes, I do. Great, John, what’s your credit card number? Then you can just bug her off doubly now. Then you go down. That’s the old sales methodology, and honestly, it doesn’t work very well. Very few people can make it to five closes using extremely high, in-your-face, and highly aggressive sales tactics.
What is most likely is that you build a relationship, establish a rapport, and then make some very subtle offers, such as, ‘If I could do this, how would you do that?’ If I could, would you? And those are the kinds of sales tactics that work today. Last but not least, John, you did number eight. You get a lucky number eight to go along with our show, number 480. So here we are. What’s lucky number eight? Do not become the invisible agent. Go out and meet people, building relationships within your community. So, John, why don’t you carry us away on that one?
I said it was seven, really, then I combined both. What it says, don’t be the invisible agent. I have a website, and Robert has his excellent agency, an SEO agency, featured in the video, showcasing all the great things that Robert does with his team. I’ve got this more affordable platform, but it’s just tools to help you. But it’s still a person-to-person business. You can’t be the invisible agent. You have to get out there and meet people.
No matter how you do it, you have to do what John and I do, because I don’t like Schilling, and John doesn’t either. We’ve talked about it off-air. We don’t necessarily like saying every single show, Hey, go see Mailright, go see in Balmarium, but he is right. Regardless of how you do it, you must have the courage and the will to put up a signpost that says, ‘This is my business.’ This is what my business does. If you would like to learn more about these things, please visit the location where I have information about my business. That is very, very important. I couldn’t agree more. It doesn’t matter how uncomfortable you are with it. If you want to promote a business, you have to get used to talking about said business in any way that you can. Speaking of which, ladies and gentlemen, I’m thrilled to announce that today’s sponsor for the show is inboundrem.com, a real estate SEO and marketing company that does websites that you own. We offer a range of services that focus on YouTube, hyperlocal, and traditional SEO. If you haven’t implemented a solution for these things or are looking to take control of your marketing destiny, please visit our sponsor, InboundRem.
Visit Com’s website, go to the Services and About page, and see what you think. The other sponsor of the show is Mail-Right.com. It is an all-in-one platform that is extremely affordable, probably the most affordable platform in the entire real estate marketing industry right now. It’s run by John, our co-host. He has done an amazing job with it. John, is there anything you’d like to say or a place you’d like people to visit?
Yes, we’ve added all the new websites now. We got over about 9 to 10 really quite nice templates. They’re all done in WordPress using a system called Cadence. It’s really fast to load. In my opinion, it’s the fastest loading methodology for WordPress-powered websites, leveraging Gutenberg technology. I would say this, but I do believe it. We’ve done a really nice job.
Beautiful. You should check that out. For those of you looking for a new website, if you’re seeking a new destination and budget is a priority right now, there is no reason why you shouldn’t call John and check out what he has to offer. It certainly wouldn’t be a waste of your time. If you are looking for something more long-term and have a few more dollars to spend, you might visit inboundrem.com to see what we’re doing. Either way, we appreciate your earballs. Thank you for finding one of the top 100 real estate podcasts in the United States. We’re thrilled to have you as our guest. If you’d like to help us continue to grow the show and find sponsors beyond the two companies currently supporting it, please give us a like and a comment on the platform you’re currently listening to. Thank you so much, John. Whenever you’re ready, take us offline.
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Discover the best real estate coaches in 2025 who transform struggling agents into 7-figure earners—proven systems for today’s challenging market.
In this insightful video, we delve into the top real estate coaches of 2025, highlighting their distinctive strategies and approaches that have revolutionized the industry. From innovative marketing techniques to expert negotiation skills, these coaches are setting new standards for success. Whether you’re a seasoned agent or just starting out, this video provides valuable insights to elevate your real estate career.
#1 – Tom Ferry
#2 – Ricky Carruth
#3 – Mike Ferry
#4 – Buffini & Company
#5 – Katie Lance
#6 – Tim & Julie Harris
https://timandjulieharris.com/
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 479 of the Mailright podcast. Today is a very special episode because John is podcasting from Wichita, Kansas. That’s a significant move for him. I hope you’ll all join me in offering congratulations to John for leaving the West and moving to the Midwest, and I wish him well on his ongoing journey to find affordable housing.
