Archive for the ‘Podcast’ Category

#467 – The Mail-Right: Best Real Estate Software for Agents in 2025?

Wednesday, April 9th, 2025

Possibility Some of The Best Real Estate Software for Agents in 2025?

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Episode Full Show Notes

[00:00:06.630] – Robert Newman

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 467. Today, we will talk about the best real estate software for agents in 2025, or otherwise known as Jonathan Dinwood talking about software for real estate agents he thinks will be helpful, and me taking pot shots.

[00:00:30.330] – Jonathan Denwood

I found some new stuff to talk about. You get a bit hunk if we repeat ourselves too much. So I found some new stuff.

[00:00:38.050] – Robert Newman

He did. He did find some new stuff. He found seven things I’ve never even heard of. So it’s going to be really fun today. We’re going to talk about a lot of stuff that nobody’s heard of because if I haven’t heard of it, I can guarantee you that a lot of our audience hasn’t heard of it. But before we get started, before we get the show going, before we throw some coal in the fire, John, tell everybody who you are and why they should listen to you.

[00:01:02.430] – Jonathan Denwood

Thanks, Robert. I’m the joint founder of Mel-right. Com. We are CRM, a lead generation platform, and much more. We’ve a starting. It’s a closing price of $49 a month. If you pay month to month, it’s just a fantastic value. Over to you, Rob.

[00:01:24.210] – Robert Newman

Beautiful. My name is Robert Newman. I’m the founder of Inbound R-E-M. I’ve been doing online marketing consulting with real estate agents for 16 years, and I’ve built out sales teams and built my own company, Inbound R-E-M, with people. And what we do is educate agents. We do SEO, and we make real estate websites. Effectively, if you want to know about online marketing of the organic style, the inbound style, you go to my website, inboundram. Com, and check us out. Inbound marketing is all about giving away a lot of stuff for free. So, go there and get all the information you need to build your business using online tools. All right, without any further ado, we’re going to jump right into this list. The first one, which has got to be one of the most interesting names for service I’ve ever heard, is Coffee & Contracts, an interesting, exciting name with marketing templates. So, John, why don’t you dive into this for us and tell us why this made your list?

[00:02:30.010] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, its founder is Hayley Ingram. Is she related to the founder of Ingram? I did some research on that. I couldn’t find a definite answer to that particular question. They supply all leaflets and digital content you can use on social media, your website, and flyers. She, or they, they provide it through a membership website. They’re using WordPress, and they have a library of content. In some ways, it’s similar to MailRight because that’s the side we’ve built out more ourselves. Everything is editable in Canva. Most of what they supply is editable in Canva. It starts at $74 if you’re a single agent; if you’re in teams, it goes down to about $54 monthly. It looks okay to me. It’s something that I plan to expand in Melright as well, but we have recently developed that side of our offering as well.

[00:04:03.320] – Robert Newman

Very cool.

[00:04:05.290] – Jonathan Denwood

Could you let me know what you think? I’m looking at their SEO analytics, which are mediocre. Still, they do have some traffic coming into their homepage off a lot of interesting keywords, over a thousand of them, to be specific.

[00:04:22.950] – Robert Newman

Many of them have to do with marketing for real estate, which is how you probably found them because they’re number five for that keyword.

[00:04:29.330] – Jonathan Denwood

So this is something- No, I didn’t actually. I just looked at my list of resources that I check over for ideas, and they were in… One of my online resources had written an article, and they were listed in the article.

 

[00:04:46.080] – Robert Newman

Got you. Okay, well, for marketing for real estate, they come up number four, actually, above the close. Housing wire and luxury presence are doing slightly better for those keywords, and that’s Those are the big companies doing slightly better for those keywords. Reddit and rock content. In any way, what do I think? I think that I think that there’s a lot that’s already out there with AI that’s going to make this obsolete fairly quickly. But I think that if you’re a beginning marketer who doesn’t want to spend any money on a service like Fiverr or you want to have a Fiverr agent use a very specific type of workflow, coffee and contracts could have a place inside your marketing. I like the pricing, that’s for sure. I like the idea of having a place to go that’s going to give you a lot of ideas because it’s templates. I think that’s probably the important part of template providers these days is to give people ideas to start off their marketing process. If that’s what you’re looking for, then I do think that this website has a few hundred ideas. And if it’s worth $74 a month for those ideas, then it’s a great deal.

 

[00:06:05.390] – Jonathan Denwood

I see where she’s coming from, though, because obviously, I’m in this business myself. But I think somebody that can’t afford a company like yours, Robert, but who is okay in using Canva and has some computer skills, and it’s got the great reassurance that you’re not using other people’s copyright materials because there’s a lot of people that get in problems when they’re using imaging or materials that you don’t have the commercial copyright to reuse, and you can get into a real mess really quickly. And there’s a set of companies, and their business model is to sue people or ask ask, send threatening letters and ask for, not enormous sums of money, but thousands of dollars because you use their image or something, and it’s the ease of use as well. So for the price, for what it gets, I can… If you go to the website, it is really aimed at the female agent agent in the style of the website and the copy and their pitch, basically.

 

[00:07:37.780] – Robert Newman

Copy you. Listen, I think for most services, including this one, if somebody built it, they probably had an agent archetype in their mind when they built it. I feel like that’s probably the case here, too. I’m certainly thinking that there’s an agent of a certain place in their career or maybe a part-time agent where this service would be really useful and for a very long period of time. So Caffe & Contracts, I love the name. That I will tell you over and over again. It’s really unusual and it’s certainly memorable, and it got them to be number four for a major keyword, which is not easy to do, and they’re only a four-year-old company. So they’ve got something going on there. Check them out, everybody. All right, number two on the list, Agent Crate. Why don’t you talk to us a little bit about that?

 

[00:08:26.640] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, looked over their website, looked at some demos on YouTube and that. It’s doing… They’ve expanded. They provide a social media calendar, so does Mailright. Also, they’ve got a service where they actually post for you using their social media calendar. Melright does that as well, additional service. But they’ve expanded. They’ve expanded into the same area as coffee and contracts. And also they’re providing websites, which is what Melright does. We provide a list of templated WordPress-based websites using Gutenberg technology. They’re using their own priority software. I put the wrong price on the list. That was on… It actually starts at $89, but they’ve expanded. One of the things that I noticed, I did do a search on their website to confirm this, but it didn’t come up with any useful information, is they provide content, but they provide their own editor. It’s not linked to Canva, like coffee and contracts. And that can be a drawback because some of the reviews that I watched, they were having problems in actually customizing the content that they provide because there were some browser conflicts. But the last review that I watched was about six months ago, so they could have fixed that problem.

 

[00:10:19.540] – Jonathan Denwood

But they provide an editor themselves. It’s a bigger library of content Plus they got this scheduler, this social media scheduler. So they’re offering more functionality than coffee and contracts. But the name isn’t so good, is it? That’s what really matters, if you got the name, doesn’t it?

 

[00:10:46.690] – Robert Newman

Right. Yeah, absolutely.

 

[00:10:50.030] – Jonathan Denwood

You should have laughed more on that one. That was a good one.

 

[00:10:54.680] – Robert Newman

Okay, well.

 

[00:10:57.790] – Jonathan Denwood

Because you’re not being well, are You’re not being well, sir.

 

[00:11:01.710] – Robert Newman

I’ve not been well. Listen, there is no doubt that there is a deep need inside the real estate space for social media tools. And of all the service-based professions that are out there, one of the service-based professions that gets the most value out of social media is absolutely real estate agents. There’s no doubt. And all the controversies that relates to real estate, whether the market’s heating up or slowing down, plays well into social media feeds. You can really leverage that, which makes these auto-posting tools really interesting to look at. I’ve been looking at a service called Hero Post lately. They’ve been through many phases of development, but they’re the only social media service that seems to have their eye on trying to actually post to just about every popular platform at the same time. And that’s what I’m interested in personally.

 

[00:12:08.430] – Jonathan Denwood

I want to be able to-That’s all right, does that?

 

[00:12:12.170] – Robert Newman

No, I doubt it. Because I’m talking about Reddit LinkedIn, everything.

 

[00:12:16.430] – Jonathan Denwood

We just concentrate on the ones that are relevant to real estate agents. But they say they got 20,000 agents on their website, trusted by over 20,000.

 

[00:12:28.070] – Robert Newman

Are you talking about Agent Crate? I have no idea. I’m looking in here trying to figure out what platform- That’s what they’re saying on their homepage, trusted by over 20,000 agents. This is a very hard tool to develop. Now I’m going to… And John, you’ve developed one. So one of the things that… And I don’t know how you cracked the metric for Instagram. You cracked it, though, right?

 

[00:12:59.620] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, linking it to Instagram.

 

[00:13:02.340] – Robert Newman

Not linking, posting, because they update their actual core tool and they break code for auto-posting services. And then you have to go in and basically reactivate your token every 15 to 20 days with Instagram. We have never figured out a crack for that. It just always breaks. All the automated tools break with Instagram. Did you solve for that?

 

[00:13:32.500] – Jonathan Denwood

No, we haven’t. You have to go in and read. We can’t do the impossible. I doubt if these people have done it as well.

 

[00:13:41.690] – Robert Newman

Okay.

 

[00:13:42.310] – Jonathan Denwood

All right. I’ll be very surprised because all these social media. Our one works for Facebook, Instagram, but you are correct. You have to go in and reconnect.

 

[00:13:55.100] – Robert Newman

Okay. Well, we haven’t figured it out either, John.

 

[00:13:58.210] – Jonathan Denwood

I don’t think we can.

 

[00:14:00.500] – Robert Newman

If anybody ever does figure it out, I think that they’re going to make a lot of money.

 

[00:14:08.410] – Jonathan Denwood

I don’t think it’s working it out. I think it’s more to do Instagram. It doesn’t want to bar these optimization tools, these schedulers, but it doesn’t want to encourage them too much either.

 

[00:14:25.770] – Robert Newman

I agree with that. I agree with that assessment. Anyway, so that leaves interesting ideas. But ladies and gentlemen, if you have a really good assistant and you have a strong person handling your social, I think that something like Agent Create will automatically post your content is probably really cool. And I love the price. The price at $39 is really, really, really sure.

 

[00:14:53.230] – Jonathan Denwood

It doesn’t start. I was wrong on that. I was taking that from a couple of online resources, but when I checked the website, it starts. They got about three to four different plans, and the basic plan seems to start at 89, but I might be wrong. But I did check over the website, and the cheapest price I could find started at $89.

 

[00:15:20.510] – Robert Newman

Copy you. All right, well…

 

[00:15:23.440] – Jonathan Denwood

But I could be wrong. It could be 39 because there’s a big difference between 39 and 89, isn’t it?

 

[00:15:30.940] – Robert Newman

Very, very, very big difference. Well, okay, copy you.

 

[00:15:35.900] – Jonathan Denwood

I presume the 39 is like with our MailRight system. We provide the calendar and the functionality, but you have to do the posting, set up the posts, and you can store them in a library so you can reuse them. But we offer an additional service where we will post for you, but they seem be offering that at $1,99 per month. That’s a similar price to what we charge. I presume the $89 is for the self-service. That’s what I’m presuming.

 

[00:16:18.170] – Robert Newman

Those prices start to get into the realm of prices that I’ve looked at with Hero Post and Hootsuite and all the rest. What I’m interested in, basically, which Hero comes the closest to, is an automated social calendar function that literally breaks into every single major platform, Pinterest, all of them, like 15 to 20 all at once, so that you can go to one social calendar and push content everywhere that is relevant. Now, what’s relevant for SEO and what’s relevant for a real estate agent who’s not doing SEO are two different things entirely. That’s where John and I are coming at this at cross purposes, because I look at all the platforms that allow you to read content. That’s like Reddit. And John is looking at places where you want to post for branding and things like that. And that is more like Facebook and Instagram. So anyway.

 

[00:17:12.310] – Jonathan Denwood

Thanks for saying that. I was a bit puzzled, but now I totally understand. So thanks.

 

[00:17:18.920] – Robert Newman

Okay, so number three, Catalyze AI, Predictive Analytics. I’ve never even heard of these guys, John.

 

[00:17:28.780] – Jonathan Denwood

No. So please. They’re on the list. I watched an interview from one of their cofounders, Ryan Foults, F-O-L-T-S, Foults. It seems interesting. The price I I found it’s 1400 for the year. I have no idea if it works, but this idea of using AI to monitor, I presume it works with certain CRMs, and it monitors changes that might be occurring in the people in your CRM. And then it it, like when somebody dies, that’s a big event, or other life events, and then it notifies you. I I can actually… I follow the logic, and in a way, I see it’s an interesting way how AI could actually help a real estate professional. I don’t know if this particular setup actually works, because I did a bit of research on them, and I listened to a interview by one of the joint founders about a year ago, but I can’t I can’t really say if it actually worked. I did do a search trying to find reviews, and I couldn’t really find that much, to be honest with you, Robert.

 

[00:19:11.690] – Robert Newman

I got you.

 

[00:19:13.050] – Jonathan Denwood

It is interesting, isn’t it?

 

[00:19:16.540] – Robert Newman

Yeah, I’m doing some very, very basic research right now. And so the guy that they’ve got on the real estate professional that they have on their actual website is deep into AI. He’s got a website built on AI. He’s doing a lot of coaching having to do with AI. He’s using a lot of AI. So it doesn’t surprise me that he is really building, and he’s building all his websites using AI, and all these things look relevant. If he found a tool, and what this tool is saying that they’re doing is using AI to identify when properties are being inherited, which is a thing that you track. You could do that, John. You could do that in an automated way if you built out the AI in the right way.

 

[00:20:05.830] – Jonathan Denwood

One thing I found a little bit, I wouldn’t say disturbing, but put me off a little bit. When you go to their website, you click Prices. It takes you to a slightly different website. So if you go to their website and you click the price button, it’s taken to, I presume it’s their parent company, and this seems to It’s not really just a division of another parent of the main company.

 

[00:20:36.060] – Robert Newman

Like I said, when you can create anything you want with AI and do it in a click of a few buttons, including websites, John, I think you It’s a bit weird shit like this, and I don’t think it inspires trust at all.

 

[00:20:48.200] – Jonathan Denwood

It didn’t with me. So you agree? I thought it was a bit odd myself.

 

[00:20:52.810] – Robert Newman

So Wealth feed, the primary company that we’re talking about right here, Wealth feed, is a Okay, a money in motion event. So Wealth feed is basically like a data analytics company that tracks individuals and people, and it’s mostly for really, really high-end real estate markets like California, where your average sales price, tracking an individual, let’s say my neighbor here, who bought a home literally 40 years ago for 50,000. But when they die, it’s going to be a million-dollar transaction. So does it make sense to track that client in that area? The answer is it does, if you can do it cheaply. This tool, Wealth feed, is 13. 99 per year, but it only gives you a thousand monitored contacts, which is crazy. What the AI tool seems to be doing is proactively looking for events inside a zip code. Now, if it works as it’s advertised, that could be really productive. But if you’re only doing a zip code that, let’s say, has a thousand people, how many wealth events would there be in a year? Probably two. So you better have a conversion when you call them. You’re paying 13. 99 for a zip code per year.

 

[00:22:23.460] – Robert Newman

It’s not an enormous price for most lead generation, but considering the fact that you are passively sitting there and waiting for somebody to essentially die. I don’t know, John. I would say everybody who’s listening to the podcast, I would say, do your own research and take it with a grain of salt. I like the idea. I don’t know that it’s ready for prime time as I feel about a lot of things that we see and get pitched as it relates to AI. We’re going to go to our break. We’re going to be right back. When we come back, John is going to walk us through the rest of the list. For those of you that like a cheat code, we’re going to be talking about virtual staging, property showings, and a little bit of coaching and goal setting. We’re hoping that we’re going to give you some great ideas. John has once again put together the list and done the grunt work. If you like what you heard, you like what you’ve seen, make sure that you message John. What email are we using for you these days?

 

[00:23:20.740] – Jonathan Denwood

It’s Jonathan, J-O-N-T-H-A-N@mail-right. Com.

 

[00:23:26.040] – Robert Newman

Make sure you email John there, especially if you have something that you’d like to see him work on for us as a team. We would love to hear your thoughts about, do you want us to deep dive into something that you’re curious about? Let us know. As long as it’s related to real estate marketing, we’ll do it. All right. Without any further ado, we’ll be right back. Okay, dokey. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It’s episode number 467. John and I are talking about the best real estate software. I think that My opinion, John, please forgive me. I don’t know the title, Best Real Estate Software, but I think interesting real estate software for agents. I was pushing it a little bit.

 

[00:24:09.210] – Jonathan Denwood

I was just trying to become more enthusiastic like you.

 

[00:24:12.750] – Robert Newman

Yeah. I think interesting is a really good way.

 

[00:24:17.560] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, that’s what I would have said a year ago, but I’m becoming more American. I think you’re rubbing off on me, Rob. I think in the last couple of years, I’ve become a much more effective market than I used to be.

 

[00:24:31.880] – Robert Newman

I think that’s true. I’ve seen a lot of improvements in a lot of your marketing. You’re doing a lot of really cool things. And if I’m not mistaken, since I think I’m still connected to the Mailright calendar, I feel like you’ve been seeing results. I see a lot more calls in your calendar these days from real estate people.

 

[00:24:47.360] – Jonathan Denwood

Is that-Yeah, I think the other business is doing… I had a very good year last year. The Mailright thing, it’s going the right direction. It’s been very painful, but I don’t think until Still recently, I had any real idea of market fit, really. So that’s a bit of a problem. But I think it’s much better than that. Can we go on to the next thing?

 

[00:25:10.950] – Robert Newman

Dialed odd, man. I’m looking at it. Hit me with it. I mean, I’m I’ve never even heard of this again. Here’s the opening line to the-I thought you would like this one because you’ve mentioned about virtual staging a couple of times in previous episodes recently, haven’t you? Yeah. Empowering MLSs 2, remain central to agents and brokerages, proactively reduce mediations, unlock new revenue, enrich listing data.

 

[00:25:37.130] – Jonathan Denwood

Can I tell you what I didn’t like about this?

 

[00:25:40.010] – Robert Newman

Yeah, please.

 

[00:25:41.390] – Jonathan Denwood

I like the concept, but if you look a bit further on the website, Rob, you realize they’ve gone into a bit of everything, which I know it’s hilarious because that’s what Melright does. But I think if you scroll down, they can make a website for you, they can do video content for you, they can do this, they can do that, they can do the other. And that put me off a little bit because I actually want them to concentrate on the virtual staging, if you understand. Can you understand my logic there a little bit?

