Welcome to another episode of Coaching Moments With Ryan D’Aprile from D’Aprile Properties!
Ryan talks about the different phases of a real estate’s agent’s business trying to figure out where agents spend most of their time, and how to optimize that time. Ryan discusses the importance of time tracking and scheduling. Next, Ryan reveals how to categorize your prospecting for different channels. Ryan also talks about the difference between lead sourcing and marketing. Last, Ryan gives tips on how agents should organize their day.
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
Ryan D’Aprile can be reached at 312.590.6416 and ryan@daprileproperties.com.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
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Welcome to keeping it real the largest podcast paid by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show and today is our monthly coaching moments with Ryan de April. Now if you’re not familiar with Ryan, or if you’re new to the show, Ryan comes on every month to give our listeners and our viewers a coaching moment and a coaching session. So let me tell you about Ryan Ryan de April is a progressive thought leader focused on providing for his agents and staff at deeper properties. His strengths are his motivational skills, his coaching style and his dedication to training. He has 14 offices throughout Chicagoland and he’s also in Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan with hundreds and hundreds of top producers Table Properties is a coaching company with eight strategic coaches who work week in and week out with every agent individually focused on business planning, coaching and accountability. If you’d like to take your career to the next level, or if you’re just not getting the attention you need from your existing firm checkout depot properties, visit D APR properties.com. That’s D AP. Sorry, da p r i l e properties.com. Welcome once again, Ryan.
Ryan D’Aprile 2:02
Thanks, TJ. Thanks for having me. I figured I’d come solo this time, we had a guest pass three times.
D.J. Paris 2:08
Yeah. Well, we’re happy to have you with or without a guest. And you always have a lot to say. And Ryan and I were actually speaking before the we started broadcasting about, you know, what’s going on right now? What are agents facing? And what are eight What are things agents need to keep in mind during these really, sort of active but stressful times? I know, I’ve seen a lot of posts in different Facebook groups with brokers, talking about how you know, wonderful it is if you’re a listing agent right now, and how difficult it is as a buyer’s agent, and how easy it is just to get sort of mark Mayer down in in the stress of that day to day and to maybe lose sight of the overall business plan and keeping things moving forward.
Ryan D’Aprile 2:51
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I was thinking, you know, with our audience here is, let’s see if we can pull them away from their business and look on it and look at maybe the different phases that are in your business, right. And let’s talk about each of those phases. So from lead generation side, to that phase to when you actually get a client to when you’re in contact with the client right to post, but maybe we dabble a little bit on all those phases, and maybe give her a perspective of what they need to do. Because I think personally, the, the, the biggest hurdle with our business is the distraction amount of distractions that are there. Yes. You know, and I think one of the biggest enemies to real estate agents, businesses, their actual clients and their business, not that their clients are enemies. But if your client is controlling what you’re doing during the day, and you are always reactive and not proactive, you can find yourself you know, we say down the highway mediocrity or even outside out of the business. So, and every market is so different, right? I mean, he’s, you know, might you but I started 2005 and went through the great recession, we’ve had a 10 year boom, and now we have this crazy what our you know, it’s an inflationary market, right. I think that’s the next thing that’s coming down our pipeline is inflation. It’s already honest, a piece of plywood was $37 I think it’s $106.
D.J. Paris 4:16
For hits. Yeah, it’s 320. The price of lumber has jumped 320% as from this time last year, and even from January, it’s up 70% Just from the beginning of the year. So things are crazy right now.
Ryan D’Aprile 4:30
It’s absolutely crazy. And it’s just different though to and for all the listeners, you know, and the viewers here on Facebook Live with us understand is like it’s different. It’s always different markets always shift, but your business doesn’t have to shift your business is gonna look different. And you’re gonna handle things different and there’s gonna be a lot of emotions that you’re experiencing. Like, again, like you mentioned, right now if you have a listing, you’re selling it in a day over asking price, and if your buyer you’re ready to ship by contract And you’re losing out, you’re maybe getting, you know, one on every five offers that you’re writing for your buyers and your buyers have been coming really frustrated. That’s all the in the business. That’s all the doing the business, but how do you get there? And how do you grab yourself and pull yourself out? Especially like, the mental gymnasium that we’re living in? How do you pull yourself out of that, that shit? You know what I mean? Like, Hey, I gotta look at my business, I got to look at what I’m doing. I figure let’s kind of chat about that a little bit here. Because we could talk about techniques of how to get that that contract, we can talk about techniques about you know, how to get somebody accepted. That’s a skill set. And those are really important parts. But I think, I think if we think about long term, I don’t know when this is going to pull down. Obviously, I think interest rates are going to go up. Not anytime soon. But when you’re having inflation, maybe even hyperinflation, the only way you control that is by increasing interest rates Once you agree, sure, cool down the economy, overstimulated our economy, that’s why we have this inflation. So but the point is, is now it’s gonna look different. But what really controls all of this is sales is leads, and what are you doing and how you handling that part of your business and how you continue to generate leads? And then what are you doing during the phases to give yourself, you know, that recharge, I posted something on our internal Facebook page this morning to all of our agents and our and, and two group of loan officers as well that I’m coaching. And and I said, you know, your decisions have a ripple effect. And that was kind of the header and said, a lot of individuals in our businesses get burnt out from an incredibly amazing career. And it’s a choice that you’re choosing to get burnt out. What I mean by that is, and what I went on to say in the post is, is that if you’re fielding calls at eight o’clock at night to 1011 o’clock, you’re choosing to feel those calls. And it’s also an addiction. In you gotta be smart about your your mental health, your attitude, 80% of your success is completely built on your attitude. And you don’t have to be a servant or a slave to your business boundaries are not bad. And you don’t even need to express that you’re having boundaries, just power the damn thing off, powered off at 730 at night, and pick it back up at 830. This morning, when you’re ready to get going at it.
D.J. Paris 7:32
Most people, most clients are pretty reasonable. You know, most people I found in this world are pretty reasonable. There’s outliers, there are crazy people out there and and if you have people like that you’re you have a challenge. If those are some of your clients, and you can choose to, you know, continue that relationship or not. But most people can handle you taking a you know, a time off at night to unwind and recharge and not respond instantly to to every text message.
