What Is Wellness Real Estate? • Sheila Alston

Sheila Alston with Healthy Home Media talks about her journey into wellness real estate. Sheila describes what wellness real estate is and how to promote it. Sheila also talks about her magazine and how it can help agents differentiate themselves from other agents. Last, Sheila discusses current trends of the home wellness space.

Please check out Sheila’s magazine here and get $50 off of your first purchase using real50.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Sheila Alston can be reached to book a strategy call here.

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks and Apply Design (get 15% off of your first purchase using real24).

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Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
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Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents. And for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris, I’m your guide and host through the show. And we’re going to be speaking in just a moment to my guest, Sheila Austin about wellness, real estate. What is that. But before we get to Sheila, just a couple of quick reminders. First of all, if you’re new to the show, welcome. We appreciate you and hope that you find our episodes really helpful for your business. Give her a returning listener. Thank you. Thank you double thanks. And please continue to listen, let us know what we can do to improve the show and also tell a friend about the show. And last thing I’ll ask if everybody out there could just take one minute, leave us a review on whatever podcast app you might be listening to us on. That really helps the show out gets us in front of more ears. So thank you to everyone also check out our sponsors. They keep the bills paid for us. So please check them out. We love our sponsors. And we also of course love all the listeners. So let’s get right to it. My conversation with Sheila Alston.

Today on the show we have Sheila Austin from Healthy Home media. Let me tell you more about Sheila. So Sheila Austin is a trailblazer in the real estate industry. Now she has walked the agent path, but ultimately understands the challenges of lead generation and the struggle to differentiate oneself in a crowded market where everyone sounds the same. But here’s the exciting twist Sheila has discovered a unique approach to leverage your skills and more importantly, has empowered agents nationwide to do the same. And on this episode, she unravels the secrets now brace yourself for a transformative experience, as Sheila reveals how you can shift from chasing leads to effortlessly attracting leads you The key demonstrating genuine care for your clients. By the way, something we have been saying for years and years. So we are so excited, Sheila is with us. But by leveraging a little known industry to growing trend like crazy that you probably don’t know. So I know that got jumbled up at the end there. But we’re going to talk about something that is a growing trend that real estate agents need to jump on immediately to really help their marketing attract more clients. We’re going to discuss that in just a moment. So if you are intrigued, stay tuned. And join us as Sheila unveils the art of flipping the script on lead generation, please follow Sheila at her website, which is media.com My apologies, she was helping me out there because I just closed the tab by accident healthy home media.com. And also please follow her on Instagram, which is wellness agents. And on Facebook healthy home media, we will have links to all of that in the show notes. So you don’t even have to listen to what I said. But we’re gonna please click through and check out because what Sheila’s offering is very, very cool. Sheila, welcome to the show.

Sheila Alston 6:06
Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here.

D.J. Paris 6:10
Thank you, and happy to have excited to have you because this is a topic that we haven’t even even announced the topic yet. But it’s a topic I’ve never heard of. So I mean, I’ve heard of it. But I’ve never heard of it in relation to this industry. So I am as a marketer, somebody who is very excited to chat with you. But before we get to kind of what we’re here to discuss, let’s tell talk a little bit about your journey. Our audience always likes to know, you know, sort of how are our guests to have progressed in their career? Why real estate how they got in, and I know you were an agent. So can you tell us about that journey for you from you know, being an agent to then, you know, switching pivoting to really helping agents with their marketing? Yeah,

Sheila Alston 6:50
well, sure. I, I became an agent in 2018. And I guess a lot like other people, you know, is kind of a second career for me. You know, I was a stay at home mom, and my kids were getting older. And before in my business life, I had been in marketing, I’d studied marketing, but I had also done a lot of interior design. And I had become a certified health coach, but I didn’t I for some reason, I didn’t want to be a health coach. And my husband and I had flipped a lot of homes. And so I always just had this passion for real estate. So I thought I’ll become a realtor. And maybe I can combine some sort of, you know, interior design with that, or do some staging. And I really wanted to not waste my health coaching background, I thought, gosh, there’s got to be a way to integrate healthy something, how can I how can I do that? And I just stumbled upon wellness, real estate. And it was a term I hadn’t heard before. And I thought what is this? Why is nobody talking about this. And then I found NAR screen, sort of designee and so I, you know, got my designation, and I was like ready to tell everybody about how it was as wellness agent. And people were like, What are you talking about? What is this? And so I just kept deep diving into this. And I thought, okay, nobody, this is something it’s just maybe too far out there. I’m just going to keep plugging along, but maybe my, maybe my stitch will be, you know, interior design and that. And I just found that, gosh, I was living in a luxury market. And being an agent in a luxury market, I’m gonna have a lot of affluent friends. But I didn’t want them to feel like, you know, they were practicing with me, right? Like, they they’re gonna want to hire the best agent in the area. Why would they hire me even if they’re friends and I didn’t want to like pressure them, I wanted to provide value first. So of course, I work for a top broker, I worked on a team and I did do some great sales. And but what I found was that it’s just being a new agent. And even my friends who had been agents for a really long time, this whole lead generation was really a pain point for a lot of people because, you know, you know that you are great with clients, you know that you can walk them through the transaction. Great, but how do you talk about your business with people without having them? You know, run away? Because if it’s just literally How’s the market? And you know, in talking about interest rates, like, I don’t know, everybody’s friends with like, 10 agents, right? So if you’re saying the same thing, everybody else is saying, you know, they’re just, I don’t know, I just have so many friends who became secret agents like they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t talk about their business at all. And that’s not how you grow your business. Right. So in the back of my mind, I was learning all these things. Meanwhile, I was diving deep into wellness, real estate, and we’ll get into what that is. But I just thought, well, I’ll create something that will differentiate myself. And I ended up sharing with sharing it with tons of realtors and they loved it so much that I realized that’s my true passion. So even though at the time I was making a little bit more money, or a lot more money, selling real estate I thought well Oh, this is this is going to make a bigger impact. And I’m going to be able to help more people this way. So that’s my journey.

