In this episode Adam Sheets from The Sheets Team with Re/Max discusses how he started his journey in real estate. Adam describes how he gets about 97% of his business from Facebook describes his strategy in Facebook to better leverage social media without spending money. Next, Adam talks about what agents should include in their Facebook page and on every post and how to use Facebook Messenger as an outreach tool. Last, Adam tells how he got into coaching other agents about social media strategies.
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
Adam Sheets can be reached at (239) 839-6974.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
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Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real, a largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with Adam sheets from Remax by the way, Adam gets 97% of his business through Facebook. And even more incredible than that he doesn’t pay a dime for it, which is just beyond amazing, which is why we’re going to be speaking to him. But before we get to Adam, don’t fast forward. I have just asked you to do two quick things for us. One, please follow us on Facebook find us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pot every single day we find an article that’s written specifically designed to help you grow your business, we post it there. And every time we do an interview, like for example, this one you’re listening to with Adam, we actually had already posted on our Facebook page as we were recording it live. So another great reason is you don’t have to wait for these episodes, you can actually go you know, listen and watch them while I’m recording it. So again facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And then the last thing is please tell a friend think of one other real estate professional that could benefit from hearing from top 1% producers like Adam and send them a link to our show, you can send them right over to our website, keeping it real pod.com Or if they’re a regular podcast person haven’t pull up a podcast app search for keeping it real and hit that subscribe button. So thank you very much for continuing to listen and support our show and now on to our interview with Adam sheets.
All right, today on the show we have Adam sheets from ReMax Realty Team in Fort Myers, Florida. Let me tell you about Adam. Adam is 30 years old and has been practicing real estate for five years he operates a team with his parents and other agents who have been in real estate for almost 20 years. Adam is a REMAX platinum agent. He’s a five star professional rising star. He’s a REMAX rising star, as well as he has been featured in real producers magazine as a rising star. We love real producers magazine, by the way, and He’s ranked he’s ranking in the top 500 realtors out of over 16,000 agents in his local market. In his free time you’ll find him on the golf course or exploring different parts of the world with his wife. So Adam also coaches over 150 agents nationwide. He’s definitely the youngest coach we’ve we’ve ever had on the show. But he’s talked specifically among other topics about how to leverage Facebook to gain clients without actually spending money doing so please visit Adam at his website, which is sheets team.net. And that’s sh e t s team.net. And also find him on Facebook, which is that at the sheets team or just search for the sheets, and you will find them Adam, thank you so much for being on our show.
Adam Sheets 4:34
Thank you for having me. I’m looking forward to looking forward to doing this. I’ve done a podcast called bet so I’m pumped.
D.J. Paris 4:39
Oh, we are excited when Adam and I were just talking podcasts right before right before the show. So I’ve got hopefully I’ll make this a pleasurable experience for you. But we’re so grateful to have you on. Tell I always like to start and you’re such you’re such a young guy with so much success. We’d love to hear about how you got into Real Estate, would you mind walking us through sort of that journey?
Adam Sheets 5:03
Absolutely. Okay, so it started I’ll try to make this somewhat short. But um, so like everybody else after high school, I was like, Alright, now you go to college. And so all my buddies moved to Orlando, they went to University of Central Florida. And I was like, Okay, I want to go there. But full disclosure, I didn’t have the grades to get into UCF. So I was like, I still gotta move to Orlando, but I’m gonna go to a school called Full Sail University, which is sure for entertainment. And because I wanted to be a movie producer, or an agent, or something along those lines, and it was the closest It was either that or go to like Los Angeles Film School, or the New York, whatever, whatever the equivalent is. And so I did that. And then after about a year, I realized that it was just a cash grab as private university super expensive, but I got to live where all my friends live. So I was like, Okay, now the next step, I’m gonna have to go to a community college here. And then I’m going to have to go and get to UCF after that, so started doing that. But about that time was when all my friends were graduating. So I was already behind the curve, because that year, basically just that was a year wasted that I spent at Full Sail. And I still think to this day, the only thing I learned was that one of my professors was like The Rolling Stones tour manager, and he told me, I can’t remember now but he told us like what the Rolling Stones like and their greenroom before our show.
D.J. Paris 6:24
Who else is a professor there is Oprah’s partner Stedman Steadman is he was he was one of the big professors at full sail, whatever I would see full sail and Full Sail grads have won like Grammys and Oscars like it’s definitely like, it’s definitely got some some some credentials. But But yeah, but understanding that that it’s you know, it’s a trade school, essentially. Yeah,
Adam Sheets 6:47
exactly. And I was just, maybe, maybe it’s because I wasn’t all in I’m not really sure. But so I was a year behind the curve, then all my buddies started graduating. And I was like, Well, I’m way behind. I don’t want to be living up here alone. Because like, I’ve got a very close friend group, everybody was moving back. But when they started moving back and getting jobs, you know, right out of college jobs, I was like, there’s just no way I’m doing that. And, and I got an I like expensive stuff. I like doing fun things. I like traveling. I was like, that’s just not gonna cut it. So, for years, my parents told me, Merson said turn 18 They’re like, just get your real estate license. If you never use it, that’s fine, but at least you have it. And I’m like, I’m not gonna be a realtor. I can literally still hear my friends in high school saying, you know, you’re gonna be a realtor. And I’m like, I’m not doing it. I swear to God, I will not do.
D.J. Paris 7:34
And this is what your parents have always done. Yeah. Yeah.
