Guests: Chris Smith, Daniel Ramsey
Recorded: September 5, 2019
Excerpt
We’re truly honored to join author, keynote speaker, & entrepreneur Chris Smith – the founder of Curaytor! Chris is one of the top real estate influencers in the industry and a true expert in real estate conversions. He’s worked for two billionaires (Dan Gilbert and Lou Pearlman), a near billion-dollar publicly-traded company (Move Inc.), and a startup (DotLoop) that was acquired for $108 million (by Zillow Group)
Chris took this experience and used it as a blueprint to grow Curaytor to nearly $15 million in annual, recurring revenue without raising any venture capital. His work has been featured in AdWeek, Forbes, Inc., Entrepreneur, Fortune, The Huffington Post, and many other publications.
Transcript
00:00:07:20 – 00:00:27:12
Daniel Ramsey
Hey, everybody. Daniel Ramsey here for MyOutDesk. We are the premier real estate virtual assistant company. We’ve helped over 5000 people. 5000 people. Just like you guys right here. Grow and scale a business. And today I’ve got a special guest. Chris Smith. Chris, this is the first time we’ve ever done one of these together, so I’m super pumped to have you.
00:00:27:12 – 00:00:28:15
Daniel Ramsey
Thanks for being here today.
00:00:28:23 – 00:00:36:00
Chris Smith
Cool. Thanks for having me. I’ve watched a few of your other shows and pumped to be on. You’re a great interviewer and you’ve got a great community.
00:00:36:00 – 00:00:55:13
Daniel Ramsey
Yeah, yeah, man. We’re so excited. Okay, so let’s start out. I mean, you’re obviously one of the co-founders of Curator. That’s where you kind of put your love and heart and soul into. But you’ve got a back story. So let’s start this interview outright. Let’s hear you said something about Quicken Loans, man. Let’s talk about the early days.
00:00:55:13 – 00:00:56:08
Daniel Ramsey
Who is Chris Smith?
00:00:57:08 – 00:01:25:13
Chris Smith
Yeah. So it’s funny. It’s four there’s four B’s, right? Is two billionaires, $1,000,000,000 company and then, you know, $1,000,000,000 experience, let’s call it. So I started working in boiler rooms. I actually was a cold caller calling leads for Lou Pearlman. Yeah, Lou Pearlman is the person who invented boy bands like sadly he did. So he discovered Britney Spears, NSYNC and Backstreet Boys right here in beautiful Orlando, where I live.
00:01:25:20 – 00:01:49:03
Chris Smith
Yeah. So my first job was actually calling people around the country that wanted to become famous. And this was like pre-Internet. So a lot of the leads were like, you know, how you go to the mall and there’s like a lady that says, your kid’s cute, and she handed a clipboard like, that was my lead source or things like radio ads, you know, would, would fill our funnel.
00:01:49:11 – 00:02:15:05
Chris Smith
So I got really good at like dirty, sleazy eighties boiler room wolf of Wall Street tactics by working for Lou Pearlman, who went to jail, who died in jail, who did a Ponzi scheme. My sales coach was in jail in the eighties for telemarketing fraud. I worked there in the early 2000s. So these guys were legends, but billionaires but for the wrong reasons.
00:02:15:09 – 00:02:36:05
Chris Smith
And so I was taking notes and I was studying the tactics, but I’ve always been kind of a moral and ethical guy, you know, raised as a Christian, raised as a person that definitely tries to obey the golden rule and stuff. And so I knew I couldn’t stay there long. And so I ended up working at Quicken Loans Next, which was kind of like the legal legit.
00:02:36:13 – 00:02:56:07
Chris Smith
Same concept. You’re in a boiler room, you’re getting leads, you’re calling leads, but now you got a product, it’s a loan, you got a name brand like Quicken, you know, which was affiliated with QuickBooks and TurboTax. And that’s when I really started making money. That’s when I got really good because of the volume 100 calls a day, five credit pulls, two loans written, one loan closes.
00:02:56:11 – 00:03:19:08
Chris Smith
That’s where I made my first six figures, my first $10,000 check and all of that stuff. And so working for a billionaire like Lou Pearlman and then a billionaire like Dan Gilbert who owns Quicken Loans, he owns the Cavs. Like this guy’s Baileys. Yeah, it was just like, wow, they have salespeople. They have scripts, right? They have systems that aren’t just marketing and networking and hope.
00:03:19:20 – 00:03:32:24
Chris Smith
Yeah, but what I learned from those first two places is you have to treat sales as important or more than the tech and the marketing. They have the tech and the marketing, but you don’t see the boiler room. That’s what I saw because I lived in it.
00:03:33:06 – 00:03:48:23
Daniel Ramsey
I love it, man. And guys, if you’re listening today, this is this is going to be a sneak peek into that guy’s brain. Right? So let’s give him some love if you’re here in the chat, just say hello. Give us where you’re from. And just. Just just say hello to Chris. Is that cool?
00:03:49:16 – 00:04:18:12
Chris Smith
Yeah, I hope they do. And I love the chat back, but ultimately that led me to Realtor.com and Dot Loop and now curator. And what I learned through that process, Dan, was basically, if you understand the science of sales. Yep. And you have a good marketing funnel. Yep. You’re going to be successful. Now the other piece is a good product that I can’t always teach a realtor to be good, right?