Ryan D’Aprile 7:58
Well, yes, actually. And actually, most people are unaware of what they’re doing. They don’t realize they’re calling you at nine o’clock at the last minute. They called you and went direct to voicemail. They’re gonna leave a voicemail and shoot you a text, you call them back at 830. If they fly off the handle, you know, you just I redirected like, Well, I was I was in bed, or I was reading my childhood story. It’s nine o’clock at night. There’s no fire that can’t be handled between eight in the morning at six o’clock at night, quite honestly. And nothing’s gonna be solved overnight. So, anyway, so let’s talk about the different phases, okay, and start by pulling ourselves out of the business. And remember that distraction, right, as Robin Sharma says distractions, the enemy of progress.
D.J. Paris 8:47
And we are awash in distraction. We carry around a perfect distraction tool, that at any moment at any part of the day, depending on whatever you’re experiencing. You can Yeah, Ryan just put hold up a cell phone, because you can literally distract yourself infinite in it to an infinite degree, almost for free because we all have these devices on them. And it’s very, very dangerous because it doesn’t I mean, it’s a great thing to of course, but it no it well, I just mean it’s it’s great if it’s used correctly, what’s
Ryan D’Aprile 9:23
this app this morning, I was coaching a group of loan officers in a classroom and I think we had about 14 people. And I was highlighting a particular loan officers brand new, I mean six months into the business. And we’re surrounded by you know, $70 million, your producers to brand new veteran, right? Loan Officers. And I was highlighting this one particular ello and I had what we call their dashboard because visual flow, combine the total manufacturing system. It’s one of the keys to your success. One of the reasons what our dashboard is built on is visual flow to see where your businesses and I was teaching you Seeing him as an example, because his kids at $6 million in production, why with what he’s closing when he’s got in processing? That’s great for somebody six months in the business, I mean, yeah, phenomenal. And as I told them, hey, you’re gonna fill in these blanks, and you need to be aware of these different people in the process. And here’s why. I turned and started talking somebody else. And I noticed he was doing this. And I said, Hey, you know, what are you on the phone for, we’re in a coaching session for one hours, and all this insurance agent and returning back to him, I said, you are in a career that can make you want to 378 $100,000 a year, we are here or more, we’re here to learn how to grow your business. And you’re texting an insurance broker right now. You know, and I’m actually highlighting you, I’m highlighting you and not highlighting you like paying it back. I’m highlighting your business to show you what’s going on. Someone’s asked a question. And like, are you taking it? Are you distracted by some insurance broker, you guys, you’ve got to understand how huge of an impact these distractions are having on your finances on your pocketbook. Most of us are missing so many opportunities, because we’re distracted on things that don’t matter. Again, big fan of Robin Sharma. And what he says is, most of us are busy being busy, focused on being productive. Now, we’re probably gonna be productive at best, you know, an hour and a half to two hours a day, right. But most of us choose to not even be productive, most of the time, we wake up, we just jumped into the busy and busy just ain’t gonna get you there.
D.J. Paris 11:39
And the challenge with busy is it tricks us into thinking that we’re we are productive, because writing that that person back, the insurance agent feels productive. It’s like I just closed the loop. I had an open loop, I closed it and awesome, I get a little dopamine hit. And I feel good. But was that really the best use of the time at that moment? No, of course not.
Ryan D’Aprile 12:01
Yeah, right. So I’m going to write on the board here and get into this a little bit for the viewing audience. And if they’re listening on the podcast, they can go and see this live stream, right?
D.J. Paris 12:12
Absolutely. And if you want to watch what Ryan is going to be writing, and we’ll be describing it as well, in the show notes in the podcast episode is the link to the YouTube video.
Ryan D’Aprile 12:23
Right. And so, you know, let’s talk about the different phases. I’m actually just making this up. As we’re talking. I’m just thinking this out loud. Trying to take my thoughts put it on paper. So you have the lead generation part. Let’s call that phase one. Okay, you have the lead generation part, then you have the prospects are let’s call it phase two. Then you have the active clients. That’s phase three. Then you have contract, phase four, and then you have post close. It’s a fifth face. Is that safe to say you’ve been doing this long enough, right? Yep. Okay, so let’s talk about where we’re spending most of our time. Right. Now, if we have, you know, if we’re focused on our working hours, and we break it down to 100%, where do you think most people are spending their time?
D.J. Paris 13:26
Well, they’re spending their time servicing their existing clients.
Ryan D’Aprile 13:30
probably spent the most time in phase three. Is that right? Yeah. Yep. Phase three and probably under contract toe? Yeah. So what percentage of the 100%? Would you say they’re spending their time in?
D.J. Paris 13:42
In the phase three? I’d say, Boy, I’d say almost 50% would be my guess.
Ryan D’Aprile 13:47
Okay. And how about when it’s under contract inspection, meaning appraiser renegotiated deal after the home inspection, and
D.J. Paris 13:54
all that stuff? Right? Probably 20 20% 25%, somewhere in there.
Ryan D’Aprile 13:58
25%. Okay, so we have 100% total, we’ve taken 75%, we have 25% of our time, where we spend the rest of our time. Right? Yeah, it’s a rhetorical question. Yeah. And it’s not for you to answer. It’s for everybody. Right? It’s less retort question and answer. It’s for everybody to kind of ponder and think about what are you doing? Where? Where are you spending your time? Now, if you’re spending half of your time with your active clients, and 25% of your time with your clients are under contract, which is still quasi active in negotiating 75% of your time, right? How many? How many working hours are we spending in a day? Yeah, yeah. What do I say eight, or let’s say,
D.J. Paris 14:39
let’s say eight just to be conservative. So we have, you know, what
Ryan D’Aprile 14:42
can we say? 10?
D.J. Paris 14:43
Yeah, let’s say 10. Real estate agents won’t like me saying, hey, they all work they all work 10
Ryan D’Aprile 14:48
Well, and also I just realized it’s gonna help me with my math, right when I said, Oh, good. Long division there. So so now we have 10 hours in a day and we spent 7.5 hours errors on our actives and our pending deals. Now we got two and a half hours left. I bet you’re most people are just catching their breath minutes. Two and a half hours.
