SHOW NOTES
Jim Remley entered the real estate industry at 19, and within a year he listed a record-breaking 150 properties. Within 2 years, he became part of the top 1% REALTORS nationwide. Today. Jim leads one of the most successful real estate firms in the US, John L Scott Medford and Ashland - a company that is ranked in the top 350 Real Estate firms by Real Trends.
In addition, Jim is a consultant, best-selling author, speaker and trainer. Let’s hear from Jim as he shares his expertise on how to create an attractive brand, marketing styles, how to adjust your business during a pandemic, his views on market disruptors and how to make A.I. work for you.
In this episode, we talk about...
- (05:20) The importance of building value in a brand
- (06:32) What's the key driver for culture?
- (08:47) What's the best kind of marketing you can possibly do?
- (14:32) How agents should deal with clients afraid to sell due to Covid
- (15:51) How to address clients who don't want to sell because they're afraid they'll end up homeless.
- (16:46) What's the most missed opportunity for most agents right now.
- (21:03) How big is your sphere right now?
- (21:43) What is the "engine" of your business?
- (28:20) Why should you make A.I. work for you instead of against you
- (31:08) Jim's Advice on how to make zero-cost marketing strategy for someone starting out
Show Transcript
Brian Charlesworth
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Grit podcast. I'm Brian Charlesworth, the host of the show and the CEO of Sisu, which is the growth automation software for real estate. And today I have a special guest with me Jim Remley, Jim. Geez, he's been in real estate for how many years now? Jim?
Jim Remley
31 years.
Brian Charlesworth
31 years. Okay, so when Jim first got in the business, Jim actually, like, in his first few years sold 150 listings, which to me is incredible. I jumped into the business for a short period did 48 transactions my first year 150 I can't even comprehend that. I don't think I don't think that's something I would be able to do. So. Anyway, congratulations on that. But from there he grew. His Own Business opened up 17 offices became one of the largest john l Scott brokerages which for those of you who aren't from the northwest, you may not be familiar with john L. Scott, but super credible Relevant brokerage up in the northwest, and I've heard a lot of great things about them. Jim sold that business a few years ago and started a coaching company about four years ago called a real estate coach. And so, anyway, coaching mostly brokerages, I believe, is that right Jim?
Jim Remley
Yeah, majority of my students are brokerage owners. But I also coach some some high level teams and some agents as well. So I do a mix but I really love the the brokerage coaching because it's something I'm kind of passionate about. I love to do.
Brian Charlesworth
Yeah, and obviously you've had tremendous success growing, coaching, maybe share a little bit more with our growing brokerages, maybe share a little bit more with us about like, what kind of volume what kind of numbers you were doing as a brokerage owner.
Jim Remley
So I got recruited to come down and work with a general Scott office here in Southern Oregon, so if you've never been to Southern Oregon, we're just over the border from California. So beautiful Medford and Ashland. But the markets pretty small, I mean population base of about 80,000, and for passions about 5000. But we're selling about a billion dollars in real estate this year in that small little market. And we're the top 500 companies in America competing with companies, you know, in New York and LA and Atlanta, Chicago. So we're proud of those numbers. And the the way people ask me all the time, how does how do you do that? I mean, how does that happen? what's the
Brian Charlesworth
I think, relevant topic for people. What's your price?
Jim Remley
Yes, so we just crossed the $300,000 threshold. So we're at 306 is our average price last month?
Brian Charlesworth
Pretty comparable, probably to the average nationwide, I would guess
Jim Remley
Exactly. Right in there, right in there. Not super high. So you know, about 2500 transactions last year, put it in transactional unit kind of viewpoint. The biggest thing I think for us in in building a brokerage is you know two things really it's retaining Great agents and recruiting great agents, and building a culture that attracts people, it's attracting people and really having them be passionate about your brand. And it's you know, that's that's really what all the brokers coaching focuses on is, how do we create a brand that's super attractive with great tools, great training, great support staff, that just attracts great talent. It's not necessarily one of the biggest traps I think people get into is thinking it's always about Commission's, and it's not it's not about commissions, it's about productivity. And I just had this conversation yesterday with a broker, a broker student who was competing, you know, with other brokerages and they're saying, should I lower my fees? And I said, Absolutely not. That's not the solution, because then they're going to lower their fees and then you're gonna lower your fees and pretty soon you're working for free.
