Today on the Book More Show, we caught up with Bob Mangold to talk about how his book 'If You List, You Last' is working to start conversations with realtors and mortgage brokers.
Bob's business is helping those in an industry swamped with 'training' opportunities by working with them to achieve tangible outcome.
His book is the perfect way to engage one of his key audiences, realtors, by identifying 4 simple steps they can take to improve their listing business.
We talk about how a book helps cut through the noise of other trainers to identify those people who resonate with his message and ultimatley become great clients.
Your book becomes an asset you can use across many channels as the tool that amplifies work you're doing to reach new people.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
- Stuart introduces Bob Mangold, an expert in the implementation of strategies within the real estate and mortgage sectors.
- Bob emphasizes the importance of execution, explaining that without it, even the best ideas in real estate remain unused.
- We address common issues such as the abandonment of strategies and the allure of new, untested ideas, advocating for perseverance and adaptability.
- The concept of role-playing is highlighted as a valuable training tool, preparing agents to make confident cash offers.
- We discuss the shift from personal branding to value-driven branding, focusing on the unique value agents can offer the market.
- Stuart and Bob delve into building a referral-rich business model that is cost-effective and enhances clients' financial outcomes.
- Challenges of working with senior clients are examined, underscoring the need to understand their unique needs and provide value through knowledge.
- The episode discusses the Home Boss system, an innovative approach to real estate transactions aimed at maximizing seller profits with transparency and efficiency.
- We explore the use of authorship, particularly writing a book, as a strategy to engage with clients and provide value through additional resources like classes and consultations.
- The importance of aligning the message of a book with one's brand to attract the right audience and initiate meaningful conversations is discussed.
LINKS
Bob Mangold - LinkedIn
If You List, You Last
Show notes & video: 90minutebooks.com/podcast/156
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TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Stuart: I want to welcome back to the book more show. It's Stuart Bell here and today. Great episode. We're joined by Bob Mangol. Bob, how you doing.
Bob: Thanks, how about you, stuart?
Stuart: Yeah, fantastic, thank you. I'm in the week leading up to Christmas, as we record, so I'm not quite sure whether it's busy or quiet, or it seems to be a little bit of a hectic rush towards the finish line at the end of the year. How is it for you?
Bob: Yeah, always.
Stuart: Yeah.
Bob: Always.
Stuart: So, bob, would you describe yourself as a realtor coach? What would be the best way of describing it?
Bob: That would be okay, is a word. Really, what I do is to help real estate agents and mortgage brokers and mortgage loan officers implement. So there's lots of coaches that'll get on a call and you know, every week or every two weeks and say, hey, stuart, you should be doing this, this and this. Did you do that? No, oh well, the next two weeks you need to do that.
And then that, to me, is by and large what you see in coaching and almost every industry, and it's not that it's a bad thing, it's just nobody actually helps on implementing right. So you can have coaching, you can have marketing. I look at it as what we do is we implement, and so I don't let people move. I take them down a path of basically 10 things that they need to do to implement in the business and we don't move to step two until we have step one done and we don't move to step three until we have step two done. Then we implement, because you could have the greatest ideas, you can have the greatest system strategies, but if they're not implemented and executed, it doesn't matter.
Stuart: Right, there's a podcast probably a lot of the audience are aware of you probably are as well the Isle of Markets in podcast and the idea around the getting the most value from the ideas. I would have a heated or enthusiastic debate with my business partner, dean, because it means very much, on the ideas. A good idea trumps everything else and I'm very much on the side of without any implementation. I could Google ideas and have 50 to implement, but without implementation nothing happens and of course the reality is both is true, but it's always interesting the spirit of debate, because I think there is a lot of heat and light and energy and other offerings around the idea side of things. But unless there's that implementation and I don't want to say necessarily the real estate is worse than anyone else, but it's definitely a challenge of business owners across the board having that implementation step. So your approach on the implementation side was that from a hard one experience or were you naturally on that side of the fence?
Bob: You know, listen, I am of the mind that I would agree with both of you, both Dean and you, have to have good ideas. You have to exist outside the box, especially in the real estate and mortgage space. Agents and loan officers are nothing more than a commodity unless you can step out of that box or step out of that frame and do things that provide value and do things that are different. So I believe you have to have the ideas to be able to do that. But then if you don't go and put them in place, it doesn't matter. And so somebody whose own business is I've owned brokerages, mortgage brokerage, real estate brokerages if you don't implement things, nothing moves forward.