Thanks for telling everybody my business. You can do it.
Guess what? I don’t control the editors. Feel free to delete it. I’m not going to put it. But I’m So I’m thinking that there is a whole relocation episode for us to do, John, and I think that we should leverage the heck out of your current experience and turn it into a subject for our listeners, because you are now literally a living, breathing, embodied embodiment of a case study of what it takes to move from one part of the country to another. And you also have your reasons for doing that. And I think that’s an incredibly good podcast. But I’m going to get off my high horse because that is not what we’re talking about today. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to talk about a hot, hot, hot subject because it’s so opinion-based. We’re going to talk about top real estate coaches or some… I’m going to change that slightly and say some top real estate coaches of 2025. We’ve some names on our list that you may know, and others that we don’t think you’re familiar with. I didn’t know all the names. That’s surprising.
With no further ado, John, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself as the English voice of reason on the show, as well as give a little bit of a background on not only who you are, but also if you wouldn’t mind saying why you decided you wanted to do a podcast on coaches.
Well, we normally discuss marketing, but there’s only so much to talk about. However, coaching appears to be extremely popular in the real estate industry. It’s not cheap. I’d be interested in your thoughts, as you’ve met a few of these people. I’ve met one or two of these people through the podcast, but I think you know a few of them better than I do. I think you’ve done some work for some of them. I’m not sure. I’m just interested in what you think they offer, what value they provide, what they can do, and what they can’t do. I think it’s time for a quick discussion about this, Robert. I’m the joint founder of Mel-right. Com. We’re a great, valued CRM lead generative platform that allows you to build Facebook or Google campaigns yourself. And, as I said, it has a number of other features. Also, a great-looking library of WordPress-powered websites. It’s a great value package that starts around $49 a month. Back over to you, Robert.
Okay. I’m excited to dig into this now that I’ve had a chance to think about it for a few minutes. It’s one, it’s been a long time since we’ve had this conversation. John and I used to have a lot of guests on the show, for those of you who are listening. Anyone who has been a long-time listener already knows that. We’ve cut it down because it turned a little bit into pitches. About two or three times a year, we would have a marquee guest. We are People who run marketing companies, big muckety-mucks. And those shows were always really exciting. A really great guest to have great conversations with. The smaller conversations often revolve around a particular strategy that a coach is following or someone similar, and essentially, they’re pitching you on embracing their marketing idea. Some were better than others. Many of them were likely behind where John and I are in our knowledge and application of some of these strategies. So we ended up saying, let’s just keep having the conversations with us. We felt that we could bring more value, and I agree; this list is not dissimilar from that.
So let’s dive into it. What’s on our list today is Tom Ferry, Ricky Carruth, Mike Ferry, Bafini, Katie and Tom, and Julie Harris. John chose these coaches. Some of them I know, some of them I don’t. So some of my conversations will be a little longer than others. Number one on the list, because he has to be number one every time we start talking about real estate coaches, is Tom Ferry. I have a lot of thoughts about Tom and his team. I know many of the people on his staff, and some I love, while others I think he’d be better served not being coached by. So, having said that, John, before we dive into that, obviously, you knew what you were doing when you put Tom at the top of the list. But why don’t you share it with the audience quickly? How did his name get here? Did you have any particular thoughts? Or were you just setting it up to let me say what I was going to say?
Partly, but he’s a very effective marketer, him and his team. They do a podcast. He does all the conferences. He runs his own conferences. He’s obviously the son of Mike Ferry. So they’ve been in the real estate, what, 50, 60 years? He’s effective on his own marketing, his online marketing. He knows what he’s doing. Obviously, depending on how much you’re spending, I doubt if he does apart from the most highest level that he’s doing the coaching, he has a whole group of real estate professionals that are part of his coaching team. Like I say, I think it really depends on the particular individual. Obviously, I’m only going by his online YouTube channel and his podcast. It seems a lot about organization, motivation, organization, all very relevant. But on the other hand, not particularly for me, really, because I think you’re just the same. I don’t think we need motivation. I think we get on with things every day. We’ve been doing this podcast for almost three years plus. You turn up every week, most weeks, I turn up. I think we’re two pretty motivated individuals, but a lot of other people aren’t, aren’t they?
