In this episode Matt chats with real estate veteran Josh Smith in Arizona, who discusses why agents need to have a mix of both long and short term lead generation strategies. So many marketing ideas focus on nurturing leads over time, but those don’t pay the bills right now – his approach is to utilize a mix of strategies that can feed you now and in the long term. Josh is also the host of the GSD Mode real estate podcast – he is also a real estate broker, fitness fanatic, and entrepreneur. Josh’s unofficial tagline when it comes to real estate is to “get sh*t done!”
Connect with Josh online: https://www.gsdmode.com/
The Neighborhood Realtor is proudly sponsored by Treadstone Funding and Neighborhood Loans. For more tangible tips in real estate marketing, check out Matt's book, The Tangible Action Guide for Real Estate Marketing available on Amazon.
Learned something new, or have a suggestion? Message Matt Muscat on Instagram!
In this episode Matt chats with real estate veteran Josh Smith in Arizona, who discusses why agents need to have a mix of both long and short term lead generation strategies. So many marketing ideas focus on nurturing leads over time, but those don’t pay the bills right now – his approach is to utilize a mix of strategies that can feed you now and in the long term. Josh is also the host of the GSD Mode real estate podcast – he is also a real estate broker, fitness fanatic, and entrepreneur. Josh’s unofficial tagline when it comes to real estate is to “get sh*t done!”
Connect with Josh online: https://www.gsdmode.com/
The Neighborhood Realtor is proudly sponsored by Treadstone Funding and Neighborhood Loans. For more tangible tips in real estate marketing, check out Matt's book, The Tangible Action Guide for Real Estate Marketing available on Amazon.
Learned something new, or have a suggestion? Message Matt Muscat on Instagram!
Joshua S. | 00:00:03:05 | Confidence is so crucial when it comes to sales. So many people just focus on the process. Then you've got confidence, then you got report, then you got enthusiasm. I'm like, You can nail the process. If you fall short on these other three, your sales conversions are going to be low.
Matt M. | 00:00:21:28 | Everybody, thank you so much for tuning in today. I'm unbelievably excited, jazzed up, energized to have my guest on. I'm with Josh Smith, real estate professional in Arizona. Josh is going to talk to us today all about the things you need to do to ensure that you're preparing for the current but also for the long term. So, Josh, welcome to the show today.
Joshua S. | 00:00:42:29 | Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Matt. I'm excited to be here, man.
Matt M. | 00:00:45:26 | So we always talk. We always start the show the same way. Josh Tell us how long you've been in the industry and how did you get started?
Joshua S. | 00:00:52:10 | Yeah, so just over 18 years got started 23 years old, you know, young punk, college dropout kid. You know, I was in a gym business prior. My dad owned operate gyms for 30 years. I was in management and sales, and I made the realization that man, for the amount of money I want to make, I need to be in ownership.
Joshua S. | 00:01:11:08 | Well, 23 years old, college dropout, thousand bucks to my name. You don't necessarily want to. Crew is going to cost like 800 grand. I'm like, okay, I can have the cap or nobody's going to give me a loan. I wouldn't give me a loan either. You know, it's pretty high risk. But at that time, 2005, the real estate market out here in Phenix, it was the biggest boom we'd ever seen.
Joshua S. | 00:01:27:12 | So it's very similar like 20, 21, 2020, that kind of timeframe. And so my perception was everybody in this industry just crushing and killing it. So like, right, man, I love people, I love sales, loved working my ass off. So let me just jump in. Real estate, go raise much capital, go by my gym. But very quickly, I just became infatuated with this industry.
Joshua S. | 00:01:45:25 | Now, now, you know, very quickly really helped us, became my passion for this business, became my obsession. I just fell in love with it. And 18 years later, here I am.
Matt M. | 00:01:53:17 | We think that's a huge point. Like, I know I'm a huge fan of like the Micro Dirty Jobs podcast, and he talks about this idea that in order to be successful in any industry, you do need to turn it from. You need to turn into a passion. And I know you mentioned that it became your obsession, right? And when you're obsessed with something and when you're doing it all day long as you genuinely enjoy it, you're not just trying to get a paycheck out of it, you tend to do better at it.