00:04:18:12 – 00:04:45:21
Chris Smith
But I can teach you how to build a beautiful funnel and I can teach you how to get on the phone with those peoples and create opportunity. Whether you’re Dave in Michigan or the guy in Seattle, I’m going to teach you how to be better at marketing and sales and by selling vacations and events with low end loans, with Dan and software, with dot loop and advertising subscriptions, with Realtor.com and now marketing and SAS tools a curator.
00:04:46:03 – 00:05:11:22
Chris Smith
What I learned is that there is a science to the sale. There is a science to the way you present, the order you present, and how you pitch. And it was crazy. But like the script at all of those places is the same. And no, that sounds weird because it’s like I’m talking to people that want to be the next Justin Timberlake and then I’m talking to people that want to be the next like Ben Kenney, right.
00:05:11:22 – 00:05:29:11
Chris Smith
You know what I mean? But like the foundational pieces of that pitch, the way you open the call, the way you end the call, the way you pitch the product, it doesn’t change. There’s a science to sales that Zig Ziglar and people long before us figured out and it did not change. What changed is we’re now in a modern era.
00:05:29:18 – 00:05:53:11
Chris Smith
Okay, you got to do something with your IMO day earn modern like modernize your business right now. Now we’re in a modern era, right? So the only change is that the consumer, the customer is already halfway down the football field when you talk to them for the first time. And so what’s happening is there’s a lot of people that don’t get that because number one, their marketing sucks so they don’t go down the field, right?
00:05:53:13 – 00:06:10:18
Chris Smith
Or number two, they actually are halfway down the field and they’re trying to take it from the top like a boiler room call right. And so there’s this new opportunity to do what we do. A curator, we apply outbound prospecting methods. Yep. To inbound marketing tactics.
00:06:11:05 – 00:06:11:16
Daniel Ramsey
Got it.
00:06:11:20 – 00:06:18:06
Chris Smith
We think you should attract business, then chase it. But we don’t think you should chase business.
00:06:18:20 – 00:06:38:04
Daniel Ramsey
Sure. Okay. Well, you know what? You’re blowing my mind, and I’m going to make you break this down because I think it’s important for the audience. Real quick, before we do, though, we talked before we started the show. Chris has got a new book. We’re going to drop a little love about that new book because it actually is launching tomorrow.
00:06:38:04 – 00:06:59:10
Daniel Ramsey
So some of what we’re talking is a little pre-launch stuff. And my out desk, you know, we just put together a book. So if you’re listening right now, you can actually get a copy if you just text SVP 231996. And basically the name of the book is Scaling Your Business with Virtual Professionals. And it’s a completely free copy.
00:06:59:10 – 00:07:31:07
Daniel Ramsey
And basically it’s it’s 12 years of my heart and love going into that book, telling people how to use virtual assistants, which is a huge deal in the sales process. But so if you’re if you’re interested, definitely text SVP 31996 Chris break down the sales marketing process because I don’t think there’s anybody better qualified to explain this in a simplistic talk to me like I’m a my six year old daughter who just entered first grade like I need to have the easy dummy version and wait.
00:07:31:07 – 00:07:32:19
Daniel Ramsey
Are you taking pictures? What’s going on?
00:07:33:03 – 00:08:03:15
Chris Smith
We’re doing stories. You know, stories are the future. Like stories overtook the newsfeed for popularity. Yeah. Ready? So the thing about marketing that I love Daniel, is that it changes. Yeah. Like the tactic, the strategy, the tool, the tip, the trick. Yeah. Marketing actually changes way more than sales. Right? So I have such a passion for marketing and for building the funnel because then what matters is the artist, right?
00:08:03:23 – 00:08:26:15
Chris Smith
That you have a blank canvas in marketing and sales. You don’t. You have to stick to a pretty rich, rigorous process to get the best results. You can be creative within your speeches and your sales pitch, but on the marketing side, you’re always testing, you’re always trying, you’re always tweaking. And you know, what’s the impact of an emoji on a subject line?
00:08:26:15 – 00:08:49:19
Chris Smith
Sure. You know, what’s the impact of pro photos on a Facebook ad versus amateur photos as far as the click through rate, what is the optimal length of a subject line for an email that gets the highest click through rate after it gets opened? So I basically wrote a book that’s three parts. Part one is marketing and how to get leads, right?
00:08:49:23 – 00:09:16:17
Chris Smith
Part two is systems and technology and people that help you turn those leads into opportunities. Sure. Appointments, if you will. Right. Option three, section three is they pick up the phone. Let’s pitch, let’s close, let’s sell. Yeah. So my book is a little bit of a choose your own adventure because like if you’re using like Boom Town or Commissions Inc or if you have like one of these great platforms like curator, right?
00:09:16:20 – 00:09:40:17
Chris Smith
You don’t necessarily need to even read part one or two because we’re helping you generate hundreds of leads a month and you have the systems that identify the best opportunities. So if you’re in that boat, you just go straight to the sales tactics section of the book and you get better at closing people on your next call. Yeah, but the reality is my book is with a publisher called Wiley.