Yeah, and I agree with everything you said. So for Tom Ferry’s organization, which is genius, is set up like he’s got some circle of 10 that he still coaches personally. It’s obviously a very high amount of money, and he’s got some marquee names in that circle of 10, like Christoff, too. I think he does some big calls, massive calls, which lots of people are on, and he also makes an appearance for those calls. The last I heard, the last information I was given, that is what he does in terms of personal coaching. Most of the coaching, which is 100% true, is done by other people. It’s done by people that he acquires. Some of the time, these people he’s acquiring are legends like Betty Graham. Other times, they’re realtors that you don’t know, that you’ve never heard of, that supposedly have a great track record. But oftentimes, when I’ve done research on individual coaches, it turns out not to be the case. I’m not saying that Tom or anybody else on his staff It says that every single coach has a track record, but they do say that these people are supposed to provide value.
His average price, I think the last time I looked into it was about $600 a month. What you’re getting is an hour of time with your coach and some follow-up. My comment to that, John, is that this is coaches like Tom, and I’ve been in the coaching business since 1989, and always the structure is the same. You get a marquee name. Everybody that marquee name writes a book or does videos in this era, in this decade. And then they hire on a good team of salespeople, and the salespeople sell the services and then hand off to the quote, unquote, coach. The salespeople selling the service should be the coaches. They know how to sell. The people who are supposedly coaching you, it depends on who it is, but When it was Tom Hopkins and Zig Zigler, it was basically people that had learned their books, and then were trying to stick to a routine to get you to follow the advice in the books. Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re still at the point where you haven’t read a couple of sales book and you’re selling real estate, don’t hire a coach. Read a couple of sales books.
Tom Ferry and organizations like that are the easiest places to lose value from money because you don’t know what you’re getting when you hire your coach. You’re When you’re walking to a salesperson, you don’t get to interview the coach. When you get put with the coach, let’s just pretend for a moment that you know you need some social media coaching. You need to get better at using social media. That’s the weak spot in your business. And then they hand you off to a 30-year veteran who’s never used social media. That’s what I mean. And of course, you can ask to be switched to another coach, but it’s all a big arduous process.
You would hope they’ve got some vetting mechanisms, weren’t you? About you would hope that they would ask what particular areas that you’re weak in or you feel you’re weak in, and they would try and match one of their coaching team with some of the areas that you feel you’re weak on. You would hope, wouldn’t you?
You’d hope. And maybe they do. They probably do. Let’s just say they probably do. Whether or not that’s really truly effective, because when you’re talking about internal resources, obviously, all the coaches have sold the organization on whatever their skill set is. What I know for a fact, John, is over the years, I’ve heard more questioning of the investment made with Tom Ferry than any other organization. That’s what I know. I know that from taking three to four calls a day from top realtors across the country, I know plenty of people, hundreds probably, that have used Tom Ferry. I’m not saying that some of them have gotten value. Oftentimes, value comes down to, Use Zillow. What John said, his opening statement is That’s really true, ladies and gentlemen. If you need some motivation, go to Tom Ferry. If you need somebody to discipline you for your daily activities, go to Tom Ferry or somebody like him. If you already got those things down, I would very carefully examine the idea of using somebody like him. Number two on our list is Ricky Carv. We’ve had Ricky on the show either two or three times. I don’t even remember anymore.
Ricky is a different beast by far. Ricky is somebody who absolutely provides massive value He keeps his investment low for his services. He is a person that… The coaching that he occasionally does is extremely hands-on. He is not trying to be a one-size-fits-all coach, as far as I can tell. He has a system that he personally is used to great effect, and he teaches people how to use it: circle prospecting, using a lot of cold calling, things like that. What makes Ricky different, and certainly has earned him my respect, is he actually still, to my knowledge, he spends an hour a week doing cold calls, and he records them, throws them up on YouTube. So you want to know exactly what he’s saying, what somebody else is saying, what his response is. You want to try to emulate him. This guy really throws down. Like, really throws down. That’s my opinion about Ricky. I think he’s the real deal. He’s an unusual character, but there is no doubt that his philosophy to provide value first and ask for money later, it really matches the inbound philosophy. For that alone, I give this guy top marks.