And if you're the leader of your business, which every real estate agent, every mortgage person is, if you're the leader, you have to be pushing forward. And the only way to move forward is to implement. And when you implement, you have to accept. I may have to tweak right, so I may not be great the first time I do it, but by the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth time I can get good at it. And I think what happens is most people they implement, they go. Oh, that didn't work the way I thought they go, it doesn't work. No, you just have to tweak it because you didn't work and right.
Stuart: There's some discipline and expertise and the likelihood of hitting anything out of the park. The first time is slim. I think there's an also an element of kind of like the shiny object syndrome. Because there are so many ideas, so many implementations, it's easier to or maybe it's not even easier, but it's less. There's less accountability to think oh, it was the idea that was bad, I just need to find another idea, rather than it was my implementation. That could have been better and I just need to have a little bit more practice and I think that you just hit the nail on the head.
Bob: We always look at oh well, there's something wrong with whatever shiny object I have. So that had to be the problem.
Excuse me, because it couldn't be me right and we just have to accept as people that, no matter what we do, the first time we do it we're not that great at it, because I promise the fifth time you do it you'll be better than the first time, and the tenth time you do it you'll be better than the fifth time. And so you know. That's like hey, you've got to do things, you know, a hundred times or a thousand times before you get good at it. It's a hundred percent.
True, yeah, and I think what happens is people just do it one or two times, they get blown out and it doesn't feel right for me, instead of going back and making changes and putting things into their own personality, for example, like one of the things I don't like to do is I don't like to write scripts. I have them, but what happens is then people read a script hi, stuart, good morning, how are you today? Well, that's not going to work right, and so until you get comfortable going hey, stuart, how you doing? My name is Bob, I'm right, and you put it into a normal tone and you get good and you get comfortable at it.
It's not going to work very well, and the only way that you're going to get comfortable is really what I recommend to everybody, and really I don't care what business you're in, is that you role play, right like, why think about it? Why would you practice, you know, in the real state space? Why would you practice in an actual listing presentation where there's money on the line? And you're practicing now? Why don't you just grab another agent, a spouse, a friend of somebody, enroll, play it when there's no money involved first?
Stuart: particularly, I think. Realism yeah, this is in mortgage brokers particularly, maybe even more so than some lower transaction businesses the value in those converted appointments is so high, compared with selling someone a twenty five dollar widget, that the college, the idea of practicing before actually turning up I mean, at least if you're going to practice whilst you're there and have the commitment to carry on and see it through, I guess that's better than giving up too soon. But the idea of role play, I think it seems somewhat artificial or kind of academic to people. But when you look at sportsman, high performance sports I was at the Miami Grand Prix with a friend earlier in the year and my dad's super into the Grand Prix I am not so much friend, andrew super into it.
So he I just spoke to him last week and he was saying that the teams had moved from North America to Europe and then back to South America. There was some real tight schedule and was talking about one of the drivers who was flying in two days early specifically to be on the simulator for two days before that course. So on the lead to the example that with that idea of role play, we talk about it in a real sense or in a sales sense and it seems kind of contrived. But if we took that exact same scenario and put it into a professional sports context, we've all heard of Tiger Woods kind of just practicing every hole in the racing car, drivers simulating the course. It's such a common experience in other elements but I think people right make it too easily yeah, I mean, think of a pilot.
Bob: Would you want to go? Hey, you know. Hi, welcome passengers. You know, today's my first flight. I've never even been behind a simulator.
Stuart: Let's give it a go right, yeah, I've watched on TV, but yeah definitely.
Bob: Yeah, in our profession we do that, and you know I'm always dumbfounded why we would do that. When there's money on the line, you go, well, figure it out. When I'm, you know, talking to somebody, it's like, well, not when there's money on the line. That just never made sense to me. And full disclosure. When I first started in sales I did not love role playing right, you were self-conscious and all those other things. But pretty quickly I learned it's better to mess it up in role playing than it is to mess it up sitting in front of somebody when you can get paid right and so that's what I mean by implementation.
So like, literally, you know, in about two hours after we're done with this today, I have a weekly implementation call and what we're doing is I will have the agents in my program literally role playing how to present a cash offer to a seller and do it with me. And you know well, depending on the week, maybe you know normally hundreds, but maybe some dozens this week of other realtors listening. So it's pressure, no question, but wouldn't it be much better to have the pressure now when there's no money on the line?
right and so, before I have them go out, start calling potential sellers, I want to make sure that they can explain it properly yeah, and that to me just makes common sense anyway.
