Josh Anderson with the Anderson Group talks about his transition from the Army into real estate business. Josh discussed the importance of the power of networking and making new contacts. Next, Josh shares some tips for agents to use as their strategy in knowing their clients better and providing better value. Lastly Josh emphasized the importance of standards and procedures for an agent needs to follow.
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Josh Anderson can be reached here.
This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks and Modwell.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
If everyone in your sphere of influence got 36 touches from you over a 12 month period, what would that do to your production? We’re going to talk about it today. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads into interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? We’ll find out why agents across the country come to real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering clients a real estate sales and marketing solution to generate more business and real geeks is super easy to use. Their websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for the end user. Real geeks is also mobile friendly delivering an excellent user experience on the go. Real geeks includes an easy to use CRM. So once your leads sign up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up triggers. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase your brand awareness. Do yourself a favor and please visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. This episode is also brought to you from manuel.io who can take your listings and quickly virtually renovate them to show prospective buyers what’s possible, making your sales much faster. And for higher price points. Guys, this is awesome stuff and I’ll be telling you more about Manuel halfway through the episode. But for now, go visit manuel.io That’s mo d w e. l l.io. And now on to the show.
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 this show. And in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with top producer Josh Anderson of Nashville. Before we get to Josh, just two quick reminders. Please tell a friend about this show. Think of one of the realtor that’s struggling right now and send them a link and send him over to our website keeping it real pod.com Or just have them pull up any podcast app search for keeping it real, hit that subscribe button and also please follow us on Instagram. We’re actually on all the social channels but we’re trying to grow our Instagram channel because we post really great content there a couple several times a week we post short form videos How do you find us top agent interviews so go to Instagram search for top agent interviews or that’s our handle and hit the Follow button. We appreciate it Okay, let’s get to the main event my conversation with Josh Anderson.
Today on the show our guest is Josh Anderson with the Anderson group Real Estate Services in Nashville, Tennessee. Let me tell you more about Josh. Now Josh Anderson is a highly motivated individual who is passionate about Nashville real estate and dedicated to serving his clients and community. Josh was born and raised in Nashville. He graduated from Louisiana State University graduated from Louisiana State with a degree in international trade and finance. He served in the US Army for eight years including a 10 month deployment in Bagram Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. These experiences along with his education have instilled in him a strong work ethic, discipline, and a desire to give back. With over 17 years of experience in the real estate industry. Josh has helped more than 2000 families achieve their homeownership dreams. He has also built a successful team that consistently ranks among the top five real estate teams in the southwest region. Now Josh’s unwavering commitment to client satisfaction is reflected in the fact that nearly 75% of his business comes from past clients, his sphere of influence and Agent referrals. Please follow Josh on Instagram and Facebook. There’s two places you can follow him on on social which is at sorry, tag Nashville. So that’s one of his accounts tag Nashville. The other is the real Josh Anderson. And by the way, we are going to have links to both of those in the show notes so you don’t have to even search around will tag right to it. Also visit his website at Josh Anderson realestate.com. And let’s all welcome Josh and thank him for his service to our country as well. Josh Welcome to the show.
Josh Anderson 5:00
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. I appreciate that.
D.J. Paris 5:03
Well, thank you for coming on our show. The hardest part of interviewing top 1% producers is finding time to do it. So we appreciate you and the fact that you’re not just, you know, running your own business, you have a whole team to to help as well. And we appreciate your time today. So thank you. I’m excited to chat with you, and would love to learn how you got into real estate. So you were a military guy. And then were you doing real estate while in the military? I actually recently interviewed someone who was, but I’m curious to hear your story.
Josh Anderson 5:36
Now, actually, actually, well, I’ll tell you, though, the after high school, I was smart enough to know that I probably didn’t need to go from high school to college. So I went into the military and did that. And then went to LSU. And I was actually in my junior year of college, when I got a phone call walking into my last final of the semester, that I was going to be going to Afghanistan for a year. And they actually didn’t know how long we’re gonna go. They told us three months, six months, it ended up being about 1110 and a half, 11 months, my goodness. And so it was, you know, it was like within eight months of 911. So it was back in 2002. And, anyway, so I got into real estate in April of 2006. It’s funny, it was actually April 1, so April Fool’s Day. And, you know, I graduated in finance and economics and worked at an investment bank. And I think I created a idea or a story in my head of what that was going to be. And it just, it wouldn’t fill in the buckets, I wouldn’t be mentored, I wouldn’t be challenged. And so I was getting my real estate license in the meantime, just because I’ve, I’ve always loved real estate architecture. And so I ended up, I ended up doing that. And within the first three months, I sold my first house. So I think I sold 23 or 24 houses my first year in the business.
D.J. Paris 6:59
That’s incredible. That’s an incredible amount of homes. I’m curious, because at again, I know, a lot of times people listen, and they’re like, well, it was different back in, you know, the early 2000s. Or I’m not sure it was so different. I know, client acquisition. I don’t think it’s gotten easier over the years. If you’re a brand new agent. So curious on how did you get that many deals done in your first year? I mean, that is truly a huge, huge as you know, a huge number.
