Jess Lenouvel discusses how she built her business in real estate, before leaving personal production to start The Listings Lab to help other agents grow their own business. Jess talks about how to see yourself as a marketer, and the strategies top agents use to find business. Jess also focuses on sales funnels and how she teaches agents to niche people out in terms of demographic versus geographic. Last, Jess talks about the services they offer in The Listings Lab.
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Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
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Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents. And for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide and host through the show. And in just a few moments, we’re going to be speaking with Jesslyn oval from the listings lab. Before we get to Jess, just a few quick reminders, I think in I don’t know, I should know. But we have approximately 250 episodes. And I the whole intention when we started this podcast was really to create a timeless library that new agents or any agent that’s looking to become a top producer can go and learn from these Mavericks who have come before them. And so I just want to remind everyone that yes, we are putting out new episodes every single week, I think we average about three episodes or so a week and then with new content, but we have so much great past content. So really encourage everyone, especially if you’re new to the show to go back to our previous history. Now. The RSS feed that feeds into like your podcast app might only show you like 100 or so of the episodes at a time. But what you can do is you can actually go right to our website to see all of them at once. So feel free to visit us at keeping it real pod.com And that has every episode we’ve ever done, you can actually stream it right from the browser there because I know there are some restrictions with podcast apps with showing every episode so go all the way back because there’s so much great wisdom in there. And also please follow us on Facebook find us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod and you can watch us record episodes live because as we’re recording them, we stream them live into that Facebook page. And as you as always please remember to tell a friend think of one other agent that could benefit from hearing episode interviews with top producers and send them a link to the show and now on to our interview with Jess Lenovo.
Okay, today on the show, we have Jess Lenovo, from the listings lab.com Now just is a real estate expert and founder and CEO of the listings lab, a virtual training and mentorship program for real estate agents to get them from six to seven figures with over 15 years of experience just helps agents overhaul their advertising and scale massively while leveraging the power of online marketing. Instead of relying upon old school traditional methods used in the industry. She uses strategies developed through partnerships and real experience. Jess has personally built a multiple seven figure business that has sold over 300 million of property in the last five years alone. Now as head of the listings lab, she has helped over 1000 Real estate agents create a track record of huge results. Please everyone listening or watching right now go visit the listings lab.com. Just Welcome to the show.
Jess Lenouvel 3:41
I am so so excited to be here. Thanks so much.
D.J. Paris 3:44
I am so excited to have you. This is a really we’re very, very excited, we’re so glad that we connected with with each other, or I’m so glad we connected with each other. And I would like first before we get to the listings lab and all of the services that you do offer real estate agents to help get them to have their best year ever and 2021 and beyond. I’d like to learn more about you because you were a top producer. And you at the ultimately ended up leaving to start this business to help real estate agents. But I’d love to hear about how you built your business. Your real estate business.
Jess Lenouvel 4:15
Yeah, for sure. So I got into real estate almost by accident. I think a lot of us can sort of say that. I was 21 straight out of school had no idea what I was going to do I have a degree in African and Caribbean studies. So nice to
D.J. Paris 4:33
be a professor, I’m guessing and
Jess Lenouvel 4:35
no, not even anymore. I need more qualifications for that. So, but my mom’s been a realtor for 35 years. So she sort of said, you know, I think you’d be good at it. Maybe try see what you think. So I got my license and just kind of like puttered around for a year or two I this is this is at 21 at 21 So I was really young, and I looked like I was 16 So it was it was actually pretty hard.
D.J. Paris 5:03
And I’m assuming none of your friends at 21 are probably are very few are buying property.
Jess Lenouvel 5:08
Well, and the other thing that I struggled with was my entire sphere of influence was also my mom’s. So right, like, were they going to use me or with a mom who had 20 years of experience and wasn’t 21? Right, exactly. So that was rough starting out. But the way that I actually got my business rolling, there was this brand new thing out there called Facebook. And I essentially started prospecting on Facebook in the classified section, which is doesn’t exist anymore. But I just started making connections with people friending people having conversations, things like that, that were clearly looking for something to do with real estate. Some of it ended up being rentals at first that turned into buyers down the road, some of it actually ended up being listings and things like that, that I pulled from there. Obviously, that wouldn’t work nowadays. But back then, I There were very few people doing it. So it worked really well. And that’s really how I started initially growing my business.
D.J. Paris 6:05
Yeah, I remember, like 10 or 11 years ago, there were people and it was very rare that somebody would think to do this. But with Twitter, in particular, when Twitter was a lot more popular, you could do the same thing. You could do a geographic search for the community that you serve as real estate, and then look for certain keywords like moving or new house or, or new job and things like that, and those aren’t as accessible anymore. And now we have the Facebook marketplace, but no classifieds and, and things so but when just out of curiosity, when you were finding people on Facebook, which again, I’m assuming these are people because it’s classifieds, these are people you didn’t know before, did you find it? Was it challenging to make those connections to because Facebook really is a peer to peer or friend to friend network? Yeah. Was it difficult to sort of bridge that gap?