Matt M. | 00:02:19:06 | And I think that's that's almost like your initial lesson for agents, sales people listening to this right now. Like, do you feel that real estate is your passion or is it just what you're doing to make money? Because even though now we're seeing agents getting out of the business for the first time in 20 years, there are so many people still getting into the business and a lot of them come in initially for the money.
Matt M. | 00:02:41:26 | But those who do well tend to develop a passion and an obsession for it. So I love I love that you mention that.
Joshua S. | 00:02:48:00 | Yeah. So if I can if I can just say one thing there, because, you know, a lot of people will be like, well, they wait for the feeling to come in. It's like they wait for this. Yeah, one day I'm just going to wake up and I'm going to be on fire about this thing now. Like, you've got to create the fire, you know, So.
Joshua S. | 00:03:04:02 | So it's one of these things where man, like, you know, in order to like, it's your choice to become obsessed. It's your choice to become passionate, you know? So I didn't become obsessed with this industry until I realized, hey, this is the best vehicle that I've been able to identify on the planet for me to go out there, create the life that I truly want to create for myself and for my family.
Joshua S. | 00:03:22:07 | Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong, There was a time where I enjoyed working buyers and sellers, and then there was a time where I frickin hated it, you know, where it just became so repetitive. And then you were doing six listing presentations every single day. Seven days a week back. Like, you get to the point where, like, okay, like you get burnt out, you get those things.
Joshua S. | 00:03:36:27 | The obsession came in like, I've never seen a better vehicle to go from zero to hero and six months to create more opportunities in this opportunities, you know. So again, it's that obsession and that passion, that drive that so many people want. It's got to be internally created. I mean, some people might just have it innately, but for most it is.
Joshua S. | 00:03:55:28 | And for me it wasn't, you know, like just like anything like discipline. I mean, it's a muscle that can be built.
Matt M. | 00:04:01:12 | All of that. So walk us through your first couple of years in the business like you were a new agent once to How did your first couple of years go and then where did it leads you? What did your team do in production last year? Let's end it with that one.
Joshua S. | 00:04:11:21 | Yeah. So first year, 248 deals. Now I get a lot of people that ask me like, man, I did 48 deals, $280,000 and I mean, I was gross income, but I wasn't spending money. So most of that was net. But you know, you got to also remember I had nine years of a sales background, you know, before I got into real estate.
Joshua S. | 00:04:31:15 | So I started selling memberships for my dad at 14 years old, not selling personal training packages. So I already had the human connection, that rapport process down that, you know, it was just instead of selling, you know, health of memberships and personal trainer package, now I'm just selling people on the fact that I'm the best guy to get him from the current living situation living situation that they want to go to.
Matt M. | 00:04:48:19 | So what's easier to sell yourself than any other product, right? Like when you're a realtor, you're not necessarily selling the home, you're selling yourself first. And if you can sell a gym membership insurance, X, Y, Z product, it's more fun. And it should be easier to sell yourself as long as you have a little bit of confidence and a good pitch.
Joshua S. | 00:05:04:10 | Yeah, because people already sold on real estate and it's not a real estate to sell, it's somebody else's real estate. Right? Again, we're just selling them that we're the best guy to get them from here to here. Current them situation, living situation I want to get to. And I mean it was it was a grind, man. I mean, I was popping out 4 to 5 open houses every single week.
Joshua S. | 00:05:18:24 | I had to go out there and do that kind of business. And then, no, I wanted to double my business going in my second year. But I quickly realized because in 2005 things were different. We didn't have smartphones, we didn't have friggin scanners, we didn't have DocuSign. It just took a lot longer to do each deal. So I'm like, I want to do my business, but I couldn't fathom on how to come close to even doing that.