Adam Sheets 7:37
Yeah. And well, they they had corporate jobs for a long time. And then they got out because they were missing my brother. And I like soccer games and hockey games and stuff. So. So they got into real estate, but they said skate real estate license. So finally, see my friends moved back. I’m like, at this point, I’m a college dropout. Because I moved back home when they all moved back home, I was like, I’ll go home, I’ll figure it out. I’ll just go back to school here, whatever I need to do. And so I got my real estate license. And they, they’re like, Okay, why don’t you want to come work with us for now. And basically, I was like a, an assistant, like a part time assistant, most of my time was spent, like hanging out with my friends that were still in college that lived here. And you know, for spring break, we just party. It was just a fun time. I was like, journey. What’s the I when I got my real estate license, I guess I was 24. But I didn’t start practicing until like late 25, something like that. Yeah. So finally, I decided that I just wasn’t really into the whole school thing necessarily at all. Because I tried to go back to school and I was I just presumed me, I couldn’t do it. I wanted, I knew I was gonna work for myself, whether it was doing real estate or something else, I was gonna do something that made me the schedule of made me be able to make my own schedule and play golf and I wanted to and do stuff like that. So I went to work for my parents. And this whole Facebook game kind of started because the first day I sat down I literally went and spent like my last $1,200 on an iMac as you do because I needed that right I needed real estate. And but I sat down at my desk and of course I’ve got great coaches they’ve been business forever, tons of awards millions and millions of sales. And I they told me UK you need to get your farm areas you need to do some mailers, you know, if you want to door knock, go door knocking or cold call do that to whatever you want to do. Here’s kind of the the list for success in this business. And being just kind of a pompous 25 year old. I was like, Yeah, I’m not doing that. Doors. Yeah, I’m not like I’m just
D.J. Paris 9:45
not doing that. So I’m not going to call expireds or Fizbo. Yeah.
Adam Sheets 9:49
And so, I sat down on my desk with my brand new iMac and I said, Okay, I’ve always been into social media in general. I mean, I grew up in like MySpace was huge. So my generation we’ve been on social media, we’re the first ones really. And so I always knew how to get people to react to stuff, whether it was on MySpace, or like, the early days of Facebook when no one was really on Facebook, but I would could get people to react. So I said, Okay, I’m just gonna do that. But I’m going to do about real estate on Facebook. So within six hours of being, you know, new realtor, I had somebody say, hey, I want to I want to rent a place. And I was like, wow, this is, this is crazy. And that rent that renter within this, as I didn’t really know anything about real estate, I flipped her into a buyer. And so it was literally the first day being a realtor that I got my first contract. And that’s incredible. So that’s what I thought I was like, Oh, my gosh, I was like, This is so easy. This is so easy. This house is like 230 grand, I’m gonna make like 7000 or $6,000, whatever it is. I was like, I’m filthy rich. And and then it took like, five months to get the second sale.
D.J. Paris 11:10
And did that one also come through Facebook?
Adam Sheets 11:13
Yes. So the first year, I sold seven houses, I think all seven came from Facebook, and some pro se. And it was it was literally just just posting information. I mean, it’s the stuff offer value. And you know, eventually people come around, right? That’s kind of the spiel with anything social media, and trying to gain business from it. So, but it took five months. And in that time, I’m in the first first six months of being realtor anyways, you feel like you don’t have you have no idea what you’re doing. Even if you have coaches that have been in the business. 20 years. Sure. I’m just I’m just like, Yeah, I just sit here. I go to the office for four hours day. And then I go do whatever, because I had nothing to do. So the first year seven houses, which I think equaled maybe $20,000 in commission commissions. Yeah. But I just moved back from Orlando. I was living at home. No bills. I I’m literally think I’m rolling in it. Sure. And, yeah, then. So 2000, I guess 2016. January one, I think January, one phone a Monday, that year, somebody’s going to correct that. But I think it fell on Monday, because I’m very big on January one. We go, we raised the we raised the Billboard, and we’re onward to the next year. So leading up to that, like through Christmas season and stuff holiday season. So I said, Okay, I’m gonna, I gotta get a plan together for social media, for 2016 or 17, whichever one it was. And so January one fell on Monday, which is perfect, because you get the start the week and the new year. So I hit it really hard. And I developed the content schedule. And I, I stuck to it. And I started using Facebook as a sphere of influence, because I also didn’t do that when my parents said, hey, get a sphere of influence together. Now, I’m not going to, to this day, I don’t have a sphere of influence a proper sphere of influence through with like Excel, or you know, whatever CRM you want to use, I still don’t have it, because we use Facebook for that. So yeah, and the reason I started using Facebook, kind of back to spending the last total $100 on an iMac, that’s family money, I didn’t have any money to spend on leads and stuff. So that’s kind of how I got into real estate. And because it was almost a it was like a last ditch effort. But it apparently turned out alright. And because I I tell people all the time. Yeah, I wouldn’t do another job. I don’t know what it would be if if, you know, somebody came to me tomorrow and said, Hey, would you do this? I don’t know if I would do anything else now. But that’s how I got into got into real estate. It’s kind of fell into it family business and hit the ground running.
D.J. Paris 14:02
Yeah, well, it’s it’s an impressive story. And it’s the number one. So at our firm here, and we’re in Chicago, we have about 750 agents here at our company. And the number one question we get, and the number one question we get from all of our listeners on the podcast is how do I better leverage social media? And I’m, I really want to pick your brain about this because I think this is so such an interesting thing. Because you get what percentage of your business I don’t want to misquote you, but what percentage of your business comes from Facebook?
