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Holy shift, what the hell is going on? A lot people are hurting right now in the industry, but this isn’t as bad as you think. Market shifts can be a blessing in disguise, especially if you are willing to adapt.
Phil Duke Jr started as a realtor but took a break during the 2008 market crash. In 2015, he jumped right back in and started his own company a few years later.
Three Things You’ll Learn in This Episode
- How do we deal with the market shift?
- How to stay ahead of the market.
- Make sure you aren’t missing out on clients.
Resources
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 powered curse, holy shift, what the hell is going on? We got a lot to chat about today. And, you know, we’re seeing it. I mean, I’m seeing it in every aspect a lot. So, in the mortgage side, I know a lot of the mortgage brokers are hurting right now, things have gotten a lot slower. Not as bad as for real estate agents. But folks, this isn’t that bad. In general, if this is your first shift, well, welcome. Welcome to it, take notes and learn a lot because the shifts are sometimes a blessing in disguise. At least they are for the entrepreneurs and the business owners. Because if you’ve been through one of these before, it’s the ones who last and the ones who start doing things differently through a shift are the ones who actually start grabbing market share, building their brands, and those are the ones who actually benefit the most. So if you’re hiding beneath a rock right now, because you’re worried about expenses, well, you’re doing exactly what we want you to do. Keep sitting there, don’t come out of that rock, stay in that closet. And we’re gonna be very worried you might want to get out of the closet by this conversation. But I wanted to bring on a very well rounded guests that I coincidentally met last week over in the wonderful city of Kansas City. I’m still trying to lose the 10 pounds I gained from the barbecue a couple of days Jesus, but he’s pretty well rounded guys. He’s broker donor. His office is doing over 100 deals a month. He has a title company or mortgage company. I mean, and he’s could see everything he’s been here before he’s he understands the shift. And if you want to take notes on anything, you’re gonna take notes from this guy. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and introduce our guests. Mr. Phil. Duke. What’s up, dude?
Yeah, man, I’m excited about this. Certainly a hot topic in my arena. And hopefully we can share some nuggets that will help some folks through this time because there’s really nothing to be afraid about. So
yeah, I agree. Why don’t you tell everyone where you’re at? Who the hell are you? Give us a quick little brief rundown and I got all kinds of questions for you.
Yeah, so Phil do Jr. I’m in Northport, Alabama, most people don’t know where that is. But it’s west Central Alabama. Tuscaloosa, Alabama is on the other side of the river. From us here. That’s where the University of Alabama is. We’re pretty good football team for a couple years now. So we’re here in a relatively small market. And, you know, I was one of those people that got in the business. At at a time when the market was on fire back in Oh, six, everything was selling. And then oh, 708 happened. And unfortunately, I didn’t make it through that shift. And so I ended up joining the military and going back to school. And in 2015, I jumped back in the business as a part time agent and went from a part time agent to a top producing agent to a team leader to a broker owner to now having multiple location multiple states and a mortgage company and a title company. And so you know, a lot of things I learned along the way. And you know, I’ve been in one of these before, and I didn’t make it. So this is certainly something that I’m really looking forward to the challenge. And I know what I need to do this time because I didn’t do it the right way the first go around.