What do you think?
Yeah, I think you’re spot on. I think his methodologies don’t gel with me. I don’t think I could do what he does with the cold calling, I think you’re up for it. I think if I was really hungry, I could make myself do it. But unless I was really hungry and just needed to bag pray, as I say. I don’t think… And fundamentally, I just don’t believe in that mythology because of the iPhone, because of the mobile phone. Anybody that rings me up that’s not on my contact list, I don’t pick the phone up. And if they don’t leave a voice message, I do once a day listen to my voice messaging. If it’s something I’m not interested, it gets deleted and they get placed on the blocked list. I just don’t believe in cold calling. There’s effective sales methodology in the middle of 2025, but who am Why? I’m probably wrong. If he’s getting success, that’s it. Obviously, I am, bro. No, no.
Yeah. In this, we resoundingly disagree. Circle prospecting is where you a list of numbers, like in a building or an enclosed neighborhood, places where people likely know each other, and then you use an intro, you try to build a relationship with one person, then it leverage that relationship on the calls with other people. It is a very A very strong prospecting method. It works, it works well. I’ve cold call for the vast majority of my career. Do I want to do it anymore? I absolutely do not, John. Do I think it’s the most effective way to market? I don’t anymore. I used to. I don’t anymore for reasons that we’ve discussed in other shows. If everybody wants to know, go listen to our catalog of back episodes. All I will say, I think inbound and video and things like that, more passive forms of marketing are probably a more effective use of your time, honestly. But having said that, if you don’t have those skill sets and you are the rarest of the rare and you have no compunction about knocking on the door or making a call, then Ricky is a guy that you can listen to.
No doubt about it. All right, we’re going to go to break. When we come back, John and I are going to continue down the list. First up, when the show starts again, it’s going to be Mike Ferry. In the meantime, everyone, if you are on some platform, like a podcast platform, Million Podcasts, I can go on and on. You’re listening to our show. You found us there. Please, John and I would be so grateful if you would give us a thumbs up, leave us a comment. We recently discovered that we’re the number 89 in real estate marketing podcast.
And that’s great. He loves saying that, folks.
I do. I do, because I didn’t know. John stopped doing all the tracking. And I’m a marketing analysis guy that so many of you out there had done us the favor in the courtesy of liking us on these various platforms that we’ve probably never even heard of. It was humbling, eye-opening, and I was so incredibly personally grateful, and I’m sure that John would agree with me that he would be, too. So thank you, and please Please, if you feel so inclined, do more of that. We’ll be right back. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It is episode number 479, I think. I lost track. I lost my screen. But anyway, we’re talking about real estate coaches in 2025. I’m going to slightly change the title of the show and say it’s maybe not the best coaches, but it is a good solid a hard list of real estate coaches for us to review and for you to get a sense of should you be looking for a coach or want to know what our opinion is. When we went to break, Mike Ferry was up next. Mike Ferry, who is the father of Tom Ferry, not an accident that their names are the same, is an old, old, old-school real estate guy and still focuses on things like scripts and the mechanics of door-knocking and older school strategies.
I’m sure he’s tried to update his kit, but honestly, that’s what he’s known for. He has a lot of really great scripts. He’s got a lot of really great sales tactics. He comes from the days of Zig Zigal and other people. My advice to anybody listening to this show would be, Hey, if you are trying to get better at door knocking, you’re trying to get better at the old-school in-person referral gathering methods, I’m not talking by phone. I’m talking like you’re sitting across from somebody, you’ve closed a deal, and now it’s time to get referrals. Mike has some good ideas about that. His stuff still works. If you’ve never read a sales book, if you’ve never read Zig Zigular, if you’ve never read Tom Hopkins, if you’ve never read Brian Tracy, if you’ve never done any of those things, then Mike might be a good place to go and get some coaching. That’s my opinion. John, what’s yours?