00:09:40:17 – 00:10:03:03
Chris Smith
They’re the number one business book publisher in the world. Right. They told me, they said, Chris, you think people have leads? They don’t have leads. So I actually wanted to just focus on like they answered the phone. Now what? But they really sold me on this fact that we are a little bit what what Jimmy likes to call, you know, kind of a victim of our success.
00:10:03:09 – 00:10:29:13
Chris Smith
Yeah. We sort of forget that for many, many of the businesses watching, they don’t have enough leads. Like, let me ask the community on Facebook and in the chat. Yeah. Like on a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are you with your seller lead generation? Okay. So on a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are you with your seller lead generation?
00:10:29:22 – 00:10:40:10
Chris Smith
And I want to look at that number in the chat because I really like James is a zero dude. Like James is like he said one and said, I’m going, I’m taking the under.
00:10:40:19 – 00:10:46:21
Daniel Ramsey
I think I think James is going to have to go to curate intercom and check you guys out because if it’s a zero.
00:10:47:01 – 00:11:07:21
Chris Smith
Well that’s but but seller leads is harder than buyer leads like a lot of the people are watching. They’re going, why do you say seller leads? I would have had a good number because it’s a lot harder to capture seller leads. It’s a lot harder to get listings. It’s it’s like you wires. So let’s think about that for a second.
00:11:07:21 – 00:11:30:24
Chris Smith
You say, okay, do I need to fix my funnel or do I need to fix my phone? Okay. If you’re giving yourself a zero or a one or two or three on the seller side and on the branding side, then you probably need more marketing help, right? But if you’re frank and you’re like, Dude, I’m 100, I’m a ten on the buy side and I don’t care about listings.
00:11:32:02 – 00:11:55:14
Chris Smith
Yeah, you would probably end up just going with more of a seller conversion package with curators. See what I’m saying? Because like what I know the best businesses in the world do. Frank I don’t need to ask anybody. They do four things. Everybody should write this down, okay? They generate leads, so they grow their list. You have to always grow your list.
00:11:56:09 – 00:12:26:01
Chris Smith
Number two is they do conversion focused marketing, so they generate leads, but they also do marketing to convert the leads. They don’t have sort of nothing behind the lead. There’s write drips and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And then third, they actually grow their brand like they grow their brand. So whether that’s through social media or Instagram, right, like a brand is more valuable than all the leads in the world combined.
00:12:26:10 – 00:12:43:14
Chris Smith
Yeah, but, but a lot of people, they’re like really strong with the lead gen and really weak with the lead conversion or I bet a lot of people listening to you are really strong with the lead gen and the conversion and their brand sucks. Yeah. Like they just don’t have a brand. They’re just like hiding behind a bunch of like stealth sites, right?
00:12:43:17 – 00:12:44:05
Daniel Ramsey
Sure.
00:12:44:15 – 00:13:16:12
Chris Smith
The fourth bucket is very simple. Pass client follow up. Repeat in referral business, my friend, there is so much more money being made doing that, but there’s so much more money being spent chasing buyers. So what curator provides is really we focus on all four of those buckets for our customers. If you’re the Joe Taylor group and you’re in Vegas and we helped you grow your business to having 20 buyer’s agents, we’re going to have to get you a bunch of buyer leads.
00:13:16:12 – 00:13:38:03
Chris Smith
Right, because that’s your business. Right. But like, we have clients that want zero buyer leads. Like we have a guy named Billy Billy y Malinger. He’s the parrot group. And they don’t even have search on their site. They don’t even want one buyer lead. If they get a buyer lead, there’s one role for them. It has to be inquiring about my listing.
00:13:38:05 – 00:13:59:11
Chris Smith
Okay. Yeah. And so we just give people that freedom to say, you know what, I need to build my brand. I’m good on these buckets. Or a listen. If you’re good on all four of those buckets, I want to work for you. I want to work I want you to write the next book, because if you think you’ve got leads in lead conversion, branding and pass client follow up, figure it out.
00:13:59:18 – 00:14:04:12
Chris Smith
You should be getting interviewed, not me, because it’s difficult to do all four.
00:14:04:19 – 00:14:27:17
Daniel Ramsey
But let’s give them real results. And this is a challenge and why I wanted you on the show because here’s the I mean, we talk about this all the time, like but what should like if let’s just say I’m a medium size agent, you’re in the top 10%. You’re doing half a million dollars a year. And in business like that’s the top 10%, top 5 to 10%, half a million dollars in gross revenue.
00:14:27:22 – 00:14:43:17
Daniel Ramsey
You know, gross revenue income, you know, how many leads should I be generating? How, how what’s the results? What like, what should my conversion ratio be? What does my brand need? I want real stuff from you not not the kind of gross over gloss over.
00:14:43:18 – 00:15:04:01
Chris Smith
Yeah. Well, all I’m getting at is that different people have different businesses. Dan Yeah, yeah, yeah. So some people don’t want 800 buyer leads and some people have to have a buyer lead. So all I’m saying is we’re very flexible with the way we can approach that. Sure, other systems are pretty rigid, that it’s mostly buyers. They can’t even turn on the faucet for your brand.
