Latest / PropMedia Podcast / Cracking the Code on Brokerage Deals w/ Todd Kivimaki

Transcript

Cracking the Code on Brokerage Deals w/ Todd Kivimaki · PropMedia Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Prop Media Podcast.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Maddie.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: This is Moses.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: We are the co-founders of propmedia.com and pixelmob.com.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: And we're here to talk about everything around property media.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: Today we get to talk with Todd Kivmaki.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: You may know him from a couple different places.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: He's pretty well known in the industry.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_02: He's probably one of the most recognized operators in the industry with WoW video productions.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: You may also know him.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: He's the founder of the Spiro platform for booking and delivery pages in the real estate media space.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: So he's pretty awesome.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to talk with him about how he structures brokerage deals and how he's grown the empire he has up all across Ohio and the surrounding states.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: So if you want to learn from one of the best, come listen to what Todd has to say.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: But we're pretty excited about today.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, diving a little more about like what you've done.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: You've built some really cool stuff in the industry.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: Probably one of the most recognizable operators, at least one of the top five across the country with a huge, huge um real estate media business all across Ohio, right?
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Regional in Ohio and the surrounding states.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: I think one of the things you're the most known for that might be fun to dive into for all the other operators who turned into this, is you're pretty well known for foraging brokerage deals as kind of like the core of I think I think you'd credit that as like the core of how you grew WoW and that sort of thing was you destruct particular deals with particular brokerages to do like all of their media.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: You want to share a little bit of like what is what did that look like as you were growing WoW?
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'd love to.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh first off, just thanks for having me back on again.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's an honor.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I I was reading the about Todd section and the beautiful summary you sent out to me beforehand.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that some of my Claude credits must have drained in my account and writing, like I think my Claude account was paying your Claude account to write nice things about me.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: So I appreciate that.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: That's a your Claude account is very well trained.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: I need to work on a skill MD for mine to do that when I'm doing things.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, like you mentioned, Moses, we grew on broker broker deals.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And uh what a a broker deal is, is it was me being lazy.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh as I grew my business.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: I find a lot of things.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's also a key trick, is if your business is slow, go on vacation and it'll explode because it need it needs to ruin your vacation.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's something about business, yeah.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Very true.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Very true.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's always when you don't want it, and that's the funny thing about life.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I got out of school and uh wanted to look for um you know a guaranteed income.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, well, I'm not gonna go to all of these agents, and I have to talk to them, and I and I've got to, you know, get to know them and they have to get to know me.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I I just I know the broker just from being in and out of the office through some of this um the building that I was doing, and I just went to her and I said, Hey, uh, what if we put together a package for all your agents where they did video with us?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh she liked the idea, and uh, you know, the the rest was history, and we began just selling it.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now we've morphed it over the years and we've tweaked it, and we do it differently in some deals versus others.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: I know we're gonna get into all that today, um, but at the root core, it's a relationship you have with a broker in charge of a company who is then saying you to all their agents, agents, you should use this media company.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: Brokerages, there's lots of different kinds of brokerages.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: Are there particular kinds of brokerages that are maybe more open to that kind of a thing than others?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: Because, like, in in my experience, like your bigger, your really big ones might be less open to being really prescriptive for their agents.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: They're afraid to lose them.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I don't I don't know.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: You give any advice on like which brokerages maybe are the best, um, the best ones to target, or or maybe I'm totally wrong and they're all great.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, you're completely correct, Moses.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, your traditional, what I call traditional brokerages, are uh going to be the ones that I think you'll find more success at.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: So what I mean by traditional is that you you might have a a local owner, and these local owners might be a boutique brokerage where it's uh a brokerage that only exists in that city, and it's not a regional or a nationwide, like uh, say a Cobalt banker.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you are speaking with the person who makes the decisions in that company.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um taking this up a little bit more, like let's go to more of a national name, Cobalt Banker, this is a great example because there's two different types of Cobalt bankers.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they got your franchisee owners, yeah, yeah, and then your corporate owners.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: So uh if you have a franchisee owner, that there's a person that owns that ability to sell as Cobalt banker in the that city, they make the decisions.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: As in comparison, if you have corporate, that's controlled by the corporation.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: They have listing conciers, you're not going to sell them anything different.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: So at the base level, are is this a contractual agreement or is this a you're looking for the brokerage to just recommend you as the photographer, or are they actually like they're obliged to actually sell your company to them?