Yeah, that sounds like me, but in my defense, I consume a load of stuff about the bootstrap and the bootstrap startup I have some mentors and people that built up SASSes, Software as a Service businesses, sold them for 20, 30 million. There’s about four or five people that are personal friends of mine that made that type of money, and they’ve given me advice. Unfortunately, I haven’t got to their success, but I think that’s more down to me than anything. But they’ve been kind enough to give me advice, and they’ve written books and I’ve read them and listened to them. So that’s where I come from, and where you come from more the traditional sales background. I come from the world of startup, bootstrap startups. I can’t really make a judgment. I think everything you said about Mike, I have watched some of his videos. He knows what he’s doing. It just isn’t my cup of tea, Robert.
Sure. Well, having said that, everybody, We hope you got a little bit of value out of my insight. We’re going to move on to one of John’s favorites, makes every list every time when we talk about networking, referral, gathering, John, who is the producer of the show, always puts Bafini on the list. Bafini was nobody I’d heard the name when John and I started doing this podcast four years ago. Through John, I’ve done a fair amount of research and started to understand when people call in to me and I say, How are you marketing yourself? And some of them say, Have Have you ever heard of the Bafini method? I asked him some questions. So now I’ve gotten up to speed a little bit with Bafini. So, John, we’re going to let you lead off on this one because you always put these guys on the list.
Yeah, it was my co-host before he left and you joined. He was trained in the Bafini method. I think it has different terms, but what you said about Ricky’s mythology sounded different term, but it seemed to me what you were saying, there was a lot of linkage between the Bafini and the Ricky method. The Bafini, and it’s been about three or four years since I last really looked at their training. You don’t get Bafini. In some ways, it’s like Tom Ferry. You get a coach that’s part of the Bafini family, but they seem to me to have a more core ideology that all their coaches appear to. This is about getting a small group of 300 people in your community keeping really tight with this group of 300 and getting consistent referrals from this group of 300. They provide a social media CRM, which they built internally, which is designed to assist you with the coaching methodology. And I haven’t received any of their training, but it made sense to me what they were saying and what they were trying to teach. And I could see it working, but you talk to more agents than I do.
What’s the feedback that you’ve received?
So these old-school relationship builders, it’s not a new concept. You go back far enough, you’ll find a guy by the name of Harvey McKay, who wrote a book of How to Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive, and he made his own CRM. It was how to build relationships with a circle of people. His was corporate. He was selling envelopes, and he did very, very well out of it. So well, he ended up buying a professional sports team. That’s how well he did. Harvey McKay Envelopes was a thing. I don’t know if it still is. I just know that it was. And Brian Tracy, similar methodology. Here’s the idea, and I like the idea. If it was me, I would use an idea like that. You create relationships with a core group of people that match a certain criteria that you have, such as a certain level of success, a certain level of influence as a realtor, that’s what you’re looking for, small business owners, people like that, people who come in contact with many other people throughout whatever it is they do, even people like HR directors and other people that sometimes give life advice would be good people to add into your circle of 100.
You build relationships with those people. You said 300, I say 100. It doesn’t really matter what the number is. You choose a number that you think you can properly maintain, and then you really go out of your way to build a relationship with those people so that when somebody’s talking about moving or somebody they know is talking about moving, yours is the name that comes up. But Finny turned that into a method and built tools around it, and I love that. I love the idea, and And from all accounts, from everybody that’s worked with them, what’s rare about FFINI is that it’s extremely unusual for me to hear a realtor say that they didn’t get value. That’s work noteworthy. A lot of realtors call me and say they felt like they wasted their money on various types of coaching. I have not heard that often with Bafini.
Yeah, I think they’re credible. The only thing is I couldn’t do it. That’s a contradiction, isn’t it? Because I’ve said some good things about them, but I couldn’t do it. The reason why I couldn’t do it, folks, is it’s too artificial for me. I don’t think in my heart I could mix with people that I didn’t like, that I didn’t want to be around just to try and get some referrals. I’m not saying that’s good or bad. It’s just me. But maybe if I was hungry enough, I just have to change my freaking attitude, wouldn’t I?
