The real estate market is competitive. You need to stand out. Having a clear understanding of what is happening economically will give you a competitive advantage.
Yet, how does a real estate agent excel at serving their clients and have time to understand financial market news and the implications to the real estate industry?
Meet Jason Shulick, the founder of Fiscal Newsletters, a quick weekly digest of the most important financial news that impacts real estate and the economy. Agents can choose to receive these for their own viewing or they can choose to have these reports branded and sent out to their client base on their behalf.
Tune in to learn more.
2:38- Imagine if you were to have this kind of conversation with clients
5:19- The stuff they don’t teach you in school that will make you financially smart
7:00- Why this is so critical in our market RIGHT NOW and a simple script
12:14- People are willing to pay for value and here’s what to say to demonstrate that
13:33- What to say when people say “Will you do it for less?”
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Justin Stoddart
So the big question is this: how do we those of us in the real estate industry, with crazy amounts of ambition, how do we think bigger than the building of our own empires? How do we simultaneously seek success AND significance, income AND impact? My name is Justin Stoddart, and this is the Think Bigger Real Estate Show.
Justin Stoddart
Welcome back to The Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I am your host, Justin Stoddart. Today we are talking about differentiation. It’s a very competitive market out there right now. There are fewer sellers than what real estate agents and consumers would like. So how do you stand out in a crowded market? How do you stay top of mind and in a way that the consumer believes that you’re actually going to be able to deliver a better result than the next guy? That’s today’s topic?
Justin Stoddart
Before I introduce today’s guests, that’s an expert on this. I want to remind you that inside of the think bigger Real Estate Group on Facebook, we go deeper on this conversation, you only learn so much by listening, you learn best when you start to engage. And that is where we go to allow you to begin to apply these topics and go deeper on how you can implement them into your business.
Justin Stoddart
Today’s guest His name is Jason Shulick, he is a returning guest on the show I had him back because I feel like now more than ever, agents need to know how to differentiate. Jason, thanks for coming on the show today, my friend. I appreciate it.
Jason Shulick
Justin. Thanks.
Justin Stoddart
Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit, Jason about, first of all, maybe your background, and then we’ll get into a little bit about what you do and how you help agents. So obviously, in the past, I know you spent a number of years really going in and taking financially distressed companies and fixing them, right, putting them back out into the market. I would imagine that in that process, you had to really understand what was happening, not just at the micro level, like their economics, but also the macro level, what’s happening at a global scale that affects this particular company, how we position it, to where it has the best chance of succeeding and succeeding big Is that true?
Jason Shulick
That is correct, you know, we would look at stuff from you know, what’s happening with the economy to some maybe stock market, depending on what’s going on there. Because you do have different fluctuations in both the economy and the stock market, that may affect what’s going on with the business. Because you’re going to look at your supply chain and see how that’s affecting you, and how you’re going to manage your business, especially in a distressed business, because you’re dealing with very little money, and you’re having to fix it and then sell it off, because you want to see how much money you generate from the company to get the lenders and all the equity people their money back in order to go ahead and get good returns.
Justin Stoddart
Interesting. So you obviously study the markets at a very deep level, right? You know, what’s, what’s happening locally? What’s happening, happening nationally, globally? And how all those things interact, to set up an environment that’s either conducive for success or not conducive for success for a business. Right?
