Too many real estate agents work so hard to get referrals. Yet, the quantity and frequency of the referrals they get from their sphere and clients do not keep up with their needs and wants. Today I share the reality that there are referrals right under your nose, why you can’t see them and what to do to start to get them flowing into your business.
FULL TRANSCRIPTION
Welcome back, everybody very excited to be with you, like, thrilled to be with you. Back in my home office after spending almost a week, I guess it was a week out and about meeting so many wonderful people teaching and being taught learning with so many wonderful people. That was a great experience, very excited to come back and share some things that I learned. And much of what I learned is around this topic that there are referrals, literally right under your nose. Now, what do we say they’re right under your nose? What like, why did we say that line? It’s because you can’t see them. But they’re so close. Today, I’m dedicating the next 30 minutes to helping you recognize this and start down the path of seeing like, what’s right under your nose, what’s right there, I’m thrilled to have this opportunity to spend some time with you. So bring your questions if you have them. And know at the end, I’m going to extend an invitation for you and I have a conversation so that I can coach you directly for 15 short minutes, and really get your questions answered as to how you can take the next step. So again, if by chance, you can’t make it all the way to the end, put down in the comments, let’s chat. And I’ll set up 15 minutes with you. I’ll give you my all for 15 minutes on helping you take the next step of uncovering what is right under your nose that has the ability to absolutely change your life. Stay with us folks is gonna be an awesome 30 minutes.
Let’s get rocking and rolling here. Let me just begin by saying I have discovered some things. So this past week, I spent some time in sunny Arizona, and I was able to emcee and speak in an event for a group of which I’m very fond of it’s channel junkies. For those of you that are familiar with Jesse Jackson, they had to come down and be a part of their events. And while I was there, I discovered a couple of things. Number one is every agent in the business wants more business, as I’ve described before is that anytime you’re coming into a market that is either flattening or shrinking, if you do what you’ve always done, you will follow the market, right you will go up with the market, you go down with the market. And you and I both know that when the market is flattening, we don’t necessarily want to income to flat and when the market tightens we don’t necessarily want our income to tight we want to be able to continue to grow. Not only did I learned that, but I also learned that sunny Arizona is a lovely place. For those of us that are from cloudy Oregon. I also had the opportunity to spend some time back where my wife and I met for those of you that are friends with me on Facebook, you saw how we
inadvertently reenacted some of our initial encounters. My wife and I. So unbeknownst to me, I dropped off our rental car, and my wife was coming to pick me up, she drove down to Utah, I flew into Utah from Arizona. And I said, You’re not gonna believe where? What’s right next door to this rental car drop off site. She said, What is it so this wingers and I pause and I almost like, teared up a little bit waiting for her reaction. She was Oh wingers it was our first date. We weren’t even like, romantically interested in each other at the time. We’re just friends to go out on a date. But it’s so funny. We had my oldest daughter there with us. And she was like, darling, she was taking she went outside the restaurant and put my phone right up to the window and was taking pictures of us in sight. So if we’re not friends on Facebook, go see that you might find some, some fun things for you as you come up on certain milestones in your marriage. And with those relationships that matter a lot to you. But it was a great experience. This image that you see here in this slide is actually of a track meet or nice computed in the state track meet. She was hoping to get first but she got third place in the high hurdles. But before I get said, I can enjoy the beautiful mountains of Provo, Utah, it was it was a very, very fun experience. While in Utah, I discovered not only do people not want their incomes flattening or shrinking during a tightening market, but they actually want to grow. And in addition to that they have the ability to grow. It’s actually right. Like it’s within reach, I guess I consulted with agents, both in bigger presentations where I was presenting, as well as after the fact, I realized that the ways that they’re going about getting business is not serving them well. It’s not scalable. In fact, it’s underperforming. Now you might be able to relate to this to where the ways and means by which I go about getting business is not performing as well as it used to or it’s not performing as well as I want it to had conversation with the people that were that that do cold market prospecting. They suggested. We used to get people to answer the phone, people are not answering the phone anymore. Have other people that are very focused on warm market. They’re like the people who have referred us in the past. They just don’t have as many referrals because many of their friends are happy where they’re at or they’re really happy with their mortgage or And they’re unhappy with the alternative the options of moving. And so like those things that we always used to rely upon, are not working like they used to. So this was a big takeaway from me in my time in Utah. Just as important as that, right, the thing that I recognize is that we are significantly underperforming in our businesses, and therefore, cheating ourselves and those that rely upon us. Okay. Now, this isn’t because you’re not good enough. But it’s because the methodologies that you’ve been using used to work better than they’re working right now, if you’ve heard me speak in person, you’ve maybe heard me share this example that if you had the best phonebook ad, in 1975, where you