Josh Anderson 7:25
Yeah, so I guess I did, I did those 23 transactions really in about eight and a half or nine months. You know, I think I kind of approached it with I approached it with the idea that it was really kind of guerilla marketing. So I was I was out networking constantly, I was having breakfast with people lunches with people, I was doing nonprofit and volunteering activities. I joined the Junior Chamber and the Young Leaders Council and all these different things. Because I was trying to add as many people to my database as possible, and I was shaking as many hands as possible. And you know, when you’re new, I always jokingly tell people, I, I knew that people weren’t going to necessarily just do business with me. So there were a lot of people I was like, hey, you know, when somebody has a property to buy or sell, who do you refer? And they were like, oh, so and so? And I said, Well, can I be your second place realtor? And no money asked love that. Yeah, so nobody asks that question. Right. So you know, how often somebody said no, like 0% of the time, of course and so I was always the second place realtor for so many people and it just requires the first place realtor did not answer their phone or not be available for you to become the first place realtor. And I one of my, one of my best sources. Now I was just gonna say my, one of my best referral sources is he told me he would never do business with me because he had his he had his team. He had his guy. Yeah. And that guy didn’t do whatever he needed, and then the referral source and the agent ever since.
D.J. Paris 9:01
So I’ve done about 500 episodes, you’re the first person to give that particular tip. And I think it’s one of the very best tips I’ve ever heard because, well, not only do I like it, but I have a little bit of a personal experience with that particular idea. My father is a paper salesman and he’s been doing it forever 40 years, and he’s like the least salesy person you’ll ever meet. He’s just a wonderfully nice human being. And because he’s not very salesy. I always was curious, like, how did how did you, you know, win these clients over who were already with other paper salesman, you know, they all basically have this access to the similar products and pricing. He goes, I just always told them like, hey, if your current person like screws up, I’d love the opportunity to help you out. And he goes, I just would wait and I’d wait for that and it it built a very nice career for him and obviously, for you as well. So I love that tip. So for everyone out there listening, let’s make sure we have that ret holstered and ready to pull out when somebody goes oh, you know, I already have a real Sir, but thanks be like, hey, that’s great. If anything ever changes or if you’re ever dissatisfied, you know, with with anyone service, I would love to have the opportunity to win earn your business. That is, that is a wonderfully wonderful suggestion. Thank you for that our audience needs you. So I’m sorry, I so so you. So I also want to make one other point, you actually said something else that was it. This is not something that that is this is commonly said, but it’s something that’s so important. I’m glad you said it, which is he didn’t assume that everyone in his current database was going to use him. Right. And you know, he’s a new realtor at this point. Maybe there’s a lot of his friends that are like, yeah, maybe I’ll wait a few years before I’ll give Josh, you know, my $700,000 home to sell or whatever. I mean, that’s not an unreasonable thought, really. And I’m not saying you thought that but but it could have been one at some people in your database has thought. So the idea of like, gosh, my friends aren’t really calling me. Right away? Well, yeah, I mean, I don’t know that I would call my best friend who just got their license. But But what he did is he said, I need to add people to my database. So he went out, he did lunches, he did breakfasts, he did a volunteering, all of those things, add people to your database. And that is really the name of the game when he gets started. So cheers to that. And obviously, it worked 23 transactions in your first year as in credible? And then how did you continue to grow from there?
Josh Anderson 11:20
Yeah, and so just just going on that on that first year piece, you know, I probably did 75 open houses. And I tell people all the time, I don’t think I did a, I don’t think I did a single transaction from an open house. But what I what I did get was really comfortable meeting somebody and having to figure out what you need to say in the first seven seconds of meeting somebody and not hovering over them, but being available being a resource. So yeah, I don’t think I actually closed any deals from open houses. But I got really comfortable in front of strangers. In a house that wasn’t mine, that I didn’t know a whole lot about. I mean, I, I could read the MLS sheet. And most of these weren’t, these weren’t my open houses, it is one of my listings for open houses, I was just doing activities to get in front of people. And so that those are things that get somebody goes, Well, I’m not going to do 75 open houses to get zero business. But then you look up three or five years later and go, my scripts are better than yours, my objection handlers are better than yours, because I’m out doing all these things. And so I’d say the best thing that I the best things that I did in 2006. And I would argue that 2006 was probably a not as good but similar market to maybe 2018 1920. And then 2000 789 and 10 are probably a little bit more like we’re in now where it’s like hard to tire and hard to hard to convert. You know, conversion is very different today than it was five years ago. But I got really comfortable and very good. Looking back on it. I didn’t realize how good of a job I did with the basics. And when I say the basics, you know, time blocking, I literally to this day, you don’t you don’t have like they’re all outbound phone calls from 830 to 1130. Every single day, five days a week. And
D.J. Paris 13:15
let me let me pause you on that because that you just said something that that again, a lot of people say and then when people hear that, they’re like, Well, okay, what happens when you get that emergency tax, that emergency phone call the email that from a client, I need to speak to you right now and you’re in a time block? Obviously, nothing is absolute, you probably would break that if you needed to, but but how? How important is it that you that you keep on track during those those outbound phone call times? And do you even allow messages to come in? Maybe you don’t? I’m curious to hear
Josh Anderson 13:48
so. So everybody on my team makes fun of me? Well, two things I would say one, everyone. Is it their 911? Or is it your 911? Right? Was it their emergency? I mean, everybody else thinks everything is so important to them. But is it? Is it a priority for you? And so, for me, there’s nothing in real estate and 17 years that couldn’t wait two or three hours, there’s literally nothing, not one single thing. Even if there’s an issue at closing, like my, my administrative team can take care of that they can figure it out. And so that’s how serious I got about lead generation and lead follow up. And people always talk about lead generation but really lead follow up really worth it.
