In this episode Tristan Ahumada, the CEO of Lab Coat Agents, shares how he decided to make the shift from a history university degree to pursuing a career in real estate. He discusses how he built the Lab Coat Agents platform as a result of wishing to create value on sharing best agent practices. Tristan also talks about the importance of stress management and how to garner inspiration from successes of top agents. Last, Tristan explains the services Lab Coat Agents provide in their platform.
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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 moment, we’re gonna be speaking with Tristan Ahumada from labcoat agents. Before we get to Tristan. Just a few quick reminders, guys, we just celebrated our 200th episode. And we want to say thank you for everyone that listens to our show, who tells other agents about our show, and of course, for all of the guests that appear on our show. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And also a special thank you to our producers zonna She is the reason why we have gotten to 200 episodes, she’s come on board in the last year, we’ve done over 75 episodes, and she is the main reason why these keep continually getting pushed out. So special thanks to our producer zonna. And guys, Also, please remember to as always tell a friend think of another agent out there that you know could benefit from hearing from top producers like Tristan and all the other guests we’ve had and send them a link to our show the best way to do that, send them to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com We have every episode we’ve ever done, we even have all the different categories of episodes broken down so you can see and listen to exactly what you want to write on our website. And of course, we’re on every podcast, app and directory. So just pull up a podcast app on your phone and search for keeping it real if you haven’t already done that. And last please follow us on Facebook find us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. We post all of our episodes there and every single day zonna finds an article that was written somewhere about how real estate agents can improve their business and posts that article. So guys, thank you again so much. Here’s to 200 more and now on to our interview with Tristan Yamada.
Hey everyone Today on the show we have Tristan who Mata from labcoat agents.com. Let me tell you about Tristan. Now Tristan, he’s actually a legend in the real estate community. I’m gonna tell you a little bit more about him. Specifically, he operates labcoat agents as its CEO. Also he consults fortune 500 companies. He himself runs a successful real estate team in Southern California. He has expansion teams in the United States in different brokerages. He’s he himself as a brokerage owner. He currently sits on different boards for tech companies. He’s also an international speaker. His love for technology and systems push him to test and use the latest products for global growth and all businesses around the world, including real estate agents and brokers. Now Tristan is from Southern California, where he currently lives with his wife and two kids and his community. labcoat agents has a Facebook group that all of our listeners and viewers should be checking out. If you’re not already a member you need to be because they already have over 126,000 agents participating making it the largest realtor community on social media. So definitely look up labcoat agents on Facebook, we’ll be providing the link as well and also visit their website. They have incredible tools for realtors called labcoat agents.com. Tristan, welcome to the show. Yeah, that was a great intro. I appreciate that. Well, I am I am one of your biggest fans. I’m a huge, huge labcoat agents fan. And this is a big win for us on our podcast here to have you on the show you speak to in some ways you maybe you speak to more agents than just about anyone really online. So we’re super excited to have you speak to our audience as well.
Tristan Ahumada 4:26
Thanks, man. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
D.J. Paris 4:28
You’re so welcome. I’d love to go all the way back to the beginning before you became sort of a tech mobile mogul and a real estate mogul. I’d love to hear how you got interested in involved in real estate.
Tristan Ahumada 4:39
Yeah, alright. So I was in college university. And I was like, I’m only really kind of good at history. And that was like, What can I do with history because I was a history major. Yeah. And my wife said I was married at the time. My wife’s like you should, you should probably either do law school. Will or something along those lines. And so I was like, Okay, I’ll try law school. And then at the same time, my mom’s like, you know, I keep on seeing all these real estate agents drive these amazing cars. You know, you should check that out because you do pretty good at sales too. I’m like, they do try and create cars, don’t they? Honestly, that’s like, it’s either a history professor, right or law school, I went to law school, I went to real estate and then I was like, real estate’s better, at least for me at the time, I was just add more passion. So I dropped out of law school went all in into real estate. And it was great. Obviously, we had the oh, 60700708 challenges, right. So that whole thing pivoted But dude, I started off and I was I was really lucky to start with a company, a local company out here in Southern California. I started with Century 21. Sure. And they put me with a mentor. And then that guy, he worked for Sparkletts water before. Okay, so he would love door knocking obviously, right? Yeah. Yeah. So he took me through this whole process of how he used to knock on doors, you know, during the whole SPR. I don’t know, spilling out Sparkletts. Right. Sure. And then how to stand how to talk to people. And I was like, it was a huge blessing to be able to door knock with somebody that had been doing it for a long time. Yeah. So that’s how I started door knocking man.
D.J. Paris 6:32
It’s funny, we I had a Keller Williams agent on from Northern California, more recently, and he’s in his third year, and this year without a team just himself. He’s closing over 60 sales, which is you know how insane that is. And he’s under 30 years old, which is even even harder, right? So he the way he does it is he doesn’t do door knocking. But what he did for the last three years, he get up at like five in the morning, and he would be out. And he would hand deliver on somebody’s doorstep a postcard and he would be in a suit, he would hand deliver it. He wouldn’t not because he just felt that he didn’t want to do that. And he and I said, does that work? He goes, I can’t even tell you. He goes like I’ve done it 1000s of times. So it’s not like it always works. But he goes, people started recognizing me in the neighborhood over because I did it consistently five days a week. And so he that was his version of door knocking, and he’s doing it today, and he’s crushing it.