would actually create the brand AAA Realty. So you’d be at the front of the phonebook. Like that’s not going to serve you well, right now, folks. And now that’s a drastic example. The reality is we’re moving into a time when the sources that we used to rely upon may not be delivering to us at the same level that we need them to. And so it’s important for us to not just accept less, but to say, what more can I do? Or even better, what better can I do in order to have regular warm referrals flowing into my business, day after day, week after week, month after month? So we’re going to cover today? So why is it that we’re underperforming? Well, I believe, first and foremost, is that we are missing out on so many referrals that are right under our nose. So I’m gonna share with you an example here just a little bit of a conversation that I had, just recently, just recently with a CPA friend of mine, at how many opportunities he has, in any given week, or month, where he’s uncovering the fact that people are going to be needing a real estate agent. And he’s not referring like it’s just and you might very well know this CPA, some of you might actually know him personally. Others of you may know somebody just like that. And as I have this conversation with him, he said, Yeah, I’m not referring that to an agent for some very specific reasons. And then I said, What if an agent were to do this, this and this, he was like, that would make it really easy for me to refer, in fact that make it hard for me to not refer. Did you hear that? Let me say that more times, it would be easy for me to refer them it’d be so natural and normal for me to refer that real estate agent, whereas the way that they’re approaching me now, it’s a little bit off putting in it doesn’t work. Okay, so I’m telling you that there are professionals in the industry right now, are outside just outside of your industry in a neighboring industry, who all day every day are uncovering the fact that their clients are going to need a real estate agent next. And they are not referring to you and to any agent for very specific reasons. We’re going to cover that today as well. So why, why is it first and foremost that we are not recognizing that these referrals are right under our nose? I believe it starts with the fact that we don’t recognize the value of our own time. And I will even add to that, that I didn’t put in this slide. We don’t recognize the value of our own time and have our own value that we have the potential to bring to the marketplace to bring to another professional in a neighboring industry.
We discredit that we don’t recognize that. Okay, so let’s begin by asking the question why and then that’s it. And then answering, why is it that we don’t recognize value of our own time is because we spend significant amounts of time with people who cannot really help our business. Okay, we cannot really help our business now. Let me give for example, here, an example of Shark Tank. Okay. Let’s assume now for everybody here that’s watched shark tank before please let me know in the comments. Yes, I’ve seen it. Yep. Um, Shark Tank fan, or you at least know what it is. Okay, this, if you’re watching this and you’ve seen Shark Tank. This will relate to you imagine me coming out in front of the sharks, right? billionaire investors who have money to spend on a business if they’re gonna get a return. Now imagine I’m looking at the face of Right. Mark Cuban Barbara Corcoran, right? Kevin O’Leary. Lori Greiner, I think is their name. Damon Daymond John John’s. Okay. I’m looking at these guys. And I’m like, my name is Justin Stoddart. I’m a thin figure real estate, and I am here seeking $1 million in exchange for 10% of my business, okay. And these, this group is looking at me right in the face. And they’re like, Okay, well tell us what you do. Justin, said, Well, I am a residential real estate agent. And here what makes me unique is that I reach out to my friends and I take them to lunch. And about one out of every 10 of those lunch meetings, turn into a transaction. Okay? Now, if you were the sharks and you were sitting out in front of me, would you invest a million dollars in me in exchange for 10% of my business if that were my strategy? I’d be curious to know, if I were a shark and I were looking at you and you pitch that, to me that that’s how you go about getting your business. I’d be like, I’m out, right, which is exactly the sharks say they say, I’m out about not doing that. I’m not gonna put my million dollars in that strategy, because I don’t think it’s very scalable. I don’t think you can have one lunch a day, maybe you can add in a breakfast and a happy hour. But ultimately, they’re like, it’s it’s very constricted, you can’t grow that very well. And if those friends are very happy, and their friends are very happy with their houses, now what? Now what, right now you’re out of business, and I just lost my million dollars. Now, this isn’t realistic for you to go on in front of Shark Tank pitching your residential real estate business. But please hear me very carefully that what is absolutely realistic, is the fact that you are sitting across from a mirror, and you’re pitching yourself on why I’m going to invest the next million dollars of my opportunity cost can maybe the next 10 years of my life, or the next five years of my life into this business, when you’re saying the same strategy. Okay. Now, am I saying you shouldn’t have lots of friends? Absolutely not. But what I am saying, if that’s not getting you to your goals, and you still really want to work by referral, that maybe you need to consider that there’s a better way to go about this. Okay. So how do we, how do we fix that? How do we fix that? Let’s begin by calculating your dollar per hour. Okay, I’m gonna make this very simple. And everybody’s listening here today. Okay, I want you to assume 240 working days, okay. Now I know what you’re saying, as a residential real estate agent. And you’re saying like, just an extra work 365 days a year. Now, I’m going to push back on you, I want to say, you know, you might be available 365 days a year, right, which I would say shame on you to some degree, right? There should