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Today we are talking about how we work on our business, quite often real estate’s a very easy business to literally become a slave to. People think that we can just choose our own hours, we don’t choose our own hours our clients do. And if their clients are choosing our hours for us, that means you have none. So what we have to really do is work very smart.
Jess Lenouvel is the creator of The Listings Lab and has helped thousands of real estate agents manage their time and business to start attracting clients and not chase them.
Three Things You’ll Learn in This Episode
- How to prepare your business for a market correction
- How to better manage you time
- How to become a seven figure realtor
Resources
Learn more about Jess Lenouvel
The Listing Advocate (Earn more listings!)
Transcript:
So how do you attract new business? You constantly don’t have to chase it. Hi, I’m Mike Cuevas a real estate marketing. This podcast is all about building a strong personal brand people have come to know, like trust and most importantly, refer. But remember, it is not their job to remember what you do for a living. It’s your job to remind them. Let’s get started What’s up ladies and gentlemen, welcome another episode of the real estate marketing dude, podcast. What we’re gonna be chatting about today, folks is, well, let’s be honest, we’re getting to we’re seeing a correction. And during the correction, it’s time to sort of revamp, look at our businesses, our systems, look at all the stuff that we’re actually doing and get ready for it. And one of those things is on how we work on our business, quite often real estate’s a very easy business to, you know, literally like become a slave to like, you can just you don’t own a business people think that we can just like, it’s great, we choose our own hours, we don’t choose our own hours our clients do. And if their clients are choosing our hours for us, that means you have none. So what we have to really do is work very smart. This is something I’m passionate about, I used to always be someone that always stuck working in the business stuck in a hamster wheel. And once I started really studying business, and this isn’t even a real estate thing, it’s a business thing, right? Working on it is more important than working in it, otherwise, you’ll never grow it. So that’s going to be the concept of today. And we have a an author here who just released a book. And it’s doing very, very well number one on both Canada and the United States. So without further ado, she’s going to talk about the concepts of those books. And if you are feeling like you’re running on a hamster wheel, I think you get a lot out of today. So let’s welcome our guests. He’s been on the show before so you guys may know her already. But if not, let’s go just Len Neville
Lenovo. That was really close lead Nerville
I told her. I told you I was gonna butcher your name. But she’s corrected me. But just go ahead and tell everyone who the hell are you?
I am Jess I have been in the real estate space for a long time. I grew up in the industry, got my license at 21. My mom’s been an agent for 35 year odd years, somewhere in and around there. And yeah, I built a multi seven figure team myself and then transitioned out of selling into helping agents scale their businesses through programs. And murder may 17, I released a book called more money less hustle, becoming a seven figure real estate agent, which is it’s out and it’s doing well. And I’m glad I’m grateful and I’m glad and it was a it was a really fun. It was a really fun one to two, I say Right. But to be honest, I didn’t write it. I dictated it. Because it literally just was more of like a stream of consciousness thing than it was something that I like very meticulously kind of sat down and wrote. I never grew up thinking I was gonna write a book. It wasn’t a goal of mine. I got frustrated with a lot of what was out there. And, yeah, I got I got frustrated with what was out there. Because I think that a lot of it is a lot of what is being taught out there is still that hustle grind, you know, crushing it mentality, which is not what I think leads to happy agents. And
it’s a hamster wheel. Like we said, like the business sucks. I I moved to San Diego, so I so I can stop selling real estate, because if I would have stuck in Chicago, I would have still been doing it and I hated it. That’s why I created real estate marketing. I love the marketing side of it. But I am burnt out man, I’m 17 years in the business I’m done. Doesn’t mean I don’t like to be in the business I got I sort of miss it in a sense. But yeah, because it’s so grinding. So let’s get into the principles of the book. Obviously. You’re good on time management and all that. And that’s probably what the number one skill. I think any real estate agent needs a master. But how do we go out and make more money? Less hustle? What do you what do you what are we doing here? What a real estate agents doing wrong?