Tristan Ahumada 7:24
I love that. That’s, uh, that just goes to show you that a lot of things out there done excessively, consistently work, right? Yeah. So I love that. That’s very true.
D.J. Paris 7:35
Tell us a little bit about labcoat agents for all of our listeners and viewers who might not be a member, although probably most of our viewers and listeners are. But tell us about that community and why you built it and what it does. And you know who it’s for?
Tristan Ahumada 7:48
Yeah, labcoat agents is a group of real estate agent professionals. So title, escrow lending, real estate agents, brokers, and so forth, where we’re in one community, and we share best practices for technology, process systems, and just overall communicating back and forth as to how everything is going in general. Every once in a while you see a poster that just goes sideways, right? Sure, of course, it’s 126,000 people, so you should expect weird things. But for the most part, it’s there as a community to help us grow together, and just be aware of the best and right steps to take to grow your business. So and it all started as a brainchild from me when I was speaking around the nation for realtor.com on online lead conversion. Sherpa, and I was speaking and then I said, Hey, honey, I’m gonna, I think I’m going to create a blog. And, and it’s going to do this and that just because I keep on getting the same questions. She’s like, You should do a Facebook community like a Facebook group. I’m like, I hate Facebook, though. And so I created a Facebook group. And she was right. So then after that, we just it just grew because nobody was giving out value at the time and communities. And I just went all in all in and then brought in some amazing people like like Nick Baldwin, right, Regina Brown and some other great people that helped us grow it fast.
D.J. Paris 9:14
Yeah, I love Regina Brown. She is She is awesome. And so kind and sweet. And I am in a bunch of different groups with her. So she’s awesome. She is and always, always is like the first to respond to something if I ever write something on any of the groups that I would really I’d like to meet her in person. I was actually going to go speak at the independent broker Network Conference, which was supposed to be in Nashville, this this past year and it got changed. And she she was helping with some of that I believe as well. But yeah, you’ve just built such an incredible community. I really encourage our listeners and viewers to to really subscribe and participate because our whole intention with this podcast is to give agents access to top producers and and we’ve done that and but you know It’s one, we only do two to three episodes a week. But labcoat agents has constant activity, and it’s really just a great way to find out, you know, hey, you can go there. And maybe you work for a smaller firm where there maybe aren’t a lot of support or training resources. Or maybe you just want to get someone else’s opinion, who’s out there doing it from anywhere in the country. That’s the place to go and really share and say, I need help, or here’s what I’m thinking, what do you guys think? And you’ll get tons of different opinions and advice. So I think it’s awesome.
Tristan Ahumada 10:27
Dude, that’s, that’s very true. And I think one thing that I’ve learned in, in growing this with a whole bunch of other people together, right, because it’s a team effort. We’ve got like, 4040, plus moderators, and admins, we’ve got an amazing staff, right. And then I’ve got my whole real estate team to that, that runs, right. So I’ve got an amazing staff and agents on that. So one thing that I’ve learned over the over the last few years, that can help everybody listening in at every level, any business is really the ability to be able to, to see both sides of, of any situation that’s happening, whether it’s an emotional situation, or just a process, the good and the bad. And it was one, it was one quote, I don’t remember how the quote goes, but it was from Henry Ford saying, hey, the secret to success, the one secret to success, you want to Google it, you probably find it, but the one secret to success was being able to see both sides of the story. Right. And that’s so key in just success in general. Because you see, the more the more people you talk to, at every level, you find some people that are very, very egotistical and very ego driven, right, it has to be about them, then. And that’s the fastest way to fail. In this business. So that’s one thing that’s been super apparent to
D.J. Paris 11:57
me. Yeah, it’s I know, Gandhi, they used to say Gandhi, maybe his greatest accomplishment, or, or the skill that he had, that was able to topple the British empire in India, was that he was able to put himself in the shoes of the British oppressors and actually feel empathy and compassion and understand where they were coming from. And then only then was he able to, to create a strategy to then you know, get them to eventually leave. But the whole idea of being able to see every point of view and understand it really gives you a huge leg up in this industry. So that if someone’s negotiating against you in a transaction, or the other realtors not being cooperative, or you’re not getting the results you want. And it’s frustrating, because you’re you’re not getting what you want, you can start to think about, well, how do I maybe help the other side get what they want? Or how can we meet in the middle? What are they looking for? Why are they acting this way? I think that is so important. So I’m so glad you mentioned that.