D.J. Paris 10:06
And you’re kind of at the forefront of the wellness movement with respect to real estate. So I just want to recap a little of what you said, just to make sure our audiences is on board. Because this is new to me. This is even relatively new to Sheila, although she’s been doing this for a while, but we’re want to make sure everybody has a good awareness. So here’s the problem we’re solving for. So the problem is, as a realtor, as Sheila said, so elegantly, everybody knows 10 realtors, and in fact, they probably want in every family just about, or extended family at least. So not only are you competing with all the other bozos that your friends know, who sell real estate, but also potentially realtors in your own family. And also, yeah, you know, what are the questions that agents get when they’re at a cocktail party, and someone introduces themselves and finds out? You’re a realtor? Well, yeah, you’re just like you said, how? What’s going on with interest rates? What about inventory? Basically, what’s going on with the market? Is what people hear. agents get that question a lot. And so we what we want to do is really give you RMU, with something that would really differentiate you from essentially all the other agents in your marketplace by actually providing value to your prospects and your clients and Sheila’s stumbled across. It’s kind of I’m like, a little bit jealous, because I actually, I’m like, I should have come up with this idea. It really, really, I’m actually, like, a little mad at Sheila, that she’s okay. You can promote it to like, it’s, that’s true. That’s true. And by the way, we do have a special code, we have a coupon code for what we’ll share with you towards the end of the show, where you can actually take advantage of this opportunity. Guys, I really do think it’s a no brainer. It’s very cool. But let’s just dive right into it. What are we talking about?

Sheila Alston 11:49
Well, just to use, you mentioned something that I thought of, and as when you’re at a cocktail party, and people say what do you do for a living? And if someone says, you know, I’m a realtor? That is the worst thing that you can say,

D.J. Paris 12:01
what insurance agent?

Sheila Alston 12:03
Did you know why? It’s because they just whenever they think about realtors, they dump you into that box. Now you are one of them. So if they don’t like realtors, they probably you know,

D.J. Paris 12:16
I have a friend who is a luxury car salesperson. And he does not say I sell cars, because he doesn’t want to be lumped in with you know, look, you know, not every car salesman, or car salesman, just in general, maybe don’t have the rep always have great reputations, and I’m not in any way being disparaging to that industry. I love car salesmen. I just We just know that how people think about them. So he says ideal in luxury auto. And I was like, Oh, that’s interesting. What does that mean? He does. And he really does. He’s like, Well, ideal and Bentley’s and whatever, you know, whatever the cars are. He doesn’t say I sell cars, because nobody really wants to talk to a car salesman. But if you’re talking about luxury, Ooh, what’s a Bentley? Like, you know that? Well,

Sheila Alston 12:59
he’s creating curiosity. And that’s the whole point. So if you have, when someone asks you what you do for a living, you need to say something that creates curiosity. And that’s usually either leading with the problem or being a little vague with what that is where people like, Oh, what’s that? So don’t say that your realtor. What you’re going to learn from me is that you need to leverage this growing trend that we just mentioned, which is wellness, real estate. And so maybe before I tell you how to do that, I tell ya, let me tell you what wellness, real estate as well. So I don’t know if you’ve heard of the global wellness Institute, they are the ones who track this wellness growing trend around the globe. And they have identified wellness real estate as a pretty large segment, that’s already $275 billion. And it’s projected to grow to be 870 or 850 billion by 2027. Like it’s growing like gangbusters. And what it is, is it’s forward thinking developers who are building communities, residential communities that are centered on wellness. So it’s not just let’s add a pool or community center and build this and say that you can have, you know, this great luxury lifestyle. It’s not that it’s I’m intentionally building this community to support healthier living, and how can I do that? How can I bring people together? How can I get them motivated to go on walks? How can I get them eating better food? How can I bring more natural light into their home? How can I use energy efficient building practices to make the home more safe, and more, I mean, bring more fresh air and bring more natural light in. All of these things are things that developers are thinking, even before they’re building anything during the planning stage, and that’s what makes the difference and you’re seeing these communities pop up kind of all over the globe, really, but there’s so many that are coming all over the country and it’s pretty exciting. There’s communities called Agra hoods that are centered on an organic farm. And so that’s kind of like farm to table living. And I’m here in San Diego. And there’s one being built in Encinitas, which is just a mile from the beach. So it’s not like you have to be out in the country to live on a farm or have and they’re going to have a five or six acre regenerative farm, they’re going to have a local brewery on site that actually uses the local produce, they’re going to have farm fresh eggs, I think. And they’re going to have a coffee bar that uses the beans roasted or they’re growing on site. And they’re gonna have edible walking trails, and they’re going to have green space for music festivals. And so you can have this walkable community, that’s pretty much in the suburbs. That’s really normally a car dependent area. And it’s offering just a different kind of way of living for for people so that they have another option to just be healthier, which is awesome, I think.