D.J. Paris 14:33
Before we get before we get to lead follow up. I did want one more question I meant to ask a few minutes ago and I forgot. But being that you are a military man and military is about process, precision, discipline, obviously hard work. Going above and beyond. I’m curious if there were any lessons I’m sure there were but anything that that that you learned in the military that you were able to take with you back into your real estate practice that really you think helped push you maybe where somebody who might not have had those experiences might not have those skills?
Josh Anderson 15:10
Yeah, I mean, I think there’s certainly there, there are standards and procedures for everything. And there’s also hurry up and wait, which happens a little bit in real estate. And that’s maybe why I’m so good at follow up is, you know, it’s like, when I think about follow up, I will follow up. Somebody told me early on in the business, it’s like, you follow up with somebody until they buy or die. And I like kind of probably took that a little bit to heart too much. But I really do. I mean, there, there was somebody we listed a property for two years ago that literally was in our database since 2009. And he never responded to any text messages any voicemails, called me one day while I’m in West Palm Beach at the Four Seasons. And he’s like, Hey, this is Sean. And I’m like, Hey,
D.J. Paris 15:57
like, trying to figure out who Sean is.
Josh Anderson 16:00
Yeah. And I’m like, he’s like, over on Fairfax. And I was like, Holy crap, this guy’s finally calling me This is unbelievable. Because I literally had lifting, you know, probably four to six or eight messages via text, email or phone call. He was on a market report, or a Market Snapshot. Then when we had top producer, there was like, unbelievable that he was responding to me. Of course, I was on vacation, right. But we ended up listing his property and selling it and it was like, Well, was it worth it? You know, it was a smaller condo near Vanderbilt University $300,000 $9,000 for I don’t know. 20 voicemails and text messages overtop? Yeah. Yeah. When?
D.J. Paris 16:44
When sake nine grand for 20 different text messages. Sure. Yeah.
Josh Anderson 16:49
But I but I win so much, because of the simple fact that I’m willing to follow up with people forever. I’m not doing anything massively different than most other people, except the consistency of doing it over time.
D.J. Paris 17:06
Isn’t it nice to that you have these very strict processes, it really helps take the emotion out of it as well, right. Like, I know, for me, I never went to the gym for people probably sick of hearing me tell the story. So I apologize if everyone listening is like, Oh, we’ve heard this. But the only reason I now go to the gym is because I have a trainer and I have a set appointment three times a week. And I just that just works for me. I know I’m going to show up if I have an obligation to someone else. And so I am I you know, one nice thing about having the standard operating procedures, these processes you created is you don’t really have to think like if you know, every day between 830 and 1130, you’re making your outbound calls, there’s not an option not to do it really right. It’s just like this is just what I do during this time, it becomes less of a challenge to talk yourself into it because it just becomes a habit.
Josh Anderson 17:56
Yeah. And it’s easy, I don’t have to like, really, from a time blocking person, I know exactly what I’m doing every day from 830 to 1130. And it’s boring. What I like about it is super predictable. And I know that if I make a certain amount of contacts, I’m going to certain I’m going to set a certain amount of listing appointments, or work with a certain amount of buyers, whatever it is, it’s almost guaranteed. If I make 20 contacts a day, I’m going to do a certain amount of deals every year, every month, every quarter. Well,
D.J. Paris 18:32
before we dive into your follow up process, which I’m super excited to hear about. I also just wanted to make make an observation that our audience has already made about you, which is or if they haven’t thought about this consciously, I’m gonna put this in everyone’s mind. Notice Josh’s tonality, notice how his his his way of speaking his inflection. Notice if it’s a calming presence, or if it’s a an alerting presence, where it’s, you know, some people they speak and you get this like fight or flight response, like oh my gosh, it’s it’s a little too intense. Notice how Josh comes off. Imagine meeting Josh in an open house. He said 75 of them is first year. Imagine that would would would you if you were walking into a home where you didn’t know the realtor or any you know brand new person. Would you rather have somebody like Josh now that not everyone’s wired the same, of course. But Josh’s voice is incredibly calming and relaxing. And people everyone listening you can learn how to manipulate your tonality in a way that’s authentic and puts people at ease. Josh is clearly somebody and maybe it’s a southern accent kind of thing that he’s got from Nashville. He’s a born he’s a born and raised guy there. But boy is is that not a calming? I mean, imagine that versus like a different type of accent from somewhere else that maybe isn’t as calming. So I just wanted to make that point that you have a very relaxing and easy to listen to voice. Way better than mine for sure. But um, let’s talk about the follow up process because this is really, really like been the key to your success. So walk us through it.