D.J. Paris 15:10
Sure. They’re having a lot. You need some downtime. Yeah.
Ryan D’Aprile 15:13
Yeah, you haven’t lunch. You might be commuting. Yeah, might be in those 10 hours picking up the dry cleaning, picking your kids up from school, maybe you’re on the PTA, maybe a volunteer to be on a podcast or your podcast somebody, right? This is real shit that goes on in our day, right? You got paperwork and everything else you have to do. Maybe you’re in an office meeting. Right? Yep. So so we got five phases, we have five phases of our business. This is what I think all the listeners need to really think about and step back, you know, that want to take their business to the next level, there is a true thing of working less and making more money. That absolutely is true. And if you don’t stop to plan, you’re not going to achieve it. You’re gonna have a couple of those unicorns, those few percenters that this just comes naturally to them. Right? I know, that’s not the majority. You know, there’s 1.6 million real estate agents in the National Association of Realtors. And I think the last time I heard this statistic, 50% of them don’t sell a home all year long. It’s amazing. It’s absolutely amazing. 50% of the agents that are members of the National Association of REALTORS don’t sell a home all year long. So there’s a huge, overwhelming majority of us that are struggling to try to figure out which camera to look at struggling to kind of get ahead. Well, listen, folks, this is not something that you’re born with. Okay, this is a skill set you gotta look work on. And the truth is, it’s all about self exploration. What are you doing? What are you spending time? I just threw this up here right now? I mean, DJ, we’re like, what should we talk about today? Right? It just said, we’ll talk about lead source and marketing versus lead gen, but all this is just kind of coming out. When we say it, we step back, what are we doing today? And I would find it hard that anybody actually, it’s funny that you threw this other would argue that’s where they spend most of their time. And if you shifted this, if you shifted this, and you spent 25% of your time on the actives, maybe 10% of your time over here, and put 50% over here, and 10% over here, right
D.J. Paris 17:31
now. Ryan just put 50% in the lead generation, lead generation bucket and then 10% of your time in prospecting.
Ryan D’Aprile 17:39
You know what, let’s even switch that. Lets even change it. Let’s let’s, let’s change up. Let’s put 20% in lead gen, but let’s do it consistently, five days in a row. Yeah. And then let’s take 10% on our prospects. It’s called converting, one of the biggest reasons agents fail loan officers fail is they don’t track their business. They don’t have tools to track their business to see I’m doing all this stuff. I’m networking. I’m on bus benches. I’m on postcards, and my email marketing. I got people and they’re on a note book somewhere. Right? And you got to really dive you got to really die. Oh, my gosh, you got to dissect how much of your time are you spending on one Jared lead. But the two converting leads, right? By the way, if you’re working 10 hours a day, that’s only one hour. It’s only one hour and converting. And this is only two hours on lead generation. And maybe your lead generation is also organizing your database. Are you connected with them on social media? Are Do you have their home address for your auto flow? Do you have their email address for your email marketing and digital marketing? All of these things are really incredibly important to understand. So we spend now two hours, three hours, two and a half hours. So we’re gonna Matt five and a half hours. Yeah. Right. And then five and a half hours, six hours. I got three and a half hours rest in the working day to do the other things launch a podcast with a friend and Office meeting. All those other activities are incredibly important. So it makes sense.
D.J. Paris 19:18
Absolutely. I think the key to it is tracking number one, what where am I spending my time, but then most importantly, is scheduling, right? Like how important is you know, I’m such a good example of this with respect to exercise. So I just got back from the gym a few hours ago. And for years and years and years, I knew I should work out and I never, I never could do it. I just wasn’t naturally inclined to do that. And we all have parts of our business that we’re not naturally inclined to do. We don’t like doing it, but it’s important. And the moment I realized that I could take time during the day to do that. And that for accountability purposes, I would need to schedule it and so it’s been about a year. I have never now missed a session I’m in the best shape of my life. I still hate ever moment, but it’s the hardest thing I do. But the only reason it gets done is because I scheduled it.
Ryan D’Aprile 20:07
Absolutely. And the hardest thing about this, especially our business is that it is a it’s a it’s a solo sport. Most people don’t treat it as a team environment, they’re out there, and they’re out swinging, and they’re doing it on their own. And you got to figure out some type of accountability partner to have you focus in organizing this stuff. So let’s, let’s, let’s talk about the two phases. I’m going to skip over lead generation for a minute. And I’m going to talk about the importance of seeing your business. Okay, now, again, I’m gonna give you some examples of, of agents that I coach on our dashboard. And what it shows us we have this tab called the prospect tab. Now the tab categorizes our business, okay. And we have warm, cool, and cold. These are not active clients, DJ, make sense. These are people who said they want to buy or sell, you know, they may have a need or want to buy or sell, but they’re not actively listened with you or they’re not actually in the car driving around looking at properties, you get it? Yep. Next to these categories, we have dollar amounts. Some of these agents have anywhere from 4 million to $50 million dollars in different amounts in these categories. Does that make sense? Yep. And then they are able to see who the lead is what the lead source is? Are they connected with the my social media? Do you see email marketing, and the date of last contact? That’s the most important thing that these individuals?
D.J. Paris 21:48
Can we pause for one moment I want to just talk about? So you’re we’re talking about three buckets inside the prospecting are three statuses that it and prospect could be cold, warm, or sorry? Cold, cool or warm? I would like to know if they’re not actively working with these are people you’re trying to convert into clients? How do you estimate what what amount per per like? Do you look at what their current home that they’re if they own a home that they’re living in? And then what they might upgrade to? How do you estimate what that amount might be in production,
Ryan D’Aprile 22:23
it’s a big Delta, it’s within 100 grand. Got it? It’s within 100 grand, hey, let’s just look I’m in the west loop right now that headquarters, and this person is looking for, you know, a two bedroom condo, guess what, it’s $400,000. Right? I’m in Park Ridge. And they’re looking for a four bedroom, three bathroom house, I’m going anywhere between six and 900,000 hours, I’m ready to settle on 650. Because I want to be conservative, got it by 500,000, our house 5 million our house great, it’s a surprise, but at least start building my forecast in visual flow, the dashboard that we built in our company that I have now a company, it’s a technology company to CRM, and I have a slew of software developers, the whole principle behind it is a Toyota manufacturing system. And that takes in Kaizen, which means continuous improvement, you got to continuously be improving your skill, set what you do, and then combine and combine these visual flow. And so this spells all this out. And you can actually see it some numbers, you have to plug in like, hey, that’s an estimate. But boom, it puts it in black, white actually puts it in color for you builds a pie charts, bar charts, and you get that to have an understanding, hey, here’s your business. This is what I’m doing. And we spent well, we should spend one to two hours a day on the lead generation. I should title leads. Now we’re going to categorize them. What am I doing 10% of my day, if you’re working 10 hours a day, it’s one hour. That’s all it’s gonna take. And then you can look at it and maybe this might be 48 leads. And they’re categorized one cold, cold, warm, warm as you are 95% Certain they’re going to transact this calendar year before December 31 of the year you’re in and you’re 95% Certain they’re going to hire you if you’re anything less. They’re cooler to cold. Okay, and most people gravitate to the warms No, the warm is taken for granted and that the worms are
D.J. Paris 24:15
going to the warms are already already in the back during the day. Yes.