Adam Sheets 14:30
It’s just about it’s plus minus 97%.
D.J. Paris 14:35
That’s what I thought but I wanted to make sure because it’s such a astronomical number that it almost sounds not real and I know Israel, but Well, I don’t want to know how you got that. Yeah.
Adam Sheets 14:46
All right. So how it started was an again back to sat down. I said okay, how can I reach most people the fastest I possibly can for free. And so I started using Facebook Messenger as my You’re of influence and way to contact my sphere of influence. So I sat down with a list, and I wrote down 25 names a day that I was going to send messages to, Hey, my name is Adam sheets. At the time I was with Coldwell Banker said hey, I’m Adam sheets with Coldwell Banker. Just so you know, right now you can buy this was when FHA was 3% down, I think I said just so you know, you can buy a house 3% down. So if you’ve thought about renting, 3% may be cheaper than first, last and security. And then I just include my name, phone number, email address website, at the bottom. And for every time somebody would respond out a checkmark next to their name. And then that went into I guess I kind of lied, I do have an Excel file with all these people in it. Now, and I didn’t the first year, I had to go back and do it, which took forever but so I was tracking it. So I knew that basically, for every 250 messages I sent to people that I was gonna get one to two deals per 250 messages. But 20 250 messages, takes 15 minutes. Yeah, base looks a little different now. Because now they taught you, I think they cut you off after like 49 messages, like if they know if they realize what you’re doing. And Facebook’s pretty smart. So they always do, they’ll put you on a 24 hour ban, you go back the next day you started over. So that’s what I was doing for months and months and months to develop this kind of presence with people. And then I paired that with content every single day, whether it was because I mean, some days, or when I started I had the time. But some days, you’re Hey, no, you don’t have a you don’t have the creative juices flowing. So sometimes it would just be like, Would you buy a house if you only had to put 3% down, and the amount of people that I’ve sold houses to because of that simple little post, it’s got to be over 100 people just because of that, wow. And, but it all works together. So they’d see me in their inbox. And then they would see my content on their feed. So even if they didn’t, you know, fully read the message, they know like, I Why don’t know that name. I know him from somewhere. And so I started developing a rapport with all the people I was friends with on Facebook. And when I started, I had 1000 friends on Facebook. So basically what I started doing was I added absolutely everybody I could that was in and around, you know my in around Fort Myers, so Cape Coral, bonita, Naples everywhere. I never added a realtor. And I always tried to add people with multiple with multiple mutual friends. So that I’m just not, you know, Joe Schmo adding them on Facebook,
D.J. Paris 17:38
right, there was there was a connection there that
Adam Sheets 17:41
connection and that little trust almost. Now it’s gotten out of hand, because throughout the years, I mean, I’m not, I’m up to 5000. So like you, there’s really never, there’s not, there’s an endless supply of people you can add on Facebook. Because once I once I add all these people in to my list, and I’ll go through, and I’ll say, okay, this person has an ice because I have a schedule where I’ll message somebody, if they don’t read it, because you can see if they read it, if they don’t read it, I’ll send them another message in three months, another six months, nine months, 12 months, if after 12 months, they haven’t read it replied to it, I delete them off Facebook. And that makes you room for one more person because you’re only allowed 5000 on Facebook. Right? So Right. So it’s a constant cycle of filtering people in and out and in and out. But it’s literally unlimited. Now, I’ve taught this to I mean, there’s, I’ve taught this, I teach this to agents in my office too. So everyone’s doing it, but like, I get friend requests from Realtors all the time. And you know, all my friends do too. Because even in five years, the amount of people that are using social media has gone up substantially, it’s still not to where it should be because everybody should be using it. But for a lot of people, it’s tough to understand, you know, and to come up with, you know, a plan and a content schedule in a list and to make sure you keep it organized. And it can be tough, but if you use it like I always tell people it’s like sending out a mailer. But you don’t know how many people are opening up that piece of mail. I throw any realtor that sends that to my house, I throw it away. Sure, maybe because I’m a realtor, but like I don’t have any interest in reading what they’re what they’re sending, because it’s always the same exact thing. You want to know your value, your home value is Yeah. And the difference with using Facebook like that is so that you can track it you know, who read it, you know who you know, responded to you? I’d say the majority of the message the responses I get are, hey, I don’t like not ready yet but in six months, you know, give me another message. So they literally go into my calendar, six months boom, you’re getting a message and with the way that people so they see the message and they see whatever content I have that comes across their feed and it there’s no limit to it. So my biggest kind of success story with it is one of my clients and now friends Trey. He was one of the first people add on face About five years ago, and last year, he I get a random phone call. Hey, it’s Trey Jones. I’m like, Who? He’s like, Oh, we’re friends on Facebook. We sent like, 5000 friends. And he’s like, You sent me a message in 2015 I wasn’t ready to buy a house then. But now I’m ready to buy a house. And I’m like, Dude, I appreciate the loyalty like, that is crazy, because we’ve never had a conversation before this. He’s like, Yeah, but I’ve been following your stuff. And you’re the only you’re, you’re also one of the only Realtors I know that got into the business is and isn’t now out of the business. Yeah, right. Because sure, you know, like, I’ve been here and I get messages from people all the time. Hey, are you still in real estate? And I’m like, well, one, that means that I’m not doing a good enough job to get my content to you. Because you would know if I saw it. But but to, it’s crazy that there’s this like, there’s this known thing outside of real estate where like, I might not be in real estate, you know, your friend, that’s an agent might not be in real estate tomorrow, they’re back to do in their
D.J. Paris 20:54
old job. So the consistency of doing it as often as you do it just over time solidifies that you’re the guy.