Jess Lenouvel 6:54
No, not really, I think that I went about it really differently. And I still do the same thing, I still teach the same thing, we lead with value. Right? And so that’s exactly what I did back then it was, you know, what do they need? What do you what don’t they know. And you know, you start the relationship that way, the Law of Reciprocity is super powerful. So you know, I would give them as much value as I could. And then when it came down to it, a lot of the time, they would turn around and say, hey, you know what, I think you should just help us.
D.J. Paris 7:22
Yeah, I love that. And then so So you started to grow your business, you know, predominantly fed through connections you made on on social media, Facebook, in particular. And then then sort of how did you move on from there.
Jess Lenouvel 7:37
So I did a lot of different things. My the first, I would say, the first eight years of real estate, I was a solid six, six, multiple six figure agent, which isn’t hard to do in my market. And, you know, I found clients in different ways, most of it was online, but I very rarely put a lot of kind of juice behind what I was doing. And about my last five years, I decided, okay, if I’m going to do this, and I’m going to keep doing this, then I’m going to kick it up a notch, I want to do something I don’t want to really see what I’m capable of here. So I kind of the big mindset shift for me was really, I stopped looking at myself as a realtor. And I started looking at myself as a marketer. And I went out and I learned marketing from anywhere that I possibly could, I took programs and courses, I went outside of the industry. I got engaged to my wonderful now husband, who had a background in graphic design, but also really, really understood marketing. And he and I kind of came together. And we started to develop what we use now, which has changed and evolved, of course, 100 times. But it really started to work. And really what ended up happening is I was working for a builder because I wanted to learn the inside of some builder stuff back then. And when I when I left that position, I was like, Well, I’m starting from scratch, essentially, what are we going to do? And how are we going to do this quickly. So you know, we really at the time, we started building landing pages. And we started building landing pages and running ads and building relationships on Facebook and really creating like really value driven content to put out into the world. And we went from essentially zero to seven figures in six months. Wow, talk about burnout. I don’t recommend it.
D.J. Paris 9:20
Right, because you still have to service every one of those leads and clients right
Jess Lenouvel 9:24
100% And it was just me because ever has been. Wow. So obviously at that point at about six months, the team started to grow. Yeah, out of necessity for my mental health. And we ended up growing like just a small team. It was never a massive team and we never wanted one. But you know, the team was very high producing, we ended up doing somewhere between 250 300 deals a year, three agents, three agents and you know, marketing and admin.
D.J. Paris 9:56
So you would basically you and your husband would be kind of the mark Getting an arm and also running the business, and also probably servicing clients to you know, you’d be servicing clients too. But then being able to feed those the those the fruits of your marketing efforts to the team, and they would just go, that’s amazing.
Jess Lenouvel 10:13
Yep. Yeah. So it ended up being really great. And it was fun. And, you know, we were having, we’re having a lot of success, and at the same time, because we’d leverage the team so well, that I wasn’t, I wasn’t in a situation where I had to be on call all the time. So you know, I would take a good two to three months off a year, we traveled all the time, we would just kind of look at the seasons of what was happening in the market and decide when we were going to take off. Sure. And yeah, I mean, life was good.
D.J. Paris 10:44
Yeah, it’s it sounds it sounds like it. And I’m curious to on, you know, at what the sort of spend was per client back then, like, what did it if you if you remember the numbers from from back, then, you know, because I know, you know, we Facebook, actually corporate comes on our show once a month to talk about tools they have for real estate agents. And we’ve had lots of social media experts come on, and people that have built a lot of their business through through social, you know, search engine mark, their search engine marketing, or social marketing. And, you know, I’m always curious on like, what the return was then? And has it changed at all, to what people are spending on now?
Jess Lenouvel 11:24
I actually think that it was a little bit more back then than that, I would say it is. Now I’m gonna work on the number for you. But we were spending around $3,000 a month. So we were not spending that much money.
D.J. Paris 11:37
Right. So about 311 sale covers that
Jess Lenouvel 11:42
totally. Yeah. So So you know, 36 grand a year, and let’s say 250 69
bucks.
D.J. Paris 11:56
Wow, incredible $69 to acquire a customer that is, I mean, any agent would spend that all day long.
Jess Lenouvel 12:03
Yeah. And you know, at the time there was, we definitely have built out systems now that are better at using psychology to take someone from stranger to client. A lot of you know, when we first started, a lot of that conversion was happening manually, which is the opposite of what I teach now. Right. But at the time, like, you know, people weren’t using retargeting that often it was, you know, it really wasn’t content marketing wasn’t the powerful force that it is now. And so, you know, some of some of that needed to change over time as we started to
D.J. Paris 12:34
scale as well. Yeah, it’s a lot of, you know, but a lot of agents I think, are, you know, they have so much to do with their business, they have to, obviously, service clients, they have to source clients, they have to do all of most of the admin work, unless they’re on a team that, you know, maybe takes care of some of that for them. They really are a business owner who wears most of the hats, if not all of the hats, and, you know, marketing. And in particular, whether it’s just branding, or whether you’re specifically going out looking for clients online and doing you know, the you have a marketing spend, is Boy, that is just so much work, even just your branding around social posts, you know, what are you posting? How consistent is it with your values, your brand? And how often are you doing it the frequency, it’s all just so it’s a it’s an a crazy amount of information to learn as a business owner, and then to then execute it when you’re doing 910 hours a day of other business is really, really challenging, which I guess is where you guys come in?