Josh Anderson 19:58
Yeah, before I get through that, that’s also neuro linguistic programming classes and all the all the all the conferences and all the things that I’ve done. Maybe a little bit of southern southern charm, and I don’t know. Thank you for that. So So today we’re talking a little bit about, like, what our what our 36 Touch program is. And, you know, it’s not just one piece of our marketing, it’s kind of encompasses all things marketing, which is such, it touches so many different pieces of our business down to the phone calls and the text messages, you know, the client events, the giveaways, the agent reviews, or the Google reviews, the agent referrals. So I’ll break some of that down. But really, all of it starts with kind of, you know, once a year, we do kind of the 12 week year in the traction book, and meet from a quarterly perspective. But once a year, we get together for our focus day, and it’s our one day all tonight, and we really work on. And there’s more data than just that one for follow up. But it’s knowing what our numbers are. And it’s putting an entire calendar together of literally month by month, quarter by quarter of all of our marketing, client events, giveaways, all of our social media, all of our reels all of our YouTube videos. So if you’re if you’re wanting to put together a really good 36 Touch, start with the idea of calendaring it, that doesn’t, that can be overwhelming if you’re trying to just be like, Alright, we’re going to do this all at one time. This has been a process over the years that we’ve taken client events off that didn’t get the ROI, or didn’t have as many people show up. And some of our easiest and best events and least expensive events have been our best turnout and some of our fixed cost ones that cost $10,000. And we’re like, oh 36 people showed up that sucks. And then other events where, you know, we’ve had 400 people show up. So it’s one of those deals that start with a calendar and and decide what’s important to you from a from a marketing perspective. So we know that we’re going to like to all of our past clients, they’re going to get a birthday call and an anniversary call, and a home anniversary call. And then they’re going to get you know, 12 postcards a year and 12 newsletters. So I mean, these are all relatively basic things. If they own a home, obviously, if their client, they own a home, we put them on a market report. So they get that, you know, either every two weeks or every four weeks. But breaking all that down is overwhelming, until you start breaking it down into pieces of your business. So our phone calls, you know, we realized, for me, maybe I’m a little bit robotic phone calls are easy for me, because when I looked at it, I said, Okay, what’s the best way for me to get in front of the most amount of people, it was either big networking events, or like niche events, but I knew a bunch of people were going to be there where I can shake hands with a lot of people, but then follow up with all of them afterward to get coffee or lunch or whatever it is. But I said, you know, I can’t do the Northwestern Mutual where I go and have coffee like eight times a day or whatever their appointment setting is, I’d love to do that. That’s the best quality probably for me. But to get 20 contacts a day, which was my goal, back in the day, was 20 contacts a day, I needed to be on the phones. So I needed a time block that three hours of outbound phone calls every day. And it still works, I still do it. And then I’m just a little bit more. I make decisions on what networking events that I do. But, but just breaking down some of these different things. So where I was going with that is the phone calls. Were hard for team members. And so we started doing client events to make the phone calls easier, because then they could just invite their clients to the events. And then they could say, well, while I have you how’s the house? Is there anything you need? Do you need our
Unknown Speaker 24:00
I love that. That’s smart. Yeah.
Josh Anderson 24:02
So it made it simple for them. And then, you know, if people aren’t doing Google used, not everybody wants to do them. But we have 804 805 Google five star Google reviews. Online, we’ve probably had 900 to 1000. Some of them get taken away occasionally, whatever Google’s algorithm is, but 804 five star reviews. We we can track every year since 2018. We’ve done at least 30 transactions a year that we can track from Google Reviews. Our average price point $650,000. So 30 deals you do the math, it’s it’s worth the time we’ve put in to do $20 million a year in volume just from that one source.
D.J. Paris 24:47
Just quick, quick, quick pause question for you around phone calls because a lot of people have phone dialing reluctance or that’s called the there’s a cute term for it, but but the unwillingness to want Pick up the phone. And obviously, the younger generation doesn’t talk on the phone at all anymore. Very, very much if at all. And so a lot of times people, especially younger people, like I didn’t grow up jumping on the phone that much. So this is this is really a challenge for me. My question is what, today what percentage of the time when you call do you get a voicemail?
Josh Anderson 25:21
Yeah, it’s probably at least 50%. It might be 60 or 70%. I don’t think it’s 75. But we leave voicemails and I know, and one thing I’ll say, before I talk about these voicemails is it’s not call reluctance. It’s value deficiency. It just truly is. You’re right. And so people can, people can say what they want, but you’re not call reluctance, you’re just value deficient,
D.J. Paris 25:47
you don’t have a good reason to call them. So you’re like, I don’t want to have a good reason.
Josh Anderson 25:51
Right? Yeah. So you don’t know what to say to them. You don’t know how to like, one of the biggest things that we talk about our trainers on our team is What does value mean to different people? Because for you value might be something completely different than what I value in a financial advisor or CPA or a doctor or a realtor. And so it’s called it’s, it’s, it’s value deficiency, because you really don’t know how to add value. It’s not that you’re not willing to, it’s just that you don’t know what the hell to say to them, or how to add value. As far as the voicemails, I tell my team always leave voicemails no matter what, because if you don’t leave a voicemail, they definitely don’t know that you call him. Right. I mean, for friends, they see that you call and they might call you back, but we’re talking about internet leads, sign calls, whatever, I always leave a voicemail, because they might check it. And they might call me back. But if I don’t leave one, they’re definitely not calling me up.
D.J. Paris 26:50
Yeah, I think you made a really strong point about call reluctance, this idea of, you know, Oh, am I making a sales call? Or am I actually calling with some specific value that I’m going to be bringing to the person who’s going to be picking up the phone. And if you do have that value really does, I hadn’t ever thought of it that way. But you’re so right, it, it pretty much eliminates the call reluctance, because you’re actually like, No, I’m gonna, I’m doing a good thing by calling for the person not not just selfishly, for me trying to keep my contacts satisfied, I’m actually doing something for them. And it makes those phone calls a heck of a lot easier.