 

[00:26:20.640] – Robert Newman

Yep. Well, I only see one name associated with this guy by the name of Todd Carpenter. And as with so many other people, he appears to be a real estate agent turned tech entrepreneur. I love it when real estate agents do attempt to provide stuff that they feel like they see the profession and they need. But most real estate agents have never really run a business. And this website, for sure, the StyleDod website, it’s lacking any bit of depth to it. I’m still looking at it going, I think I understand what they do.

 

[00:27:05.920] – Jonathan Denwood

I should have kept my mouth shut because I jumped in, but we are on the same prayer sheet in this episode. I think there’s a lot of agreement. Yeah, it’s funny. We got the same impression.

 

[00:27:24.160] – Robert Newman

So Stalad also links to another website called reimaginhome. Ai, which is virtual staging, impure space, redesigned furniture rooms, landscaping. It’s a much bigger, much more in-depth website than StyleDot is. It’s got all sorts of stuff here. It’s got pricing, it’s got resources. I understand what it does. It ranges from $14 to $99 a month. It’s at the bottom of the site when you click on AI solutions, but it only takes you to a single place. The S implies it’s going to give you more than one service. It doesn’t. It would appear to me that style. Is serviced almost entirely by this reimaginahome. Ai. This is, once again, another one of these guys that seems to be able to build a website using AI in a heartbeat and then just links to a better website that actually has YouTube videos and you know what they’re doing. I don’t know. That’s my 10 cents, 20 cents, a dollar’s worth.

 

[00:28:24.800] – Jonathan Denwood

Can we go to the next one, dude?

 

[00:28:27.200] – Robert Newman

Sure. Show Show me. Show me?

 

[00:28:35.290] – Jonathan Denwood

Show me.

 

[00:28:36.480] – Robert Newman

Okay. Show me. Property showings. Let’s talk about that.

 

[00:28:44.160] – Jonathan Denwood

I don’t want to influence you, really, because I’ve got some strong feelings about this.

 

[00:28:50.650] – Robert Newman

You want me to go first?

 

[00:28:52.270] – Jonathan Denwood

Give me what your impression is of it first.

 

[00:28:58.020] – Robert Newman

Well, I’ll say this. This is very different than all the other services so far that you put up here. Number one, the website is deep. It has 30, 40 pages connected to it. So there’s a lot of information here, and I, once again, haven’t heard of these guys. So what I am noticing is that it seems to be a showing agent website where you can get agents to show your property. That seems to be what it is. Our paper showing system makes it easy to pay for completed requests. And then you put in price per showing a tip. I would say, here’s what my thought is, John, as a professional salesperson. I could see maybe a very, very, very, very, very set professional actually getting value out of this. And it would have to be somebody super specific because in general, we’ve got all these people basically trying to take the salesperson out of the sales process. I’ve never understood it. I never will. The idea behind sales, man, is you put me in front of a customer and I’m going to sell them. I’m going to build a relationship up and I’m going to sell them.

 

[00:30:14.780] – Robert Newman

This It’s just literally saying, Hey, I want you to go show my inventory, but there’s going to be no salesperson. And it’s the same thing as with certain car dealerships. You name your price, you set your price, buy through an app, blah, blah, blah. Take the salesperson out of the process. So that the consumer, theoretically, doesn’t have a bad experience, right? What a terrible idea.

 

[00:30:39.180] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, we’re on the same thing. The founder is Matthew Kutcher, K-U-C-H-A-R.

 

[00:30:47.950] – Robert Newman

Okay.

 

[00:30:48.640] – Jonathan Denwood

Whoever does his online market, they know what they’re doing. If you go on YouTube, you go online, they have done a blitz of videos. You try and find a third-party review, good luck to you, because they’ve pushed any negative review with their own stuff. So who’s ever doing his YouTube or his social media marketing? They know what they’re doing. I think the idea is terrible myself. It’s basically they got their internal review, you get points if you do a good showing. I I know a lot of agents, when the money is coming in, they don’t want to do showings, they think blah, blah, blah. But I just think the whole thing is a terrible idea. I just think it’s shocking. I think it’s shocking that he might be getting traction. A couple of YouTube reviews, they We were sponsoring a couple of major influencers, one guy based in Miami, a top producer. He was saying great things about it. I just think it, like you, it’s like you. It’s just a terrible idea. But who do I know? What do I know, Robert?

 

[00:32:17.460] – Robert Newman

I think that there are… Listen, he’s been a real estate person for a lot of years, and he has been a Since 2010, and his founding story for this service is being on the ski slopes and somebody calling him to do a show in the next day and being forced into a decision to alter or adjust his vacation based on the fact that he had to show a property. In that one very specific situation, I agree a thousand %. You can have somebody step into you for part-time because he was calling team members in his brokerage to go show property. I don’t disagree with that story, and I think that there is a very specific niche that this could theoretically fill. Is it a big niche? Is it consistent? Is it running in line with where technology is going? No, it’s not. But could it serve a need in a very specific set of circumstances? Yes. For all you and I both know, might it this be one of the more exciting startups? Because it’s been around for eight years Yeah, it’s totally possible, I suppose. All right, we’re down to the bottom of the list now.

 

[00:33:39.200] – Robert Newman

This is number 6, the last thing on the list. It’s called agently. Com. It’s the only thing that I had heard of on the entire list, really, that I’d actually seen, stumbled across.

 

[00:33:51.340] – Jonathan Denwood

I think I will. I found stuff that Robert Newman doesn’t know much about. I think that is a five-star compliment, actually.

 

[00:34:00.090] – Robert Newman

It is. It really is. Tell us a little bit about what you thought about agently.

 

[00:34:10.490] – Jonathan Denwood

I don’t get it. I honestly don’t get it. It starts at 39 to 459. I think a lot of coaching platform, I understand it. They are like the Perthini, I think they’re very credible. I think Tom has credibility I think there are mentorship, coaching organizations and individuals that can make a difference. I think a lot of it is mediocre. I think It’s not in my opinion. Please don’t send the poison emails. Send it to Robert. Robert knows how to deal with it. I don’t get it. I just don’t But what do you think?

 

[00:35:02.680] – Robert Newman

I think that understanding sales at a brute force level, listen, this is basically somebody who’s taken the idea of train them in classes, train them in masses, kick them in the asses, and turned it into a today’s-age service. And what it effectively comes down to is the numbers for real estate are absolutely staggeringly ridiculous. Just in the last three months, we’ve lost 300,000 licensed agents. But that means that there were 300,000 agents out there, John, that were barely maintaining their license to start with. The numbers that I’m seeing for professional real estate agents in 2024 is dumb. I heard an actual quoted figure that says 85% of agents with a license sold zero properties in 2024. If that number is true, which I’m not saying that it is, but if that data was actually accurate, that would mean that if you put 10 agents in a room, something like seven or eight of them didn’t do squat for an entire year. If that’s true, there’s an epidemic of a lack of sales understanding, basic sales understanding, because I hate to say this, John, but I don’t care who you are. You can be a bad salesperson.

 

[00:36:22.040] – Robert Newman

If you went out every single day and knocked on doors every single day, I guarantee you that even a bad salesperson would stumble into a deal eventually because somebody would say, I’m glad you’re here at my door. My parents just died and I now own this house and I have some questions. There’s no way that you wouldn’t eventually stumble into a deal. But why do we not do that? Because people who get real estate licenses for whatever reason have zero understanding of how sales actually works. When that is the case, and they don’t have $600 to $1,000 a month to pay Tom Ferry or Mike Ferry or whoever, yeah, a service like Agently might be good. Digital assistance where you can coach online, tell them what to do, tell them maybe what to do in groups and classes.

 

[00:37:11.740] – Jonathan Denwood

I totally… You’ve put it really well. The only thing I would say is this is why it’s important when you’re starting your career to choose the right brokerage. Choose a brokerage that has that cares something about their agents, that will put you under their wing, will provide good training, a principle. There are too many brokerages, especially digital, I won’t name names. And it’s not only digital agents, brokerages, but this applies to the more brick and mortar, larger ones. Kelly Williams, I I think it depends on the region, but I think they still believe in training. I think it’s really finding the right brok, and too many brokerages don’t have the right attitude, in my opinion.

 

[00:38:19.370] – Robert Newman

I agree. Listen, at the end of the day, the best real estate sales operations are still manned and helmed by old-school salespeople like me that understand that sales is a numbers game, that you got to get on the phone, knock on a door, do something. Marketing, which is what John and I do, is a great way to apply maybe a few years into your career. And if you If you find something like John where it’s inexpensive and you can learn, then by all means, do it sooner or later.

 

[00:38:51.200] – Jonathan Denwood

It has become harder, isn’t it? Because just ringing up, if it’s not on my contact list and they don’t leave a voice ‘s message, ‘ I’m not picking the phone up. If you go around knocking on doors in parts of Reno and certain parts of the Washoe Valley, and you just go around knocking on door, I think it’s a good chance you’re going to get shot. That’s a bit tonne-in-cheek, but it’s not totally, because there are… Yeah, I think you are putting yourself at risk a little bit. I think it’s just got a little bit harder using the general… I think a few years ago, what you were saying, it was correct. You just need to get on the phone or you need to go around knocking on doors. I’m not saying that’s totally wrong. I just think it’s got a bit harder myself.

 

[00:39:51.110] – Robert Newman

Yeah, I agree. We’re going through a challenging real estate period right now. One of the things that I agree with that Agent lead definitely epitomizes is, listen, John, when we are going through hard markets, we examine our basic skills and offers, and I’m doing the same thing for inbound REN. Then if everything else fails, you can go old school. I’m considering starting up a phone room right now, and I’ve avoided that. I’m an inbound marketing company. I didn’t want to be back to being a telemarketing company. But you know what? I know it works. There’s no doubt it works. If you reach out to enough people, you can sell stuff. That’s it. You It may take more effort. I agree with you a thousand %. But to say that it doesn’t work at all is a fallacy. It just takes more effort. And all great entrepreneurship, great businesses, great wealthy people. It started somewhere somehow with somebody having a lot of determination to do the basic thing. And it will still work if you decide to- But on the other hand, being what I call the invisible agent won’t help you.

 

[00:40:59.390] – Jonathan Denwood

I think not just ramming cards in people’s hands, but going to as many free events as you’re capable of going to and just telling people, and just knowing your local real estate market, really knowing it well, educating yourself, using all the resources of a good brokerage provides, immersing yourself in your local market, and then going to everything, doing as many open homes. If there’s open homes, you do it and you’re rock reliable and you build your data list, talking, going to any event, that’s looking for a speaker and just talking about your… Doing all that, that is to me, the plausible way of not becoming the invisible agent, becoming a real visible agent in your local market.

 

[00:42:01.020] – Robert Newman

I agree with that a thousand %. I mean, the first thing to get people to want to contact you these days is to let people know you. And you’ve got a couple of ways to do it. You can do it with big, broad messaging tools like social media. And you can also do it the way that we’ve been talking about on this call, which is you can also just simply knock on a door, walk up to somebody, shake their hand, go to meetings, go to PTA meetings. If you’re a parent, go to every single thing that every other person in your social circle invites you to. I get invited to all sorts of weird stuff, barbecues and event announcements and other people launching businesses, and I can go on and on. The Rotary Club has tons of those. If you go to places where there are meetings that you are part of a membership or invited to, you have a natural reason to be there, and thus a natural reason to talk to every single person in the room, giving you a prime opportunity, if you wanted to, to introduce yourself, tell a compelling story about who you are and what you do, and try to drum up enough of a relationship that even if the person in front of you can’t do some business with you, then somebody else in the room can.

 

[00:43:12.080] – Robert Newman

Brian Surhunt talks about this shit all the time. He’s I’ve invented it. It’s dumb. New York is just a place where you go out and have drinks with your friends. I’ve been there, I’ve lived there for a while. You do.

 

[00:43:21.930] – Jonathan Denwood

But on the other hand, and I find a lot of agents struggle with this, they’re going to check over your website. If you just got a crappy one page or a website that your brokerage provides, I just don’t think that does it for you. Do you need straight away a fully powered IDX, fully customized? Probably not. But you do need a good website presence, and you do need a presence on social media, even if you’re doing all this other stuff that you’ve just described, because people will check you out, and they They will connect through the website and through your social media. So you need a combined strategy, and I find a lot of agents don’t have a combined strategy.

 

[00:44:12.010] – Robert Newman

I want to add a new thought here. Combined strategies I agree with. Multi-platform strategies, I agree with. And I agree very strongly that most data is collected on other platforms. So a brand new agent could probably get away with Instagram, YouTube, and a Google business profile page and I don’t need necessarily need a website, which is shocking because I want to be clear with everybody, I sell websites. I make them. I am literally telling you that there are times that, let’s just pretend, John, that I gave my websites away for free. I would still say there are times and places in which an agent, depending on where they are in their career, may not need one. Where you do need an omnichannel website is when you are slightly established in your career and things are taking off and now you need a single place that talks just about you with no distractions. And in that circumstance, all of a sudden, my advice changes and I go, You absolutely need a website. You need a destination point that connects all the folks that we’ve just talked about, like the YouTube and the Google profile and the Zillow profile and the Active Reign profile and the Medium profile and all those places.

 

[00:45:24.640] – Robert Newman

You need a singular place where somebody can learn just about you. And then if they I want to, search for properties. I also think that IDX has changed in terms of priority, like do you need it and what’s it supposed to do? I think that really, honestly, most people only use an agent IDX when they have a relationship with the IDX. That’s what I’m seeing. I’m not saying that strangers don’t do it. They do do it. I’m just saying that I’m watching a shift in user behavior as we speak and that it is definitely changing, in my opinion, and that agents should just be aware of it.

 

[00:45:59.770] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s I’m not saying you’re on because it’s just an opinion. I do disagree with you. I think when you are starting, you do need a website presence that you have full control over, and it just needs a good homepage, a good About Us page, good for some decent photos of you, and contact details, just the bare minimum I’m not talking about going crazy, but it’s just an honest difference of opinion. But I think in general, we do agree.

 

[00:46:42.920] – Robert Newman

We agree on most things. This is one of the That’s one of the things that we may not necessarily agree on. But you know what, guys, for all those people listening to the show, this is the challenge that you always have when you’re seeking marketing advice. Even experts oftentimes don’t necessarily agree with one another. So my advice is always the same. Get to know the people that you’re taking your advice from and take what works for you personally as a human being and discard the rest, including anything I say, including anything John says.

 

[00:47:12.680] – Jonathan Denwood

You want to listen to Robert more than me.

[00:47:14.710] – Robert Newman

Including anything Tom Ferry says. Could you just figure out what works for you, stick with that, and let the rest go? While we may know more than you on a subject, Tom may know more about mindset and motivating people. He knows a lot about it. He’s very good at it. But how long has it been since he sold a piece of property? Fucking years, decades. So, take it with a grain of salt. All right, we’ve put on a great show. John, you’ve shown up, and you are the expert in the research and all these questions about new services. If anybody had questions, he would be a great guy to go to. Even if John sold you something, he lowered his monthly service price to $49. You can’t beat it. How would people reach out to you?

[00:48:10.190] – Jonathan Denwood

Thanks, Robert. Just go over to the mail-right. Visit the com website and have a look at what we have to offer. You’ll be impressed with the package we’ve got. We’ve broken it up so the core is more affordable, and then we have other services you can hire us for if you get to that stage. Just look, and then you can book a free chat with me on the website. Back over to you, Rob.

[00:48:38.260] – Robert Newman

And go to inboundrem. Com if you’re interested in learning how to market yourself in an ever-turbulent market. And all my stuff is free. I do a lot of videos. I’ve done 150 videos to educate realtors on what’s working for SEO.

[00:48:55.530] – Jonathan Denwood

It’s one of the biggest websites. It’s just got a ton of information on your website now.

[00:49:02.540] – Robert Newman

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for noticing. I, too, have been trying to build everything out slowly but surely. We talked about postcards. If it’s marketing for realtors, we probably have it on there.

[00:49:15.770] – Jonathan Denwood

It’s one of the best resources on the internet regarding general information about marketing for real estate. You have invested a lot of time and energy in it.

[00:49:29.540] – Robert Newman

Can’t even begin to tell you how much I appreciate that, John. Thank you very much. So inboundrm. Com is the place. You can go to the About Our Services page to learn what we sell and how much it costs. But if you want to learn stuff, go to the blog. All right. Thank you so much, everybody, for tuning in. I’ve been Robert Newman, and my partner has been Jonathan Dinwood. He is the master of all things mail-right. Com, and we appreciate you listening to the show.

 

#1 – Coffee And Contracts

Marketing Templates

Prices – $74 for agents; $54 per user for teams

https://coffeecontracts.com

#2 – Agent Crate

Social Media Posting On The Go

Prices $89

https://www.agentcrate.com

#3 – CatalyzeAI

Predictive Analytics

https://www.catalyzeai.com

Price: $1,399 per year

 

#4 – Styldod

Virtual Staging

Prices $16 per image

https://www.styldod.com

 

#5 – Showami

Property Showings

Prices $45 per showing + agent tip

https://showami.com

 

#6 – Agently

Coaching And Goal Setting

$39 for agents; $459 for teams

https://agently.com

038: Good Quality Photography With Special Guest Greg McDaniels
038: Good Quality Photography & Video is Important! 1

We discuss with our special guest Greg McDaniels the importance of quality photography connected to being a successful real estate Read more

039: Why Agents Need To Blog Regularly
038: Good Quality Photography & Video is Important! 1

Agents need to do more than blogging to get results in 2016. We discuss this during this show with our two Read more

040: We Have Special Guest Greg McDaniels
038: Good Quality Photography & Video is Important! 1

Greg McDaniel literally began his career at his father’s knee. It would not be an exaggeration to say he has Read more

041: Personal Agent Photography With Preston Zeller
038: Good Quality Photography & Video is Important! 1

Personal agent photography is really important but usually semi-forgotten. We have a great guest "Preston Zeller" on the show who recently Read more

Posted in Podcast | Comments Off on #467 – The Mail-Right: Best Real Estate Software for Agents in 2025?

#466 – The Mail-Right – How To Make Your First YouTube Video for Real Estate Leads in 2025

Tuesday, April 1st, 2025

#466 - The Mail-Right - How To Make Your First YouTube Video for Real Estate Leads in 2025

How To Make Your First YouTube Video for Real Estate Leads in 2025

You can attach real estate leads to your first YouTube video in 2025. Our guide provides a step-by-step process for creating engaging content.