D.J. Paris 16:02
Yeah, I think, you know, the wellness trend, certainly Millennials have embraced and even younger generations, of course, we understand the importance of physical Well, being mental well being etc. And, you know, we although we Americans, I think I just saw this statistic is very depressing. It was like 70% of Americans are overweight. So I’m not here to address why that’s, of course, you know, there’s a lot of factors of why that is, but the point I’m making is overweight, people are also thinking about their health and what they can do to correct it now, you know, correcting ones, ones, you know, health is not the easiest thing. But it is something that is in the zeitgeist, we are constantly a huge industry, wellness, and taking care of oneself getting in better shape, and having the environment around you to help support that. So I, I’m a big fan. So let’s so keep telling us more about how to realtors fit. So

Sheila Alston 16:59
that’s the thing is like, I just here’s this trend, developers are building this stuff. And nobody’s talking about it, right. And so and then you also have all of these other small businesses that are coming up with like, no VOC carpeting, and got certified fabrics and all of this stuff, that’s kind of healthier options. And then I think with the pandemic, and people being stuck at home, they’re really realizing how their environment is. And that’s why you know, people moved around a lot, but you can get sick from your home environment. So there’s all of this stuff swirling around and I thought, Gosh, why aren’t Realtors talking about this? We are the ones in people’s homes. We’re the ones who are recommending contractors, we’re the ones that during home inspections are making people feel okay about remediating mold or being scared about it. You know, we’re the ones that are kind of guiding them to find a home that checks these boxes, right? But why couldn’t we be the ones that also you know, connect them with healthy home professionals and help, you know, not be the Healthy Home expert, but let them know that it’s an option so that they can make some better informed choices that are going to empower people to be live in an environment that supports healthier living. And, you know, when I first started this, I thought that you needed to become a wellness agent. And really, I’ve been doing I have my magazine that I created has been around for three years. And the agents who have found me first are the ones who are trying to do that. But what I’ve learned is that wellness real estate really is just a bridge to have more conversations about real estate, because it’s not How’s the market, how our interest rates, it’s like, this is a new and exciting trend. Let me tell you about it. And here’s the magic words, that I teach all my agents. So not everyone can live in these wellness, lifestyle communities, but everyone deserves to live in a healthy home. So what I teach my agents to do is connect with These Healthy Home professionals in your area, go find them, because most agents don’t know about them. You know, most agents just have their title lending. You know, a few contractors who can do stuff at home. That’s your list. If you have a long list of client past clients that have small businesses, you might refer to them, but you don’t have you know, who’s the EMF person who’s the air quality tester who’s the water filtration expert, who’s the you know, the green appraiser. You know, there’s a lot a long list of college psychologists, eco designers, wellness architects, biophilic designers, there’s lots of people that are experts in the home environment, that if you just connected with these people and started talking about them on your Instagram page, and just shared you know, I care about you, I want you to live in a healthy home. Let me be your connector for everything home. I’m expanding my knowledge and network and that’s what I want to be for you.

D.J. Paris 19:55
I love all of that. So basically you’re at a cocktail party What I would say, based on what you told me, my, my head was swirling, a lot of the things you mentioned, by the way, I don’t even know what those are. And I get my getting I’m getting excited to learn about color. And, and what you know, this reminds me to have people get very confused about. And they should be confused, like, let’s just talk about solar for one second. So solar is an interesting industry. And I’m not here to cast any aspersions on the industry or be pejorative towards them. But it is very confusing. If you want solar, just call three different companies and give you quotes and you will get three wildly different quotes most likely, and you will be more confused than ever. So people, but people are checking this stuff out, they want to know their air quality inside their home, they want to understand, you know, what sort of harmful things might be there and how to increase their overall health inside inside of the home. So and outside the home. So if I was at a cocktail party, and someone said, Hey, what do you do say, Hey, I’m a realtor. And you know what I’m really into right now, I’m becoming really fascinated by this growing trend called what wellness, real estate, let me just give you like, me tell you what it is because really cool. And then you just mentioned a couple of data points, like like you had mentioned, and say, what I like to do is obviously yes, I help people buy and sell homes, but I really want to help connect them with professionals who can help make that home as healthy as possible, because you’re probably thinking about this stuff anyway. And nobody really knows who to trust and how to do it. So I’ve got all these connections, and we want to, I don’t want to just sell your home, anyone can do that. I want to actually sell you a home where you feel where you thrive. And it feels really healthy and isn’t