Josh Anderson 27:25
I think you have to flip the mindset and come from contribution and go, you know, I always think of it like this, if I don’t call these people, they have to work with an inferior agent. And I don’t want them to work with an inferior agent. And I know, that’s like, maybe, you know, kind of ego driven, but it’s not, it’s more like there are a lot of good agents out there. And there’s a lot more bad agents, just like CPAs, and doctors and financial advisors, there’s good and bad and all these industries. And I know what I can provide my clients, and I know what value we add. And I know that a lot of other agents don’t add any value, and they just want to get a commission, and they’re never going to follow up ever again. And where the majority of our business comes from as long term follow up, and inviting them to our client events, and trying to educate them on how to be better business owners by doing trainings on a monthly or quarterly basis for one particular class, and then we do a wealth building class every month. And that’s not even real estate wealth building. It’s, it’s, I mean, that is certainly a large piece of it, but it’s more like, we all want to believe that we’re always going to make more money. But that’s just not the case, not for it, you’re not forever going to make more money every year forever. So how can we get better at not paying taxes? And can we invest in real estate or do flips or short term rentals? Or can we put our kids on payroll, things like that? So we’re educating our clients on that stuff?
D.J. Paris 28:57
Yeah, it’s it’s brilliant, actually. So we’re talking about value. So when he was when Josh was mentioning client, client appreciation events, you know, I’m immediately thinking and probably our audience is thinking Party Party Party. And yes, you know, I’m sure you have those obviously, you do have those as well. But this idea of continually adding value that isn’t just so you want to you want to buy your first home, well, let’s let’s get you into a seminar, which is fine too. But having this like, Hey, I don’t just sell homes. I also want to talk to you about wealth preservation, wealth building, maybe you bring in a financial advisor to talk about investments, you know, outside of real estate as well. There’s an accountant maybe like you were saying to talk about opportunities to you know, maybe you started S corp or an LLC to you know, to get some pass through income and things like that. So that is an absolutely brilliant strategy. It’s not one that I see a lot of realtors doing it at almost everything I see that Realtors do as far as events are usually around buying or selling real estate and again you said part of yours is about you know hey there’s passive income you can earn with through investments, real estate invest Yeah, but this idea of continually adding value, I think is like I would go to that seminar.
Josh Anderson 30:06
Yeah. And it’s even things as basic as like, Why do you have your money in a bank account, earning zero when you could have it in a money market account making four and a half percent right now? Yeah. And maybe your bank offers that. And that’s great. But you have to go ask them to do it, they’re not going to automatically give you a 4% if they can give you point, point 1%. And so we’re, we’re going through all these, like, one of my classes is 25, wealth building ideas. And it’s just ideas, it’s putting your kids it’s maxing out your HSA accounts. And it’s so it’s a lot of it is real estate, but a lot of it is not real estate, it’s doing a cost segregation on your investment property. I mean, my parents are in multiple commercial properties, they don’t even know what Cost Segregation is. And so and they’re intelligent people, they just have, they don’t know what it is. Yeah. And so, you know, it’s, it’s trying to figure out that value might not mean any like that class, for a lot of people, they’re just like, whatever. But for the ones that care and do want to save money on taxes, and do want to build wealth, it’s invaluable. And so that’s what we’re trying to do is constantly, and we do have the dinner party client events, the VIP events, we have things that are, you know, one of our best cloud events we’ve ever done is pictures in the park, it literally cost us a couple $100. And everybody forgets in September in October, that they’re going to need holiday pictures further or further pictures for their holiday card. And we have massive turnout in the fixed cost is literally like, if we have 100 people there, and it’s only $200 for the photographer to come out. Like it’s like a couple of dollars a person, it’s crazy, it’s amazing. And it’s something that I have to spend, you don’t have to spend 1000s of dollars you can do, you can add on to other events that are already like sponsored, I mean, there’s so many, you just gotta get creative.
D.J. Paris 31:59
And a lot of times too, with with photography, you know, family photos, in particulars, a lot of that gets framed a lot of it gets hung up on walls or put on on dressers or, you know, the set out for people to see. And, you know, that’s it also a memory that would trigger Oh, that was a Josh thing like, oh, yeah, I remember we went to that thing that just brought us to, that is a nice reminder, visual reminder of, you know, what you do without saying, hey, I want to put a you know, account a calendar for, you know, the local sports team on your on your on your fridge, and some people like that some people don’t. But everyone likes a family photo. And it doesn’t also have your name plastered on it. But inherently, your name is all over it, because you were the guy that facilitated that. So and yeah, the ROI on that is incredible.