Brian Charlesworth
Yeah, exactly. There's a there's an agent here in our neighborhood, and my wife, obviously she runs a team. She has a brokerage now of 50 agents and runs a team of 25 agents. Anyway, she, this this individual competes just like in this high, higher priced home area, and really just does stuff pretty much in his own neighborhood which he happens to be our neighbor. So he just rolled out 1% listings, right? Why did you do that to yourself? That is crazy stupidest thing you could ever do.
Jim Remley
Crazy. That's more work and less money. I mean, and, and you're kind of saying to everybody that it's about commodity that we're all just a commodity that there's no differentiation points here that you're just gonna go with the lowest lowest bidder. infatuation. And that's exactly the wrong approach. You just go down the slippery path, right? So for us, it's always about how can we build value in the brand and that's really what it is. And, you know, I like some of the things Gary Vee has to say one of the things he says is that branding is the key to you know, to value right now. Yeah, branding is huge, right? I mean, we can all deliver Similar things, but it's the brand that's going to differentiate you. And so we look for we look for really for value differentiation. And how do you build that? How do you support that? How do you help people develop?
Brian Charlesworth
I think that's absolutely the key. I actually gave a speech yesterday or the day before, on how to build an accountable culture, a culture of accountability, right. And I think culture is such a key part of a brokerage, and so many brokerages don't really focus on that, how do they differentiate themselves? So I'd love to hear from your perspective, because you know, way more about this than I do. All I know is my wife has a company, she's doing a great job building a culture. Yeah, I have a company that is actually focused on something you just said, which is increasing agent productivity, not just agent productivity, but brokerage productivity. And part of that is around culture because it addresses the four Disciplines of Execution, but I mean, what's the key driver for culture in your eyes
Jim Remley
So one of my good friends told me one time, she said, Jim, you know, you can have a company with a great strategy, right? But if the culture sucks, you're never gonna go to work, right? You're not gonna want to go into that building. So and she said that my point is that that culture, Trump's strategy every day that we can beat strategy. And you see that so often with companies that have great tech, they've got great systems, they got great value, but they've got terrible leadership when it comes to building a culture that people enjoy working in. Right? Yeah. So we, we do in a lot of different ways. I'll give you a couple of examples. One is that we believe in bringing the whole family into the business, not just the individual agent, so that it's a family that's real estate's a family operation, I mean, because you're, you're operating a business. So one thing that we're doing this coming Friday, we've rented a whole island in our market. We call it discovery Island. You can only get there by jet boat. So We're still social distancing. Everyone's wearing masks. It's legal in our state. But we're jet boating everybody out to this private island. We have a band there. We have food there. We've got wine and beer games from kids. And all the families are invited. But because it's open air, we're able to socially distance, enjoy time together, have conversation and bond as groups and bond as families instead of just agents doing transactions.
Brian Charlesworth
Yeah, wasn't everybody. How many agents do you have?
Jim Remley
We have 190 agents.
Brian Charlesworth
Okay, so 190 agents doing 2500 transactions you said,
Jim Remley
Yeah
Brian Charlesworth
Okay, and you're taking these hundred and 90 not agents, hundred and 90 family families out to this island. Yeah, tell us more. This is amazing.
Jim Remley
So we're gonna do a private island. By the way, it's if you ever seen you've probably seen the jet boats, they'll do spins, everybody gets soaking, wet, laughing You know. So it's a great time on the way out. But the idea is that we want the kids we want the wives and spouses, girlfriends or boyfriends. That we want them to meet each other. We want them to talk to each other, we want them to interact. We want them to tell war stories and just connect in a different way. There's a there's a great i this philosophy that experiential marketing is the best Mark kind of marketing you can possibly do. So experiential marketing means that if I, if you're my customer, and I sell you a house, and I give you a closing gift, and it's a gift basket, or it's a around a golf or whatever, you'll quickly forget that you'll thank me but then it will be forgotten in a few weeks. You can't probably remember the gifts you got last year, it's probably out of your mind. But if I gave you a round of golf, but I changed it and I say instead of around the golf, I'm going to buy you a golf lesson. That's going to take stroke soccer game with a with a great pro that I know. Now, because I've taken strokes off your game, you're going to remember that forever, it will be impossible almost for you to forget that experience.