Stuart: One of those elements on. You talk about the call today, specifically around the cash offer side of things. Anything I think is that's not everyone's level of comfort is within their kind of sphere of experience and they can talk pretty comprehensively about that particular subject and once they've gone through it a couple of times as you say, perhaps practice not when there's money online, but once they've been through it a couple of times, it becomes second nature. But as soon as the subject starts going slightly wider or they're trying to introduce a new topic or have a new approach or deal with a new type of client, I think we can sometimes rely on that expertise of the familiar where anti-sellers are slightly the new thing that we're approaching, jumped off on a bit of a test.
Bob: And that's why in the book I actually have a 10, really, we just call it a roadmap just 10 steps, and what I teach real estate agents to do is focus on building a listing focus business right, and for years I've been predicting that what happened this year was going to happen, that we would get into the courts and this buyer agent commission.
I just didn't see any way in the world we were going to win. It doesn't mean that it's valid or invalid. It's just you get in front of jury, of your peers, and then people start feeling like they were screwed and paying more than they had to. The outcome is not going to be good, and so if you were listing agents, you didn't have the flux in your business that you're going to have going forward in 2024. So I've always believed just if you list, you last and at the end of the day then it just becomes again. To me, 87% of all real estate agents fail in the first couple of years because we're not teaching the right things. Well, we know that the top earning agents in our industry are all listing agents. Why don't we model that instead of what doesn't work?
Stuart: Yeah, I think so it never made sense to me.
Bob: It's like why aren't we teaching agents how to build a listing focus business? And then the second step of that once you make that determination, I'm going to do it. You better figure out what your value to the marketplace is, and so you know. I just refer to that as value branding. So often you hear you need to build a personal brand. Well, and that's great. If you want to tell the world how wonderful you are, Personal branding is a great thing. In my opinion, I think we need to take and talk to the people about what value I bring to the relationship, so that the outcome that we have by working together is more lucrative for you Meaning you sold a house for more money, you netted more money, whatever that looks like, but it's about the experience that you're going to have as the consumer and what value I bring to you, not how wonderful I am.
Stuart: Right.
Bob: And so I don't market that way. To me, it's all about what value are you bringing to the consumer, right? And if you can't answer that and that's what I talked about in the book and I give everybody you know how we do it in the system I created to be able to answer that. But if you can't tell people what your value is to the marketplace, why would they hire you, right? And the second part is if you don't provide any value, why will they refer you?
Stuart: to anybody. Yeah, those ideas of orchestrating those steps. I think even if people, if you push them and force them and they answer, they would see and maybe even come up themselves with a level of value being more important than personal brands. But the default, the general position, seems to be so much more people are focused on the personal brand side of things. Coming from the UK, you don't seem to get the same. It's much more company driven rather than person driven and I'm guessing that's some structural difference.
I didn't know that many realtors in the UK to be able to look at the difference. But realises in the US, compared with a number of other professional services industries, definitely seems to be more. They default more to the person Right. They're based on a bus seat or a billboard rather than the value proposition at their point.
Bob: Right, so those. And so I think if you focus on the personal, you know you can be successful and you spend a lot of money doing it, but if you actually focus on the value that you bring, you can build a much better, a much more solid base of referral business. Right, right, which is ultimately referrals are free, so I could go out and spend all kinds of money on Facebook and Instagram and I could spend time making YouTube videos telling the world how wonderful I am, or I could actually take and change the financial outcome for people on their transactions and then at that point they're more than happy to refer people to to that. So I refer to something I called I don't call it the stadium pitch. I actually got it from Chet Holmes book the Ultimate Sales Machine.
Stuart: Right.
Bob: And it's the concept hey, if we fill the stadium full of people for you buyer, sellers, investors and I said, stuart, I'm going to give you 30 seconds to get out there and tell those 50, 70, 500, 100,000 people, tell them about your business, tell them whatever you want to tell them to do that, and I'm going to instruct them prior. If you're boring, they can just get up and walk out, it doesn't matter. And then you go okay, go. What do you say? And the typical real estate default answers Well, I've been in the business for 25 years and I've sold 300 million and I love my clients and I was born and raised here and etc. Etc.
Stuart: Yeah.
Bob: It's like come on, yawn, that doesn't speak to anything. And so what I encourage everybody to do is to create that, that stadium pitch, to be able to do that. And people say to me all the time it's like wow, that's not realistic, that's never going to happen. It's like, well, I disagree with you, probably not 50 or 75,000 people. But you go to a B and I meeting a Chamber of Commerce a little tip, any of those networking groups and everybody gets their one minute to tell about you and they get up and they say that stuff.