be some times when you actually turn your phone off and get away from it. But let’s just say that you are available 365 days out of the year, right? My guess is that being available is very different than actually proactively getting new business or proactively working with existing clients. My guess is you’re probably on right actually working directly in the business, probably five days a week, okay, let’s just say, Okay, you probably have a half day off here, where you’re not super productive half day here. And maybe you take one day off on the weekend, right? Now we get it, you’re gonna there’s gonna be some pushback on that. But just hear me out just for math sake. Okay, if you did work, five, actively working your business five full days in your business, okay. And you took like, major holidays off, and you took two weeks of vacation. Now for some of you, this is a dream come true, right? But just again, play with me here, this, these are the numbers that I calculated, make it easy for all of us. Let’s just say eight hours a day. Now, again, you might be pushing back, say, Justin, I work 12 hours a day. I would say proactively, like you’re proactively reaching out to people to either get new business or work with existing clients, or are you kind of preparing to work, there’s a difference. Okay.
So what we’re counting here is actually working, which this is probably more than what most agents put in, I would imagine, like proactively seeking new clients, or working with existing clients, there’s a lot of preparing to work that’s necessary, right? But using these numbers, hopefully I’ve justified the reason why I’ve used these numbers. Okay, so 240 working days, times are multiplied by eight hours a day, that’s 19 120 hours per year, okay, just under 2000 hours per year you’re working. So take that number, okay. As you take your desired income number and divide it by that 1920. Now you can adjust your 9020. If you disagree with how I came up with that, that’s fine, this is your number not mine. Okay, and that right there will give you $1 per hour. Okay, now, let’s do some math on this just to help everybody through this. So let’s say for example, that your desired income, let’s start a little bit lower number here. Let’s say I just wanna make six figures. Okay, so let’s go $100,000 divided by 1920 equals $52 per hour, okay? $52 per hour. Now, let’s say for example, that you actually want to make more than that you want to earn $50,000 a year, okay? divided by 1920 equals 130 $130 per hour, okay, there’s your updated number, $130 per hour, is your dollar per hour, whatever your number is, let’s say it’s 500,000. That’d be $260 per hour. whatever number you came up with, I want you to write on a sticky note. Okay, I’m looking around for a sticky note that I have anyway, final sticky notes ticket to the bottom of your computer. What is your dollar per hour? Okay, and now this becomes a filter and a guide for you to be able to say, is the work that I’m doing right now? Is it really worth $130 per hour or whatever your number is? Okay? Because you might say, Well, I went to lunch with like, with a really good friend and they sent me a referral. Okay, awesome. That’s fantastic news. Okay. However, I’m going to ask you the question, let’s see you The number was $130 per hour, right? Which is $250,000 per year. Okay, so 130 times eight, we have to ask ourselves, like you needed to generate $1,040 per working day. Okay. And you might say that one referral pays for my next 10 days. Okay, my question to you is, then if you’re gonna go to lunch with friends, and that’s your only strategy, right? In the next 10 days, you better get another, another $10,000 referral, right? So hopefully you recognize where I’m going with this is that once you start to identify your dollar per hour, you can start to say, is really the way that I’m spending my time? Is it conducive to that because we can get ourselves out and have these big goals. But if our day to day work doesn’t actually reflect that, then we’re out to lunch, right? We’re out to lunch, and so not not literally out to lunch. But yet, kind of getting it right, we’re out to lunch with friends, not really growing our business. Now, trust me, I’m a referral guy, I recognize the fact that there are some referrals right under your nose, from friends and family. Okay, I get that now, you should obviously stay in touch with them. But here’s what I honestly believe, is that you should keep that as a small compartment of your business, you should systematize not saying outsource I’m saying systematize the regular contact of those people, of educating them and of taking care of them personally. Because if that fills all of your space, you’re in trouble, you’re not going to be able to perform at the level that you want based on the numbers that we just ran. And so if that’s true, if we can systematize again, I’m not saying you can’t outsource relationships, especially personal friendships, however, you can systematize it to where it actually fits as a small percentage of your business instead of the entirety of your business. Okay, so now that we have established your dollar per hour, I’m going to propose to you that the average friend or client is not going to be able to help you at that rate, they’re just not, they aren’t in that they’re not in conversations, the average right now you might have somebody in your database who’s not average. And that’s, that’s, then they should be probably separated from the group. But the average friend or client is not going to be able to help you at the pace that you just said you needed to earn. They’re not, you might love them, you should spend time with them, continue to go on weekend trips and vacations with them. Do that. But don’t kid yourself. You are a million dollar investor in your business. And if you actually recognize that and recognize that a million dollars of my opportunity costs over the next five years, 10 years is going into this business. What am I really doing with my time? Are there conversations and be more valuable than the ones I’m currently engaged in? Now, not valuable from a personal standpoint, but from a business standpoint, okay.