Joshua S. | 00:05:38:04 | I mean, I was already, you know, I was working like formed at midnight, you know, right. With the deals that I was doing. So then I knew that I had to delegate. So I had my first assistant going into my second year, and then that skyrocketed me up to 103 deals. Then from there, because, you know, I was able to delegate all my central knowledge and make activity.
Joshua S. | 00:05:54:25 | So I focused all my time on just moneymaking activities, you know? Then from there I got to the point where, man, I was like three weeks book out for for any client. So I was losing business. So that's when I started adding agents, you know, And originally the my team was, you know, my agents were handing my overflow different than the kind of your standard team today.
Joshua S. | 00:06:12:03 | And then if you look at fast forward, I mean we sold 7000 homes now last year, did 4.7 million and GCI, you know, unit count was just over 500 units. I don't have the exact unit in front of me, but just over 500 units, 4.7 million GCI.
Matt M. | 00:06:26:17 | Congrats. I mean, those are some absolutely huge numbers and especially considering that the last half of last year wasn't necessarily like a record breaking year. Again, you know, first in your market, what is the average price point and how many agents do you have on your team?
Joshua S. | 00:06:41:25 | Yeah, so got 35 full time agents right now on the team. And then we have some part time as well. We've got two full time transaction coordinators, listing coordinator, office manager and then a recruit agent kind of recruiter slash trainer team make up our average price point. I mean, average price point is just above half a million. My average team price points about 450 is always really focused like up until last couple of years now.
Joshua S. | 00:07:08:01 | And most of my career has been spent slinging 2 to 3000 properties. Yeah, I've always focused on that. Yeah, you know, kind of average price point that's always turn on man. People are always buying, people are always selling because I've always enjoyed the volume game, you know, I've looked at, okay, I could go the luxury game but those deals are few and far between you know where it's like you know what are those price points where the market meets the masses, right?
Joshua S. | 00:07:29:29 | I would rather have 50 deals closing consistently each and every month than two big ones, you know, because when you have five of those five deals fall out, it's just like, okay, I got these other 45, you know, like, you know, like, like it just to me, it creates more consistency. It's easy to delegate. It's easier to go out and kind of build the system around real estate.
Matt M. | 00:07:47:28 | It has a lot of contracts. I want this podcast to have a social contract as well, cuz what I need from you, if you're listening to the show and you get something valuable out of it or you hear something that you think that's awesome, I want you to send me a demo on Instagram, or if you find my email, send it that way.
Matt M. | 00:08:02:26 | The more feedback that I get helps me to put together better shows and attract better guests. Well, then talk about talk about consistency and building a business and not just being a real estate agent who sells a couple of houses when their friends call. You know, you have this database now of 7000 and you know, call it maybe it's 4000 people, but like, you know, you sold a couple of them, a couple of houses.
Matt M. | 00:08:24:09 | That's a lot of people. And so when you look at the fact that real estate agents operate in an area, right, you operate in a, you know, a 25 neighborhood range or maybe in a tri tri city area, that's a that's a decent market share. And these people know people. So when you market to them, you can market them for their own business, you can market them for referrals.
Matt M. | 00:08:43:07 | You can market to them to see what other businesses they can connect you with. You have so many things you can do and you can consistently count on them for X amount of business per year. I think NA Na typically says that an average realtor closes 7% of their database in a good year, 5% in a bad year, right?
Matt M. | 00:09:00:12 | So call it a good year. Call it a bad year. 7000, 7000, 5%. That's a lot of deals. 350 deals. Yeah. I mean then if you have, you know, whether it's zero agents or 30 agents on your team, it's still over a deal per month per agent if you're just focusing on your database and nothing else. I love that.
Matt M. | 00:09:20:10 | So with all of these agents, I'm assuming you've you probably have some really good systems on your team for how you train them up to make sure that they're not a waste of your time and that they have some success for themselves. So what is your what is your training process? Because I know it's it's pretty tried and true at this point.
Joshua S. | 00:09:37:11 | Yeah. Yeah, man. So, you know, one of the mistakes that I've seen so many making this industry, I continue to see it on, I mean, it's just the biggest mistake that I see new agents make out of the gate, let's just say that, is that they don't put the foundations. They don't they don't they just jump in and they start going fast.