Ryan D’Aprile 24:19
So you’re organizing it by cold top cool. And then you’re looking at your data last contact. Holy smokes You better not let more than three weeks go pass now cool is you’re certain they’ll use you but they’re going to transact next year. Cold isn’t going to use you. So you start cold first and you’re going after the relationship not the sale. Right? You’re going after the relationship, not the sale. If you sell you’re chasing. If you sell you’re chasing you get the relationship you’re going to attract. You’re going to track them and people work with people that they know they like they meet flesh and bone. They have a personality you have a personality in your your syncing. That’s typically what your network is going to use your network Trying to work with you. Your network is your net worth. Okay? But you spend time on the lead generation. You know, let’s let’s let’s get it figured out here, an hour a day looking at our prospects just saying look at it and so I got I got DJ Paris, I might connect with him on Facebook. I follow him on Instagram. Do I have him connected on LinkedIn? The date last contact was May 11. Okay, that’s cool. I’m done. I’m moving on the next one. Yeah. Okay. Oh, and the date last contact in the message was, Hey, buddy, I just saw you were in Florida. How was it visiting your sister down there? Something like that. But I know that information because he went on Facebook, he put it on Instagram. That’s my job. I don’t sell houses, I create relationships. selling a house is a byproduct of what I do. Does that make sense?
D.J. Paris 25:46
I almost wonder it makes perfect sense. I almost wonder if prospecting is really just synonymous for deepening relationships.
Ryan D’Aprile 25:52
God gave it to that as well. You know, I wouldn’t say lead generating yet lead generating is for sure. I mean, if we’re going to dive if we’re going to we’re going I did this a long time ago, I think one of our first podcast. Can you see this little triangle drawn? Right? We’re gonna go fishing for buyers and sellers. Okay, we’re gonna go fishing for buyers and sellers. These are three different lakes that they live in. Do you remember this? Yep. Okay, what’s PW L stands for that. Purchase web lead
D.J. Paris 26:23
purchase web leads Zillow realtor.com realtor.com.
Ryan D’Aprile 26:28
By the way, real estate agents. These are not competitors. They’re a vendor to you. Most real estate agents think Zillow is a competitor. They’re not Redfin is a competitor, losing 10s and 20s of millions of dollars a year with publicly traded money. That’s a whole different story. Right working for free. Zillow is a vendor to you. Okay, Zillow, realtor.com. Trulia. Even Redfin, if they shift their BOT model around the price start making money, they should be swimming in this lake being a vendor to realtors and loan officers, instead of trying to compete at lower margins that we’re already working at. Anyways, that’s called purchase web lead. Here’s your conversion rate looks like. Wow.
D.J. Paris 27:06
Yeah, maybe 5%? Yeah, two to 4%. Yeah, two to 4% 5%. If you’re a superstar with us, yeah, two to 4%. And by the
Ryan D’Aprile 27:13
way, agents, if you’re going to be doing this and purchasing these leads, you need to do it the right way, means you got to follow up within 10 seconds, maybe even less, and that you got
D.J. Paris 27:23
to call a lot of times over several weeks, but yeah, so purchase web leads are one one way to, to generate leads
Ryan D’Aprile 27:31
this link to go. Fishing is like prospecting. You could do open houses, you could farm a neighborhood, you can call cancelled expires for sale by owners, you jump up between 10 to 15% conversion rate because they actually meet you, they see you who will be looking to buy or sell your home or sell homes a cancelled listing, they just didn’t do it. Now you’re on the phone with them. You’re it’s higher than somebody perusing the internet looking at homes on Realtor Zillow. So your your capture rate gets little bit higher. And then the last Lake is your network. And your network is your net worth you like your network is your net worth. And your conversion rate here is about an 80% capture. And hold on. This is really important. Your capture of your network is about 80%. If you have a relationship, most people mistake like I’m not getting 80% I’m not converting a person on my network. And then I dial it back and we look at your activities like well, you’re not multilateral with these people. So if you’re not creating relationships, you’re not sending the real estate port. So you don’t have an auto flow program where they get postcards, even marketing every single month. You have court Yeah, right. There’s the right way and there’s wrong way. If you do web leads, and you do them the right way. You’re looking at two to 4%. If you have a network and you do it the right way, you’re looking at 80% I’ve never met anybody who’s done this the right way hasn’t worked out. I’ve met people who’ve done the Hokey Pokey, you know, the Hokey Pokey is left for Dan. Yeah, right foot out. And there’s so many real estate agents. They’re in and they’re out and, and I saw this motivational speaker and I’m in for an hour and then I’m out for four months, and I’m in and then I’m out you got to be consistent. You got to treat it like a business and you need visual flow. You guys see where you’re at? So we’re going fishing. These are three different lakes. Now let’s go gambling. Do you gamble? DJ?
D.J. Paris 29:24
I don’t.
Ryan D’Aprile 29:26
DJ D did you do you have your real estate license? I do. Okay, great. Did you take a real estate class put your real estate license?
D.J. Paris 29:32
I did weigh costs $500
Ryan D’Aprile 29:36
Cool. Are you a member of an association?