Ready to harness the power of video marketing for your real estate business in 2025? This video provides a comprehensive guide on creating your very first YouTube video to generate leads. We’ll walk you through key elements like topic selection, audience engagement, and effective promotion. Take your real estate game to the next level—click to watch the full video now.

#1 – What Type of Content Do Your Leads Watch and Like on YouTube?

#2 – Video Optimization | Traffic | Thumbnail | Title | – vidIQ – Canva

https://vidiq.com

https://www.canva.com

#3 – Get A Profession Developed Video Intro

https://www.fiverr.com

#4 – Tips on Video Recording and Audio

#5 – Video Recording And Editing | Zoom | Descript

https://www.zoom.com

https://www.descript.com

#6 – Final Thoughts

Episode Full Show Notes

[00:00:28.190] – Robert Newman

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the Mail-Right podcast. We are going to be doing live straight from California and Reno. We’re doing episode number 466 today. If you are looking for specific data on how to do videos or get leads from videos, this is the episode for you today. It will be how to make your first YouTube video for Real Estate in 2025. As usual, you’ve got two pilots for this episode before we get into the episode. Both of us are entrepreneurs experienced in marketing, and each has a different background. I’m SEO, and John tends to be WordPress, but we have developed products and services specifically for real estate agents. Before I go any further into the show, John, why don’t you give everybody a brief wind-up to who you are and what you do?

 

[00:01:30.200] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, thanks, Rob. I’ve been struggling, haven’t I, Rob? Folks, I can’t even get into my own Google account. It’s been resisting my efforts for the past 45 minutes, folks, but I managed to overcome it. So I’m flustered, folks, but I’ll calm down. But I’m the joint founder of Melright, mel-right. Com. We’re a fabulous platform. We’re a CRM and a lead generation platform all rolled into one. And we start, if you pay month to month, at only $49. What more could you ask for, my beloved real estate professionals? Back over to you, Rob.

 

[00:02:14.630] – Robert Newman

All right, beautiful. Well, ladies and gentlemen, here we go. We’re going to jump right into this. What content do your leads watch and like on YouTube? Before you get started on video, the first thing you need to do, and John is correct, is figure out what video you will make. And you don’t just sit here, devise a clever idea, and do the video. That’s not the way that I do it. That’s not the way that most professional marketers do it. We go on to tools like VidIQ or TooBuddy or AREFs or any number of research tools that we generally either have a free account for or spend some money on. We research subjects that people are currently looking for in our market. First-time homebuyers are people with listings that haven’t sold and people in distressed homes trying to get out. What are they searching for? That’s how I would do it. John, how would you come up with a subject for a video?

 

[00:03:15.750] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, there’s the free way, and you mentioned some paid services. One of the free methodologies is to use YouTube search and type in some topics, and then it will drop down some suggestions, which are pretty keyed on. Another free mythology is the guy from Backlinko. It’s Brian Dean. Brian Dean. He’s got a free interface if you go to batlin’co. com and then type in how to get a YouTube subscriber. I’ll make sure the links are in the show notes, folks. He’s offering a free interface that you can also use to type in keywords, and it will come in. It will come out with a list of suggestions. Then you mentioned the ones you can use: TurbBuddy or VidIQ, which has good SEO search-suggestion functionality.

 

[00:04:28.690] – Robert Newman

Beautiful. Well, understanding subjects is usually pretty easy to do, especially if you’re using a small set of tools. Okay, go on to YouTube, and if you’re going to use a tool like VidIQ, you go in, you put a general topic, and then it takes a few minutes of looking at videos and seeing how much traffic those videos have. And when you find a subject area that is getting a high level of engagement from people on the platform you’re looking at, you decide to say, Do I have something valuable that I can add to this particular subject? If the answer is yes, we will finally start to narrow down what video you can do. What video makes sense for you to produce? All right. So that’s number one. What content do your leads like to watch, and what content do they like on YouTube? And I cannot emphasize this enough. When looking at this, make sure that whatever you find, whatever subject you’re looking at, you are willing to spend 10 or 15 minutes watching some videos.

 

[00:05:44.040] – Robert Newman

If you’re not willing. When you do that, you’re looking in the wrong category. This is my favorite subject because it’s so misunderstood and poorly known. Video optimization. You You listed two sites here. You listed Canva, you listed VidIQ, you broke the subject into categories, you said traffic, thumbnail, title, so on and so forth. John, you put a lot into this, so why don’t you start us off?

 

[00:06:15.820] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I think we’ve covered the traffic part, or you have. I think I do some SEO research, see a video that if you’re using one of these paid tools that we’ve mentioned, they’re not that expensive, but they will give you an estimate about how competitive and how much traffic a particular video topic is getting, and then you can use It’s a tool to make a judgment. The other thing is the thumbnail. The thumbnail is important. It’s one of the key factors that will lead to your video being watched. Canva is a great tool. They’ve got a library. They’ve got the free version. I think the paid version is worth investing in, folks. It’s about $110 a year, I think. It’s not ridiculously expensive, and it comes with a load of predesigned thumbnail templates that are reasonably easy to adapt. Another Another thing, give you another tip, I’ve used this myself, is you’re going to need some pictures of yourself. It’s best to use headshots. Now, if you go to a photographer, it can be quite expensive. I got about a year ago some revamped photos. I went to a local photographer. I had about two hours at the time.

 

[00:08:00.490] – Jonathan Denwood

I went to their studio. I bought about five headshots from a number of photographs that they took. They charged me, it was a package deal, but it still cost me around $500. But then if you wanted to buy any additional photographs, it was like $50, $90, $80 per photograph. But what I did was I uploaded those photos, and then I took some photos using my iPhone, and I uploaded them to an AI service. You got to upload a certain amount of photos to it, and then it makes headshots from what you’ve uploaded in different backgrounds, different poses, and it provided over 100 different images of me. I know this sounds renders because I’m not the most attractive person, but it did a reasonable job. I’ll try and remember and put it in the show notes for you, folks. But it did a good time, and that would have me, and they were quite good what it did. It did take a couple of hours mucking around, trying to upload enough photos for it to make this batch of additional headshot But he did a great job. Actually, I was really impressed, Robert.

 

[00:09:36.110] – Robert Newman

I think that… It’s funny because clients ask me all the time ideas for videos, stuff like that. And what we’ve done at InboundRM is we have a master account on VidIQ. I just give people a login. And when my people get asked, we just generate an idea using VidIQ IQ because the biggest trouble with agents is that they’ve already been inundated with ideas about tools that they can use, and they’re tired of it. Most real estate agents just want to go out and sell real estate. So my team uses With transparency, just uses AI, just generates a couple of ideas, and when a client says, Hey, can you give me a script? Sure, no problem. Here’s a script. Just generate it.

 

[00:10:24.810] – Jonathan Denwood

It can generate the The thumbnails. I haven’t used it. I’ve just used Canva, but it can generate the thumbnails, can’t it? It also can generate the headline, the tagline, the top- Yeah, it does it all. And the script, can’t it?

 

[00:10:43.670] – Robert Newman

Yes, it does it all. The only Everything that it’s not doing very well is its customization feature on your channel. It’s not that great. Excuse me, John. I’m still getting over being sick.

 

[00:10:58.020] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, he’s been ill, folks. He’s a trooper coming on the show, really. That’s all good.

 

[00:11:02.720] – Robert Newman

So anyway, optimizing a video, though, is a different thing. So optimizing a video is definitely something where it’s like there’s 13 things that we do when we optimize a video. We’re optimizing the text inside the video. You’ve got your footer or your… Here’s a few things about optimizing videos. You want to put it in a description. You You want to use tags, you want to use a title, you want to use a location, you want to do all of these things. It takes us longer to optimize a video than it does to shoot the video by far. These categoric things that you’re doing allow Google to categorize, understand the video much faster with a lot more clarity, and they are far more likely to rank the video once you’ve optimized it correctly on your channel. The main thing that I find is a real game changer is doing high effort activities such as manually closed captioning the video and indexing the video. These two things most people don’t like to do. They don’t because they’re time consuming, and it’s understandable why they wouldn’t do them. You can do a closed caption, automated closed caption in about one second.

 

[00:12:19.370] – Robert Newman

But Google can and does understand when you’re using automated tools to close caption a video, they give you extra credit when you manually do it. There’s all sorts of things that we do inside the video optimizing process. We have an almost unbroken 100% track record on ranking videos. And that is because most of this manual stuff that I’m describing to you, nobody does. There’s so many automated tools out there, but unfortunately, nobody has yet created the automated tool that does any of this with 100% accuracy. That’s the problem. So people who spend time giving 100% accuracy, Google can generally sense it. Not 100% of the time, but like 98, they get it right. When they get it right, you give yourself a 10, 20, 30, 40% ranking bonus for just uploading the video and optimizing it correctly. It just takes time. That’s the only problem with it. But cool thumbnails, getting easier and easier to make. More and more tools out there to just input a picture of you and then use these thumbnail optimization tools, just like John already said. I haven’t played with them that much, but that’s because VidIQ is really getting to be incredibly good.

 

[00:13:42.190] – Robert Newman

It’s always been decent. It’s becoming excellent. It’s so easy to use. Anybody that’s out there, just go out there and use it. If you get sold on the idea of manually optimizing videos, then you need to call a company like mine. But instead of You’re spending $10 a month, you’re going to spend $150 a video easy. There’s a huge price difference, massive. Just so everybody’s clear between doing it yourself and having other people do the 100% route. In my experience.

 

[00:14:18.800] – Jonathan Denwood

Shall we go for a break?

 

[00:14:19.910] – Robert Newman

Yes, and I can cough in private. All right, we’ll be right back, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for tuning in.

 

[00:14:29.900] – Jonathan Denwood

Oh, dear.

 

[00:14:30.730] – Robert Newman

I’m so sorry, John. No. I thought it was better. I thought it was getting better.

 

[00:14:36.350] – Jonathan Denwood

I appreciate you doing it, Rob. Honestly, I do, if you’re not feeling 100%.

 

[00:14:41.790] – Robert Newman

All right, let me just take it I’ll just sip here and then…

 

[00:14:47.840] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, bash it out.

 

[00:14:49.850] – Robert Newman

I try. All right. I actually need the break this time. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and It is episode number 466. I’m here with my co-host, John, and we’re talking about how to get started with YouTube in 2025 and what you need to do. We’ve covered optimizing videos and how to get content ideas. And once again, because I’ve been coughing up a storm here, I’m going to ask John to give his ideas about getting a number three, getting a professional video introduction done for you. John, take your way.

 

[00:15:30.260] – Jonathan Denwood

I’ve done it. I’ve got one for Melright and for my other company. I went to Fiverr and I worked with a guy and I checked him over, and he was like a five-star rating. I think for these small Pacific jobs, I think Fiverr, and using Fiverr, I think they got what they call Fiverr professional. It’s their more expensive service. I think it’s worthwhile and then checking and going with the best rated person that’s got a lot of previous examples and looking at them. I think it does make a difference. I’m not sure how much Google and YouTube sees it, but I think it’s worth the invest because you’re not talking about ridiculous money. It might cost you a couple of hundred dollars to get somebody that that can do a good intro animation and a voiceover. But I think for that money, it’s worth the investment. What do you reckon, Rob?

 

[00:16:40.150] – Robert Newman

Couldn’t agree with you more. You’ve done the route that I would recommend for everybody, even over the route that I took. I have a professional in-house videographer, and after many months, they produced a decent intro from the company. If you looked at what I paid, thousands of dollars, and all the time getting to know that person versus a couple of hundred bucks that John’s talking about, perceived value on intros is high. Everybody assumes that you spend a ton of money. I did spend a ton of money, so it’s a reasonable assumption. But when you look at… I’m so sorry, John.

 

[00:17:20.440] – Jonathan Denwood

No, it’s all right. Shall I go on to the next one? Please. Tips on video recording audio. Well, we’ve covered this, so I’m not going to go into a lot a lot of detail. We’ve got some past shows that if you listen to, go in. We’ve got a couple of Pacific shows that go into this in a lot of detail. But if you’re going to record, I’ve If you’re going to record on your camera or your iPhone or your Android, you can use Zoom or Loom to actually it will record the video, and it will record it in 4K. If you got the Pro version of Zoom, which is about 150 bucks a year, and a lot of real estate agents do, or you can use Loom. A lot of these inexpensive conference, they’re more about one-to-one conferences or small groups. They actually do record quite well. There are web-based tools. We use one here to record this podcast and make video. We use StreamYard, and there’s half a dozen. They’re more expensive, but you can use Zoom, Basically, if you’re looking for the most easiest way to edit the video and do a rough edit, I think some of these AI tools that are out there, Even Canva has a video editor.

 

[00:19:02.760] – Jonathan Denwood

It’s not bad, actually. But one that’s interesting is Descript because it’s like a word processor. You can actually move. It does a transcript of the video and you can just move the words around and that does the editing for you. It’s quite an impressive interface and it’s much more simpler to use. But I think the main thing, folks, it’s not intuitive. The main thing is to sort your sound out, is to just get a half decent USB mic or lapel mic if you’re using your phone, but you can just get… There’s some reasonably good USB mics, around $50. The one I’m using is about $250, but you don’t have to go there. Just look up the reviews on Amazon and you’ll be well off. But you got to sort your audio. But there’s a lot of There’s some expensive choices out there, folks, that can get you going. You don’t have to lay out a lot of money. What do you reckon, Rob?

 

[00:20:23.970] – Robert Newman

I agree with John 100 %. So I am not the best example of this because I tend to buy my equipment, keep it, and never update it. The only place I have professional studio equipment is in my actual studio, and I had other resources, other people that knew a lot more about that stuff, use my money and buy the stuff they said we needed. My computer set up, I’m using a Plantronics headset that is still mostly what I use for my calls. I’ve used Plantronics for 30 years now, and so I’m familiar with the equipment and I’m using a $35 Logitech camera to shoot my video on. I did, based on a podcast that John and I did long ago, buy myself a Blue Eyes microphone and discovered that I rarely use it because of the way that it stands on my desk. It interfered with my space. I ended up dropping it. But John is correct in the sense of, what do you invest in? How do you invest? I think it comes down to what your personal brand is. My personal brand in terms of my image is always a little sloppy because I’m a little sloppy.

 

[00:21:40.850] – Robert Newman

However, I know my subject matter very, very well. And so when you’re looking at who you are as a person, decide what the most important factors are. And if for some of you, you think that the better equipment, slightly better sounds, slightly better visuals, really, really, really impact your your particular brand. If you walk out to real estate appointments in a three-piece suit or a Chanel dress, whatever it is, then obviously spending a couple of hundred extra dollars on visual or audio equipment makes all the sense in the world for you. If you’re like me, where you’re like a mad scientist, it’s like, I don’t give a damn. If you want the best information that’s available in the real estate industry, you come to my channel. If you want the best-looking whatever person, you don’t come to my channel. I’m not that guy. I don’t want to be that guy. I strongly recommend that all of you just take that into account. But what John said about equipment cost everything I agree 100%, about Loom, agree 100%, There’s lots of great video editing stuff out there. It’s getting better and better all the time. Ai is making it better and better.

 

[00:22:52.100] – Robert Newman

The entry level for video is actually getting more and easier easier and easier to do because so much of the support work that’s being done on video is going to be absorbed by AI, which just means that more of you should be getting into this now and learning the basic tools because it’s just going to get easier. You’ve already covered video recording and editing. No, did you? Yeah.

 

[00:23:24.990] – Jonathan Denwood

We got the final thoughts. I think it’s a really good resource is back to Linnco and Brian Dean because he moved his channel, really, from general SEO advice to advice around YouTube. I think some of it’s really good. The one area, and it’s not I disagree with him, but I think it’s stage two, because one of the other major elements that will determine the success of your YouTube channel is how long people view your videos. It seems to have gone into two different directions. Obviously, YouTube has given a lot of emphasis to short form video as a competitor to TikTok and other platforms. But if you go to Brian’s site, he actually says, When you look at the analytical data, it’s more long form video, video that’s over 10 minutes long between 10 to 20 minutes long. Then he strongly advises that you do a lot more editing. I don’t do it on my videos, but My other channel, the Melright channel has grown quite a bit recently, and my other channel has grown quite considerably, but I just do a lot of videos, and I do some editing, but he’s talking about getting them professionally, or spending a lot more time on the video in having two cameras, having graphics, having animation, and that takes up a lot of time if you’re doing it yourself.

 

[00:25:17.960] – Jonathan Denwood

I would have probably advise you to get an editor, but even if you’re doing it offshore, that work does cost a lot more money. I think he’s right, but I think you can get 80 % by doing everything we’ve discussed previously, and I think the last 30 to 20 % is about upgrading your camera, your lighting, and really employing an editor. But I definitely wouldn’t go down that route initially. What do you reckon, Rob?

 

[00:26:05.660] – Robert Newman

I think that Brian Dean is probably right. I think that the future of most marketing, as we know it, call and response marketing is on video, which we’ve been talking about for a long time. And call and response marketing for just a talking head video, which is mostly what I do, is getting harder. It is. You have to be really deeply knowledgeable to get a result. And Brian Dean is talking to the world’s best marketers on his channel. That’s who follows by me. When you start taking all that into account and saying, What are you going to do with video? I agree with him. Animations, using AI. I’m following a guy by the name of Michael Weis, who’s doing a lot of AI videos. He’s doing a lot of really cool things with video. Do I think what we want for real estate? I think If you look at the future in real estate as it relates to video and clever implementations is using video AI as part of a listing presentation that you’re doing where you use an edit that switches the decoration inside a room as part of your video listing edit, stuff like that.

 

[00:27:20.970] – Robert Newman

I think that whatever realtors get to that baseline first are going to see massive explosive differences in their business because a good video editor could actually do that with relative ease. You just have to suggest it to them because the tools are already out there. They’re already fixed.

 

[00:27:41.450] – Jonathan Denwood

I think you, on my understanding, it’s the initial We’ll get in an edit template developed between you and the editor and get in a particular style and having two cameras. You have two cameras depending on the software using Zoom or StreamYard. There’s a device called StreamDec. I’ve actually got one, but I haven’t used it yet. But I do have a two cameras set up and you and pre-programmed Streamdecks. They do a microversion, which is 12 buttons, or they do the next version, which is 16 buttons. You just click a button, then it can change cameras, or it can do an effect or it can do audio effects as well. It’s quite neat. The actual one I’ve got, it’s only a couple of hundred dollars. I think the bigger version is just under 400. It’s not mega money. But I think working with editor and working out a structure, how the videos are going to be edit is the initial cost. I think after you’ve sorted that out and worked with the editor and modified that, then I think the costs go down a bit because the editor knows what you’re looking for on each video.

 

[00:29:13.580] – Robert Newman

Interesting. You’ve introduced me to something I haven’t seen yet, and I’m going to check it out because of you, Stream Deck. That sounded very interesting to me. Ladies and gentlemen, one way or the other, this This stuff is going to get easier. Most real estate agents, either through an agency or through their own resources, one of the most valuable tools that you can get is somebody overseas or somebody local to you, a young person who knows how to use these tools. Instead of throwing yourself down every rabbit hole like what John and I do, I’m going to suggest that you find somebody who will throw themselves down the rabbit hole for you. And then you just come up with things that you want to say, content ideas. That’s how I’m going to leverage it is find people that are able to do the mechanics, but I am going to continue to come up with the overall global ideas on content. I think this has been a great show. I apologize to our audience. I apologize to you, John. I thought it was a little bit better.

 

[00:30:19.750] – Jonathan Denwood

No, you can’t be playing. He’s a trooper turning up, folks. So give him some love because he had been nil. He has been nil the past few weeks, haven’t you, Rob?

 

[00:30:28.300] – Robert Newman

Yeah, it’s been hard to shake. We’re going to wrap this up. John, if somebody wanted to reach out to you and take advantage of this amazing new pricing on your amazing and your upgraded platform, how would they reach out to you to do that?

 

[00:30:40.560] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s fantastic, Rob. But go to the Melright website, have a look over the website, and then you can book a free chat with me and I can do a live demo with you, show the key parts of the functionality, and then you can make your mind up if you want to join the Melright family. We have modulised it. We offer other elements to the package, but we decided to provide the core element on a cost-effective basis. Then, we split the different parts into separate modules that are still available if you require them, like IDX or paid Facebook campaigns. But our package is great. We updated it a few weeks ago. We’ve added some new functionality, which I will discuss in the next few weeks. It’s significantly improved, and I would love to show it to you. Back over to you, Rob.

 

[00:31:36.140] – Robert Newman

Beautiful. All right. Well, it’s hard to go wrong with the starting cost of $50, ladies and gentlemen, in this spot. We’re living in a cost-budget conscious world. That’s a great doorway into a WordPress website focusing on real estate. It’s a great toolkit, so take a look at it. If you are interested in doing something bespoke or that is more involved for both price and also focuses on slightly different areas such as Google, local, video SEO, things like that. You’re going to want to go to inboundrem. com and check out my services and About page and contact me personally. I’m Robert at inboundrem. Com. We appreciate you tuning into the show. Thank you very much. We hope you got something from it. It thumbs us up, sends us a comment, all the good stuff. Until next time. The next time, I was Robert Newman, and my co-host was Jonathan Deneuve.

 

038: Good Quality Photography With Special Guest Greg McDaniels
038: Good Quality Photography & Video is Important! 1

We discuss with our special guest Greg McDaniels the importance of quality photography connected to being a successful real estate Read more

039: Why Agents Need To Blog Regularly
038: Good Quality Photography & Video is Important! 1

Agents need to do more than blogging to get results in 2016. We discuss this during this show with our two Read more

040: We Have Special Guest Greg McDaniels
038: Good Quality Photography & Video is Important! 1

Greg McDaniel literally began his career at his father’s knee. It would not be an exaggeration to say he has Read more

041: Personal Agent Photography With Preston Zeller
038: Good Quality Photography & Video is Important! 1

Personal agent photography is really important but usually semi-forgotten. We have a great guest "Preston Zeller" on the show who recently Read more

Posted in Podcast | Comments Off on #466 – The Mail-Right – How To Make Your First YouTube Video for Real Estate Leads in 2025

#465 – The Mail-Right – The Challenges of Moving Away From Traditional Marketing In 2025

Monday, March 24th, 2025

#465 - The Mail-Right - The Challenges of Moving Away From Traditional Marketing In 2025

The Challenges of Moving Away From Traditional Marketing In 2025

With Special Guest Dave Kimbough

Are you grappling with the shift from traditional marketing to digital strategies? This video addresses the numerous challenges that companies encounter during this transition. We cover everything from shifting consumer behaviors to the need for real-time data analysis. Learn how to navigate these hurdles and embrace innovative approaches that resonate with today’s audience. Tune in and transform your marketing approach—watch the video now.

Moving away from traditional marketing? I’d appreciate it if you could uncover the challenges and find practical solutions to modernize your approach.

This Episode’s Full Show Notes

[00:00:14.150] – Robert Newman

Welcome back to episode 465 of The Mailright Show, ladies and gentlemen. We are super excited. After a long hiatus with guests, we have a guest on the show today. The amazing, esteemed Dave Kimbrough is with us this afternoon. And, of course, I have my old pugilistic English partner, Jonathan Dinwood, who I’ve had for a long time.

[00:00:51.020] – Jonathan Denwood

What’s that word?

[00:00:53.140] – Robert Newman

I’ve used to meet you before, and you always push back. Pugilistic.

[00:00:56.910] – Jonathan Denwood

What the hell does that mean?

[00:00:58.560] – Robert Newman

It means you’re a fighter, dude.

[00:00:59.860] – Jonathan Denwood

Oh, Putinistic. There you go. I looked that one up. Thanks, Rob.

[00:01:05.650] – Robert Newman

You’re welcome. And Dave, that’s a true fact. Back in his youth, Jonathan used to box.

[00:01:10.080] – Jonathan Denwood

I did.

[00:01:10.840] – Dave Kimbough

That’s right. How did you guys meet?

[00:01:14.860] – Robert Newman

We met because he had a previous podcasting partner who was doing the show. That partner found me and asked John if it would be okay if he brought me on as a guest. John said, Yes. That other guy was already John’s hanging his way out of the podcast. John asked me if I wanted to do it. I said, Sure. I thought it would be a lark, and that was three years ago and something ridiculous. It may have been longer. We’ve done 200 shows together; we’re approaching that. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:01:48.730] – Dave Kimbough

Very cool.

[00:01:50.560] – Robert Newman

Dave, well, before we get started, I’m going to let John go first, and then I’m going to circle back around to you. But, John, why don’t you quickly give people an overview of who you are in your own words without just my little pugilistic intro there?

[00:02:03.970] – Jonathan Denwood

All right. Thanks, Rob. I’m the joint founder of Mel-right. Com. We are a CRM and marketing platform for real estate agents, and we’ve just done an extensive upgrade to all our systems, and what we offer is much improved. Just go to the Melright website and find some more. And we’ve also got a new pricing structure, and you’d be amazed at the value that we are offering. Back over to you, Bob.

[00:02:37.430] – Robert Newman

Beautiful. And for those of you who are catching the show for the first time via video, John has done something different with his hair today. So, if you look at our old episodes, you’ll see that he’s either coiffed or uncoiffed. I don’t know which. All right. So now, let’s move on to our special guest, Dave. Why don’t you introduce yourself to both me And the audience about who you are?

[00:03:03.750] – Dave Kimbough

My name is Dave Kimber. I’m a RE/MAX agent team leader in Grand Junction, Colorado. For those of you who don’t know where Grand Junction is, it’s about four hours due west of Denver. We’re located about 20 miles off the Utah border, 4 hours from Denver, and five hours from Salt Lake City. Cool.

[00:03:25.480] – Robert Newman

For those of you who may or may not know me, my name is Robert Newman. I’m the founder of Inbound or Unbound Real Estate Marketing. I am the most experienced online marketing consultant and the most experienced real estate SEO guy in the United States. So, without any further ado, let’s jump into the conversation; before you give us a brief detail, I’d like to know your real estate trajectory: who, what, when, where, and why. How long have you been doing it? What What made you a team member? We both know managing people gets harder and harder. So, give us a five-minute summary of who you are and why you do what you do.

[00:04:11.420] – Dave Kimbough

So, I can do that. I got into real estate back in 2002. In 1999, my first wife was diagnosed with brain cancer, and unfortunately, she passed away in 2001. At the time, I was working in pharmaceutical sales and had a completely different career. I had many other careers then and just needed a new gig. I needed a new start. Life had dealt me a lot of cards, and I just needed to try something different. So, The guy I hired to sell my house, I was going back to Atlanta because we’re from the South. I went to the University of Alabama. My parents are from Birmingham and Gadson, Alabama. So I was living in the West, and we’re just for Southern people. So, I was going to move back to Atlanta.

[00:05:02.540] – Robert Newman

I’m sorry, Dave. I’m sorry for all of us. Go ahead.

[00:05:11.720] – Dave Kimbough

So, yeah, don’t hold it against me. So I was going to move back to Atlanta to go to work for another pharmaceutical industry or another company, a biotech company as a district manager. The guy who I hired to sell my house is a long time family friend. And he said, hey, I think you could do great at real estate. He’s like, you should give it a try. And I thought, well, that might be one of the dumbest things anybody’s ever told me because I’ve got a great career, right? I mean, I had a really strong career in the pharmaceutical industry and I enjoyed it. I was good at it. But thought about it and prayed about it and got peaceful about it. And I thought, you know what? I’m going to give it a whirl. So he took me under his wing, and that’s how I got started in the business. It was a lot by intent. I thought I would get into the real estate business and drop my handicap from a seven to a three and sell a dozen houses a year. And that’s just not exactly the way it’s played itself out.

 

[00:06:14.330] – Dave Kimbough

But that’s why we do it. You never know what you’re going to get. That’s how I got started in real estate, fairly serendipitous the way it began.

 

[00:06:24.530] – Robert Newman

Beautiful. I want to ask a very brief follow-up question, which John did not include on his list, but it’s an easy question I promise. Why did you agree to come on the podcast?

 

[00:06:36.800] – Dave Kimbough

We have, like I said, been in the business for 23 years, and we have just finished in the last couple of months a new coaching program called Expectation Selling. And so we’ve just launched that here in the past month. And so we’re doing… We’re thankful to have some invites to do some podcast based on the expectation selling platform. And so that’s why I agree to do it. I’ve never done podcasts before. You guys are like my third podcast ever. I appreciate it. I’m almost a podcast virgin.

 

[00:07:10.910] – Robert Newman

Well, I don’t know about John, but I’m always happy to take a chair or two. No, I’m just kidding. I appreciate that. That’s terrible. That was terrible.

 

[00:07:19.060] – Dave Kimbough

That was terrible. That was terrible. That was a couple of weeks ago.

 

[00:07:22.700] – Robert Newman

Okay. Well, thank you for the incredible introduction, by the way. I know that I appreciate it. I’m sure the audience appreciated it. Once again, John, I’m going to take this next question, and I’m going to change it slightly. John asked the question, and we wrote down for you in the show notes. We wanted to know what the biggest challenge has been for you in 12 months. But now that I know that you have a 22-year history in real estate, and this is not the most challenging real estate market, if you’ve been in it that long, that you’ve ever seen, I want to change the question slightly and say, what is the biggest challenge you have ever faced in your real estate career as far as the market is concerned? Not like a personal challenge, and I’m very sorry to hear about your first wife, by the way, but not a personal challenge, but like a professional challenge related to the industry and the circumstances surrounding it.

 

[00:08:22.530] – Dave Kimbough

2009, ’10, ’11. That’s easy answer.

 

[00:08:26.200] – Robert Newman

Okay.

 

[00:08:26.890] – Dave Kimbough

For us, it was where we I think the rest of the Great Depression, whatever they called it back then. 2007, a lot of the nation was having a really tough time. The real estate markets cratered, housing prices cratered, all that stuff. Well, in 2007, 2008, we were still setting records because we were about 30, 40 miles north of where we live is a huge natural gas reserve. So we had a huge energy boom happening here. So we would go to a seminar ours, and we’d go to coaching and all these other things, and everybody be like, oh, my God, we’re getting killed. We’re like, what are you guys talking about? We’re killing it. And lo and behold, we were two years behind everybody else. In 2009, this thing completely flipped, and we were losing a % to a % and a half a month. Buyers and sellers, we lost tons of traditional sellers, and we ended up with a ton of have to sellers, distressed. And you lost your traditional buyer, most of them, a lot of them, and replaced those buyers with distress buyers. People who are buying distress properties, flipping them, fixing them, doing whatever.

 

[00:09:42.110] – Dave Kimbough

That was a very, very difficult market for Yes. It was a lot of foreclosures. We made the intentional decision not to seek or chase foreclosures or short-sale business. It didn’t mean we didn’t do them. That just wasn’t the lion’s share of what we did. We decided stay the course, do traditional real estate. If you chose to stay the course and do traditional real estate back in our market in those times, you were choosing the most difficult path possible.

 

[00:10:12.330] – Robert Newman

John, that begs a follow-up question, but you should ask it.

 

[00:10:15.840] – Jonathan Denwood

I think I’ll go on to the next one, actually. This is what he’s like.

 

[00:10:21.870] – Robert Newman

This is what he’s like, Dave.

 

[00:10:23.890] – Dave Kimbough

If you want to do a follow-up for your question, You’re several.

 

[00:10:30.760] – Robert Newman

Yes. Why? In the good Lord’s name, why would you choose the hardest road?

 

[00:10:41.400] – Dave Kimbough

Because it’s what we knew. Just being honest with you, it’s what we knew. We knew how to do it. We were good at it. We were number one in the marketplace at the time, and it was going to have to be a complete revamping of our business and everything we did to take on distress sellers. So it was just my sister. So my sister works with me on our team, and at the time it was just the two of us and one assistant. I think there might have been one more buyer’s agent we had. And we just decided we were just going to stay the course and do exactly what we did. Was it a good decision? I don’t know. I don’t know whether it’s a good decision or not. And it was a hell of a hard time. But we also survived it. We got better, we got stronger, we made our systems tighter. Everything we did when we came out in 2012 was infinitely better because we didn’t just tread water. We spent those three years of getting our ass kicked, but also making our business better. So we came out the other side.

 

[00:11:41.430] – Dave Kimbough

We poured money into advertising. We poured money into everything when everybody else was pulling it back. So did I make much money? No, I did not during those years, that’s for sure. But did we set the groundwork to come out of that thing like a bullet? We did. But it was a really hard I’ve given this advice to so many entrepreneurs and business owners.

 

[00:12:05.530] – Robert Newman

It’s ridiculous. But Dave, I’m super glad that you set it on your own. When everybody else runs for the hills, you’ve got a lot of tough decisions. You can pull up stakes or you can invest, thinking, knowing you’ll come out the other side with more momentum than anybody can catch. And it sounds like that’s what happened for you.

 

[00:12:22.830] – Dave Kimbough

That has been our motto whenever anything has gotten tough, it’s pedaled to the metal. I mean, The old stock adage is you buy when people are selling, you sell when they’re buying. For us, like you said, when they’re pulling back, we’re pushing forward. And it’s just harder, stronger, faster. That was our take. And It was our mantra at the time, and that’s what we did for three years. But let me tell you, bro, it was hard.

 

[00:12:50.690] – Robert Newman

Believe me, we’re going through a bit of hard on the marketing side right now ourselves. But before we digress, John, finally, Finally, you can ask the next question.

 

[00:13:04.010] – Jonathan Denwood

Thank you so much. So Dave, apart from recommendations from your previous clients, I’m sure you get a ton of recommendations and repeat customers.

 

[00:13:23.170] – Dave Kimbough

We can always use more.

 

[00:13:24.680] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. Apart from that, what are some of the other biggest and successful lead generation methodologies that you and your team uses to attract people to your brokerage?

 

[00:13:39.930] – Dave Kimbough

Well, I mean, nowadays, now or earlier in my career, Please say in the last year, 18 months, what are being some of the methodologies that you feel have worked for you and your team? There’s no question. I mean, the biggest thing for us is new construction. We do a lot of construction. We work very diligently with our builders on our development side, new construction. So that’s a huge one for us. We probably sell more of new construction homes in our market than anybody does. Our leads come in largely website leads for new buyer leads that aren’t referral-based. And a lot of those come from new construction because we have a lot of it, and also residential resale. I mean, between new construction and residential Resale will sell somewhere between 125 and 180 houses a year between those two with a pretty even split between, well, probably a little bit more resale than the new construction, but it’s still a large portion of new construction. And also, too, we do a lot of radio. I know a lot of people think, hey, radio, radio sucks and whatnot. But in our market, again, when you realize we’re four hours from Denver and we’re five hours from Salt Lake City, we literally If you look at a map, we’re about one of the most isolated towns of 150,000 people you’re going to find in this country.

 

[00:15:06.970] – Dave Kimbough

So radio really works here. Yes, people do podcasts. Yes, it’s a splintered and fragmented world. All of these things are so true. But terrestrial radio still does work very well for us, especially AM radio, talk radio. It’s a captive audience. My background was in radio. I was a disk jockey back in the early ’90s, and we found radio to be a very positive thing as well.

 

[00:15:35.770] – Jonathan Denwood

I’m not surprised, actually, when I was watching a couple of your early Virgin interviews, I sense that you had some professional training because you are quite a good communicator, Dave.

 

[00:15:52.200] – Dave Kimbough

Well, I don’t know about the professional part of it, John. You’re being very kind.

 

[00:15:56.600] – Jonathan Denwood

No, but you understand what I mean. Some people It is difficult to talk on a podcast. Some people get very nervous, but you seem to be able to get your points across without the nerves affecting you.

 

[00:16:13.400] – Dave Kimbough

Yeah, well, I think part of that, again, it’s very kind, and I appreciate that. I think part of it is because I spent a portion of my life behind a microphone in radio. But also even here when I talk about radio, we did a radio talk show. I did a talk show for Oh, my gosh, 13 years on Saturday mornings. And that was a really robust thing for me. And I also do newspaper ads and articles. I do a lot of writing. So we just do a lot of diverse things that we find really work for us, and we really like it. Our focus is always about quality over quantity. I’ll happily pay more for a quality lead than less for a whole bunch of quantity, right? So We’ve always been very focused on what’s the quality of our lead.

 

[00:17:04.330] – Jonathan Denwood

All right. Beautiful. All right. Thanks. So I’m to go for a break, Rob. Yeah.

 

[00:17:08.520] – Robert Newman

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for tuning in the podcast in any of the many places that we post this podcast Sure. If you’re watching us on YouTube, forgive us. We’re sorry. We’re easier to listen to than look at. But other than that, we really appreciate you all. Most of our audience, Dave, are actually other realtors like you. I’m sure that like me, they appreciate a good story that relates to real estate. And I think that our audience is going to love the fact that you happened into real estate because about 80% of the people I talk to say the same thing. So with no further ado, give us a thumbs up, give us a like wherever you’re seeing or listening to us, and we’ll be right back. We’re going to ask Dave three more questions, and I’ll try really hard to vaguely stick to the format that we handed him before the show. Stay tuned. All right. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It is episode number 465. I shouldn’t know that. I just said it a few minutes ago. I had already forgotten. Welcome to the land of ADHD. We’re here with Dave Kim Burrow and Jonathan Dinwood.

 

[00:18:16.510] – Robert Newman

We’re super excited to have John co-host the show with me and Dave be on the show. We have now discovered that he is a radio personality, so he should actually be putting John an eye to shame.

 

[00:18:29.990] – Jonathan Denwood

He’s putting one of us to shine. That’s for sure. All right.

 

[00:18:36.690] – Robert Newman

So John and I focus a lot on the show, and we each have companies that we end up having a lot of discussions with people about lead generation, specifically real estate agents, realtors, brokers, mortgage brokers, if anything in the real estate vertical. And I’ve been doing it for 16 years, and John has been doing it for eight now. And so we’ve got this conversation always It happens. Always, always, always, every single person. I would love it if you would share with the audience some of your specifically marketing challenges and failures, things that you’ve learned from. We all know that failures is just a way to learn and grow and get better, and I understand that. But at the same time, there has to be things on the road that you tried that you just didn’t work for you.

 

[00:19:24.450] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I just want to cut in. Maybe a couple of things that you were sold that looked you thought they were going to really work, and somebody sold you a plan, a platform, and the reality, it didn’t pan out, Dave.

 

[00:19:40.080] – Dave Kimbough

Yeah, I mean, where do I start? How long is it? That’s not a joke, right? I mean, it’s the gospel. I mean, I think the biggest thing for me over the years is I have found around real estate in particular, but not just real estate, the world in particular. It has a way of sucking you in and mesmerizing you with the sexy lure of more. More. You got to have more. As real estate agents, I mean, every single day… John, don’t fall asleep there, bud.

 

[00:20:28.250] – Jonathan Denwood

I’m I’m very almost like listening to you, Dave.

 

[00:20:32.690] – Dave Kimbough

I’m just kidding you. I’m giving you a hard time. We get sucked in, every day on my email. I don’t know how many emails a day I get somebody selling me something, somebody calling me, getting text on my phone. All they’re trying to do is suck me in to buy something, to follow the money. Everything is about selling you something as a real estate agent. And you are constantly have this feel. At least I did. Maybe I’m the only guy in the world who ever did, but it was always I need more. I need more buyers. I need more sellers. I need more this. I need more that. And I’ll pay for it. I make good money. It’s just one check away. Hey, Dave, it’s only $1,300 a month. If you close two deals in your market, an average market of $500,000, that’s $30,000. You’re going to make $12,000. You know what I mean? You’ve all done it. And you can justify it right into the poor house. And it has happened to me. So my biggest failure is that. My biggest failure is buying- But give Don’t name names, Dave, because we don’t want to be sued.

 

[00:21:37.320] – Jonathan Denwood

But give us a couple that- We can’t get sued if he has an opinion about a company he did business with, John. I’ve got enough Let us see.

 

[00:21:45.590] – Robert Newman

You’re just tired of the angry letters I generate for you.

 

[00:21:48.560] – Jonathan Denwood

Yes, that’s all I have.

 

[00:21:50.270] – Robert Newman

I volunteer these opinions, Dave. I see these guys are second rate, and then he gets the emails.

 

[00:21:56.690] – Jonathan Denwood

I get the heat done. I get the heat Dave. That’s what I get. So Dave, there must be a couple that have stuck in your memory banks.

 

[00:22:09.000] – Robert Newman

I’m going to caramane them.

 

[00:22:10.260] – Jonathan Denwood

Go ahead and name them if you want to name them. If you don’t mind sharing one or two, give us a If you can give us that sticking, that sounded really good, but it didn’t pan out, though.

 

[00:22:22.610] – Dave Kimbough

Oh, my gosh. I mean, I’ve done things with a company called Lion Desk. You guys ever heard of that?

 

[00:22:27.620] – Jonathan Denwood

Oh, yeah.

 

[00:22:29.910] – Dave Kimbough

I thought it was going to be the greatest thing ever. I tell you what, here’s the other thing about that. Sorry, I just have to do a qualifier with this.

 

[00:22:36.070] – Jonathan Denwood

When you’re in a market- These are Dave’s opinions, I want to point out.

 

[00:22:39.690] – Dave Kimbough

Yeah, and it just didn’t work because what happens is a lot of times these things are built and can be very successful in big markets. When you’re in a market of three million people, and people are calling you unsolicited, I mean, on stuff, they don’t know who it is or may not know who you are or whatever. When you’re in a town of It’s 150,000, it’s 150,000, but it’s still a very small town. People know everybody who works for me. I would get calls from people and say, Hey, who’s Julia? She doesn’t work for you. I’m like, No, she doesn’t. So there Where’s that? I mean, any online lead deal, I mean, where you’re- What was the specifics of what happened with Line Desk that didn’t work for you? Yeah, it didn’t work because it was a really hard bridge to gap in a market my size where people were cold calling or calling database or calling people on your behalf, and the people knew it wasn’t you. They knew that Julia didn’t work for me because they were calling… A lot of people know who works for us. There are pictures in the newspaper, there are pictures our pictures on billboards, our pictures everywhere.

 

[00:23:47.440] – Dave Kimbough

They know a lot of them knew that Julie wasn’t there. So it’s really hard to outsource that stuff in a lot of instances, because if they run across anybody who knows anything about our team, it’s a really difficult thing in a smaller market. So some of these things where if it’s a bigger market where there’s a lot more anonymity, we’re a pretty high profile team here in our marketplace. So it’s a lot harder to slide that stuff under the door, just to be frank. And so it just- So to So just a quick follow-through.

 

[00:24:17.960] – Jonathan Denwood

Was it really the fit between you and Linedesk? Was it more that they didn’t really understand? Do you feel it was an understandable misalignment because you were too small, a too niche market? Or do you think you’ve brought them up, so it must have left a bad taste in your mouth. So do you feel that they were aware that it probably wasn’t going to work in your particular market?

 

[00:24:53.360] – Dave Kimbough

Yeah, it didn’t really leave a bad taste in my mouth, right? I mean, it doesn’t. What works for me may not work for somebody else. What works for somebody else may not work for me. I have the extensive knowledge of my marketplace being here for 22 years and being the top agent team in this market for a really long time. We understand the dynamics of our market. If you come from outside of our market, it’s really difficult to understand what those dynamics are. And so it’s a niche market, like you said. And so it’s not a bad taste. It’s just like it was an epic failure because I got a lot of people who called and texted, and put to stop It. Knock it off. Stop texting me. Why are you texting me? And I’m the easiest guy in this town to get a hold of. If you want my phone number, it’s not hard to find, right? So when people are texting people unsolicited and they’re not expecting to get something from me, all they got to do is, Hey, this is Dave Kimbrough with what a blah, blah, blah. And then all of a sudden they’re like, Hey, dude, stop it.

 

[00:25:54.350] – Dave Kimbough

Knock it off. Why are you texting me? What’s the problem here? I thought you were a market leader. I’m like, Holy crap, dude. Just stop. It’s okay. Let’s dial this thing back. I don’t think it was necessarily, Hey, this doesn’t work. It’s just when you’re in a smaller town, people are less receptive of that stuff. There’s a reason why you lived 4 hours from Denver and 5 hours from Soleil.

 

[00:26:14.550] – Robert Newman

The tool was a bad fit.

 

[00:26:16.230] – Dave Kimbough

Bad fit, yeah. It’s not a bad… I’m not saying it’s a bad product. I can’t say because I talked to other agents who did it before me, and they’re like, Yeah, this thing works. This works great for us. It was just a bad fit for my marketplace. It just didn’t fit for our or what I was looking for at the time. It didn’t fit.

 

[00:26:33.790] – Robert Newman

We could have a whole episode. Honestly, Dave, the details that most other real estate people want from us is they probably… That’s why John just drilled in so deeply is that we get calls, both of us do, from team leaders, brokers, owners, you name it. And generally speaking, their biggest frustration is similar to something that you’ve just vocalized where they’ve already spent tons of time, energy, and money on tool. It failed because they weren’t able to get a good enough view of the tool before they actually purchased it. And by the time you’re in it, you’re in it. And so the frustration is no, but seriously, will it really work? Now, we get a lot more people spending a lot more time researching, which there’s been no other iteration of the real estate market where that’s ever been the case. Real estate agents love to buy the newest, shiniest thing, which you pointed out. But you get burned a couple of times, and I think that changes, or at least it does for some people. All right, but let’s move on before we run out of time here. Do you use any AI tools? And if you do, what AI tools are you using in your business currently?

 

[00:27:52.290] – Dave Kimbough

We’re pretty limited, honestly, on AI tools. We’re looking at doing some website stuff with changing up our website to where they use a more AI-generated chatbot type scenario, much more authentic seeming interface for the client. I mean, I’ve read a lot of stuff about really exciting stuff that seems to be coming that we haven’t seen. I mean, I know there’s disruption happening that I don’t see. I know there’s disruption going to happen. But at this juncture, we use it for the same stuff. We use it for Asking for coming up with marketing plans for Instagram, videos that are current and things that we can do to make it simple stuff like that. But nothing… I’ve heard and read about things that are just mind-blowing and amazing. If they ever show up, we’ll be the first ones to jump on board if we can. But I think most of it for me, it seems to be more conceptual than it does in actual practice. So we don’t. A lot of people on our market, they use it for copywriting. We use it for copywriting too on stuff, and we need to pound stuff out pretty quick.

 

[00:29:02.320] – Dave Kimbough

They use it for property descriptions, graphic generators. We use some of that stuff as well, but there’s nothing that I would say, oh, my gosh, look what Aon is making a huge impact on our business yet. It’s not.

 

[00:29:15.310] – Robert Newman

I have a follow-up question. It’s personal, wasn’t on the list.

 

[00:29:19.590] – Dave Kimbough

Okay, great.

 

[00:29:20.310] – Robert Newman

A vendor that I do business with, a lot of business, is getting ready to introduce a room. It’s like a dream room concept, but this is already out there, but it’s not really out there with IDX yet, which is where you get to take a listing and redecorate the room inside the actual search functionality itself, actually within an IDX. It’s brand I knew. I haven’t seen it, so I’m not asking any questions about performance. I’m asking you the thought. What’s your thought about a tool that could do that? Do you think people would use it?

 

[00:29:57.860] – Dave Kimbough

I think they would. I I think if they would, it would be impactful because I’ve always been one of those. The longer I can keep them on a page, the longer I can keep them interacting on a site, the better my chances are making contact with them and then being quality. So Everything we do from picture arrangement, write up, whatever it may be, is can we keep them there as long as humanly possible on each and every property that we have? Because the longer we can keep them, the higher the likelihood is they’ll contact us or see us as a valuable resource.

 

[00:30:31.540] – Robert Newman

Couldn’t agree more. All right, number six.

 

[00:30:34.470] – Jonathan Denwood

Can I ask that question, Robert?

 

[00:30:38.530] – Robert Newman

All right, H. G. Wells, go for it.

 

[00:30:42.530] – Jonathan Denwood

So Dave, if you had your own time machine and you could go back in time and maybe mentor your sofa 10 minutes at the start of your real estate career, what would you tell yourself? What little tip, what little bit of advice would you tell yourself at the beginning of your journey in real estate, Dave?

 

[00:31:11.990] – Dave Kimbough

I mean, it’s going to sound super clichĂ© and super stupid, but I don’t think I’d give myself any advice that I wouldn’t want it. I wouldn’t trade the journey that I’ve had. My career has been far greater and far better than anything I ever dreamed it could be with the ups and the downs and the this and the that and every bit of learning. I know we talked a little bit about it earlier. Every bit of learning we’ve done from bad mistakes or things we’ve done, we should have done differently or whatever, we have learned from that. We are learners. We are not fool me once, fool me twice. That’s it, right? I mean, We’re going to fix it. And so I think that the journey that we’ve been on as a team and I’ve been on as a singular agent and team lead or whatever, I wouldn’t trade any of it. And I wouldn’t want some advice to cloud the judgment I came in with, because certainly If there’s anything, I would have maybe said, well, I mean, no, no, there isn’t. I mean, I look back on it, I don’t have any regrets.

 

[00:32:09.300] – Dave Kimbough

I got no regrets, and I got nothing on here that I would read. Okay, one thing, billboards. I would not run billboards. I have pissed away. I have pissed away more money on billboards, trying to get billboards to work for me. And I just am done. I’m done with that. I Somebody saved me a couple of hundred grand over 23 years by telling me, Dave, don’t ever do billboards.

 

[00:32:37.150] – Jonathan Denwood

So one other thing. So you mentioned about it, and you’ve been a fabulous guest, Dave. I’ve really enjoyed the interview, and you must come back. I’ve really enjoyed this discussion. So you mentioned this course that you’ve developed. Can you give us a quick outline what that’s about?

 

[00:32:55.420] – Dave Kimbough

Yeah, quick outline is it’s a complete mind shift. It’s a complete mind shift. We’ve taken 23 years of experience. So myself and my sister and my partner, her name is Jan, and my partner Mason have created this expectation selling. One of the biggest myths in real estate is that you can’t have massive production and work-life balance. You can’t have life balance and do massive volume. That’s not true. It’s absolutely not true. So what we’ve done is put together a course to help agents get their time back in their day and get their focus, get their work done efficiently and get more balance in their life by systemizing everything they do. And I mean, it’s a crazy process for those who are willing to go through it and implement the system, because I’m here to tell you, two years ago, I sold 159 listings with one system, right? I still coach football. I still eat dinner at home every night. My wife still loves me, I think.

 

[00:33:57.070] – Jonathan Denwood

I’m sure she does.

[00:33:58.710] – Dave Kimbough

I’m sure she does. But the whole gist around this thing is if we can find a way to give back what we’ve been able to learn over the last 23 years and the systems we’ve got in order to churn the volume we do with still having a work-life balance, and my kids love me, and my wife loves me, and I spend time with friends and all that stuff. It’s the number one thing that happens to real estate agents. We’re addicted to a hustle culture, and you don’t have to be addicted to the hustle culture.

[00:34:26.090] – Jonathan Denwood

Where can I get this course, Dave?

[00:34:29.350] – Dave Kimbough

You can go to www. Expectationselling.com or follow us on any social media outlet at expectationselling.com.

[00:34:41.990] – Jonathan Denwood

I will ensure the links are in the show notes, which you can find on the MailRight website. Back over to you, Rob.

[00:34:50.610] – Robert Newman

Well, we’re going to wrap up the show. I’m going to second what John has said. Dave, you’ve been a lot of fun. I hope you keep podcasting. You’ve got a talent for it. You’ve got a knack for it. But I suspect you probably have talent and knacks for everything else. If you haven’t already looked into it deeply, I suggest you look into both local and video because you are built for it. You would be wildly successful.

[00:35:15.040] – Dave Kimbough

You’re perfect. I don’t have a face for video, bro. You do.

[00:35:20.010] – Jonathan Denwood

It could be worse, though, if you could have my advice. Good point.

[00:35:23.570] – Robert Newman

I wasn’t going to say it. No, I’m just kidding. I’m just joking. No, in all seriousness, Middle-aged white men do fine on video. Please be sure to trust me on that. All right. Without any further ado, though, if anybody wanted to reach out to you personally, I think it’s expectations selling. We appreciate it. I hope that some people check it out. I strongly recommend that they do. If there’s anything I love about inbound marketing, it’s the same conversation you’re trying to have, which is to get back your time while still doing huge business. How would somebody reach out to you? Assuming you even want them to. How would they do?

[00:36:05.410] – Dave Kimbough

I do. I’m open to it. Please feel free to contact me anytime. It’s dave@expectationselling. Com. That’s my email. Could you just drop me an email? I live on it. It doesn’t go off my email inbox until it’s done. I’m happy to chat and talk to whoever.

[00:36:21.780] – Robert Newman

If anybody would like to check out the new, upgraded, incredibly fancy, snazzy system that Jonathan is using, it’s worth it.

[00:36:30.670] – Jonathan Denwood

It’s a lot better. It’s massively improved.

[00:36:33.500] – Robert Newman

Because we’ve just gone through hammering all the real estate marketing companies, but no, seriously, we’ve got something you should look at. But anyway, Jonathan, how would you like to? Our system starts at $49 monthly, so it won’t bankrupt you.

[00:36:49.140] – Jonathan Denwood

So go to the mail-right. Com website and book a call with me. And I will, or a team member will show you the Mail-Right system. Like I say, it starts at $49 a month. Go and have a look, folks.

[00:37:12.060] – Robert Newman

Beautiful. Well, that’s a big reduction. All right, ladies and gentlemen, if anybody has enjoyed the hustle that I have displayed on this podcast, you can find me at inboundrem. Com. You can go to my About or Services page, either or, and book a call with me directly if you would like, or you can learn everything you’d ever want to know about real estate marketing on my website. Detailed guides, PDFs, graphs, charts, videos, you name it, it’s all there. All right. Thank you so much, everybody, for tuning in. We appreciate it. Once again, Dave, we appreciate you coming on the show. It’s been magnificent and a lot of fun.

[00:37:49.850] – Dave Kimbough

Love it. Thank you, guys.

[00:37:51.300] – Robert Newman

All right.

[00:37:51.830] – Jonathan Denwood

Take us off. Bye.

 

038: Good Quality Photography With Special Guest Greg McDaniels
038: Good Quality Photography & Video is Important! 1

We discuss with our special guest Greg McDaniels the importance of quality photography connected to being a successful real estate Read more

039: Why Agents Need To Blog Regularly
038: Good Quality Photography & Video is Important! 1

Agents need to do more than blogging to get results in 2016. We discuss this during this show with our two Read more

040: We Have Special Guest Greg McDaniels
038: Good Quality Photography & Video is Important! 1

Greg McDaniel literally began his career at his father’s knee. It would not be an exaggeration to say he has Read more

041: Personal Agent Photography With Preston Zeller
038: Good Quality Photography & Video is Important! 1

Personal agent photography is really important but usually semi-forgotten. We have a great guest "Preston Zeller" on the show who recently Read more

Posted in Podcast | Comments Off on #465 – The Mail-Right – The Challenges of Moving Away From Traditional Marketing In 2025

#464 – The Mail-Right – Branding 101 For Real Estate Agents For 2025

Sunday, March 9th, 2025

#464 - The Mail-Right - Branding 101 For Real Estate Agents For 2025

Branding 101 For Real Estate Agents For 2025

Master branding essentials for real estate agents in 2025. Learn proven strategies to build a strong, memorable brand and attract more clients.