Adam Sheets 21:01
Exactly. And then my, my, you know, kind of content schedule, if you look at my Facebook pages, for anyone that’s gonna listen, I’m just Adam sheets on Facebook. If you look at my page, everything looks the same. It’s all branded with my logo, or our logo. It’s got my phone number. People always say don’t be a secret agent. Right? But that always applies to wearing your nametag at the grocery store. Anytime I hear that said, What’s your the grocery store your nametag and I’m like, Okay, it’s not a 1950 anymore. Although that does work. My mom gets business from wearing your nametag, so I can’t really knock it that much.
D.J. Paris 21:33
Yeah, some some some people do it for sure. And but yeah, but the point is doing that on Facebook, essentially, right?
Adam Sheets 21:39
It’s the same exact thing. Don’t be a secret agent, everyone should know I did when I’m when I’m coaching people, and I’ll show through their Facebook page. And I’m like, I’m I’m five minutes into scrolling down your page, I don’t even know your phone numbers. And they’re like, I guess I should put that on there. I’m gonna Yeah, it should be in your header photo, like it should be right there. Because you have this one, capture somebody’s attention. And if you don’t, they’re gone. If they thought for a second, you know, maybe I’ll message them about buying a house and they weren’t on your page, and you were too difficult to get a hold of, they’re just not getting the path of least resistance, they’re just not going to get a hold of you. So that’s one of the first things I tell people make your cover photo with all your contact information, that should be the first thing somebody sees, and then they should see it again and your bio, and then they should see it on every single post that you have. And that’s another thing that I tell people is that typically, when a realtor uses social media, you will see that when they close on a house just listed just sold. Yes. And they’ll go and they’ll go on Microsoft Paint, and they’ll put sold across. Like, it’s always diagonal. And it’s always in the same disgusting font. And it’s always and absolutely right. And I’m like that is just so bad. And they just post the picture, no information or anything like that. So for me, I see a new listing, that’s three pieces of content from me, because that’s a, it used to be four, but we got rid of coming soon. So we can’t do coming soon anymore. But so you gotta just listed post, you get an under contract post and you get a closed post, the average Joe is not going back on your Facebook profile, and looking back 30 days to say, well, that’s that’s the same house right there just saying, Wow, he sells a lot of houses. And then on the buying side, you know, you get an under contract and enclosed posts. And then for every one of those, I always like to include, you know, if it’s like my kind of claim to fame, if you will, is that I’ve gotten $550,000 In closing costs paid by sellers. So I always add that to every post. I’m like closing costs counter 454 55 500,000. And so I always include like a little bit of a story like what how much like, what did it take to get this buyer under contract? What did you do to make sure this listing stood out above the other 30 homes that were for sale in the same neighborhood? So people have something to read, nobody cares that you closed on a house, but they developed care. They’ll care if you have something to say about stories. Yeah, why? Why are you the guy should hire. So it’s almost like you’re writing your own testimonial. Like I had to do this, this, this and this to get this house list ready? And then you know, we all went under contract in two days prior to all this craziness that’s going on right now. But we went under contract and two days before there were six houses on the market and 30 offers over list price but yeah, so I always like to it’s about informing people and that’s I use my my three and my two for just listing and, and fireside, whatever you want to call it to make sure that everybody knows exactly what’s going on in my real estate career.
D.J. Paris 24:49
And that’s really smart too. Because, you know, we have to realize that people don’t see all of our posts. Facebook does not show every one of our followers All of our posts, in fact, on a Facebook page, if your followers to the page can see 20% of your posts, your superstar like they don’t that does, it’s usually three to 5%. You know so so this idea that everyone sees everything you post is a complete myth or just not. So if you want to post even adjust listed two different times in a week, odds are no one is going to notice that you even did the exact same post twice. You probably shouldn’t, you probably should come up with additional ways to sort of market that. But but it’s not, you know, it’s not something that we should be too worried about. I wanted to ask you about video versus you know, text and picture, text and image postings. Do you do video? Are you mostly text and image guy?
Adam Sheets 25:42
So I do do video I’ve gotten away from video, like, it’s been so busy, so I haven’t had time to put because I’m so my background prior to going to Full Sail is in TV production.
D.J. Paris 25:55
I was gonna say it seems like natural for you. Yeah.
Adam Sheets 25:57
So I mean, 12 I had a video camera and I was editing skateboard videos. And then you know, 15, I was had a few production, like, for the four years in high school and stuff like that. So I’ve always been into it. So video has been very easy. For me always, it’s not like that for most people, most people are scared to death of the camera. But because of that, I will not put out a piece of video content that I don’t think is absolutely perfect, which is tough, because, like, it might take me 10 hours to edit a video, but only two hours that had a video and then 10 hours to say, You know what, that beat just didn’t line up with that transition properly. I can’t put this out, it’s something no one’s ever gonna realize. But when I have put out video, the the feedback is so much greater than just then you know, just listed in closed, and here’s what your down payment, you know, those kinds of posts. But when I was consistently doing video, which would have been last year and years prior to that, you know, the feedback was great. And then with video too, you know, you can tell Okay, 600 people watch this video 700 People watch this video, whereas the the normal posts, you have no idea I mean, you might get. And that’s part of the issue with Facebook in general and bacteria, not everyone seeing everything you post is that you might post something one day, that goes for 60 comments, 10 shares and 150 likes, and then you could post the same thing and the next day, and it goes for absolutely nothing. So back when I was doing video, that’s kind of when I would gauge when to post a video is when my just just normal content wasn’t doing so hot, then I’ll be like, Okay, it’s time for a video and then I post the video up and then the engagement on the other post comes with it. It’s always about just trying to try to tease that Facebook algorithm a little bit to make sure that you know, your front and center.