Sheila Alston 21:42
rambling, that’s so much better. I mean, the one liner I teach my agents to say is really just to start with the problem and say, you know how so many people are realizing that the home environment matters, and that there are toxins that are coming into your home, I don’t know if you know that. But like you can create a home that supports healthier living. And so I am a real estate agent, and I am wellness focused real estate agent, I really just want to give goodwill and share how to create a healthier home. So I’m expanding my knowledge and network to include these healthy home professionals so that I can be your connector for everything home because I believe that everyone deserves to live in a healthy home. And then people are like, what, you know, tell me more? Can I follow you? You know, like, I’m

D.J. Paris 22:24
Yes. So I see this being, you know, as you said, you can really use this in a number of areas. Number one, you could reach out to all your existing clients, you’ve helped sell homes for say, Hey, if you know, I have been studying this, this, this new thing, I have this network of people that I I want to introduce you to if you’re feeling like the home could use, you know a wellness upgrade, you know, there’s ways to do that. You can also as you mentioned post video content, as you learn about this, this could be your part of your

Sheila Alston 22:53
value added content, right that you’re doing

D.J. Paris 22:56
value added content. And then also, you can use this again, when you’re talking to prospective new clients. So to me, this would be this would be a absolutely wonderful way to to really differentiate yourself. Now let’s talk about the magazine because there is a physical or a digital component to this that you have put together. So talk us talk us through what you provide for agents and how they can utilize this serve. Okay,

Sheila Alston 23:23
well, so if you’re just talking about wellness, real estate, I feel like you know it can at first it can be like what is this? Sure you have a great conversation, but how are you actually helping people and and how can you do this without, you know, adding more work to your plate because I understand how agents are already really busy, right. And so I created this magazine, and at first it was called Wellness real estate magazine. Now I have three different covers to choose from that are all the same magazine, but one is healthy home and one is wellness at home. So it’s a branded magazine that’s branded to you. So you can join my digital membership and you’ll get the digital magazine every month. It’s it’s not like any other, you know, generic magazine that you get to brand. It literally is written by healthy home experts. So I have a biophilic designer, I have a wellness architect who writes monthly, I have a building biology expert who’s also a home inspector and she writes monthly, I have the green building design summer who will write occasionally. And I have a organizer. And I also have a celebrity chef. That’s all there’s always the recipe in there. And she specializes in allergen free foods. And so I just feel like it’s a really unique piece of content that you get to share that you can feel proud of saying, hey, you know, let me share this with you because everything that’s inside here is going to help you live healthier. And they’re going to learn something for sure that they you know, haven’t seen before or haven’t learned about and they’ll look forward to getting your content. So if you join the digital members You get a branded mobile feed issue, and then you get a digital unbranded flipbook that you can share. And you can embed it on your website to drive traffic there. And then for $25, more, you get a whole bunch of social media stuff that I create, I create reels that have prompts, so that you can, you know, you can personally read what I say, and everything that I talked about is about, you know, how to create a healthier home. And it’s meant to be value added content to kind of add on to your local real estate content so that you have more of a well rounded, you know, social media feed and marketing campaign. And then I also now have direct mail. So you can actually get a physical copy, you can farm your local neighborhood, you can promote your business partners or your, your healthy home professionals that you find in there. So I have lots of ways that you can even print these magazines out and have them at events, and that are going to differentiate you and I have a good story to tell you about that, too.

D.J. Paris 25:59
So what we’re what we’re talking about is a solution. So we think about providing great value, a value added content to our prospect list our sphere of influence, you know, we think about other realtors for a second, what are they sending out as far as content on a regular basis? Well, it’s going to be market updates. It’s, you know, here’s what’s going on in your neighborhood. All of that stuff is great. Does it differentiate yourself from other agents? Probably not. Certainly, you know it, there’s a lot of that already floating around out there. In fact, a lot of brokerages do it for their agents. So you know, you, you may that may be getting those people may be getting a lot of those emails every month, but are they getting anything about wellness and real estate, almost certainly not. So this is an opportunity to to not have to put that information together yourself as the agent, you can lean on Sheila and Sheila’s got a team that writes, puts and edits these this publication which can be in a digital format, or even a printable format. So she’s got different pricing for both, you can of course, you know, brand yourself in the magazine. So that it’s your you know, you’re you’re putting you know, the your brand there. And she’ll even said you can even add your own experts in different ways there as well. And on top of that, she’s going to give you exact social media, content to film and produce for yourself. So with comes from you, she’s going to tell you exactly what to say how to do it, you literally follow the instructions. And now you’re putting out content on social that nobody else has.