Jason Shulick
Correct. Well,
Justin Stoddart
Interesting. So that skill set again, I think, although real estate agents might be saying to themselves, like, thankfully, I don’t have to do that kind of work. However, I want to, I want to, I want to pose this possibility for you that Imagine if, when you speak the agent next to you, all they do is they put out recipes. Now nothing against the recipes. I know some of the agents out there that are listening to this might take offense to that. But here’s my point. If you’re all about cooking, and you’re like masterful at that, then you should be the recipe person, right? But if you’re not, and you simply took a template from the person down the hall, because they did recipes, and you could care less about cooking recipes, or football schedules, right? We think about all the ways that real estate agents stay in contact with their people. And they may say like, I care less about football, but my clients like it. I think we’re moving past that era in real estate where agents that are succeeding at a high level can’t just use template information that they can’t that doesn’t actually move the needle for the client when it comes to things financial. Now, I still think you need to be very relevant when it comes to helping them live a good life and have a good lifestyle. But if everything you’re putting out there is unrelated to their money unrelated to this being the potentially the largest buying and selling decision and transaction of their life, I think you’re becoming disconnected with the value that people actually care about, right, or the value that really moves the needle form in such a big way that you’ll be referred to people. And you’ll people always come back for you. Any thoughts on that? Jason,
Jason Shulick
I totally agree with that. And that’s kind of something why I designed what I did with This Week in Money is that, you know, not only from transitioning from companies, but transition, just people in general, most people I’ve noticed, over time, have a hard time understanding money. Unfortunately, they don’t teach you anything about the stuff in school, you know, what’s happening, what it means and how it can affect your money. So I had a bunch of real estate people actually come to me say, this is a great tool for us to use here in Phoenix, because we actually get a lot smarter from the information you provide us. And if we’re smarter, that means we can educate our buyers a lot better. And we’re looking out for the best interest in the long haul, and everything that’s going to affect their transaction, such as now. I mean, obviously, there’s no supply. So people are paying for the nose right now. And everybody’s just trying to find a house. Well, that may not be the best thing is just to go buy any house just because you can afford a house. I mean, there’s a lot of panic buying going on right now. And if you don’t do your due diligence on a house and understand what’s what all entails in the house, and you know, doing inspections, everything, you could really screw your client, because you say buy this house, and it’s got a whole lot of problems and your clients like I need to buy it right now, because we’re at the top bid. And that’s, that’s the wrong way to look at it. And so if you’re financially smart, you can go ahead and advise your client saying, here’s this. And this and also lends to down the road is if your client is happy with their buying experience and understanding of your knowledge of financial aspects that help them, they’re probably more than willing to go ahead and refer you to friends and family that want to buy a house in the future or actually want to sell a house, which is the key thing right now is who can get their hands on a house to sell because there’s so little inventory out there.
Justin Stoddart
Yeah, we really are at an interesting time where right job report last week was was a quarter of what they expected it to be concerns about inflation, people, like you said are paying crazy amounts of money for homes, you know, far beyond even what they’re appraising for, and they’re doing it without contingencies. And I think it’s important that people bring some rationality, right into this equation, that maybe this is not a bubble, maybe you are getting the best deal you’re going to have at some point. But wouldn’t it be nice for you as an agent to be able to speak intelligently now, you’re not going to be able to foresee the future, nor is anybody, but at least if you can digest several key talking points, right, key kind of indicators as to here’s what’s happening economically. And I think you could, you could paraphrase it, like if I were a client of an agent that’s listening to this today. And they were to say, look, nobody knows exactly what’s around the corner financially. However, here’s what we do know. And you were to say, point A, point B, and point C, and all of these things affect your purchase. I mean, just that alone, all of a sudden, I went from like, oh, you’re not a part time realtor, you’re not a hobby realtor, you’re not even just a good realtor, like you’re a great realtor, you just separated yourself from everybody else. Because you actually understand the numbers behind the economy and how that affects my purchase. Right? Then they take in all that information, bringing it back to, and here’s where I think this applies to your situation buying in this neighborhood, in this community in this city in this area at this time, like, blown away, right. And again, it doesn’t take that much. That’s the point that I want to own help people to understand that you don’t need to have an MBA or a doctorate in some sort of financial, you know, degree in order to be able to speak this way, right. But you do need to leverage the network of somebody who does somebody who has actually can go look at the markets at a macro level like that and and simplify it down and teach you on a regular basis. And I think that’s a lot of what you’ve done, Jason.
Justin Stoddart
Well, we’ll get to that for anybody that’s wondering, like, what’s the takeaway from the show, we’re going to give you a very key takeaway, that’s going to allow you to actually have a very simple tool that will allow you to become that professional that I just described, allows you to convert look your clients in the eye and say, Look, nobody knows exactly what’s gonna happen. But here’s what we do know. And that’s something really powerful you’ve created. But anyway, any thoughts, Jason, more about kind of this, this evolution of the agent of not being just, oh, we’re gonna use this agent because like, we were friends in high school, right? Or, because they, you know, they pop by cute things by my house, like this. Like we’re moving to a level now where where people are expecting in order to pay you what real estate agents have traditionally been paid. People aren’t expecting that they get a little bit more for their money than just a friend. Would you agree with that?