Jess Lenouvel 13:35
Yeah, no, totally. And you know, a lot of what we teach, yes, you have to set it up on the front end, but there’s a lot of automation involved in it. So you know, all of the retargeting campaigns all the nurture from stranger to client, all of that can be done from an ad from like a paid traffic standpoint, in an automated way. The also the way that we teach content creation, I’m a really big proponent of creating your own content. I think that I can go on almost any agents, you know, profile, and I can tell whether or not they’ve outsourced it, or they were, they’re creating it themselves. I think it’s pretty obvious for most people, and a lot of content that comes out is, especially from agents is, I would say vague, and kind of, I don’t know, not very specific, not market specific, not client specific. It just tends to be kind of just a post for the sake of a post. Sure. So a lot of what we teach is basically like how can you maintain the growth, the marketing and all of the things that you need to do from a marketing standpoint, both organically and through paid traffic with like an hour a week? So
D.J. Paris 14:38
well, that’s incredible. And I realized I jumped way ahead in our story. I want to get to the how do we get to an hour a week managing our social sort of life, but we didn’t talk about how you decided to make this your full time you know, sort of thing. So So you were managing this team, you guys were doing hundreds of deals. A year you had a system in place where you were managing Got it. And you were getting a predictable return on investment. You were able to travel for a few months out of the year. And then sort of what was the next evolution after that?
Jess Lenouvel 15:10
I think I had I was in my early 30s. And I think I had a bit of an existential crisis. Maybe I went through like a midlife crisis a little young. So I was in Hawaii, and I’m driving down this beautiful
D.J. Paris 15:23
road. And by the way, a wonderful place to have an existential crisis. I know for sure you’re going to, we’re going to have a breakdown. Do it somewhere tropical.
Jess Lenouvel 15:30
You were like in Hawaii or something? Yeah. Yeah, we were having like this beautiful time best vacation ever. And we’re driving in this Jeep that we rented top down, and I start bawling. Like I’m sobbing. And my husband looks over at me. And he’s like, what could you possibly be crying? Right. And I just looked at him and I said, I don’t think I’m gonna sell real estate anymore. Yeah. And his face just dropped. Because he’s like, we’ve built not only our entire lives, but like our financial lives, our like, everything in our life is comes from that business. What are you talking about? And I’m so lucky, because he’s the most supportive man in the world. But we I basically said, I was like, Look, I just my heart’s not in this anymore. I don’t feel like I’m doing the right thing. And when I think about, you know, what I’m going to be doing when I’m 40? Or when I’m 50. Or like this, isn’t it? Yeah. And so we sat down, and he kind of, we started talking about different things, and you know, where things could go. And he sort of said, you know, the times that I see you light up the most, like, the times that I think that you’re really the happiest, is when somebody comes and knocks on your office door and says, How are you doing this? Yeah. And you get to like, help them and teach them and like, even if it’s just something really small, that tends to be where you’re the happiest. So that’s what we did. And it was the scariest decision I’ve ever made in my life, because I was walking away from something that really was a sure thing.
D.J. Paris 17:03
Yeah, it was predictable. It was reliable. And it was a machine that you just had to monitor and keep the keep the gears running. And but it wasn’t, it wasn’t fulfilling you. It wasn’t
Jess Lenouvel 17:14
for me. And you know, I don’t think that that don’t get me wrong. I know that there are people who are super fulfilled by what they do when they’re when they’re helping people literally find the place that they’re going to lay their head every night. But for me, it was just not the right thing. For me. I think in the long term. I also realized being in Hawaii that I wanted to be a little bit more location independent. Yeah. Right. I wanted to be able to pick up and sort of work from anywhere. And so that’s what that’s one of the things that we really took in, took into account as we were building out what we built. We built very, we built the listing side very quickly. And we I I literally could not tell you that it was more of the right thing for me, personally.
D.J. Paris 18:00
Well, let’s talk about the listing side, because I’m now excited to hear you know, what, what does fulfill you and how it’s helping other agents?
Jess Lenouvel 18:09
For sure. So the listing club is kind of our signature program, we have some other programs as well, we’ve got a program for new agents, we’ve got a program called the seven figure agent that is for eight agents who are really looking to scale quickly and build out their team. But our our listings lab program is everything from a marketing standpoint that you need to go from six to seven figures. So it the whole premise behind it is the right content in front of the right per person at the right time automatically. Yeah. Right. So it really is about creating relationships at scale. And, you know, I think that there’s so many things and so many people that teach you to just talk to more people, whether it’s prospecting, whether it’s you know, wearing your weird realtor pin to the grocery store, like there’s all kinds of stuff that people will tell you to do,
D.J. Paris 18:58
and have more conversations with buyers. And so that’s the common approach to finding more clients. Yeah,
Jess Lenouvel 19:04
exactly. So everything that I do, and everything that I teach is not based on the one to one, it’s based on one too many. Yeah. So how can you have something that is fully an optimally leveraged so that you can have more relationships being built at the same time that feel just as deep or maybe even deeper than if you were having a one on one conversation? So the idea is, is that you know, the lead comes in however it comes in, we use Facebook a lot because it’s the easiest place to micro target. Sure. And then from there, we actually take someone through a nine point psychological journey from stranger to client. Now all of that can be done in an automated way through really high quality content. So that’s one of the foundational things that we really focus on. So it’s content creation written video. It’s it’s the psychology it’s understanding this person’s this person that like the deepest level, you know, marketing at the end of the day is just being able to articulate what’s in the back of someone’s head better than they can. Right, right. And then they’ll automatically credit you with the solution. So a lot of what we do at the beginning of the program, the foundations of it are, it’s very psychologically driven, and really, you know, doing the market research and really understanding what these people need to hear from you.