Brian Charlesworth
Every time you play golf you're going to
Jim Remley
Every time you play golf. So this experience that we're having with everybody on this island. It's almost impossible for them to forget it. And when I say to them five years from now remember we went to Discovery Park when brother jet boats together, they'll remember it. That's the difference between what a lot of brokers brokerages are doing. And what we're doing is we're building experiences. So we do, we do as we can't, we've rebranded it, we used to call it a social night social event, because social is kind of ixnay right now. We're just calling them events. And so we'll do events all the time. We've had to make a lot of these.
Brian Charlesworth
I mean, when
Jim Remley
Six to Eight weeks, we'll do a small version six to eight weeks, let's say outside of COVID no COVID going on every six to eight weeks, we're getting together. We mix it up with adult events and kid friendly event. So an adult that will be will take over we took over Jefferson spirits, which is a whiskey bar in town, whiskey and cigars. Anybody wants to come? So you'll get you know, 5060 people that have it. Then we'll do a go kart racing. whole families are invited will have 200 people and take over the gokart area in our town racing go karts, so we pay for everything. And that Another example would be we have a local regional baseball club here, we'll rent the pavilion will bring in the family's barbecue, watch the baseball game, you know, watch the national national anthem together, then you know, that's a family event. So those are the kinds of things we're doing every eight weeks or so. Okay, we have to adjust for COVID. Let me give you an example of how we've adjusted for COVID. We were going to complete shut down like a lot of the country right now. And we did a what we called our john L. Scott kids day. So the general Scott kids day through zoom was one of our staff members would do a scavenger hunt or a game or something for all these parents that have kids at home that are trapped at home and the parents are going crazy. Kids are going crazy. So all these kids and we started getting 60 7080 kids on the zoom call, we had to expand our zoom to make it work so that they would be so excited to play this scavenger hunt to play the online Bingo. And then what we would do is when people the kids would when we would have our staff go deliver a gift to their door, social distance, virtual drop by, this is a gift for the child. Those are the kinds of experiences that no one ever will forget.
Brian Charlesworth
Yeah, that's that's genius. So you do these events every six, eight weeks, the smaller events, how are how often do you do these large events? I mean, this event you're doing on this island sounds like it's once a year or twice a year?
Jim Remley
Well, that's a great question. We do a big we try to do a big winner then and a big summer event. So normally, so that this sounds big, but it's actually a scaled down event. This island event sounds huge, but scaled down. This is a just an event for our own crew our own agents. Normally every year in June or July, we do what's called our cat party. So our client appreciation party, and when I first started run the company, he was in our parking lot, and we bring in tents and we'd have barbecue and we just Have some fun games out in the parking lot of the office. We quickly outgrew that then we went to a winery. And then we went to a complete outdoor events center. Last year we were at the center outdoor event center in a beautiful Jacksonville, Oregon historic town. We were the largest event they'd ever had in Jacksonville, we had 2000 people in attendance at this event. And so here's how this event works. It works like this. I say to you, you're a top agent of my company or your any agent I'm like I'm you have to be a top agent. You can invite 10 of your best clients to this event. 10 of your best clients and their families, not just the client will pay for their beer, their wine, their food, we'll have a live band there. Of course the leadership will be there you can have your own private little area where you can have it you know for you. And here's what we do to make it special to is we bring in the CEO of the franchise Linux Scott, who's the great grandson of Jonathan Scott who owns the franchise. He flies down. It's one of his favorite events to attend all year because it's so fun. And he's shaking hands and kissing babies like a politician. There. So you can ask them to introduce you to the owner of the franchise, you know, got the leadership here, and everybody's having a great time. We're all partying, you know, it's a fun, fun event. So that's actually our biggest event of the year. We can't do it because of COVID. So we scaled it down to this island event.