Jason Shulick
Correct. You know, things that I look at it from a real estate agent. Now. They’re like, they’re they’re professional. They’re just like a lawyer or CPA or something like that. They’re very specialized and what they do and you need the people that need to understand the most information out there because you want the person that can go ahead and lead you down the right direction is you’re just not going to pick somebody off the street and say, Hey, you know what, I’m going to go ahead and use you. If you go ahead and interview somebody, as a lawyer or CPA, you want to know that they understand exactly what they’re talking about, and how it applies to your situation. Because you just don’t want any CPA for any specific reason, you have a specific need that you need for a CPA, such as tax breaks, or where to live, however, you want to go get that specialized person. So if you’re a real estate agent, you want to be able to separate yourself from the rest of the pack saying, Hey, I have all this information that I’m fully aware of now, I can go ahead and tell you how this is potentially going to affect you down the road. And this is the best option that you’re gonna have based upon the information and you need to go ahead and make the decision. But I’m gonna guide you down that route with all the information that I’m now aware of.
Justin Stoddart
Yeah, I totally agree with that. You know, I think the reason why the red fins of the world that choose any agent off of Zillow why the discount brokerages have have, even I buyers have risen in in in market share, right and in my marketplace. You know, they took I think $38 million in GCI just this past year, like that was one eye buyer in our market. So it’s like, it’s not really affected me it is, and they’re just getting started. And it’s like, we should not be fearful that that you know that all agents are going to be obsolete, only the ones that only open doors, right? Only the ones that are not bringing real value, like the days are gone, in my opinion of well paid real estate agents that don’t provide superior value, where your people are just choosing you because they like you, right or because they know you people are expecting more value, there’s just too much money at stake for people to choose somebody because simply it’s like the realtor that you know, yet we run into this same problem of like, you can be better. But if nobody knows it, because you’re not Top of Mind, that’s a problem too, right? I know, you know, you’re aware of that we’ve discussed that you’ve built a tool around that tell us a little bit about how much of it does go into that being valuable number one, and number two, being able to stay top of mind with that value.
Jason Shulick
So if you’re valuable, you can kind of drive more and more insured yourself in a higher price. People are willing to pay for value, you know, most people are going to go out, you know, don’t have like three or four options. It’s not saying you’re always gonna go with the cheapest option, because the cheapest option may not be the best option, you may want to pay a little more because you’re going to get a lot more out of it the end. So you doing something like that brings a whole different, you know, talking points to your client saying, hey, I’ve done this, I know my my clients, I know my area, this is why I can bring you to both sides. And so if you bring them an extra $100,000, they may be willing to pay you an extra $10,000, because you just brought them an extra 90 grand net. So looking at that, having that knowledge and everything going forward, only helps the professional get more market share. And you’re right about the stuff with you know, you got all the technology and stuff that’s going to start weeding some people out. But the people that really know what their know their information, they’re not going to be overtaken by technology, because technology can only do so much and knowledge is not going to go ahead and negotiate your deals and stuff to get the biggest bang for the buck. When you when you go to sell your house, especially in this day and age. I mean, this is a seller’s paradise. I mean, they can pretty much write whatever the number they want them to contract and get what they need.