You would. And ladies and gentlemen, if you’re really, really an old school, you want to know where a lot of these ideas came from, go back and read Dale Carnegie. He’s still relevant. How to win Friends and Influence People is still one of the greatest books on sales that’s ever been written. It’s another follow-up book, in my opinion, that was also just as great because it was more scientific, and that’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. John, you raise a good point, but these books, the two that I just mentioned, will basically explain to you how to… I’m going to get hippy-gipping on everybody. How to vibrate at the same level of the people that you wanting to influence. And part of the methodology there is you don’t chase relationships with people you don’t like. You should like or respect or trust. And if you like, respect or trust somebody, what you’re doing in terms of building relationship and using tactics to do it, it becomes more like, I am a neurodivergent, handicapped person. I need these tactics. Why do you think I’ve read all these books, John? I am an introvert at heart.
I had to learn how to to approach people and influence them and talk to them. Then when I learned how to do it for a while, I was young and I did a lot of stupid things, made a lot of morally questionable decisions when I was a young man and paid the price. I realized I don’t want to be a bad human. So I changed everything I did. Inbound, my whole philosophy these days is I provide value first. I give you everything upfront, just like Ricky does. If you liked what you got, you can call me. The reason for that is my morally questionable When I was a young salesperson, I did all sorts of crazy shit. I don’t regret it. I just learned from it and don’t do it anymore. That’s it. I know what to do, which is what’s different about me than other people. I just don’t do it. All right, so now next on our list is a mystery person. Katie Lance was somebody I had never heard of when we started the show. I’ve logged into her channel. I’ve looked at her stuff. She wouldn’t capture my attention, generally speaking, for a number of different reasons.
She doesn’t seem to have anything unique going on about her, except for the fact that she’s a woman in real estate. She does talk a lot about social media. She does have a good social media presence, which means that she actually knows how to use social media, which is rare. A lot of people who coach, you’d think that they know, they don’t. When you’re curious to know if somebody knows the thing that they want to coach you on, go look at their channels and answer yourself. Now, Katie has the distinction of having 18,000 followers on YouTube. That is a lot. For this space. So well done, Katie. Jon, what do you have to say about her?
Yeah, I think, obviously, she’s a woman. I think it’s a very different philosophy that she pushing. It’s around social media marketing. It’s more online with a high emphasis on social media. But in some ways, social media marketing has similarities to some of the more traditional, like the, but you’re using social media to build those relationships. She’s got 18,000. I’m getting close to 13,000 on my WP Tonic channel. It’s bloody almost killed me, but I’m getting there. I think it’s 12: 02, 12: 03, I’ve got. But I looked at some of her stuff. If you’re into that and you’re into utilizing social media, and I think it definitely can generate leads. But you got to… Having her show you some of the ropes, she looks reasonably legit, I haven’t sampled any of her coaching, so what more can I say? She’s not been on your radar, so I presume nobody said anything to you that you’ve been consulting with. So what can we say?
Yeah, no, nobody has. And I don’t… By the way, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you all will not take that comment personally, because in this case, it’s not meant that way.
What comment?
Just because we haven’t heard of her, I’m not seeing something subtly through that.
She was on a number of the lists on the website like this that I utilize for the research for this, Robert. But she wasn’t somebody that I was aware of. But of the five to six lists that I looked at, she was on about four of Fair enough.
There’s probably good reason for that. My guess, my gut check here, is that Katie is probably one of those people that really appeals to new realtors and teaches a lot of basics very well, because those are usually the people I haven’t heard of, that my clientele tend to be people that have advanced beyond that basic stage, and I oftentimes don’t deal with nor do business with realtors who are only in the business 1-3 years. That means that if Katie is serving that audience, there’s no surprise that I wouldn’t have heard of her. By the way, it’s desperately needed. If she is doing that and you do know who she is and you’re listening to this show, good God, keep listening to her. I hope she provides a lot of great information. Last on our list is Tim and Julie Harris. I’ve heard of them, but I don’t know that much about them. What Why don’t you… I did research a little Katie right now on the show. I didn’t actually do a ton. Why don’t you share whatever you learned when you put them on the list?
