Maximize Your Real Estate Success – 5 Actionable Tips You Need to Do!
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In this week’s episode of Masterclass, we had the pleasure of hosting Robert Mack, a seasoned real estate agent and expert in the field. Robert shared invaluable insights on how to skyrocket your success in the industry. Here are the key takeaways:
1. Utilize Chat GPT for Professional Communication and Marketing: Robert emphasizes the power of using Chat GPT to enhance your listings and effectively communicate with attorneys. It’s a game-changer for streamlining your workflow and presenting yourself professionally.
2. Networking and Prospecting: Robert’s current focus is on networking and prospecting. He firmly believes that the number of conversations you have directly impacts your income and opportunities. Make it a priority to add value to every interaction and be around as many people as possible to create opportunities.
3. Improving Your Communication Skills: To thrive in the real estate industry, improving your communication skills is crucial. Robert recognizes the value of enhancing not only his skills as a real estate agent but also as a leader, communicator, and husband. Strive to become a better communicator to foster professional development and personal growth.
4. Open Houses: Doing open houses is essential in real estate. Elevate your open houses by conducting thorough research and enhancing your skill set. Consider linking up with successful agents who conduct open houses and offer your assistance as a second body to facilitate learning and growth.
5. Investing in Yourself: Robert places great importance on investing in oneself. Whether it’s through monetary investments in coaching programs or seeking out free mentorship and accountability, making this commitment has the potential for significant returns. Remember, investing in yourself is never a wasted expense.In addition to these insights, Robert shares his experiences with gardening as a metaphor for focusing on more motivated leads and utilizing technology to save time. He also dives into the benefits of using chat GPT for generating video ideas, script ideas, and email content.
Robert, being passionate about self-care, emphasizes the significance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle, including whole and nutritious meals, regular exercise, and ample sleep. We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences with implementing chat GPT or trying out any of the strategies discussed in this episode. Share your stories with us, and we might feature them on future episodes of Masterclass!Don’t forget to listen to the full episode to gain even more valuable insights into Robert’s success strategies. Stay tuned for upcoming episodes, where we’ll continue to provide expert guidance on excelling in the real estate industry.
Transcript
[00:00:00] I came up with something that I thought could be beneficial to everyone. So, you know, what I find is that when we do these master classes, and not to take away from any of it, but the instructors aren’t always doing what they’re telling everybody else to do. Like, make your calls, call these people.
But if you really ask the instructor who they’ve been calling, I. They’re not really making a lot of phone calls, and so I thought in an effort to have integrity, I wanted to talk about the five things. Five in a play for obviously five realty that I’m working on personally and. With hopes that it inspires you all to maybe look at what you’re doing and either refocus energy on things that are gonna be higher and better use of your time, or maybe some of the things that I’m doing where you’re like, Hey, that’s a great idea.
I want to incorporate that into my day-to-day. So I’m gonna try to keep this short and sweet. I will probably go from maybe 15 to 20 minutes and then we can [00:01:00] leave some space for q and a. So I’m just gonna, I’m gonna jump right in. The, the number one thing I’m focused on right now is networking slash prospecting.
So we’ve heard this before, the, your income, your livelihood is directly dependent on the number of conversations that you have. So for me, I’m always looking to associate with and be around. As many people as possible because I know that when I’m around people and I’m having conversations around real estate or even just life, I can create opportunities.
And, and one thing I focus on is always trying to find ways to add value to the people that I’m talking to. So the one thing that we talk about a lot at rmg is we don’t wanna check in. Anybody cuz no one really wants to be checked in with. So we’re looking for ways to add value to the people that we talk to.
And when I say people that we talk to, [00:02:00] you know what we’re talking about? Our sphere, right? So we’ve got our clients that we’ve served in the past that we want to stay in touch with because they may be able to refer business to us or they may want to do more business with us, right? Right now a lot of people who own homes that have already bought with us may want to invest.
We want to spend time focusing our efforts with our friends and our family. And in my situation, I’m also looking to expand my team. So I’m spending time prospecting agents and I’m also spending time prospecting agents that may not necessarily be a good fit for my team, but maybe a great fit for five.