Josh Anderson 32:44
Yeah. And so there’s just little things like, you know, this isn’t really part of the marketing, but it plays into the marketing, like when we meet with clients, buyer clients. Especially, they come into our office, and we do you know, a consultation with them. And we do a VIP intake form. So we want to know, their names, their birthdays, their anniversary, their kids names, do they have dogs? Do they have animals? What is their dream trip? What’s their bucket list? What what is their occupation? So we want to do an event or we want to market to all of our probate attorneys in our in our database. That’s how we that’s how we do is we get this VI, P and
D.J. Paris 33:27
you Oh, I just got
Josh Anderson 33:30
Yeah, VIP intake form is talking about and intake. It just allows us to know what their favorite candy bars and all these things. I mean, just silly basic stuff. But you know, the thing that I’ve told people all the time is if you if you send a birthday card to their kids, or you know their dog’s name, and you send their dog a treat huge, you’re winning them for life. And so I think those are really important things that you can do really inexpensively. And I try to tell my team, we need to be like the Facebook’s and the Instagrams and the tiktoks. Like their data companies, yes, their social media, but they’re actually data companies. And that’s important to think about when we gather, we get all their other information. I mean, think about we get everybody I mean, between the title company, the mortgage company and the realtor, we get as much information as Facebook has actually probably more sensitive information. And so I think that’s really important for people to understand is we have we have the ability to really go above and beyond and create like a four seasons experience or like a Ritz Carlton type experience if we want to. There’s a lot of people that just want to do transactions instead of have relationships. But my my, my database is my database has really done a lot more for me than just income. I mean, you know, some of some of my best friends have come Out of being in, you know, the Junior Chamber or Young Leaders Council type, class. And then they become clients and they refer me for life, which is income. But it’s also, you know, my ultimate goal is to be able to hang out with all the people that are clients. And that doesn’t always work out. But, you know, when we have 2000 clients, we really don’t need any more clients, we just need to do a better job of following them on Instagram, checking in with them loving on our database, and ultimately, educating them about wealth building, so they buy more real estate, it doesn’t have to be a traditional deal. It’s what if, what if your top 25 clients bought one house a year from you? So January one, you know, those 25 people are going to buy 25 homes? And then what have you had 10 more people in your database that were automatically going to refer you three people a year. That’s another 30 deals. That’s the 55 transactions a year. Most people that are watching this podcast probably aren’t doing 55 deals a year.
D.J. Paris 36:03
No. And so So you’ve basically determined your database can support and sustain that with all of the information that you are collecting about them so that you have a reason to reach out, for example, and I just want to highlight one of the examples you gave actually highlight two of them, because they’re super easy to do. What is somebody’s wedding anniversary, which you mentioned, I mean, for everyone listening, if you are married, when’s the last time either either somebody outside of your closest friends who happens to know your wedding anniversary, which most of your close friends don’t even know that outside of your family? And maybe a few close friends when’s the last time somebody who shouldn’t even know your wedding anniversary picked up the phone and said, Hey, man, Happy wedding anniversary. Hope you and your partner have a great day today. Nobody does that. I mean, that’s a simple thing. Another another thing that Josh didn’t say, but I know he does. Well, he did say, but I have an idea of of one way to help automate this. If you know, obviously, you’re going to know where your clients work, right? Maybe if both people work, you’ll know where both of them work. But you could literally go into Google. Yeah, Popeyes a great idea. And think about Popeyes brilliant idea. Because you can meet other people at their employer at their place of employment too. But I was also thinking, put Google alerts for all of those businesses. And you’ll get those news stories when they come in, and a great reason to reach out. It’s like we have Boeing here in Chicago. So be like, Hey, I just saw Boeing close to an amazing, huge deal with the military just thought that that was really cool. I hope, I hope you know, whatever you you can just be you’re talking about Facebook, you’re a data company, Facebook knows, they know where you work, they know all of this info, and they’re going to serve you up information that they think is relevant to your interests. Josh is doing this individually. Brilliant.
Josh Anderson 37:43
Yeah. Yeah. And, and I’ve gotten away from this a little bit, but the pot buys. I was doing up until COVID. And I just haven’t gotten back into it. But it’s something I actually mentioned. In the last couple of weeks to my Director of Operations, I was like, I gotta start. Doesn’t have to be all the time. But for me, it was like, I’m gonna go have lunch with somebody on Friday. And then I want the rest of my Friday to be pot bus. So wherever I eat in town, I want to look at my database who, who’s in that zip code? And who who can I? Where do they work? And can I either stop by their house, and we’re literally talking five or 10 minutes. I’m not trying to like, hijack their afternoon. I just want to get some FaceTime of hey, how’s it going? I was in the area I just felt like stopping by. Done.
D.J. Paris 38:32
And that’s and again, Josh is so intentional. And so well thought out that you go okay, well, if I just show up at my clients, you know, place of employment, that might annoy them. It might be there. They’re in the middle of something. So Josh is like, Hey, I just was in the neighborhood. I was down the street, I thought I’d swing by and I knew I knew we were over. So I just wanted to say hi hope all as well. And nobody says that nobody is going to you know, have a bad impression of that.
Josh Anderson 38:55
I even tell people when they got leave voicemails, hey, I was just thinking about you. I was in your neighborhood for a final walkthrough yesterday. Just wanted to check in see how the houses Call me if you need anything. That’s most of the time. They don’t call me back, but they do get the voicemail or they read it transcription on their phone. And it’s good. So gosh, you know, this is just like, This doesn’t have to be rocket science in our business. It’s It’s relatively simple. It’s not always easy, but it’s relatively simple. I mean, we’re not we’re not performing neurosurgery or anything crazy. Like this is literally just contact sport relationships. And just seeing just just checking in on people. And really check. I mean, like, one of the things we did really good during COVID was we really checked in on people like, I know, you know, when you talk to somebody and you’re like, Hey, how’s it going, man? And they’re like, Oh, good. And it’s like, no, but really like, Yeah, are you doing good? Like, I know a lot of people are struggling right now. Is there anything we can do for you? Are you you know, Unlike we paid a couple of people’s mortgage payments through our nonprofit, during COVID, because they could work, or we would go to people’s, a couple of my clients that own restaurants, we’d go and just get big ass tips to people because we could. And it was, you know, we didn’t know 2020 was going to be one of our most amazing real estate years of all time, and 2021. And, and so we were fortunate enough that those people took care of us, when it might not have mattered as much. But now we can go take care of them. And instead of giving a 20% tip, we can give 150% Tip If we need to whatever it is, especially if it’s a small, like a lunch that’s $15 it’s like, well, what if we just leave them another $15? Right? I mean, that helps out? And if that’s a win for them, and whatever, like,
D.J. Paris 40:52
yeah, it’s it’s no, it’s brilliant. And at absolutely there, I think most, most of the best gestures that I’ve ever that’s someone has ever done for me, they’re almost always usually on the smaller, like, if you wrote it on a piece of paper wouldn’t seem like a big deal. But to me, it meant it meant the world. So sometimes it isn’t even about, you know, and giving somebody 100% tip or 150%, if that is significant, because even if it’s only 15 bucks to them, they’ve probably not gotten a lot of 100% tips or 150% tips, and it just shows that you care, it shows that you want to help and it doesn’t even matter how big the gesture is. So you’re absolutely right. But demonstrating care and compassion is always the win, I think.