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Or I'm sure it's probably taken shape many different ways.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just kind of curious, like what's but this is how does that look?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: This is more than just going in and buying a breakfast, though.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like the lots of photographers will try to do that sort of a thing, but this is actually some sort of an agreement.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: Like, get a little granular.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what do these often look like?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: So the the Tuesday morning breakfast, that's a brokerage presentation.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: So just to kind of keep terms, that's that's where you're gonna go present to a company.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: And those are cool, but that's not the that's not this.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right, exactly.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is where you're actually you've created some sort of contrast with your company, you've built a following up to get the attention of a broker.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Y'all aren't gonna walk into a brokerage and say, hey, can I speak to the head person?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna, you know, there's gonna be a gatekeeper there that's like, yeah, they're not in, or they, you know, send this email.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And or I'll let them know you stop by.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this is where you have some momentum I've found on your side.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where you're actually having conversations with the brokerage, understanding what the broker wants from a media provider for their agents and their recruitment department.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's an agreement where you're saying, hey, Mr.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: and Mrs.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Broker, I want you to only advertise my company at your brokerage if an agent comes up and says, Hey, who do I use?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: I want you and all of your managers to say, hey, use Todd's media company.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the the fine line I want to point there is all real estate agents in the US are 1099 contractors.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: They can do whatever they want.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Except for whatever they want.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: There, there is a fine line though, as to where, and you know this very well, Moses, agents are at a brokerage because they see value in that broker.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the brokerage's game.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, exactly.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: And if what the broker said didn't pull any weight, then there's this idea of you might have some client, you know some agent fall out there, but agents listen for the mo to the most part, they will consider what their broker says.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: There's almost like two different kinds of agents.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's like when I was doing Keller, there's there's your team owner, agent, they're they're basically just a business within a business.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: They're gonna listen to themselves probably strike their own deal with you for a subscription or something like that.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: And then most agents definitely do look to their broker for advice and staying out of trouble with compliance and who do I use for X, Y, and Z.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's kind of the traditional real estate agent broker relationship that Keller and Remax kind of disrupted.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Keller in particular, Keller Williams has built a business around kind of a business in the box.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of brokerages are work under those assumptions.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of agents are coming to them, and we're gonna give you all the tools, all the relationships, um, the portals, everything, so you can run your business and not think about all that stuff.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: Skating that way now.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like, even even the boutique, like we've got a great boutique one here in town.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's one of the bigger brokerages.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um Bluefield.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: Michael Smith is one of I he I think what he's built here is really cool.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: But even him, he's consolidating dashboards, resources, like he's coding it all.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's all proprietary, it's all here in Greenville, which is cool, but that's the impulse of all of these brokerages in different ways, whether it's Remax with oh my gosh, what did they call their thing?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: It was awful, boo bouge or something.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_02: I I don't remember the their internal dashboard, but anywho, you're positioning to basically be on that dashboard, but you're doing it through uh relationships with more boutique brokerages.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_02: If I'm if I I'm gonna kind of pull all these threads together, you're finding those boutique brokerages and you're going after them and you're trying to build their value by creating a deal.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know about that, but you're you're creating some kind of a package deal for their brokerage or something that's a benefit to the agent, I'm guessing.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Who doesn't love a good deal, right?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what that's what the broker is always going to advocate for, and that's some of your sell point is that, hey, we could combine the buying power uh, you know, of all your agents.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what a broker looks to do.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: They look to find uh products and services and vendors that will deliver a level of service that they demand, and then they'll try to negotiate with you uh to do it at a uh you know the the lowest possible cost.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_02: And can you like I I'm sure it differs from brokerage to brokerage, but can you give any kind of like a range of like are you I I I imagine you can't discount these things a ton.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: So is it like you're adding a service for them or you're it's 10% off, or what are some of the things you've put together over the years?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm sure they're varied, right?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've I've I've done this wrong and I've I've changed I've molded this over the last 20-some years.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so the first discounts I gave were just based on emotion.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, like, hey, the first deal I did, there were about 32 agents at the company, and I was getting out of school at the time.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, man, I'd really like to have a base, just guaranteed amount of money that I know I'm gonna make.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was still living at home, didn't need a lot of money.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I went, oh, it'd be great if 32 of these agents could pay me 75 bucks a month.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this is not the way we do it now.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: But 28 of them, 29 of them signed it.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, cool, I've got$26,000 guaranteed.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna pay me$75 a month.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that was a complete discount based on my emotions of what money I needed to make.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it made sense at the time.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as you grow, that you're not gonna go into the next brokerage and say, hey, I'm already making$26K from brokeries one.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'd really like to get a dependable car and I'd like to get out of my parents' house.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd like to make another 20K.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds like a great sales pitch.