D.J. Paris 20:20
So I remember years ago, before Facebook advert before social media advertising was as sophisticated as it was that the predominant way people would do this is they would build a landing page for a product or service, they would somehow, you know, through either paid search marketing, or through organic traffic, they would drive you to the homepage, they’d do everything they could to get your first name and your email, because then they would put you on a drip campaign, and you would get, you would get like, a series of emails. And that’s still it’s not as popular as it used to be. But you still see that from time to time. But that was really the only way that that online marketers had, if it was a difficult sort of purchase, where you’re like, No, I have to nurture this client through this entire process at scale, I better have 15 emails locked and loaded. And I better be driving traffic to get those. And now you’re able to sort of evolve and there’s nothing wrong with doing that, that’s fine to email
Jess Lenouvel 21:15
to like, it’s not like email is not dead. I know that some people like to say that it is it’s an email is not dead, as long as your open rates are good. And as long as you know, your emails are really, really high quality. It still works. But it’s also not enough.
D.J. Paris 21:30
It Yeah, it isn’t enough. And so basically, though, we’re talking about taking customized content, and putting someone through a sales funnel, or maybe funnel isn’t the right word, but but just a sales sort of journey. From from stranger to hopefully client. But there’s a very specific set of information that you’re going to be delivering, you’re going to be delivering it in a specific order at a specific time. And based on maybe the interaction, even with the previous amount of content. So this is a really something that you and your husband have developed to sort of get, you know, it’s basically not a fully automated system, but a system that really pushes somebody through a funnel in a way that they’re not manually having to do that correct. 100%.
Jess Lenouvel 22:19
Yeah. And I think the end result is always the goal is always the come list me call. Hey, I’ve seen your stuff I’ve been following you. I feel like we’re best friends already. When can you come unless my house? So we’re
D.J. Paris 22:31
really we’re talking about getting the customer hooked on your content?
Jess Lenouvel 22:35
Yep. So there’s really the element of building that know, like, and trust factor. And I know that’s used, and it’s so cliche in the in the marketing world, but it really does make all the difference, especially in an industry like real estate that our trust levels from the general public are so bad. Sure, right. And so it is so important that we’re building this kind of human connection. Right? This is a human to human business, we have to build a human connection with another person for that person to feel comfortable enough to not have to interview five people.
D.J. Paris 23:06
Sure. So utilizing the social media, sort of basically social media marketing, and delivering content to that consumer, how do you introduce yourself and create that? That connection? You know, through a virtual means when you’re not doing it one to one? What do you have any sort of suggestions or tips or tricks that you could share?
Jess Lenouvel 23:31
Here? Sure. So instead of kind of explaining all nine content types, because we’ll be here forever, I can break it down into three major buckets. Right? So your first bucket is your authority content. So we call it authority value. It’s going to be the basically like any question that you ever get when you’re selling real estate, that’s authority content, answer that question, right? Teach people what it is that they’re asking and what they need to know. Now, I don’t believe in things like you know, your generic market stats and your market updates. I think way too many people are just taking something they got from their brokerage with some branding on it and throwing it up on social media. Now, there is a better way to do it, which is basically interpret the data for your audience. What does this actually mean for you? And, you know, give a little bit more information and build a little bit more trust in your expertise in terms of, you know, what’s the trend in the past? Where are we now? And where do I see this going in the future? So there’s a thought that’s kind of authority content, which is, you know, you know,
D.J. Paris 24:31
I know my stuff, basically, yeah,
Jess Lenouvel 24:33
I know my stuff. I’m answering your questions.
D.J. Paris 24:35
I can I’ll digest the information and I’ll present it to you in a way that’s, that’s more easily digestible for you. Yeah. And it’s actually that I’m actually gonna pay attention to. It’s relevant and it’s important to me. Yeah, absolutely.
Jess Lenouvel 24:48
And, you know, then we have the second bucket, which is your personal bucket. This is personal beliefs, personal philosophy, personal story, because really, at the end of the day, if you’re just a real estate robot, there’s gonna be some trust issues in and around there. And especially if you’ve niched down or you specialize in helping people who are at the same point in life as you are, they’re really going to resonate with a lot of the things that are going on in your life. And you know, I’ll get messages from people who are like, Hey, I’ve been following you for a year. And I’m really interested in working with you. By the way, I saw you did a 3d game of thrones puzzle last week. And that’s just something random like that, you know, and all of a sudden, like, there’s, there’s some sort of a weird connection that they feel comfortable enough to actually reach out. And I think a lot of that initial reach out will be something like, you know, a funny video of your cat, and not necessarily an authority piece of content.