Joshua S. | 00:09:54:19 | They just start going after deals. And it's like, look, look, let's just slow down a little bit. So then that way you can go that much faster to get those foundations in place, you know? So our first 14 day onboarding process, when we bring in somebody new, it's about getting those foundational items in. Yeah. So what are those foundational I'm sorry, Number one, we make sure they're tracking systems that when you said earlier, you know, treating this as a business, you don't need to have a team or brokerage to be treating this as a business.
Joshua S. | 00:10:18:00 | You might be the solopreneur, but you need to treat this as a business. You're just wearing all the hats. But it is a business. You are an entrepreneur. You got to operate in this industry as man. I'm a business owner. Real estate just happens to be the vehicle that I'm an entrepreneur within. You know, what are smart operators do and they know their data, they operate it.
Joshua S. | 00:10:34:24 | You know, they have a process and system based business that eventually allows them to continue growing scale and plug in the right people.
Matt M. | 00:10:40:19 | So we always say, like if you're if you're if you're an agent and you're looking because this this advice, by the way, I want to make this super clear. This is not just advice that you could get you need to listen to if you're growing a team. This is advice you need to examine your business with and say, you know, you might be in the business for a year or two, you might be brand new.
Matt M. | 00:10:57:07 | Do you have the metrics to answer key business decisions? And think about it like if you were at any other company in the world, in any other field, what would be the questions that your boss would be asking you? Right. Like it would be, How many leads did you get a month? How many closings did you have? What were your costs?
Matt M. | 00:11:12:06 | What were your expenses? What what was your time? How much where? What did you spend your time on? If you can't answer these questions in about 5 seconds, about any key area of your real estate business, you need to reexamine your foundation. And Josh is obviously training his new agents from day one and building that foundation. But I think existing agents need to really examine whether they can truly answer those questions for for themselves.
Joshua S. | 00:11:36:24 | Yeah, 100%. So, you know, step number one, we get that tracking system in place exactly what you're talking about, so we can see how many leads per lead source, but then how much also effort. So how many reach out to conversations, appointments, appointment connections, clients. So then we can see that full picture, you know, because.
Matt M. | 00:11:50:27 | Then I have to pause you again right there because that's that's groundbreaking because people don't do this. You're not just tracking the results. You're tracking what you're putting into the system. And the funnel is, at the end of the day, especially for a new agent, it doesn't necessarily matter how many closings you get in your first month. That's cool.
Matt M. | 00:12:07:23 | It's money we need money. But what's more important is the outcome. Or is is the about the outputs that you're putting into the system. How many calls did you make? How many emails did you send? How many break breads did you how many people did you meet? How many drive bys did you do? If you tracked those? We can make some predictions on results.
Matt M. | 00:12:24:24 | And your coach, your your manager, your broker can help you figure out. But I love that you're tracking that and holding your agents accountable to what they're putting in their daily activities, because that's almost more important than any any other business data that I can think of.
Joshua S. | 00:12:38:00 | Yeah, 100%. I mean, like when I have one of my agents reach out to me at once, you know, one on one strategy session, first thing I do is show me your tracker. And is it up to date? Because if you don't have the tracker up to date, it's like, dude, I mean, what are we going to do?
Joshua S. | 00:12:48:19 | We're just going to guess and throw a bunch into the ball and hope something sticks. Like, the only way for me to truly help them is to know what their data is. And in order to improve upon anything, you have to have a measurement system in place. So we get that in place. Then step number two is we make sure that their their CRM is dialed in.
Joshua S. | 00:13:03:22 | When I say dial, then we make sure all their lead sources are plugged in. We make sure that their auto responders, their drips are set up so we can rely on automation as much as possible and make sure they they know it enough to start using it. So I don't expect anybody to master this stuff in two weeks, but they know good enough to start navigating, start using and start living in that system.