• 11:52
  unknown: Right?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna try it on the next one, Moses.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: We'll I'll let you know how that please do and video it.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: I think that'll blow up on YouTube.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: Don't give him a key.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: Getting out of his parents' basement after 22 years.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Do a deal with me.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: But today what we do is we've created tiers of discounts.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we did this to be fair to all brokerages, and we share it with every broker that's considering to do a deal with us.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: They're consistent.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, what it is is yeah, the the more listings they do, the more money they get as a discount.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Also, the more services that they combine, that is a different way to that's that's a way to get an additional discount.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: So we take and we consider the number of listings, the number of services they want, and uh, and then also if they're gonna front the money for it, we sometimes give them a little bit more of a discount there.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, to give you hard numbers just to cut to the chase, our discount varies from 5% to our largest client gets in the 30s percent.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I think a lot of people they hear kind of this uh common wisdom.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Now, like you can go make some uh a deal with a brokerage, you can maybe set up subscriptions, and everyone's like, oh, I can do a twist on this.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: I I I've got my version of this.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: And uh don't do that.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Don't you've got years of doing this, and we stand on the shoulders of giants, right?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: No, and and you've got those tall shoulders.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: So we've you know, like and you've tried this a bunch of ways.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: You guys don't know this, but Todd is a rather tall gamut.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: But you've gone down this path many times before.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: So what is your what does a deal look like now when you're designing a deal?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: And you you may not be actively designing these deals.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: You have a team of people that are working on this stuff, but what does a deal look like now when Wow's trying to make a deal with the brokerage?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: And how do you structure it?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's two important things to it.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's one figure that's important to a broker, and that's combined of two things, and that's market share.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: So a broker uh only cares about market share.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: They don't care about your media.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: As great as your photos and videos, as great as they are, uh, the broker doesn't care.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right now.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: If you need a compliment, send it to your mother and she'll compliment you on your photos.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: But the broker just doesn't care.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: The broker cares about growing their market share.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: And uh what market share is to a broker, the way they get more of it is that they get more listings or they get and they get more agents that in turn get listings.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that's they're they're just worried about that figure.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I that that definitely tracks with my experience on that side of the industry.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: So all right, well, burning question.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the conventional wisdom of like you, you know, when you're shooting real estate, the first thing you teach somebody is you you don't take it here, you you take it at your belly button, right?
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: But given your stature, is that more like you take it from your knees or like where where do you actually position the camera?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I I angled down for probably the first eight years of doing real estate photography.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it was great.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was like drone before drone existed.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: Todd was the original drone, yeah.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then somebody called me out in Columbus, Ohio.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, your photos just they're the the walls are not the right direction.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, Jeremy, what do you mean?
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I think they look great.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: My mom told me they look great.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's true.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: My mom likes a lot of stuff I do too.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: That's pretty fun.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: So, okay, so you've got these subscription models, and that's a core thing that you've created as well.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: Is that a different thing than the brokerage deals where you have like uh, or maybe you don't do this anymore?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: One of the things we found online was subscription models with a brokerage where they would pay a flat amount.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_02: And it sounds like what you were talking about at the beginning with like the 26 a year.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, do you still do that?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_02: Or was that kind of a bust, or or what does that look like?
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that did go bust just because what you get is you get the number the top agents uh that doesn't do 100 a year.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then you have uh an agent that does five a year, and they quickly do the math and they say, Well, wait a minute, I paid 75 bucks times 12 divided by five.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Debbie paid the same amount divided by a hundred.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Why am I paying for Debbie's tours?