So even though the average friend or client cannot I would propose, and again, I’m seeing this all the time, because this is what I do now in full time, is I help people to identify other professionals in neighboring industries, who all day every day are having conversations with their clients. And in the process of having conversations with their clients, you know, what they’re finding out, oh, these clients are going to sell two rental properties. They’re going to downsize their house, and they’re going to buy a condo in the city and a vacation coast on the vacation home on the coast. Like they are talking, they’re consulting with these professionals to get their insight on the tax ramifications on what this does to their financial plan. And what this does to their insurance portfolio, on how they’re going to finance this right, on what other potential legal minds might need to be involved to be sure that they do this correctly. I just suddenly, throughout a number of upstream partners, who again all day every day are in conversations with these people, they’re going to need a real estate agent next. That’s the exciting part, folks. The sad part is that they’re not referring you. Right? I guess that maybe some of you on here, I don’t know exactly who he was. And maybe some of you are like, no, they are referring me congrats to you. I love it. You know exactly why I’m doing this. Because this strategy has the ability to not only give you a like a successful, profitable business, but it will also give you time left over to actually pursue a significant life. One of the saddest things I see as an agent give their entire life to helping pay for their kids college. And as the kid goes out the door, they don’t have relationship with the kid. Because they could only have one or the other, I can have a successful business or gonna have a significant life. Right? I can I can be able to help them through college, or I can hope that they get some grants and some scholarships because I’ve got a relationship with them. No, that’s not acceptable, you guys, that’s not acceptable. Especially when you have an industry with so much abundance if we do it correctly. Write a better answer is to be able to have both the successful profitable business and have the time leftover to give them both. Let me help them with college and at the same time, be able to have a relationship with them. Right so they actually want to come back and see us and visit us after college is over and have us be a part of that right. That’s the joy of life. Here’s where whether it be kids and colleges and personally, this is a side note, right that I think one of the best educations kids kids can get as helping is figuring out how to help pay for college. That’s just my personal opinion. That’s what I did. And it was an amazing education. But nevertheless, you get the point, right is that we oftentimes get this option of I’m going to have a successful business. But whether we admit it or not, we’re, we’re also accepting the fact that I’m not going to have a lot of time for the people that I love the most. And to me, that’s way more tragic than is not having enough income, not having enough money is actually having the relationships that matter the most not be able to have the attention that they deserve to produce the joy that they can. Okay. So, back to the point here, the right upstream partner can help you in significant ways you see right there on my screen. Okay. And you see from this image, again, where most people are fishing right down here, at the bottom of the stream, where everybody else is at, and in a tight market, guess what they start doing? They start saying, I’ll get there faster, I’ll lower my price,
I’ll go 5%, I’ll go four and a half percent, I’ll go for right, I’ll go 4%. And there, it’s a race to the bottom. Right? You’re working for small wages, right, potentially, when putting stuff on cards to get you through open the market turns around quickly. That is not a way to move through an industry to live in an industry where there’s so much abundance, whereas those that get it have the ability to say, Okay, who are the neighboring professions, who all day every day are having conversations and uncovering the fact that my clients, that my clients, my next future ideal clients are going to be needing a real estate agent next. Okay. That’s how we do that. So why doesn’t everybody do that? Right? Like, first, like, what? Let’s start off with what is the difference between those two? Right? And why doesn’t everybody do this? Well, the reality is because they’ve never been taught how just haven’t been taught how, right I would love. Right? They say, to get a like, a builder who refers me a subdivision, or a lender who sends me a referral every week that’s already pre qualified, ready to go. I would love to have a probate attorney and estate attorney reaching out to me introducing their clients, I would love to have a CPA who’s who’s reaching out to me, right? I just don’t know how to do that. I just don’t know how to do that. I haven’t been taught that. So we either try using traditional formats of marketing, and strike out or we don’t