Yeah, so I mean, the way that I wrote the book is I broke it down into six different pillars, but the ones that are going to really buy back time, like obviously marketing is in there and but but the things that are gonna buy back time are your outs, your automation, your automation operations, outsourcing that side of it, and also the team and hiring aspect of it. And so many agents build teams the wrong way. And we’ve all been trained in like the same way from the very beginning where, you know, you become the bottleneck, and then you hire an assistant or you become the bottleneck and then you hire your first agent. And there’s a step missing in there, because that training and that concept was developed in the 70s in the 80s We have this concept now, which is automation. Right? So Tim Ferriss teaches, you know, eliminate, automate, outsource, it’s the perfect way of going about it, can it be eliminated, can it be automated and then last resort, can it be outsourced, there’s so many agents out there, right now we’re paying a full time salary $50,000 A year or $20, an hour, whatever you’re paying to someone, for them to do repetitive tasks that a piece of software can do for $500 a year. And so not only is it time inefficient, but it’s also money inefficient. So you know, a lot of what this book really is really geared towards is figuring out, what is it that you want? What do you want the business to look like? What do you want your life to look like? What do you want the day to day to look like? And how do we reverse engineer it? But there are certain principles that are going to show up no matter what, which the first one is a task? Got it? Because I think so many agents are misaligned, when it comes to Well, why would I pay someone $30? To do it when I can just do it? Well, it’s because you’re valuing money over time. And if you took that $30 An hour task, and you gave it to someone else paid someone $30 to do it, and you replaced it with $1,000 An hour task, then you’re ahead. And for most people, what they don’t realize is I can do an audit of their time, and look at the value assign an approximate value for the different tasks that they’re doing on a day to day basis. And I can tell them how much money they’re making.
Interesting. So like, we don’t put a value on our time. And that’s really well said, and what do you say to someone, though, that’s like, Hey, I’m just starting in real estate, I’m broke, I don’t know where my next commission is going to be. I don’t know, when I’m gonna get paid. I’m living a life of peaks and valleys. What do we say to them?
You need to be consistent with your marketing. Because really, at the end of the day, like there are like you don’t run a business if you don’t have clients. So there’s like, there’s layers of this right. And and the people are asking me all the time right now is who Who is this book for? Is it for that seasoned agent? Who’s going who’s like, on their way to seven figures? Or is it for a new agent? And my answer is kind of both. And I’m not saying that because I want to sell more books, even though I want to sell more books? The answer is, is that someone who is at half a million, a million, you know, in that range, they’re going to take very different things out of this book than a new agent? Well, sure, the new agent is going to look at the overall the overall, you know, strategies, and how not to make mistakes. Whereas the more seasoned agent, or the or the agent who is at a higher level is going to be reworking things that are not set up the way that they should be in their existing business. So it’s kind of twofold. But usually what I’ll say is like, you know, the marketing piece is going to be piece number one, because I think that in order for you to have a real sustainable business, it really has to it has to be marketing first. So the way that we have the book laid out, is pillar one is marketing. Pillar two is mindset. So it’s how are you actually thinking about your business? Are you are you thinking about the business? Like from a, from like, the mindset of of a successful person? I think so often, what happens is we think of our businesses as small businesses, and so they remain small businesses. Right, so that we then we have clients and signature system, which actually creates better services better late, essentially, the product that you’re selling, and I think that a lot of agents forget, and this is what you know, one of the things that I get quoted on most, you don’t sell real estate, you sell services, and you consult on the sale of real estate. Yep. And so you your your product, which is your service package has to be dialed in and has to be has to be repeatable. So that becomes kind of that next step. Then we’ve got sales conversations or sales conversions, which is, you know, if you’re you can be the best marketer in the world. If you can’t get in front of someone and get that person to that next step. It doesn’t matter what’s going to what, like, it doesn’t matter. Right. Are you actually good at getting someone to that next step?