D.J. Paris 27:56
I want to and I’m sorry, I meant to go back to this earlier. Thank you for that I want to talk about using Facebook Messenger as an outreach tool. This is a particularly interesting, and I don’t really see a lot of other people doing it that way they’ll you know, friends will communicate that way via messenger. But to use it as an introductory point, or at least a hey, you know, here’s a little piece of content that, you know, you may or may not be interested in. Do you automate that? Because there are ways to automate some of those? Or are you doing it all manually?
Adam Sheets 28:28
No, it’s literally copy and paste, pull up 25 chat boxes on the bottom, bang, bang, bang done for the day. But I know on our business page we had on Meishan for a while, but it just wasn’t. It wasn’t the same. I wasn’t I mean, business page is always gonna be different than personal anyways. But doing it from the personal page and having it it felt like I was typing every single message out because it was always her Hey, so and so it wasn’t just Hi there. And I tried the Hi there. Because that was way quicker for a long time. And like nobody was reading the messages. So
D.J. Paris 29:04
I need to know what it’s about. Yeah, exactly.
Adam Sheets 29:08
So now it’s, yeah, now it’s um, I mean, depending on my schedule for a day, I might type out 25 different messages and send them to 25 different people. Hey, just so you got a new dog, cue dog. Also, do you want my house? And it just depends on the schedule, but just the copy and paste simple and quick, because that’s what it was about. It’s about efficiency. And you can sit out 25 and 30 seconds. I mean, not really two minutes. And you know, you do that five times. I know I’m getting one or two deals out of it. And, again, most of the majority of the messages are, you know, I’m not right now. But in six months, give me give me a shout. I’ve never had anybody be rude about a message. I’m sure people who deleted me off Facebook afterwards, but I don’t care. It just makes room for somebody else. So not a big deal. But yeah, Facebook Messenger is just and I tell people all the time it works, it all works together. And I don’t think you can do one without the other. If you’re going to do the messages thing, you got to make sure the content follows. You can do the content day, you got to make sure you hit them in Messenger too. Because and, and kind of back to what you said, I don’t know anybody else that uses Facebook Messenger like that either. And to this day, five years later, I still do it, I still do it. Like it was the first time I ever did it. And I’m still getting the same results.
D.J. Paris 30:25
It’s it’s incredible. And the other cool thing I want to mention about Facebook Messenger is those notifications. People do see, right, so where they might not see all of your posts, because Facebook’s algorithm doesn’t, you know, doesn’t always show everyone, everyone all of your posts, but every time a message comes up, if you’re connected to that person, as a friend, then they will see it. If you’re not a friend, then maybe they’ll see it, maybe they won’t, depending on their their notification settings. So would you encourage people not to do that for people that they’re not already direct connected as friends,
Adam Sheets 30:59
I would say you need to be direct connected as friends just because like I recently went into my like spam folder. And I mean, I had messages from years ago that I’d never seen. And if you’re not friends with that person, they’re never going to see it. I don’t know how Facebook really works that because I’m not huge into the technical side of Facebook, obviously. But only a couple times have I not been friends with somebody on Facebook and gotten their message and actually say that the most recent time that happened was a 21 year old realtor who was doing the same exact thing that I did five years ago. And and now he’s I talked to him all the time now because I was like, Dude, I appreciate this so much because I literally built the business office. And then I told him I said, but just so you know, my game just ramped up because now I know somebody’s competition me five years ago doing the same exact thing. I was blown away. I’m like, Dude, you got this is all you need to do. This is it.