D.J. Paris 25:44
Right? So not maybe a non real estate related, sort of, I’m a human, here’s what I’m up to kind of for sure. For sure.
Jess Lenouvel 25:50
And really, really explaining like, who are you? Where do you stand for? What do you believe in? Where do you come from? You know, what is your day to day life look like? What’s your lifestyle, like? And then our third bucket would be something like social proof. So this is case studies, testimonials and PR, not just listed just solds.
D.J. Paris 26:09
Yeah. Can we talk just really quickly about just listed just sold just to what are your I already know your opinion, because you’re laughing? I, you know, I’m a marketer, too. So I’m not a practicing real estate agent. And I still think the majority of the social posts I see related to real estate are just listed and just sold. And it drives me crazy. Because I’m like, yes. Okay. Your friends are will cheer you on. They’ll be like, how exciting for so and so. And that’s great. I don’t know that it impresses anybody else?
Jess Lenouvel 26:41
No. And show trying to show people that you have business to get more business is a pretty archaic way of doing things. So really, the just listed just solds are looking at me Look at me, whereas your content really should be not what do I want to say? But what does that what does my ideal client need to hear? And I think a lot of the time, people will fall into the bad habit of the just listed just solds. Because they really don’t know what else to do. Yeah, it’s easy. It’s easy, and it’s what other people are doing, and that’s what they’re seeing. But the only people who really like and comment on those things, just like you said, friends and family who are like, Yay, you did a deal. Or other agents.
D.J. Paris 27:22
Wait, it’s also funny, too, because it is basically the only industry where people are bragging about their success on social media. I mean, really think there is virtually no other. I mean, I don’t even see like car salesmen, which I’m not equating real estate to car sale, but I’m thinking of people who sell like, everyone uses. Yeah, like everyone lives somewhere. Every drive is a home but I ever drawn drives a car, but I don’t see, hey, I just sold this really cool car, you know, but you do see, hey, I just sold this beautiful home. That’s, and again, I guess POS I guess it’s probably better than doing nothing. But it’s it’s not really providing value to your consumer. You know it? Yes, it is saying there is some, some authority proof, I guess a little bit with like, Hey, I know what I’m doing. I’m obviously busy. And I’m successful. But it’s not necessarily giving people content that is going to make a difference in their life.
Jess Lenouvel 28:13
No, and it’s really not going to attract the people that you want to work with. And I think that that’s really the difference between, you know, creating a business that is based on chasing and building a business, it’s based on based on attraction. So you know, what we teach instead, from a social proof standpoint is, you know, something like a case study stories are 22 times more powerful, more powerful and more memorable than facts. So you know, as soon as you start to tell the story of Sally and Jim, who, you know, they just had a baby, and they were in a condo that was too small for them. And they really needed space, and they were like falling all over each other, and the baby was crying, and they were going to get divorced. And then they started they moved they upsized and what that process looked like, and you know, now they’re in this, this house, and they each have their own office and the babies, you know, like, you just want to tell the story, because someone’s gonna see that and be like, Oh my gosh, that’s me, and I need her help to get me there. Right. And there’s a reason why we’re also obsessed with HGTV exactly what they’re doing. They’re just, it’s basically a beautiful case study. And that’s what people are really drawn to. And at the same time you’re eight, you’re actually in a more effective way, showing your audience that you can help them where they are to get where they want to go. So the case study is something we use a lot and testimonials are also something that we use, I really love video testimonials, but a lot of agents are terrified to ask their clients for a quick little video testimonial but they’re the most powerful thing in the world.
D.J. Paris 29:41
Super powerful and all you have to do is tell your client and you know basically beg and plead them but in a nice way to say all you have to do is turn your phone around push record for one minute or however long it takes you tell the story. You know there whatever you want to whatever your experience was was buying this home or selling a home or working with me. You know? It’s It’s remarkable. It’s you don’t need it. There’s you don’t need to hire a crew, although, you know. But But yeah, it’s it’s just, it’s It’s remarkable and that’s Yeah, we all I mean, there’s a reason why reality TV is like half of the television that’s on even today, because we like seeing real life stuff and it doesn’t have to be perfectly polished or perfectly lit, it just has to the content has to be authentic. And and yeah, just a real.
Jess Lenouvel 30:34
You know, the other trick that we use sometimes when a client is like really worried about like, I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to take a video myself, we’ll just get them on Zoom. Review. And then you crop yourself out of the top. I love it. It just it makes it super easy. You can ask them a couple of questions, you can edit it a little bit and then just you know you have yourself this beautiful testimonial. That’s actually on video. And people really trust the video more than they trust a written review.
