The Real Estate Rundown

Own Your Weird, Niche Down and Grow Your Business to Seven-figures

This week’s special guest is Jess Lenouvel of The Listings Lab.

 

She coaches agents and makes a very bold statement … She and her team will help agents go from six-figures to seven-figures! And she means every word of it.

 

She takes aN “own you weird” attitude to branding and uses it to help agents “niche down” to help stay relevant and bring their business to the next level while freeing up their time by knowing what to work on, what to automate and what to outsource.

 

One of the more jolting exchanges came when Jess said that relying on repeat business and referrals isn’t really running a business. After the initial shock of hearing that it makes sense. “you have no control over if somebody has that conversation, you are essentially relying on others to market for you … The stuff that comes from your sphere is the icing.” Using a predictable system to bring people into your world and convert them form stranger to client is the cake!

 

“People don’t like to hear this idea, they are so attached to this ego thing that 100% of my business is referral, I say to people if 100% is from referral then you are not running a business, and I see it as a sign of laziness.”

 

Talking about tactics to support that bold statement earlier Jess said there are basically 6 pillars to go from six-figures to seven-figures.

 

1. Mindset
2. Sales Skills
3. Operations and systems
4. Lead Gen
   1. Organic
   2. Paid

5.  Clients and signature precess (How clients are handled and your signature process)

6.  Team and Hiring

 

She talked about building small, nimble, lean teams “we don’t teach building large expansion teams.” This keeps things scalable and allows agents to not live in a situation where they can’t not answer the phone at dinner. “You are fully supported in your business.”

 

You need to rewire your brain for high performance. “For a lot of people once you get to a certain point in your business you don’t have business problems anymore, you have personal problems the appear in your business.”

 

Agents also need to know the psychology of sales, not just spew the same scripts everyone else has. The disruptors are there because we have let them be there, “if everyone says the same things and keep everything transactional then we are opening the door to automation taking over.” 

 

You’ll recognize this theme from several of our talks and guest speakers. 

 

She continued to say that 50% of agents should quit. “Not that I don’t think agents are valuable, but 50-80% aren’t.” What they are doing is talking business from the agents that are valuable to clients and they actually make the rest of the industry look bad. Agents complain that they are not treated with more respect, and that the industry is not seen in the light they would like. They say “I would never do that to my lawyer” … Well your lawyer performs in a very different way, first I don’t know very many part-time lawyers. Lawyers are “niched down” that is they specialize. You want to be seen as an elite professional then the whole industry needs to shift.

 

Old school niching down was geo-location based, think of the farming you learned early on in your career, new school niching down is human demographics based. It is applied in terms of life transition, are they sizing up, down sizing, first time buyers, first time investor or what? What is it they are looking to do and all are different.

 

You’ll also hear one of our team role play with Jess on finding his niche and beginning the process to apply these pillars to grow to seven-figures.

 

Be sure to check out The Listings Lab website https://www.thelistingslab.com

Speaking With Joshua Smith - Founder & Host of GSD Mode

This week we’re glad to have Joshua Smith the creator of the GSD Mode YouTube cannel/Podcast.

 

Eliot began with a question and some background. What many listeners may not know is that you still run a high powered real estate team here in the valley. “What are you seeing in the real estate space? And what are you doing to remain relevant in this ultra competitive market?”

 

Josh said, more has changed in the last few years than has in my previous 16 years in real estate. “Tech is growing exponentially, so the growth is going to continue to be more rapid.”

 

Josh continued, “It really boils down to two things.” 

 

First we as real estate pros need to embrace change. “Many people have an issue with change and those that do and aren’t willing to adapt and shift are going to be left behind.” Agents shouldn’t fear or resist change, they should embrace it, “Run to it, you are going to have to be willing to continue to have that rug pulled out from under you on a consistent basis because change is happening.

 

Second, it used to be if you just worked you ass off and did good by your clients you could become a top producer. “those things are now the ante to be in the game, the given things just to survive.” Now you have to be a brilliant operator and possess the mindset of an entrepreneur - a business person - you’ve gotta understand business.”

 

Eliot asked, “We all know more money, more disruption , more high tech are coming … What do you see coming down the pike? How do you position you team to handle all of this?”

 

So everyone gets this question ‘is the market going to crash?’ “Who knows. We do know that there will have to be a correction, but we don’t know what that may look like.” All I know is that we are going to be prepared, “I mean just pay attention, markets never shift on a dime,” Josh answered.

 

Looking here in Phoenix, anything under 3 months supply is a sellers market, 4 to 5 months is a balanced market and the price increases are basically 3% or 4% inflation, or appreciation, however you want to frame it, with 6 months supply we have a buyers market, at 7 months we see short sales increase, at 8 REO properties begin to hit the market. “You’ll see these upticks, I don’t need to see the short sales and REOs hit the market, if I’m seeing an increase in supply I can start timing it out. If you just pay attention to what the market is doing there is plenty of time to get out there and shift and pivot.” 

 

All the tech that is changing the game and the multi-billion dollar hedge funds disguised as real estate companies create a new and different angle, the thought that the agent is becoming obsolete. “I don’t think that will happen, at least not few do our job as an industry.” 

 

If we allow this business to become transactional rather than relationship based, the danger is that REALTORS become a commodity, real estate is so complex that this is unlikely “but I’m not saying it can’t happen, I don’t have a crystal ball, but I’m all in on real estate. My whole life, everything, is used to give agents the tools they need.

 

Even while having a high level of confidence that agents are going to be around for a long time, “if you look at all the other industries for the most  part things are moving to a superior product at less cost.” With real estate commissions, we really haven’t seen that compression in our space. I am mapping out how to react to this when it comes. I’m not acting on it, but have mapped it out, it eventually becomes a volume game. “I don’t know what the future holds, but I am always preparing to be prepared,” Josh added.

 

Kala pointed out “ when you said we as REALTORS can’t allow the business to become transactional, that really caught my attention." You are known as an amazing content creator, “in my opinion that is one of the was we can scale relationships through technology,” If you could give our listeners just the highlight reel of some of your content milestones.”

 

People can see a lot of what they want and need, but not everything on these sites. “I want to know what they can’t find and that is what I create my content around.” With IDX, Zillow, and everything else people can see a lot but they don’t know what the lifestyle is like, what the schools are like or the parks, in short “they don’t know what it is like to live in the area.” So that really becomes my content creation strategy, delivering content the consumer wants that’s important to them but ins’t readily available.”

 

Josh concluded “This is the name of the real estate game, to get people to know you, like you, trust you, be aware of what you do and then for you to follow up frequently, then you business continues to grow.” Agents want to own that mindshare when they are thinking of making a buying decision. “To build that you have to give them valuable content that matters to them. When they push that play button has that persons life improved in some way, the cool thing is it’s easier to do today than ever before, you can do it alone your iPhone”  

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