Joshua S. | 00:13:21:19 | Then the next step is we make sure that they've got their listing in by presentation. The buyer presentation dialed in. And again, when I say dialed in, I don't expect mastery, but in let me even go a step further than this. How do we get it dialed in the first three weeks? Well, number one, why we provide them with, you know, a world class proven listing, presentation, buyer presentation, but they need to go out there and practice it.
Joshua S. | 00:13:41:02 | So I have them rehearsing it three times a day each day for that first 14 days. And at that point it's pretty damn good. What's good enough where you I mean, we spend so much insane amount of time generating leads, falling over those leads that just get that appointment. That amount of work is so insane. Well, we can't afford to flop those appointments, so it's got to be good enough where they can turn that person to a client or do a decent job at it and have a good chance at it.
Joshua S. | 00:14:06:11 | And then we make sure that they're past client repeat referral game is dialed in, their strategy dialed in, and again, we provide them the strategy, but we've got to make sure they understand it. They know what to do, how to do it. You know, it's always a you know, what to do. You know when to do it. You know why to do it, you know how to do it, and then provide them the tools and the systems and the processes to, you know, to execute on that.
Matt M. | 00:14:24:01 | So when they agents initially when these agents initially do step one and they get their list of people in the CRM system, what either other them like, you know, the spam emails here, they're what actual activities are you recommending that they do with the people once are in the database? Because I think a lot of people are, you know, stuff.
Matt M. | 00:14:42:11 | Good agents get a database going and then great agents come up with a strategy for what to do with it.
Joshua S. | 00:14:47:00 | Yeah. So, you know, and differentiates, I mean, you know, because in our CRMs, I mean we're working all of our leads or working all of our all of our clients, all of our under contracts, overpass clients and our sphere of influence. So each one dictates a different strategy. But to your point, the system itself, I look at CRM is like the cookbook, right?
Joshua S. | 00:15:06:09 | Then from there, the cookbook is only as good as the recipes inside that cookbook. So you've got to go out there like a CRM alone is going to do you any good. What are the recipes? What are those instructions that you're feeding it? So let's just say, okay, with a paid like, well, if they're willing Facebook lead generation.
Joshua S. | 00:15:20:20 | Okay, well then boom, that Facebook lead automatically comes in automatically ported into the CRM gets an auto autoresponder email auto responder text we have the automatically queued off and set and started on 2008 email texture campaign automatically starts tasking my agents to call them. So we call day one. Then every other day for the first 14 days and every 21 days that first year until communication expectations have been established, we know what their timeline is.
Joshua S. | 00:15:44:09 | Then it adjusts from there. Then we set them up on the property alerts, you know, So we want to automate as much of that as possible. But even the reminder tasks, you know, so like with my agent, it's like, look, do we have so many other things to think about? So let our system just tell us, hey, here's you got a call, here's exactly what to say.
Joshua S. | 00:16:02:02 | I mean, I even write it out in the system where it's like, Dude, if you get him on the phone, say this. If if you have voicemail, here's the voicemail to go out, then leave. You know, sort of eliminates every element of guesswork. So in that strategy can differentiate, you know, based on is it my sphere of influence, is it past clients?
Joshua S. | 00:16:17:05 | Is it like it just is? And even each lead source, man, how I up with an expired or if this beau or an open house lead your YouTube lead or Facebook lead or a Zillow lead, all of those need I mean there's going to be some similarities, but all of them dictate a different strategy because there are different timelines and different psychology per lead source.
Matt M. | 00:16:36:18 | Yeah. So I think the big thing, the big takeaway there is that for every category of someone in your CRM system, agents need to have a plan, right? Like whether it's a certain number of calls, texts, emails, tasks. And I think that I think this is where people get confused because people put someone in their CRM and they think these are the people that I'm going to send spammy texts, calls and emails to for the next year.
Matt M. | 00:17:00:06 | Really, you can program your CRM in a much more customer service centric way to remind you to task with a task for you to reach out and personally call. And then you can you could have the scripts in there if you want to use them or you can you can read a little bit more. But it's having that plan.