Tristan Ahumada 12:51
Yeah, dude, it’s such a big challenge in general, for people in real estate or in any business. And I don’t think we talked about it enough. Right. So it’s just when you think about as really, I was talking to Mike Bernier and long this morning, yeah, you know, them? I do. And it was one of our weekly meetings and I was like, Mike brought up he goes, this business really comes down to agents, getting help with understanding and being able to deal with stress all levels of stress. And I was like, Dude, that’s so good. You just simplified the whole thing. But now it’s let’s let’s help him with that. Because that’s a big challenge. You didn’t like in the span of like 20 minutes you have a deal. Wait, you don’t? Well, maybe you do. Hold on. And now they just backed out. Oh, right. And it’s like a roller coaster ride. Yeah. So
D.J. Paris 13:46
I’m in the process of of buying a property with myself right now. And I’m, I’m not a Producing Realtor. I never have been but I work with realtors, we have hundreds of them at our own company, you would think I would be more familiar with how to navigate the emotional ups and downs of a buying or selling process. Yet as I go through it myself, my attorney accidentally missed our the attorney review period, and I thought it was the end of the world I was like, oh my god, this is it. And of course it was fine. But But there I was even and then we were going back and forth on earnest money and they wanted a certain amount and I didn’t want to give and I’m so emotional about this. I’m like, you know, this is why people have Realtors like I should not be doing this myself and I didn’t and I turned it over to my boss. I’m like, Could you please do this for me because I am way too emotional about this. I’m making I’m driving myself crazy and I’m making poor decisions here. And he’s like no problem. You had to help me out which is a little embarrassing, but it’s that emotional even for somebody in the industry who knows better so I think gosh, if if our listeners and and of course at all your followers, the one thing they can understand is this is like a such a stressful process, buying and selling a home whether it’s somebody’s first home or it’s not my first home either. This is you know in some motion So being able to manage your own stresses the agent, but also your clients stress and being able to anticipate, oh, they’re about to freak out, I can I can sense that I’m about to give them news that’s going to send them sideways, and being able to figure out a way to sort of mitigate that as boy, you’re you’re a top agent, if you can do that. Yeah,
Tristan Ahumada 15:17
I think it also goes to show that the level of maturity and, and awareness you have, right. And that’s, I think one thing we can all work on at every level, right? So I mean, you and I probably deal with it a lot more, because we’re, we’re not just dealing with a group of consumers, right? We’re also dealing with so many different other people, right, and we see it at different levels. But the one thing that doesn’t escape anybody, because we all share same feelings, right? happiness, anger, all this stuff. It is really that that self talk that we have sometimes, right, the conversation you have with yourself. And sometimes, sometimes it’s pretty bad. And in the end, sometimes it’s great, right? Yeah, but I think that that’s one that’s where it all starts, like, when you start saying to yourself, I was, Oh, you’re so stupid, that that was stupid, and you’re talking to yourself. Right, right. And why is this happening to me? Right? That was a question that was being asked a lot at the beginning of COVID. Sure. And I saw it, people were talking and say, Well, why why is this happening? I don’t understand. Right? And, and that’s really that, that self talk, I can’t take this anymore. Why is everyone against me? That’s where it all emanates from, right? You wonder where all of your challenges are coming from? It’s the way you’re talking to yourself, right? Because that’s what’s gravitating to your, to your reticular activating system, right, you’re filtering out everything else. And you’re focusing on that negative self talk that’s coming through.
D.J. Paris 16:49
And you’re repeating that cycle, because now you’re looking for it. So this is funny. So Tristan, and myself, although we were not exercising together, just before this, we both got on and said we just finished a workout. So we’re both very sweaty by the way, although you probably can’t tell. But if you’re watching us, you probably hopefully can’t tell but I was in the gym. So this is really applicable to like an hour ago. So I was trying a new exercise. I’ve only been working out with a personal trainer for about six weeks now. And, and she pushes me hard, which is their job. And I couldn’t do this one exercise, I just couldn’t figure it out, I had to focus on three different muscle groups. It was complicated. And I kept saying to myself, you should be able to get this, why can’t you get this? What’s wrong with you? And finally, I had to say I had to stop, I had to tell my the personal trainer, I said, please just tell me that I’m doing okay. Because what I’m saying to myself in my head is so mean and cruel to myself that I have to know that. She goes, you’re doing fine. She goes, you’re not doing it perfect. But you shouldn’t be doing it perfect right now. Stop. She’s like, stop whatever you’re doing in your head. And I had to laugh and say, Okay, I’m not going to have any expectations here. Because I expect perfection, which so many of us are like that we expect ourselves never to make a mistake. Nothing is supposed to be hard. And yet life is hard. And it is supposed to be difficult. And we’re going to struggle, and you have to be really careful in the amount of empathy you have for yourself. And can you allow yourself to not be perfect? And as agents you’re never perfect.
Tristan Ahumada 18:16
And that stems from from childhood? You’re right. Absolutely. And it needs to stop everybody listening, and it needs to stop with you. So you don’t transfer that out to other people’s. Right, right. And this is why awareness of what you’re saying to yourself is really important. So the language that you’re using with yourself, right? Always looking to when people ask you like, I’m careful as to who I ask, DJ, I’m careful as to how are you doing today? I’m really careful. Me too. You know, I don’t I don’t want to hear oh my gosh, it was the most terrible day ever because of this and that and this and this and that. And can you believe this person and oh my gosh, over here. And I’m like, I wish I never asked.