00:15:04:08 – 00:15:07:12
Daniel Ramsey
Okay, so let’s do listing focused. How many listings?
00:15:07:17 – 00:15:31:02
Chris Smith
Yeah, well, let me give you the blend and then it’s easy to understand the scale. So for $500 per month, right, if you go after all four buckets, buyers, sellers, past clients and branding and your buyer lead gen is all your own listings, right. We’re generating right now through Facebook and Instagram about 75 leads a month. Okay, $500.
00:15:31:09 – 00:15:56:10
Chris Smith
And again, that’s buyer leads, seller leads, past client opportunities and branding conversions. Right. We’re doing branding, but take away everything but buyer for a second. Sure. That same 500 is going to get you a couple hundred leads for buyers only. Right. I’ll say you want just seller that same 500 might get you 25 or 30 on the sell side.
00:15:56:17 – 00:16:15:11
Chris Smith
Right. So it’s really sort of like you can scale up by spending more or by going after buyers, but you could you can also scale down by spending less and going after things like pass clients. Because if I go on Facebook and you say, Chris, I want to stay in front of the people that matter to me. Yep.
00:16:15:18 – 00:16:50:02
Chris Smith
Well, your past clients and you’re listing leads and some of your already qualified buyers, like it’s actually incredibly inexpensive to stay in front of them. Yeah. Compared to trying to go after Orlando as an example. Right. But you look at some of these systems, they’re going to need a pretty good budget. Like I’m getting maybe 500 to 1000 bucks if your goal again if your business objective is lots of leads, but if your goal is to stay in front of your clients and your goal is to grow your brand and your goal is to get traffic on content, I might be able to get you all of that for 150 to 200 bucks a month.
00:16:50:17 – 00:17:11:19
Chris Smith
But don’t come and say, Where’s my 800 leads too? You got to kind of pick your poison. And that’s part of what we do. Every client like we start that in the sales process. If you go and curated a column, you say, Let me check my zip code. I want to work with you. We’re already saying which of these four is the most important, because then we can give a better demo, we can give you better expectations.
00:17:12:02 – 00:17:34:15
Daniel Ramsey
I love it because we have a client in in Texas. His name is Ryan. And he and I were talking and he does 200 deals a year, so, you know, one and a half million dollars in revenue. And we are breaking down what his challenges were. And he has never, ever called any of his past clients. He’s got 10,000 people in his database as past clients.
00:17:34:15 – 00:17:40:15
Daniel Ramsey
He’s been in the business for 15 years. He knows zero marketing, zero calls zero tells.
00:17:40:20 – 00:18:01:08
Chris Smith
About that Daniel is that’s actually what when I hear that on a demo my dopamine goes off because I know that I can send one email, right. And I can get him an ROI for four years because it’s almost better if they haven’t been doing anything than if they’ve been extinguishing the interest by doing bad stuff or cheesy stuff.
00:18:01:16 – 00:18:23:02
Chris Smith
I’d rather take, you know, a thousand past clients that you ignored completely. I’ll get you 17 appointments in one email from that list, but if you have been dripping on them with some bullshit, they ain’t even going to open anything. I said, you know what I’m saying? So part of it is the less like people want to ask, like, is it curator or boom, no.
00:18:23:02 – 00:18:47:07
Chris Smith
Is is it John or Sally? Like Your lists are dirty. We know like we have all the same customers doing the same marketing in different markets. So why do I get 45% open rate over here in four over here? It’s not the platform and it’s not the message. It’s the messenger. It’s you. It’s not knowing your brand. It’s them not liking what you did every day until I took over your marketing.
00:18:47:11 – 00:19:07:16
Chris Smith
So people just have to be self aware. But yes, the Ryans of the world should create more content. That is 100% for their past clients. It has nothing to do with buyers or sellers. I’ll give you an example of a campaign. We did just like that. Okay. The like what city is Ryan in? Do you know the city or do you just know?
00:19:08:01 – 00:19:09:22
Daniel Ramsey
I know it’s Texas. I don’t know.
00:19:09:23 – 00:19:29:10
Chris Smith
So let’s say Houston. Let’s say Houston. Okay. Okay. We we did an article, the five most instagrammable places in Houston. Uh huh. And we literally went to the most popular Instagram accounts in Houston. We grabbed the embed code, we put it into the article and then in the email and all the social, we said, What did we miss?
00:19:29:11 – 00:19:43:05
Chris Smith
Where is your favorite spot? Right? But that was like list equals pass, client’s audience equals like my page. It wasn’t this big wide net. It blows up because they already know you. They like you, they trust you if you’re good. Yeah.
00:19:43:15 – 00:19:57:16
Daniel Ramsey
Well, and for Ryan, what we did was we just hired two virtual assistants to start pounding the phone. So I think, you know, our product on top of your product. So now they’re getting messaging and branding as well as calls like it’s been a long time.
00:19:57:22 – 00:20:18:08
Chris Smith
But yeah, it’s omnichannel is what they call that. And I call it land, sea and air. Right. If you’re going to go into a war, if you attack from all different angles, you’re going to have a better shot at winning that battle, you know? And so, like even with our guys that do tons of Facebook, they doorknocked too and then the guys at door do Facebook too.