Sheila Alston 27:33
Yeah. And let me give you an example of how this works. Right. So I have this agent, Terry Brown. She’s a Coldwell Banker agent in Atlanta. And she went to her Church’s Jazz Festival last month. And she said she got a table and she was right across the aisle from another broker who had two agents there. And she was like, Oh, God, and she brought a little house plant with her. And everybody was looking at her like, Why do you have a plant, and she had my magazine that was branded to her. And she basically just talked about the home environment and how plants help clean the air and how she really wants to help her clients live, healthy. And so basically, she shares this magazine that helps you create a healthier home. And if you wanted to join her email list, she would send you the digital copy every month, and she got 25 people to join her email list. I don’t know about you, but most people don’t want to join a realtor’s email list. And so the fact that she got 25 in one afternoon, and then she got a listing two weeks later. So that’s the power that this you know, vehicle has to just create more conversations and connection with people. It’s pretty powerful. And I have another agent who actually is she’s branding herself as a holistic agent. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that. I

D.J. Paris 28:49
think I’ve had her on the show before if we had somebody who considers himself the holistic agent, I can’t remember that. Well, maybe it was Christie

Sheila Alston 28:56
Woodford but um, but Tori McGee is one another one in Atlanta and she has a great website. And she’s basically she was telling me, you know, so many people have brokerage websites, or they just have websites and everybody’s saying the same thing. Let me find your dream home. She’s like, people don’t go to agents websites to look up homes anymore. They just don’t do it. They go to Zillow. Right? So you need to have your website be your calling card of how you’re different. Like, what are you providing, and if you haven’t taken the time to look inward and find out what your differentiating things are like, you need to do that too. But then also, if you talk about what’s trending, the magic is that all of a sudden in people’s eyes, you’re an authority. You are a forward thinker. You care and you’re not really you don’t really have to do anything extra but already be the connector that you already are and just connect with some different people. And the minute you talk to a business professional that is working so hard to try to create a healthier home for people whatever that businesses are. And you say you’re the first realtor that comes to them and says, Hey, I love what you’re doing. Can I share what you’re doing on my Instagram, you’ve got like a new best friend. And you know, and you’re so you’re helping out a small business in your area, and you’re promoting healthy living, and you’re being a forward thinker, and you’re being the connector for everything home, and you have a whole bunch of new stuff to talk about with people. So it’s just such a win win all around.

D.J. Paris 30:23
It’s a win win. And most importantly, I think it’s what the clients are interested in anyway. So I always think about this as an example, I remember, let’s just go back 30 years, whenever that was 30 years, and I never saw an air purifier in anybody’s home 30 years ago, like unless maybe somebody had extreme allergies, and their doctor gave them some sort of prescription for this air purifier that they bought. That was this big clunky thing. And then you know, 20 years ago, Dyson comes out or whatever the the big air purifier company is realizing everybody wants an air purifier. So and now they’re most people, I don’t know, most people, but a lot of people have them in their homes. This is a thing that people are thinking about. They’re already buying plants for these reasons. They’re already thinking about air quality and mold and pollen. And I have cats and cats, you know, can you can get very sick from like toxoplasmosis. And that, you know, pregnant women can be around cats. Anyway, there’s lots of things that people are exploring. And with the rise of Tiktok, and Instagram reels people are now getting access to this information at faster speeds. So they’re already knowing about this, and you get to be their, their connector to actually how to how to make it. Yeah,

Sheila Alston 31:39
I mean, imagine, imagine, so you’re supposed to be cold calling people right or not cold calling, but you’re supposed to be connected with your network every day. And you’re supposed to call them and what do you say? So so many agents don’t want to do that? Because it just feels cringy to just keep talking about you know, the market? Hey, do

D.J. Paris 31:53
you want to sell your home?

Sheila Alston 31:54
Do you know anyone looking to buy or sell like, oh god, yeah. But imagine you knew someone who’s going to remodel their home and they have a young child that has asthma. Imagine now you get to be the one that says hey, I want to connect you with the green design center. Because they have a whole bunch of flooring options and paint options that can help you mitigate the VOCs that are going to be in your home. And you’ll be able to pick healthier choices so that when your child is rolling around on the floor, they’re not getting off gassed in their face with all these toxic chemicals. So you’re helping a family live healthier. Now all of a sudden, you’re getting out ahead of things instead of chasing leads and asking them Are you looking to buy or sell, you’re being their home connector already, right. And people don’t remember what you say, they remember how you make them feel. So if you’ve connected with them, and they all of a sudden feel like, wow, thank you so much, you just made this wonderful for my family, you just connected me with someone who’s going to help my child live healthier, or help us live healthier, you are in their circle of trust. Now, you know, when it is time to sell their house for sure you’re gonna get a listing appointment, you know, because you showed that you cared ahead ahead of the are you looking to buy or sell? You know, I

D.J. Paris 33:12
love it. So the magazine is what’s the publication frequency? How often are you creating new newest, so

Sheila Alston 33:19
I do it every month. And so every month if you you know, if you have the digital issue, you get your own URL, you actually get to have a little feature article about you, you there’s a place for you to have a coupon or something about your listings in there. And that’s just auto updated every month, the social media also is updated every month, you’d go into my portal and you can find it, if you wanted printed issues, we’re really flexible on that you can send them quarterly, you can send them by monthly you can send them monthly, I do take the date off of them. So if you sent them quarterly, they usually will last two or three months. And I do feel like so many agents have had such success printing them out and hand delivering them from people like during the holidays, it’s such a good gift to be able to have conversation instead of just you know putting your name on a calendar or putting your name on pins or you know, whatever and just sending that out. Wouldn’t it be better if your calendar had health you know how home maintenance tips for how to live healthier or just something like that instead? Or the magazine right so