D.J. Paris 29:38
I am what is the cost here? $1,400 Somewhere right? You
Ryan D’Aprile 29:42
gamble every single day but that’s true. spending an hour with me? It’s a gamble. I can see right? I could be a flop and midam a flop but you get my point. Everything is a gamble in life. And you’re gambling your money and you’re gambling your time. Yeah So let’s go gambling. Here’s your blackjack tables, right, we’re going down, you know, the, we’re going down the Bellagio, here’s the three different. But here’s the cool thing, though. They’re telling us our odds of winning. Right? Here’s your odds of winning, you know, where are you putting your money. That is what I try to get everybody to kind of focus on. And so if you’re gonna spend most of your time 20% of your 10 hours and working, you should be focusing on generating relationships with your network, then you create this whole bank, cold bank could be from four to $50 million, even more of prospects from warm, cool and cold. Boy, let’s spend an hour looking at these and my cold and like, I’m doing the exact same thing, I’m going over my prospects. I’m just maybe doing it more frequently here, maybe once a week, maybe every other week, I have never worked on a lead that I have converted from an open house, or a farm that said, You know what, you’ve called me all the time. And you’re really bugging me, leave me alone. Never. I’ve had tons and tons of people who’ve got no response from nine wants to say, hey, I really appreciate you reaching out to me, sorry, never circled back. But we’re ready now. And we really appreciate you always reaching out, can we get out and see your home next week? Okay, but you got to look at the phases of your business spend, where are you spending most of your 10 hours a day? Lead Gen relationship building. And then when they come over here, right? Focus on one hour a day of looking at it and converting these people. Okay, then. And then look at the lead source. So if the lead sources or a purchase web lead, your frequency has got to be 10 times higher, if a lead source is an open house 10 times higher, 10 times higher than what right? Then your network? What about a network referral, same damn thing, your communication needs to be 10 times higher and more frequent than somebody that’s in your network that you have a relationship with. You can’t take network for granted. Right? But you are a stranger and you say about Stranger, right? Stranger danger. If you’re a stranger to these prospects, your chances plummet down to the two to 4% range, you have the ability through the decisions you make on your daily actions to increase those ads and understand this. It’s not your brand, your broker, it’s not your company, it’s not your spouse, it’s not your teammate, it all stops, starts and stops with you. It’s all based on the decisions that you’re making. Maybe get a buddy, maybe get a friend, maybe get a CRM, we could see all this, outline it, put a little bit of time and effort into visually flowing and seeing what you’re doing. And watch the results. And honestly, you guys, it does get easier. As the years go on, you do create the compound effect, the snowball effect. But you got to put in the effort, you got to put in the good a couple of years of being consistent day in and day out. Alright, so what else is talking about lead sources versus marketing? So we’re great. All right. So because we’re just talking about lead sources there. And I’m just throwing everything at you guys. Is that okay?
D.J. Paris 33:34
Yeah, it’s great. And while you’re writing, I was just going to mention, you know, if you’re thinking about, okay, how do I work in deepening those relationships from people that aren’t, who don’t necessarily know, like, and trust me yet. And Ryan made a good point by saying, really, you should be spending a good chunk of time, you know, building and deepening those relationships so that they do turn into that 95% That is, you know, likely to use you. But in order to do that, you have to track when’s the last time I contacted them, as Ryan mentioned, and there’s so many opportunities to contact them. And it doesn’t have to be a real estate reach out. We just had Mother’s Day Two weeks ago, you should know everybody in your database, who is a mother who has children. Also, who is a mother, who is a pet, a pet mom, some people you know, consider that mother motherhood. And so those are that’s a perfect reason to reach out and say, hey, you know, Happy belated Mother’s Day or, you know, there’s so many of these opportunities. It doesn’t have to be and let’s talk real estate.
Ryan D’Aprile 34:31
Can you see what I wrote up here on the board? You wrote, it’s a choice. It’s a choice. And the reason I’m saying that you triggered me is you said you gotta open up your your dashboard, our dashboard, a CRM, and you got to record it. And there are many people in coaching say, I’m just not good at recording. Sure. Any one of those individuals that tells me that I tell them that they can give a PhD and a college atmosphere are on how to record something into a CRM. It’s just a choice. And we all got to be real with ourselves, you’re just choosing not to record. And I’m going to tell you, if you choose not to record, then you can’t see what’s happening, let me tell you, the main inspiration of the dashboard comes from the Toyota manufacturing system, which is a it’s a CRM, right? But what it does is, is I’ve worked with so many CRMs in the real estate business, and they were not giving you the visual cues that need and studying the Toyota manufacturing system, they have Kaizen and Kanban, you have to write it, you’ve got to record it. If you don’t, you can’t know what’s going on with your business. It’s just like bringing your car to a mechanic, and they put all the equipment to your car, and it gives up all this data, all this information, and they know how to fix it. If you’re not recording it, then you’re not going to get stuck in your snapshot. And we’re not going to be able to tell you how to bob and weave and how to grow your business. And it all comes down to this. It’s a choice. It is just everything in life do is a choice. And to say yes to one thing is saying no to something else. And to say no to something is saying yes to something else. So I would tell everybody, step back and really listen to what you’re saying. Really, really listen to what you’re saying. And you know, especially for us that are parents that are send our kids to school, then we’re spending $50,000 a year for college tuition. And then we’re saying well, I’m not good at recording what you’re going to spend 200 grand for your kid to go to college, right? Spend the time to record the notes of the last reach out you made to your network. Why? Because it’s everything. And any top producer tell you how incredibly important it is.
D.J. Paris 36:51
And our minds are just not capable of remembering this information. We’re just not it’s not, it’s not something we can do. So you don’t have to worry about it. You just have to record it.
Ryan D’Aprile 37:01
Totally. So okay, go now back to basics, again, trying to benefit all the listeners here. Everybody, whether you’ve been in real estate agent for 30 years, or you’ve been in business for one week, most real estate agents can’t tell me the difference between the two. Okay. And it’s important to know the difference between the two. Why
D.J. Paris 37:22
the two is Ryan has written his lead source versus marketing.