Josh Anderson 41:35
Yep. Yeah. And so, I mean, this isn’t, you know, this is all stuff we’ve built on over the years. And it’s, it’s good, Ken. And look, we’re not at a 10 We’re not I mean, we’re never at a 10 I don’t believe in 10s. I, you know, are we doing it at an eight and a half or nine? Sure. I think so. But can we always talk graded and make it better and make it a either a better system and process? Or can we make it a better experience? And so yeah, that’s what we’re trying to do. I mean, we don’t need to send, we don’t need to sell 10,000 houses a year, we need to sell a couple 100 and make, you know, help a couple 100 families a year and really be able to help them. You know, we had a girl here yesterday for one of my trainings. And actually all the people at my training were they were all clients that came to class that I created called the acronyms boss, but it’s business owners sharing strategies. And they’re all either small business owners or in sales or an executive or something. And she bought her house six years ago from us, and we’ve stayed in touch with her. And they were they were all just kind of saying how they all get postcards and all these things. But our nonprofit paid for her house. After she moved in. She had structural issues. And we made it right. Cost, it cost me us the nonprofit 12 grand to fix it. But and I don’t think that her work. The commission that we got from our house was 12 grand to be completely honest. But it was the right thing to do and like they had married have kids, and we want people to live in a good house. This
D.J. Paris 43:09
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Josh Anderson 44:48
And I also Well, we were gonna sell it at some point.
D.J. Paris 44:51
Well that’s that’s true. And I would imagine and again, you’re not doing it for the you know, for the pat on the back or for the market. And, you know, collateral you get for that. But you certainly do get a lot of appreciation from the vast majority of people that you help to that degree. I mean, they’re going to, I would I would assume they’re going to tell everybody they know, well, it depends, you know, if they’re comfortable sharing that information, but they’re going to at least feel it themselves, you they are never going to work with another realtor, you are their client for life, or at least you probably are. And they’re likely going to tell a lot of people you know, not again, that’s not why you’re doing it, you’re doing it because as you said, it’s literally the right thing to do. And and you took action, and most people wouldn’t, and that that’s huge.
Josh Anderson 45:37
Yeah. Well, like you said, it’s the right thing to do. And we were in a position to do it with our nonprofit. And that’s why we created the nonprofits, so we can help either other nonprofits or people you know, every year, we kind of do a, our Anderson group day where we go out in the community and volunteer. And if we can, you know, one year, we helped a lady whose aunt, her sister and her mom died in the same year, and she acquired all their stuff, and she had leaks in her house. And we were fortunate enough to be able to spend $23,000, or whatever it was, and we spent the day in our yard, cleaning it up, because it was a mess. And it was awesome. It was a team building event. It was good culture. Yes, it was strategic, kind of PR strategic giving. But it was, it was awesome. It feels good to make enough money to go give it to people that actually need it. I’m not necessarily saying I’m handing out that kind of money to people on the corner. But if I can help my clients or friends of my clients, and they’re in a real true need, it feels awesome.
D.J. Paris 46:46
And what’s nice about it is it feels awesome, no matter what else is going on in your life. And of course, Josh has problems just like everyone else, Josh has struggles, he’s got his wins and his losses and his personal challenges and his business challenges. He is no different from the rest of us. But when you give you at least those some of those challenges and troubles personally, sort of take a backseat for a little bit where you’re able to revel in, hey, I got some problems in my own life that aren’t perfect, and I’m still helping someone else with maybe some of their issues. And that is a wonderful way to feel while we may be going through challenges ourselves.
Josh Anderson 47:23
Yeah. And so some of the other 36 touch that we do, I mean, we’re kind of doing the high level stuff. But, you know, one of the big things for us is, is also volunteering, you know, every month and every quarter, we do a certain amount of volunteering. And it is, again, it’s kind of a team building event, not everybody can make it every time. Sometimes we have clients that come in down, and they’ve got to bolt out and go show properties, and that’s fine. But we usually do some kind of whether it’s second harvest, or feeding the homeless or whatever it is, even, even if it’s just giving money to somebody that’s, you know, giving money is not the same as going out and actually doing it but, you know, buying coats for the homeless when it’s the middle of the winter or buying, you know, I’ll tell you one year what I did, which feels really good to be able to go to Walmart, and buy like two buggies worth of just toys and stuff for kids that aren’t going to get much for Christmas. Pretty awesome. Yeah, so you know, a good day, that’s never gonna do that for my kids. But, but I did invite them to to go with me. And I was like, what toys and they were just dumping stuff in it, but it feels pretty awesome to be able to do that. And look, there’s plenty of other things I could do with that money, trust me, but it again, it goes back to can you help out and give back because you were fortunate enough and it freakin feels great.