Stuart: Yeah.
Bob: And I'm going like how compelling would that be? So in the book I outline our stadium pitch. It's very, very simple. Hey, there are 3 mistakes that homeowners make that prevent them from having their home paid off in 7 to 10 years and accumulating a million dollars in cash from that property In addition to the equity. And all we simply do is we rearrange the interest that you pay so it stays in your pocket instead of the bank. If you'd like to see how fast you could have your home paid off and how many hundreds of thousands of dollars you could save, schedule a 15 minute call with me. That's more compelling than saying, hey, I've been doing this for 30 years and I was born and raised here, which I wasn't that kind of stuff.
Right, when people understand that there's a potential value and it's different than what everybody else says, that's how you Change the perception of you as a professional. So people you say to me all the time say so you're kind of like the Dave Ramsey or Susie Yorman of of real estate and mortgage. It's like, yeah, there's things I disagree with them on, but by and large yes. And so if realtors understood that they had to have a value proposition, a difference in how they work. Like why would you refer a friend to me? Well, if I could help your friend get completely out of debt in seven to ten years, save hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments and interest and then use that to fund their retirement, well, that's a good reason to refer your friends or family members to me.
Stuart: That comes back to that value proposition like, say, well, leveraging the relationships because there's another existing relationship there. It's actually the value that you're providing to the person. The ten ideas that form the book and bring those together, are they? There's a consistency. I've got a cover. Let me just bring that up. Click the right button. Okay, so if you list your last, so this idea is consistent across a number of the things that you do, whether it's the book, the podcast, the websites, this Framework. Is this one of the fundamental frameworks to the rest of the program or is this something that was brought together for the purpose of the book?
Bob: They're basically different steps and tenets of what I do, but I brought everything together in the book to say, hey, here are the ten things that you have to do, right? So a simple one everybody goes. You know the four-step process starts with well, who will you talk to? Well, real estate agents talk to everybody. Well, it doesn't matter who I talked to, it's talk to everybody. Well, no, if you want to actually focus on listings, then you need to be talking to People that have homes to sell, or people who can refer you to homes that have homes to sell. And everybody goes. Well, in today's market, just, people aren't selling their homes. And I would beg to differ with you because, well, in every market we have people that get divorced. They don't care what the interest rate is on the home they need to sell right 65% of all listings in 2022 came from senior citizens, mainly.
As we age Right, we have to downsize, and so 65% of the people that are selling in your neighborhood are Seniors. Well, there's a good place to start. And then there's things that we do Algorithmically that we know they have a higher likelihood of selling. Well, that's who we focus on like a laser Because they're likely to sell. And then, if you think about it, there's a whole industry around that right a state planning attorneys, medicare insurance, people on the divorce side, divorce attorneys so there's all these other professionals that can refer business to you. For example, one of my agents works with a divorce attorney. He gets three to five listings every month from them.
Stuart: Yeah.
Bob: Now we've got a probate. One of my guys in Northwest Indiana works with a probate attorney. 16 listings last year from a probate attorney.
Stuart: Wow, yeah, yeah. This idea of complimentary, non competing business it isn't just taking that moment to think outside of that first degree circle to the people who have your clients, who you can help best but you don't necessarily have immediate access to it starts opening up so many channels and over time it builds as well. I mean, I'm sure the agency work would see this time and time again. The first time they do that thought exercise, they'll they'll identify one person but keep doing that exercise. And five years down the track, that's a pretty robust business. I can't. I did see a start earlier this year.
Bob: They're great part is that that's recession proof Business, right. People are gonna continue to your old. 10,000 people a day turn age, turn 65 every day, right now. That business is gonna be there for decades. Divorce is never going away. That has nothing to do with the economy. If I'm a senior and I fall and get hurt or I get ill and I have to sell in my house, it's not economy driven Business, right? So the problem is, yeah, you have to determine who you're gonna talk to, then you have to figure out where you're gonna find them.
Stuart: Right.
Bob: And once you start to specialize right I'm sure you've heard the phrase the riches are in the niches Don't be everything to everybody. Focus on one thing. Those one thing could be sellers, and then there's subsets of sellers underneath that, and then there's subsets of prospects. I have the people at own the house, but I have people that refer them. Yeah, that's where you focus your business.