Matt M. | 00:17:17:12 | And I think most agents really lack creative and plan for every lead time. They do say, Oh, I'm going to call everyone a couple times a year that's in my database. But you need different types of calls for different types of lead contacts and a different cadence like that Facebook lead, you know, that's a garbage lead unless you call them a hundred times.
Matt M. | 00:17:32:19 | Yeah, the person who bought 100 and, you know, $1,000,000 house from you, you need to personally connect with them 4 to 5 times a year in a meaningful way. I think that's I think that's.
Joshua S. | 00:17:43:05 | Absolutely right on that, Max. I know a lot of you know, a lot of those of you that are watching or listen to this, that sounds like a lot. And it is, you know, an elephant, one bite at a time. You know, So it's like, you know, you're always refining these or build them out. Like people ask about, how did you come up with thousand day email tech strips?
Joshua S. | 00:17:58:24 | I'm like, I blank up 20 minutes a day and just, you know, write to new emails, to new text messages, will ask maybe three weeks worth of drip data. And you know but but here's the thing is, look, we don't need to reinvent the wheel. There's so many other badass top producers in this industry that have had great success with whatever lead source you're whatever strategy you're trying to deploy.
Joshua S. | 00:18:21:14 | You know, the first question I ask myself when I'm doing anything new is who do I need to go to? Who do I need to study? You know, who do I need to reach out to? That's already got this thing dialed in? Like, why am I going to go out there and try to, you know, spend the years of figuring this stuff out?
Joshua S. | 00:18:34:06 | Because here's the cool thing that I found is most top producers in this business, because they wouldn't be where they're at if they didn't have amazing people help them along their journey. Most of them will jump on a phone call with you or just tell you exactly what they do like. So don't be afraid to reach out. Go find out who is who, who's crushing with that thing.
Joshua S. | 00:18:51:14 | Reach out to them. We're seeing they're going to do do is say no on busy or not respond best case. And in most situations I find this to be true, where they're willing to jump on the phone, they're willing to help you, they're willing to tell you and break down their exact strategy to eliminate that guesswork so you don't have to go out and figure all this stuff out on your own.
Joshua S. | 00:19:08:03 | And I call R&D rip off and duplicate. You know, it's taken people were like, Oh, you're so good at this stuff. I'm like, No, I'm a very good pirate.
Matt M. | 00:19:15:04 | Well, that's the thing. Like, that's why we have this podcast because we know that, like, people don't view people in other cities and markets as competitors, right? Like it's a referral opportunity. It's a relationship opportunity. So for someone to listen to the show and say, you know what, I'm just going to pick up the phone or send Josh Smith an Instagram message and ask him, How do you do this?
Matt M. | 00:19:32:28 | What did you say? What was the process? Takes 2 seconds to answer that. And then you've now set yourself up, both of you, to have a referral source in X, Y, Z, city state around the country. I mean, there's so many reasons that networking with other agents is helpful, especially if you're a new agent with no assets. Find an existing agent to partner with you, all their stuff, but also help them like, yeah, do agents have time existing agents have money in a database.
Matt M. | 00:19:58:26 | I mean, that couldn't be more well aligned and that's probably why teams got started in the first place. Well, Josh, another huge thing you told me when we did our pre call is that you force your new agents not at gunpoint, but like, you know, you work out a lot so, you know, muscle gunpoint too to really develop a market knowledge of the areas that they plan to serve.
Matt M. | 00:20:19:17 | Tell me more about that, because I think that is something that especially from like buyers and sellers that I've worked with, they think that's missing in a lot of the new realtors out there. They just don't seem to have that market knowledge that an existing rules are more developed for 20 years. How are you helping speed up the process of market knowledge for your agents?
Joshua S. | 00:20:35:24 | Yeah. So with our brand new agents, our local market expertise strategy, it's twofold. Okay. Number one, we have them spend an hour a day in the MLS just going back 24 hours. So and looking at everything that's hit the market for an active anything that's one pending, anything that's went that's close and it's been pulled off market so canceled spy it's buyer withdrawn and we haven't studied those for that our you know studying the MLS is the MLS pronounced study only studying the photos studying the tax records and look I'll be honest I mean for the first two weeks is something that's brand new.