D.J. Paris 31:57
So what’s so interesting is what really you’ve done is you’ve taken what everybody does on LinkedIn. And to very little success, I have to assume so we all know that every day, if we check our LinkedIn, there is somebody has messaged us about something that person that we typically don’t know, maybe we’ve accepted them as a connection. But they it’s a lot of sales pitches. And it’s just my inbox is flooded every day. I don’t even read it. I don’t open it. I don’t care. It’s never anything interesting. But he does that. Yeah, vendor different vendors, different financial advisors, realtors, whatever. But nobody’s doing that on messenger that I’m aware of. And that is such a brilliant idea. Because it’s you see it all the time on LinkedIn, and you just don’t think about it for messenger. So Wow. Well, yeah,
Adam Sheets 32:43
LinkedIn is supposed to be the business tool, right? That’s the business social media. But I don’t know anybody that’s gaining. I mean, I’m sure there’s someone out there someone out there is doing it at a high level getting business from LinkedIn. I don’t know who that person is. But Facebook makes it so easy, because it’s a personal thing. Whereas LinkedIn, it’s like, oh, another person or Northwestern Mutual what’s. Okay, big deal. But with Facebook, I might just be messaging about who knows what, Hey, I like your new truck. But instead, it’s a little sales pitch. With all my contact information there, but yeah, I mean, even and then I also in my 97% is included. You know, somebody messages me back on Facebook says, hey, my dad wants to, you know, buy a house, which happens pretty often, too. That goes into my Facebook stats also, because that stills from Facebook. And I mean, I don’t I tell people all the time, I’ve become a one trick pony, actually, because Facebook’s my guy, I mean, that’s my bread and butter. Like I I’ve tried the mailers thing. Now at this point, I’ve tried just about everything, and nothing gets any results like Facebook does. And I’ll let you just know, like, if it wasn’t for Facebook, I probably sell two houses here. It’s it’s crazy. The the exposure that you get
D.J. Paris 34:06
curious if you also are aside from message using messenger or car connected, you know, you have this 5000 Friends limit. Are you going through your feed and commenting and liking on other people’s posts? I’m curious if that’s part of the strategy too. So
Adam Sheets 34:23
I’m not Yes, I do. But not for the reason of making sure that they you know, the algorithms and stuff will work for me and putting me in front of those people. What I do do about three hours a day. I scroll through Facebook, because every time you refresh, it’s different stuff. I will scroll through Facebook. And a lot of people have this is the part they don’t typically understand when I’m giving this spiel is that I do not use Facebook like a social media tool. I don’t care about a picture of a new dog. I don’t care if you’re getting married. I scrolled through Facebook looking for key things like just had a kid Um, well, I guess marriage isn’t fair because I’ll because if you just got married, if you just got engaged, if I’m seeing these people, they go to the top of my list of who’s getting a message when I’m done doing my, you know, a few hours of Facebook scrolling. So I’m using it as like almost prospecting, okay, who has a life changing event that I need to send a message to you that might be in a position that they need to buy a new house? So babies marriages and engagements,
D.J. Paris 35:24
new job, I’m my job. Yes, exactly.
Adam Sheets 35:27
All that kind of stuff to go to the top of the list. And I’ll immediately send them a message as soon as I’m done. And then another thing that I don’t know why this happens, you may know more than I because you, you, you know, people at Facebook, but I always tend to, when I get on my phone it in the evening, Facebook puts the posts, front and center for me. Hey, who knows a realtor in Fort Myers. They’re always right there. So I probably do 20 deals a year, just because it was the first thing that popped up in my feed. And I’m the first one that you know, hey, I’m a real, you know, my, my hands are shaking. I’m like, I’m a real dude. Yeah, and but it’s, it’s always right there. And the only thing I can think of is that Facebook has figured out that I sell houses. And they know to put that stuff in front of me because real estate is something that, you know, my profile puts out into the cloud that I’m interested in. So that didn’t start happening. I mean, that that was never there before I was in real estate. And now all of a sudden, you know that all of a sudden, I started started selling real estate, and these posts are right there all the time.
D.J. Paris 36:38
And have you have you expanded into Instagram at all? Because realtors are spending all their time on Instagram. Curious if you’ve had success there, or if you stay strictly with Facebook?
Adam Sheets 36:49
No. So all my business posts from Facebook, I do have an Instagram profile, which I was off of for a couple of years, I actually just got back on Instagram. Because I just figured if I can do this on Facebook, I can do it on Instagram, also. And it’s way easier, I think to engage on Facebook, on Instagram. So literally just recently i i took the same formula. I haven’t started the message thing on Instagram. Yeah, it’s also it’s easier to engage. But it’s harder to find people to, you know, send a message to because it’s not like I can just throw out 1000 friend requests in an hour and then hope that 300 of them accept it. And then same thing, I believe Instagram has spam also, which I’ll check done. But oh, yeah, they do. Absolutely. So So I haven’t started the messages on Instagram yet, but I’m still doing the same content schedule. So everything that goes my facebook page goes on my Instagram too. But again, back to nobody cares, the sold a house on social media. My Instagram is more of like a it’s more of like little salt on top of the you know, it’s it’s just to go along with my Facebook because it’s it’s most of the same people. So, yeah, they go on Facebook, they see it, they go on Instagram, they’re like, Okay, there it is, again, Adam, I know you’re the guy, I’m gonna call it when I sell my house. Because, but it’s just, it’s just reiterating like, Hey, I’m here for you. Here’s the content that I’m putting out. Here’s the info that you need. And so I’m just back to being front and center. I’m front and center on all of these people’s social media pages. And I’m not it’s no secret that I’m a full time realtor. Whereas the guy who only posts like, I’ve got buddies there, you know, highly successful realtors, they don’t use any social media at all. And occasionally, I’ll see on their Instagram page, like, hey, sold the house for three and a half million dollars and like, dang, must be nice, but and then they’ll post it up, and then you won’t see anything. They’re doing business behind the scenes. But some people just they don’t they don’t need it. I needed it. And to this day, I still don’t spend any money on marketing. It’s all Facebook and just organic reach through my personal page.
D.J. Paris 39:02
Yeah, I love it. I want to talk about how social media has also built you a pretty successful coaching business. And I Adam was telling me the story before we started. But I would love for you to share the story about how you even got coaching clients, because it was sort of an unintentional thing.