Ryan D’Aprile 37:25
Yeah. And why it’s important to know the difference is I hear people say, you know, I’ve done this and fill in the blanks, email marketing. I’ve done grocery cart ads, I’ve done a billboard, and I never got a lead from it. Right. All right. And my response is, well, then the you don’t know the difference between a lead source and marketing. You got to know the difference between a lead source and market because lead source is where you get business from. Marketing is a channel, it’s an activity that you are directing towards one of those lead sources. Does that make sense? DJ, I’m looking down and all over the place. Got all the cameras over here. Sorry about that.
D.J. Paris 38:09
No, no, no, you’re it’s doing fine. But this is important. Because oftentimes people try one thing that they think is is is a lead source. And what it really is, is a branding exercise, or it’s a you know, it’s just keeping your name in front of someone and it’s not necessarily going to be a direct linear line to a consumer to it to a customer.
Ryan D’Aprile 38:31
Right. So let’s do it together. Okay, let’s let’s let’s go over a lead source. You want to give me a name of a lead source?
D.J. Paris 38:39
Sure. referrals,
Ryan D’Aprile 38:43
referrals. We go one step beyond that in our dashboard for referrals from where
D.J. Paris 38:49
existing clients or past clients will say, network network. Yep,
Ryan D’Aprile 38:54
referrals new network, because an existing client and a past client get categorized in your network. Yep. Okay. Now in your CRM, you should have categories of people in your network. We have network suspects, acquaintances, and then farm, a suspect that somebody had met at Zillow, somebody met in an open house, somebody who is referral from a network, they get put in my network put their suspect until I’m flowing with them, they’re flowing with me. And then I require an algorithm every categorize an acquaintance or network. We’ll get to that a little bit later. Okay. So referral from organs elites, what’s what’s another lead source?
D.J. Paris 39:31
Farming?
Ryan D’Aprile 39:32
Farming? What’s another lead source?
D.J. Paris 39:37
Let’s say bench x, or no, that would be marketing. So yeah, farming, I would say a purchase web leads as a lead source. Yeah, purchase web
Ryan D’Aprile 39:47
lead. And we don’t just say the Z word, say purchase web lead, because there’s many different web lead providers out there. Okay. We’re realtor.com They got upset the lending tree if you’re a loan officer go on and so forth. So purchase web leads. What’s another one?
D.J. Paris 40:06
For leads? Let’s see. As a non actively producing broker I’m so I’m struggling here but
Ryan D’Aprile 40:13
I’m putting on the spot
D.J. Paris 40:17
Yeah, network, network.
Ryan D’Aprile 40:21
Network and a referral for your network are two different lead sources. It’s similar but you got to categorize in different, right? You market to your network, you can get referral from a network, but you need to categorize that lead. So referrals from your network your network, a farm, a purchase web lead, have an open houses, sure. Okay, last one, there’s more. Okay.
D.J. Paris 40:44
Maybe just, you know, meeting someone socially, you know, a new introduction that work or if that falls under now, okay. Yeah, I guess you’re okay.
Ryan D’Aprile 40:53
But I’ll say listing lead. And once a listing lead calls you from your for sale side? Sure. Okay. Or they saw your listing on Realtor. You aren’t paying realtor, nor are you paying Zillow for leads. But they saw they scrolled all the way down the listing agent was and they called you direct. Sure. That’s listening. Wait, is this important to know all these?
D.J. Paris 41:20
You know, I want to add one more to that, because I just realized there’s a really important one. And that is referrals from other realtors in other areas. In other words, building relationships with other realtors, especially if you live in an area that people move to or retire to.
Ryan D’Aprile 41:38
Yeah, I do agree. I throw those in my network though. Okay, that makes sense. So that’s a really great point, right? It’s a really good, good point. But I categorize them as Jill with REMAX and Sammy would call the banker and Bill properties. They’re in my network, and I’m with a real estate company somewhere. And then I’m lifelong, because they their referral source for me. Okay, so I get listing leads Open House pretty badly. For me, there’s more but that says, For, do you think it’s important to know where your leads come from?
D.J. Paris 42:09
Oh, my goodness. Absolutely. Why do you think it’s important to know that? Because? Well, I’ll tell you why it’s important for me to know that because I wouldn’t, my brain does not categorize things and, and sort with accuracy. So I wouldn’t ever really know where the bulk of my leads were coming from, I would only know where the last lead came from. Because that’s where my mind. So if I, if I don’t track it, there’s no way my mind would ever be able to just inherently know 20% came from this. And so there’s just no way for me to know unless I had it, well, it
Ryan D’Aprile 42:43
will, it will, it will categorize really, as far as you know, what percentage of your business is coming from your lead sources, right. And then it will help you with the value you have in terms of value to you, which is time and money, you have a choice, and you’re going to spend time and you’re gonna spend money in this business. That’s why I really want to tell everybody listening is golly, if you’re not, if you’re not putting one to two hours a day into life flow, recording it, what are you spending your time and money on? You’re blindly just throwing time and money out there. And let me tell you something, your time is more and more about way more valuable than money ever will be. And we spend time like it’s, we save money like it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s scarce, and we spend time, like we’ll always have it the other way around. Money is always around, there’s always enough money, there’s so much money, be very, very wise with the time you spend. Because when it’s gone, it’s gone. So you have your time and money. And it gets to let you know, where’s my business come from? What’s the easiest form of conversion? And then where am I going to spend my money on marketing. I was with an agent the other day in another state coaching a group of individuals. And she had mentioned to me that she didn’t do shopping carts. And this is an agent in the community. That farms, okay. And he has a auto flow program. And we were just chatting. And I said you got to consider and think about reinforcing your brand through other mediums out there. Shopping carts, not a bad idea. And she said I never got a lead from a shopping cart.
D.J. Paris 44:31
Right, right in. So just just to make a point for all of our non Chicago listeners. There is an agent in Chicago, who is on every one of those dividers in that you know those little dividers you put in on to separate your groceries from others while you’re checking out. And and he’s been doing that for years and years and years. He’s one of the top agents in Chicago. And I bet he would probably say he doesn’t get a lot of phone calls from that either.