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so that it the I was that actually deal existed a long time because Debbie and Cindy, and these are some real names that have been with us for a long, but it was such a good deal for them, and they held so much weight at the company that they were able to get people on board.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: So they kind of became my best salesperson because they were paying like$13 a tour.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, but that doesn't work anymore.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's more, it's pay per, it's the agents, you know, will pay for their own, and it's not dependent on any other agent.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean that that makes sense.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I was I was fascinated when I heard about that, but like scaling a subscription to a service like that.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, subscriptions make sense when with digital subscriptions and stuff like that, those can scale, but when you have to actually deliver all of them, like it can get pretty crushing on that delivery side.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: And then it sounds like on the political side too, it could also get a little dicey.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think their theory and the broker pitched it this way for a while, too, was like, hey, any of you can sell anyone else's listings, and as a company, we look better because we have video on everything.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think it makes sense, but it eventually just kind of breaks down.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and you just said something interesting that maybe old hat to you, but I can't think of any brokerages in our area that have video on every listing.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: There are I there's some that have professional photography on every listing, but I can't think of any with that particular value proposition.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: So that's pretty interesting too.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's been a huge value prop of ours for a long time.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, when I saw you started, right?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_02: It was you started with video.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I couldn't even sell them.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: The funny thing was is I would show up to do a video and they would show up and they take their photos.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Just like it.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: I did that for a lot of years.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: I did that for probably five years, and uh, it was just agents were doing what they were doing, but I was doing a video and uh um they had video on every listing.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is still something that all of you out there listening, like, this is a great thing.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is a great goal to try to get that sell through from a brokerage of like, hey, do you want to be the first brokerage that has video on every listing?
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, still in 2026, that's a relevant thing as to where agents are gonna stand out because of video.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think like uh I don't know, Ariel puts out those stats.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: I think at PMRE last year, there was something like less than well, it was less than 30% of listings had any kind of video.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was closer to 20 for the Yeah, I think videos were the one of the lowest as far as rich media, yeah.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like uh 50% something had something, but most of those were floor plans.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: And then but video, I think there's still like it's still one of the most eye-catching, grabbing, scroll stopping kinds of things to create that I'm I'm amazed that more agents don't use video.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: Like it seems like a key way to win listings of like most of the agents around here are just gonna take cell phone photos, and the good ones are gonna take photos, but I'm gonna do photos and video, and like it just seems like it makes sense.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_02: And seems like you built a an empire off of that idea as you expanded.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that first company that I talked about where the you know the 26k of those agents, like everyone in town, and now this is a small town, Lima Ohio.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but everyone in town started calling them Cowan's videos.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: That was the name of the company.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Even when other companies started doing them, they refer, you know, it's kind of like you know, in the South, you know, what they refer to Coke as any soda, like you know, what what do you want to drink?
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I it still holds true today, like get those videos in there, and that becomes the standard, and then everybody else is catching up.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it makes sense.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: Lima, Ohio.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: Is that where we get lima beans from?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: I it's not, I don't think it is, Moses, um, but I do refer to it because everybody calls it lima, and I I refer to as lima as the bean, like the bean.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: But is any bean that you eat in your hometown actually a lima bean?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's a lot of soybeans around here.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's what I have out back this year, soybeans.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: Good to know.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: We're really, we're really on getting the the big scoop today.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm I'm on I'm unearthing the dirt here.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: With the the lima beans.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: This is rural America.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: Come on.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: So you describe brokerage deals as a top-down selling approach.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'd say the majority of people we talk to are doing some form of whether they're DMing them or going to their brokerage for breakfast or whatever, they're they're kind of targeting the agent.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: Seems like 90% of any wisdom that I hear in the space is how do you get in front of and connect with more agents?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: And you kind of flip that on its head, and you're doing like a an end run toward an influencer in the brokerage.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so maybe zero in on that.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what are the pitches that actually work?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: So, not the get me out of my mother's basement, but what are the pitches that you've seen really connect with that broker where they're like, Yeah, I've got to do this.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: I need to do this.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: What it is to the broker is you are showing them how a consistent media program, getting their agents to easily and simply and affordably be able to do more media on their listings will get them more market share, like we talked just a little bit ago.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then they're also going to have a program that's unique to them.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: I know a lot of our brokerages pitched this, where it's like, hey, we have a program where we have this great bundle of media, great company.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, for those that front the money, and we can talk about that as well, but they will go talk to the other agents, other agents that who are not at their company and say, hey, you should come over, look at all these great reasons why you should switch to our brokerage.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, we make all the media for your property, for your listings easy.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: We do photo and video on everything, and we pay for it.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't have to pay for it when you get a listing.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: And that makes a lot of sense.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: So you're basically a service, uh, you're the service behind the broker offering a key value proposition, something to the agent.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: So in that scenario, it sounds like you have brokerage deals that do one, but either one, right?
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: Some where the broker fronts the money and some where the agents pay.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: So the I will say that it's very normal, like this idea.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: If you're just hearing this idea for the first time, like you're like, oh my goodness, how am I ever going to go ask the broker to pay for it?