Stuart: Right, that idea of specialization and the riches being in the niches. It's the first tenant of the of the book blueprint scorecard. It's the picking that single target audience and thinking of things in terms of campaign by campaign by campaign. It's not saying that you'll never address other things, but for this particular exercise, doubling down it just makes the whole process so much easier because, as your guys I'm sure see as well, the language that you use with that particular group, the follow up sequences you've got in place, the examples that just spring to mind as you having those conversations, once you've all played it and got the language square in your mind, it just makes it so much more straightforward.
Bob: And that does come to the expertise part where we're talking earlier like you have to get better and better at this. Well, the more you enter into those markets, the more you understand what's important. Let's say to a senior Right, right, so seniors, you don't go in and just real estate agent all over them, you just turn them off because they're used to having people try and scam them. To be honest with you, and at the end of the day, the better you get at understanding the needs and things of that nature, the more success you'll have. But that just simply takes time, transactions, understanding, conversations, networking, like, hey, what's important? What are the five things that are important for estate planning that people should have?
One of the things if you have a 45, 50 year old client, the question would be hey, stuart, have your parents signed a beneficiary deed? Yet you know it'd be better if they had a trust, but it'd be better, it would be good if they had a will. But the very worst case scenario is they have a beneficiary deed and so often I talk to real estate agents they go what is that Right? It's like well, when the person dies, the deed goes directly to the descendant. It's not going through per bait or any of the rest of the stuff. So at the end of the day, the more you get involved in that, the more knowledgeable you get, the more value you bring to the client. It doesn't happen like day one hey, I'm going to focus like that and all of a sudden I'm going to be an expert at it.
Stuart: Yeah, and that being in it for the long term, the specialization and adding value, layering on the value, one level on top of the other, that is. I was listening to a podcast. I own an electric vehicle. I was listening to a podcast the other day.
The guy was talking about going into one of the traditional manufacturers who had an electric range but none of the sales guys knew anything about it. So he was giving them the details because he was enthusiast and then had gone back with another friend two months later and the guys still didn't know the details like how big the battery was or what their average range was or whether how affected cold weather was. And he'd literally given them the information. But by not doubling down in that particular specialization or having an interest to double down in that specialization, the likelihood of you building a relationship with a senior where you are able to provide that extra value and given a broader perspective, versus just going in and like the line you use, kind of real estate realtor all over them, it just makes such a difference and I think if you're in any industry for the long term, having that interest and and respect for the clients to want to be able to provide that value really makes the difference. All right, yeah.
Bob: Yeah, you know, I, about six years ago, I started looking at the market. The way things were happening is when these lawsuits first started and I said, you know, quite honestly, it's like this isn't going to end well. But the question you have to ask yourself really is why would a seller pay a buyer's agents? And you could say, well, the seller doesn't pay the buyer's agent, the listing agent does. The end of the day, the seller pays it. Right, the buyer pays it in the form of an elevated home price, just the way it works, and be honest with with that. But basically, what you're doing is saying, hey, I'm going to pay you 6% or I'm going to offer 6% and you're going to give 3% to a buyer's agent. Oh, yes, do it. By the way, that buyer's agent's job is very simple it's to negotiate the best price in terms for the buyer, which means it's going to take money out of your pocket at closing Right. When you explain that to a seller like that and I just go is there a reason you'd want to do it that way? And they say, well, that's the way it's done? It's like, well, what if it wasn't done that way?
And I started having these conversations with sellers and I created a system called Home Boss that was designed to answer that. Hey, the buyer's going to pay the commission. We have a way to do it where it's compliant with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It's all completely disclosed, so we don't have any lawsuit issues. It's if a buyer wanted to negotiate their commission with the agent, they could see it right up front what it was. They could do whatever they want. But at the end of the day, what it allowed us to do is it allowed us to take and get the seller the highest market value, and we can guarantee that because of the amount of traffic that we get and we can do it 14 days. We don't even put a lockbox on the house, right? Because biggest thing for sellers they hate the hassle and headaches of listing. Corelogic did a study about a year ago that said 77% of home buyers would be willing to give up 5% to 10% of their equity just to eliminate the normal process of selling a home. So if we could get price, which is a big deal, we could eliminate hassles and headaches and get it done fast. We could do that but at the same time be compliant with the courts, and so simply, all we do is our fee is 3% to sell home and if another agent brings the buyer, we add 3% to the price. It's all disclosed. It happens online and everybody knows what everybody else is offering. There's no highest and best blind offers.
And so, about six years ago, I seen that coming. My son was just getting licensed, he was 22. And it was like you know how's he going to walk into somebody's house and they're not going to go? Kid, how old are you and how many homes have you sold? And what we're able to do is create a process that we focused on the process and not the person. This is the process that allows you to get these things and we're able to drive traffic like our record open house was April 3 of 2023. We had 1,224 people in an open house.