00:20:18:18 – 00:20:31:20
Chris Smith
And then the guys that do both of those do circle prospecting too, because it’s almost like we’re in a world where I don’t even look at you until I’ve seen your stuff seven times, and then all of a sudden a light switch goes off and I’m like, Man, they’re legit.
00:20:32:06 – 00:20:57:00
Daniel Ramsey
Yeah, I love it. So guys, if you’re if you’re listening and you like it, you can obviously go to curator dot com to find out more information. And if you’d like to follow up with mod, it’s just text SVP 231996. Chris Let’s rock. Let’s rock through. What do people screw up in the branding you know it’s funny is I had all these pre you know questions and I’m not going to use any of them because this is so great.
00:20:57:06 – 00:21:09:14
Daniel Ramsey
What do you what do realtors do wrong when it comes to branding and and generating that listing? You know, like give us some tricks and tips for this for our audience today.
00:21:09:14 – 00:21:48:10
Chris Smith
Well, it’s incredibly difficult to get branding right, like we we take for granted. Well, all Apple, Nike under armor, Chick-Fil-A, Popeyes like you know, we see all these brands doing all the cool stuff yet. But the reality is that the the majority of the people that sell real estate, they should build their personal brand. Okay? Like their goal should be that people are intimidated when they walk in the room because their online personal brand is one of class success, sophistication, knowledge.
00:21:48:10 – 00:22:10:20
Chris Smith
So like when I go to all these conferences, people are like nervous to meet me. They’re sort of like, you know, think about that. Realtors can do that very easily. Like, I remember one of our clients, they said, Chris, the next time somebody asks you the ROI of curator, right, ask them what it would do for their business if they got recognized everywhere they went.
00:22:11:08 – 00:22:43:24
Chris Smith
Right. That that’s my advice is start with you. It’s about being brave. But then that brings in our weight and our hair and our voice and our wrinkles. Right? And so what happens is I don’t I don’t know if people really grasp this, but like, you don’t have to be an Instagram model to grow a personal brand. In fact, a lot of the falls and a lot of the relatable ness to you is why people like you like I didn’t shave today.
00:22:44:00 – 00:22:59:19
Chris Smith
Did? Yeah, you know what I’m saying? Like, I’m wearing a Jordan t shirt, you know, like. Like you can be a brand faster than you can build a brand. Got it. And so I think for most agents, they’ll never build a real brand.
00:23:00:18 – 00:23:05:07
Daniel Ramsey
What? What? Okay, so what is a real brand and how do you do it? Like what’s what’s the.
00:23:05:07 – 00:23:06:18
Chris Smith
Zillow as a real brand?
00:23:07:08 – 00:23:08:05
Daniel Ramsey
Yeah. Zillow. Yeah.
00:23:08:23 – 00:23:10:21
Chris Smith
Yeah. But you do that.
00:23:11:07 – 00:23:17:19
Daniel Ramsey
No, no, I’m totally with you. But how about for a realtor? Like, what are the steps? Like, what are the things to build a brand for?
00:23:17:21 – 00:23:19:17
Chris Smith
Step one Build a personal brand.
00:23:20:13 – 00:23:21:08
Daniel Ramsey
What does that look like?
00:23:21:24 – 00:23:37:08
Chris Smith
It looks like better pictures, better design, better headshots, better copy, better social media feeds. Like one of the tests I give people is if you go to my Instagram right now. Yep. Chris underscore empty h you know.
00:23:37:15 – 00:23:38:09
Daniel Ramsey
Well put it in there.
00:23:38:09 – 00:23:55:16
Chris Smith
Yeah. Like it up that for me. Yeah. But if you go to my Instagram and you scroll, you’re going to know what I’m going to. You’re going to know exactly what I do for a living and I’m going to be the expert in 2 seconds. You’re going to see that everything is on brand, everything’s got great colors, great pictures.
00:23:55:21 – 00:24:19:08
Chris Smith
The message is unified. The logo, the look, the feel, the quality, the consistency. Do that, dude. No one does that. So don’t you don’t need to ask me the actual thing. That is the thing. Okay? The thing is, you post a lot. The thing is you post good shit. The thing is you post your opinion and your advice and it’s not about politics if you’re not a fucking politician.
00:24:20:14 – 00:24:44:08
Chris Smith
So for me, I stay in my lane. When I build my brand, I build my brand around being one of the smartest people at marketing and sales on the planet. Got it. So what are you the smartest that Mr. Age is? Mrs.. Okay, if you’re the smartest person in the world at like Buckhead real estate, that’s what your feed should be about.
00:24:44:22 – 00:25:08:17
Chris Smith
And what I think is tricky is that’s not always what people’s true passion is or expertize. They might actually be better at yoga, they might actually be better at like being a mom. Right? And real estate’s just a career. So it starts with a very simple principle passion powers, profit. So if you don’t build your personal brand around your passions, right?
00:25:08:21 – 00:25:28:21
Chris Smith
If you build them around your pocketbook, you’re going to quit. You’re going to fizzle out. It’s not going to work anyways. So like, listen, curator is going to get sold one day for a fuck all the money and the day after that, like the next morning because I won’t have a hangover. Because I won’t party. Because that’s not my goal.