Yep. Well, I could guarantee you that your military experience discipline and all that has a lot to do with it today. Let’s start at the very beginning. Let’s tell everyone what you’re not going to do right now. Let’s start with that, like, what are you not going to do right now what I’m seeing is people are like, pulling back. They’re, they’re scared they’re in? They’re not doing anything. And that’s part of the problem. I mean,
yeah, I think I think one thing I’m definitely not doing is I’m not buying into the hype that we’re about to crash and everything’s gonna be over with. The reality of it is every single day, there’s buyers who are making offers on properties and the sellers are accepting them. And it’s going to be that way, no matter how good or how bad it ends up being. And so one thing that I learned, you know, along the way is that the markets always going to be good for somebody, it’s been really good for sellers the last couple of years, hasn’t really been very good for buyers. But it’s either going to be good for sellers or buyers or renters or investors. And so you know, more than ever, you’ve got to have a well rounded approach. Is it going to be bad for sellers? I mean, I don’t think so. If, if you’ve owned a property for more than two or three years, you’re probably sitting at 100 grand or more in equity in your property right now. And several years ago, we used to go out on a listing appointment and just hope that there was enough equity that they could pay us a commission to be able to sell that house. So if if unemployment does go up, and people start moving to areas where cost of living is down, and they need to sell, they’ve got equity in their houses right now that they didn’t have in oh eight and oh nine and 2010. You know, the same buyers that have been complaining about lack of inventory and bidding wars, they’re now able to get in houses, yeah, at a higher interest rate. But there’s not as much competition out there right now. And then, for us, you know, really gearing up going back into buying rental properties. You know, we really haven’t tried going after investors, because it’s been tough for investors out there, I think, we’re going to have a lot of a lot of accidental investors that may be paid top of market value and bidding wars, and they’re going to find themselves transferring to a new city to a new job. And even if they don’t want to be a landlord, they’re gonna need somebody to manage that rental property. So we’re even gearing up to kind of shift that direction too. So. So we’re going to pivot, and it’s going to be good for somebody, and we’re just going to adapt. And we’re also going to mark it more as a big thing we’ve been talking with our agents about, if there’s going to be less sales done it make more sense to mark it harder to get a piece of those lesser amount of sales. So you know, those who market and have a clear message and who have a pipeline full of leads and appointments and people to follow up on are gonna win might be more time in the office, you know, prospecting and following up and less time after their own appointments. But if that’s what we got to do this, what we got to do
crazy that like, a lot of this is a it’s a lot of it’s like, just shift in mindset. But I’ve never realized why all the buyers like to buy when everyone’s buying because that’s usually the worst time to buy in hindsight. But then, and that’s just a quick, easy shift, you know, that folks can have and you have to know how to, let’s unpack a couple of the things he just mentioned. And these are a couple of really, I think, really good tip just to sort of unpack that because everyone’s going to ask the same questions. And they’re at getting asked this, Phil, hey, well, I’m just gonna hold off a little bit because, like, holy shit, did you see the fucking news? Like, wouldn’t you hold off right now? You know, you can easily reverse the way you answer that question be like, Well, that’s exactly why some of the smartest people are actually buying right now. Like, it’s weird that everyone wants to buy when everyone else is buying, but when no one buying when no one’s buying, that’s actually the time you do want to buy because there’s gonna be a lot of motivated sellers. So I’m not saying you buy anything, but I’m saying you do buy the right deal. That’s a different pitch. People are like, what, huh?
Yeah, or, you know, the thing that I would return to that person with is, how do you how do you determine if something is a good deal? Or not? You know, is it a good deal? Because it’s been sent on the market for 60 days, and nobody’s written an offer? Is it a good deal? Because 10 People wrote an offer within 24 hours? I mean, how do you determine what’s really a good deal, and I would also encourage anybody who’s in that buying window, whether they’re an investor or just, you know, buying something personally, don’t you wish you would have bought five years ago with those prices? And I bet we’re gonna be saying the same thing five years from today is when the economy is going to continue cranking out, I mean, you know, billions and billions of dollars of stimulus, just, you know, going through through through the house right now, it’s gonna be more and more inflation prices are going to continue to go up on everything. So I’d rather get in on it now at today’s prices with less competition, then a year from now, two years from now, five years from now. And then understanding also what to do with that money you’ve got, whether that’s, you know, doing a cash out refi to purchase a second property and leverage that property to build wealth. I mean, there’s just all kinds of opportunities out there in the market right now, if you know how to play the game.
He also said a couple other things, guys, if you got that. Property Management, yeah, there’s gonna be some annex accidental downloads and where you’re out in the country is going to be a little bit different. In our market, there’s been a lot of accidental landlords, if you bought in the last two years, you’re already down 20% 13%. But that’s normal for a very overinflated market. Much of rich people problems out here, right, Crimea River, everybody. But I want you to hear what he said is that, like, it’s true, like, you gotta adapt your services. He’s talking about getting a property management company, because if he doesn’t do that, what’s going to happen is he has a chance to lose touch with the seller of that property with an agent who does and then who’s going to get the listing when the time does come, right. So you got to start fishing upstream for that. Back in the crash short sales was our thing. properties don’t stop getting transferred. However, the way people transfer them is what changes and if you don’t defer enchant your message right now you can miss out on that. Another thing that we have to unpack them all for this market more. I’ve seen people that’s used to spend a lot of money on lead generation like teams like some of these big teams, you see these teams that are just crushing it. Well, I’m like, Dude, you’re spending 100 grand a month you better fucking be crushing it on leads on buying leads and opt ins like if you’re not fucking crushing it, you spend 100 grand a month like dude, you should be crushing it, you know, I mean, and I’m like, what? I don’t get it. But I’ve also seen those very teams win the shift. happens because the ROI is change on those numbers, folks, you cannot calculate when there’s a market shift like this, the one thing you can’t calculate is what your lead generation was doing the month prior. And therefore, because those numbers are going to change, just a little blip in consumer sentiment will fuck that up. And you could be a month or two away from losing hundreds of 1000s of dollars. But you said market more. And you’re right, I think you if anything in a shift, I do pull back on lead generation stuff, because I don’t know what that market or those numbers are doing yet. I can’t accurately take an ROI. But the one ROI that is always going to prove to be true is the one that comes from your past clients, friends, family and aunts and uncles. Market more market more get louder when everyone retreats. Talk to me a little bit more about that.
Yeah, I mean, so that’s a big thing that we’ve been talking with our agents, you know, our our business model within our brokerage is we don’t spend money on leads for our agents. But what we do do is we help them put together a marketing strategy, and they’ve got to do the work. So this is what it looks like in our company. Tuesday mornings, every other Tuesday morning, we do a 6am. Okay, I didn’t say that wrong 6am Video Chat, where we’re walking them through what content to create, how to post it as a Facebook ad how to retarget the same people over and over and over. And you know, it only the truly committed show up for that. I mean, it takes a little bit of extra effort for a real estate professional to get up that early in the morning, hop on a video chat. And we just do it for 30 minutes. But they’re out there on a weekly basis, creating video content. And we’re specifically targeting people in the local area where they work and to their sphere of influence. A lot of people don’t know this, but you can take your phone, your contacts list in your phone, you can download that into a spreadsheet, and you can upload that spreadsheet into Facebook Ads Manager, and you can target to people who are already in your phone as contacts. So think about your your sphere of influence whether you got 300 people, 500 people, 1000 people in your phone. And every time they log into Facebook, only those people are seeing your video content over and over and over. And we’re not we’re not preaching doom and gloom, we’re not preaching, you know, date the right marry the house. Yeah, I mean, we’re, we’re just going to keep plugging forward, it’s going to keep being good for somebody. And we’re just going to keep that message out there. So, so I think these are things again, you know, it’s been, I hate to ever say it’s a good thing when the market goes down a little bit. But I have seen a greater separation, even within my group of agents between the ones that really want to make it through this. And the ones who are just going to continue, you know, struggling a little bit, it’s really the committed people, I’ve started rising to the top. And a lot of them their business is better right now than it was six months ago. You know, because they’ve just stayed committed to it. So I think those are just a couple of ways that we’re working on doing it. You know, video CMAs still our number one way of generating listing appointments, we just created a really simple video with little screenshare video, where we like pull up the tax records. And hey, Mike, Phil here with first class real estate, looks like you bought your house for 150 back in 2018. And, and I just want to show you the last three houses that sold in your neighborhood. And here’s one for 240. And here’s one for 250. And here’s one for 260. And then you’re probably not looking to sell right now, but just wanted you to know that, you know, if you were to need to sell right now, even with the way the market is, and it’s not that well, not as bad here as it is in other areas, your house will be worth somewhere between 240 and 260. So again, like we’re not waiting on them to click a home evaluation landing page to ask for that report. We’re just sending it to them whether they wanted it or not. And we put that into a YouTube, I can unlisted video on YouTube, we, we text that out to the husband or wife whoever’s, you know, living in that house. And there we go every six months, you know, we’re touching people in our sphere of influence, just by letting them know what their house is worth. And in a down economy, you know, there’s probably people right now that pay too much for a car as well. I have a lot of friends that pay too much for a camper. They’ve never camped before in their life, but they bought a $40,000 camper they’ve used three times, they’re gonna need to pay some of that debt off. So they might not have planned on selling, but they’ve got 100 grand and equity in their house right now they can still sell that house and they can pay off that camper. So people are going to continue needing you know, real estate and I think it’s just always gonna win for somebody. We just got to continue trying to find those people who who are seriously needing to buy or sell something and they’ll always be there.
