[00:00:02] All right, from Sean to Dan, how are you doing, Dan? Hey, Brian. Really good. Thanks, man. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, I'm excited to have you here. For those of you who don't know, Dan is the CEO of Follow Up US, and I'm just excited to get in. Dan, you're going to talk about some 10 year plan today that will help us put the customer in front of your business. And I don't think there are many of us that think 10 years out, it seems like. We always overestimate what we can do in a year, but we far and away underestimate what we could do in a decade. So looking 10 years out, I'm excited to hear what you have to say today.
[00:00:49] Yeah, awesome. And I think it's a nice Segway. I just call it the end of Sean's talk there. And he's talking a lot about how consumers are always going to drive the experience. And that's that's I think that is going to be true in 10 years. Like it's what how capitalism works, like what people want to consume is what they're ultimately going to go for.
[00:01:08] And so I think in real estate, you know, people are always going to want to do business with experts are always going to want to have like this high level of service when they buy a home. And that may change a bit with technology and so on. They're always going to want to do business with companies and people that they like, know and trust or know, like and trust like. That's not going to change. And people will continue to refer to people that treat them right and give them a great experience. So I think most of us sort of understand that. But what I want to try and do is give some examples of what we're seeing full of buzz is actually a couple of months away from being 10 years old. So I feel like this is maybe an appropriate topic. And some of these things, like we've really built our own business on some of these concepts and some of them we've just been lucky enough to work with people like the Robert Slack's The Crystal in Dallas, like these mega agents, and just observe like how they obsess over the customer experience and really just try and improve things for the actual consumer, which ultimately helps them grow their business.
[00:02:12] Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[00:02:14] So looking at that, what I mean, you've been running this tech company highly successful and I believe profitable. If I remember correctly, tech company has been around for 10 years. I would love to hear more about just.
[00:02:31] What you think is critical for the agents, for the team owners, for the business owners to be doing in today's environment.
[00:02:41] I mean, the arms have been around for a long time. You're not necessarily one of the older streams and you've been around 10 years now.
[00:02:50] What are the up and coming things happening within the CRM level that that excite you?
[00:02:56] Yeah, I've got a bunch of things here on this sort of I think on the technology side, we can start there. Kind of teed it up nicely. I think what's happening a lot is like people needing to step up their game in terms of seamless communication. And so you look at programs like Zillow Flex or how Zillow is handing off leads and all these kind of things. And they're based on like warm cold transfers. Right. So it's like that's the kind of thing where you can't be having this experience where the consumer is like, someone's going to call you back in 30 minutes and then the agent's busy and so they don't call them back and all that kind of stuff. Like it's just going to like the need for customers to get satisfaction now, like they really need help right now. So that's the kind of thing that I'll be looking at, making sure, as you have in your business, especially if you run an A team, making sure you have capacity to do these live handoffs. The other big exciting thing, I think, is group texting. So this is already around as a consumer technology, but is really coming to like serum's as we follow our boss. We have that in testing now with some customers. But I think you'll see that over the next couple of years with CRM and what that does. Again, the goal is seamless communication. So instead of the ISI texting the age, the consumer and then the agent texting them separately and all this kind of stuff, there's actually like a like a seamless group text happening. So also like, oh, I need to introduce you to a lender to get you pre-approved, like you're introducing them via text and making that happen in real time. So I think that's just one way that technology is helping you just give a bit of an easier experience for consumers and how they interact with your business. Right. And all the different parties involved in the real estate transaction.
[00:04:43] Yeah, absolutely, I know you guys have done some things that follow up, so we're really kind of being open to letting them maybe do the idea in other areas, things like that.
[00:04:58] Why did you guys choose to go that route? Tell us a little bit more about that.