The question would be, how long would it take you if you put it in MLS and you let the normal process? How long would it take you to get 1200 people in an open house or to visit the listing? We did it in two days, which is how we can. You know how we know that we can guarantee that the maximum value for the property, and so it's just about looking outside the industry. Six years ago, I can tell you, people told me I was nuts. Realtors were like this is crazy. Why are you doing this? And suddenly now it's not so crazy anymore because we lost. And now one of the people I talked to five years ago actually had a team, was named in one of the lawsuits, called me up and said, my God, I should have listened to you.
Stuart: Yeah, like you say, even with the lawsuits on the natural, the joy of the peers naturally signing on the side of the consumer because there's sympathy and it seems unfair and the big guy versus the little guy type approach, but just the natural tendency towards faster, more seamless transactions online. The whole COVID approach to forcing people to be more comfortable or making people be more comfortable pretty quickly with purely online transactions. I think that accelerated things by five years. But the situation we're in now that study saying people would be willing to pay, give up real money, just for ease of transaction, anything convenience trumps anything and as more and more people heading down that route, I think it's the agents who are adopting that or acknowledging it and then embracing it slightly will be the ones who are heading in another five years and not just fighting the nostalgia of how it was when they first got started.
Bob: Yeah, 100%. So it's funny Many, many of my agents actually do listing presentations on zoom. They don't. They don't even go into the house anymore. Well, pre COVID, that like people didn't know what zoom was right, so you couldn't necessarily do that.
So there are some things that came out of COVID that helped us as an industry, and one of my agents literally just sold his house, now travels around the country, has a I call it a rockstar tour bus and he takes his listings via zoom traveling across the country and he has a buyer's team that does the open houses form. He's traveling the country and he takes two to three listings a week traveling in a you know, a luxury RV, a tour bus, whatever you want to call it. And the whole paradigm has changed because of COVID and yet people will still say no, people won't do that. And it's like my answer is well, please don't tell all my agents who are doing that, because it works pretty darn good. Right, and you got to change your paradigm and you have to start looking at how the world's going to change and what you can do to be in front of it.
Stuart: Yeah, you know everything with AI.
Bob: Now it's. You know, is AI going to replace a real estate agent? No, but boy, can it take care of some of your tasks and things like. Hey, I have a podcast. If you list your last podcast and guess what, I had it on AI. It used to take three hours. I used to have a firm that did it for me and everything else and, you know, paid a few hundred dollars a month to do that and Literally I uploaded into an AI system and three minutes later I have a perfectly edited video and podcast.
Stuart: Yeah, yeah that that's speeding up of the task related things. When you look at the real estate industry across the board, how many things are slowed down by Old or legacy ways of doing things, or because that's the way it's always done, or the the Reducing need to do things with face-to-face contact, the whole title side of the business that it just I I'm surprised at that still exists and it really.
Bob: Real estate is a very College, traditional business, if you will. They still teach agents the same thing that they've been teaching for the last 50 or 60 years. And my thing is, I have a corporate background and you know my answer is hey, if I ran a corporation and 87% of my employees washed out in the first two years Like we'd be firing somebody right. Yet in the real estate industry that's what we do and it's like, well, that's just how it works. It's a tough business. Well, no, what if we started teaching them different things to be more effective?
Yeah and Changing the way that they're trained, instead of just throwing them out to the wolves and go door knock. You know, go knock on doors.
Stuart: Yeah, I think that expectation that it's a personal business and you can't replace the human element of it is true to the point of the Relationships and making sure that the client feels like you've, you're their trusted partner, but all of the ancillary things around it, those are the things that will go quickly and You're right. Speeding up the process, changing the training to be more effective in 2023 and beyond, means that they can double down on that human element and make sure that that's the piece that is replaceable by machines, but streamlining everything else, taking away the headache that that does wash out so many of the people.
Bob: It's what what I actually teach is is pretty simple Process. The only job that you have each day is to talk to 10 potential sellers or 10 People who could refer you to sellers. The only job you get paid for is to talk to people. There's a real estate agent or mortgage person. The only thing we actually get paid for is to get a listing agreement signed or a buyer broker agreement signed the only thing we get paid to do. Everything else can be clerical for lack of, you know, a description. So if you want to maximize the amount of money you make, well, it's pretty simple Just talk to 10 people a day and then, if you can take the 10 people a day and get better at your value branding, your value Proposition, instead of talking to like, let's say, the average realtor has to talk to a hundred people to get one listing Right.