So I just want you to help sell my stuff a little bit here. So why video though? Like why why video doesn’t work? I thought.
Yeah, I mean video is the game changer. You know? You can only be I mean even if you were going to come in on, you know today, today’s a Monday, if you were to come in on Monday Ain’t crank crank out, you know, cold calls for eight hours, there’s only so many people you can talk to in an eight hour period. And, and less and less people are even answering the phones anymore. I mean all these robo calls and spam and all that kind of stuff, but you record one video a week, and you put that in a $5 a day ad on Facebook, and you’ve got video playing for you constantly. You too, you know, the kind of an area where I’m spending more of my time on people looking to relocate to your area, want to know what it’s like to live there. And Zillow can’t tell them the best place to walk their dog, or the best park or the best. I’m doing a video this week, the top five boat ramps in Tuscaloosa, people who who have boats they’re looking there, we have a lot of lakes and rivers around here. Outdoor recreation is a big thing here. This is located tell him that but we can in video? And does it take some time to plan it out? script it out? Edit it? Yes, it does. But that video can be creating leads for you and can be in front of people 24/7 365 So I really can’t think of a more valuable tool than that. Yeah, you can do it with a Facebook ad. And it’s okay to have your picture on there and, and have a you know, picture of your business card or whatever. But video just connects on so much of a deeper level. And that’s what people want to see. When I’m when I’m looking up how to do something. I’m on YouTube and YouTube as my number one go to. So, you know, we need to take those same same approaches to what we do in the real estate world.
Agreed. And we’ll take a 15 second commercial break here. You know, you could get your video scripted, edited and distributed at real estate marketing do.com We will help you tell you what to say. We’ll be in the room with you. And then we even help you distribute it whether you want to run ads put into your YouTube channel, whatever it is, it is you don’t need more leads. You need more dudes back to our regular message. I love he said this is so funny. Like please never say date the right marry the house guys like I’m gonna shoot someone if they say that again. Like I can’t stand that I hate it. I hate it data rate, marry the house dude, shoot the messenger. Don’t copy that, like, stop. I hate it. I was so annoying. So when I saw that stuff, most people even what that meant, like consumers, by the way, only, like the real estate industry knew what they meant a lot of people didn’t understand that. But that thing went viral. And that’s so funny. So that folks, great videos, it’s more impactful. So most impactful way to communicate. 90% of communication is done through tonality and body language, which can only be done through video. That’s why people don’t get you out of your head. And if you farm them with video content, they’ll start associating your name with whatever your name is associated with that simple farm with friends and family and Facebook friends. What talk to me about the mortgage side? And what’s going on there. Because we all learn a lot there’s that I listen to the shows Well, and what should they be doing right now? What do you what do you guys do it?