And so, so what am I doing? What am I saying? Right now, one of my favorite things to talk about, Is equity because a lot of sellers are not selling for a couple reasons, right? We, we know that the, the interest rate that they have is preventing them from wanting to get a new interest rate in the sixes and sevens.
And we also know that if they list their property and they can’t sell it, where are they? I [00:03:00] mean, if they can sell it, but where are they gonna go? So there’s this bottleneck. So I was like, okay, well how can I get. People who have equity to, to transact. And I actually asked chat, G P T, what are three ways that a homeowner can leverage their equity to create more wealth?
And the top three answers were a pull money and create capital improvements. So that’s gonna create a higher quality of life for these people that don’t plan on moving. And then when they want to go sell in the future, their home is in better condition. B, they can pull money from their property. Use that.
As a down payment to buy their next property and then rent out their current home, which is now turning them into a, an investor and they’re imp increasing their portfolio size. And then the third is pulling money from their current residence and just using that money to invest. So for example, I know somebody right now, my network that pulled 300 k from their equity, they bought a [00:04:00] fourplex in Cleveland Cash and now they’re cash flowing.
So a great email to somebody that you’re working that that’s in your database that is sitting on a mountain of equity is, Hey, I’m not sure if this is for you, but right now I’ve got several clients pulling equity from their property to do one of the three things. If any of these investing strategies sound interesting to you, I’d love to set up a time to have a conversation.
But at the end of the day, here’s what’s going on. A lot of, a lot of you are overthinking, and I speak from experience who to call and what to say, and that’s creating paralysis. And so you’re doing nothing and that’s the absolute worst thing you can do. So stop focusing on the message and just start focusing on the activity, which is call people that you’re really comfortable with and have conversations around it.
Another, another strategy that I like to use is, who do you know? That [00:05:00] might be interested in possibly making a move. Nobody likes to sell. Nobody likes to buy. That’s like a painful process, but people wanna move. And the beauty of it is, is if you say, Hey, who do you know that’s thinking about possibly moving?
Number one, the person you’re talking to, you’re taking the pressure off of them to to say like, oh, I’m not interested in buying or selling. But if they are, they’ll tell you and then you don’t have to say, Interested in selling or buying? Cuz when you say interested in moving, it already addresses both selling and buying.
So, so at the end of the day, make your calls wherever you’re looking to grow, have those conversations, the more conversations you have. The, the more you stir the pot, the, the more opportunities you’ll create. So that’s one of the things I’m doing. The second thing that I’m doing right now is I’m focusing on improving my skills.
I always want to get better as a leader, as a communicator, as a real estate agent as a husband. So, [00:06:00] so I’m always looking to improve my skills. The number one way I’m looking to improve my skills right now is through communication. So You know, in this industry we, we always hear things like we need to have more conversations, but we never really hear.
We need to have better conversations. Raise your hand. There’s a lot of people, there are group settings here. Raise your hand if you think that you talk too much when you’re with a client and you don’t ask enough questions. Okay. So like half the room. So, If you’re talking more than 20% of the time, then you’re not doing a great job being a salesperson, because whoever asks the most questions, controls the conversations.
And the more questions you ask, the more you uncover. And the more you uncover, the more certainty you create around the advice you can give this person. So, so for me, you know, I spent some time going through the Phil Jones event and I, I think [00:07:00] Nazar is there right now. Right. He has a book called Exactly What to Say.
There are other books you can use too there. You know, there’s never Split the Difference with Chris Voss. He’s a, an F B I negotiator. He also is really heavy on the question based selling, but the bottom line is, is. If you’re looking to sell more homes and serve more people, you have to look within and find ways to elevate your skillset.
And if you can be a great question asker and you can be a great communicator, you can have the same amount of conversations that you’re having now, but have a higher conversion rate. And I’m a much bigger fan of working smarter, not harder. Number three, leverage technology. So that’s one of my, my OB obsessions right now is how can we create more automation in the day-to-day?
So I’m looking at how can we can create more automation on the team? How can, how can we make things that we do? So, for [00:08:00] example, if we’re always having the same conversation with a prospect, why can’t we just make a video and then just share that video and never have to have that conversation again?