Brian Charlesworth
Very nice. I love it. Okay, well, that's that alone is a great lesson for everybody. Let's jump into some other topics. So, right now we have one of the lowest inventories of all time. Yeah. What's going to happen here? What can people do? How do we address this? I mean, I think as close to the business as I am with my wife having a real estate business, like I know it's hard to find a buyer a home today. Yeah.
Jim Remley
So it what it is, it's like a it's like a pond in the middle of a desert in the middle of summer. And that pond is shrinking every day. Every day. It's getting smaller, every measurement we take. It's the lowest in history. And so the we have we have the challenge is sellers. It's not that they don't want to sell is that they're selling Ready to sell right now. So they're afraid to sell on on two different levels they're afraid to sell number one because of COVID which is a legitimate concern and they're afraid to have people in their house. So number one agents have to straight on address the COVID concern you cannot, you cannot just pretend it's not happening. You have to be very very conscious of I've got address this head on. And so when you are doing posting when you are talking to your audience, you got to say Listen, I've adopted a nine point plan a 10 point plan for my homeowners to stay safe when we're showing property and for my viruses they've saved while we're looking at property, here's my 10 point plan. So you're just add on dealing with this so that sellers get a sense of well, if I do list at least I want to list with this person because at least they're addressing this situation. Yeah. And then you also are showing through social media posts and through you know, your email, your communication, your video, your your YouTube, that you're out. Engaging in that behavior. So if I'm wiping down a lockbox, after a use, I'm wiping down a cabinet, I'm getting a picture that if I'm wearing a mask of my plants or wearing a mask, I'm getting a picture of that. So I'm showing, you know, my commitment to staying safe. So that's number one. Number two, is the second reason why people are not listing their house is because of a self fulfilling prophecy that's happening is because they're looking at the market and they're saying, I can't find replacement housing. If I'm going to sell I'm afraid I'm not going to find what I need to buy. And so when that happens, then even less inventory comes on the market, which creates an even worse problem. So it's like a compounding problem. So we have to address that issue head on, and we have to first say to every one of our potential seller clients, I'm never gonna leave you homeless. That's never going to happen with me. And here's how I'm gonna ensure that doesn't happen. Number one, I can include if we need to, I can include language into your listing and on any contract that says our sale is contingent on you, finding Replacement housing. So if you're uncomfortable, if you haven't found your dream home yet, that that's what we'll do. We'll put we'll make sure you're never homeless. So we put that in that makes it gives them a level of comfort. Second thing is, and this is the most missed opportunity from agents, is you got to treat sellers, like buyers instantaneously. So when you say to me, Jim, I would probably consider selling, but I'm afraid I can't find what I want. I don't say oh, I'm just gonna wait till COVID ends, I say, Well, I understand. Do you mind if I start looking for a home for you right now, tell me what your dream home looks like. And I instantly start treating them as a buyer. So that I begin to unlock that thought process. And I'm going to start reporting to them. Here's a listing. Here's a listing. Here's a listing, here's a listing. So that's the second thing to do. The third thing I do is I demonstrate to them some other maybe creative things I could do. One is I talked about equity in their home. Like I'll say, let me ask you do you have equity in your home? And if they say they have significant equity, I can say well, let me give you an idea here. It's just a thought. It's a way for you to Buy your next house with zero pressure and sell your current house with zero pressure, I call it the zero pressure alternative. And that's by getting a bridge loan on your current house to buy your next house. And that way we get you into that house, you get settled, we put your other house on the market, and that's going to sell it will probably selling multiple offers. That way, you don't have a you know, a stress point there. So I mean, those are a few simple things that we need to do. But the two things we're addressing is lack of supply, how we're going to deal with that and the COVID fear because the amount of people that are wanting to sell has not changed. They just are not taking action. There was a flash survey that was done by it's been done several weeks in a row by NAR and the flash surveyed revealed that 25% of the people that were putting their house in the market are still doing so. But 65% of the people that would put their house on the market have pushed the pause button because of COVID and they're waiting for it to resolve. So 65% of these people are out there. So what's happen with a lot of agencies a pullback and prospecting is exactly the wrong thing to do. If you look at that 25% number, and it's related to right to your tech, but you guys have, if you say that only 25% of the normal population is going to list right now, that means I have to go for X on my lead gen to get to an even playing field, what I would have done last year, the same time. So if you think you're going to really generate the same rate you did last year, it gets the same result. Not going to happen. You're going to find the listing side, on the listing side, you're going to go for x, right? Yeah, that doesn't mean all that all those people are coming in contact with it says I'm gonna pause is wasted effort, because they will come to market at some point either because you've convinced them to, or because COVID results. And now you've got all this business you've stacked up so you're getting that you're staying even and you're stacking business. So just a few points there.