try because we’re intimidated that we’re going to do it wrong. Okay. Let me share with you what I’m doing to help teach people because I feel so passionate about this. I have an offering called upstream coaching plus, okay. And every week, almost every week, I’m bringing on professionals from other industries. Okay, this is a very good friend of mine. Were friends in high school has a very successful CPA practice. I literally spoke with this gentleman just this past week. And I said Dallas, would you come speak on my coaching, call this next week, and teach my clients those that are in upstream coaching, plus exactly how many opportunities you have in any given month. And like to refer an agent and why you’re currently giving zero of those opportunities, while you’re referring zero, write to a real estate agent. And he said he’d be happy to. Okay, so you’re not gonna hear it from me. You’re hearing it from upstream partners and neighboring industries. You can see the power of that. This isn’t just as ideas cuz he wrote a book. So he’s got somebody, there’s no, by the way, how do they write the book, I interviewed professionals just like this and uncovered the model. It’s what I’ve done to build previous businesses, both my home building business was my title business. Every business I’m a part of now we focus on the upstream model, who are the people who already know that my next ideal client is going to need me, you start there, and that golden goose saves you from having to chase golden eggs, the golden goose will give you all you want, the upstream partner will hand you the fish out of the stream before your competition knows that they exist. Okay. This is the secret to scaling a referral business, which most oftentimes, people say, you can’t scale a referral business. Good friend Jessie mine who I spoke about earlier, he refused to even pursue like a referral business at all because it doesn’t scale well. Well, the traditional forms don’t scale well, right. If you take good care, your clients will they come back probably if you stay in contact with them. But if they refer you once or twice a year, it’s like jackpot. And I’m just telling you, it’s really hard to build a business when you’re spending all your time on somebody who can send you one or two deals a year at best. Whereas Wouldn’t it be awesome to be able to spend that same time? The same one hour Have you spent with a friend to spend with an upstream partner and have that one conversation turn into week after week, month after month referrals. That’s what I teach. That’s what I’m passionate about. Because why? Because it gives people successful business and time for a significant life, which is the essence of thinking bigger. Thinking bigger isn’t mean just build a massive, bigger, bigger, bigger empire, maybe if that’s what’s important to you. Right? That’s for you to decide. But I believe it has to do more about thinking bigger than real estate, about actually having time leftover for you to pursue the things that will bring you joy, right, having a great business that provides you all the income and all the freedom and all the options that you need. So that and so that you have time leftover, to pursue the things that will bring you true satisfaction.
If this is at all interesting to you. And you’re like Justin, I agree with you my existing lead sources that were once great when the internet leads, whether they be your personal sphere, whether they be for sale by owner, I don’t care what they were, if you’re like, they were here, and now they’re here. And I got to do something about it. Because lowering my goals is not an option. Let’s just chat. I turn more people away from my coaching than I then I convinced to come in, right. And I don’t convince anybody command. They’re like, I want this. You’re great. Here’s, here’s what’s required of you. Here’s how we help you. And by the way, it’s a very different model. It’s a very different model. It’s not a Okay, here you go go do it. That’s like done with you. We schedule time to work on these things with you very different model. So if you’re at that spot where it’s like, look, it’s worth a conversation, just as like not a hard press kind of guy, right? Like we’ll talk about if this is a good fit or not. If it is great. Put in the comments, let’s chat, or send me a private message. Let’s chat. If you don’t hear from me be sure that I saw it right. I don’t want to miss the opportunity to see if this is a good opportunity for you. So appreciate you listening in guys. We’re right, two minutes early. We’re gonna end early. So appreciate you all listening in. Just know that this model works. If you follow the model, if you get the help and mentorship that we offer, we can help you to unlock regular warm referrals and have systems in place actually systems in place to help you deal with that added business flow. Alright guys love you all. shoot me a message. Let’s chat if this is at all interesting to you. And I look forward to having conversations with you. And if we don’t, I hope this has been super valuable for you. Anyway, talk soon. Bye bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai