Lab Coat Agents Podcast

On this episode of the Lab Coat Agents Podcast, Jeff is talking  with Jessica and Justin Ball. They are  discussing the aspects and the components of their book - Succession Planning for Real Estate Agents. They share about how a retiree can help an agent who is new to the industry by teaching them their ways of working and letting them take over the business. The core of their book is about how an agent who is thinking about retirement begins to identify a successor, or if you are a younger growing agent, how you sit down and have a respectful conversation with an agent who is near retirement. Tune in now.   Episode highlights: Jessica had a 10-year career in law enforcement and was a federal law enforcement officer. She made the jump into real estate when she decided to start a family.  Jessica has formally done several succession plans with other agents, and just as they were going through those, they realized there was a lack of information out there. They were taking notes, doing interviews and compiling it all together, and then decided to share it with everyone else because money was being left on the table for the retiring agents.  Justin is an academic by trade and by nature. He got his real estate license, and now he is a commercial agent. They are working through a succession plan with the number one Re/Max commercial broker in the St. Louis region and one of the top commercial agents in the United States. Justin was an unlicensed professional for five years, and as a licensed professional, it's been several months at this point. The Jessica Ball team with Re/Max Traders Unlimited. Jessica has two other residential agents and an unlicensed administrator assistant office manager who are doing amazing work. There are 65,000 active realtors today who do not plan to be selling real estate in less than two years from now. In their home state of Illinois, there are more than 7000 Realtors over the age of 60, probably closer to 70. In a lot of the cases, they have almost 2500 realtors who will not be selling real estate in Illinois in the next 24 months, says Justin. There are agents who want to let go of the business, and they are going to give it to someone who they can trust to take care of their sphere and their clients that they have been working with for years and years and years. There are also new agents in the industry, they are buying Zip Codes and trying all the fancy stuff, spending all this money to try to get leads- there is huge opportunity if they can really work out a deal with a seasoned agent who is wanting to exit the industry and literally that agent is going to put a stamp of approval on you. The majority of the time people experience agents who are generally flattered and that opens the door for a great conversation. Through their book, Jessica and Justin teach about 3 kinds of structures and contracts for building the succession plan. They typically tend to find that the best time frame is to have a few years to make that trust transition and to expose your sphere of influence to your successor. They have found what works best is not only paying those referral fees on clients but including a one-and two-year incentive bonus. Given the average home price in our market, $5000 is a big incentive. “We are at a market where the average home sale price is roughly $150,000”, says Justin. Jessica is doing her own advertising and marketing. She says that is why a CRM is important, a database where she knows these people here.  At the end of those three years, the successor takes ownership of that database at that point in that sphere of influence. The part of the motivation to really keep in touch with the retirees, a sphere of influence, is knowing that you have the potential to build lifetime clients and referrals of referrals. Jessica went through those succession plans. Justin and Jessica started to write components of the book about what assets a real estate agent has. There are advertising contracts and magazines and billboards and right down the line of assets that people don't really take the time to think about their value and how necessary they are to support your business.  One of these other kinds of intangible assets is a seat in some networking groups. Some agents have been in these groups for 10-15 years and so having the successor step into that role takes time to really gain the trust of that referral network in that group.  With a commercial agency it is not necessarily the book of business like it is with traditional residential. They explain the difference. 3 Key Points: Justin dug deep into the National Association of Realtors profile of real estate agents and there are 300,000 Realtors in the United States over the age of 60 and while there are 10s of thousands of new Realtors joining each year. The average age of agents is going up, and it's just over 56 years old, and they ask this fascinating question on the realtor profile: Do you plan to be selling real estate in the next 24 months and all of the groups? About 20% said they did not. Jessica and Justin discuss if the younger agents are paying the retiree on all their deals, or is it only specifically referred deals? As per Jessica, an agent probably can't come out of nowhere. They need to be present and involved in their brokerage. They either need to show that they are there, and they care about the industry and that they are involved in the longevity of it because that is going to be important for the person who is retiring.   Resources Mentioned:  Lab Coat Agents | Website | Facebook | Facebook Group | Twitter | Instagram  Jeff Pfitzer   | Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter PowerISA (Sponsor) RedX (Sponsor) Jessica & Justin Ball:  https://resuccession.com/ https://jessicaballhomes.com/ https://www.facebook.com/JessicaBallHomes/

On this episode of the Lab Coat Agents Podcast, Jeff talks to Deanna Kory. In today's real estate world, the idea of having to stage a house or even get it ready to sell isn’t high on the list of importance because all you have to do is put a sale sign in the yard, and the thing is going to sell. However, these times are not going to last forever and understanding the importance of staging a property and then leading to the negotiation aspect of it are going to become critically important. Deanna Kory is from Manhattan, New York; She has over 37 years of experience in staging, and she has closed over 2 billion in residential real estate in Manhattan.   Episode highlights: In the beginning, Deanna was a classical musician, studying conservatory in soonest. Soonest is one of the larger woodwind instruments. But she had interest in the business side. Deanna ended up in New York for the classical music business, but she was making zero or so little that she could not live in New York. Deanna’s family background is from real estate, and she started in real estate in June 1985. When you promote classical musicians, it’s not like you are promoting a car or something not flashy. It’s very understated and that’s why it worked out well when Deanna went to real estate business. Self-promotion is that fine line we talk about all the time now, but in late 80s, it was nothing like what it is today. In New York there was no such thing as newsletters back in 1985 but having written a lot about public relations, positions and everything Deanna decided that she would use that strain and she would write on her observations about the market. Deanna decided that she would be giving people information about what they need to know in the business, which she knows people do.  Deanna has been in the business for a lot of years and her goal is always to achieve the highest possible sales price for a seller, and she believes in that because that is part of her value. If nothing else around you is staged and you stand out with staging, it becomes a better place and makes people feel better about place when they walk into the home or the apartment or whatever it is that you are selling. When people walk through the listed house you want them to have a positive experience as much as they can from each room. Lighting is very important in house when client is visiting because it affects how people feel, and even if you don’t notice that, start thinking about it. Deanna always makes sure that there is light that is all around the room and if you have a light source from a window make sure that when you enter you have a feeling of light because it makes the room feel larger and spacious. Deanna often work with whatever furniture she has in the space because it’s just the idea of having as much seating in the living room. And when she says floor space she wants to see the carpet area only not the actual floor area. Deanna talks about the four or five key pieces of staging elements that agents should have at their disposal.  As per Jeff  most real estate professionals opt to hire a staging company, and oftentimes it is not necessary because you can just make some minor tweaks that can make a huge difference. In New York everything gets done by attorneys after agents have negotiated an entire deal and then we have to do a whole board package on top of it. So we really need to make sure that the negotiation is a very good negotiation, says Deanna If we have an influence on both our buyers and our sellers to get them to a number provided that the seller wants to sell it at a price that is within market and the buyer is willing to pay the price within market. If you don’t make that deal, then you are not negotiating well.   3 Key Points: Authenticity is really taking hold and social media is becoming a place where a lot of people are finding success by telling their true story. Real estate was not that big of an industry earlier as it is now and there is a lot you can do as an agent to stage yourself. Deanna shares that “you do need to be real”. It is important to be out there on a regular basis. The more you are out there, the more you are providing information and giving advice and being real will be very helpful. Resources Mentioned:  Lab Coat Agents | Website | Facebook | Facebook Group | Twitter | Instagram  Jeff Pfitzer   | Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter PowerISA (Sponsor) zBuyer (Sponsor) Deanna Kory | Website | info@deannakory.com | dek@corcoran.com

Brad McCallum, a luxury real estate agent known for his innovative video marketing, shares his journey of selling $71 million in properties last year. He discusses the pivotal role of video in building a personal brand and expanding business. Brad challenges the misconception that only top agents can attract an audience. He emphasizes that authenticity on camera is crucial, urging agents to embrace their true selves. Collaborating with others and continuous learning are key themes that highlight the evolving landscape of real estate success.

On this episode of the Lab Coat Agents, Jeff talks to Nate Joens. The real estate industry is changing. Being a social media guy, Jeff goes on stage and speaks about how the next technology in terms of AI, VR, AR and blockchain, and more automation are designed to take the jobs of real estate agents; One way to overcome that is through social media. Nate Joens, the co-founder and head of Innovation at Structurely, who is an expert on the AI side of things, is going to tell us how AI, Artificial intelligence, is extremely important when it comes to lead conversion.   Episode Highlights:  Real estate agents and lenders are great at getting out being face to face, and they love getting close to someone, feeling out what they are looking for and what they hate. Call centers have been around for 20 plus years, and they are not particularly scalable, enjoyable, and inconsistent but, technology solves all those three things. For so many real estate professionals, follow-ups are a very important piece of their business. For some, it’s the entire piece of their business, and technology essentially solves that. One of Jeff’s good friends Eric Hatch, who coaches ISA from across the country, says if you don’t have an ISA, you are the ISA, and that is completely true because if you don’t have someone to follow up or chase, it is on you. Nate shares that one of the things, when they started Structurely, was, they were going to replace ISA, and that was kind of like their lead in, and they were going to displace the market.  Nate ended up finding that their product has a lot better position as augmenting the role of the ISA. Some of their best users and teams today are ISA themselves. Smaller teams and individual agents who are getting started say, “I don’t have an ISA. I am trying to scale up my team. I don’t have the money or the lead volume to hire an ISA. So, I am going to use Structurely in place of that ISA so I can focus on closing.” There is a ton of neglected gold in your database that Nate’s product helps work too. You could probably make as much in a month or two months just focusing on your old leads. “AI definition was the lens that we took when we approached real estate, and our goal from day one was to say our product would be indistinguishable from a human”, said Nate. Nate is very excited after being in the market for about five years. They analyzed over 5 million of their conversations and saw that 99.9% of their leads believe they are talking to a human. Nate doesn’t want to be a black box for their conversations. So they have a mobile app and a dashboard, and they integrate with a user’s CRM so one can see conversations in real-time and take over if they want. If you are newer, you might not have a huge database, but you want to squeeze the juice out of every lead you possibly have, and you can do that with AI. Companies like Structurely are doing their homework to figure out the right cadence, which probably isn’t one size fits all because every customer is different. GPT 3 is the world’s largest natural language processing model trained on basically the Internet. Every piece of text that it could glean from the Internet, all of Wikipedia, all of everything it’s trained on. It’s the largest training set of words. AI won’t replace you, but it will make your job easier and more enjoyable in your life. And it’s the same truth for the VA aspect. It will help them kind of seed their work. You need an ISA, and you need that function in your business to follow up with leads and qualify leads. You can’t do it in a fake way. You have to have a system in place to do it, and if you don’t have a system, you are the system, or you are the ISA. You have to make some decisions to use AI, like do you want it fully integrated into your system, or do you want it partially integrated into your system. Nate’s company offers a lot more script customization through their product directly. 3 Key Points: AI is a computer doing the task or job that a human has done historically. There are a lot of different means, channels, and avenues of AI like predictive analytics, conversational AI, generative AI, computer vision, and many more. As consistency is key, conversational AI is extremely consistent. You set a program in place, and it will follow up X many times over X many days, no questions asked, and no matter how many leads you throw at it. A study from the Salesforce team has found that sales teams spend just one-third of their time selling. They are spending 2/3 of their time scheduling appointments, qualifying leads, following up with leads, and updating their CRM. Resources Mentioned:  Lab Coat Agents | Website | Facebook | Facebook Group | Twitter | Instagram  Jeff Pfitzer   | Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter Nate Joens  | https://www.structurely.com/  | https://www.facebook.com/structurely/ Street Text (Sponsor) Follow Up Boss (Sponsor)

On this episode of the Lab Coat Agents Podcast, host Jeff talks to McCall Jones. She owns a company called CharisThere are 54 different forms of charisma styles that somebody can be. There are ways that people sabotage themselves on video, are you? How do you create a persuasive video that grabs attention and builds trust with your audience? Tune in to hear from McCall.    Episode Highlights:  McCall has 20 years of performance experience. She started her professional singing career when she was eight years old. When she was eight, she went from doing talent shows to doing crowds of 35,000 people in a couple of months. McCall had a dad who wouldn't speak to her for days at a time if she messed up on stage.  When McCall was building this Charisma-style system, she looked at what gives people the ability to make people pay attention, trust, and  act. There are three ways to move somebody to action. There are only three ways to get somebody to trust you, and there are six ways to get somebody to pay attention to you. There are different emotions and different intensity levels that every single person has, but each one of those emotions and intensity levels remains within a specific charisma style. What is the concept of finding your voice? When people try to find their voice, they repeat and repeat, and suddenly the thing that they measure of success is comfortability. When people get comfortable, they start to measure their success in the number of the videos published instead of what each individual video does for their business.  McCall suggests that you don't get caught up in how many views your videos get but get caught up in how long they watch, which Jeff can attest to is very hard because he produces many videos. When you tell your friends to take your advice, and they do it, you're not asking them to buy something. But if they do it, that means your authority's file is great. It is hard to build trust in one touch, but we always have ways to do that. The longer you have viewers in your universe, the more videos they watch, and the more likely they will develop that prosocial relationship, which means that they know you. There are six different entertainment styles. Three are hourly focused and less intense, and three are person-focused and more intense. When you meet a stranger or go to a different table at a networking event, you should shift into the higher intensity version of your entertainment style. Every time you meet somebody and sense that something is off, it means they are out of their charisma style. Nothing on camera makes you feel awkward, but what you are doing on the camera makes you feel awkward.   3 Key Points: There are no good or bad Charisma styles. There is only a right and a wrong for every single person. So if I tried to be you, it would be wrong for me, and it would be wrong for you if you tried to be me, says McCall. Light, lift, and compassion styles are three ways to move people to action. If somebody likes you in real life, they should like you on video, and if they don't like you in real life, they shouldn't like you on video, and it all depends on the skill you are using.   Resources Mentioned:  Lab Coat Agents | Website | Facebook | Facebook Group | Twitter | Instagram  Jeff Pfitzer   | Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter McCall Jones | Instagram | Website | https://charisma.style/ Follow Up Boss (Sponsor) Chime (Sponsor)

Most real estate professionals and agents do not take the competitive advantage that they have with their license and the data they have access to for  investing in real estate.  On today’s episode of the Lab Coat Agents Podcast, host Jeff Pfitzer is talking  with Jake Harris about how to make commercial real estate more profitable and easier to manage. Jake is the author of a book called Catching Knives - A Guide to Investing in Distressed Commercial Real Estate. You won’t want to miss this one!   Episode Highlights:  Jake kind of grew up on a construction site. He got into the army, and when he was getting out of the army, somebody gave him the Rich Dad Poor Dad book, and it was a lightbulb moment. Now, he has been a professional investor for the last 20 years. Jake was a bartender at a country club because that is where rich people hang out. He asked their advice and said, “I am 23, ready to grab the tiger by its tail, and I want to build skyscrapers. What should I do? And they said, “work for a contractor.”  Jake worked in commercial construction as an estimator superintendent and as a project manager, did many projects, and started flipping houses.  In the early 2000s down in Phoenix, Jake met Robert Kiyosaki, and he hung out with him at his studio. Robert warned him to be cautious of greed. Robert was from Hawaii, but he moved to Arizona. Jake talks about the journey and what he learned.  The book’s momentum created real revenue for Robert and allowed him to start investing. And then, as a millionaire, he was able to continue to assemble good teams around him and continue to double and triple and quadruple down on real estate. For Jake, part of writing his book was to showcase or show people like it is not as complex or more difficult to do a commercial deal as it is to do residential. All the other areas of Jake’s life were bankrupt, but real estate was the thing that he still was meant to do. He shares how he needed to focus on all those other aspects to become kind of a whole life millionaire. Jake even put one quote on the back of his book from Baron Rothschild, “The best time to be buying real estate is when there is blood in the streets, even if it’s your own blood.” In the commercial real estate world, putting together the financial systems is not about how good the individual is but about putting together a team because it is a team effort. What is interesting about commercial real estate and real estate as a whole is you get a free option. There are ways to do $100 million deals with no money, and you only need a goal to find out how to do that.  In commercial real estate, you can tie a piece of property up in escrow. When you are in escrow and tied up controlling it, you have a very intensive time trying to figure out all the things that could go wrong with this deal. Many brokers want to close deals similar to a real estate agent who sees the transactions going on, but very few own real estate. They all want to be the sponsors, and they know how to structure it.  Reonomy is a commercial real estate database that tracks all the mortgage holders and owners of the particular asset types. Jake shares his view point on where he thinks the market will go. He also talks about the market shift. He shares his opinion on what is coming, and should investors wait because prices are so inflated right now. Jake thinks there are opportunities in infill housing that already has the infrastructure built in because of the people buying houses in square footage and rent by bedrooms.  3 Key Points: Jake focused a lot more on the commercial space, building a hotel on the Riverwalk in San Antonio, converting an office building to apartments, doing new ground-up construction on apartments in East Austin and other markets. Systems are great for those that want repeatable and predictable success. Jake had a goal to become a millionaire before 30, and he achieved that, but goals are great for those who want one-time success. For people looking to get from residential to multifamily, it has some very similar mechanisms of fixing up a kitchen, a bathroom, or whatever, and that becomes a very easy place for people to transition to on the small scale multifamily. Resources Mentioned:  Lab Coat Agents | Website | Facebook | Facebook Group | Twitter | Instagram  Jeff Pfitzer   | Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter Jake Harris  | Instagram | https://www.reonomy.com/ https://www.catchknives.com/ https://www.catchknives.com/course/ - Course 50% off by using the code word Jeff

How do you choose your brokerage? What is the best place for you? Where is the right leadership? Does it even impact your career? On today’s episode of the Lab Coat Agents Podcast, listeners will get answers to all these questions with Jesse Zagorsky. Don’t miss out!   Episode Highlights:  Jesse has been in real estate for 18 years, and his business partner for his entire career has been his mother, so he is a mama’s boy. If there is a position in a real estate company or brokerage, he has probably done it. He has answered the phones, booked appointments for other people, and been a buyer’s agent and a listing agent. He has probably done everything, and he ran his own company with his mom for about 14 years. Jesse has heard an expression long ago, “no matter what we do in this business, people don’t join companies, they join people.” The way a lot of people train is not aligned with the way a lot of agents like to work these days. Many agents have gravitated towards social media attraction-based marketing, but the brokerages are still training in a certain way. Jesse knows a handful of agents around the country who still do floor-time shifts and get business. But he thinks the model is shifted, and if agents want leads, they are typically getting them from a team instead of a brokerage. When you talk about compensation, Jesse would tell agents that you need to educate yourself to at least ask around, especially from a team standpoint or even from interviewing brokerages. Jeff doesn’t think enough agents define the importance of reasons and decisions in brokerage means to them, which allows segue to the experienced agent. When you look at the agents that are leaving most companies or transitioning, it is typically agents that aren’t doing a tremendous number of deals. Innovation drives a growth mindset, and technology is a piggy bag of innovation. Jesse believes that you can create an amazing tech stack in real estate that has nothing to do with your brokerage. If you are a broker-owner or a leader, and if you put technology, innovation, culture, education, geography, and training factors together and then rank tham, then you kind of see how important it is to you. 3 Key Points: Jeff talks about what causes someone to choose a brokerage? He also shares some of the things that newer agents should be looking for. Some people truly want to be left alone. Their idea of culture is to let them do what they want and don’t mess with them. So it is very different for each person what type of culture they would be drawn to. If you are getting money upfront from your brokerage, you are paying for it somewhere else, or you are offering such a value to that brokerage that they are willing to have you there because you are the flag bearer that they are going to use you like a moth to a flame.   Resources Mentioned:  Lab Coat Agents | Website | Facebook | Facebook Group | Twitter | Instagram  Jeff Pfitzer   | Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter Jesse Zagorsky  |Website | Facebook Power ISA (sponsor) RedX (sponsor)

How many  of you real estate agents reach a plateau or a place where you feel like you cannot get passed? How many of you struggle just with yourself, your inner game to overcome your inner demons to take your business to another level? On this episode of the Lab Coat Agents Podcast, host Jeff Pfitzer will be talking with guest, Amira Alvarez, who is a coach and has seen incredible results for her students with her platform called The Unstoppable Woman.   Episode Highlights:  Amira grew up in California, with an upper-middle-class life in the Los Angeles area. She did not have hardship. She doesn't have the rags to riches story. She had great parents who were incredibly supportive.  Many people have a solid standard of living and a good life, but Amira found that she was doing good, but not great. Also, she followed the rubric of how to be successful in life, and she was somewhat successful but not exceptional. Amira crossed the six-figure mark in three years of business, but she didn’t have any freedom. She woke up at 5:00 in the morning or 6:00, and a tiger chased her all day long. Amira wanted to do something bigger with her life, and in her case, it was growing her business. Then she had to learn how other people did it, and she started studying success and what successful people do habitually to call themselves to higher levels. How you see yourself is your identity and if your identity is of someone in the middle class, you are not going to slip below a certain level. You are not going to go above a certain level because your identity is comfortable at this level.  Amira and Jeff discuss why most people don’t make an income breakthrough, and they stay in that same range and become frustrated. If you are working with someone and ask what you want and your goal, they hedge for a little while because they are uncomfortable claiming what they want.  How does the subconscious weigh on your success? There are the thoughts of ‘what if I fail? what if I invest this money and I lose it all?’ And that is your self-image coming and stopping you from taking the next step. Jeff asks Amira to share what her self-image barrier is and how she gets past it; How can somebody overcome that stuff?  Amira had to study and get an intellectual framework for helping her see where she was getting in her way because otherwise, she was going to keep living out how she was living until her mid-40s. If you are not getting the results that you want, whether it could be income, health, fitness, or any part of your life, there is something that you are doing to self-sabotage because, otherwise, you would be getting those results. Jeff knows Amira has some successful real estate clients. He asks Amira to share an example of someone who started here and had X breakthrough and went to the next level of what they do. Jeff knows he needs to hire help, but he is afraid to take two steps back to take ten forward in subconscious fear. He asks, ‘Is this the mental block, or is this who you surround yourself with? What is your take on this, and where do you see most people kind of breakthrough?’ Amira believes in putting yourself in an environment where you are called your highest and best self. Every time she has done that, she has leveled up. Amira is not scared of her own shadow anymore. She is not constantly doubting herself inside, She is not exhausted, and she is excited about life and all that came from breaking through the self-image that kept her at a certain level and made her completely unhappy because she wasn’t living to her potential. One of the biggest breakthroughs or turning points for Jeff’s business was joining the closing table mastermind group. Jeff is focused on staying in his lane and continuing to scale the lanes. Scaling ourselves and growing and getting better and innovating- If we keep making that money will follow. Deep commitment to improving your best and giving more is why you keep getting compensated at a higher and higher level. You need to be obsessed with the process and learn how to bring unique values. 3 Key Points: Amira wanted to do something bigger with her life, and in her case, it was growing her business. Then she had to learn how other people did it, and she started studying success and what successful people do habitually to call themselves to higher levels. One of the biggest things that Amira learned was that your results don’t lie, and it goes hand in hand with the concept of the amount of growth that you will experience. The amount of growth you can experience is directly proportional to the amount of truth you can accept about yourself. Money is not going to rain from the sky. You have to do the work, but there is a way to shortcut it. Amira helps listeners evaluate where they may be getting in their own way from succeeding. Resources Mentioned:  Lab Coat Agents | Website | Facebook | Facebook Group | Twitter | Instagram  Jeff Pfitzer   | Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter Amira Alvarez: https://theunstoppablewoman.com/ https://www.facebook.com/theunstoppablewomanpage Power ISA Street Text (Sponsor)

On this episode of the Lab Coat Agents Podcast, host Jeff  Pfitzer talks to Ryan Garson. People know Ryan from the Very Social NYC, a content creation app for Instagram. We also have two wise experts in the book writing field joining him today, Michael, the publisher, and Jeff, the copywriter/ghostwriter. Ryan is a real estate agent and has been in the real estate business for eight years in Manhattan, and he has a ten-person team. About four years ago, he started to market himself and build a brand on social media. Tune in for all of the details! Episode Highlights:  Ryan wanted to create an agency that could help other realtors build their brand on social media, help them sell; His goal was to free up their time to sell more real estate and still have their social media on point.  With almost 90 clients, Very Social is more than just an Instagram company; they are a full-on agency for real estate agents doing LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, email newsletters, and paid to add. Ryan felt he is most comfortable talking to realtors because that’s what he is, and that is what he knows best. So, Jeff and he wrote a book together, spent probably a good six to eight months putting this book together. Writing a book is the next level. It takes time, effort, and money, but it is an investment in your brand and yourself that could pay 10X, says Ryan. Michael has been in publishing for 25 years. He has authored or ghostwritten probably 20 books himself, working on 70 traditionally published books. Michael believes in strongly using books to help establish a platform of credibility for whatever business he is in; It gives you instant authority in whatever subject you are talking about. Ryan is being a little bit modest about the story behind this book because the fact is he was able to leverage social media to generate $300 million in sales, and that is a story worth telling. Ryan talks to realtors about social media every single day. He hears their pain points and their success stories. So, he has become an expert on it.  Jeff says many people have a misconception about ghostwriting that it is almost like a very long version of paying someone to write or do your homework for you.  A ghostwriter’s job is to collaborate. There are your thoughts and ideas, and you are the expert to teach. Ghostwriters in the process flesh out the verbiage in a way that your reader can understand in a methodical way, and then it’s in your voice.  Jeff  has written books in as little as three months, and duration also depends on the book’s length. The longer the book, the longer it takes, and the more complex thoughts, the longer it takes.  For a businessperson, you will probably not make a mint on book sales, but to bring in new business, it’s a no-brainer, says Michael. If everybody else is handing out business cards and you are handing out a copy of your book, you will look better. If you have a unique value proposition and a new approach to the market or a new way to deal with the market issue, Micheal thinks that is the time to write a book. Ryan had a real story to tell, and he also gave a lot of advice on making your social media better. But if you are fit in this business and successful, you have a story to tell.   3 Key Points: Ryan is a content creator himself. Jeff writes all his newsletters, and he has worked together for ten years. He did years of newsletters super consistent, always on point articulate, and most importantly, he got his voice. Ryan shares if real estate agents want to write a book, where they could derive their inspiration for a topic around a book based on his experience with other authors. If book cover design distracts from the title, then it is distracting from what you are trying to accomplish with your book. Every publishing deal is a rush job, but then you could sacrifice quality, says Michael.   Resources Mentioned:  Lab Coat Agents | Website | Facebook | Facebook Group | Twitter | Instagram  Jeff Pfitzer   | Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter https://www.compass.com/agents/ryan-garson/ https://www.amazon.com/Very-Social-Broker-Strategies-Business https://www.instagram.com/ryangsellsnyc/?hl=en https://www.verysocialnyc.com/ - mention Labcoat agents for discount https://go.oncehub.com/MichaelJKlassen https://illumifymedia.com/ Jeff McQuilkin, ghostwriter. wordsmithmcq@gmail.com   Street Text (Sponsor) Follow Up Boss (Sponsor)