Brian Charlesworth
Yeah, very valuable. Great advice.
Brian Charlesworth
Let's talk about how important the sphere is right now.
Jim Remley
Yeah, your sphere. I mean, always sphere is number one, I just I'm having all my agents do a mid year review. So we go back and we and I recommend every agent that's watching this every brokerage that's watching this, encourage your agents to do so. And your tech allows us to do this so easily and so beautifully. I mean, if you're not using this technology, it's amazing. But if you go back from January 1 to July 1, and you look at that window, and say, What did I do? Where did my business come from? First of all, you should measure yourself against last year at the same time, see how your performance is ranking you? Are you rising? are you falling? Where's your business coming from as a buyers and sellers? What's your average sales prices going up? Is it going down? I can look at that. But the one thing you should all be looking at is the Genesis. And the Genesis is where did this client come from that you sold a house to in the last six months? When you look at those numbers? Typically eight out of 10 of them will come from your sphere. And then the question mark is what am I doing About that, how am I leveraging this opportunity as my sphere to grow that number? So when I, when I looked, I just had a coaching call this morning with a student. And we're talking about being range bound. And this is a young lady that's been in the business several years, and she's been doing business at about a pace of about $5 million a year. Now, some years should go to 6 million. In a couple years, she went to six and a half million, but other years she went to four and a half, but over a 10 year period, the range is in the five to six to $7 million range. And then I asked her the key question which every broker that's watching this can do the same thing and the key question is, okay, let's talk about how big your spirits and your sphere is about 100 people. And I said I'm going to guess just you know, my psychic brain here telling me is that you are probably closing 9010 transactions a year based on a sphere of 100 people Am I right? She said yes. And I said in sometimes you get lucky. In one year you get you have a somebody that's your cousin or your friend or your brother, somebody went in the grocery store, some open house attendee will give you a sale. It will push you up to that. 5.5 6 million that you're not used to, and you'll think I've made it, I broke through and then you're dragged back down. The reason you're dragged back down is your business is a direct relationship between q2, the quantity and quality of your database. And it's the engine of your business. And she said, you know, the reality is, if you have an engine that's like a Camry, nothing against camrys Camry, I love cameras too. But if it's a Camry and you're expecting like Lexus performance out of that Camry engine, you're not going to get it. The only way you get Lexus performance is you've got to grow your sphere to get to that level. And that's the that's the ultimate is a lot of my coaching at the brokerage level is coaching brokers to help their agents to build their sphere number their engine, and then to service a problem. So that's, that's the key is your your ultimate quality and quantity.
Brian Charlesworth
Okay, great. With with everything being digital right now, I mean, the industry has changed. It's been interesting to watch as companies have come in. And I know you have some opinions of using Zillow or not using Zillow, I want to talk about that in a minute. But companies coming in and trying to disrupt the industry and I mean they have disrupted the industry. I mean, if you look at Zillow, Zillow, and op city or realtor now, they're taking 35% of every transaction they're involved with, just for generating a lead, which they are becoming very quickly the largest real estate companies in the world. Yeah. That being said, though, there's a lot of other digital things going on out there today. How important is it to embrace these things? And I mean, in all aspects of the business, there are so many things that you're doing as an agent that can be replaced by that being automated.