Let’s stop it right there. back some of these things. Yeah. So first off MT non money making activities let me give you one all you guys trying to edit your own videos, to hire real estate marketing, dude, that is a complete waste of time and you’re not going to be good at it. He didn’t. He was just like, I’m not gonna do anything. That’s why we have editors. But stop editing your own videos and hire me Okay, dammit. But that’s true. You gotta get rid of all those tasks that can be beyond there. But you just said something. It’s really important. You’re right. We’re not salespeople. We’re service people. And you don’t have a service though. If you don’t have anything that is duplicatable and what people often don’t ever think about in real estate at all is what is your process look like? Like what’s your process to working with buyers and sellers? Do you have a consistent gift? Are there systems in place most people don’t they run around with their head cut off and there is nothing duplicatable, which means you’re just a salesperson chasing the check. And if you can’t deliver that service that people remember you don’t have a business like there’s a reason like when you go into a hotel that the beds are all made the same way. Yeah, folded the same way. Right? Yeah. There’s a reason when you go into a restaurant that the food tastes the same. Imagine going into like your favorite restaurant or McDonald’s even McDonald’s is giving me time to different Yeah, well, that’s what happens in real estate. Like you got to have systems I used to have systems for everything I had. When I had a referral. I had a little card I’d send out those automated $10 gift card. I would have a nice to meet you. Thanks for closing gift was the same each and every time. When a clear to close came in the business I had a clear to close gift that I would send the people. I had systems and little customer service touches in a systemized way that we all duplicated. And you’re right you can’t run a business because you can’t have a brand without something that’s duplicatable. And what is duplicatable and your business does your process, people often overlook that. So I’m glad that you touched on that.
There’s a whole section on it on signature systems and how it is connected to each and every piece. If you don’t have a really solid signature process or signature system, then you won’t get as many repeats, you won’t get any referrals, you won’t actually handle as many clients, right? It’s connected. And it usually becomes the bottleneck. I say to people all the time, if I dropped 100 deals on you what would happen? And they’re like, oh, everything would fall apart. Yeah. And it’s like, well, then we need we need systems, we need processes, and we need to make sure that everything in your business is repeatable.
Yep, I like it. I like it. Alright, marketing, let’s unpack that a little bit. What do you see, there’s marketing. And then there’s lead generation, there’s a difference.
100%. Right, I like to break it down. I like to break it down between lead generation, nurture, and then conversion. Because I think that all three of them are very, are three separate things. And when we do like I do this audit, sometimes with businesses where we look at the six different levers that you can pull to grow from a business growth perspective. And lead gen is literally just how many people are coming into your world. And almost 100% of the time when I talk to an agent, I’m like, what, like, what, like, where’s the challenge in your business? I need more leads. I’m like, Do you need more leads? Or do you need more clients? Yes. And they’re like, Well, isn’t that the same thing? No, no, not necessarily. Right? And so the conversation happens, it’s okay, so there’s the lead gen part of it, which I’m kind of, of the mind that like, most people can generate leads. That’s not the hardest part of it. Right?
And you could, you know, you could buy him, you could generate them, you know,
a lot of ways to bring them in. But the magic actually happens in the nurture and the conversion stages, which is how do you get someone and what we teach is the psychological journey from stranger to client. So you know, how do you get someone to touch and touch all of the points that they need to build that elusive know, like and trust, and to be able to have them become from a cold lead to an inbound client, for that person to be reaching out to you to say, hey, you know what, I’d like to have a conversation. I’d like to hear about what you like, I’d like to hear about your services. Yep. Know that that piece is your nurture piece. That’s the piece that most agents don’t have at all. They go straight from lead gen to I’m going to try to call and convert Yeah.