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not exactly what you're doing.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: You're asking the broker just.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: They're going to charge it.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: They're going to charge it, usually, right?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to charge it back.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing is, and we all know this because we work for real estate agents.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: Just because they get a listing doesn't mean they've made that money.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it means they probably don't, they have less money.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, how many times Moses Maddie, you know, how many times you think about we've been asked, like, hey, can I pay you?
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: I have a closing next Thursday.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, that's that's just the way it is for realtors.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: They're, you know, jumping from closing to closing.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that that is real, especially in the busy season when you have five listings hit in a week.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's five times everything on the list that they do to get ready for a property.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: And taking that that weight of having to pay for their media up front from a brokery's perspective is a great thing.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and also, you know, think about just from uh media companies' perspective, when agents don't have money or feel strapped from money, are they gonna order more with you?
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, they're gonna they're they're gonna either take it themselves, like you mentioned, or they're gonna pick photos only on your order page, and it's just enough to get by.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and we've I've seen that over and over and over again.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's always it's always crazy to me because like you have it's like Feast or Famine in the agent space.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_02: Your average agent does like four or five listings a year, but then there's other agents who do 50, 100 listings a year.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: Those guys aren't they you can have your own, they're never sweating spending three or five hundred dollars on a set of videos that's part of their brand.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: But all the other realtors, like if you think about that, we uh I think a lot of times everyone associates a a realtor with they drive a Mercedes and they like they're they associate it with that the top performing 20% agent, but all the other ones also produce listings just only four or five a year, and they might be part-time or they might be new in the business, or who knows why that is.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: But if you think about that person, they're they're making forty-fifty thousand dollars a year.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: I think sometimes photographers also get in their head about it of like, I can't go sell the Mercedes agent on my services, I'm just getting started.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: But I mean, they're making a normal median fifty thousand dollars a year.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: This is a normal person that you can go have coffee with and pitch why your media is gonna work well for that agent.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: And you can pitch to get them to introduce you to broker to the broker.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and those are the people that that need it.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: So if you think about um selling an established agent, all those agents that you mentioned, Moses, that are doing 50 to 100 listings a year, they they've got a process that works.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: They do.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like honestly, you show up, you're like, hey, you need my video.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, I don't need your video.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: I sold a hundred last year.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: What's their what they're doing is working.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: They're harder to sell.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: So it's actually better to start with the mid-tier agents and take them to coffee or the agents that just started develop a relationship with them.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna do listings someday.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what is it?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: 90% of them are gonna drop out in six months.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to give a grim.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh well, at least I don't know the six months, but within a year, yeah, a lot of them drop.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: But it's just coffee, it's cheap.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's on year two agents.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just go.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: They might get lunch, like they might get a deli or a like a Panera type level, and then if you, you know, yeah.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_02: First year black coffee.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: Second year, I will buy you Panera.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like we're gonna Applebee's.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're if you're having a problem because you're focused on the top agents, like I salute you.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, those are the agents we all want.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: You're just starting with the wrong agents.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like they they're used to tuning everybody out.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: Start with high.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the middle agents, they have some money.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And who do they want to be?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: They want to be the top agent, so they're willing to try something different.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and that top agent that's turned up your nose, their nose at you of like, I don't need to offer video, I already sell 50 houses.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, find the agent who only sells 25 houses and teach them how to beat the agent who sells 50 houses with a listing presentation that includes video and just raise your whole market.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's exactly how it happened to me.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: I went to Dayton, Ohio, which is the largest market south of us, and uh an agent called me.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they, you know, he had a listing north, and our agents were a little bit south, and he's like, hey, I want you to come down and do videos of all my properties.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he averaged, he was the first in Dayton, Ohio to do video, and we did it on everything.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: He had sign writers created that talked about video, and he would sell it like crazy.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't until and and and he would begin winning listing presentations from the top dogs.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: And when he started getting those listing presentations, he would tell me he was happy about him.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: I was happy for him.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like he was able to leverage video to get a listing.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, Yeah, I just beat Cindy.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh crap, like, yeah, like shoot the big dog.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and it wasn't that many times that Cindy called me, and the rest is history.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, leverage those mid-tier agents, get in good with them.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: They'll try new things.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: And when what you do works for them, they'll trust you.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: And those are the people that you can always push with.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: All right, it's that time in the episode.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_02: So we're gonna pause for a second and have a commercial for Pixel Mob.