Justin Stoddart
So, you know, one of my clients when approached by anybody who says, will you do it for less? Like, will you will you shave a half or 1%? off your fee? You know their responses? I think you’re asking the wrong question. The question you should be asking isn’t can I save a little bit of money on the fee, but it’s Can I hire somebody that will help me to either save or make 10s if not $100,000 by being an expert in their craft, and really understanding the numbers. That’s where all of a sudden, competition becomes irrelevant when you can not only say that, but back it up with results because you understand the numbers and perform at a high level. Now, like there is no competition, you are rare air, and people will line up to want to work with you. Because you have a value proposition that’s not comparable to the typical agent is as an agent. You don’t want to take every sales transaction on because sometimes it’s not worth your time and stuff like that if you know your value. You know what you bring in, you’re going to attract those type of buyers and those types of sellers that you want to manage. I mean, people here but the area that I live in, you know, there’s certain ones that are dealing with $4 million homes and more. They’re not flashing the ones are 200,000 because they know they can get the demand for the four lane because they’re the experts. So they’re like I’m not for everybody. That’s how you will kind of want to differentiate yourself and being able to do that is being intellectually loaded with the right information, and being able to speak about your thoughts. That’s Well said. Now, on all this topic, again, I promised that at the end, people would have a concept of like, Okay, what do with this, like, I agree that I need to be better. And I agree that I need to communicate that value better. I love what you’ve created. Jason. That’s why you’re back on the show, if I’m gonna put a link here in the comments.
Jason Shulick
It’s called fiscalnewsletters.com, talk a little bit about what it is, and how it helps us to achieve this differentiation. And Top of Mind-ness that we’ve been talking about so far. So I’ve created this news weekly newsletter, it’s called this weekend money, the good, the bad, the ugly. And basically, what I do is I go ahead and summarize the top stories from the finance industry every single week, and gives the overview of saying, This is what happened. This is what it means. And this is a potentially could affect your money. So pay attention to this point down the road, and kind of like the buffer or the the person that goes ahead and sorts through all the news to say, okay, what’s really important? What do people really need to see? How do they need to understand it? As I say, go back to one of my friends, they don’t they don’t understand money, because nobody would talk about it. So it’s kind of looking at, okay, what does this information mean, to me in the real world. So I go ahead and do that every week, picking out stories that are good, bad, and ugly. And I go ahead and I’ve created this letter where as an individual, you can go ahead and subscribe to it. And what I’ll do is it’s got the top section, which is the good bad, the ugly. And then starting then around the first of June, I’m adding a section where I’m going to go ahead and deep dive and do a big analysis on one, two stocks. Because my current readers like we would love to have this information so that we can understand what the stock market if we want to do some long term investing. There’s also a version of this for the professionals that want to go ahead and get more visibility. So the clients not only gain intellectual knowledge, they can go ahead and sign up for it based upon the number of emails, they want to send out a different price level. But they also have the option of excluding the stock part. And the thing that I did with this is in order for these people to gain more visibility, because real estate is a relationship driven business, and you need as much visibility as much publicity can never get enough of it. And I’ve had a couple of real estate agents come in and say, you know, I missed out on one to three deals a year, because I’m out of sight out of mind, this tool allows you to go ahead and send this out to all your clients. It allows you to branded as your so you put your photo on there, your logo for your company, your contact information in the sketch your social media accounts, which you can upload Twitter, your LinkedIn, Facebook, in your Instagram accounts, and people can go ahead and click on this every week and read this stuff. And it’s just a good tutorial. And so when they see your name in your picture every week, it just gives you brand brand new visibility that you didn’t have maybe clients, you hadn’t asked him in the news for months, and allows you to go ahead and reach out to him very easily say, hey, so you’re reading this, by the way, are you in the market for selling or buying your house, because I’d love to really help you out. And you know, it’s the same thing with mortgage brokers, they have an opportunity to go ahead and reach out the past clients say, I can help you out now because they know who’s been reading these newsletters and say, Hey, we loved you with this, we can get you a new loan with this, we can save you $500 a month, it was a call. So it’s really about the visibility and the intellectual issue that people can gain knowledge and stuff. And they can go ahead and speak intellectually and then grow their brain.