They get talked to ten to get into, or they talked to a hundred to get ten appointments. Then they list one, two, whatever the number is. Well, what if all we had to do is talk to ten to get six or seven listings Right? So it isn't that we have to talk to more people, because I hear that all the time. Real estate's a numbers game. To some level that could be true, but it's actually a skills game. Our job needs to be I could. If I can talk to less people to get more signatures, I'll make more money in less time.
Right and so one of my coaching tenants is I don't want our people working more than 40 hours a week, because then you're working. If you're working 80 hours a week, you're not working smart, you're working hard. Let's work smart, improve our skills and what we're saying to people and what we talk to people about, and that's why I don't. I don't love scripts. Scripts because they become Something that's red and we eliminate all tonality, all speed, pace, things like that. As a natural, you know, my natural tone is talk fast and like I dump a lot of stuff out, but if you actually hear me talk to somebody in a sales situation, I'm actually very slow, I'm contemplative. Right, it's all that tonality that comes into it. Why aren't we teaching that in the real estate business and saying here's a script. Right, you see it all over Facebook all the time. Hey, who wants my physboscripts or who wants this script? The script itself is there's nothing new out there. The question is, what's your skill level In that scripting, in talking to people?
Stuart: right, exactly, it's the taking, the, the, the, the tool in the idea and tailing it for your particular Use case and your personality and actually internalizing it as well. It's not just reading as you say off a page and it's the words, their magic. It's the fact that you're able to Internalize and use those words in a real conversation with a real person and and kind of make that connection and show the value so that they take that decision and exactly podcast there as well.
This idea of bringing the ideas together into a book and how you plan on using the book to get in front of the people who you Can best help. Was that an idea that was pretty crystal clear, when you mind before you started, or have the ideas kind of formalized as you've kind of made the move to bring it together?
Bob: I'm pretty good at making a decision and then figuring out all the different ways that I can. You know the different tentacles that go out to to do that. But no, I went into it with the idea that it's it's simply a Promotional tool, if you will, and I don't like to use the word promotional, but part of my mission is that I want to start teaching agents and lenders how to financially impact their clients. And I can't do that one one real estate agent time and I speak on stages and I do different things, but at the end of the day, a book gets it out there where they maybe they want to start to interact and go. Well, this kind of makes sense. And what might the next step be? Well, we're turning that into podcasts, which will turn it into videos, which will turn it into blog posts, which will turn it into content, which will turn it into reels and shorts and all those things. So, yeah, there's kind of a master plan to how that all will work, but part of it is to let people experience really agents and lenders experience, say that content and see if it makes sense to them.
My brand of things are the way that I think may not be. You know, it's not for everybody, right? Somebody wants to be a value brand. No, no, no, it's all about me and I want to be. Everything is about how wonderful I am. They're probably not going to relate well to what I talk about and that's okay.
Stuart: That idea that the book's not the product, the conversation from the book is the product and the matching of your approach with the ultimate conversation you're going to have with people, because the business model isn't sell a book and make money from a book.
The business model is give a book away, start that conversation and eventually talk to someone one on one. And if there is that consistency of what they've read or what they skimmed, and then they're having the conversation with you and the conversation you're having with them, that congruency then leads to the next step, so much better than I think. People sometimes want to write in a way that doesn't reflect them or want to include content that isn't necessarily aligned with their mission or their message, and it misses the opportunity because the, as I said, the book isn't the product. We're not looking at book sales. It's the ability to start a conversation with someone who can then eventually become a client. And if they're married up, then not that we're necessarily trying to sift and sort as the primary purpose of it, but if it's just some amount of selecting and really help those people who it's a yes for take that next step, then that's the perfect use case for it.
Bob: And that is that. That was the entire goal. This was never about like selling a book and making money with the book. It's like, hey, let people experience what it is that I do, and in the book I give them the links. They can attend classes. I teach classes every Wednesday so they can come and experience that. They can go to our website, real estate asset advisorsorg. They can watch replays of those classes, right, and we're not selling anything at the class.
If you want to hear what I'm teaching and that resonates with you. That's how we'll attract clients that are dedicated to the same mission that I'm on, which is impacting your client's life financially. And you know, again, if you think about it, real estate is the number one source of wealth. For everybody in the United States, or at least who owns it, it's a number one source of wealth, and yet this is the business we're in and we don't do anything that actually helps teach people how to utilize it and leverage it to build wealth. Well, that's really what our value is opening a door, writing a contract, and you can get anybody to do that, and so my message will go out in all these different arenas and then I'll let them experience that and if it resonates with them, great.