00:25:29:03 – 00:25:53:16
Chris Smith
Yeah, I will probably travel the world for a couple of weeks, but the next morning and while I’m in the Galapagos, I’m going to be reading about marketing and sales. Dude, I’m going to already be thinking about my next thing and my next thing. And which marketing and sales startups do I want to invest in my my social media brand wouldn’t even st you already told me where did I used to work?
00:25:53:16 – 00:26:16:12
Chris Smith
Realtor.com What did I do? Tech savvy Where do I work after that? In mid news what did I do? Blog and then conferences. Where do I go? Dot Look what I do. Wrote books, build my personal brand or am I now? Curator So why do you think I’m saying to build a personal brand? Dude, it’s transferable, right? It’s and it’s the thing that is the, the red thread of all of that is me, right?
00:26:17:02 – 00:26:39:09
Chris Smith
So that’s why I’m passionate about it. I hope I gave more tactical advice there, but I call it the tombstone test. Yeah. What do you want to be on your business tombstone? Right. And then go look at your social media feed, look at your last five or six posts and ask yourself, is what I’m putting out there as a brand, what I want my brand to be known for when it’s done?
00:26:40:09 – 00:27:10:17
Chris Smith
And so if you’re telling me you’re a freaking legend selling homes in Beverly Hills, but I go check you out online and you’re just like a really good dad and you actually really love to hunt. There’s a disconnect, so just be what you want to be at the end of your career as your strategy. Yeah, because then it won’t matter if the wind blows a little bit one direction or the other, or if you decide to go from Compass to Keller or vice versa.
00:27:10:17 – 00:27:10:24
Chris Smith
Right.
00:27:11:10 – 00:27:37:08
Daniel Ramsey
Let me let me understand your suggestions on like Paths Clan follow up and referrals kind of. We have one of the things that you’ll get in the book is we have a referral strategy. We call them the three R’s. You’ll love this referrals our recommendations like somebody like videoed something, you know, reviews. So online reviews and then actual referrals, personal introductions, like where somebody says, you got to talk to Chris.
00:27:37:08 – 00:27:54:04
Daniel Ramsey
He’s awesome. So we call it the three R’s of my desk and that that’s in the book. But let’s break down from your perspective, marketing and sales for referrals and past clients. Like what do you think? Like the the ideal funnel looks like or the idea.
00:27:54:04 – 00:28:29:17
Chris Smith
The perfect strategy for everybody listening is to basically do what they really want to do the way that the audience wants them to do it. So let me unpack that for you. Yeah. If you want to get reminded to do marketing as a realtor, right. If you if you don’t want to forget, you should build your campaigns around listening because when you get a listing you got coming soon just listed price reduction open house just sold so if you step one is what are the things that happen over and over so I don’t go through like a drought of not doing any marketing, right?
00:28:29:17 – 00:28:51:07
Chris Smith
But then step two is you have to just be self aware and say, okay, I want to send my listings to my past clients and I clearly can’t do that through the traditional listing alert approach. Right, right. Because if every week, let’s say I’m taking on a listing a week or you know, we work with some pretty successful folks like you guys do.
00:28:51:13 – 00:28:52:16
Daniel Ramsey
Every day, maybe.
00:28:52:16 – 00:29:14:23
Chris Smith
Yeah. Like it could be every day. Like Veronica. She’s in our building here. Veronica Figueroa. Yeah. Client, you know, 330 homes a year. That’s more than one closing every business day. So when when you have that much sort of volume happening, you know, you absolutely cannot be in people’s inbox every day or every week about another listing. Yeah.
00:29:15:08 – 00:29:38:05
Chris Smith
So what? My new book, it’s called Exactly What to Say for Real Estate Agents, and it addresses this head on and it’s about taking that listing, but then using words and phrases that take into account that you’re probably sending that listing to someone that’s not going to buy it. Right? So as an example, one of the phrases in the book is, I’m not sure if it’s for you, but.
00:29:39:17 – 00:29:58:21
Chris Smith
Right, yeah, I’m not sure if this listing is for you, but it’s got a pull and it’s got a lot of space and it’s got this. It may be for someone, you know. Sure. And it’s not like a link and it’s not an ad feed and it’s not like it’s just a personal email. That’s like 18 words total with no design.
00:29:59:08 – 00:30:27:18
Chris Smith
Right. That makes sense. And the other thing would be like, hey, I’m only sending this out to a small group of people that I really value because they do what you said the are one, the actual referral one, right? So we have found like comingsoon and whisper campaigns and pocket listings and hey, this, this house hit the market and I’m pretty sure it’s not for you, but that one works really good.
00:30:27:18 – 00:30:45:18
Chris Smith
Another good one is that there’s three types of people and everybody’s making the plan right now. Daniel, did you know that? Yeah, he does. As soon as you hear that, you’re like, oh, everyone’s making a plan. Hold on a second. Yeah. What plan? What plan I want. Right. So, you know, everybody’s making the plan right now. And then there’s really just three types of people.
00:30:45:18 – 00:31:00:03
Chris Smith
There’s people that are going to do nothing and they’re just going to keep the home they’ve got and let it keep appreciating and grow their their net worth. There’s people that are going to sell that home and get a different one. And then there’s people that are going to get that home and then they’re going to try to add another one.