In “Branding 101 for Real Estate Agents for 2025,” we delve into creating a powerful brand that stands out. This show provides practical tips on leveraging social media, building a personal narrative, and enhancing client engagement. Whether you’re a seasoned agent or just starting, understanding branding is crucial for success. Tune in now to gain valuable insights and advance your real estate career.

 

#1 – Who is your target audience?

#2 – Person or Life Style Brand?

#3 – What Are Your Core Values?

#4 – What is Your Unique Offer?

#5 – Be Consistent!

#6 – Final Thoughts

Show’s Full Show Notes

 

[00:00:20.800] –
Robert Newman

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It’s episode number 464 of The Mailright Show today. We’re going to do Branding 101 for Real Estate Agents for 2025. We’re starting off with the basics. So discovering audiences, developing a message, that’s what we’re going to cover today. But before we get going, in case you are new or newish to this podcast, we want to make sure that you hear our names so many times that you get sick of hearing them. With no further ado, John, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself to anybody that may be new to the show or just within the first few times of listening to the show.

 

[00:01:05.090] – Jonathan Denwood

Thanks, Rob. I’m Jonathan Denwood. I’m the joint founder of Mel-right. Com, Mel-right. We’re a CRM lead generative website platform aimed at real estate agents. Go and have a look and book a consultancy with me. Back over to you, Rob.

 

[00:01:27.590] –
Robert Newman

All right. My name is Robert Newman. I’m the founder of InboundREM. That’s the word InboundRE at rabbitedwardmichael. Com. Check me out if you are impressed with all this knowledge. I’m about ready to lay on you with my partner. All right, let’s get into it. Who, ladies and gentlemen, is your target audience, and how do you figure that out? John, do you want to start us off? Or do you want me to start us off?

 

[00:01:51.960] – Jonathan Denwood

No, you go off. Go on. You have a go. That’s it.

 

[00:01:55.640] –
Robert Newman

Okay. With real estate agents, it’s a very, very good to do a little bit of city, state, and local research on who lives in the area that you are trying to serve. So if you can’t figure out who your target audience is, if you don’t automatically know that it’s older immigrants or older Asians or anything in that category, what you’ll do is you’ll go to either the state or local registrar’s office, which is usually in your city buildings, and you will ask them for what publicly available city data can you take a look at. Sometimes they have books, sometimes they have demographic stuff. And failing that because it’s the second best source, usually the city is actually the best place to grab data for who actually lives there. Second best source would be a search like this. Vanuise, Demographic. I live in Vanuise, California. And then it’s Hispanic, 63%, white, 21%, Asian, 8%, and two other races. So then I can also do demographic and age. Then now I’m going to get 18 to 17-year-old is 99. 5%, 22 to 34 is 24%, 75 years or older, 3. 2 So now you know age, gender, and basic demographic.

 

[00:03:22.870] –
Robert Newman

Now, here’s the last piece of advice that I have. Ladies and gentlemen, if you haven’t already, as your burgeoning career and figuring out what your brand is, you haven’t figured out a way to go out and meet the people that you intend to sell to or serve. That is probably the biggest mistake I see new salespeople make. Go to school meetings, PPA meetings, just as long as they’re in the city and the location you’re interested in servicing, and meet people, talk to them. Say, Are you ever going to buy a house? Did you buy a house? What are your primary concerns? Get to know your audience and get to know what they’re thinking. That is a very, very good way to understand what your first set of objections and your first set of concerns are going to be. All right, that’s it. Who’s your target audience? John, you go.

 

[00:04:06.040] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I agree with what you outlined. I think also, if you look at Northern Nevada, which is Reno, Lake Tahoe, Truckee, a lot of the people that you’re going to be selling or dealing with are out of state. Northern Nevada really relies on California to Northern Nevada and Southern Nevada, Las Vegas. It really depends on the state people It’s really going to be the type of people that are attracted to the various different areas of Nevada that you’ve got to really understand their wants, needs, and you’ve got to really pitch yourself to what these possible clients require, and really understand why people sell, upgrade, or move out of the state, why people move. It’s really understanding and finding a niche, something that stands you out a little bit in a crowded market, basically. But it doesn’t have to be something enormous. It just needs something which you’re target audience actually cares about.

 

[00:05:49.260] –
Robert Newman

Copy you. We’re going to move on to number two, which I’ve always, ever since I’ve read books about branding, have struggled with the generality of this statement. It’s person or lifestyle brand. Are you a lifestyle brand? Do you surf? Do you ski? You know, stuff like that as a realtor. Person is like, what human are you? Are you really religious? Do you have some tried and true philosophies that you absolutely live your life by and run your business by? What person, lifestyle, brand, blah, blah, blah? I have put out a video called The Death of Real Estate Branding because I think that most branding is informational, and informational ends up being very specific to the human being imparting the information. Over the years that John and I have done this show, we’ve discovered that he’s dyslexic, seasoned entrepreneur, and I have so much data on myself out there. It’s not even worth trying to shake a stick at. I’ve got stuff about my personal life that most people wouldn’t put online, and I’ve got hundreds of clients from having put myself out there because the people that would normally just treat me like another real estate marketer connected deeply into certain parts of my message that have nothing to do with what I do for a living, like the fact that I’m sober as an example.

 

[00:07:13.100] –
Robert Newman

I think that that is an informational brand that goes beyond personal lifestyle, personally. I don’t think that one or the other really apply. I think it’s just a combination of everything. I do strongly recommend that if you feel comfortable with it, that That you put yourself out there, that you let people know who you are because it will become part of your brand. You can also have a little fun with it. Take your dog with you everywhere. I have two of my clients that make over a million dollars a year in real estate. They’ve become synonymous. Their branding is synonymous with their two little dogs that they take everywhere, including real estate appointments.

 

[00:07:50.230] – Jonathan Denwood

Do they do the negotiation for the agent?

 

[00:07:53.670] –
Robert Newman

I’m sorry?

 

[00:07:54.410] – Jonathan Denwood

Do the dogs do the negotiation for the agent?

 

[00:07:57.370] –
Robert Newman

No, but apparently, they provide great distraction and comfort.

 

[00:08:01.840] – Jonathan Denwood

All right, there you go.

 

[00:08:03.150] –
Robert Newman

And they’re not alone. Betsey Graham tells a story about how relating to a client dog got our $23 million sale. So it’s not even by themselves. All right, John, what’s your version of personal or lifestyle brand?

 

[00:08:16.710] – Jonathan Denwood

I think the other part of this with the research I did is a few of the people I was watching and reading, they were saying, You got to make… Some put the argument that they They thought it was a mistake that they went with a personal brand because they turned into a team, and they didn’t want so much to be the public face of the brand, and they felt that was a mistake. I see where they’re coming from, but I don’t see it as black And I’m not saying why. I think you can still be the public face of a regional local brand, but they say, and I think you’ve remarked that you struggled with this a little bit because sometimes you feel that you have to be available a little bit more than you would hope to be. But you are the public face of your brand, so people want to talk to you. So it can be a problem, can’t it? I don’t know if you’ve got any reflections about how you would have dealt with that a bit better or if it is a problem at all.

 

[00:09:45.520] –
Robert Newman

I mean, I’ve always… First of all, it is a challenge that I’ve mentioned that is true. It is your accurate from my perception to your statement. And at times, it’s very uncomfortable for me. There’s all sorts of boundaries. John, I just indicated when the podcast started how tired I am. Between the time we started the podcast in this very second, I closed my calendar off yesterday. Somebody booked another call with me, something to talk about, broadly enough, more like transitioning their business. Do I have to be more forward-facing than I would like? Yes, I do. But when I started this business, I had, I think, $15,000. I I don’t remember exactly anymore. That number, I may have said something different in different places. I had no advertising budget. None, zero. The way I intended to get my clients was blog on Active Rains and blog on a website, and I had some existing clients that were basically keeping the lights on. It was just a few thousand dollars a month is all I was making them. I mean, we’re talking just a very small handful of clients. I decided in that moment that I could advertise or I could put myself out there.

 

[00:11:02.710] –
Robert Newman

And I put myself out there, and it was successful, John. I crossed the the the the the bridge between complete unknown and I have a brand. And I got a lot of other people to hire me, like Guailopo and other companies like that. And I did it all with the power of video, so it was successful. Nine years into it now and 200 clients, do I regret my decision? No, because I don’t think I’d be here a day without it. Do I wish for certain things that they might be different? Yes, I do. I do wish that I had a little more of my time and a little more animinity. But in order to get that on another business I build, I need millions and millions of dollars like Elon Musk or somebody else has. It’s like, Give me $10 million and ask me if I do it the same way. Hell no, John. No way. I would not be the public face of anything. I’d let other people do it. I’d hire a CEO, whatever it was. I would not do that again. But do I have any problems with how I bootstrap the business?

 

[00:12:05.470] –
Robert Newman

Zero. I’m super grateful it worked at all because it was a gamble. Does that answer the question?

 

[00:12:11.610] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, it certainly does.

 

[00:12:13.410] –
Robert Newman

What are your core values? I love this one. You know I love this one. Do you want to go first or do you want me to?

 

[00:12:23.050] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, I’ll put a quick pennies in. I think a A lot of real estate advertising, obviously, this is a difficult one because you don’t really want to rub people really up the wrong way, so you can take this to the extreme. But on the other hand, a lot of real estate advertising promotion is very bland, very unmemorable. And I think you’ve got to identify some core values that’s relevant to your target audience that you actually believe in, and you need to really talk about those and promote those quite effectively.

 

[00:13:24.540] –
Robert Newman

And core values is one of those I use I use core values all the time in my marketing because real estate, holy cow, there is not a week that goes by that I don’t have just nightmare stories told to me by agents. If an agent is calling me, they tend to be a little bit driven and a little bit disciplined. The nutty thing is that I’d say from what I hear and everything I’ve heard on the phone for nine straight years, I feel like 70% of the profession are not those things. They’re not disciplined, they’re not driven, they don’t treat their business like a business. I was just on the phone, literally within the last day of taking calls, John, and an agent was telling me how they made a showing appointment with a seller’s agent. They were supposed to meet the seller at the client’s house. There was no lockbox on the door. They got into a car with a buyer from out of town, drove to the house on a Saturday. No agent. Call the agent. No response. Texted the agent. No response. A hundred % no for a viable client from out of town.

 

[00:14:35.790] –
Robert Newman

I was just like, you got to be kidding me. Any other profession, you no-show somebody potentially with money in their pocket? I mean, man, I can’t even… I can’t fathom, John. None of the sales careers I’ve been in, if I started no showing clients, are you joking me? I would have been fired so fast. It’s not even funny. So core values. What are your core values? And I’m so sorry, John, but it’s got to be more than fucking money. It’s just got to be. You got to have core values like, I don’t flake, I try hard. I’m late all the time, but I try hard not to flake on you, really hard. I move shit around in my calendar not to flake on this show, not because of anything related to a business transaction or finances, but because I have given you my word that I will be here at 2: 00. And so I try to be here at 2: 00 You have kept your commitment rock solid.

 

[00:15:34.270] – Jonathan Denwood

You hardly have ever missed anything. I gather from that that when you do commit to something, you’re totally focused on it because you’ve proven that.

 

[00:15:50.500] –
Robert Newman

That is the idea behind core values, ladies and gentlemen. What is it that you value which will allow people to understand what you expect? I value people, I value My opinions, my reviews are stellar. I treat everybody the same. Well, not 100% the same. Clients get certain allotments of both time and energy that other people don’t. But for the most part, I treat people basically the same. Certainly with the same set of core values. We’re going to go to break. When we come back, we’re going to talk about how to create a unique offer, what is a unique offer, being consistent. We’re going to wrap up with some final thoughts about brand that John Ron and I are going to share through the lens of two entrepreneurs who’ve done brands, both of us consulted with lots and lots of real estate agents. We’re going to come back and we’re going to share those thoughts with you. Stay tuned. All right. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 464 of the Mailright Show. Today, we’re talking about branding, and we’re sticking with Branding 101, and we’re talking about it specifically for the year 2025.

 

[00:16:57.740] –
Robert Newman

This is not going to be an evergreen piece of We’re going to talk about branding from the perspective of today’s agent. Leading back in, I’m going to toss this first question coming back from the break to John. John, how would you go about crafting or how would you go about advising to craft a unique offer?

 

[00:17:15.750] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, it’s not easy in a very competitive, congested market. But on the other hand, it doesn’t have to be something enormous. It is quite linked to knowing your target audience, isn’t it? Number one, and some of the other points that we discussed in the first half of the show. If you understand your target audience and you understand and you dived in to the uniqueness of what those particular segment of the market requires, you’re probably going to then be able to identify an element that could be part of your unique offer. So it’s not jet science, is it? But on the other hand, with my other business, I’ve done it because we focus on membership learning management systems and community-focused website using the WordPress platform. But on the other hand, that entails quite a lot of subsets. So there’s associations, nonprofits, colleges that are using learning management systems. And then you’ve got the whole individual entrepreneur market where it’s individuals or a few people trying to build actual business in the e-learning space. So it encapsulates quite a few subsets. But I pitched it at that because it’s very difficult to identify which market I should have…

 

[00:19:05.580] – Jonathan Denwood

So it’s worked out for me. And that’s what you really got to think about when you’re a real estate agent, isn’t it?

 

[00:19:15.470] –
Robert Newman

And yeah, and you know what? It’s interesting because it’s funny. I ask this unique selling proposition question to agents all the time, What unique selling proposition? I’m going to negotiate. I’m a really good negotiator. Well, I do a list of services. Like I say, what list of services do real estate agents provide? John, would you take a crack at what the basic list is from the web? How many items do you think are on the list? 10, 20, 30, 10? Just 20, just right out of the gate. Okay. So home inspection, negotiating offers, negotiating with buyers on your behalf, marketing and advertising, showing properties, providing advice, education, educating people, communicating. There’s two different sides of real estate. There’s listing and buying agents. This thing says listing agent specific stuff and has other things. I opened up the listing agent-specific thing and I immediately find a blog post from Balz Mara Realty that says 184 things that real estate agents do. 184 four things. And I have just done a quick look at that list. It’s legit. So when you’re saying unique selling proposition, and there are people out there that are blogging that can figure out 184 different things that an agent does in the buying and selling process, please don’t tell me that there’s nothing in that 184 list that you can’t do better than other people.

 

[00:20:58.030] –
Robert Newman

If you You can’t look at a list of things and go, I’m pretty good at that. Like John and I have, John is pretty good at WordPress. He has experience in it. I am pretty good at marketing. I have experience in it. I could look at a list and go, I’m probably better than other people in this one little category. It’s not arrogance. It’s just, do you think you work out it harder than other people? If the answer is yes, you’re probably better. And it drives me nuts, John, that I can usually not get an agent who’s supposed to be a sales person to admit that they might be better out of one out of a couple of hundred things. It’s like, really? So figure out what your unique offer should reflect on your values, your skills, who you want to serve? What’s your unique offer to that person? In Beverly Hills right now, there’s this dearth, this proliferation of concierge agents. I will say this, of the concierge agents that I know the three that are wildly successful, 20, 30 years careers in real estate, all of them, they’re really never off. They don’t take time off.

 

[00:22:08.960] –
Robert Newman

Not really, because when they have a high enough value client come into town, since they’re only dealing with three or four transactions a year, max. They drop everything. And so they’re out all weekend. They’re taking people to parties. They’re going to movie premieres, selling somebody in the lifestyle and the experience of buying a property at the same time. But barring that, when it comes to what your unique offer is, and even that is not unique, any of the top four agents can do that with you. They all have that ability. You start to go, Well, what is the exception above and beyond that? Well, I’ll tell you what, one of the three, head and shoulders above the others, has a better support team around them, and I’m not going to say which. I’m just going to say they have four qualified people to help with the management of a very challenging client, and they’re all really good, world-class in their own way. So one could say the support system was their unique sales offer, and I think that they should. That would be the unique proposition I’m willing to give out some of the work to some of my subordinates because some of these agents are not.

 

[00:23:25.340] –
Robert Newman

That would be something I would look at in an actual Beverly Hills. Now, this is a favorite subject and one that John is a master at. I’m going to play you up and then I’m going to hand it off to you. I’ve dealt with a lot of people over time, and I think we should always look at each other and go, this is our honest opinion. Well, I’ll tell you one thing about John Denwood. He is one of the most consistent marketing partners I’ve ever had. He is consistent. He walks his talk. He also shows up. He also keeps pushing forward with his businesses. He consistently does not one podcast, but many. I mean, take everything else away and say, Is this person consistent and reliable? I’m going to say 100% in my experience so far, yes, no doubt about it. Consistency is a really great thing to have as part of your brand. Consistency, just one, John, a testimonial for me that doesn’t give out many, and I’ve given out a few for John over the years. It’s important that you deliver that what you want. You show up when people want you. If you say you’re going to show up, show up.

 

[00:24:38.390] –
Robert Newman

That’s my opinion about consistency. It’s just you have to… I also block hours out of my calendar, John, and I’m religious about not letting anybody get in them because I would go insane if I didn’t do that. That’s how I manage consistency. In the time that I have allotted, yes, I’m going to show up unless I’m in the hospital. What is your views on number five?

 

[00:25:03.530] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, it’s difficult in the real estate industry, especially when you’re starting out and you haven’t got the money to hire a team or have a good assistant. You got a lot of balls and you got to be available, fundamentally, you got to be available seven days a week. But if you can’t manage to be consistent as a real estate agent I think you’re going to have a hard job. A lot of people, it has a reputation, and you pointed out to earlier on in this episode, somebody that wasn’t very consistent. They did turn up and they ghosted a possible sell. Consistent of all the things we’ve talked about, if you want to be successful as a real estate agent, I think you got to be pretty consistent consistent.