So little things like that that buy back your time. Most specifically, I’m learning more about artificial intelligence, so, Chat G B T is, I’m assuming on most people’s radars. And so if you haven’t heard of chat G B T I would encourage you to Google it and explore it. And if you have heard of it, I would encourage you to use it more than you are currently using it unless it’s part of your day-to-day.
Who here right now is using chat g B T for something really cool that would love to unmute themselves and maybe talk a little bit about how it’s making their life easier. Or can we say who uses it for embarrassing things? Like what’s that mean? Every text message I send out every email? No, I’m teasing.
Yeah, you can, you can do that. Yeah. For real. No, I use chat [00:09:00] G B T. We use it a lot. We’ve started using it on our listings just to put in the information and then we always tweak it. I send out a lot of emails to attorneys and other things, you know, and you kind of get that What’s the word? Imposter syndrome sometimes.
And so even though I, you know, I grew up, I worked in a law office, but I’m like, now, you know, I haven’t communicated with attorneys for a long time. So any email that I’m sending out, I’m putting it in chat, G p t if I wanna, you know, create a marketing piece or anything like that, I’m throwing it in chat.
G p t. Yeah, absolutely. You know, we were, we had a call With Tom Ferry today, and he was talking a little bit about Chad, g b T and, and he was talking about all the different ways he uses it. So, you know, at, at, at, at the agent level. I would encourage you all to go in there and explore, ask it questions, and, and, and just play around with it and learn.
But, you know, if you’re looking for video ideas, If you’re looking for script ideas, if you’re looking for ways to create emails, the beautiful thing about it is you can [00:10:00] actually create tonality using Chad Sheet BT two. So I’ll give you a perfect example. I’m working with a client. She’s looking to sell her property.
She’s got a tenant in place. She’s like, what do I say to this person? To like make the, the, you know, like the, the 60 day notice. How do I make it official? And I was like, have you heard of Chad g p t? And she’s like, yeah, I use it for work. I go, just ask Chad g p t to write a 60 day lease termination letter.
And I said, I said, you know, if you want it to be a little bit friendlier than when it’s done writing it, just ask Chad g p t to make it friendlier and it will actually make that. 60 day lease termination, a friendly letter. And she did it and within seconds it, it spit it out and she emailed it to the client and the client signed it and we’re done.
So, so anytime you have to create something like that, ask Chad. G b t I second the marketing ideas. You know, one thing that we’re looking to do is get people to raise their hands more through our direct mail campaign. [00:11:00] And Naar had a, a talk with Tom Ferry and they were talking about what are the crazy.
Marketing ideas that you’re, you’re offering people to get them to raise their hands. Like one of the ones that Azar shared with me that I, that we’re, we’re, we’re beta testing right now is we will sell your home for 3% more than market value, or we’ll do it for free and, and we’re just testing that right now.
So I went into chat, G p T and I was like, give me 10 crazy real estate related marketing ideas to get a homeowner. To be interested in wanting to sell their home. And it spit out all these different ideas. And you know, some of them are kind of like, nah, that’s not gonna work. But if you ask for 10, you’re gonna find two to four great ones in there.
And then you could say, give me 10 more, give me 10 more. And it will dig deep and it’ll find more. So if you’re looking for marketing ideas, third in there, what if it’s like, give me marketing ideas to get somebody who’s lived in their property for 40 [00:12:00] years or more. To be interested in wanting to sell their home.
Cuz one of my farms is like, people lived there for 40 plus years. Whatever I can do to get ideas through chat, G p t I’m using it, presentation ideas. And then also one, one cool thing is if you wanna like get a synopsis of an article, copy the entire article, post it in there and just say, give me a two paragraph synopsis of this article and it’ll break it all down for you.
So, Leverage technology to make your life easier, whether it’s through automation or if it’s AI to CR to create new ways of doing what you are already doing. Number 4 thing that I’m doing right now is I’m elevating my character through coaching and through masterminding. So raise your hand if you’re getting coached right now.