D.J. Paris 19:00
Right? Because it affects your mood.
Tristan Ahumada 19:03
The opposite of that is is what we should shoot for, which is like, I know you’re having problems, right? We all do. Everybody. Everybody does. Well, why don’t you turn it around? And tell me something good that’s happening in your life and spread some of that instead of that negativity that nobody wants to hear. Right. Right. So that you don’t know if you read Carol Dweck book on mom course. Perfect. So mindset mindset ever, right? fixed mindset versus growth mindset. And the fixed mindset, which is the one that avoids you avoid challenges you give up easily. You see any effort is fruitless. Right? And here’s the biggest challenge because this in real estate in any sales vertical, or any type you anytime you see competition, you usually see this in the fixed mindset. You feel threatened by the success of others. Sure. Right. And, and I don’t care who You are, you’ve felt that because I felt I’ve felt that in the past, right? Or me too. And every once in a while, I catch it and I’m like, oh shit. I mean, excuse my French, but Oh, damn right. And then I’m like, oh, let’s, let’s just let’s just stop right there. Why am I feeling this? What’s going on? I embrace it. I’m like, Okay, I’m feeling I’m feeling this, what’s going on? And then I want to be able to change it. Because the growth mindset is where you find lessons and inspiration from those people that are doing great, right? That’s the difference. And you have to purposefully tweak that, because for some reason, as humans, we do feel threatened by other people’s success sometimes, because we’re not there yet. Yeah, right. And the moment we just embrace it and say, You know what, we’re human, it’s part of it. But let me tweak it and tell my own story on this and be inspired by DJ success. Yeah, right. All of a sudden, you start living a different life, and you start seeing things very differently.
D.J. Paris 21:01
And you start seeing what you used to consider to be competitors, as you know, points of inspiration. I know, you know, I’m a recruiter, I recruit realtors, that’s what I do. And that’s all I do all day long. And there was another company that here in the Chicagoland in a market that sprouted up several years ago, seemingly out of nowhere, and all of a sudden, they were recruiting more agents than me. And I was the guy who was recruiting the most agents before that. And I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t think I needed to be the guy who was who’s recruiting more. But as soon as somebody threatened, what I was like, wait a minute, how are they doing it? They’re not better than me, how are they doing this? And I would get really upset and angry, then I went, Wait a minute, they’re probably doing something I’m missing. I want to figure out what they’re doing. And I’m inspired by them, and they’re gonna make my life easier. Because once I figure out what they’re doing, they’re not better than me, I can figure it out. And you know, and again, I’m not looking at them as competitors anyway, but I was just like, I was jealous. I was like, how are they doing? It’s so much faster. And, and it ended up being the best thing that ever happened, because I took I figured out what they were doing. And I went, I would have never thought of that. And now we incorporate it into our business, and it’s working. So you’re absolutely right.
Tristan Ahumada 22:05
Did I love that? And also, with what you said, where you have people around you, you’ve incorporated into a business with other people? Yeah, that has a lot to do with, with how you see everything too, because we are continually surrounding yourself with people that are always sharing those negative negative stories with you always taking the time to criticize other people. Hey, hey, DJ, do you hear about this other agent? Oh, my gosh, can you believe it? Can’t even Can you believe that? They did say nobody cares? And the moment you do that, to me is the moment I shut you out of my life? I don’t need that. It’s yeah, right. You need people that are around you, talking to you about the things that they’re working on to either better their lives or better their businesses and how they’re helping other people. Right? Because that starts expanding your mind. Like, okay, I got this, you know what this guy is doing so amazing. I’m kind of inspired by this person. And because you’re close to them, they take you along for that ride, you see their growth, and you now benefit from being around people like that. That’s my, that’s my alarm to finish up working out. But I finished up earlier. So
D.J. Paris 23:15
Well, we appreciate you cutting the workout. A bit short to be on our show. I, I tried to cut my hair short. And my trainer is like, Nope, you have to do one more set. And she’s right. That’s why I pay her. Don’t let me wimp out. But no, I appreciate you, you know, being spending time with us to do this. And I want to go back to something you just said which is about helping. You know, we’ve I’ve interviewed over 208 top agents in the country now for the show, and they’re so gracious with their time. There’s nothing really in it specifically for agents who jump on our show other than they’re happy to just help. And I have found that that is the most consistent quality. It’s not I mean, yes, they’re also hard workers, of course. But you know, a lot of thoughts, people are hard workers, but disability of saying how can I create value, and this is what you have really dedicated a good chunk of your career to is building a community that does nothing but create value for other agents. So it’s probably no surprise to me that you’ve also had a lot of success because everyone on our show has figured out maybe it just in their local market, how to create value for local businesses right now that are struggling or restaurants who are just trying to stay afloat, or you know, giving back and other volunteer efforts. There’s, this has been the consistent theme. If somebody were to ask me, Hey, you’ve interviewed 200 brokers, top agents in the country, what’s the number one thing I would say they give back more than anyone? I know. Yes. They work hard to that’s the second thing, but they give back and they think about how do I create value to my clients? And they don’t worry about the paycheck. The paycheck comes. And yeah, so I applaud you for devoting a good chunk of your career to that.