Well, to be honest with you, I mean, it’s this very similar. I mean, that’s a great thing about being in the industry I’m in is the same things we’re doing our real estate company, is exactly what we’re doing for our mortgage business as well. You know, mortgage professionals have been able to get away with just showing up at sales meetings dropping off though nuts. Commenting on Facebook, you know, how awesome that new vehicle was that she bought, or how pretty the view is at the beach. And when you’re on vacation, and, and, you know, mortgage applications are down. And so you know, what we’re doing with our mortgage business very similar. On the real estate side of things is we are creating video funnels, and we’re generating our own buyers, and not just depending on real estate agents to provide us with ready, willing and able able buyer applicants. So has it slowed down? Yes, it has, you know, but again, you know, we can just sit around and wait and hope that it changes and, and keep waiting on referrals to come in from agents or we can go out there and hunt our own business down. And when we get that business, we get a good approval that comes through and we got an applicant that’s ready to go. Well, now we can figure out which agent we want to send that person to. And we can kind of pick and choose which which agents we want to work with. And we like working with agents that are doing the same kind of stuff we are. I think our agents like working with mortgage lenders who are also out there generating their own leads as well. Not just waiting on a handout from one of the agents. I mean,
the mortgage empires where they just take take take take take like hey, got leads for me. Hey, by the way, I got tickets for a Cubs game tonight because you want to roll. Yeah.
Yeah, that’s honestly I mean, to be honest, that’s the main reason why I wanted to get in the mortgage business because I was like, as real estate professionals, we’re the ones doing all the hard work now. Now that I’m in it, you know, there is more that goes on behind the scenes, obviously. But if you can generate the leads, you can figure out the processing and the underwriting and the closing and the font all that kind of stuff.
same marketing plan as a real estate agent.
Yeah, it’s exactly the same. You know, you know, it’s exactly the same marketing, you can literally do the same message, you know, our marketing that has anything to do with REITs that have anything to do with what’s going on the economy, you know, you know, we put out a view magnet video, you know, top five reasons to live in whatever town we want to do. And then just a couple tips that are going to help them throughout their mortgage process. And then you know, you know, hey, click here to see which loan programs you might qualify for. Really, really simple. It’s just mind blowing to me that, that, that so many in the mortgage business are just waiting on agents to just send them a referral, and not going out and generate their own business, you know, they got hundreds of applicants that have applied, but they’re not taking time to go through that database and see, you know, who might be ready right now, who who did end up by retargeting that database. And so those are the kind of things that I think, are going to have to become a normal part of any mortgage lenders arsenal. And we’re lucky here that we know how to do it on the on the real estate side of things. So we’re just doing the exact same thing with our lending team.
And your market to my guess is that, and I’m not saying anything about the South. Right. Not, I’m not saying anything about the South, but I think you’re pretty technologically advanced for the South. Yeah,
I would agree. Yeah. It’s, uh, you know, we have, we have people in our area that, that that requests for us to come by and show them how to do things, just just setting up their CRM, just basic stuff like that, that you would think is just normal, everyday, people would just know how to do it if they’re in the mortgage business or in the real estate business. But yeah, we’re taking you know, everybody else, you know, people around town, there’s still spending 2500 hours a month per billboard,
you’re spending five bucks a day on ads to get the same results.
Yeah, we’re spending $140 in a month, getting the same results is what’s taking them five grand a month with two billboards that they can’t even track and verify where those leads came from. So it is just kind of mind blowing to me. So I would just say, you know, to anybody that’s listening to this watching watching this, you know, those who learn how to market, particularly digitally market video marketing, you’re gonna win in this market that everybody else is gonna get left behind, it’s going to be extremely expensive for them to continue marketing the way they are. And so if you will commit to learn in this digital marketing, this video marketing way of doing business, number one, you’re gonna save money right away, but you’re also gonna get probably a better result than those who are spending far more, and they’re not gonna be able to spend that much and what happens when the billboards go away? Will they remember you six months from now? If you’re not on a billboard anymore? I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think we forget them. Now, videos playing every week. You know, one one video a week can change the game for you doesn’t have to be, you know, if you can do one video a day, that’d be great. That’d be something to work toward. But if you’re kind of new at this, you’re kind of looking for something to do. one video a week in a Facebook campaign can really be a game changer for you.