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: So inside Pixel Mob, we just launched some awesome features.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_02: We've tried to design these very specifically for stuff that you would actually use.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a lot of stuff in there that's really self-explanatory.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: Remove an object, clear a room, stage the room, all of that built right in into your workflow.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: You can build a chain of them.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think the one that we're the most excited about, though, and is the most unique, is a design for how to actually put lot lines onto images to really simplify your workflow.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_02: So you're not in and out of a bunch of different systems.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_02: You can do it right inside Pixel Mob, and you can do it with tools that make it easy right there in front of you.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: So it'll pull up a plot that has the outline of the property next to it, just put in the address and your aerial right next to it.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_02: And then you can just, like with a pin tool, you can draw around where the lot line is supposed to approximately go, and then it'll immediately turn that into little Bezier curves and your anchor points so you can adjust it, all right in line in your Pixel Mob workflow, so that you can easily make lot line overlays, cool features, make the lot lines go behind the house and all that stuff, gray out the area that isn't the house, all kinds of the different styles that you've probably seen online.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: You can now bake those in really easily in just a minute or two after you finish your work on Pixel Mob.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: So go check it out.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: We're particularly proud of the lot lines function, and I'm sure you'll see lots of other value in the other functions right there as well.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: All really cheap, easy, and inline in your workflow in Pixel Mob and back to us.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: I also think it's interesting.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I mean, I came into the real estate industry blank slate, had I've never bought or sold a house.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I spent my entire career on the media side, and then coming into it in uh rekindling a relationship with Moses after many years.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we knew each other in high school.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_02: So like we were estranged, yeah.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: But then he's we've we've we're now grown-ups, we have careers.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: He has a career in real estate industry in the real estate industry, and it was like a whole new like introduction to this thing I knew nothing about.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: But I was blown away just by how much people move around, like they're getting poached by this brokerage, and they spend one year here and then they move the next year to.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: But I think it's like bees that they pollinate your services into new.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's the great thing, right?
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like it's actually this like viral group.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like, if if you can prove your your worth with them with when they're at this brokerage, they're gonna carry that along to the next brokerage.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then yeah, it's like this pollinating thing, right?
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it there is definitely, I think, uh a value in building up that um network that way.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but it that takes a long time.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think kind of what you're calling out in this uh, you know, that might take years to develop that network, but with a brokerage deal, you have this kind of like top-down where you get exposure to 30 people all at once.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they actually get hands-on experience with you, they're incentivized to give it a try rather than trying to do um one agent at a time.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: This gives you kind of a volume attack uh strategy, which I think is really interesting.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: I want to make this really, really practical for somebody who's listening to this, and they're like, okay, Moses and Maddie and Todd have been talking about this for 20 minutes.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I want to try this, but I think there's this phase where it's like they they won't go do it because they are envisioning this moment where they they got the meeting.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_02: They they drop the donuts by, they talked to the gatekeeper, they bought her flowers, they bought him a truck, like I don't know, whatever somehow they got in front of the big dog, right?
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: This person who controls these 50 agents, and there's this headcanon where it's but then what do I say to this person?
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I'm finally sitting in front of the person, I heard the podcast, I did the thing, I worked the network, I'm sitting in front of Big Dog Bic broker.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: What do you lead with?
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what's the conversation that you have?
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like, how do you start that script to give them a little confidence to try this?
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so something very practical.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: So once you build a little rapport, that you know, walk in and I always look in their look around their office.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: Do they have kids?
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: Do they like sports?
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Do they what is hint in their office?
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: I try to make a little small talk.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: Be very simple.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: I just make fun of how tall they are.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: That's my go-to.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: Always works, always works every time.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, real it really works if they're like five, four.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: They love it.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: Y'all try that and then comment below.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're expecting your video of you of this as well.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: So when you get down to brass tacks and you're ready to go, and don't don't make too much small talk.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, you can these people want to cut them to shape.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: Warm up a little bit, then get on with it.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: You're asking them questions.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: Please do not open your laptop, do not show your cell phone, don't open your portable DVD player and show them your video.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: They don't care about your video or photos.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: You're there.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: You've already you've already been past a gatekeeper and you're there for a reason.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they want you there at that point.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's something people forget.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_02: Like if they took the meeting with you, they don't take meetings with a lot of people.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: And and and so ask them questions.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Ask them if they would like more of their agents to use professional photos.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Would you like more of your agents?
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: What are your agents doing with video?
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: How many do you think are using a professional video?
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: Are they on camera in their videos?
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that if more of your agents were on camera, they could be more relevant on social media?