Okay. I see a few hands getting raised, so look. It doesn’t matter if you hire a coach on a one-to-one basis. It doesn’t matter if you find a mentor. It doesn’t matter if you find [00:13:00] a peer group of like-minded individuals at the end of the day. We always want to be growing. We always wanna be getting better.
And if you’re just leaving it up to you and your own devices, if you’re anything like me, you go into autopilot and you just keep doing what you’ve always done and then six months go by, 12 months go by, you look back and you’re like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe I still haven’t done this yet. I can’t believe I still haven’t done this yet.
So I know that about me. And so I’m part of two mastermind groups. I’m part of an accountability group, and I’ve literally got. Four coaches. So just to give you an extreme example, and there are people by the way, that spend 10 x what I’m investing in myself. But just to give you an example, when I first started in real estate, I was just finding smart agents in my office that I could kind of connect with, ask questions with.
I would talk to my broker. I was looking for free ways to get better joining networking groups. That’s what I did. But [00:14:00] over time, I started investing in myself. So to give you an example of what I invest in myself, this calendar year, 2023, so I’ll invest $25,000 in Tom Ferry coaching, plus the cost of the events.
I’m spending $30,000 this calendar year for my men’s group, which has helped me significantly. And how I interact with people that I care about and also my own internal growth. I just pulled the trigger on a $30,000 a year coaching program for another business that I’m running. This is coaching that’s unrelated to real estate, but to my new business.
And I just spent $6,500 to go get certified with Phil Jones in a private mastermind setting of just 13 people. And a lot of people are like, God, you’re crazy for spending that much money on yourself. But I’ll tell you this, that Phil Jones class that I spent $6,500 on, well easily be. A $250,000 return on my investment [00:15:00] after I get and sell multiple listings and help multiple buyers and help my team, help multiple sellers and buyers through the strategies that I learned in that class.
So I don’t look at it as a cost. I look at it as an investment in my myself, and I’m turn, I’m looking to turn that investment into 10 or even a hundred x. If you have money to invest in yourself, I highly recommend it if you don’t have money to invest in yourself, but it’s a goal of yours. Find ways to get free mentorship and free accountability until you can, but it’s necessary that you do.
And then the last thing that I do right now is I’m focused on taking care of myself. I’m focusing on getting enough sleep. I’m focusing on eating as much whole foods, nutritious foods as possible, knowing that I’m not perfect, but I’m always looking to put great stuff into my body. Right? Garbage in, garbage out, great stuff in great stuff out.
And I’m looking to exercise [00:16:00] daily, sometimes exercising two times a day, right? So I feel like if I get enough sleep, if I fuel my body appropriately, and if I exercise, And, and improve my strength, then I’ll be in the best position possible to help my clients get what they want. Because real estate is an extremely demanding business and clients demand a lot from us.
The business demands a lot from us. And if you’re not at a hundred percent, which we all can control, then you’re not gonna be able to help people at a hundred percent. So, so those are the five key areas that I’m focused on. Growing myself, my team, my business, my relationships. And I wanna open it up to some q and a to see if anybody has any specific questions around things they’re working on they need help with.
Or maybe if you want to dive deeper into other things that I’m working on to add more clarity. Just really quick. Can you hear me? Yeah. Okay. So you mentioned that we don’t have the money [00:17:00] yet to find free ways to pretty much invest in your, yourself, your knowledge. What are some suggestions that you have as far as free avenues that we can take to get there?
Yeah, so I would start looking internally, right? If if you’re in the office, look for an agent in your office that’s doing what you wanna do. I know there are some really strong top performers in, in that in that office and find ways to help them make their lives easier. Right? So an agent. When I, let’s just say before I was really growing the team, if an agent in my office came to me and said, Hey, Rob, I, I love what you’re doing.
You know, you’re, you’re, you’re getting great listings, and I, I wanna learn how to do that. You know, would it be okay if I, if I took over some of your open houses or if I shadowed you when you did a showing or a final walkthrough or a listing presentation, nine times outta 10, I would say yes. So if you can find somebody in the office, that’s a great place [00:18:00] to start.