Joshua S. | 00:21:05:00 | That's your real estate experience that's going to feel like you're learning German. But then about that two week mark, man, it really starts to click. We're very quickly, and especially after a month of doing that first 30 days of doing that, you, you start to know exactly what the job neighborhoods are most is our neighborhoods, what those features are, who the who the desired builders are, the desired school districts, the price per square foot things are selling out, right?
Joshua S. | 00:21:26:29 | So so that's part one of this. The second part of this is we have them go drive the neighborhood each day to spend another hour to 2 hours. You're going to let them drive this neighborhood, get to know all the parts, the local schools, the local businesses associated with that, and then go preview to either to vacant properties or maybe it's, you know, to new build subdivisions inside that neighborhood when you're visiting specs.
Joshua S. | 00:21:49:17 | And that does a couple of things, you know, right. Like you get used to preview and proposition properties using their lockbox key. But then also a big part of our business is something that we really push our agents to hammer hard is leveraging these amazing new multibillion dollar tools and platforms that we've been blessed with, the Facebooks and the Instagrams of the world, which we should all be leveraging the hell out of.
Joshua S. | 00:22:10:09 | It's all free and you can massively grow your business. So it starts getting them to create that content with those properties that they're viewing each and every day to let their eye look at them in social CRM. And then this is my social CRM. I got my business, CRM has my social CRM, I'm communicating my social. See, I'm that, hey, I'm in the real estate industry.
Matt M. | 00:22:28:06 | The Neighborhood Realtor podcast is proudly made possible by the support of our sponsors. Treadstone Funding and neighborhood loans to amazing Midwest mortgage companies that now have offices all around the country. You're a realtor and you'd like to learn more about connecting with one of our lenders, DME, and that must vary and often acting with someone in your market.
Matt M. | 00:22:45:11 | If you're a lender and you want to join the right mortgage company in DME, and I'll connect you as well. I love that. Well, a couple of things there. So the first one is the hour a day of studying the MLS. I think this one's huge because not all people do it, but it gives you something to talk about, right?
Matt M. | 00:23:01:17 | And it's actually not a monumental task. So in most areas of the country right now, there's not that many new listings hitting the market in a given month. So for you to say like, Hey, I'm going to take the entire greater Phenix area and we'll get every single property that hits the market every day, that's not going to be that many properties.
Matt M. | 00:23:21:14 | I get most. What is that like? Maybe there's like a couple thousand listings a month. So that's that's, you know, at most 20, 30 listings a day. And if you have any filters is like maybe like you're not looking at vacant land or maybe you're not with your properties above, you know, $2 million are not under 100. There's a lot of ways to make this work.
Matt M. | 00:23:38:29 | But then also when you're at a dinner party, when you're out in the community, when you're dropping your kids off at summer camp and someone tells you that they're looking at X, Y, Z area, you can tell them definitively that you saw a property that hit the market that morning. It gives you something to talk about and it's knowledge.
Matt M. | 00:23:54:00 | I mean, there's so many reasons that that's an important skill set that not only new agents should be doing, but existing agents too, because the big thing I see with existing agents is that you get busy and then you stop setting the market and then those opportunities dry up and then you're slow and you have to actually rely on all the annoying marketing like open houses and cold calling to get business back versus if you keep the ball rolling, if you keep with your strategies of studying the market every day, working with people you have a much steadier business.
Joshua S. | 00:24:21:15 | Yeah, Yeah. And for us, I mean, you know, because I mean there's 30 some cities that make up the Phenix metro area. So, you know, I my agents pick and choose. You know, it's kind of divided up whether you're West Valley's valley. You know, it's like, you know what what are the primary markets that you're going to work, you know, And usually that's a list of like 3 to 4 cities.