[00:05:02] Yeah. So I think, you know, when we came into the industry, like we just saw, there were so many companies doing Legian, Zillow real estate, obviously the massive portals. But then also there was Trulia at that time. Then there were also Tiger. That was Tiger leads. That was Boomtown. There was I think Commissions Inc was getting started or something around about that time frame as we saw those so many companies doing Legian. And the big problem when we started was there was no one system tying it all together. So again, it just became like this really bad experience for that agent and then also a bad experience for the the consumer at the end of the day. So I think now what we're seeing is teams go to the next level. They're like, all right, I've now got my technology stack kind of sorted out, like I've organized all this stuff into one place. Now, let me make sure that, like, you know, again, like this seamless kind of handoff to happening. Let me make sure to like, you know, we've really got systems that make sense for the consumer because I think 10 years ago, like, that was just really a struggle, because even if you wanted to do all these things, like a lot of the tech and APIs and so on didn't exist. So, yeah, we just decided to focus more on the CRM and follow up part than, you know, generating leads.
[00:06:16] Ok, so I know I'm let's let's dove in. I know you have a 10 year plan that will help the customer be at the front of the front of.
[00:06:25] All everyone on this call is business, how do we how do we make the customer at the front? What do we need to do differently than maybe we're doing today?
[00:06:35] Yeah, sure. So, yeah, I got 10 things. We'll see how far we go, if you like. We go through one of them. They're all just pretty casual things. I'm sure we can chat about them. I think like what we talked about at the start, like I think we're so busy as small business owners. And definitely when I started my business, like I was all over the place, I didn't know what I was doing next week, let alone next year. And so kudos to you guys for putting on this business planning summit because, like, I think people need to do it right. But what I would challenge people for is not don't just have a plan for next year, but have a plan for the next five to 10 years. And so what you could just literally do is on a piece of paper, on a whiteboard, just write out like twenty twenty one, twenty, twenty to twenty, twenty three, twenty, twenty four. And then write out what you want to do in each of those years. Like do you want to go on a holiday to Europe, like do you want to sell your business, do you want to grow your business to one hundred agents. Like just put it at the high level, what are the big things you want to do? And I think that it just kind of gives you a bit of a vision. And I think just sometimes, like people have those vision boards or like those vague goals. But I think once you start to really break it down into years, you can say like, oh, cool, like that I, I could realistically do, you know, next year or the year after that or maybe like twenty, twenty one. I've already got enough stuff on. So let's, let's plan that for the next year. That makes sense.
[00:07:52] So identify those key milestones and then identify a timeline where you want to make that happen.
[00:07:58] Yeah, absolutely. Great advice. Yep, and then I think it's kind of get your agents excited as well around those type of things. So the next thing I've got here is just having a customer centric culture. So we talked about that consumer experience. You can have all the tech in the world if you don't have agents which are customer centric, like it's going to be bad basically, and you're going to get bad reviews and all this kind of stuff. So I think practically you just need to look at who you're hiring. Put this up front in your job ads like the way you guys work, talk about it in your team meetings. Definitely. It's a lot of leading by example as the team leader or the business owner. And I've seen, like customers, Bally's have like entire culture of where it's like an eighty point eighty slide thing. I don't think you need that. But maybe just have a one pager like, hey, this is how we treat customers here. This is what we do. This is sort of the standards we want you to keep. And that's just a bit easier because then if you ever have problems, you can point to that document and say, hey, look, you know, this is really how we're trying to run things here. This is why it's important. And, you know, we want everyone to be on the same page. Right.
[00:09:10] That's part of the team.
[00:09:11] So that's really helping somebody that's really having everybody on board as a customer centric culture. I mean, the only way you're going to have a culture around that is if you ingrain it throughout.
[00:09:24] Absolutely. And when I started my business, I had no idea about this, I thought culture was complete B.S. like I thought it was just like a marketing consulting thing. But like, as you become more than, say, like four or five people. Right. I think, like I don't know, there's just a point where it's like it makes a lot of sense to try and keep that culture alive. And you just be deliberate about it and realize like, hey, maybe a few people are going to come on that don't fit that. Exactly.
[00:09:50] And then just part ways with them. Essentially, they filter themselves out, really if you once you get the culture going.
[00:09:59] Great. I think we're on number three, is that right?
[00:10:05] So I would say feedback loops in your business. So after the transaction closes off the consumer, how it was ultimately like the other person that knows. Right. Like they're going to be able to tell you, like, did the agent do a great job or a bad job? Was there some aspects of the transaction that could have improved? And I think that's that's the way to get better, like get direct feedback from the people who are doing business with you and. Yeah. And then obviously take on that feedback and improve it when necessary and give your agent some coaching around, like maybe things that they could improve or that didn't go so well. And then that's obviously going to lead to better reviews and all that kind of stuff. So I think this has to be that feedback loop. And I think like in this team situation, that should be a lot of like the team leader reaching out to the consumer and asking them out. They went because obviously the agent reaches out and they're not necessarily going to complain about the agent to the actual agent to.