Tristan Ahumada 24:51
That’s a really good point. Yeah, you kind of think of that paycheck as a second thing.
D.J. Paris 24:56
Yeah. I want to I want to talk about it. love to hear your any thoughts you have. So we have so many listeners and viewers who look at, you know, your labcoat agents and 126,000 members, which is just it’s so mind boggling to me I, I’m so impressed by it. And I know our listeners are as well. And I know there’s so many opportunities for agents to build their own social media communities, maybe hyperlocal, maybe they want to be, you know, I interviewed a woman on my show, four years ago, the way she built her entire business as she was a mom out in the suburbs of Chicago and this one specific suburb. And there were no, there was no online community for for new moms. And she was a new mom. And she’s like, I didn’t know what all the events were and where it was supposed to go. And I didn’t know what resources. So she just created what had nothing to do with real estate. And now she’s a $75 million a year producer, just simply by creating this. Yeah, I mean, completely insane. And she’s like, I have never even mentioned that I’m a realtor on this, this but i Mom, she moderates the group. And she has all these meetings. It’s all about value. And that’s again, what labcoat agents is all about. So can you talk a little bit about how you created that community and how you really started attracting people to to the community?
Tristan Ahumada 26:11
Sure, man, it was it was all through the very first thing I thought of was just to give value. Right? In my in my, in what I was really good at. And that’s online lead conversion, right? Yeah. And at the time, nobody was talking about the technology to use with online lead conversion, and also processes like Hey, call, call text, text, call, whatever it was, right? And combine it with this combined with that. So I was like, You know what, I keep on getting the same question over and over again, let’s just help out people and just throw this out there. Right? So I kept on posting it. And there were people in the in the group at the beginning saying what are you doing? Why are you helping people out? This is so stupid, right? And I’m like, That’s weird, right? So I kept on doing it with no and no inclination to make money from it. And people then started seeing that it wasn’t going away. And then people started gravitating towards, oh, this is a cool place. Maybe we should contribute to. So I started bringing in people that were of the same mindset, hey, let’s contribute without asking for anything back. Right. And so those are the people that became my first moderators and admins, right? And that’s how I ended up connecting with Nick Baldwin. I created the community and I had Steve pass and Nellie I don’t know if you know Steve, personally from bom, bom. He created How long have you been in the real estate kind of world?
D.J. Paris 27:41
10 years? Yeah, I’ve used Bom Bom. I love Bom Bom. Alright, so
Tristan Ahumada 27:45
I think it was 10 years ago, he had, he had created a blog with Chris Smith. And I can’t think of that name right now. But they both created this great blog. And then we became friends because he used to work for realtor.com. And so we were both speaking on the same panels together and going around the nation speaking. And so I go, Hey, Steve, you want to be a moderator in this thing that I’m creating. It’s similar to what you were doing with the blog. And he’s like, yeah, so it came in. But then he got hired at bom, bom. He’s like, Dude, I can’t do this anymore. But I’ve got this great guy. His name’s Nick Baldwin. Right? And I’m like, sure bring him in. So Nick started posting in the community. Right. And people started gravitating to what he was saying. I’m like, Oh, this guy’s pretty cool. I didn’t talk to him over the phone for six months, because I didn’t have to. I was like, This guy’s doing great. Yeah. So that’s what happened then. And then slowly, as we started gaining momentum, we started getting approached by vendors and saying, Hey, have you guys ever thought of doing an affiliate program, offering it to your audiences? And I’m like, No, I’ve never thought of that. How does that work? Right? And then next, like well, did, I did it before and another group that I had, but this is this is different. All right. Let’s try it here. And so that’s that’s really where it started. We looked at affiliates, and then we did an event for commissions Inc. Then Inman started noticing us and then after Inman, Facebook got a hold of us. Yeah. And then it just did. It didn’t stop. It just kept going.
D.J. Paris 29:20
Yeah, it’s amazing. And I think we both had Facebook on our show there. I love the fact that Facebook has a real estate department, I had no idea. The real estate division and they come on to ours. I know they’ve been on labcoat many times, they come on my show once a month. And you know, it’s so cool that Facebook itself now has resources, and they’re about to launch even some additional resources very shortly just for realtors. And so it’s so cool to see some of these these tools sort of catch up to the realtor community, which is you know, I’m a tech guy. My background is I’m a marketing guy from the IT world. So I got to real estate I went everything 10 years I was like this There is no technology. That’s, that’s now there’s so much technology all these years later, it’s really impressive.
Tristan Ahumada 30:06
Facebook just launched the site today. So I’ll send you that. Oh, great.