Joshua S. | 00:24:35:28 | So it ends up even trickling down to less because that's where they're focusing, you know, whether it be their social media posts, their open houses, their YouTube videos that they're creating around good. You know, it can be hard to go out there and, you know, have really niched down and have extreme market expertise in all 30 plus, you know, cities.
Joshua S. | 00:24:53:08 | But the other thing I always stress and this is something we work with our new agents on right out of the gate too, is like, look, you don't need to know it all and you never will. I mean, I've been doing this eight years, more than 7000 properties. There's crap that comes up all the time that's still new to me, you know?
Joshua S. | 00:25:06:21 | So like in because confidence is so crucial when it comes to sales. So many people just focus on the process. The process is one element. Then you got confidence, then you got rapport, then you got enthusiasm. Like you can nail the process, but if you if you fall short on these other three, your sales conversions are going to be low.
Joshua S. | 00:25:23:24 | So then I'm like, okay, like, you know, we got to work on this with a lot of new agents, lack that confidence. And I'm like, Look, all you got to have confidence in is can number one like again, again, you're not going to have all the answers. You never will. I still don't have all the answers all the time either.
Joshua S. | 00:25:35:21 | But we're resourceful, right? So just understand that you're with the right team. You have the right resources to go out there and be resourceful and people are okay with and they respect you sitting there saying, Hey, I don't know the answer to that. I don't want to guess and give you wrong information. So I'm going to go get that answer for you.
Joshua S. | 00:25:50:27 | I'll call you back today at noon with that response. So people, they're totally cool with that. Nobody expects you to have all those answers right out of the gate, you know. Then from there, though, I'm like, all you got to do to have that confidence is number one again that you're with the right, you know, have the right resources at your disposal and that you're able to be resourceful.
Joshua S. | 00:26:04:27 | But then from there, okay, like are you going to work your ass off for your clients? Everybody always says, yes, okay, you got to work your ass off for your clients, right? Are you going to put your clients before commissions? And by that, I don't mean you got to be a discount or commission activities. I mean that. Okay, It's.
Joshua S. | 00:26:17:09 | It's in your client's best interest to get out of this deal in even though you need that deal to close to pay your own mortgage this month. Like you put your mortgage payment aside and you get your clients out of that deal because that's in their best interests, like, you know, clients, people, commissions. And then are you going to operate from a high ethics and morals like you do those three things, you're ahead of 90% this industry.
Joshua S. | 00:26:37:05 | So you're already ahead of 90% your competitors. I that's all you really need for confidence, you know, So, you know, just approach that and just understand that step one, that that be being a huge hang up for a lot of, you know newer unseasoned agents.
Matt M. | 00:26:50:03 | Once you like. I mean it's the same thing is you know when you're in school in your kid, the more you study, the more real estate related activities you do and the more things that are in your calendar along those lines, the more confidence you will naturally have. Because you know that you're not you're not a poser, in essence, like you put the work in and you're doing things that benefit you, but that also benefit your clients and that confidence you will build internally is absolutely huge.
Matt M. | 00:27:13:25 | So, Josh, tell me if someone wanted to get in contact with you, how could how could they reach out to you? What's the best way to go with you?
Joshua S. | 00:27:21:08 | Yeah, so GSD mode at dot com is kind of the hub. You know, I've got a great podcast GSD mode, which I've been doing it for eight years, you know, several thousand interviews and tips and all of that on there and everything on this guy's free. I'm not here to try to pitch or sell anything, but I guess demo dot com.
Joshua S. | 00:27:38:18 | I'll get my free e-book on that which is 42 top tips and strategies walking through whether be inspired or open house or Facebook and also follow up scripts and you know, a lot of just different top tips in there you can snag that I mean if you want to follow me on social pretty much anywhere at Joshua Smith GSD awesome.
Matt M. | 00:27:55:15 | Well Josh, thank you so much for the tips today. Really appreciate your time and I hope, I hope some people reach out.
Joshua S. | 00:28:00:07 | Yeah, this has been an honor, my friend. Thank you guys.