D.J. Paris 34:24
I love that. So if you have a you have a direct mail version of this as well where you can actually physically so so people can always subscribe to the digital they can always print out and have those available but if it was me I’d want to have the print the professionally printed magazine because just looks better. So tell us about that as

Sheila Alston 34:51
well. Well it’s a magazine people will keep because it’s not like every magazine that you see right and so your face gets printed on the cover inside you There’s a little note that I write and you can completely change it. Like I literally send you a Canva template that you can customize. And then you get an inside back cover template the Customize. So it’s not, you know, I love reminder media, they’re great. But when I was an agent sending reminder media, even though it’s customizable, it’s not it’s limited, right. So when I created mine, I want it to be a little more flexible than that, because everybody’s brand looks different, you might want to change the colors. And you might want to completely change the whatever’s written there. And so you’ll get the inside back cover for whatever you want. And also the back cover. But here’s the exciting thing is the publisher that I work with. If you send 1000 or more copies, we can hyper localize it for you. So we can put your town name on the front. Not only do are the addresses exclusive to you, but you can also add, you can mail some to your sphere, and some to address as you don’t know, you can, we can actually normally it’s for 2500 or more. But if they mentioned you, and they want to sign up and send 1000 or more, they can get a feature article written about them inside the first issue. So we could literally put their face on the cover of their hyperlocal. And it’s such a way to build authority is having a, you know, magazine article written about you and you’re on the cover. So you’re just not, you know, it’s not just branded to you, but you’re in the magazine.

D.J. Paris 36:30
You know, it’s so funny, I was thinking about magazines the other day because I received the Costco connections magazine, which for all people who who are Costco members, we all get this magazine once a month, and it’s literally the only magazine I get. I never look at it. But I always think because I, I just I’m not I don’t go to Costco that often. But and I don’t really care. But I do look at it. And I do I don’t really thumb through it. But I do look at it, I see what’s on the cover. And and then I toss it. And I’m always like, I wonder why they do this. And then it dawned on me recently, because it works, it clearly works, they must know what they’re doing, they’re not wasting all of this money on this Costco connections, because it doesn’t generate business for them. They’re not stupid. They’re obviously at the top of of the wholesale sort of, you know, you know, retail space, that’s them. And they published this printed, you know, magazine. And then I thought about realtors and I go, who has a printed realtor magazine. And I was like, nobody, the only printed realtor magazine in our marketplace is like a third party company that is just like talking about the industry in general and features, you know, agents and different articles. And it’s cool, it’s really great. But nobody has their own magazine. And I was like, This is so cool, because it’s going to be like nobody subscribes to magazines anymore. So this is also going to be something that they noticed, it’s not going to be stuck between Elle and Vogue and all the other magazines that people you know, used to subscribe to that. Let’s just be honest, they’re not anymore. This is something you’re going to be sending them. And not only is it okay, I’ve got this magazine that no one else has. But it also is something that I actually would thumbed through, why don’t I thumb through the Costco connections, because it’s all the same stuff in Costco every month I yeah, just not a big deal to me. But I would I would thumb through this, because guess what, I have two kittens now. And maybe there’s gonna be an article on there and how to keep the home, you know, free of toxoplasmosis from from Kenya someday or just here’s to how to improve the air qualities when I walk in, I don’t always just smell the litter boxes. So the point is, is this is stuff that people do care about, they are looking at wellness, I would suspect that almost everybody on social media follows some wellness accounts in some capacity. Right, we all follow somebody, I follow a guy called knees over toes as a workout guy. So I’m following them, everyone’s following them. This is a way to have your own physical. And by the way, the physical, you know, the physical issues are more expensive, of course, you gotta mail them and print them. And you don’t have to do this, right, you could go strictly digital, I would encourage you to step up, though, and do the physical mailer because people are going to be even if they don’t read it, they’re gonna be impressed. They’re gonna be like, Wow, my agents got something going on. This is really cool. So I’m, I’m well, and we have

Sheila Alston 39:18
such great pricing, if you’re sending to 1000 or more, it’s 329 An issue, which is a really good price. But here’s the thing, we have a partnership program, where if you give us your list of vendors, and we can call them to get ads, or you know, we’ll call them and say hey, would you like some exposure in this Realtors magazine? They they wanted us to call you because they refer you a lot. And if we sell an ad in their magazine, we’ll split the revenue with them and we’ll create the ad and it helps to reduce the cost of the magazine. So depending on how many ads they get, they could literally get it down to where it’s the same cost as a postcard but they’re sending this beautiful magazine and We like to call the mailbox moment really the mailbox moment. And I think you know, for years Top of Mind used to be a thing, like, you know, top of mind works for Costco because you go to Costco already, you’re already a customer, you’re like, oh, yeah, I need to go to Costco. And it used to work where it’d be like, okay, yeah, oh, I need to sell my house. There’s a realtor. But that doesn’t work anymore. Right? Like, you get so many realtor ones. And you can easily go on Google and find who’s selling the most on your street. So how can you be memorable? That’s what we like to say, instead of just being top of mind, how can you be memorable. And if someone sees this magazine, and sees what you’re putting out there, and, you know, of course, it represents your values and what you think is important and that you care you are, you’re being that memorable, because you’re providing value.

D.J. Paris 40:46
Absolutely at the website to see all of the different options, digital and print healthy home media.com. You can, the pricing is on there as well. And you can you can schedule a strategy call, but you said something that I just want to go back to this idea of having partners help compensate or pay for the cost, right? So you could have lender and attorney and inspector you can have people who want to get exposure as Sheila was mentioning inside the magazine, and that could help be how you afford to do the print the printed material. So, you know, think about if you could get the price down with a few partners who want exposure to you know, $1 an issue printed or even possibly, who knows how low it could go? Boy, that’s a no brainer. Yeah. Because as you said, yeah, and the Costco connections thing. Yeah. It’s always like who reads this? I don’t know who reads it. But it does remind me, oh, yeah, I gotta go to Costco soon. So even if they don’t thumb through it, when they they are likely to thumb through it. But even if they don’t, they’re going to see, wow, I’m getting this physical magazine from my agent who is clearly into healthy living. And I think that is, again, it’s an ultimate differentiator. So I am such a huge, huge fan of this. Where do you see, Sheila? Curious? Are you seeing any additional trends in the home wellness space, that are kind of exciting, and, you know, new sort of things that that, you know, different? Different industries are coming together to?

Sheila Alston 42:22
Well, I think, you know, when I hear about my, you know, the wellness architect, when she talks about the wellness kitchen, I was like, oh, that’s kind of exciting. What’s the wellness kitchen. And it’s simple things, but it’s just about organizing, you know, your kitchen so that healthy things are easily reachable, right. But then also, you see like appliances that are coming out, there’s a whole new steam oven. So and there’s an air fryer, right, so that you don’t have to use that microwave oven that’s putting radiation in your food, you could use a steam oven and a convection oven, an air fryer, and you could still you could get wonderful tasting food that’s going to be way healthier for you. You’ll notice that designers now there’s eco designers that specialize in, you know, getting new things that aren’t from overseas and sprayed with all those toxic chemicals like fire retardants, anything that is got extra chemicals on it, you don’t want it like I had an interview on my podcast with a got certified carpet person. And she’s an interior designer. And she said she sells these organic, beautiful wool rugs that are totally toxin free. And then she says the designers just don’t know. And she saw one of these designers who bought this for a client. They’re spraying all that scotch guard all over it afterwards. And then the kids are playing on it. She’s like, Oh, gosh, you just ruined it. You know, she’s like, not every homeowner knows about this stuff. But every designer should write and I was like, you know, realtor should, too. Because you’re the ones recommending people. And it’s not that you need to become a healthy home expert. just expose yourself to this stuff, start meeting some new business people and start sharing what they’re doing, you’re gonna learn about it, you’re going to be helping, not only them, but the people that you’re connecting them with. And, you know, in turn, we’re making a difference because you’re helping people live healthier. And I just feel like that’s a ripple effect that you can be proud of.

D.J. Paris 44:19
Yeah, and I’ll give the audience a quick story of my own. So I was just thinking about this, as you were saying that so about five years ago, a friend who was in the real estate industry came and to me, just as as I say, Hey, what’s going on with you? And he said, You know, I am starting a magazine for realtors, and I went for a magazine for realtors. And he said, Yeah, and this was like, you know, 2018 Maybe. So I went, Oh, that seems like the world’s worst idea. No one reads magazines anymore. And he goes, No, no, no, I’m in and he said it’s going to be exclusive are only going to send it to the top 500 realtors, and I was like, nobody is going to care about this. And I even said that to him like nobody cares. Like, you’re better off just making a digital magazine, and I don’t even think anyone’s going to care about that. But good luck, I wish you the best. And I thought for sure he’s gonna fail. Five years later, the magazine here in our local market, Chicago is as big as ever, it’s just for realtors. And agents are getting, like, steamrolling over each other to try to be featured in this magazine. So people do want physical marketing materials these days. And, you know, flyers, brochures, all of that’s fine, but really coming up with something unique, that actually provides value. What this magazine actually did, this one I’m referencing, why it became successful is because they would interview these top agents, they would learn about how they grew their business, they would provide articles for realtors in there kind of similar to what we do on the show. And people do read it, I was featured in it once people read my article reached out. So I was like, wow, I guess I was totally wrong. And I was. So guys, you know, please, please don’t think of this as another newsletter. Don’t think of it as think of it as a way to really differentiate yourself. And you can get people to pay for this, you can reach out to your vendors and say, hey, I want to do something really cool for all of us, we’re going to include you in this and we want you to help contribute to it so that we can get you more business as well, Mr. or Mrs. You know, vendor. So I’m a huge fan of this idea. I’ve never seen anything else like it on the market. And I really encourage agents do and it’s not that expensive. By the way, if you even if you’re just doing the digital one, it’s, it’s, it’s remarkably cheap, I won’t even go into the pricing because it’s so inexpensive. I don’t want to make it sound like it’s it is so worth so much more than what you’re charging such as