D.J. Paris 30:10
Awesome. Yeah, I didn’t I have I didn’t know that. So I’m excited to to see that. And yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s really exciting. I would love to hear your thoughts. You have, gosh, you know, over 125 under 26,000 agents in your group. And this is one of the big questions. And the reason why we have Facebook on once a month is agents are always asking how do I better use social media? And I just curious if you have any tips and tricks for an individual agent, it because here’s the thing that and you might have a different opinion. And of course, you’re welcome to hear all opinions. But I always think agents do a disservice if all they’re doing is posting newly listed newly sold, I’m like most of the people don’t care. It’s Yes, it’s cool. Your friends will be happy for you. But I personally don’t care to see that. Or I don’t only want to see that I want to see other stuff. So I’m curious on what your thoughts are around what agents should be doing on Facebook or Instagram and Twitter?
Tristan Ahumada 31:08
Great question, I actually did create a process for for people after noticing that, that it becomes a challenge for people to post routinely to social media. And so what I did is I actually broke it down for people so that they can better understand how to do it. And I made a little system. So look, the biggest challenges are finding time to create the content, I’m sure, and then knowing what to post, right, those are the two main main problems. So I’m going to take you through a little process here. First thing is you need to identify what day or what times in the day you’re going to be posting to social media for me. It’s usually in the morning, I have like this morning routine. And then in between it I have like where to when to post so that’s when I go to Instagram. Tik Tok, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, I said Instagram, there’s another one with an eye. I have I have a little I have a little acronym. It’s called lifted. So I just check it off. It’s LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tiktok. There you go. Perfect, lifted, and I check them off as they do it. So for me, it’s in the morning for you. I don’t know, right? But you’ve got to find that time. So it’s more of a routine this way. If for any chance you missed it that whole day. Tomorrow you won’t because it’s already in your schedule, right? You go back right to that schedule. Number two, identify where you post the most, right where you already gravitate to. Is it Facebook? Is it Instagram? What is it right? Where do you feel comfortable posting like Jeff fitzer, who is with us in labcoat agents. He loves posting the Tick Tock to him. It’s like easy, right? He posts all day. I’m like, Dude, how do you do this? Because it’s kind of like weird for me. That’s where he is all day. And for me, I gravitate more towards Instagram, and Facebook. That’s where I gravitate to. So I post more to there, right? So I’m happy that that Instagram just released a realz to compete with Tik Tok because I’m like, Oh, I’m gonna just stick with Instagram. But, you know, identify where you love posting. Now, next thing, if you’re kinda like, well, I don’t know where I post or I could do a lot better. I want you to spy on people. I want you to spy on people find that social media platform that you’ve been wanting to get in on and spy on them. So for instance, you’re like, Ooh, I like tick tock, but you know, I can’t dance. Right? Right. So go on tick tock, and just for like a week or two, go on there, take 10 minutes a day, go through so you understand what it looks like. And then you start gravitating to those people that are like, oh, you know, that DJ guy. I like what he’s doing. I could totally do that. Right. And that’s what you’re looking for, for all social media. Right, gravitate to the people that you relate with, because you could probably duplicate what they’re doing.
So next, you’ve got to start commenting and liking. If you’re going all in DJ on Facebook, then you’ve got to go all in and not just post you’ve got to take time to go through all of your friends on Facebook or Instagram or wherever. And take time to comment, like meaningful comments, not like yeah, or thumbs up, or that’s kind of crap. Right? You want to go in there and fully comment and be like, I love this picture. This is cool. But where are you by the way? Or, like I did with my friend, Tessa Bella, who’s on Instagram. She’s always posting and then she was sitting next to a car. I’m like, What the hell? That is a really cool car. Is that your car? Right? Right. And then she messaged me back she’s like, No, it’s not my car. But the point is we engage you right? We don’t just like things. And then after you do that, what you start noticing that is that ah, I got it. I’m getting into a groove right now. And then you go into what I call the acronyms stay. Right. And stay is sell teach advice you sell, teach advice you and you rotate. So first easy DJ, we always love to sell, right? Sure. Hey, I just listed a home Hey, check out this new listing, hey, I helped the buyer when we do that naturally, I’m at an open house. Yep, that sell. Next is T for Teach, take time, to teach people to be able to understand our world right now. And keep it to anywhere around. If you’re on obviously, just watch your social media outlets, but tick tock, 15 seconds to 60 seconds. Instagram, you got your feed for 60 seconds or less. Or you can go on IG TV for longer. You can do the reels for 15 seconds, Facebook, three minutes or more. Three to five minutes. YouTube sweetspot no more than 10 minutes about there on YouTube. Right. But that’s what you’ve got. And when you’re teaching. If you don’t know what to teach on, just Google, Google, anything you want along the lines of real estate. I’ll start with buyers having problems with home inspection. Just type that into Google. And then you’ll see a whole