100% There is no, this is all branding, guys. It’s like your personal brand. Let me paint a picture for people. So we have this mortgage broker and I’m rebranding, this is funny, you guys will like this. And I’m rebranding him. And this is what he wants to start is very slim. He wants to get on video, right? He wants to go out and do video do a video but he doesn’t like his brand, which means doesn’t like his process or what he stands for. And his brand is like the mortgage planner. He’s like, like, I’m not a mortgage planner at all, like at all. Like I don’t I don’t plan anything. I’m totally unorganized. Like it doesn’t fit me and therefore he can’t get out of here. That’s what’s holding him back. Yeah, so after you get to know me know, this guy’s like he ends up being a Star Wars nerd. So we rebrand him made the rate be with you is his tagline now, right? And it’s all like Star Wars and he calls himself the Rebel Alliance mortgage team. And now how we’re gonna adapt that into his process is that he has everything done through a Star Wars theme. That’s what people are gonna remember guys, even the way he communicates. So we’re bouncing off ideas, and we’re defining process and all that stuff right now. And you know, like, he Jabba the Hutt is gonna cut the fat out of the loan process, right? Like there’s all kinds of different ways that you can go ahead and create that experience that we’re talking about that people will actually remember. And like There’s who are who are you going to remember more? And who are you going to refer more? Because your services marketing? Yeah. Right. And
that’s what the people most important part is important part. It’s
people remember how you made them feel that’s like, you know, we all hear that st all the time. This is how, like, no one will remember the guy that gets refinanced from Quicken Loans, but they’re gonna remember the Star Wars Darth Vader refinance process forever. And there are a lot more, that’s just how this you take
the edge off of it totally right, like money is stressful real estate is stressful. Yep. And the more streamlined it is, the more the more enjoyable it is. And the more people this is all about human to human connection people buy from humans. Yep. And so a lot of this comes down to you know, are you What does that psychological journey look like? Are you taking them from stranger to client in as much of an automated way as possible? And then is there consistency? Once you get in front of that person or someone on your team gets in front of that person? Are they going through all of this marketing, and then all of a sudden, they’re like, this doesn’t feel the same? Yeah, or this isn’t what I thought that I was signing up for, or I met this person in real life. And like, I just didn’t like them. Because their marketing did was not authentic to who they actually are.
And know what that sort of reminds me of is like, when you show up to a restaurant and meet a client, you’re like, that’s not who I saw in the picture of your day.
And real estate agents love that. Right? It’s like the glamour shot from the agent. That’s what we’re known for. And, and I think that it all it all comes down to like video for one. Anybody who says to Me, I’m completely opposed to doing video. Well, I can’t help you. Yeah, because really like how in today’s day and age, how can you build human connection with someone if you can’t see them on video?
Yep. I agree. It’s not longer optional. It’s necessary.
Yep. Yep. So So there’s, there’s, there’s all of these pieces. Plus Lena, we teach the, we teach the social media stuff, which is like the you know how to do it without throwing a bunch of money behind it. And then we also teach the paid traffic part of it, which is, you know, how to how to do it at scale. And then, you know, there’s, there’s elements of the personal side of it. Sometimes people will say, I’m a very private person. And I’m like, you get to be very private, if you want. But we need to have personal elements. I don’t need you to necessarily talk to me about like your childhood trauma. But I do need to have some personal elements about how much you love your dog. Yeah, right. Like I need.
We don’t we don’t care about we don’t care about your foot fetish. But we need to know that your family man, right,
exactly, exactly. Like Like, what are your values? What matters to you, like, give us something to work with? You get to be incredibly
private, but just, I might turn some people off if I do that.
Well, good. Good, because, you know, I wouldn’t you rather have 1000 people who absolutely love you than 100,000 people who really don’t care. Yeah, who could take or leave you? Right? And that’s really what it comes down to.