And you know, even in the book I give them access. They can schedule a call with me. I don't care, they don't have to be a client. I'll schedule a call with somebody and talk to them about their business and see if it resonates and if it makes sense for us to work together, great. If it doesn't, great. If I can impart some knowledge or you can learn something from going to the class, is great. So it's really just an invitation to say, hey, experience this content and if any of it resonates and you need help you know I have a plan for that.
Stuart: Yeah, I think it's the perfect utilization of it because you've got a framework that exists already. You've got the tools to help people. There's an easy model that people can understand it and imagine for themselves how to put it into practice for their business. And then there's a very straightforward and simple next step. Whether you're really committed and want to jump in with a call to see how it works for you, or whether you just want to dip your toe in the water a little bit more and attend some of the classes, and this bringing together of all of those elements that you have into a holistic approach to kind of move that conversation forward I think it's a perfect implementation of it.
Bob: Well see how it works out, but I think it is and it's a way to get the message out and it'll resonate with some not all, but it's the ones that it resonates with. That I'm interested in talking to.
Stuart: Yeah, and you can help them and they can get the best from you in that experience. That transaction 100%. Time goes fast, as always on these calls, If you're going to check back in a little bit down the track and get some feedback on what the feedback from people who have been through that particular funnel so come from not having heard from you before to seeing something about the book, to joining the program and taking it further. I think that'd be really interesting for people. I want to make sure that people can access you and make sure that they can follow up and find out more. So where's the best place for people to go if they want to check out both the book and what you do?
Bob: Probably the easiest place is to go to www. If you list you lastcom, perfect.
And so you can connect to the podcast, you can register for the classes, you can schedule a call. You can download. Right now I've got a what did I call it? A pre-editor version. So the books are being printed as we speak and the digital will be ready and I'll call it a week or two, but in the meantime we've got a pre-digital version that somebody could download and go from there. So it's pretty simple, because if you list you last and wwwifulistulastcom and that'll connect you with everything that we do, Fantastic.
Stuart: Well, we'll put links in the show notes. So if people are listening on the podcast play, it will be in the show notes there or on the website. Obviously, it will be just below the video here. That before we wrap, actually that pre-edited, pre-live version idea. I think we were talking to someone I can't remember who it was a couple of months ago who had sent out a kind of like a slightly earlier version which was pretty much complete, but it just what didn't have all of the polish around it, had sent it out to their existing list and was using it as kind of like a referral interest generating tool, but positioned in the way of hey, we've worked together or you're in my world already. I really want to give you, like behind the scenes, insights into what's happening and then if you want to sign up or anyone you know wants to sign up for the final version, then head over here.
And they generated quite a bit of excitement, not in some artificial presale list or best seller list or anything like that, just an authentic hey, we've worked together. I just wanted to share the behind the scenes and keep you up to date on what's going. That idea is fantastic and I think it just adds to the point you were making about building the value and the human element. That can't be AI to work. Is that one-on-one connection and doing things like that, the slightly more behind the scenes, or the sharing, the, the, the recipe, as things are being made? I think that just helps add that, that real connection to people, great idea.
Bob: Yeah, We've given away. We've had a lot of people download the book already. This isn't about being an Amazon best seller or anything else. It's about getting a message out, finding a group of people that are committed to the same things, because when we do that, that's how I can. That's I personally can have the biggest impact. I could sit there and scream in the mountain top about how to take and utilize a real estate to build your personal net worth and things like that. Or I could have thousands of real estate agents that I teach how to do it and then they go out and do it. I can have a much bigger impact that way. So it starts with a, a simple book, and we'll move it from there.
Stuart: Yeah, it's exciting. There's so much opportunity here to bring it all together and we really should hook back up in a few months time and just give it an update on on how it's going Right. Well, thanks so much for your time. I know this is a busy week in the lead up to Christmas. We appreciate you taking some time and my pleasure from it.
Bob: No, my pleasure. Thanks so much.
Stuart: Okay, well, we'll make sure that, as I say, the links are in the podcast player and in the just below the video on the website here. Thanks everyone for listening. This show is going to be the last one for Christmas, I think, so I hope everyone has a fantastic holiday. We'll push another shout next week and then, bob, like I say thanks for your time and we'll catch up with everyone soon.
Bob: Perfect Thanks for your pleasure. Bye.