D.J. Paris 31:02
Yeah, apps? Oh, absolutely. Because anyone can fabricate a written review. It takes a lot more work to fabricate a video, which can be done too. But it’s a lot harder. And obviously you’re probably aren’t aren’t gonna be fabricating video. But But boy, I see a lot of testimonials on agent websites. And I even I I’m like is that a real written way to really write that? It’s somewhat because it’s always like, first first name. And then last initial of the, you know, first initial of the of the last name, and I’m not sure, but But yeah, so So you would recommend asking, you know, all of your clients have, you know, the ones, of course had a good experience, too, you know, and I think maybe the easiest way to ask that. And this is just my opinion, I’d love to get your opinion is to is to contact your client. And I don’t think it even matters when even if it’s two years ago that you sold them the home, I think it’s perfectly okay to say hey, I’m in the process of doing my my business plan for this year. And I realized I forgot to ask for you if you would do me a giant favor, this would help me get the word out about how I treat clients, would you mind just sharing your experience, turn your phone around, you know, speak for a minute. And that’s really all you have to say. And then some people won’t do it, some people will,
Jess Lenouvel 32:15
will be uncomfortable, and some people will be so happy to Yeah. But at the same time to you know, if you are you know, if you’re I know that not a lot of people are do are going to closings and stuff in real life now. But when we’re allowed to again, then at that point, you can even just I’ve, you know, done this before with people when you’re in person, and just literally put your hand on them and say I’m going to turn a camera on right now. And I just want you to tell everyone what this process was like and how happy you are right now.
D.J. Paris 32:47
That works. I have a question I want to go back to creating these these sorts of sales funnels. And I was curious, because I’m in Chicago, there’s many neighborhoods here. Each neighborhood has its own little microcosm and its own little market. And I was just thinking, if I was an agent, and I focused in like three neighborhoods here in the city, I probably would want to create three different funnels where the content is specific to each, each neighborhood, right? So I would be wanting to provide content. Now that’s not necessarily why somebody might be wanting to hire you because they’re going to move to a different neighborhood. But But I would think, you know, you would also be looking for people that are raising their hands that are interested in those particular neighborhoods and feeding them content. So I’m curious on do you do you deal with with some of your clients with your clients or real estate agents who have multiple markets and you set up sort of multiple tracks based on you know, their specific geographic areas.
Jess Lenouvel 33:44
So we do things a little bit differently, I don’t tend to niche people down in terms of location as much, obviously, like you, you’ll have your areas that you serve, and like that’s where we want to push your stuff out, too. But we need people down in terms of demographic, up cisors downsizers, first time buyers investors, you know, corporate women, depending on how big your market is we can niche down like someone who New York can niche down a lot further than someone in you know, I don’t know some small rural Alaska. Right, right. So so it’s just it really depends on the size of your market. But the reason why we do it this way, geo farming and location stuff has been around forever. And the reason in my opinion, it was so popular for so long, was because it was the only way to be consistent and frequent in front of the people that you were trying to nurture, right, you were cold calling you were door knocking you were flyering or you were like actually mail dropping yourself. And so a lot of the time, that was the only way to get yourself in front of those people at enough of a frequency that they would remember who you were. So you know what we do now that we have the internet and we can retarget and we can get we can push this content in front of the people who are actually raising their hand and are interested. What we want to do instead or what we tend to do is niche people down in terms of demographics so that the content It can be so specific in terms of those people’s pains, problems, fears and desires. Right? It’s because the person who is upsizing because they’re, they’re having their first child. They can be living in the same area or neighborhood as someone who’s just about to downsize, but their pains and you know, the things that they’re going through and their desires are so different. Oh,
D.J. Paris 35:20
boy, that’s, that’s such an important distinction. I’m so glad you said that. So really, what we’re talking about are creating content around life events, or you said, you know, demographic versus geographics. And demographics could include geography, but but we’re talking about, Hey, where’s somebody at in their life? What what do they value? What do what are their fears? What are they? What do they what are their goals? How do I create customized content that can scale? But that specifically, like I don’t want to send, hey, let’s talk retirement to people in their 20s and 30s. But for people who are, you know, now nearing the end of their careers, and maybe their 60s, that content would look very different to those individuals than it would be to younger people?
Jess Lenouvel 36:04
Absolutely. And I think that you’re able to get so much more specific and create so much more relevant content, when you are speaking to people who have who have common common goals, common themes in their lives. And they’re, you know, and this is just kind of basic sales that I think all of us fundamentally know is that you know, sales is just current situation desired situation, right, your current situation isn’t serving you, you move, moving isn’t fun, nobody likes to move. But we do it because we have this desired situation that we truly believe is going to make our lives better. And so understanding that current situation, what that looks like, and what the desired situation looks like, and being able to position yourself your services, everything that you do as essentially the bridge between the two.
D.J. Paris 36:55
Wow, will tell us about the listings lab. So we’ve talked a little bit about sort of, you know, the overall philosophy about how you teach people how to, you know, be more effective online to scale, to get more clients how and to serve those specific clients based on where they’re at and how to automate that. Tell us a little bit about you know, exactly what that looks like, at the at the listings lab.