If you can’t find somebody in the office, then maybe you can look outside the office. I would say the easiest way to get mentorship for free on your own terms. Would be like YouTube University. That could be a great way to get started. If you find a podcast you love, if you find a YouTube creator that you really like on social media and you wanna dive deeper into their content, that’s a great free way to learn.
I’ve got a lot of people that I talk to that are on YouTube University. All the time, but I would start there, you know, or, or with the broker, right? Or, or talk to Christina and ask her, Hey, who do you know in the office that you think could be a great mentor for me? Because at the end of the day, here’s the best part.
Like it’s a, it’s a circular approach. Like I look at it like gears, right? Like if you got gears, if one of the gears is turning, the other one will turn. And sometimes this gear turns that helps. This one, and sometimes this gear turns and helps this one. So if you’re able to [00:19:00] find people in your office and help them turn their gears, they in turn will help you turn your gears and it’ll be a mutually beneficial relationship.
So I would start there.
I’m gonna add to that, Rob, that Jonathan, you have access to Aloo and so there’s a lot of great content on there. A lot of, if you look at the calendar, Daily webinars, masterminds, recorded information. So that’s really a great one to go on. And then a plug for our friends at bam, like follow them on Instagram, you know?
Yeah. Byron does every morning, and I’ve plugged this before. What does he call it? I can’t remember. I listen to, is it Knowledge Brokers? Yeah. Knowledge brokers or something? No, the hot, hot take or hot. Oh, the hot sheet. Hot sheet. Every morning he does that, and you could go back and watch it. You don’t have to watch it live at six 30, but he breaks down all sorts of stuff.
It’s like, it’s seeking the information and then also putting yourself out there that you want, you know, [00:20:00] I think you said the, you know, hungry mouse get fed as long as you’re you know, speaking out. But you have to be willing to put yourself out there. You know, one, one piece of advice I would share with you is, is singularity of focus is pretty important, so you could get completely bogged down in.
Like researching how to be a better agent, researching scripts and all this other stuff. So if I were you, I would really focus on what do you really want out of this mentorship? What do you really wanna improve at? What do you really want to do more in your business? And then start to research those type of topics.
Start to align yourself with agents who are doing that, right? Not just any agent, but agent. Like if you want to improve the way you do open houses and you want to convert at a higher level. Doing more open houses is definitely gonna help, but doing better open houses is a better approach. And to do better open houses, you have to do more research and improve your skillset.
So maybe you wanna link up with an agent in your office [00:21:00] that is doing tons of open houses and always gets open house leads. Hey, I just wanna be a second body in your open house this weekend. You’re probably gonna get a lot of traffic. I can help you direct traffic. I can help you follow up with the people that come.
I just want to see you in action because you’re doing such great work. I would like to do more stuff like you. Who’s gonna say no to that? You’re giving them a compliment. You’re offering to help them, and in turn, your needs will also be met. So figure out where you want the most support and then start to dial in where you think you can find it until you can afford it.
But ultimately, you always want to be in growth mode.
Who else has a question?
If no one’s raising their hand, I have one for you, Rob. What you, you mentioned working smarter, not harder. What are some things that you implemented, like maybe in the last few years or something that you’re, you’re doing different now than you were doing at the beginning of your [00:22:00] career? That’s, you know, smarter, not harder.
So the one thing that stuck with me about a month ago, actually, Byron, Lisa and Tom till were talking about it on the knowledge brokers is. A lot of us are thinking that the best way to close more deals is to get more leads. And so, so many of us have been conditioned to go wide, not deep. And what they were talking about in this episode was actually removing some of the leads that they were, that, that, that you’re working with so that you have more time to focus on the, the leads that are more motivated.
So I, I’ll give you a little metaphor. My team will probably laugh because I told this to them and they’re watching. But if you don’t know, my wife and I have recently gotten into gardening, and we’ve been watching a lot of YouTubes on how to be better gardeners because it’s not easy to grow a garden and plants die, and we don’t know why.
And too much water, not enough water. At any rate, we have this zucchini [00:23:00] plant, and for the first three months of having the zucchini plant, all the zucchinis that were growing were like four inches. In length and like one inch in diameter. They were tiny and we’re like, this isn’t right. Like this isn’t a zucchini, like the zucchinis that we see are like 10 to 12 inches.