 

[00:26:01.940] –
Robert Newman

Yeah. I think that part of the challenge, John, is the million dollar mindset idea, which is what I’m seeing is that right now, finally, after many years, by the way, we’re watching home prices go, sales are down. We’ve got a 9. 0 inventory availability inside the real estate market, which is higher than it’s been in a long-ass time. We’ve got all these factors that are… We have inventory, it’s just priced out of people’s price range right now. Agents are still having to work twice as hard for half as much. That’s where the million-dollar mindset comes in. Lots and lots of agents are just going, No, I’m not going to work that hard. They’re sitting on the income that they’ve earned over the last few years in what has absolutely been a cold market. They’ve made a lot more money than they could or they should. When they can make half as much and work harder, are they going to do it? The answer is a lot of real estate agents won’t, and the real pros will because they know that while they’re working harder, they’re also making market share that other people won’t make. We’re going to close out the show, ladies and gentlemen.

 

[00:27:09.380] –
Robert Newman

I’m going to have John share his final thoughts, or I’m going to ask John to share his final thoughts. And I’m going to say, I’m going to think through mine because I’m not 100 % sure how I want to close this episode down. So what are your final thoughts about branding?

 

[00:27:26.940] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, it’s a garage subject, isn’t it? Building a brand. But I think we’re given a good outline here and put some thoughts in people’s minds, because I think a lot of agents really fell on this, and it’s understandable because it’s vague. But if you can plan some strategy, and it doesn’t have to be I think complicated, but you got to use the steps that we’ve outlined in this episode, and then put a bit of thought into it, and then stick to it, and be consistent Which number five, which I think is not only consistent about turning up and doing the stuff that you got to do, but being consistent around the idea of building a brand, And on the other hand, there’s a lot of people out there that make it like it’s jet science, and it’s over complicated. You got to keep it simple because you haven’t got the budget and you haven’t got the bandwidth, and you got to keep it simple, but keep it consistent. That’s what I would say, Rob.

 

[00:28:57.040] –
Robert Newman

And I would say that branding is an overused subject. I’ve always felt this way, still feel this way. You’ll hear top agents or luxury agents, and I’ll talk about brand, brand, brand. Really, what most people are establishing these days is an informational brand. Like an informational subject brand. Occasionally, realtors have a glamorous lifestyle outside of being an agent. They go to big parties and things like that. Some of their customers are rich and famous in very rare cases, but it It does happen. And so they, by extension, become rich and famous to a degree. But most of the agents I know when you brush that away, it is a lot more… That is the marketing. That is the sizz, not the steak. The steak is showing up when you’ve taken on a listing before the team that you hired to even stage it shows up, being ready, walking the property, being there an hour earlier than anybody else, and making sure that you know the outs of everything so that when the staging team comes, you’ve got a lot of input from them. You’ve looked in every nook and every cranny, staying late after that team leaves.

 

[00:30:09.340] –
Robert Newman

I’ve seen Christoff like a sleep in a chair at a mansion that he was doing a little day in the life of thing a long time ago. It really impressed me because he was there long after everybody else was. It was probably an insanely long day, 14 or 15 hour day to make sure that you had three videos done, all when the client wanted to leave the property available, all when all the production teams could get there, and all with you managing every detail. Now, what is that? Is that skill? I would argue that that’s simply hard work and discipline. I would argue that that consistency, just like John said, is one of the big things because you only get good at doing something by doing it many times. You practice, drill and rehearse. You practice when there is no blood on the ground so that when there is, you still do the thing with a high degree of skill. I still take Take sales calls because I believe it’s important to still talk to customers. That’s really what it comes down to. It is important that you get in the trenches and actually bleed with the clients, at least every once in a while, so that you understand exactly what’s going on.

 

[00:31:13.940] –
Robert Newman

I cannot tell you how strongly I feel about that particular sentiment. As a founder or a business owner, you don’t have to do it often, I don’t think. I don’t think you have to do it four times a day like I do, but once or twice every single week, making that you’re talking to one of your actual customers, yes, I think that’s important. And that’s a discipline. That’s consistency. That’s building a brand. That’s an informational brand that leads to reviews. And when you brush everything away, somebody is attracted by the spark of some part of your offer. But nine times out of 10 these days in the market that we live in, they are pulling the trigger because of your reviews, case studies, deeper knowledge that you’ve given about your products and services, the amount of money that your clients They’re looking at the actual mechanics of what you do and making decisions based on more than just a service-facing brand. That’s what I’ve got. But No further ado. John, thank you for putting this together. As always, I’ve emailed you a link to the 184 thing most agents do. If you feel inclined, maybe put it in the show notes since I did mention it.

 

[00:32:30.450] –
Robert Newman

And if people want to find you, follow up with you, get a consultation from you, talk to you about the MailRight marketing system, how would they go about doing that?

 

[00:32:40.220] – Jonathan Denwood

I’ll just go to the mail-right. Com website and in the top navigation, you can book a chat with me.

 

[00:32:47.220] –
Robert Newman

Okay. And you could do the same with me at inboundrem. Com on the About or Services pages. You’ll find links to my calendar. Thank you so much, everybody, for tuning in to the show. John and I are so grateful that you give us a little bit of your time and your mind space. We really appreciate it. Until next time. We’re going to sign off.

 

038: Good Quality Photography With Special Guest Greg McDaniels
038: Good Quality Photography & Video is Important! 1

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039: Why Agents Need To Blog Regularly
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Agents need to do more than blogging to get results in 2016. We discuss this during this show with our two Read more

040: We Have Special Guest Greg McDaniels
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Greg McDaniel literally began his career at his father’s knee. It would not be an exaggeration to say he has Read more

041: Personal Agent Photography With Preston Zeller
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Personal agent photography is really important but usually semi-forgotten. We have a great guest "Preston Zeller" on the show who recently Read more

Posted in Podcast | Comments Off on #464 – The Mail-Right – Branding 101 For Real Estate Agents For 2025

#463 – The Mail-Right – Best Real Estate Agent CRM Software in 2025

Saturday, February 22nd, 2025

#463 - The Mail-Right - Best Real Estate Agent CRM Software in 2025

Best Real Estate Agent CRM Software in 2025

Looking for the top real estate agent CRM in 2025? Discover the ultimate tool to manage clients, automate marketing, and grow your success.

In this video, we explore the top real estate agent CRM software options for 2025. Discover the features that set these platforms apart, including automation, lead management, and integration capabilities. Whether you’re a seasoned agent or just starting out, finding the right CRM can transform your business. Tune in to learn about the best tools available and how they can enhance your productivity and client relationships. Don’t miss it.

Best Real Estate Agent CRM Software in 2025

#1 – LionDesk Bought by Lone Wolf

https://www.liondesk.com/

New Price of $39 per month

 

#2 – Wise Agent

Prices $49 + per month

https://wiseagent.com

#3 – Realvolve

Prices $94 per month

https://www.realvolve.com

#4 – Follow Up Boss

Prices $69 + per month

https://www.followupboss.com/

#5 – Top Producer

Prices $179 + per month

https://www.topproducer.com

#6 – Brian Buffini

Prices $49 +

https://win.buffini.com/company/pricing/

#7 – ClickUp

https://clickup.com/

https://clickup.com/templates/real-estate-agent-t-4392666

Episode Full Show Notes

[00:00:06.270] – Robert Newman

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the Mail-Right podcast. We talk about real estate marketing and will talk precisely about that again today. We will talk about real estate CRMs, and John has created a fantastic list for all of you. And before I go off on one, for those of you who follow along, believe it or not, today’s episode number is 463 times. John has done this 463 times. I’ve done this about 200 times now, and some odd times. John, who are you? Who is the man who would do 463 podcasts, for crying out loud?

[00:00:48.200] -Jonathan Denwood

I’ve got another podcast I did this morning, and we were on 950.

[00:00:53.830] – Robert Newman

Oh, my goodness gracious. Well, come on, man. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

[00:00:59.230] -Jonathan Denwood

I don’t know. I’ve lost the plot. I don’t know. Do you know if I exist? No. I’m the joint founder of Mel-right. Com. We’re CRM. We also use Facebook and Instagram, providing a great digital platform for real estate agents. Back over to you, Rob.

[00:01:20.190] – Robert Newman

I will help you out a little bit, John. As you can probably tell, John is a transplant from England, but he’s been here a long time. He’s He’s an entrepreneur. He started more than one company. He owns more than one SAAS, Software as a Service Company. He’s an experienced WordPress developer, so much so that his other podcast, briefly mentioned, is one of WordPress’s most popular listen-to podcasts.

[00:01:47.970] -Jonathan Denwood

It’s one of the most notorious.

[00:01:51.640] – Robert Newman

Well, I’ll say it my way, you say it your way. So he knows a lot about WordPress, and that’s what he built the platform for real estate agents on, is WordPress, and he’s got a good all-in-one system that is less expensive and still managed directly by a founder. And so obviously, when we do these podcasts, we’re hoping-That’s a sad statement.

 

[00:02:14.360] -Jonathan Denwood

I’m just waiting for Loan Wolf to buy me out, Robert.

 

[00:02:18.030] – Robert Newman

Oh, my goodness. All right. Well, as I was going to say, we do this podcast, we are our own sponsors. Obviously, it’s to introduce ourselves. We’re going to be talking about a lot of products that are going to fit very well into John’s universe today. People that are looking for good deals on tools that do a lot should look at Mailright along with this list because he does have a CRM in it. But having said that, we’re going to dive into a list of real estate CRMs, most of which are fairly affordable, that you could theoretically use to power the contact part of your business. Do you agree with everything I just said there, John?

 

[00:02:58.410] -Jonathan Denwood

As always, it’s It’s only occasionally that I disagree, isn’t it?

 

[00:03:02.920] – Robert Newman

All right. Well, number one on our list, because we were joking about it before we turned the camera on, is Loan Wolf. I remembered Loan Wolf being a website producer, and he’s like, Do you know Loan Wolf? I’m like, I don’t know that I know a Loan Wolf that’s going to be out there buying up CRM companies. But boy, was I wrong? The Loan Wolf that I remember building websites is indeed the Loan Wolf that’s out there buying up CRM. I guess they just didn’t like what they had or are going to roll this tool into one.

 

[00:03:29.050] -Jonathan Denwood

But anyway, I’m the people that bought Serentractive.

 

[00:03:34.310] – Robert Newman

It might be. And what a shame for Serentractive. I just dropped a review, literally, from one of their best accounts that has said, ever since they sold it, services dropped through the floor. And I’m getting ready to drop that review, John. He actually was so dissatisfied. He actually got on camera while still a customer of theirs and did a review with me. All right, before we go off on yet another tangent, because there’s only been four for those who are trying to count along with us, we are going to talk about this Lion Desk and acquisition by Lone Wolf and what we generally think of Lion Desk. I’m going to go. I’m going to keep it short and simple. I always thought it was too complicated. I was never the biggest fan of Lion Desk. It’s extremely reasonably priced. With being acquisitioned by a company that has a history of acquisitioning companies without being able to properly integrate them into a workflow or support system would not be something I would look at unless you’re desperate. That’s my opinion. Jon, go.

 

[00:04:48.170] -Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. Well, they did have a two-price structure, a 25 and 83, until recently, which the 83 really didn’t make much sense to me. Well, since they got bought out by Loan Whorff, they seem to only have one price now, $39, which is in some ways makes more sense to me, right? Because definitely the ’83 didn’t make much sense to me for what you were getting compared to the competition. It’s got a reasonably okay interface. It’s pretty… It’s to my taste. The main thing they seem to plug is they have a video, mess messaging platform, which is a direct competitor to Bombom. And Bombom, if you’re into that marketing, folks, where in your database, you send individual to potential clients or keeping contact or re-energise a relationship. Bonbon is a great platform, but it’s I wouldn’t say expensive, but it’s not cheap, depending on what is your budget, your marketing budget. Well, Linedesk built a similar product. It’s not as featured rich as Bonbon, and it’s one of the main cause, and also in relation with robo-calling. I discussed that to some degree because I think the days are ringing for leads, in my opinion, because of smartphones like the iPhone is dying.

 

[00:06:58.310] -Jonathan Denwood

But other Other experts, other agents would highly disagree with me. It’s okay at $39, it’s probably okay, isn’t it, for what you get, for what you can do with And it’s one of the better ones compared to some of the other ones we’re going to be talking about.

 

[00:07:21.080] – Robert Newman

I don’t disagree with that. Forgive my frustration, everyone. This features and functionality. You take a website that’s extremely basic, like most of the ones that KVCORE sell. Chime has a nicer-looking website, but still it’s a template and it’s basic. And guess what? They quote you monthlies of $500, $1,000 a month. Kvcore and Chime are both $500 a month. Now, when compared against that, John, this is a windfall because, my God, $470 a month difference for functionality Does Lion Desk deliver on that margin? Hell, yeah. Hell, yes, it does. Is it a great tool? No, you get $39 worth of a tool, in my opinion. It’s overly complicated. I’ve taken five seconds to refresh myself, and I’m already lost with this guy who’s showing all the pages. There’s a list of things on the left that’s nice and seamless, like contacts, communication tasks, campaigns. Then you You start getting to each task and there’s a hundred fields to fill out every time. Like my office, branch office, agent. There’s literally 20 drop-downs just to identify lead source. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s good. You might need that. But like I said from the gate, they built a one-size-fits-all tool.

 

[00:08:48.800] – Robert Newman

It’s not like if you’re an agent or a broker, you get a different tool, you get this tool. Some people, it’s going to be overkill, and other people, it’s not. It’s like the three… It’s Goldilocks and the three bears. One, two, cold, one too hot, and somebody right in between. And if you are the right in between for $39 a month, is that a serviceable CRM? Hell, yes, for that one in between person. All right, let’s move on to the next on the list. I am maybe feeling a little punchy like you were last week. Number two is wise agent, certainly a popular one for sure. Why don’t you lead us off?

 

[00:09:27.200] -Jonathan Denwood

Do I have to?

 

[00:09:30.190] – Robert Newman

Well, now for sure.

 

[00:09:35.640] -Jonathan Denwood

Well, it’s $49. That’s not good, ladies and gentlemen, when you open with, Well, It’s $49.

 

[00:09:46.340] – Robert Newman

That’s terrible. Okay, go ahead, John.

 

[00:09:51.380] -Jonathan Denwood

Well, they do have a mobile app. I think it It does a lot of what Line Desk does without the video. I don’t think they got a video tool that directly competes. I notice when you go to features, their lead generation, their plugin, which is an extra. I really wouldn’t buy into their lead generation system. What I heard, it doesn’t… These are my opinions. No, they’re just my opinions, folks. Take them as what they are. They do real estate content. That’s on the top of their feature list. I would strongly advise you to not take either those. I think on the basic offering, which I said, is $49. I wouldn’t But if you’re just going to use their platform for the actual contact information, follow through, as a traditional CRM should be used. As long as you like the interface, I think you’re going to be okay. It’s just… And what we discussed last week with some of the three offerings out there, when I had my little rant, when I say it’s this confusion between lead generative platforms and traditional CRMs and the total confusion of mixing all this up and dealing with expectations and what you’re really going to get from the system and And long as you really understand what you’re going to get from Wise Agent, I think we’re going to be happy.

 

[00:12:11.360] -Jonathan Denwood

But if you’ve got certain expectations which I think the Wise Agent website, in my opinion, fosters, I think you could be very disappointed.

 

[00:12:32.480] – Robert Newman

Okay. My opinion about most of these platforms, ladies and gentlemen, is pretty simple. And I hate to say this because most of our audience, 2,000 or 3,000 of you that listen to our podcast, listen, real estate agents are not technical people. And unfortunately, I’ve never seen a profession that gets paid on more, except maybe auto shop owners than agents do. You are sold something from every human being under the sun, always promised that it’s going to be the best thing that you’ve ever purchased. Almost invariably what people are doing, like Wise Agent and every other CRM, for the most part, they’re not building anything that is unique or new. What they’re trying to do is build something that’s competent that you will not know whether it’s bleeding edge or not. And then you will simply decide for yourself by using it, in all these tools are a golden handcuffs situation. Why is agent… Once you’re in it, you’ve taken 20 of your hours to learn how to use it, and you’ve got all your data imported into it, how easy is it for you to switch? Because the answer is not, which is why best real estate CRM and best real estate CRM software are two of the most expensive searches in all of real estate marketing, $10.

 

[00:14:00.270] – Robert Newman

52 and $8. 26 for those searches. And why is that? Because real estate agents who are looking to change want to change once. Nobody is a fool. For those of you who are listening to this show, unless you’re going to find a good partner. This is the one thing I’ll say about MailRight or any other system. And I’ve said this before, I’m going to say it again. I don’t know the system nearly well enough to actually show for John, and he gets very frustrated with me at times. But I will tell you something I’m extremely I’m extremely confident in. Having a partner who is still willing to talk to you as a customer, a partner that will address you personally, is worth all the bells and whistles that every system out there has in my opinion, 100 %. The fact that I still can interact with my clients, not as much anymore, but I still do it. John does it. You can get him on the phone, you can talk to him. The answering of these questions adds massively to the perceived value of a technical tool. Having somebody there, you agree with this?

 

[00:15:05.260] -Jonathan Denwood

Well, I think the support element and the training element is an important factor. I don’t think, to be fair to wise agent, they’ve never sold themselves as a direct competitor to real geek, or Sarah Interactive, or somebody of the other more lead generative platforms. I just pointed out, if you go to their feature page, they are pushing the lead generated elements of wise agent, which I haven’t reviewed it for over a year. When I last reviewed it, and I’m only going by my memory, they did have those elements, but they were pitching themselves as a more modern version of top producer. And I had no problem with that. And I still don’t have any problems with it, really, because it’s $49, right?

 

[00:16:14.190] – Robert Newman

Right. And you can build a website out of it, too. It’s basically a Wix for 49 instead of eight, and you can build on top of Wise Agent. And if all of you were like the people listening to the show, if you’re a brand new agent, God, good Lord, yes, look at Wise Agent. Don’t Maybe you don’t even look at me or John. We’re probably too expensive for somebody who’s trying to, let’s say, start a business with the change in their pocket, which both of you and I have done, by the way.

 

[00:16:39.030] -Jonathan Denwood

I’m going to be truthful. I’m looking at doing a product. We have the IDX product, and we have the paid Facebook, and I’m going to keep those two options, but I’m looking at offering a solution at this price level. We have the other two, but the main one is this. Because you got to play in the reality of where you’re playing. Shall we go on to the next one?