Ryan D’Aprile 44:56
You know what absolutely in that particular agent. It’s really interesting because that particular agent is in a in a cold call type of coaching with other agents. And they’re like he’s a cold call. It’s was like bullshit. I know exactly what you’re talking about. He’s in Roscoe village. He supports all the Roscoe village. community events, he sponsoring the schools. He’s very involved. This guy is a network champion. He’s everywhere. He’s and he’s branding himself properly. That’s the right way of doing it. I almost think of the people that are in the coaching with him on the calling to cancel expires like Jesus Christ 80% This guy’s activities is network base with a brand reinforcement to it. And the shopping cart is just a brand reinforcement to it. So she said to me, she goes, I’ve never gotten a call. And then she goes on, she goes, all the calls I get, as my friends call me say, I see you on the shopping cart. And they send these little stupid pictures of me in the shopping carts.
D.J. Paris 45:53
That’s awesome. Yeah, that’s,
Ryan D’Aprile 45:55
yeah, that’s what you’re looking for. And then you look at her business, it all comes from her network, internet worker, firm. And I’m like, This is why you need to record this, and then track where and what you’re doing. So a postcard. Sure. Hey, guys, you don’t get leads from postcards, you send postcards to a farm, you send postcards to maybe a whole bunch of web leads that you acquired over a few years, maybe you send your postcards to your network, okay, you get to pick where you do it. So you don’t get the leads from a postcard, you get the lead from the lead source.
D.J. Paris 46:29
You don’t just want to pause it reminds me of an old, an old joke. I heard. It’s not even a joke of something I heard 20 Some years ago before social media, where all we had was were business cards. And I said, Boy, I’ve handed out so many business cards for this other industry I was involved in, I never got a call back and the person goes, Hey, dummy, no one’s ever they’re gonna throw your card away in two seconds. And they said, that’s not the reason why you hand out a card, they said the reason to hand out a business card is to get one back to get the other person’s information, they’re gonna throw your stuff away, they don’t care about you, but you should care a lot about them. And and so anyway, I was just thinking about that window. So
Ryan D’Aprile 47:05
I’ll digress along at that point for again, for the listeners just trying to be a little nuggets of information. I do have this distraction, my cell phone in my back pocket. And when I engage with some internet, somebody, I start engaging with them. I said, Hey, what’s your information? Now I pull it out. So I’m just gonna text really quick. Did you get my number? I, they got to give me their cell phone number for me to text them, I got them, then record their name, I got their cell phone number, I could do all the rest from at home. That’s the technique that I use. I don’t carry business cards with me ever. But because I focus on, you know, for family Occupation, Recreation, creating a dialogue, building trust, and I say, Hey, I’m going to take some information. Here’s my give me yours, too. That’s a great point that you bring up. Email marketing is a marketing. Yeah, it’s spam.
D.J. Paris 47:55
Yeah, that you’re not going to get a lot of responses if ad to those either. But that’s not the reason to send it. The reason to send it is before they hit that delete button. They are going to say, oh, Ryan just sent me some Okay, delete, but
Ryan D’Aprile 48:07
100% and all they’re seeing you guys is from your name, Ryan. Right? And then subject. Whatever I just sold, here’s a Manhattan recipe. They know what it is. And they deleted but Ryan,
D.J. Paris 48:20
right? They think Ryan Yep. Yeah,
Ryan D’Aprile 48:22
I think Ryan, it’s spam. And that’s why it’s so funny when agents are like die sucking your email marketing. And they’re creating the greatest email marketing campaign that took eight hours of a 10 hour day and neglected what’s going to really move the needle in your business, which is the phase one part over here. Postcard email marketing. Okay, anyways, going on social media, I cannot tell you how many people say I got a lead from Facebook. No, you didn’t. You did not. You didn’t get a lead from as much as you want to think we could peel the onion. And you’re in figured out that it came from a friend of a friend. It came from a network or digital farming campaign that you had running. Social media is a marketing platform. Now. I think social media is better for developing relationships and researching people. That’s a whole other conversation. And then again, we could get on a bus benches, right. Sure. billboards, and shopping carts. They’re gonna figure you know, maybe we kind of stopped there. I don’t want to go over every single phase and cycle and I just thought, Hey, are you spending the one to two hours a day on the lead generation? Then you create this bank business? Do you have a visual flow? Are you seeing it, and then you’re looking at what you needed to be doing? And then you have your auto flow campaign, right, where you’re spending time and money and you are being you’re ridiculing these poor little marketing resources out there because they’re not bringing you leads because you’re you’re familiar that they’re not supposed to. You send them to these lead sources. This is this is who you’re critical. No, I’m not saying don’t do purchase, please. Alright, I’m just doing, I’m not gonna spend money here. Sure I got time I’ll do this, I don’t have any listings, and I’m gonna put all my time in there. So now I have a three legged stool, right? Open Houses network, and I don’t know, farm, I pick two, but you get mature, right. And this is where you, you say, I’m not going to do or I am going to do, then we spend time and money on marketing to these lead sources. And then folks, as we’ve said before, we all overestimate what we can do in a year. And we underestimate, we can do in a decade, don’t do this for two, three months and give up, right? This is a multi this is many years, right? It’s actually a career long activity that you should devote your career to. And I’m telling you take it from me, it gets easier at the end of year two, and three, and you’re five and six and seven. It’s it’s minimal efforts for you to move the needle in your business to get bigger and bigger and bigger. My biggest challenge is motivating people to get through their first year to it, and I work with experienced agents like oh my god, you’re easy to adjust and fix stick with us for four or five months. But again, there’s 80% of us that aren’t going to do it, and you can’t escape it. And this is the last thing I guess for all the listeners to hear. Let’s just say there’s 10 people listening to our podcasts, okay, DJ, there’s 10 people listening to our podcasts, two of the listeners here are going to put this stuff into practice or not. It’s a simple choice the listeners are making, turn off the radio, turn off the podcast, get on the phone, and go through life. And they’re saying, oh my god, I should do that. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. It’s put them in some consciousness takes over. And they’re not clear about what they’re doing and not making a plan. 80% of them just choose not to do it.