D.J. Paris 48:52
It, it does. And again, it’s it’s a guaranteed win for you, the individual how you feel about yourself. And if it you know ultimately results in better customer service or, or client satisfaction, obviously great too. But at the very least, it’s something that you get to lay your head on the pillow at night after you do these events and go like I did something good today, when maybe you know not everything else in life is going well. It’s a really nice way to just build it a little good feeling to how people feel. And I wanted to ask you one last thing and I know we’re coming in at the end. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t think about this, you have a very calming presence. And I suspect you learned some of that from being in the military where I know they teach you about managing your heart rate managing your your, your sympathetic nervous system so that you’re not in fight or flight because you’re not going to have access to all of your best resources when you’re stressed and anxious. So how important is that for you now in real estate to be able to handle client challenges or challenge in a transaction? Is that is that a critical part of you know, keeping everyone calm and collected while they’re going through these ups and downs? For sure.
Josh Anderson 50:01
Look, we do this every day. Most of our clients, if not all of our clients, other than a handful of investors don’t buy certainly don’t buy a house more than once a year. So that’s a small percentage. Yeah, the average person’s bought a house every seven to 10 years. And even with the first time homebuyers that think they’re only going to live there for three or four years, they inevitably almost always live in it for five or six or seven or eight. And yeah, so you do have to, I mean, we’ve seen everything, so nothing. It’s not that it’s not a big deal. It’s just that we know how to navigate it. And so sometimes we have to take a deep breath, or step away and come back to it. But we do have to just say, Hey, guys, like I had one last night, there was kind of a final walkthrough. And my client called me and was like, Dude, I’m pissed. They left the door unlocked and left the lights on. And he’s already moved out. And he was just like, you know, he’s like, I’m responsible for this property until July 31. And, you know, he just kept texting me. I said, Look, dude, I said, I will call the agent in the morning, we’ll get it taken care of. It won’t happen again. They’ll have no more access to the house until July 31. When when when they are buying, they are the new owners. And it just kind of diffused the whole thing. I mean, I can’t do anything via text message at eight o’clock at night. I mean, he can be mad all he wants, but there’s nothing I can really do. And there was nothing really he could do. So he was really, truly just venting to me. Sure. And, you know, I just had to take it. And it’s okay. It was like, Alright, man, I’ll make it I’ll, we’ll make it right, we’ll get fit. Yeah, it’s
D.J. Paris 51:36
just being like, I totally get it man, I would feel similar. I get it, I will take care of this. And then you take care of it. And that’s amazing. Well, I want to also tell everybody who out there works as an agent in the Nashville area. If you are raising your your virtual hand right now, I would encourage you to check out Josh is Real Estate Group and team. He is always looking for good talent out there. So if you think that you would like to work with someone like Josh, or maybe you work in another market, and you have clients that move in and out of Nashville, I mean, it is one of the most desirable areas to move to in the last five or 10 years. So there’s a lot of people moving there. And you probably would want to refer that business if you know your clients moving. So if you’re looking for a referral source, or if you’re in the national market, you’re like, I don’t get this guide of trading or support for my own my own company, reach out to Josh and Josh, if somebody either wants to work with you, maybe a client or another agent, or an agent wants to refer to you what’s the best way they should reach out?
Josh Anderson 52:37
Yeah, best email that goes to myself and my director of operations is info at Josh Anderson realestate.com.
D.J. Paris 52:46
Awesome. Well, I want everyone to follow Josh on Instagram, Facebook, all the social channels look for tag Nashville. And also the real Josh Anderson will have links to that in the show notes. Also go to his website, Josh Anderson realestate.com. I would I would be switching brokerages if I lived in Nashville, because I would want to work with someone like Josh truly. And I’m not just saying that because you’re my guest today. But Josh is awesome. And he just has processed for everything and his process. It makes perfect sense to me. I’m a marketer, I love process, and Josh and his team are doing it. And they’re just nice people. So how about consider working with them reach out to Josh, if you think you’d want to maybe join his team or you have a business that he might be interested in. I also want to on behalf of all of our audience, Josh, I want to thank you for not only for your service to the country for for many, many years, but also your service to this industry, and giving back and all of the different things you do to help make your community better it is definitely appreciated by more than even just the residents of that community because we all get inspired to maybe go out and do some more good. And I really applaud you for your dedication to that. And also on behalf of and also Josh’s time. He’s busy. So thank you, Josh, for coming on our show. And on behalf of Josh and myself, I want to thank our audience, we want to thank you for sticking around to the very end and best way that you can help our podcast grow tell a friend that could just one other realtor that could could hear us I mean, he just gave some really great tips today’s so this is an episode worth sharing. So just share it with one other agent in your office. Somebody that’s struggling this year. Guess what every realtor is struggling this is a tough year. It’s a whoo it’s a tough year. So let’s help each other by passing this podcast over to your friends and anyone else you know that could benefit so Thank you, Josh. We will see everybody on the next episode. Thanks. Thank you
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