Jim Remley
But what's interesting how opposite he came about, and if you look at it, that was Zillow with their concierge program, which is basically op city as well. What they both identified was the hole in our industry, which is it's a gaping hole that they just drove a freight train through, and are now reaching deep into our pockets for is our lack of follow up as an industry. So we, as an industry just don't follow up. So we're always looking for the now client. And then now client only represents about 25 to 30% of the people that contact us for any kind of online lead gen. And the rest of them. I mean, this has been studied by Google by NAR is that when you get that online lead the vast majority more like 75 70% of those people are not going to do business for six to nine months. And if you do not have a follow up system in place for that six to nine month window, you're wasting 70% of your marketing dollars right out the window. And so what opposite he did and realtor.com now and concierge has done is that they stay with those clients for months on end with texts and calls and then follow through and follow through and follow through until they elevate it and they hand it off to us because we want the natural And then we go sell a house and we paid for that service we pay dearly for it, we pay thousands 10s of thousands of dollars for that service because we're failing to follow up. So there's only two solutions to this. A, you either say, you know what, I'm okay with it, I'm gonna pay the referral fee, and it's okay, I'm just gonna deal with it. Or be you fix your follow up data. And I'm gonna be honest and transparent. I'm going to I'm going to tell you that I've done both at my company, say, so no matter how much I preach this, and I'm a coach and a trainer and you know, done it for many years. No matter how much I tell, tell my agents to do this. There's still a certain group of agents that will not do it. Right. There's a certain group of agents who will do it and certain group of agents that will not do it. So we use up city, and actually we use our city for all of our online lead gen. And I must say, people think I'm a little bit nuts, but I've tested this thoroughly in my office we've done equal ad spends $6,000 a month with realtor.com 6000. With Zillow, we matched them head to head, we use Five street only to capture leads to scrape the leads send them to our agents and then we asked our agents to track all response all you know all contact with them and then we match that against op city and what they do and I can just tell you that op city does a better job in general with online lead gen then and then agents do because they got a warehouse of people and they're just doing a great job with it. So we're we've actually made the decision that we said all of our online lead stops that he because they do a great job on follow. Then what happens is then when they get elevated to now status, they get handed off to our agents for to work. And I mean, just let me tell you the numbers on this. The you know, you have Zillow. I have Zillow top trainer in the nation and my company, the train us because we're spending a lot of money with Zillow. And this is they they they were giving us the best ideas that they possibly had for lead conversion. And they openly admitted that their lead conversion is about 3% for all leads that they're sending to agents When the agent takes the lead, and just runs the leap, we're what we're getting right now with ours is 18% conversion. So 18% of leads that I've said he hands us we're converting into a sale, which, you know, we're, we're, we're pushing through 350 to 400 leads a month throughout city. It's working. I mean, it pays. Now, all that being said, I would much prefer the agents take control of this situation, I would much control prefer the agency. I'm going to create a follow up system that lasts for a full year, and I'm going to stick with this and not get away 35%
Brian Charlesworth
Do you guys run ISA's just out of curiosity,
Jim Remley
Do we run what
Brian Charlesworth
ISA's?
Jim Remley
Oh yeah, I said, We don't as a company. I know a lot of companies do. But we do have a lot of agents that have biases in our office. A team I should say.
Brian Charlesworth
So I did a I did a podcast a few weeks ago with Robbie t who is from hatch coaching who hatches debate coach specifically and only is a how to build an AI as a team? Yeah. And, you know, some one of the things we were talking about was companies like structurally which happened to be on that interview, but also companies like call action y Lobo, some of those companies. Are you using any of those companies? How do you feel about that and like regurgitating some of those old leads in your database, as you're talking about database
Jim Remley
I think I've actually had we're not using my local because our MLS local rules prevent us from doing that. But I think actually why Lobo is a great system and looking at it I've looked at it I've met with those guys. Good system. I, I think that their AI on why Lobo It looks very impressive to me. And what I'm telling agents now is I want you to look out five years from now look out 10 years from now, we're already experiencing this as consumers and we don't even know it. But AI is getting so sophisticated, that when we go into any chat with any major company, we're not talking to people at this point. We're talking to him I until it gets elevated to a point that we're handing it off to somebody, some people or some companies are transparent with that and suck and they tell you that you're dealing with AI, but a lot aren't. In the future, I don't think they're going to be transparent with it. They're going to keep you in the AI system as long as possible. And I'll be very, very difficult for you to tell the difference.