D.J. Paris 51:54
Yeah, and if I had to give just one simple suggestion to help kickstart all of this is spend the first 30 minutes to an hour of every day, planning the whole day and planning the rest of the week. But knowing what you’re going to do that day, you know, when are you going to respond to text messages? When are you going to respond to emails because things are going to come at you all day long, all day, and all day long. And you have a choice on how you want to react. And you have to admit to yourself that you might have an addiction in replying to things I know I do. So I have to set boundaries so that I know Okay, did I get my you know, 20% of my day did I spend 20% of my day marketing? Well, if I waited till the end of the day to figure that out, I probably didn’t. If I spent the first you know, even okay, you don’t have an hour in the morning yet. 15 minutes, spend 15 minutes, plan out your day, and make sure that you have all of those different phases covered for the day, you know, and you know, and again, it’s not going to be perfect, you know, life isn’t linear, it’s sort of Jags and goes up and down. But it’s not a linear progression up. But if you can just do your best to every day, look at what you’re going to do that day. Is that going to move your business forward? Is it going to serve your existing clients? Are you reaching out to new prospects? Are you deepening relationships? You know, if you can say you did that every day? I mean, there’s no chance but unless you’re just an awful realtor, you’re going to have a very successful business.
Ryan D’Aprile 53:16
Yeah, yeah, exactly in your business day. So the planning the day that DJ is talking about, you could do that six morning, five in the morning, seven the morning, or the night before or the night before, you should start your workday at 830 in the morning, and your first day in New York at 839 in the morning. Alright, between those 911 and 12, which is between Adrian days when you start the first hour should be pure, reaching out to your network, hi doing checking in researching them at 10 o’clock, turn it off, and go to all the other stuff. If you’re a night owl, it’s not going to work. Don’t do this stuff at night. People don’t just I’m telling you, it’s a choice. Get yourself in the pattern of it’s the first thing you knock out. There’s only a limited amount of willpower that we have. And at the end of the day, you will deplete it. It’s gone. It’s over. So you got to do it starting at nine in the morning and attend at 1030 Eagle and do all the other stuff the wind down and if you follow the advice, maybe you got a plan you know what you’re gonna do at 1030 1130 and 12 Very
D.J. Paris 54:24
awesome. Well, what a great what a great hour we just spent this was fantastic. I know it was valuable for our listeners and our viewers and I want to thank Ryan for spending this time with us Ryan runs a Gosh now I guess for company for companies now. Well, maybe maybe even more than that. Well, we got
Ryan D’Aprile 54:42
the technology right? Yep. So we got the dashboard, title insurance mortgage and
D.J. Paris 54:48
you know, let’s give them a let’s give a plug to your businesses. Obviously we talked about Jaypaw properties if you’re a Chicagoland agent or if you’re in Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, looking for a new firm that does this kind of coaching and teaches you how to act usually build a business. We didn’t funnily enough, we didn’t talk about any tactics around real estate. You know, we talked about business building, and that’s what do properties does. So you can obviously go learn about them and do properties.com. But Ryan, why don’t we talk about just very quickly tell me about your title company, your your lending company, and also this, this new software company?
Ryan D’Aprile 55:19
Sure, sir. So we have a mortgage company, we’re a mortgage bank, we’re licensed in Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Florida, we’re expanding to a couple other markets. We originally close to about a half a billion dollars last year in mortgage lending. And we’re growing. We’re growing quite a bit. And as the mortgage applications are going down, our lenders are seeing their business go up and up and up. Because we run our mortgage company, like we run a real estate company. We’re a coaching organization. So we coach all of our loan officers, we have a marketing plan set up for them, we have a coaching plan for them. We have a software who created dials in and it focuses on real estate agents and, and creating those realtor relationships. Then we have a mortgage, we have a title company, we’re underwritten by fidelity, we’re under written by Stuart. And so we’re full service title company. And we obviously write a lot of our own title work. But we do a lot of external real estate agents and real estate attorneys title business here in Chicago plus, Michigan, and Illinois, our oh my god, Indiana, Wisconsin, what other companies and we have an insurance company. So we do property and casualty insurance, right? So homeowners and auto insurance, it all kind of focuses around the home. So we’re able to, you know, give full service to our clients. And then finally, and really kind of like, one of my most passionate things is we have this technology company, which is the dashboard and a dashboard is built for lenders, it’s built for real estate agents, title agents, and insurance agents. And it takes into consideration the principles on here, it takes into consideration the the Kanban, and Kaizen, like I was talking about continuous improvement, and I focusing on are seeing where your business is. So I have been in the business as a real estate agent as a purchasing real estate agent for Well, since 2015. Late 2004 2000 2005, not 15. Since 2004 2005, I’ve been in the business, and I have worked with many CRMs. And most of them are focused on, you know, web leads search engine optimization, that’s the stuff that gets agents excited. It’s focused on, you know, a website and all that stuff. And ours does that. But it’s ours is more focused on your network is your net worth. It connects you directly to your network through social media, the various social medias that are out there, from Instagram, to LinkedIn to Facebook, it tracks your activities, and then it takes everything and puts in a snapshot and shows, you know different stages of a client where they are a prospect or gesture network and categorizes them and and that’s our dashboard, a company which also accompanies a coaching platform as well. So that’s those are our companies.
D.J. Paris 58:15
Wow, well, it’s a lot that you do. And we appreciate you coming on every month to share some of that wisdom about how you run those companies and how you train those employees, which is the exact same strategies that that you’re showing us on these podcasts. So on behalf of the audience, we want to thank Ryan for for taking time out of his day. And on behalf of Brian and myself, we want to thank our audience for also showing up and continuing to support our show. And the best way you can continue to help us grow is tell a friend think of one other real estate professional or a Lending Officer, a loan officer or a title agent, somebody that is related to this industry that is looking to increase their production and we talked to top producers and we talked to people who coached the top producers like Ryan, so send them a link to our website. It’s keeping it real pod.com They can stream every effort episode we’ve ever done. Or if they’re a podcast person, have them pull up a podcast app on their phone hit look for keeping it real, do a search, hit that subscribe button and keep keep spreading the word it’s we’re so grateful for everyone who continues to do that we spend zero money on our marketing, and we keep growing and growing. So thank you to our guests, Ryan for helping us create this great content. And also thank you for our audience who has been so supportive and keeping us in in the spotlight. Brian, thanks so much. We will see you next time.
Ryan D’Aprile 59:35
All right, DJ, thanks for having me.
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