It’s just a popularity contest. You guys like let’s not overthink it to video. How do you do this blah, blah, don’t don’t worry about the logistics, the popularity contest, someone who does more content more video than someone who doesn’t is just got a lot more attention than they do. And then a certain percentage of the people who give that person their attention, need your services, it’s this is all this is. But you have to remain top of mind. We’re really talking about his brand. The end of the day, your brand is only as large as the number of people that recall it are associated with your line of work, right? So consistently communicate through video, that’s all that’s just one thing. But regardless of whether you’re going to learn to run Facebook ads, or do a video, whatever it is, you got to do something because everyone’s holding back. This is the bet the time the domain. At least for me, I need to get your opinion on this. But the main thing is when you get a market like this and everyone everyone pulls back, so then you just have that much more attention. And you I could tell you straight up, there’s a lot of people pulling back. And that means is a lot less people running ads. That means there’s a lot less people doing videos, that means there’s a lot less people making noise. And when you you won’t see it, maybe instantly, but it’ll come back to you within the next six months. And I think that’s a lot of the risk. Think back at COVID. You remember the people and COVID one of the guys that I was on stage with us, I believe he started in COVID. Right? That’s when he started as tiktoks and all that because he didn’t know what else to do. Now he could have he could have sat there and did nothing but he took time because he knows how to start shooting videos and now he’s got like a million followers or some shit now on Tik Tok and he’s crushing it. Yeah, you got to show up man.
Yeah, it does not do you any good to sit there and do nothing. I mean, do something, you know. And right now, it’s pretty clear to almost everybody out there in the real estate industry right now that video Oh, is where it’s at. So we’ve all got these wonderful cameras in our pockets. You know, I mean, this is, you know, nothing fancy, just iPhone 13. But the camera on this thing is far superior than anything we had five years ago. So just you know, with a, with a selfie stick, and, you know, either a shotgun mic or a wireless clip on mic, you can make really, really good videos that people will be entertained by. And you can become the local real estate celebrity, the local mayor of your town. And if you do that, you’re gonna win. And it’s pretty simple formula. But it does take some planning, it does take some commitment. And ultimately, you know, that is, that’s really the big thing that’s going to decide who makes it and who doesn’t in this market, the truly committed are going to adapt, they’re going to figure out a way to do it, they’re going to do the things they know they already need to be doing. And they’re just going to be committed to do it. And they’re going to come out on the other side of this thing, really, really in a good position. And then when the market does shift, they’ll have all these huge follower base that already knows likes them and trust them because they built up this video viewer audience, and then life is going to be even better for them at that point, I believe.
Yep. Always in the audience. You hit it right on the dot. Love it, man, you got any final end or closing thoughts that you want to give to everybody.
And I would just say you know it, the markets always gonna be good for somebody, it’s either gonna be good for buyer’s or seller’s or renters or investors. So real estate is going to continue to change hands. You know, if somebody’s property went up 100 grand in value in the last two years, and even if it went down by $20,000, they’re still sitting at $80,000 equity. So you know, don’t buy into the the sky is falling, you know, date the rate, marry the house, I mean, let’s speak about what people actually care about. And if you do those kinds of things, and you focus on those things, you’re gonna win and let everybody else you know, you know, complain about you know, the economy and inflation and interest rates and all these kind of things. Just keep your head down, keep doing what you need to do. I’m betting if you’re listening to this watching this, you probably already have a good idea of what you need to be doing what you’ve been needing to do, but maybe you hadn’t didn’t need to do it during the market the way that it was the last two or three years. Just do the things you already know you need to do if you do those things, you’re probably going to be very successful.
Yep, love it man. Just don’t freeze whatever you do. Just freeze remember the closet agent is still the closet agent at the end of the day. So thank you guys for listening other absolute real estate marketing dude folks script that distribute your videos if you’re really struggling with this, not only we do it less expensive in your market but we’ll do a bigger better and better than anyone you probably hire locally because all I do I speak eat bleed video consecration for you. So reach us on our website, real estate marketing do.com and connect with us on our channels. Again, thank you for listening. Thank you for downloading. We appreciate each and every one of you. And we’ll see you guys on next week’s podcast peace. 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 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.
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