Mastering Lead Conversion: An Interview with Cody May of Sheridan Street

My fundamental core belief is all conversion happens in conversation. Think about everyone else around you. Everyone buys differently and everyone makes buying decisions differently. The stats are the stats. Like, we need to be consistently following up with people. A lot of people struggle with their follow up or calling their leads is like, they get paralysis analysis. They're like, what do I say? And that's really now where the sales conversation comes in. Because it's like there's marketing and there's sales, and they're two totally different things.

All right, Cody, so I am so thrilled to have you here today. Listen, we've had the opportunity to work together for quite a few years related to marketing, related to accounting and finances. Awesome to have you here, man. Listen, I. What I would love for you to do is maybe give a little bit of a detail for our listeners about what your business is, where you're at, who you work with, and then we can move on from there.

Love it, man. Yeah, really excited to chat today, you know, and when your team reached out to, to book this podcast, we're super excited, you know, and everything that you're doing just, you know, like you said, we worked together over the last. I think it's probably been six years now. It's like, if not longer. It's been, it's been. It feels like yesterday, but. My company's called Sheridan Streets. We help real estate agents and help service businesses attract leads, nurture the leads, so to the point where they raise their hand and then set appointments. So we have a call center here, here in Colombia, and I'm actually currently in Medellin, Colombia. I've recruited a lot of great talent on the ground and yeah, we just help businesses market, try to get in front of the right people, try to nurture their leads for life and then get them into more meetings, more appointments. About two years ago, we transitioned, we changed our company name from Studio ptbo, which, you know, Peterborough, Canada, to Sheridan street to kind of more align with where I was taking the business. I had partners before I transitioned the business about a year and a half, two years ago to kind of go all in, in the real estate space and really try to serve the real estate community at a really high level. And there's been some ups, there's been some downs. There's consistently ups and downs. Really excited to chat today and try to provide, you know, this entrepreneurial community as much value as we possibly can.

And just for our listeners, I remember when Cody May first came on the scene and I remember seeing this high energy, young buck, you're still a young buck. We're still young bucks. I'm gonna put me in there too. Cody. I remember this guy coming on the scene and he was just producing content. And for me, I was like, this is like a young Gary Vee coming in here. Just a pure content machine. And I remember you had this side hustle at the time, right? Because I remember you were working at Best Buy, right, I think, at the time, and you. It was create your purpose and. And I remember it was this side hustle that was just sharing the message of understanding your purpose and your why, and you were doing this and creating these relationships with business owners in the community. And you definitely caught my attention back then. And, you know, I think continue to do magical things ever since, Cody. And it's. It's always fun to continue to watch you and your evolution, but let's, let's maybe talk about that. So, you know, a few years back before you changed the branding to Sheridan street and you were Studio ptbo and you had some partners that were in the business, the landscape of your business and what your offer is looks totally different. And the reason I want to maybe just chat about this is that I think there's so many people, so many business owners that are out here that are doing something just because they feel like that's what they're supposed to do. So can you give us a little bit of context of, you know, the kind of services that the business was offering and then why you maybe evolved into focusing down on what you do now?

Yeah, so I think, you know, there's a few different reasons. You know, if I can kind of go into. Into depth, like, you know, I had two business partners when I started the business, which was one of the best things ever because it really got me grounded in understanding. They had business experience. I had little to none. I came from the corporate background. I learned a lot about entrepreneurship, learned a lot about, you know, what it meant to, you know, network and connect. And I think I got a lot of that learning experience from Create Purpose from that brand. But then I transferred it when I. When I came over to Studio ptbo. So, you know, in the beginning we were doing video content storytelling, which is, you know, very funny because we, you know, content back then was like all. It was very Gary V. Ish, but we were creating content for businesses to help them tell their story. Like our tagline was literally tell, tell your story. And we had our graphic design business and our website business, and they kind of all operated in pockets. We had our website Design, which, like, originally was a company called Studio, we rolled it into Studio ptbo. So we had, you know, graphic designers, we had web designers on staff, and we had our video department. And that was really the service that we had offered. Like, you know, they kind of all operated independently. And then we had a couple large clients that we ended up working with where we took everything that we did and we compiled it into one. But it was like very like a la carte based, local to Peterborough. All of our clients were in Peterborough originally. And I joined a mastermind, Cat Howell, and I just got fascinated with the online marketing space. I think this was probably 2019, 2018. I got fascinated with the online marketing space around storytelling through ads, storytelling through video. And, you know, there I realized that there was a void in the marketplace that people had a hard time, you know, understanding how to attract leads, how to nurture them, how to get clients. Really, at the end of the day, how do we scale client acquisition? And I just got fascinated with the world of online marketing. And I started. We started offering, you know, Facebook ads as a service. And. And then I started to realize I'm like, oh, I don't have to go. Like, I don't have to go on video shoots anymore. I don't have to. And to be truthfully honest, I hated, like, I hated the process of building websites. I just didn't enjoy it. And we just did it out of necessity. And we don't do that anymore. Like, don't come to us for a website. We don't build websites anymore. I just got fascinated with the world of online marketing. And we were working with a whole bunch of different businesses. And then I like. And I think, like, subconsciously, I always wanted to travel the world. I always wanted to see. I always wanted to see different places. I loved Peterborough. I still love Peterborough to this date. But, like, I always felt like I'm like, okay, I have an expiration date here. I learned so much. I love the entrepreneurs here. People still know me in Peterborough. I still consider Peterborough my hometown, which is weird because I didn't technically grow up there, but we had just transitioned from being this, like, boutique agency in Peterborough to working with clients all across North America and really niching down into real estate and helped us work with clients all across North America, where now our client base is spread out in Canada, the U.S. you know, I'm currently in Medellin, Colombia. I've been living here for the last five, six months. And I just started creating a business around the lifestyle that I wanted to Live. I remember walking into my old partner's office, probably in the pandemic, and I said, like, I need to leave Peterborough. And I, I told him at the time we were operating the company together that I was going to move to California. And I did that for seven, eight, nine months. And yeah, I just, you know, the business just started to shift and change and I met different entrepreneurs and different business owners. I invested a lot of money back into coaching in order to get to where really I wanted to be in my business. So it's had, it's taken multiple life forms and even now it's changing as well in regards to what I really want and really building a business around the lifestyle that I desire. And. Yeah, so that's kind of like how we got to where we are today and serving the real estate of the home service space.