Adam Sheets 39:21
Yeah, so it was a total accident. I’m on these Facebook pages. And one day, there was a there’s an agent that said, for anyone, it was just basically like anyone using social media at a high level of generate business. And I commented and I just said, actually 97% of my business comes from Facebook, and I got 1000s of emails and messages. And I was like well, okay, I’m gonna make some money off this. And so I initially I had my remember my first client name’s dawn. She’s in Toronto, I think and I I did have this just a it was a cheat sheet for, and I charged her 25 bucks. And then that I that was a. So then she was the first one, how do in that same day or within a few days that I was getting just inundated with messages and messages, messages. And so I said, Hey, for 25 bucks, I will send you guys this cheat sheet that I did it for another agent, if you want to take it further, you know, we can definitely talk about it. So here’s the cheat sheet. And then after that, then you know, if I got if I got 2000 emails and messages, I sent them out the cheat sheet which took me like, five days to send out that many emails with a attachment to it. But so I, I, then I took it further with, you know, 1000 of those people and then settled around 150 Finally, that I’m talking to on a consistent basis. And these are people from the guy who is a star on YouTube selling real estate to some to the you know, the 78 year old who’s never ever thought about posting about real estate on our Facebook page. So, you know, it’s super personalized, but we do we do zoom calls and stuff like that. And we always make sure that they’re staying on top of it. And one of the biggest things with with these coaching clients and just real estate professionals in general is making the switch from using Facebook as a social media to like I said earlier, using it as a total business tool. So take out the picture of your grandkids or your kids as your header photo. And, and I get some backlash to this, like I’ve definitely lost clients because of this not actual clients poaching clients. I’m like, get rid of your kids, get rid of your grandkids, get rid of your dog, like why like he was like I, you know, I want my family to see my my family. And I’m like, then we should probably just end this here. I’m not trying to be brash, but this is for a very specific, you know, reason, and it’s because you want to use Facebook to generate more business. And if you’re not willing to do the things that I have done, which are tried and true, then, you know, we just stopped her now. And most of them kind of catch on to it and like, Okay, I’ll you know, give it a try. Some people haven’t, that’s fine. I mean, you can sell real estate if you want to sell real estate, but totally stumbled into it. And it was literally from one message. But now anytime I see somebody post something like that on on any real estate, Facebook page, I, I can do the same thing. And I still get tons and tons of messages. And it starts it same thing starts with sending them the cheat sheet, and then a zoom call and then, you know, Zoom call and texts and you know, whatever else. So it’s just little tips and tricks here and there. Just kind of learn along the way. And there’s so much there’s such a lack of knowledge on how to use it and market yourself on social media, that little effort, you know, start doing if you do an extra five deals a year to two deals a year. It’s worth the effort that it takes to do
D.J. Paris 43:09
it. Yeah, I go, I couldn’t agree with you more. So, so interesting. And we should also promote your your coaching program. So if somebody wants to reach out to you and learn more about what you’re offering with the coaching for social media, what’s the best way that they should do that?
Adam Sheets 43:28
Probably by by text, I respond to texts quicker than email. And that’s just the 239-839-6974 you can also reach me by email, I just like I said, I’ll respond to your texts quicker, which is just add them at sheets team.net And then we’ll figure it out. It’s not it’s not super. It’s not super formal. It’s um, I mean, I’m casual guy, I’m wearing a t shirt. And that’s this is kind of me every day. And I was we have some fun and try to come up with stuff together. And that seems to be working out for people so far.
D.J. Paris 44:03
And I’ve just one last question around your content calendar, which I meant to ask earlier is do you have a general rule of thumb of how many posts a day is it? Is it a certain number per day? Is it different each day just out of curiosity?
Adam Sheets 44:17
So I I like to post a couple times a day I don’t do it on the weekends my weekends are unless I have to show houses I’m I’m off of I’m not but Monday to Friday, you know I tried to just come up with any let me take a step back. My My schedule is technically for my our business page. That’s where I have literally I have like taped to my desk right here. This is my content calendar. Every I know that I’m because I’m kind of a I kind of alluded to it earlier, but some days you don’t have the creative juices flowing. So having a schedule like that is super important. So on Monday for our business page, I know that I’m doing anything we just listed put on your con tractor clothes. So that’s every single Monday, Tuesday I do what’s called sheets eats, and I pick a local restaurant and do a write up of it pictures the whole thing because people love seeing that you’re part of the community. Sure. Food. So cheap seats just and it just kind of goes together. Yeah. And then Wednesday is things to do things coming up this this weekend in Lee County, Thursday, love Local Business Spotlight, which sometimes I switch around sheets eats and Local Business Spotlight.
D.J. Paris 45:33
It’s my Business Spotlight, are you reaching out to local businesses and say, Hey, I have this pretty decent social media following I would love to promote your business and learn the story of your company. And, and you know, and then what’s really brilliant about that, of course, which I’m sort of jumping, I’m sort of stepping on on Adams, the punch line, so to speak. But the the what’s so brilliant about that, is that of course those business owners are also going to share this post with every with all of their customers, which drives more people to Adam.