Brian Charlesworth
If you think more and more difficult every day
Jim Remley
Every day. You look at Zillow, for instance, who has literally billions of dollars to spend, and every incentive to make this work. And so if Zillow or realtor.com, you know, really digs into AI, and says, we are going to go so deep on AI, that it will be almost impossible to tell an agent, you know, between an agent and this person, and that AI can answer any question that that person throws at them. I mean, you're you watch your referrals will go from 35% to 40% to 45% to 50% to 60%. We're going to be glorified showing agents that we're not careful. So we have to really work hard on how are we going to either adopt AI work was structurally and put it in our own systems in our own businesses, or we're going to have to get really good at follow up on a human level people always prefer human level of contact, we have to we have to be really open to what's going on in the market.
Brian Charlesworth
The thing is with texting, and I mean, you said it. People don't know it's not human, right and so adopted because the, the AI is always going to follow up, right? Every time. Human is not and so. So if you want to produce at higher levels, I think that's going to be a key. So
Jim Remley
It's adoption of it and making it work for you don't work against it, work it, work with it. I think that's the key. You're either riding away or you're getting crushed. By the way, it's all about when you got on that wave. If you're if you're if you're somebody that's been in the water, you felt that you know, we're curl over, you get crushed. You just got to be watching and that's why people that are smart in this industry, always have their vision on the horizon. You know, agents that are Suffering are always in the water looking straight down. You gotta be looking at what's coming at you. And sometimes you have to swim towards it in order to catch the way.
Brian Charlesworth
Yeah. Jim, you seem to be like super savvy as far as marketing goes, you have a zero cost marketing strategy. tell tell us more about that. Because what you just shared is absolutely not zero cost.
Jim Remley
Lots of cost
Brian Charlesworth
though, and you guys have the money to drive out and pay a lot for those leads. But But what about somebody who's starting out and maybe doesn't have 1520 grand to spend on Zillow every month? Well, what do you do at that point?
Jim Remley
Well, it's all gonna boil down to your sphere and really elevating your sphere to a higher value relationship. So I'm gonna give an example of this one of the one of the things I've learned in coaching high, the highest level teams in the country, people that are producing super high levels is that one They refer to clients, they never say this client. They don't say, my buyer or my seller, almost universally, when you're talking to them, they say my friend, they refer to their clients as friends. And you say, how did they get to that point of friendship with a client? It's because of the way that they've developed a relationship. And instead of looking at clients, as clients, we have to look at them, how do I develop this into a deeper relationship and become a more of a friend, and get to that level, and take people to this higher level of relationship? And so that's free, you know, conversation is free. talking to people is free, networking is free. sitting down with people is free. And here's the biggest thing that every single agent can do is to learn their aspirational goals of everybody in their sphere. So this is an interesting question. When I asked this in an audience, I say how many people here would describe that they have like maybe a top 10 list of people that really helped them in the in the industry. Everybody here should have like a top 10 list. If you got that hand in your mind, you could click through top 10 maybe top five He says, yes. I said, Now how many of you know without a doubt what their aspirational goals are for your top 10 people in your list what they want to accomplish in business in life? If you don't know the answer to that, then how are they going to have the answer that you have for yourself, you know, you don't know their goals, they certainly don't know yours. And that's because you haven't elevated that relationship to a friendship status. You got to take it to the next level and go deep with people about what it is they're trying to accomplish in life. And we started helping them to get there, your doors will unlock and you will start to get a steady stream of referrals. And that's, that's free. Let me give you one tactical tip. The one tactical tip I've been giving everybody this week with my coaching students as we start to, you know, look at what we can do just at home if we're trapped at home, or what can we do tactically, and this is something that's so simple, everybody has got a cell phone, or cell phone, we all have our contact we should enter in our cell phone. We all have our own personal contact. You have to have that but most people have haven't actually filled out their own contact information and what we call their v card in their phone, which is you in your own phone. And most people don't have their picture on their v card. Most pictures, most people don't have their website on their v card or multiple websites. Most people don't have their Facebook address, or their Instagram address, or their mobile phone or all the things that they need or the marketing message. So you should fill that out. And then here's the trick is you then take take time, and you text out your V card, everybody in your database, because not everybody in your database has your contact information. And you simply say, Hey, I just wanted to send you my updated information this morning. By the way, feel free to share it with any of your friends and family that are thinking about buying or selling a home this year. And it's such a simple tactical thing that no one is doing that he can just you know, have some fun with today.