I agree. I like let’s get back in the mindset, thing of it. I don’t even mean we’re sort of chatting through it. It’s just how we’re looking at our business. How does that? Yeah, you guys can see some of these ideas that we’re we’re just chatting here. You know, I mean, yeah, this is, but this is a stuff like what’s cool about what I always like about real estate is that everyone’s different, which means every single service should be different, but we don’t see that. That’s why like, I can call myself a dude. And I just started a team here. Give me a year from now, I’ll be glad to report my numbers. But it’s all marketing because I know there’s no other real estate dudes in San Diego. It’s a perfect market to launch it. Dude, Brandon is very coastal. Right? Yeah, so the dude process so that’s what I’m working through right now is I’m putting together like systems and how to dude sell real estate. Yeah, cuz I’m not going to be the one selling real estate. But I have to create a process for agents to follow because none of them have one. But
I need to have consistency. And the scalability of your business is partially based on Is there a repeatable process? And if somebody comes in and works with Sally, well, your dude so like, maybe there’s not a Sally on your team, but it’s the same idea. We could have dude, okay, okay. Okay. So so someone works with Sally versus someone works with Mike, they need to have you know, the personality may not be exactly the same. The conversations may not be exactly the same, but the process needs to be
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. 100% I like it. Let’s get into a little bit on the listing lab stuff because I know you concentrate a lot on listings, and that’s like your, your core and bread and butter. Yeah, and I think like, like right now it’s gonna be all listings, like the market shifted in 45 days. It’s so crazy that people are like, just 60 days ago. Oh, yeah, real estate. So easy money, many, many, many, many offers. And then now everyone’s like, holy shit, what just happened? Yeah, and people are scared. Right? You guys These are the best times to be in real estate these are when you take over Yeah, it’s the best like this these are so this is when you double down on this shit.
I have been talking for years about like the moment where all the people who shouldn’t be selling real estate will get out. And I’m really hoping that this is the moment
that happened 10 years ago happens every 10 years that’s a real estate cycle guys
and the who are the people who are running real businesses and who are scaling real businesses and who are taking it seriously and treating it the way that it needs to be treated. Those are the people who are going to not only last but also thrive during this period of time. You know, we’re coming from an 8020 rule to a 95 five rule
think it’s gonna go that deep ah, I’m kind of hoping so. Yeah. Yeah, you guys when there’s a shift, this is like the time that you get noticed like 100% We have a new product we just called listing or owner advocate and all it is is a seller process system. Right? We have five or six different ways we sell listings, like we you know, so we fix them this program, we have a trade in or buyer Move Up program, we have a sale leaseback program. And that’s a process guys, the reason why we created as because it’s a process that can be duplicatable, that sellers will remember, but each individual will treat it differently. Yeah. And it’s okay to have a personal brand. But you also have to have that process.
Yep. And it has to be customized to you to your market and to the people that you’re trying to work with.
What do you what are your predictions coming up with this market right now? What do you think’s gonna happen? I’m curious, you have a lot of experience.
What I what I think is going to happen with the market.
What do you think sure going on?
I really think that you know, it also depends on where I don’t think that we’re gonna see necessarily exactly the same trends right across North America. I think we’re gonna see micro pockets. I think that I mean, even just look at the you live in California, the excess that has happened a little bit, right, a lot.
There’s a lot of people right now actually, that are trying to rush the list because they know they missed the wave, you’re seeing listings popping up like crazy, there’s no inventory. Now people are like, Oh, it’s listless, listless list is because
everyone’s going to Austin, Texas, or Nashville, or, you know. And so, you know, a lot of it is just going to come down to like those micro pockets. And the people who are really going to do the best are going to be the people who can interpret the data and not just regurgitate it. I think there’s so many agents out there that are that are spewing out infographics that are taking something that their their brokerage provided them and throwing it out there as without any interpretation of the data without any information on what does this actually mean for you. And people don’t understand it. And people don’t understand what it means. And the more that we can actually set yourself up as the authority that can interpret the data that understands the data, and that has a process that can lead you through the process in this specific market is going to make a really big difference.
How many people were just posting, I mean, just um, guys, this is only 6090 days ago, the markets never going to go down. It will never go down in percentages, this market is never going to crash or it’s not going to crash, it’s going to correct. And we will I mean, it’s got to correct before it crashes. So we can’t say it’s not gonna crash? We don’t know. But I don’t think I don’t I don’t see. And I think you’re right on with the pockets, because people are still going to be moving to Florida, Texas, and all those markets and that migration wave with what’s happening, just because the cost of living costs everywhere going through the roof. So yeah, I totally agree with that. Interesting, what else you want to chat on? On this, Jess? What else what other insights you want to share with Damian?