Justin Stoddart
Yeah, it’s great. So again, two options, right, you receive the newsletter yourself, you have the talking points, copy and paste bits and pieces, or what Jason’s saying is that there’s another option that allows them to do it for you, here’s my list, send this to them every week. Now, people might be saying an email every week, that sounds like a lot. I’m gonna tell you the people that I follow in business, I get daily emails from them. And you might be saying like, holy cow, I couldn’t handle that. I only handle it from people that who are who bring me value. Like when I see that name, I jumped to it, I want to read it. Why? Because it’s valuable. So for you to send out an email once a week, I’m just telling you in this day and age where it’s it’s noisy, right? And when you say I don’t wanna be part of the noise, okay, then you’re gonna get left behind, people aren’t gonna remember you. Okay, and this is just one way in which you can up your game without saying like, I don’t have time and capacity to draft one email a week to my client base, you don’t have to. This is a way for you to do it. And differentiate yourself as being a true financial professional. Understanding the fact and relaying and conveying the fact that you understand that you’re dealing with people’s most important potential purchase transaction of their life. Like when you start to send other information, you start to brand yourself as somebody who really understands money, and that that’s one of your value propositions is being different in the sense that you’re not just the friendly realtor that drops by cute gifts once in a while, right? Now you couple that if that’s your thing, you couple that with this financial strategy, I think it’s really powerful. I’m not down anything that’s working for anybody. I’m just saying, if that’s all that you’re doing, and you have, really you’re not branding yourself as being a financial expert, I think you’re going to start to lose business to those that are. This has been super insightful. Jason, any final comments, as we wrap up here, thoughts that you have, that you really want people to kind of understand about either what you’ve created, and or how they can apply it? Or any closing thoughts?
Jason Shulick
Well, the thing that I just want to say is I wrote this letter for people that just don’t understand why standards make their lives better to make. So they can go ahead and make wiser decisions personally with their own money, not only instructing people that they may have clients and help them out. And that this letter also helps professionals provide value to their clients, because everybody that I’ve talked to know people that read the letter now, load the information that’s there. So it’s providing a diet to because they’re all like, I didn’t understand this, I didn’t know this before, and you know what you’re sending to them. It’s very cost effective, it helps differentiate yourself, it just creates more visibility for you not only bringing more information and knowledge to yourself. So it’s really about helping everybody out. And just trying to make sure that everybody has time. It’s only about a 10 to 15 minute reading morning, on a Monday morning or so like that. So it doesn’t really consume a lot of your time supposed to be quick at that point. That’s why
Justin Stoddart
I love it. It’s great stuff. Jason, that’s what you’re a big thinker, is you’re helping elevate the value proposition of real estate agents, especially at a time when the economy has a lot of question marks, people have a lot of question marks about the economy. And yet at the same time, real estate agents are wanting to differentiate like what a perfect combination, people have questions about financial items, like financial matters. And the also, the real estate agents need to differentiate you couple those two together. That’s what Jason’s packaged up for you here and allowed you to differentiate through stuff that people care about that that matters a lot when people are paying over asking price as much as they are. It matters a lot. This is important stuff, people. And I’m grateful that Jason, you’ve spent the time created the expertise, taken your years and years of history and brought it into our industry. It’s awesome. Thank you so much.
Justin Stoddart
Yeah, my final request of every listener here today is it’s time folks. It’s time to go think bigger. I want to thank you for tuning in to this episode of the thick bigger real estate show. If you found value here, I asked three things. Number one, give us a review. Number two, go to Facebook and in groups search, Think Bigger Real Estate and apply to join. Here you will find a community of big thinking professionals that will help you grow your income, your independence and your impact.
Justin Stoddart
And my third request is Go Think Bigger!
Justin Stoddart
going, No, no, please.
Jason Shulick
So as you say, as you know, when we’re looking at all those factors, I mean, you’re looking at political, you’re looking at geopolitical you’re looking at, you know, as I said, financial here, you’re just looking at a whole different factors in order for companies to survive in something that we can get into is that, you know, while you’re at these companies, we always noticed that they were always data rich, but information for and you know, you may have the data inside the companies, but you need to be able to understand what that information says, and then pair it with the economic realities of where you’re at. Just for instance, like last year, when COVID hit, I mean, you had to look at a totally different perspective of life, for the company that we were running it as a as an aerospace company and say, okay, what’s going to happen? I mean, we’re building parts for airplanes, clearly, you’re not going to do air travel during COVID? And how’s that going to affect the outcome of this company? That was the stress? And what kind of return can you get if you go ahead and sell it at that point?