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me about your goals for social media.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: So you're just asking all of these questions that are around media and you're just understanding the broker's sentiment about what they think their agents are doing.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of them are gonna say, well, our agents, they're just cheap.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: They use cell phone photos.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, not they don't like to do video.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: They don't like to, uh there's really one agent that's in video and he's doing great on social media, but they hate to be in video.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like they're just lofting these softballs up at you.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like they and they will do that because this is true in just about every brokerage.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then this is the way that the media shakes out with agents.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then you're gonna ask a question.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: A question I love to ask is what are your recruitment strategies?
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what are you doing for recruitment?
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's a great one.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the broker is gonna go, What you're a photographer.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: What do you care about?
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: Why are you asking me about recruitment?
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: I remember we're asking about recruitment because it's the second part of gaining market share.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's like Moses, how much time did you spend on recruitment?
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like you talked a lot about recruitment, right, at your brokerage.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_02: I ran a Keller franchise.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_02: That's all Keller will talk about is how do you recruit?
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, in good ways and bad ways, maybe a little bit out of out of balance, but a lot of it was about how do we grow value for the agents.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: So whether that's technology, whether that's service partnerships, what whatever we could string together as a franchise that created value, including photography companies that created value that I would recruit to.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: So if I could get a great deal with a brokerage company, this is part of why North Seventh even started existing, was my first brokerage deal was with my own franchise.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: Was it just we put it up on TVs and we like that's a pretty easy sell.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I woke up one day and I was like, hmm, should I do this or should I not do this?
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_02: We should probably do this.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um but it's there, and and if if you get that through your mind that the main thing the broker wants is to recruit more agents so that they can have more listings, typically.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: Some sometimes it's inverted, but for for most growing brokerages, they're focused on gaining agents through value so that they have more listings.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_02: If you get that, that changes the questions you ask, right, Todd?
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like, like you're saying, like how like a question that comes to my mind is how can I help you recruit agents?
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_02: What would it look like for my services to be the reason new agents joined your brokerage?
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_02: If you can have that conversation with a broker, whether they sign a deal with you or not, you are going to be memorable in their mind as somebody who's an advocate for how they grow their business.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_02: And it'll be a win either way.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_02: They'll refer even if they don't sign.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where you're taking there's this idea of like, hey, just don't be a vendor, be a partner.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: You want to give value to those brokers.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: That time's valuable.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's my goal.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: I sit with one broker at Wow, it's it's the only client I sit with, and it's our largest client.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: And every meeting is my goal to walk out and him to go, hey, this was valuable.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like I learned a lot of things that I didn't know.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: And now we can take this information and go back to our agents to help continue educate them about how we are as a company leveraging your services.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we just have such a softball because you can talk about, I mean, the media is great to talk about how you leverage it on social media, it's probably the easiest one.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because every broker is going, hey, I wow, like that's such a just an untanglable like mess of how do I get my ages to be relevant on social media?
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: And when you start asking that, and video is the layup there, like, hey, just put them in, put them in the video.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: Their face is their brand.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: The broker goes, Oh, you've got a way to streamline.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: Wait a minute, you're telling me you can streamline this and you send us the video, and then we post like it just all these dots begin to connect for the broker, and then they see you as a partner, and that's how you're able to get these deals through.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_02: It makes a lot of sense.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_02: And that that mentality shift, I mean, that might sound that might not sound like much, but I you can spot the difference if you're on the other side of the desk a mile away from somebody who's just like, hey, I bring candy by your office.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_02: Can you please help me get out of my mom's basement?
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: And the person who's like actually there as a problem solver and an entrepreneur and is like, hey, I I want to grow my business and I want to grow it with yours.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_02: How can we figure this out where what I do benefits you and what you do benefits me?
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_02: That conversation is fun if you're a broker.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: For sure.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um and if you can if you can create that report, and really that's just a mindset shift.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_02: So I would give one warning.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: You can't just walk in and be like, hey, how do I create value for you?
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like it can't be these really broad things.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_02: It has to be like it's gotta be targeted in, like you were asking some great leading questions of like, hey, what do your agents currently do?
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: What does that look like?
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_02: What do you wish they would be doing?
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_02: You it's gotta be tailored because nobody nobody wants to design your business for you, but they want you to hand like 80% of it to them and be like, Do you want to tweak a little bit of this?
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like, how can I refine this for you in the conversation?
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like, how do we make this work together?