bunch of stuff pop up, click on the first one of the first ones, then you’ll be like, Oh, that’s right. They do have problems with this. Oh my gosh, oh, that’s so true. Grab one of those. Yeah, and go for three minutes, because we’re experts in this already. Right? Then you can title it and be like this one, I’m going to teach on the three things to watch out for in a home inspection. Right, here we go. Hey, everybody, I’m at home, I wanted to show you the three things to look out for in a home inspection. Number one, nobody ever talks about the chimney. And I’m going to go into it and explain to you what to look for it next is nobody talks about the plumbing. But have you seen these these snakes, they put in all the way in there and have these little cameras like that? Right? That’s where you start getting people into that teaching, then advice, right, which is sta advice is more along the lines of really, you can use quotes, kind of like leadership quotes, movie quotes, or advice along the lines of hobbies. Like, for me, I love playing video games, dude with my kids. It’s what I kind of do in my spare time. And I love reading. I love reading like, I passionately. I’m, I’m a I’m an avid reader. So My hobbies are those two things. So I gravitate to when I speak, or when I go on lives, I typically gravitate to speaking about books. So one of the ones that I did was topic stacking, when it comes to reading books, like when I learn, I grab the same topic of books, so five books all along the same topic. I go and do some research, I find the best five books on that topic. I purchased them and I read them this way it sticks and I understand the process better, right? But that’s what I talk on. See it’s advice, and it’s something I’m great at has nothing to do with real estate. And you’re like, Oh, that’s pretty cool. I like that. Right? And then you why as ta why you should be pretty easy. This gets a little difficult for some people, but people want you to take a picture of yourself and post it up, right? Yep. Like this morning on Instagram, I took a picture of my foot and my dog and it’s about the same size as my foot. Right? Because it’s a Yorkie they’re like this big. Sure. And so people want to know, what’s happening in your life. Like, where are you going? What are you doing?
What are you eating? How do you look? Are you happy? Are you excited about something? Right? And some challenges here in there? Let’s not get too dramatic, though. But some challenges that you’re having to Sure. Right but about you and then you cycle through that again? Yeah, right? Sta why and I’m in the stands for people want to stay on your social media platform because you’re allowing them to connect with you. Right? So that’s that’s really the the process that I teach I say you know as Tay sta y and you can rotate that through the week. You can rotate that through a day, right if you post enough on social but that’s that’s really how I do again.
D.J. Paris 39:17
Yeah, and I want to go back to the why for a second for anyone listening going I have very strict boundaries around my privacy and my personal life you do not have to violate those boundaries in order to post about yourself. Find out what you’re comfortable sharing. And by the way, I have a tiny dog that is also the size of my foot she’s under the desk right here she’s a 12 year old Chihuahua so I understand the small dog foot you know sort of idea because I’ve she goes with me everywhere and so I can appreciate the your Yorkie but but that’s the thing guys, whatever your comp like I could post pictures of my foot and my dog all day long. There’s certain things I wouldn’t post about because I want to keep that private. But the point is you don’t have to be like every, like other realtors that bear everything online. You can choose your own path, but you need to show part of your life. What are what are you dealing with throughout the day? what’s real, what’s happening, you know, and you can share that in a way that’s that’s still respectful of your boundaries.
Tristan Ahumada 40:21
You got it. That’s a good point that you make man, then that’s why that’s why I tell people take some time to do some research, and spy into other people’s social media accounts, right? Look at what they’re doing and see what you connect with. So you can envision doing what they’re doing, right, the ones you connect with.
D.J. Paris 40:38
Yeah, I absolutely couldn’t agree more, I would love to talk about some of the services that labcoat agents offers, because you are a really education, hub and resource. But you guys have also launched some really cool services that I want our listeners to hear about. Can you talk about the marketing arm of labcoat agents and what that offers and what that is that agents can take advantage of?
Tristan Ahumada 41:01
Yeah, thanks, me. And thanks for bringing that up. So LCA Marketing Center. It’s LCA, marketing center.com. And it’s a design software, it’s really like Canva, but for real estate, and the cool thing about it is that it’s an app as well. So you go to the website on your desktop sign up there, and then you can download the app and use it there. But it goes deep into really simplifying, simplifying the designs for social media posts, for fliers. It even has listing presentations that are built out buyer presentations. You can do your mailers there, you can even print out the postcards to mail, and also signs and business cards. I mean, there’s a lot of other things in there, it’s pretty deep. But that’s been really fun, because we teamed up with Maxa designs to Oh, sure, Max
D.J. Paris 41:53
is a huge player in the design space for real estate. They’re amazing. They have they have one of the coolest websites I’ve ever seen. I’m a huge massive fan. So
Tristan Ahumada 42:02
yeah, and so James James a long, right. So you know, James, he and I, he and I released that into the world. And I love that, that that company Max is awesome.