I don’t know too much in the coaching realm, but I have listened. They’ve got one of the top podcasts in the real estate industry sector. This list is that we’re 89, I’m sure they’re much higher than 89, and they’ve been doing it quite a while. I haven’t listened to their podcast for a while, actually. It wasn’t particularly my cup of tea because they had a lot of guests who were pushing coaching or talking about mindset, and it wasn’t my thing. It doesn’t mean that there’s a lot of that type of podcast in the real estate sector, and they’re more successful than us. But it’s not something I really want to do. I don’t think you really want to do it either. It is what it is. I’m not sure if there’s still day-to-day real estate in the trenches. I don’t know. I know very little about the actual coaching methodology. The research I conducted is somewhat similar to Tom Ferry’s approach. I’m not entirely sure what their methodology is, to be honest, but that might be my mistake, Robert.
I agree with you. I don’t know the Harrises. I’m just conducting a brief analysis of their website. They’ve got good domain authority. They’re coming up a lot in AIO and ChatGPT. They’re not performing particularly well in traditional SEO. You’ve got somebody who apparently a lot of people are following, and they’ve a lot to say. If they’re just pushing products and that’s all they’re doing for real estate agents, I’m truly sorry. But this time, John and I are completely in line. I have always hated the idea that, for the most part, if you don’t have experience, what’s happening is people are taking advantage of that. They’re taking advantage of your lack of experience a lot. It happens more in real estate than almost any industry I’ve ever seen, except maybe in mechanics and construction. However, those are the only other two industries where we can simply call and sell products to people without any prior knowledge. I think that this is a good point. They’ve been at it a long time, though.
I’m not going to go quite as far as you have gone. It’s just that when I listened to their podcast periodically, it was my cup of tea, Robert. However, I think many people… There’s another… I forgot his name. I’m sorry. He appeared on our show about 2-3 times, and he hosts a very popular Christian-focused podcast. It’s about real estate, and it’s about mindset, but the mindset is based on Christian philosophy. I would. It’s just not my cup of tea, Robert. It’s just not… I just couldn’t do that, but it’s just not… I’m not saying it’s wrong, Robert. I’m just saying it’s just not my cup of tea. But I’ve got his name, I can see him. And he’s got a very successful podcast, Robert, but I just couldn’t do that, Robert.
Yeah. You and I are like blatant self-promotion without a clear exchange of value, letting people… Again, you and I come closer to that philosophy than… As an English person, I think you’re a bit more conservative than I am. I’m certainly comfortable promoting and marketing, probably a little bit more than you. After three years of working with you, I’d say that. But certain other things, like shilling and stuff like that, no, not me, not for me. If I know the person, product, or service, and I think there’s good value there, I will promote it all day. However, if I’m unsure or don’t know, that’s not until I become certain.
It’s a bit like the difference in philosophy around multi-marketing, isn’t it? You’ve got absolutely no problem with it. I’ve got a big problem because until I was 43, it was a criminal activity in the UK. You go to prison if you’re caught doing it.
Sure.
Well, I’m going to have a big difference in attitude towards it, aren’t I?
True. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we would like to thank The Close as a source for some of the information we have today. We really appreciate you all. We’d like to thank you, the listeners. John, I am eternally grateful for your earballs. We know that you have lots of options when it comes to your podcast listening. The fact that you’ve made us one of the top 100 most listened to is something that obviously, as you all can tell, if you’ve been listening to the last four or five episodes, I have been just staggered by, humbled by, thrilled by, excited by, so on and so forth. If you’d like to look me up or access over 500 free articles related to SEO, AIO, lead generation, and real estate marketing, visit inboundrem. Com. If you would like to reach out to me personally, please visit the Services or About page, where you can find contact information. John, how would you prefer people to contact you?
Do something a bit different, folks. If you’re getting value from the podcast by Robert and me, consider giving us a review on iTunes or Spotify. You can find it on both iTunes and Spotify, and you can leave a review. It’s a little bit buried on iTunes. It’s a little bit easier to see it on Spotify. And just give us a review, good, bad, or indifferent. I’ll check them and reply to them, but that would be really helpful. Back over to you, Rob.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, that’s our show for the day. Thank you so much. We’re going to sign out, and we will hopefully catch you next week as we share another incredibly exciting, incredibly relevant subject as it relates real estate marketing. Catch you then.
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