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: And it's it's kind of that's something I see people miss as well, is they'll be either too blank check and be like, I'll I'll do anything for you.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_02: And that's just that's too big of a check for somebody to write for you.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like, they don't want to spend an hour figuring out what you can do for them, they want you to know what you can do for them and be open to making it work.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: So have a vision and then be willing to work with the other company and and show that partnership mindset that Todd's talking about.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and giving them 80% so smart, you know, Moses.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: The idea of this is that the broker, it still needs to be their idea.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, in sales, there's always this level of like, yes.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: Give them enough and those you know the answers to those questions.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want more of your agents to use video?
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: 100% of all brokers everywhere would say yes.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're putting them down that channel, and then you're just laying it up for them to go, oh, wait a minute, I could grow my market share because my agents are gonna get more listings.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm gonna recruit more.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: What if we did a program and then like boom, you're it's so hooked because now it's the broker's idea and you're then you really won.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_02: And and you that might sound dumb, but like not every I not every broker realizes that they're in the business of recruiting agents.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_02: Some of them still think they're in the business of selling houses.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_02: And if you can be the one to unlock that for them, like that's that's a game-changing partnership for both of you.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: On the other side of this, you actually you get the deal, you have to execute on that.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be able to actually show up for 30 agents.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: True.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, any advice on like where you need to kind of set your bar, particularly if you're a solo operator and you're trying, you see the value in this conversation, you're like, man, I'd be that would open up my business.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_01: But like, what do I need to be able to actually offer in order to sustain an actual deal like this?
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: If I show up, I want to be able to confidently say, I can do this for you and not overpromise.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a great question.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's always this idea of like, uh, you know, we leapfrog ourselves with growth and then we catch up.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's just, you know, this whack-mole idea that Eli Jones talks about with like, hey, I have one problem.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: So right now, if you want a broker deal, your problem is probably you don't have enough business.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: You you want more revenue than what you're doing now.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: And if you whack that mole and you get more revenue in a broker deal, the next thing that's going to pop up is, well, you need team and probably systems are going to be the problem.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I think of the the first really large deal that I that I signed, you know, on the way home, the first call I made was to an individual that I had already talked to him about quitting his job and coming on full time.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: He knew the meeting was coming up, it was already arranged.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: He was a teacher at the time.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was in May.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was perfect timing.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, hey, they signed it, they agreed to it.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like, go tell the principal.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so it it was it was aligned with my goals, though.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's probably where I should have started, though, Matty, is like I wanted to grow.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't, yeah, I wanted to do as many shoots as possible.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to do shoots at as high as price as possible.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's just about the way my brain works.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to do large volume.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're a boutique company out there and you're pulling in some of these like two, three,$10,000 tickets, you know, I'm not saying that you're gonna go, you're not gonna go to a broker and say, hey, I really I'll do my 10K for$9K and let's do 2,000 of them a year.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's not a thing.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's not a thing.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, but if you want to grow and you you want to take on volume and grow a team, then that is what a broker deal will do for you.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_02: No, that's really really smart.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_02: I think we're nearing end of our time.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_02: But Todd, maybe one warning for folks of like maybe one thing that's gone gone poorly for you in this space of like if you could give them one word of advice of don't do this, what would it be?
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I've screwed so many things up.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_02: I know, but you only get one.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_02: I know I know there's so many.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so my advice would be that this needs to be a portion of your client acquisition strategy.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what you do consistently.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, I'm using some buzz terms.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: I I've learned lately I just talk in buzz terms the more and more they're client acquisition strategy.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_02: What he means is talking to people.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you want more business than you have now, don't think you're gonna pick out the one or two largest brokerages, and then you're gonna sit and wait.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna do a couple activities, and then you're just gonna wait till they sign a deal, and that's gonna take you to the next level.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is not an only thing.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: This should be combined with consistent client building relationships, go to events, call them, email them, whatever you want to do, pull door handles and walk into the office, whatever you like to do.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: You need to do all of this.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is not like this can boost your business.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: And when I look back over the course of time at wow, when we shot up and we had like that hockey stick growth, I can almost write a name of a brokerage down on that.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: But our consistent growth comes from the combined strategy of us doing enough things at the top of funnel.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: So individual agents, teams of agents going to events, trying to get broker deals that eventually those things start to close, and that is going to consistently grow your business.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_02: Some words of wisdom there for sure.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Todd, we thank you so much for sharing so candidly with some of what you've built.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_02: I hope it's really helpful to folks who join us on Proud Media.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's been it's been a pleasure to be on.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me on again.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, I I'm excited to uh see how the industry goes.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I I love hearing when you all sign these broker deals.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, Todd We'll see you soon.