D.J. Paris 42:13
Yeah. And for anyone who wants to see what this is just go to labcoat agents.com. And there’s a little link right there on the homepage to check out the marketing component. And then I also want to remind everyone not remind, but tell everyone about maybe a product that, you know, if you’re a podcast listener, you’ve probably had this idea as as an agent, maybe I should start my own podcast. And that’s what I did. And anyone can do it. I’m nobody special, you can do it, too. It’s not that challenging. But it does require some technical know how. And you might think, well, I don’t really have time to figure a lot of that out. And trust me, I’m a tech guy. So this is what I love to do, but not but I’m also not a real estate agent. So your passion might be real estate minds tech. So I figured all this out on my own. I wish I wouldn’t have I would have saved a lot of time. But you also offer a service called pod tastic. And I’d love to hear for our audience who might be thinking maybe I should start a local podcast. You guys offer services to do that.
Tristan Ahumada 43:08
Yeah, so we teamed up with Sharon McCormick, and she’s a longtime friend of ours, and she runs podcasting. And podcasting just really simplifies the whole process for podcasting. They literally do everything for you minus you talking, right or if you’re interviewing at elite it help with the scripts
D.J. Paris 43:27
as well,
Tristan Ahumada 43:28
right? Oh, help with the scripts, though they help with dude, I literally just finish up here. And they go into the back of zoom, grab the audio, grab the video, clip it up, then they make the designs, they post it up everywhere. They write up the whole dialogue for it. And I don’t have to do anything. When it’s ready. They send me the items if I want to promote them, put them on Instagram, put them on wherever I want that ready to go. That’s all I have to do.
D.J. Paris 43:57
Yeah, it’s one of those things that don’t let the technical side be a barrier to entry. I am telling you there is so much opportunity for agents to create a local podcast. You know, if you want to think of an idea, well, what would I talk about? What if all you did was show showcase a local business every week and just say, Hey, I would love to hear your story about why you started your business? And would you be willing to share it with your followup with your customers, your followers, I’ll share it with mine. And we can both hopefully grow our businesses 99 times out of 100 that small business owner is going to be thrilled to death that you are contacting them and not asking them for advertising money, you’re going to be doing free advertising for them and with them. And you guys both win and that is something that anyone listening can do. But the hard part is okay, now I got to figure out the technical side of it. And obviously podcast I can do all that for you.
Tristan Ahumada 44:49
Dude, thank you, man. And obviously if you haven’t visited labcoat agents.com Go take a look at it. We do have some good stuff on their blogs and other links to some great things. So take a look at that.
D.J. Paris 45:01
And every single day, we should also mention on the Facebook group, there is a webinar like, I don’t know, if it’s five days a week, I think it’s five days a week. And they are boy, and I love you know, it’s, it’s you guys do have such great emails, and the design work on each one of the episodes is really cool. But guys, what if you could wake up every day and get a little daily dose of inspiration from either a top producer, somebody in the industry that can give you some information that you can use to grow the business. That’s what labcoat agents does five days a week, it’s amazing, they never miss it’s, it’s almost like overwhelming the amount of content they put out there. So pick and choose what you like, but you have to subscribe. So you know, go to go to facebook.com forward slash groups forward slash labcoat agents, we’ll put a link to it, of course, in our notes and join this community because it’s all there’s so much great content, and it’s complimentary. It’s absolutely free for you to listen and absorb and then bring into your business. And this is probably the reason why they have 126,000 followers, which is just beyond impressive. Again, it’s the largest realtor community online as far as I can tell, unless someone else’s is got another one that’s bigger, which I’m pretty sure they don’t labcoat agents is the king. And the reason why they the reason why they’ve grown so much is because of the quality of the content. It’s it’s really quite simple. So I think that’s a great place to wrap up, I want everybody to do two things go on facebook.com forward slash groups, Ford slash labcoat. Agents just search for labcoat agents that pops right up, join the group and also visit their websites, you can see all the different services they offer. Everything they do is really centered around helping agents grow their business. They’re not a sales company. They’re a tech and training company. This is what they focus on. And I love it. I’m a huge, huge fan. I want everyone to go and visit the website, join their Facebook group. And on behalf of all of our listeners, Tristan, thank you so much for for your time today. We really appreciate it you gave great, great advice and tips for our listeners and our viewers. And on behalf of Tristan and myself. We also want to thank our audience for watching and listening to this episode. And also we want to remind everyone that if you want to help us grow, just help us do two quick things. Tell a friend think of one other agent that could benefit from watching this particular episode, and send them a link to it or have them visit our website keeping it real pod.com. And then the second thing is please visit and join our Facebook community which is facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod The only things we post there are these episodes. And we find an article every day that was written online somewhere designed to help real estate Realtors grow their business. That’s all we do there. So please join us there on Facebook. Tristan, thank you for being part of the show. We are huge fans. We will continue to be huge fans and anything we can do to support labcoat agents, we will continue to because it’s so in alignment with exactly what we’re doing on our podcast. So thank you, sir, we appreciate it.
Tristan Ahumada 48:01
Well, thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it. It was it was a whole mix of things on this one. I loved it.
D.J. Paris 48:06
Awesome. All right. Well, for all of our listeners. We will see you on the next episode. And thanks again for supporting our show. Thanks Tristan. Thank you
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