00:31:00:04 – 00:31:17:14
Chris Smith
They’re going to invest in a home, and I don’t want to send your bullshit that you’re not interested in. So if you can tell me which type of person you are right that that’ll make the other stuff I sent you more relevant because if you tell me that you’re never going to do anything this year, then I’m going to put you on that Instagram.
00:31:17:20 – 00:31:43:09
Chris Smith
You know, content marketing pass client stuff, right? But if you tell me you’re going to do something this year, I’m going to go close your ass at a listing appointment. Right? Right. And if you tell me you’re looking for an investment property, I’m either going to refer you or try to keep that conversation open. So it’s sort of like, you know, when you give people simple choices like government number one, like they’ll they’ll they’ll reply, like, why do you think the Popeyes campaign did so good?
00:31:44:07 – 00:31:48:00
Chris Smith
Because it was so easy to understand what it was. It’s just like Chick-Fil-A.
00:31:48:24 – 00:31:50:01
Daniel Ramsey
What’s the Popeye?
00:31:50:01 – 00:31:53:22
Chris Smith
Let’s see. So Popeyes Chicken went viral with their chicken sandwich.
00:31:54:05 – 00:31:54:14
Daniel Ramsey
Right?
00:31:54:21 – 00:32:17:06
Chris Smith
And the only thing they said is we’re not sure if it’s for you, but people are saying our chicken sandwich is better than Chick fil A’s. And so that simplicity of the message, because everybody already knows that Chick fil A has really good chicken sandwiches. Right. For them to just say we’re hearing some rumors that ours is better.
00:32:17:22 – 00:32:45:07
Chris Smith
That’s not saying ours is better. And it started a viral craze that sold out the chicken sandwiches nationwide. They got over $25 million worth of free advertising by people posting on social media for them. So when the message is super simple, the response rate goes way up. So instead of saying, hey, like, tell me a little bit about your home, tell me about some of the upgrades you’ve done over the last couple of years.
00:32:45:07 – 00:33:03:12
Chris Smith
Like, I got to take a deep breath before I reply to that. Right. But if you say on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate the condition of the property? They’re going to reply right away, say it’s a nine and here’s why. So it’s about like respecting that it’s a client, respecting that it’s your sphere and really wording things very differently.
00:33:03:19 – 00:33:19:22
Daniel Ramsey
I love it. I, I have a good friend. His name is Tim Rhodes. I don’t know if you know this guy, but he’s like a little legend in California, Northern California real estate. And he used to have these ads where he would be on like on a mountain somewhere dressed in a suit and say, look, I want to sell your house.
00:33:19:22 – 00:33:45:05
Daniel Ramsey
In fact, I’ll do anything for my clients. Watch this. And then he jumped off the mountain and it was like a record thing, you know? And literally he ran those ads for a decade and was the number one seller in his area because he was just doing crazy. He’d just do all these crazy stunts and he was on TV and yeah, then there was an Instagram or any of that other stuff, but that would have gone viral in today’s world.
00:33:45:05 – 00:33:58:20
Daniel Ramsey
But anyways, I love it. Okay, so let’s talk to people real quick about your book that’s coming out. It releases tomorrow. Yeah. What would they get if they actually check it out and where would they actually get it to get a preorder right now? Sure.
00:33:58:20 – 00:34:24:22
Chris Smith
Yeah. It’s exactly what to say for real estate agents. It’s based on the bestselling sales book in the last five years of the same title, we partnered with Phil Jones. There’s over a half a million copies that have already been sold, but we realized it wasn’t enough for our industry right. So if you tell a realtor, here’s exactly how to say this, but you don’t say when you’re talking to an expired, there’s this sort of disconnect in between.
00:34:24:22 – 00:34:51:11
Chris Smith
So we went to Phil, we brought him to our conference. He’s a 30, 40,000 keynote speaker. He’s already trained over 2 million salespeople and he’s already sold a half a million copies of these magic words. Right. We said, Phil, let’s do an industry edition and let’s add a field guide so that we can break down exactly what to say in the most common, critical and difficult situation agents face.
00:34:51:24 – 00:35:14:06
Chris Smith
Right. So when you’re past says, I’m just going to sell my home to Zillow this time, what do you say when you’re at a listing appointment and they say, Hey, we definitely want to work with you? The other agent said she would lower her commission by 1%. Will you rate what do you say when an expired says, I’m just going to use the same agent again?
00:35:14:06 – 00:35:56:19
Chris Smith
It’s a family friend. What do you say? So this book covers the 81 most common, critical and difficult situation and agents face today. And it gives them the exact magic word of what to say. Yes. And then because we are marketing geniuses, because we understand the power of words and things like text messages and social media and emails, we also took all 30 phrases in the book and we turned them into Swype and steal marketing templates so that you can put exactly what to say in your Facebook ads and your Instagram post and your drip campaigns and your text messages.
00:35:56:19 – 00:36:18:16
Chris Smith
So imagine you’re working with a buyer and you’ve shown them three properties and they qualify and then they ghost you, right? Well, you can’t say anything to them, Daniel. They freakin ghosted you. So what exactly does that text say? And that’s what this book is about. It comes out tomorrow. It’s not even available to buy today, but it’s going to be curator dot com.