[00:11:05] Yeah, I wonder how many teams actually use you know, there are a lot of different systems out there where you can get like your NPS score. I wonder how many teams actually do that. My guess is probably not very many, but it it would be a great thing to to add into your business if you're not after every transaction. Let let somebody like that go out and do a random survey for you so you can find out how that experience was and really know what the experience was for your business. That's how you can make real changes.
[00:11:41] Yep, yeah, like it's we talk about it our company all the time, like sometimes we just get caught up like, oh, this is a great idea that we discussed internally, but like, the customer doesn't care about it at all, you know what I mean? So it's like I think the more direct customer feedback you get, it's just like gold, basically.
[00:12:00] Yeah, agreed.
[00:12:04] All right, number four, cool. Yeah, I think we talked about seamless communication, that's what I had down. So just yeah, just keeping up with your tech game and I guess looking at technology as how you make the customer experience better. If it doesn't, then like, you know, maybe it's to improve your operations and that helps in some way. But like, there should be some link back to how it's actually better for the customer because you're using this technology. And the next one I've got down is just basically building expertize like we talked about, it will start. People always going to want to do business with experts. So I think you've just got to keep learning, Mike. And I think what that looks like at this stage, right, is buying online courses. There's not a lot of in-person learning going on right now. There's all these great sites. You obviously YouTube, Coursera. I know you've got Tom Ferry headlining the event, so that's awesome. I know he's got like a lot of online programs and courses where putting out things to our customers is part of our business. But I think, like, you really want to be investing in some kind of online training. So whether that's about your health or your business or like your sharpening your marketing skills. Yeah, I just I probably like four courses this year at least. And I just feel like that's something which the more you can encourage that also within your team. So at our company, like we provide like a stipend for people to like go and learn things and they can just choose. It can be whatever they want, doesn't even have to be related to work. So but yeah, I think just trying to encourage that, winning your team and obviously personally yourself keep growing.
[00:13:45] Yeah, I think growing is a key for sure, especially for the leader of the business and.
[00:13:55] When you say building, expertize I love that, you say building, expertize, I think we can take that to the next level in real estate and it's coming across as the expert for the client, they need to view you as the expert for you to really set yourself apart.
[00:14:10] So what are you doing to do that as well? And maybe that's a different point you have. You're down, but just.
[00:14:15] Yeah, that's a great one. Yeah. I mean, like, again, like that's whenever I see bad reviews of, like a real estate experience, it seems like they just didn't perceive the agent as the expert. Right. So I think you've got to aim for exactly what you're saying there.
[00:14:32] Either that or lack of communication. And I think, you know, you talked about seamless communication as your as your point before that.
[00:14:39] So those seem to be the two things that make dissatisfied customers in real estate.
[00:14:48] Yeah, absolutely, and then is funny, you said, like, you need a person to grow as a business owner, like, I totally agree. When I sort of, you know, when I was younger, maybe like in my early twenties, I was like, why does everyone get into personal development when they start a business? Like, it seems stupid, like why don't they just focus on their business? But now, obviously, I got older and a little bit wiser. You know, you start to realize those things. They go hand in hand because you do have to grow, you know, in so many different ways, I guess. So, yeah, it really is hand in hand. And I think that I don't like the downside or the shame is like when people do have that business, it's kind of like just on repeat year after year after year. And I think that's when maybe you go to break out of that by, you know, by just learning some new things, basically.
[00:15:36] Yeah.
[00:15:39] Always a key. You're either growing or the opposite is happening if you're not going up, you're going down.