Brian Charlesworth
Yeah, that's great. I know the new Apple update as of a few months ago. If you send somebody a text and they don't have your V card You can actually choose to share that with them. Right. That's great. I
Jim Remley
Love that. I didn't know that.
Brian Charlesworth
So yeah, that's the that's and it sends your picture out it sends it. All right. So do you want to share this with people? So anyway, take advantage of that. Share it with as many people as you can. I think that's great advice. Jim, I know you are short on time, we have a couple of minutes left. Is there anything else that you just want to hit on with people before? Before we close this out? If you look at our audience, I believe most of our audience is mostly top team owners and top broker owners. So what advice would you have for that group? I think that already share you've already shared an abundance of wealth and knowledge. But what else? Is there anything like one last thing, hey, you've got to do this?
Jim Remley
Well, I think in this environment, the danger of having a lot of agents sitting at home and having a lot of agents not engaged at the same level they may be engaged with is that people can start to have an interest Focus instead of an outward focus and the inward focus is what the company maybe is not doing what the team is not doing for me. And the only way you can combat that and get people outwardly focused, which is back on the market back on client service back on lead generation, is by delivering value to them almost daily, even multiple times a day. And that could be as simple as you guys. If you're a team leader, or broker owner, having a text group where you're texting everybody positive message like, Hey, guys, here's my positive message today. Here's an idea for today. It could be that you have a closed Facebook group, which everybody should have at this point in their life for your team or your group. And you're posting ideas strategy scripts on there, and you're just a constant coach, and that's the thing. I think, you know, people talk about hiring coaches, but every broker owner, every team leader, by default has to be a coach. You have to be a coach and you have to be not just a business coach, but a life coach. I'm doing more life coaching most of the time than I am business coaching and getting people in a mindset to work. Work hard and get them in a mindset to lead generate. So those are the things I would recommend is just getting everybody staying everybody, you know, outwardly focused and focused on the market not focused on what's going wrong.
Brian Charlesworth
Yeah, I mean, if people aren't in the minds, right mindset, they're never going to be effective. Right? So never getting them to that elevation is a key part of it. And it's been fun for me to watch. That's like, my wife. With her brokerage. Her main thing is every Wednesday, she has training on mindset. Love it, love it. Love it, I think is making a huge difference in the culture as well.
Jim Remley
So here's a fun idea. Real quick. I'll give you another quick tactical. This is a great book, by the way called the talent code. If you haven't read it, it's on my desk right now, but is to have an internal book club with your office. And that's, that's where everybody comes in and shares just an idea that they picked up for the week from a great motivational book. So that's a fun thing we've been doing.
Brian Charlesworth
Yeah, it's great idea. Gentlemen. It's been really good. I'm getting to know you I'm surprised that Today's the first day we've met I'm looking forward to getting to know you better in the future. Thanks for joining us today. It's been awesome I really enjoyed it.
Jim Remley
Thank you so much. If anybody wants to learn more about the coaching you can hop over to E real estate coach calm got a lot of great stuff over there you can check it out make an appointment to talk to me if you like.
Brian Charlesworth
Okay, so everyone go to erealestatecoach.com if you have questions for for Jim, is there an email or a phone number you'd like to leave with everybody as well? Jim?
Jim Remley
Yeah, you can. I'll give you my cell phone this my personal cell phone dangerous. Here we go ready? 541-890-1929 feel free to call or text.
Brian Charlesworth
Okay, great. Thanks so much, Jim. Have an amazing day.
Jim Remley
My pleasure. Have a good day, guys.