Sheila Alston 46:45
wanted it to be such a no brainer. And I wanted every type of agent to be able to leverage it. So I wanted a new agent who doesn’t have a home sale yet to just have it be a no brainer to just be able to share the digital issue. And then for anybody who’s already doing farming, you know, we want to we want to just have you switch from whatever you’re doing and try this instead and make it competitive price wise, but then also just add more value to our customers who are the agents. And

D.J. Paris 47:12
I do love that story of the agent who went to the church Jazz Festival and had these issues sitting on her table and a plant and then really saying, yeah, so of course I can help you buy and sell a home. But here’s what I’m really into right now. And isn’t this cool? Would you like to be on the list? So you can get these tips and tricks? Who would say no to that? No. And then you can market to those? Yeah, you can market to those people forever. And like you said, 25. I mean, that’s like, that’s like one of the most successful open houses of all time, if you can get 25 names. Yeah, that’s incredible. And so yes, and by the way, the cost for the digital is I just calculated it, it’s less than 1/4 of one month of my gym membership. That’s how cheap this is. So this is what Sheila said, it’s a no brainer, guys, it is a no brainer. Do this before everyone else in your market has

Sheila Alston 48:05
well, and I will raise prices eventually. But I’m just keeping it low, you’re gonna have to, you know, I am I’ve had the magazine for three years, but I haven’t. I’ve been busy building it. So I haven’t really done an exposure sales launching things. So really, if you get in now you’re just an introductory pricing basically. And if when I do raise prices, you’ll never your price will go up, you’re always locked in. So it’s a good time to get in now.

D.J. Paris 48:31
Kulfi home media.com is where you go and we have a promo code if you use the code real 50 R EA l five zero, you will get 50% off $50. Sorry, sorry, $50. Yes, yes, not 50% Because you could be making a $5,000 order and she needs to stay in business. But $50 off. And guys, that is a crazy, what do you see the pricing for this? That is at least for the digital one, it’s almost free. So let’s let’s go ahead and support Sheila guys. This is what your your audience wants to hear about and read about. And it’s a way just to make yourself unique in the marketplace. So healthy home. media.com is where you go. But if you’re not yet convinced, if you’re like I still want to kind of check this out, follow Sheila on social media and actually see what she’s putting out there. So you can get a sense for whether it would be a good fit for your business. And I can assure you that it will be but the way that you follow Sheila is on Instagram wellness agents, agents, plural wellness agents on Instagram and Facebook healthy home media. Again, we’ll have links to all of this in the show notes. But if you do sign up, please use the promo code real five zero and you will get $50 off one month essentially. And Sheila this way I really I’m super excited about this. I rarely ever get excited about a product or a service because you know I just, I don’t see a lot of unique sort of things entering the market in the space. This to me is extremely unique. So I was couldn’t be more excited to talk about this with you today, on behalf of our audience want to thank Sheila for obviously creating this product and opportunity for agents to differentiate themselves. So thank you, thank you for coming on our show to talk about it. And on behalf of Sheila and myself, we want to say thank you to our audience for sticking around to the end, the best way that you can help us continue to grow is to tell a friend, I think of one other realtor that could benefit from hearing this great conversation with Sheila, and send them a link to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com. Or just have them pull up any podcast app search for keeping it real and hit that subscribe button. Also, if you’d like to leave us a review on whatever app you might be listening to us on. We appreciate that. So iTunes, Spotify, wherever, please let us know what you think of the show. And lastly, support our sponsors. They’re the ones paying the freight they keep the show running, please check them out and support their products and services as well. We’ll Sheila, we appreciate your time today. We will see everybody on the next episode. Thanks. Yeah, thank

Sheila Alston 51:10
you Can I say one more thing is their time. I just wanted to give one more free resource. So if you do go to my website, and you click on free resources, I have a whole bunch of downloads that are available for you to check out like conversation starters, workbooks to help differentiate your brand, create your one liner, all that sort of stuff. And I also didn’t tell you, but I am just now going to be launching a new app for your phone. And it’s called Boost your real estate brand. And I literally haven’t launched it yet. But if you go it’s available now. So you’re kind of one of the very first and I have a whole free course called the wellness advantage so you can learn about it. And so if you just search your Android Google Play or go to the app store and look for boost your brand or boost your real estate brand you’ll be able to see it and they can download that free

D.J. Paris 51:59
awesome booster real estate brand on your app store download it check it out and Sheila has a tremendous I’m so glad you mentioned this because I forgot to mention it because I actually was looking at your free resources on your website. I was like wow, there’s some really really cool stuff here. She has after closing checklists, what does that mean? Check it out. This is a way to stay in touch. After the closing guys. She has all sorts of cool things how to brand yourself green staging ideas, you know marketing tools, social media ideas, it’s all free so check it out healthy home media.com click on free resources and get on her mailing list as well and most importantly get that magazine Let’s become the first person in your marketplace to be the wellness agent and wellness expert and and you know blit trait blaze the trail Yeah, so anyway, Sheila, thank you again. We will see everybody on the next episode healthy home. media.com is where you go. Thank you. Thank you.