Adam Sheets 46:02
That’s, that’s why that’s why it started because I was like, Listen, if I, I mean, I know, I know, a lot of business owners. So it’s, it’s, it’s not necessarily like a super formal write up or anything. It’s just hey, if you like, I have a friend that owns a T Shirt Company. And so I did T shirts and pictures of T shirts, but he shared it to his, you know, 3000 Facebook friends, and didn’t from there sure, I don’t even know where that post is. Now it’s probably in California, like, I have no idea. So the exposure, and it’s two birds with one stone, they love that you’re part of the community. And, and then the business owner is like, oh my gosh, this is awesome. Especially during COVID. Like restaurants or restaurants and business owners were loving it. I’ve only had one restaurant ever have an issue with it. And they threatened like a cease and desist letter, it was ridiculous. And wow. And I’ll never eat at the restaurant again. So what they were thinking, I’m like, I literally just give you guys free advertising in a time when no one can go to a restaurant, and you’re going to cause issue about this, like, what are we doing here? But But yeah, so that, then I what I do is all I come up with that on the business page, and then I share it to my personal page. So that can which helps the exposure the business page too, because business pages are tough. And so whatever I can do to make sure that is front and center, you know, as well. So it’s sharing it to the personal page, and then the engagement on the business page goes up, or even just not necessarily engagement, because on our business page, you know, we’re not getting like, if I post up a restaurant review, I’m not getting 100 comments on it, oh my gosh, I love this place. But when I share it to my personal page, I do get those comments. So then, you know, you can see it on the on the posts on the business page, this one reached 3000 people, you know, and so it all again, all works together messages, business page and personal page. It’s just cohesive, and I don’t think you can do one without the other. And then Friday’s end with a win, which is, hey, brag. If you want to brag about something, brag about something come on here and post it. I don’t care what it is. Just to get people fired up. And people like talking about themselves. I mean, let’s be honest, we’ve like saying, Hey, I did this this week, you know, just bought new boat like whatever. Yeah. So that’s, and that’s actually new, this is a new schedule. So Friday will actually be the first and with a win. So I guess we’ll see how that goes. But I stole that from my buddy Chris. He’s a realtor in Austin. So and he gets great, great engagement when he doesn’t. So we’ll see if we did the same thing here.
D.J. Paris 48:42
Well, everyone who is listening or watching should be following Adams business page, at the very least just to see what he’s doing to get a better sense of what you could do to increase your Facebook conversions. So definitely go to the easiest way to do it is facebook.com forward slash the sheets team or just google the sheets team. And it’ll come up and they really are the sheets but it’s forward slash the sheets team. And you can take you get a sense of what he’s what they’re doing. And if you’re interested in learning more about Adam’s coaching program, of course, reach out to him you can reach him right through the business page. He gave his text or cell phone number you can text him. And of course you can also go to his website, the firm website, which is sheets team.net. And all their social media is there as well. And you can contact them easily through email that way too. Adam, thank you so much for being on our show. I hope that a lot of our listeners reach out to you and hopefully get some more coaching clients because this is this is amazing. It’s so funny. We we on the podcast just to pull the curtain back just a little bit is we we’ve now been doing this for I don’t know four or five years. And so we get hit up by publicists every single day with hey, we’ve got this great you know realtor that we want, we want you to feature on your show. And usually it’s a lot of smoke and mirrors. It’s a lot of like, here’s why they’re so great. And sometimes they, they are really great. But it doesn’t always mean it’s going to be a good guest. And a lot of people claim to be social media experts, we also get a lot of non realtors who want to teach social media strategies via our podcast. And where we try to stay away from that as much as possible. We already have an expert that comes on once a month for Instagram, and other platforms. But you’re the first person I’ve talked to who’s a producing realtor who is really getting those kinds of results via Facebook. So I hope our audience will reach out to you because I really believe that all of us could do better in that respect. And there’s so much business there. So much so
Adam Sheets 50:44
much. It’s, it’s actually, it’s crazy how much business is there and people don’t realize it’s literally at your fingertips 1000s of clients. And if they’re not the client, they know someone that can be the client. But yeah, I get the amount of emails I get, Hey, can I or not, hey, learn how to use social media for realtors. And I’m like, Are the amount of seminars I’ve sat through? And I’m like, I was doing this five years ago. What, you know, what are we talking about here? And I know you need to be doing this. And they give you the most basic stuff, which I get. I mean, if you’re just starting out the basic stuff is good. But I’ve sat through these things. I’m like, yeah, that doesn’t work. That just doesn’t work. Like what do you mean? It doesn’t work? I’m like, I’m telling you that that is outdated. And nobody cares. Which hurts the egos a lot. But yeah. Yeah. I mean, there’s, there’s so much information out there. But I’m an open book. So if anybody I mean, even if they don’t want to be coached by if you want to call them pick my brain. I’ll just we’ll just chop it up for a little bit. No big deal. Awesome.
D.J. Paris 51:47
Well, Adam, thank you so much for being on our show. We couldn’t be more. Yeah, couldn’t be more appreciate it. so appreciative on behalf of all of our audience, our listeners and our viewers, we want to thank Adam for spending time out of his crazy busy days and credibly successful at a super young age and the way he’s doing it is so impressive to us. So we’re super appreciative that you came on and shared some of those strategies with our audience. And on behalf of Adam and myself, we want to thank our audience for sitting through this episode, and absorbing it. And also, we’re going to ask everyone to just do one thing to help us grow. Tell a friend think of one other real estate professional that could benefit from hearing this great conversation with Adam and send them a link to our website. So whether the person is a podcast person or not, just send them over to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com Every episode we’ve ever done, you can stream right from the from the browser there. If they are a podcast person, just tell them to pull up the podcast app and search for keeping it real and hit the subscribe button. That would really help us continue to reach more and more Realtors with great messages like what Adam shared today. So Adam, thank you so much, and we will see everybody. You’re welcome. We’ll see everyone on the next episode. Thanks, Adam. See you guys
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