[00:15:45] So especially in software, it's like you can go, you have to grow. So I actually have the next thing I had the systems for service. So, again, like I think we just see a lot of the top real estate teams. We have some of them call them like customer experience coordinators. Some people it's like admin. Sometimes I say sometimes it's a mix. Right. Is these different titles out there. But I just think you've got to be thinking about when someone emails your business, when someone calls your business, just even basic technology like caller ID. Right. So you pick up the phone, you're like, hey, Brian, it's been a while since we talked. It's just so different to like, who is this is like, hello, it's Brian. You know, we did business like 30 years ago, you know what I mean? So it is a little things. It's like the details. And I think that's what I see as well. I see the best teams obsess about that and they looking in their their systems like CRM or systems like Sisu. And they're like, this is wrong here. Like we took too long to respond to this customer or like, why didn't you put a note here about that? And it seems a little bit extreme, but I think when it comes from that place of like they really care and they really want to make sure everyone has a good experience, then, yeah, it just it's sort of again, it sort of helps drive the culture a little bit like, hey, here we do care to everyone gets responded to quick, whereas maybe it's some other places. They don't care as much about that.
[00:17:10] Yeah, absolutely.
[00:17:14] All right, let's go to the next one already.
[00:17:17] Yeah, the next thing I had is just building relationships. So again, thinking about this 10 years, thinking about like what can you do to build a moat against all these giant national tech companies and portals and things like that, your local relationships with your database, with your people you've done business with? I think that's always going to be the real estate agents, essentially. So I think you're using tools like video events, social media, just to stay in touch with your local sphere and your database. So, you know, I think that's that just always going to be a thing. And again, it's unique to you. No one else can really put out your unique personality and have the same relationships. So that's just always going to be important.
[00:18:06] Yeah, keep going then. OK, on the next one is really just doing the same thing, but leveraging your CRM, leveraging your database, like that's the whole point. That's why you have like thirty thousand contacts in a database. It's so that you can reach back out to those people. And so I think the things that we're seeing is like good email marketing, like email marketing, obviously not a new technology. It's been around 20 plus years, but doing good email marketing, like a lot of teams or agents we're not seeing do that.
[00:18:37] And I think the ones we do see do that. It's just been reaching people very cheap, like they're not having to go and get new people all the time because they're staying in touch with their existing database, remarketing. It's another really cheap way to stay in front of people. Obviously, social media and again, I think it's making sure trying to get your personal brand across your personality, not trying to be this giant, faceless corporation, because that's that they can get that out of the places, essentially. So, yeah, I think just just trying to think about your database as an asset over time. As you know, all businesses should versus just like CRM me have. You don't really have a strategy for those for reaching all those people.
[00:19:21] Is there anything in particular that you guys do a follow up along those lines that can make a major difference in somebody's business?
[00:19:31] Yeah, I think.
[00:19:34] We have some email marketing tools in our system, so we we make that all pretty easy. We also integrate with other systems like MailChimp Happy Grasshopper. So we're sort of I think the main thing we do is we bring everyone into one place and then we like to use other technology to reach them or some of the tools in the system. So you could be thinking these your database over the systems like I Lopa, or you could be like doing like an export and then uploading that list directly to Facebook and then retargeting with the remarketing ads. And that's just super cost effective. So, yeah, I think it's what we're finding is a lot of our team is now over the last 10 years that's just built up this massive database because they've been buying leads for so long. So it's it's all those leads that bought over the last 10 years, plus all the people have done business with and all that kind of stuff. And so that's where it's I think now those databases have got so big. It's just a question of, like, engaging them better. So, yeah, that's I mean, that's where we come in. And obviously we show you things in the CRM like, hey, this person has come back to your website recently. This person's opened or clicked an email. So those are kind of the signals you would look at to say like, oh, right. I've got this database of thirty thousand people. But let's look at the people that have recently been on my website or engaging with my emails versus just looking for the engagement and acting on it.
[00:20:57] Yeah, absolutely. Because I think otherwise a lot of people just throw up their hands and they're like, well I've got this giant but like I don't know where to start. So. Right. All right. Yeah, the next one, I just got down, like, automate the boring stuff. So I guess another part of what we do is obviously we have features like templates and integrations with systems like Saphir, like a lot of systems. And I think, yeah, you just want to try and systemize more of your business, create these templates, create these automation's with tools like Zappia. We have a new automations feature coming out ourselves. But I think there's two things there. Like, one, you're saving your team time, which then lets them either spend more time with their family or lets them do more high value work with your customers, like the good stuff, not the like things that could just be done by a computer. And then I think to like templates and things like that, they just lead to a more consistent level of service. So as an example, like with our own business, sometimes like people inquire about this plan or that plan, we could have like our support people are in a sales. People like make up a response every single time. Right. Or we could have like a best practice template, which they can customize. So, yeah, I think just automation templates trying to just get some of that stuff in.