00:36:18:16 – 00:36:42:24
Chris Smith
Slash Exactly. There’s a book, there’s a course, there’s the marketing book, there’s the field guide, and there’s going to be a nationwide book tour. There’s also going to be enterprise brokerage agent and team options for the course because, you know, you go to a listing appointment and you know, you’re competing with the lady that does all the luxury listings.
00:36:43:08 – 00:37:01:11
Chris Smith
Yeah. And you don’t. And you can kind of anticipate they might ask you, you know, hey, we love everything you said, but we’re just going to use lady from Sotheby’s. They’re the luxury brand in our market. Right? What do you say? So it’s hard, dude. It is hard. And the worst time to think about what to say is while you’re saying it.
00:37:01:19 – 00:37:21:06
Chris Smith
Right. Right. So we’re creating the book, The Field Guide, the marketing templates and the online course. Plus, we’re going on a book tour and I’m frickin pumped. I can not wait. Curator Dot com slash Exactly just start refreshing that bastard just refresh it refresh it. At about midnight you’ll see the actual book and you can go it.
00:37:21:10 – 00:37:26:13
Daniel Ramsey
That’s awesome. Where. Where are your tours? Are you going all over top 20. Where you where you hadn’t.
00:37:27:01 – 00:37:57:05
Chris Smith
We’ll be, we’ll be in every major market in the US and Canada. Okay cool. Yeah. We’ll be in every major market. Nashville, Chicago, Toronto, Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando will be in every market. And we actually have partners and sponsors and we’re going on a massive tour. We’re actually releasing some cool stuff this year. I want to talk to you about our offline, Daniel, because what we believe at curator is that you should be able to use the tools and services that you already love.
00:37:57:15 – 00:38:24:12
Chris Smith
Yeah. Find your next deal. And we’re kind in this industry where all the brands and brokerages and all in ones are, they’re sort of trying to push you towards their product and their service, and they sort of have to pretend that none of the other ones are out there. Right. So as an example, you know, what you guys do at embody what you guys are doing with virtual assistants like you are a proven service in this industry that people love.
00:38:24:24 – 00:39:04:02
Chris Smith
Yeah, well, why can’t people use your virtual assistants with my marketing platform? Why? People use your virtual assistants to run ads that lead to my system? Because I know that if all you do is services, you’re going to actually be better at that than me. And so that’s the future of curator. We’re going to connect to the services and products people already love, and we’re going to integrate that into one new type of a technology that allows you to use what you already use to build the system of your dreams instead of pretending that KW Command or commissions, inc or boomtown or booze or any of them are going to win.
00:39:04:08 – 00:39:25:20
Chris Smith
Let’s be really clear. The best chat tool in the world is never going to be built by a real estate company. The best landing pages. Ditto the best email tool. Ditto the best website builder. Ditto. So like the real estate companies are not going to out tech. The tech companies and the real estate companies are not going to out service the service companies.
00:39:26:01 – 00:39:47:19
Chris Smith
Right. We believe that this beauty of the landscape is that there’s all these amazing people doing all these amazing things and we sell more order, right? We don’t sell the bricks. We connect the bricks. And because of all this new shit, it should create new opportunities, new ways to sell, better ways to sell faster, ways to sell shorter sales cycle, higher price points.
00:39:48:00 – 00:40:12:03
Chris Smith
And for most people, it’s not. So that’s what we’re doing. A Curator Let’s make sure we chat. Daniel Because we’re looking for people to integrate on the services side, because I can only hire so many millennials, I can only hire so many estates like for me to grow curator of the fastest and to grow my clients business businesses the fastest I know I need partners, just like our clients know they need what we do anyway.
00:40:12:03 – 00:40:13:17
Chris Smith
Dude, we’re excited about the future.
00:40:14:00 – 00:40:34:02
Daniel Ramsey
I love it. I love it. Look, what’s really important about what you said is I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this, but I’ve got a lot of friends who, like, they call on a multimillion dollar listing and the agent never calls them back. Like, I swear, this is just there’s an epidemic going on. And the other day we needed we needed our embassy fixed.
00:40:34:06 – 00:40:55:11
Daniel Ramsey
So my wife calls four companies for companies, one call them, called her back three days later, three days later. And it was nuts. And if you’re in real estate right now and you’re not answering your phone, you’re not calling your leads, you’re not using systems like curator the way they were meant and designed to be used to move forward and hire a virtual assistant.
00:40:55:11 – 00:41:19:16
Daniel Ramsey
Right now, I really, really, really want you guys to text SVP 231996 to get a free copy of the book. We’re given away. It’s completely free. It’s, it’s, what is it? It’s a, it’s like 300 pages of simple, easy tactics. So if you guys if you guys want to move forward and you need help, call me out. Chris, you’re a bad ass.
00:41:19:16 – 00:41:23:16
Daniel Ramsey
I love interviewing you. I can’t wait to do this again. Thanks for being here today.
00:41:24:16 – 00:41:32:06
Chris Smith
Thanks, man. Prompt and we’ll chat offline. Thanks for your time and keep doing great work, Daniel. I really appreciate it. Yep.