Jess Lenouvel 37:18
Yeah, so, we, this is basically the program that I wish that I’d had, like 15 years ago, it would have saved me a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of stress. But really, at the end of the day, it’s it’s the, it’s everything from, you know, mindset, we always start with mindset, we call it the Seven Deadly Sins of the listings lab, it’s the things that really get people stuck. It’s the perfectionism and the self sabotaging behaviors and things like that, that keep people from really being able to use what we’re going to teach them in the program to create everything at the scale that they want. And a lot of what we teach in the listings lab is about authenticity. And really showing up as yourself, taking off that realtor hat, putting yourself in the shoes of the people that you want to attract understanding them deeply and giving them what they need. It’s not about you, it’s about them. And so we kind of start everything off with messaging, right, the nine point messaging sequence that we teach that I talked about earlier, market research, understanding, like what exactly these people need to hear, because it’s, you know, what someone in Washington DC needs to hear is very different than someone in Gainesville, Florida, right. So we want to make sure that the messaging is very specifically customized to you to your market to the demographic that you’re wanting to work with. So once we go through that, then we actually build out each individual agent has their own signature system or their own unique methodology, right. And so it gets named and branded and marketed alongside each each agent, right, just like I have the listing slab method, my name is Jess, I don’t have to Jess method, right, I have the listing slide method that essentially teaches people what to do or how to go how the basic framework of like what we do together and why our clients get the results that they get. So basically, what happens is, you end up with this piece of authority, that can that turns into your listing presentation, it turns into your some of your content, some of your authority content, it turns into this thing that gives you so much more power and authority, including, you know, when you go out and try to get some PR, and the media is asking you about things and we teach that in the program as well, but of how to attract media and PR attention, but it’s not just oh, here’s Joe Smith, and he’s this great agent in Chicago. It’s here’s Joe Smith and this is his you know, upsizing methodology. And this is what he does, and it just gives so much more power and power and authority behind it. So we go through that and then we go through content creation and the nine the nine different types of content that we teach, and we go through everything from you know what to say how it should be spaced. So you know what your video should look like, you know, we don’t teach a lot of really polished anything, especially for social media, just because it does, it really doesn’t perform as well. So like the more raw and organic and authentic it feels, the better it seems to do. So we go through all of that. And then we go through assets. So you know, your, your guides, your listing, presentations, your all of that stuff. And then we get into the ad stuff, which is going to be writing and creating lead generation ads omnipresent setup and retargeting. How to set up your ad account effectively, Facebook groups and how to grow and engage in profitable Facebook group. We go through on the President’s retargeting setup pixels, all that good stuff. So basically, what we’re doing is we’re teaching everyone the organic marketing side and the paid traffic side, because I truly believe that if you, you’re gonna have a really powerful brand online, you need to have both really dialed in, and then just, you know, maintenance of campaigns and how to track everything over time how to make adjustments. And yeah, that’s sort of like it’s everything from start to finish.
D.J. Paris 41:04
And if I heard you correctly, and I may have this wrong, so I want you to correct me, if I if it once it’s set up enough, obviously you’re making adjustments along the way, and you’re wanting to probably create new content when it when it’s needed. But it’s really what you said, do you say one hour a week or a couple of hours a week? Yeah,
Jess Lenouvel 41:21
yeah. I mean, even with me, like I have, I have a relatively large a big audience I have, you know, my Facebook group, I have Instagram, we’re building out in some other areas as well. And, I mean, I probably spend an hour a week. And I’m creating content for, you know, a lot of people answering a lot of questions with a lot of engagement. And, and it doesn’t take me longer than that. Because I know exactly, you know, what needs what kind of content type needs to be created at that point. And I have like a bank of content of things that like, I have lists and lists and lists of content of content ideas. And so I can sit down and I can look at this list and say, Yeah, I feel like doing this one today. Or I have something to say about this. Or, you know, I did a livestream the other day on clubhouse, just about like how agents are using it incorrectly, and what like how to actually use it in the most profitable way for your business. And I did a live stream on that it was 15 minutes. And it was true, like absolutely value packed in 15 minutes. It doesn’t have to be hours and hours and hours of content, but it takes practice, you know, you’re not going to write your first three pieces of content in three minutes.
D.J. Paris 42:35
You know, okay, so if I’m just thinking as, as a one of our listeners here, and I would think, Boy, if I was wanting to build a team, this is a really important machine that you want to get built and set up so that you can attract other realtors and entice them by saying, hey, the hardest part of this business, of course, is is client acquisition, lead generation, I am going to take care of some of that for you because you’re going to invest in listings lab. And and boy if I was one, and teams are everything right now, right? That’s all we hear about our teams. That’s all you’re hearing about from and boy if I wanted to. I mean, we know that brokerages really aren’t handing out leads, most aren’t. And that’s really probably not their job anyway. And teams really, it’s not necessarily their job, but boy, it makes it a whole heck of a lot more attractive, if you’re able to say oh, by the way, so and so if you join my team, let me show you what I’m doing and how I’m attracting clients and how I can introduce you to more people so that you can go out and close the business. You know,
Jess Lenouvel 43:39
the other thing that and I should have mentioned this earlier with the signature system, or the expert methodology that each agent has, a lot of the time what happens is in Agent Marketing agents tend to position themselves as magic. And so if you’re a magic and you’re like the real estate wizard, then no one else can do what you do. And so it makes it really hard. And I think so many agents can resonate with this to actually pass those leads off to other people on your team. Everyone’s calling in saying I only wanted to work with you like I don’t want to work with Sally. Yeah. And so a lot of what we do, what the methodology is positioning the methodology as the as the reason for the results, it’s the proven system to get you where you want to go. And then everyone else on your team can be trained and can be an expert at implementing that process. What it does two things makes the handoff of the lead much easier. And it allows you to build this really solid set of standard standard operating procedures. So that you know that every single client who goes through your team, your organization, your company, whatever you want to call it is getting a standardized high level of service.