[00:22:21] Isn't that a big part of how you guys really?
[00:22:25] Founded your business from the beginning, is really saying, hey, our expertize is this niche here and we're going to let you go out and plug anything else out there into this platform.
[00:22:36] Isn't that kind of hasn't that been your mentality from the beginning?
[00:22:41] Yeah, we've always tried to have, like, a pretty open platform because it ourselves, like we are bringing in all the leads from other places. So it's like we don't really want to bring in all your data and then say, oh, you can't get it out right. Like it wouldn't be very fair or wouldn't really make sense. Something else we've launched recently with two companies collection and a company called AM Cards, which does like postcards, is you can actually embed an app inside, follow us. So when you're looking at, say, like I'm looking at Brian inside my CRM and then I want to send you a postcard, I can actually do that from inside follow up. So rather than it just being an integration where, like, sends a daughter over there, they can actually be some some UI which is developed by the other company inside the system. So like stuff like that I guess exists outside of real estate tech and like the sales forces of the world and the Zendesk, like these big tech companies, we're trying to just be as open as possible and let people like, I guess, innovate on that platform. That's because, you know, you've touched them a few times. But it's the philosophy is like, you know, we're not going to create all the innovation that doesn't make sense. Right. But we can provide this platform that lets other developers and companies come along like you guys have with your integration and build build on top of it and send us daughter and daughter, that kind of stuff.
[00:24:04] So, Dan, I'll let you I'll let you address this question first. Is there a direct integration coming between Sisu and follow up?
[00:24:12] Yeah, I think there's there's there's been one that's been worked on. So, yeah, I would definitely touch base with you, our team or Sisu, and I think we could we could connect to that. I know there's been a lot of work to try and make it more seamless. So yeah.
[00:24:29] So there is a there is an additional third party integration happening right there. Somebody named Daniel is over that we can make an intro for you.
[00:24:38] As far as us going direct, we don't have anything yet. So it looks like Frank's making comments for you there in the comments section. Get in touch with our team and we can we can share more on that with you.
[00:24:54] Exactly. Yeah, and the last thing I had is just like, have fun, look after yourself, I think it's like a long journey. So just doing the basics right, getting enough sleep, having an exercise program, doing something fun every day. Like, I think that's something which, you know, sometimes I mean, just grinding and getting busy as a business. Like the more successful you get, the less personal time you have. So I think that's just an important balance for some people to bring and also to bring to that team to sort of stay sustainable because like, you can work really hard for like three years and then you'll be so burnt out and everyone will hate you. And that's like that's not going to be any fun or it's going to be profitable either because like, you know, things are not stable.
[00:25:38] So, yeah, I think that is one of the touchiest things that all of us deal with because it's really easy.
[00:25:51] And it's a sad thing, but it's really easy for us to focus on our business and focus on growth there. It's a much harder thing for us to focus on our individual lives and take that to the next level, even our family lives, so it takes real a real effort to be able to go from I'm just focused on my business to I'm focused on my self and self growth, and then I'm focused on my relationships, which can be a number of different things from family to friends to to kids, spouse, etc.. So anyway, if you're not having fun. Don't do what you're doing because it's got to be fun for you, so enjoy, enjoy the process is something I would love to say.
[00:26:40] If you're not enjoying the process, figure out how you can enjoy the process. And that's kind of a great segue because we are getting ready to welcome Brad Sugars in and he's going to dove into that in depth with us on just taking our businesses to the next level.
[00:26:57] Dan, thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:26:59] Really appreciate you being here and always a pleasure. And we just look forward to continuing to build our relationship and work closer and closer with you guys.
[00:27:08] Awesome. Yeah. Thanks for doing the summit, Brian. And thanks for having me on.
[00:27:11] Yeah, my pleasure. Take care.