I think that the number one lesson that I’m hoping people are getting from the book is that we only get to do this once. And the number one regret, I dedicated the book to my mom, because I think that she really ingrain this in me from when I was very small. The number one regret for people at the end of their life is that they work too much. And that they didn’t spend enough time with their friends and family that they didn’t experience things. They didn’t travel enough, whatever that looks like they didn’t they spent too much time focused only on the earning of money. Now most agents will or you know, a lot of agents will grow to a certain point until they’re quote unquote, successful, they’re gonna do 250 $300,000. And they’re gonna get stuck, because that becomes the bottleneck of the business. And it’s actually the most painful place to be in your business because you are considered successful, but you’re not successful enough that you actually have enough, I would say enough room to properly leverage and when you’re not properly properly leveraged, you wear all the hats in your business, and the business relies on you getting up every day and putting one foot in front of the other. The idea of freedom or why people get into real estate in the first place is unlimited income. Being able to set your own schedule and being able to help people 99% of agents know ever hit all three of those, because they’re actually not setting up their businesses with them in some of the ways that we’ve already talked about. So the reason I wrote this is because there are so many are, there’s this huge generation of burnt out agents who are the, you know, the crushing it era, right? Tons and tons of burnt out agents and burnout, I think a lot of the time people misunderstand it. And they think, Oh, well, I’ll just go on vacation for a week, burnout takes years to actually properly recover from. And so if you, you keep trying to push and you keep trying to move through, and keep doing things the same way that you’ve always done that done them, at some point, you become the thing that breaks, and you leave, you’re either have to get out, or you have to you have to rejig the entire business, which is what this is all about. It’s about setting up your business so that you have the trifecta of why we get into the business in the first place. And you can have that path out of production, if you want, you can have that, you know, multi seven figure business. And when I when I’m throwing numbers around like this, you do not have to be a genius to build a seven figure business, you just have to take the right steps, put the right processes in place. And then, you know, make sure that you’re holding those boundaries really solidly, because there’s a lot of people who build teams, and then they essentially become the personal assistant to everyone on the team, which is the opposite of what we’re talking about. So it really just all comes down to what are you building? And why like, what’s the end point? And have you actually reverse engineered every single thing in your business backwards from there?
Yep. Yeah, I mean, you’re on that person. Seven, five years ago, you know, I used your system. I didn’t have quite a system I got out, I just quit. And I started over, which is where we’re at today. So very well said, You guys get this book. Why don’t you go ahead and tell them really quick again, about where they get it. And all your info, and then we’ll get this wrapped up?
Yeah, cool. So it’s called more money less hustle. If you’re watching a video of any sort, this is what it looks like. And becoming the seven figure real estate agent. It’s available on amazon.ca and amazon.com. It’s, you know, physical book and Kindle. Hopefully soon, I’m going to record the audio book in about 10 days. So that’ll also be coming out in a couple of months. But yeah, I’m excited. I’m excited about it. And so far, the feedback has been amazing.
Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing. Folks. This isn’t always about selling houses. It’s about running a business. You guys need help with that. Check out this book. Get it the call, just check out our other stuff. She’s got a really cool service and listening labs and you guys can listen labs.com I believe is the website for that. But yeah, we appreciate guys watching another episode or listening to another episode of real estate marketing dude, check us out. Leave us some reviews, follow us on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and call me. Let us help you script and edit these videos. This isn’t rocket science. We take all that grunt work out and she started teed me up for this because editing your own videos and distributing them and really creating content is a waste of your time. It’s not a money making activity. And it is something that you should outsource to real estate marketing dude. If you guys are interested in that, please visit our website at real estate marketing do.com or estate marketing do.com And we’ll see you guys next week. Thank you. Bye. Thank you for watching another episode of the real estate marketing dude podcast. If you need help with video or finding out what your brand is, visit our website at WWW dot real estate marketing dude.com We make branding and video content creation simple and do everything for you. So if you have any additional questions, visit the site, download the training, and then schedule time to speak with a dude and get you rolling in your local marketplace. Thanks for watching another episode of the podcast. We’ll see you next time.