D.J. Paris 44:44
Yeah, that boy that just makes makes such perfect sense. And I’m gonna I’m going to make I’m going to do a self serving. I have a question for you. That is 100% our audience you can you can tune out for the next minute if this bores you, but is to be but I think You should listen because I think we’re talking about the same thing. So so what I do professionally is I recruit realtors. So one of the guys on my team, I wish it was my idea, but it’s David Bowie, and I have to give him credit. Earlier today. He said, Hey, I have an idea he goes over the last year with the pandemic. realtors have obviously not gone into offices very often, and probably not at all. They’ve been able to still run their business from home, probably to even their own surprise, more than they knew they could before. You know, most agents work remotely anyway. But now they know they absolutely they don’t even have to meet people. And they can do virtual showings, they can do virtual listing appointments, etc. So a lot of this stuff is now become as you want it to be sort of independent geographically. Now agents can a lot of times somewhat be independent, but at least they can be sitting at home, if not across somewhere else in the country. And he said to me this morning, this such apropos timing, here are such apt timing, he said, you know, we should be we should be creating content on social media talking about hey, have you noticed that you’re spending a lot more time at home running your business? And in our firm we have we have a different sort of commission structure we give back almost all the Commission’s so we’re kind of a high commission, low fee company, but but we have a cup. We have physical offices, no one uses them, but we have them and so he said we should be creating content about hey, have you noticed that you’re sitting at home a lot more and probably relying a little bit less upon your firm for some of those tangibles, like you know, you know, printed marketing material, physical office space, and so I was curious to get your thoughts on. And of course, anyone who’s listening can duplicate this as well, if you’re looking to attract other agents, or even recruit more people to your team, or your company seems like that kind of content for realtors would be very effective as well.
Jess Lenouvel 46:43
100% I follow exactly the same system myself as I teach it, you’re attracting Realtors isn’t the only my only audience and the only people that I attract is our Realtors. And I use exactly the same methodology to do what I do as I teach to other agents. Now, the nuts and bolts of what I do is a little different, because real estate’s a little bit of a different animal. But we have people who go through the program to recruit for their downlines for exp we have a we’ve got brokerage owners in the program, who they build out for their own business for their own production, but then they also build out a second funnel to attract agents. Sure, it 100% works both ways.
D.J. Paris 47:22
Well, I am sold I am I am definitely going to get to check it out. I want everyone else to go to the listings lab listings is plural. So the listings lab.com and learn more about about Jess and her methodology. And you know, take a look to see if it if it’s something that you feel this is the year you know, we’re now I was saying this earlier the other day, this is the year also if you’re like an introvert what a perfect reason to start to get involved, right this is this is the year of the introvert we’re in last year as well, you if you’re an introvert, you’re like, gosh, you know, I’m a real estate agent. But I don’t like getting out there as much as apps my energy, well, gosh, you don’t have to get out there as much as you used to. And learning tools like this will really help do the hardest part, especially for introverts, which is you know, going out and finding clients, not everyone has to be, you know, sort of a one to one in the face in your face sort of personality to be successful in this business. And having systems like the listings lab is seems like an amazing idea. So everyone listening, go to the doc now if you’re driving, but when pull over and go to the listings lab.com and learn more. And you know, I’m a marketer, that’s all I do as well. And I 100% endorse Jessica company, because I know that they have incredible results. And she is not somebody there’s so many social media experts, social marketing experts, search engine optimization experts, and it’s not always clear who’s actually an expert. She was an agent, she was a top producer sold her company and now is continuing to help agents do what she did in the past. So, you know, she walks the talk, and we’re huge fans. So everyone go listings lab.com Just thank you so much for being on our show. It was such a pleasure. My pleasure. I am going to become a client as well, because I want you to help me with my real estate agent recruiting. So I’m gonna do that. Anyway, for everyone listening, I want you to help not only go visit the listings lab.com But tell a friend about this episode. Think of one other real estate professional that could benefit from hearing from just about taking someone’s social media presence and online advertising to the next level to scale to get more clients in 2021 and send them a link to this episode. The easiest way to do that, just think of a friend and send them a link to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com They can stream the episode right there in their browser or have them pull up a podcast app on their phone and look for keeping it real. And that would help us continue to serve more and more of our agents and listeners. So Thanks, Jeff. Thank you so much, and we will see everyone on the next episode. Thanks, Jess. Thank you
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