So we’re watching all these YouTube videos and what we learned is that zucchini plants have a lot of erroneous branches and leaves because it’s like survival of the fittest. So they might be like five to eight male flowers on the base of the zucchini plant to promote bees, to come to pollinate, to create more zucchini.
The reality is, is you don’t need five to eight. You may only need two to three. You may not need eight leaves, but three to five could be enough. And so we start pruning and what happens is is as you cut these erroneous male flowers off and these leaves off, what happens is the plant redistributes that energy to the other areas that haven’t been cut off.
And [00:24:00] so now after watching these YouTube videos and we cut these branches and these flowers off our zucchinis are 10 to 12 inches, and they’re huge, and they’re freaking delicious. So what you need to ask yourself is, is what am I doing right now that is taking energy away from what I should be doing?
What areas do I need to cut off because they’re squeezing me for my energy and now I’m too wide and I’m not going deep. That’s something that’s great because if we have, Tom Ferry says it all the time, if you have more than three primary goals, then you’re not gonna be able to achieve those goals because you’re too distracted.
So if you’re looking at your business model right now, like. Stop doing the stuff that’s not helping you get anywhere and start focusing on, we all know what we need to be doing. That’s what my coach always asks me. He always says, Robert, what do you, what do, what should you be doing that you’re not? We all know, like I always go back to the whole [00:25:00] health and wellness, right?
Like we all know how to be lean and have abs and be strong, right? It’s eat better food and work out more. But why do so many people struggle? With it, we know what we need to do. So audit your business. Figure out what you should be spending most of your time on, and remove the fluff and go deep on the stuff you need to be doing.
Don’t go wide on everything because I get the concept of I wanna have a lot of fishing lines out in the water cause I’ll catch a fish, but I’d rather have three fishing lines with amazing bait than eight fishing lines with no bait. I hope that answers your question. I blacked out. That was amazing and it’s actually like international fisherman’s day today, so very good way to pull it in.
Just to close on that, so my, I grew up, my dad was a huge fly fisherman, and those of you that know fishing or fly fishing, you tie a fly or you get a fly for every single. [00:26:00] Basically day of the week because it could be a satisfy, it could be a dry fly, but you’re very specific in the fly that you’re using in the river, that you’re, the conditions of the weather, all of these things, you’re not just like, Hey, let me throw out a thing with 15 different flies and hope that I catch this trout.
You’re using one specific bay or one specific fly for that specific fish. So I love that being lasered focused on there. And. The things that need to go away. Use the, use the tools that you have and use the resources that you’re given. Don’t reinvent the wheel every time either. Yeah. You know, I, we can close off with this one cool story.
I don’t think I’ve even told my team, but I was at an event where the guy named pace, not, I think it was Pace Morby, he was talking about how he had the opportunity to meet bill Gates. No, he had heard a story about, so Bill Gates and Warren Buffet were at, at, at one point, like the richest men in the world.
And they didn’t know about each other, but they put a meeting together. And the [00:27:00] guy that was telling us a story said, he asked them both to write on a napkin, what’s the number one reason for your success? And he said, they both wrote it down, they turned a napkin over. And then when they gave the napkin to the guy, the guy turned it out.
And they both had the same answer. And the answer is, focus. Right. So, so it’s so easy to get distracted. It’s so easy to chase that shiny penny. I’m guilty of it. You know, like, what’s the next best thing? How can I close a deal now? At the end of the day, if we have a singular focus on what we wanna achieve and we have two to three different strategies on, on how to achieve it, and we just put our head down and we go deep on those three different strategies, you’re gonna have significantly higher levels of success than if you try to do 10 or 15 different things.
Awesome. I think that’s a perfect way to end. Thank you so much, Rob. I appreciate it. Thank you. Oh, my pleasure everyone. Welcome to the Barnham team. Hope to see you guys next week. Yes, well welcome Barnum team. It’s exciting, man. That’s awesome. Yes. Good to see you. Very, very exciting. So [00:28:00] everybody go have a very productive rest of your week, and a happy 4th of July.
Be safe this weekend and we’ll see you guys next week. Thanks everybody!