 

[00:17:14.490] – Robert Newman

Now, before we go to break. Ladies and gentlemen, John and I are going to take a break, share a smoke, talk about all the strippers that we hired this weekend, and come back to you. We’ll be right back. All right, ladies Ladies and gentlemen, we’re coming back to you after our long break discussing so many things, religion, all the meaning of life, whether or not we have a towel. And here we go. We’re going to talk more about CRMs because we know that ultimately that’s why you’re tuning into the show. It’s episode number 463, for those of you who are keeping track. For those of you who’ve been with us since the beginning of this particular episode, you’ll know that John has another show he’s done 900 episodes on. This is my only podcast. I’m not going to say that’s going to be true forever, but it’s currently my only podcast. We’ve managed to make it two down our list of six because John and I love to hear ourselves talk. We’re going to talk about reEvolve. Once again, my friend, I’m going to let you take this $94 a month monster and talk to people about it.

 

[00:18:22.210] – Robert Newman

Go for it.

 

[00:18:24.360] -Jonathan Denwood

Well, in my opinion, I have no idea why somebody would use this for $94 on this.

 

[00:18:33.500] – Robert Newman

There you go. All right, that’s it from John. Don’t use them. That’s it from me. All right, follow-up, boss, number four on the list. So now this is a beast, and I’m going to take up the torch here because I have a 45 minute long review with these guys. I could not be a stronger fan of the tool. And I used to be an unabashed fanboy of Followed Boss until they sold themselves to Zillow, which they did for half a billion dollars. So all the owners really came out of this massive winners.

 

[00:19:11.630] -Jonathan Denwood

But-lovely, gravy, gravy.

 

[00:19:14.590] – Robert Newman

Right. So do I love this tool the same way? Straight up from just the ownership perspective, because it would require zero for these guys. To, forgive me, I was about ready to curse everybody. These guys to change the Julia and you won’t notice. They may have already done it. I haven’t read through their terms. Here’s the slight change that can happen. The data is secure, but we technically own the rights. That’s what the language will say in legalese. That means that effectively, Trulia and Zillow just went for a play for all of your data. No doubt about it, there’s no other reason for them to make the purchase. They said all All this glorious language about fucking making a better CRM for their agent.

 

[00:20:04.420] -Jonathan Denwood

He started to swear, folks.

 

[00:20:05.670] – Robert Newman

It’s just baloney. It’s a smokescreen. Mark my words. They’re making a play for the data. And so does that make me a fan of follow-up it anymore, not to the same degree. So it’s still the best tool, in my opinion. Best real estate specific tool, not the best tool in general, but absolutely 100 %. And when you compare that you can get a better tool for than you can for 500 or a thousand. It’s better than Real Geeks. It’s better than Sierra Interactive. It’s better than Chime. It’s better-I would disagree with you there a little bit, in that your follow-up boss is a bit of a…

 

[00:20:48.950] -Jonathan Denwood

The bits that follow-up boss does is obviously you are correct. It’s just that the other three products that you’ve just mentioned, as based on our last week’s discussion, they are pitching themselves as a website CRM lead generative system. I around IDX website presence where follow-up doesn’t offer that. It is lead generative in how you use a CRM.

 

[00:21:27.760] – Robert Newman

All right. Then I’ll change my comment, and I’ll say this, the differentiation about whether or not you collect a lead with an IDX tool on a subpar website, and all the websites at this point, including Sierra Interactive, are subpar for the day and time in which they’re launching their sites. I got that from a top account. I didn’t realize how far they’d fallen off, and they’ve fallen off. I’ve been a fanboy of Sierra Interactive also for a super long time, John. So it’s unlike me to say anything negative about one of the leading real estate website developers that’s out there. But they have not kept up with the times. He says his website does not work well on mobile at all, and that’s 69 % of his traffic. That’s not my friend.

 

[00:22:09.570] -Jonathan Denwood

That’s indefensible, really. But get back to follow up, boss. For $69, you are right. So do frame that. Rob’s right. Of everything we’re going to talk about, it is head above all the other products we have talked about or going to talk about in this episode is the clear leader. Would I suggest that you use it or recommend it to you? No. Because it’s owned by Zillow, end of story. In my opinion, there’s a lot of my opinions in this episode, isn’t it? Rumpa, it’s my opinion. I would not want to share my database, my hard-earned contacts, my blood and sweat and just give it to Zillow. No, thank you. It’s just sad. I don’t blame the founders of Follow Up Boss because it’s a fantastic I’ve come for them. I’ve got no criticism of them. We all live in the real world. We all want to do well. There’s nothing wrong with that. You’re not a jerk and a con artist. But It’s now owned by Zillow, and I wouldn’t use it.

 

[00:23:34.770] – Robert Newman

Yeah. Moving on. Next on our list is Top Producer, and I’m going to start us off because, John, there’s literally nothing you could say that’s going to be worse than what I say.

 

[00:23:48.500] -Jonathan Denwood

Okay? Sure, because I’ve got some right comments.

 

[00:23:52.460] – Robert Newman

So Top Producer is one of the oldest CRMs on our list. They literally have been around for so long at the time that they launched, they were one of three top products. There’s 300 real estate CRMs now, to give everybody an understanding. Topreducer has not, really… They have done a few overhauls of their UI and their UX. But here’s one of the things they never did overhaul. Their prices are redonkulous. They have a dated tool and they charge you five times more for it than anybody else will. The level of insanity is- It’s focused off in it. Is beyond comprehension. The only reason that top producer is a business is because some agents are so loathe to learn new tools. They are literally limping along with this dinosaur paying whatever top producer does. Why? Because 20 years ago, top producer was the leading real estate CRM, or one of them, one of the top three for sure. And now they’re still around. Thankfully to all of you real estate professionals out there who would rather go to the dentist and learn a new CRM. John?

 

[00:25:13.200] -Jonathan Denwood

When I was checking it and I was reading posts and doing my research. There you go, Robert, research. It was coming up $120 start, and then I go to their website and their price starts at $179, Rob. Plus other packages. And it’s just unbelievable, isn’t it?

 

[00:25:44.760] – Robert Newman

Their I have not kept up with the times. There’s so much competition coming up from the bottom up. John included, by the way, everybody. John included so much competition because more can be done with technology for less, from the development side, from everything. It doesn’t make it easier for John to spend 100 grand building out a tool. It’s not fun, it’s not pleasant, and it takes a lot of time. But at the same time, once the tool is done, technology is advanced in such a way as like, I don’t need as many servers. I don’t need as much as anything in terms of technical infrastructure to run an SAS as I did, let’s say, even 10 years ago. And now, but top producer doesn’t pay any attention to that. Why? They can’t lower the prices to their existing account base. You are taking on a pricing metric that made sense 20 years ago, it no longer does in any way, shape, or form. God, don’t do it. That’s it. Told you it wouldn’t be worse than me. Now, this next one is completely different from me. I am going to keep talking because I do want to say something.

 

[00:26:57.140] – Robert Newman

I think that the Bafini method and their training program is one of the best things happening in real estate, in my opinion. I have met so many agents on the telephone that have gone through their coaching system and it has made a vast difference in their career. I have lost count. They might very well be the only real estate marketing and coaching company where I can say that definitively without question. They have a tool that goes along with their training, very similar to what Ricky Caruth has. My opinion about it is, heck, it may not be the best or the worst CRM, who the hell knows? I haven’t looked at it, but I will tell you this, if they’re going to train you on a tool, buy their tool. Buy their tool because you’ll be in a class. You’ll have many other people learning the tool. The learning through osmosis is a powerful thing when you’re using coaching systems. Go ahead, John. That’s my thing.

 

[00:27:48.470] -Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, the actual tool is not bad. If you’re just going to use it for a traditional sales-orientated CRM CRM that has terminology and flows that are Pacific for your industry, it’s certainly a damn lot better than Topproducer. And you can just use the tool. I’m going by their website for $49. The only thing, I don’t know if this is correct, I’m surmising this. The only problem is if you just try and buy the tool and start using it, they’re going to bombard you with sales calls, I would imagine. I would imagine they’re going to be over you like a load of flies on a dead bit of meat. But But also the other side of it is that I actually… My old co-host before you, he was a Bafini trained agent, and we interviewed the fact that Bafini himself and his brother. I know about their training methodologies, and I think they’re definitely more of the more respectable side of real estate agent training coaching companies. So that’s what I got What are you saying about it. So as long as you know, if you buy the tool, they’re going to send a lot of email, and they’re going to ring you up a few times and that.

 

[00:29:40.180] -Jonathan Denwood

And I’m not saying that. It’s totally bad to take some of their training But if you’re more experienced and you don’t feel you need their training, I actually think they’re tall. But it’s just about relationship-based and sales-based with a nice interface, and it’s not too It’s a bit complicated, and it’s actually compared to some of these others, I don’t actually… It’s a bit of a gem, really. A little bit of a gem, really. As long as you know what you’re buying. It’s not a website. It’s not an IDX website. It doesn’t provide canned campaigns for Facebook, and trying to manage a Facebook advertising account with no experience and blah, blah, blah. It doesn’t try and be those. In some ways, I think it’s a more honest platform. Does this making in any sense, Rob?

 

[00:30:46.430] – Robert Newman

Yeah, it does. I love everything you have to say about it. I knew walking into this that you added them there because you and I have had a lot of positive experiences. People have been trained by them. The idea that they build their business off of is a solid sales mechanic. They oftentimes are very focused, don’t seem to pretend to be something that they’re not. As a result, they’ve got more positive outcomes of any coaching training company that I know of that I’ve dealt with, including Tom Ferry. Mike Ferry actually does have a very good track record, but only for a certain type of salesperson. Having said all that, we’re going to move on to the last on the list. John is going to take this up as well because he’s a user and he added them twice. So he really wants to talk about this company.

 

[00:31:37.050] -Jonathan Denwood

Clickup. Well, linked to our last show, I think if you follow up, boss, is a superb product. Well, it’s not perfect, but compared… And it’s just a shame, but I could never recommend it anymore. But if you’re not bothered that you’re, in my opinion, even though they would deny this, As long as you’re not worried that your data is going to be shared with Zillow, go ahead. It’s a great platform. But the others, apart from Brian Perfini’s platform. I think a lot of the others have the problem is that you could just use ClickUp and just use their free template, Design for Re-Estate Agents. You’re probably going to be quite happy. That’s why I’ve added it to the last thing, because they got a free product ClickUp. It integrates a lot better into a WordPress website and anything else you want. I see that as a problem for these other platforms.

 

[00:32:53.060] – Robert Newman

Copy you. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to do a little bit of bonus content, and I’m going to catch John off guard because I’m going to give a little bit of a history lesson here, which is relevant to the conversations we’re having, our RE, follow up, it’s ownership, and Zillow. Here’s the history lesson, because most of us have a memory that is minutes old. I’m not even sure that John was around and focused on the Zillow. Big companies have a tendency to do stuff like Zillow just did. They just their CEO. The previous CEO was notorious for shifting his view so much. By the way, let me give everybody an example. Zillow and all the companies before them got their momentum an idea behind a service called Listing Syndication. And every person that was asking for MLS Listings was telling those MLS companies that they were not going to compete against the MLS, that all they were going to do was promote the agent’s listing for free. And indeed, they did that for 10 years. Zillow and Trulia and all those others, they came along and said the same thing, We will promote your listing for free.

 

[00:34:08.690] – Robert Newman

That’s how they all got started. How else do you think they got these guys to send them their listings? Just out of goodness of their heart. Of course not. They said, Hey, we’re going to promote, we’re going to invest a billion dollars into a website, get the traffic that you can’t, and promote the listing for you for free. What fool would say no to that, right? But you can all see the punchline overwhelming. Then they started to advertise against those listings. Then what did they say? Because obviously, agents were outraged. They go, Hey, we don’t like you doing that. We don’t want to give you our listings anymore. They said, Oh, no, no, no, no. We’re We’re going to compete against you. This is for a different buyer, different person than what you’re trying to serve. These buyers just want to look online, and you’re still going to get all the appointments with boots on the ground. We’re not trying to compete against you. We’re just doing a little advertising thing over here and a couple of people They won the lawsuits because they were already a very big company, and we didn’t hear any more about it.

 

[00:35:05.720] – Robert Newman

But then, Zillow said, because some people started to say, Wow, you’ve got 40 or 50% of all traffic related to home searches. What a bitch it would be if you decided to be a real estate company against us, the realtors, to which Zillow said, We will never compete against realtors directly. They fucking lied. They absolutely had that plan on the books. I know some people that worked over there, and they just said what they needed to say to calm everybody’s anger. And then, of course, they opened up another division owned by the same company, but it directly competed against agents. And then on top of all that, what loophole did they find next? They then looked around and said, hey, You know what? For all of those of you who are upset about us competing with you directly, we’re going to come out with a new plan. You’re going to love it. It’s going to be great. I’m channeling Trump here. It’s the best plan that’s ever been made. Here’s what it’s called, Zillowlex. You know what Zillowlex does? They still qualify the leads mostly the same way. But what they do with Zillowlex is when they send you the lead, they say, Hey, $100 a month, signs you up for Zillowlex.

 

[00:36:27.450] – Robert Newman

Awesome, right? You don’t have to pay us $1,000 a month for advertising. But you do have to give us 30% of the deal when you close it. And that’s low. They’ve moved that deal, that percentage, up to 30 to 45% of the deal, and they’re aiming at a 50/50 split. That means effectively, ladies and gentlemen, 10% of the realtors in the US already work for Zillow right now. They are effectively competing. And what’s more, they make more money than your broker does. They make more money than everybody does. They’ve just done it better because whoever controls the lead flow controls the real estate business. Now, you would think, with all that I’ve just told you, that that would be enough, that over that 10 or 15 year history, that you would be, Okay, Robert, we get your point. But they did four other things, too, that were just insanely outside the margins of what they said they would do. Number one, they hired real estate agents. They hired top agents and brokers from all of the company and absolutely bribed them. They made them a Zillow board of trustees. They took influencers, people directly out of the industry, hired them on board their company, and then got people that were adamantly opposed to Zillow to come out and say, We’re no longer opposed.

 

[00:37:49.730] – Robert Newman

I do not know what these people are getting paid, but it’s an extraordinary amount of money. I know that from hearing rumors about it, and now these voices for the real estate profession get up there and chill like lobbyists for Zillow. I’m not going to go into the other things. Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you something that I hope you really hear because you heard it here first. There has never been a company that has acted so maliciously against the profession that it supposedly serves. They are not your friends. They are 100% your competitors. Every single one of you that’s listening to this show that’s buying a Zillow lead, you are funding your top competitor. You are telling them, not only compete against me, beat me. Please, here’s my money. And you justify it because it’s an easy lead to get. I get it. I understand the easy way is always a way that’s so appealing. But God, please, everybody, you are dancing with the devil under the pale sunlight, and the jig is going to stop. I promise you. There’s coming a time… They already have beat everybody in search. There’s coming a time in which they will simply put most of you out of business.

 

[00:39:05.840] -Jonathan Denwood

It wasn’t for Google being more significant because for all their dominance of the real estate trade, for Google, they’re still a tiny bear. They’re like fleas compared to Google. Google dominates local searches, and they dominate to a certain degree. But it wasn’t for them; it would have been fleeing for Google. It would have been, and they would have achieved what they wanted. But that’s the reality. I don’t know if you agree that the only problem for them is, yeah, they’re big, but for Google, they’re nothing.

[00:39:47.330] – Robert Newman

Correct. That’s why we have opened up a whole local division, and I talk about locals incessantly. It is the way to traffic and eyeballs for the average realtor, and it does beat Zillow in many categories. Zillow locks up the home for-sale category. Regardless of what, Google would have to change its algorithm to get Zillow not to be dominant, and they have no desire to because, like every other major corporation out there, Zillow pays the green mail to… I mean, the budget for Zillow is millions upon millions of dollars a month to Google because they advertise against their own name. It’s always been a frustration for businesses, myself included. You can target inbound RM as a keyword and advertise against it. I would have to pay the same amount in the sponsor search results. It’s my company. It’s nuts. It doesn’t matter. All right, ladies and gentlemen, that’s it. We’re out of time. John, I hope I think… I’m so sorry for the ramp. It’s been a great show. It allowed me to say something that worked with the content that we were doing.

[00:40:47.500] – Robert Newman

This is our point about you handing your data over to Zillow. Follow-up, boss, is a necessary evil, but I would seek a reason to eliminate them immediately. I might even invest more a more complicated tool like HubSpot, which didn’t make John’s list, but I use HubSpot. It’s a good tool. It isn’t easy.

[00:41:07.630] -Jonathan Denwood

It’s not real- It’s just sad to say that. But it’s the reality.

[00:41:13.080] – Robert Newman

Yeah, it is. And they paid a hefty penny, but it’s not hefty to them. Half a billion, okay, a fraction of their bottom line. They’re still losing money. They don’t care. Just like Amazon did, because they’re playing the same game that Amazon did, they’re acquiring, buying up everybody, making moves until they decide to say, Hey, we’ve officially taken over a vast majority of the real estate business; nobody can fight them. That’s exactly what Amazon did with the e-commerce and shipping business. They just kept losing money, kept losing money, kept losing money, and then all of a sudden, they’re making a trillion dollars a year. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening to my rant. You can go to inbound if you’d like to hear more on my rant. Com. Look at my services or About page; you can listen to me rant as much as you want. I usually talk about SEO, marketing lead generation, how to market yourself, etc. And lots of that content is on my website for free. You will learn a lot. I guarantee it. Jon, how would you like people to reach out to you?

[00:42:13.140] -Jonathan Denwood

Shiva, thanks, Rob. Let’s go to mail-right.com, and you can sign up for a free chat with me. What could you ask for? I’d love to chat with you. Back over to you, Rob.

[00:42:24.630] – Robert Newman

All right. John and I would like to thank the shows’ sponsors today, MailRight and InboundRAM. Com. We appreciate your patronage of the companies we both own and everybody listening to the show. Could you take us offline?

 

038: Good Quality Photography With Special Guest Greg McDaniels
038: Good Quality Photography & Video is Important! 1

We discuss with our special guest Greg McDaniels the importance of quality photography connected to being a successful real estate Read more

039: Why Agents Need To Blog Regularly
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Agents need to do more than blogging to get results in 2016. We discuss this during this show with our two Read more

040: We Have Special Guest Greg McDaniels
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041: Personal Agent Photography With Preston Zeller
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Personal agent photography is really important but usually semi-forgotten. We have a great guest "Preston Zeller" on the show who recently Read more

Posted in Podcast | Comments Off on #463 – The Mail-Right – Best Real Estate Agent CRM Software in 2025