If you are not shooting videos every day, maybe multiple times a day, you are quickly going to get behind in the real estate world, and that might sound daunting, but it's not. Our guest today on the Lab Coat Agents Podcast, Mr. Darin Dawson, the President and Co-Founder of BombBomb is going to help you understand why it is not because you only need to be sending communication videos between you and your customer, one to one. So that is what we are talking about here and you don’t want to miss it! Episode Highlights: Darin's friend Conor whom he met around 1998 was working in marketing, and he came up with this idea, “wouldn't it be great if we could send videos instead of emails because we are better in person?” Whenthey got the idea for BomBomb, Darin was leading the online sales efforts at a TV station, a small NBC affiliate. In 2005, there was no YouTube, and the iPhone Gen one didn't have a camera in it, and they decided that they were going to do video email for communication. So they set up a server in Conor's closet to host one video on it, says Darin. They partnered up with the third co-founder, Kevin Dibble, who was used to running the business for this day today. He helped them build their first developers and stuff fundamentally. Patrick McDavid was the first software hire we ever made, and he is our CTO now, says Darin. Conor was looking to purchase the bomb.com domain, but it was unavailable, so he purchased bombbomb.com. We were trying to find a name that would be catchy and that people would be interested in what it is, says Darin. Jeff asks Darin to tell the listeners the general concept behind using video as a one to one communication tool in business, its psychology, and why it works? The reason loan officers, real estate professionals, and financial planners showed up early with video communication is that they all rely on repeat, and referral business and relationships are core to your success, says Darin. How you show up as a human being is why people buy your service in this industry.  BombBomb allows you to scale face-to-face interactions with the people you get business from. We are in a tighter market, and in a tighter market, you go out to do things that stand out from the crowd and be different from everybody else because we are all the same in the consumer's mindset, says Darin. If you invite old clients into a group where you are just sharing valuable, interesting, or just fun stuff that creates engagement, they choose to accept the invite and open the app every day, says Jeff.  Jeff has countless success stories from his people who said the borrower called me back and said I am going with you because of your video. It helped me understand what you described, and I could sense your excitement for us. BombBomb gives you Intel to act on your best activities, and you can have the best success in the business you're trying to move forward.  Jeff inquires , “If you are in a position of recruiting or you know that this message needs to be received by the buyer, seller, or borrower because it's time-sensitive and so being able to see whether or not they opened it and watched it, that's critical, how does that work?” “If you are in the mortgage industry and are not using BombBomb, you are inefficient because it saves you so much time, puts you out of your head, and positions yourself as an authority,” says Jeff.  The reality is we are not meeting with all of the clients face to face, and even if you are, you're making the meeting face to face a lot more efficient because they already have a heads up about what they're ready to expect, affirms Jeff.  That stat says 90% of home buyers would use their agent again, but only 13% do because they never hear back from the agent and they're not remembered. “For clients, be a person, be a human being, say thank you just like you would anyone else because it's common decency and send them thank you videos so that they can remember you and you are going to feel great,” says Darin.   3 Key Points: There are other ways to do marketing like cold calling and door knocking, and you can do that, but if you want to attract and use different means of marketing that will grow your business, you have to do video, says Jeff. The main reason to start BombBomb was to send personal videos and talk about what we wanted clients to consider purchasing from us, and with that, we would make more money, says Darin. In BombBomb, we focus more on the recipient experience than we do on the sender because we want the recipient to be used to this easily, explains Darin. Resources Mentioned:  Lab Coat Agents | Website | Facebook | Facebook Group | Twitter | Instagram  Jeff Pfitzer   | Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter Darin Dawson | LinkedIn | https://bombbomb.com/ |  Book Follow Up Boss (Sponsor)  Chime (Sponsor)