Yeah, and it's Cody, it's a great story. And, you know, you're one of those stories that I have loved to watch, probably because we've had, you know, a really great friendship over this, you know, past six years. We've obviously worked very closely with you guys. You, you know, really kicked off our storytelling and our brand presence and collaborating with you has been such a huge value, I know, to my business. But let's talk about, about this. Creating your business based on the lifestyle that you want, right? So I know that initially, you know, it was like, oh, I want to get out to la, I want to hit the west coast. And that kind of evolved, Right? And so what is it that you're. I know maybe you don't have a definition for this, but what is it that you're trying to create now to adapt to your. To your lifestyle that you're really trying to live?

So I read a book a while ago from a friend, Cameron Harold. It's called Vivid Vision. And what it really helped me do was it really helped me attract really what I consider Grade A talent. And I wrote down, like, what. What do I see the next three, five, ten years look like in my business? And that is evolving a lot. And that's completely okay. You know, a lot of the things that I wanted, even at the beginning of the year, are different than they are today. And I think that, you know, when you're creating a business around the lifestyle that you want to live, I realized that that took a lot of, like, introspection and, you know, time alone by myself and a lot of coaching. I coached with Brendan Burchard's team for literally a year, just trying to, like, articulate what I wanted, what I wanted to experience. And I didn't. Like. It's funny because I look back at the beginning of the pandemic, when it happened. It's like we went. We took everything online. Like, literally. We lost all of our video clients overnight. Everyone canceled their. Know, their monthly packages because we couldn't shoot video in person. So it forced me to go online. But a year went by and we had this office that we were spending money on. And I'm like, no, there's no one in office. It's literally me and Neil in the office. No one else is there. And I'm like, this is crazy. And. And then it kind of opened up other things around, like, well, I. You know, the whole reason, Like, I didn't. The whole reason I left the corporate careers, I. I wanted the. I wanted the freedom and flexibility to go where I want when I want to have more, just freedom and flexibility. And that's like that to me. Like, it's like, even If I'm working 40, 50, 60 hours a week, as long as I have the capacity to go where I want to live where I want to kind of just have that freedom. Like, you know, different people get into business for different reasons. And for me, I. I really think, as I analyze the reason I got into business, it was the freedom and flexibility that entrepreneurship gave me. It's like, sure, I'm working more hours, but I can live in Medellin, I can go to Spain, I can go to Thailand. I can go wherever I want. And I had a real. I had a kind of like an epiphany sitting in that office. I'm like, I just, like, I'm not living my version of what entrepreneurship looks like for me. I was living somebody else's version of what it. What it looked like to that. And then, like, you know, it's like. And then you. What happens is you begin to resent the business, and you're like, well, I have to be in Peterborough in order to do this. But it's like everything kind of ravel around, like a belief statement that I had that I didn't realize I had actually believed that I needed to be in Peterborough in order to build a successful business. When. When that belief system started to change, I was like, well, this isn't actually true because I have a client over here that lives in Toronto. I have a client here, lives in Calgary. I have a client here that lives in Florida. And it's like, well, why am I still at Peterborough? I don't need to be there anymore. And it's like the whole reason I started doing this was to create freedom for myself. And that realization helped me realize I'm like, oh, I can travel the world. And, you know, it really led us on a journey towards, like, when, like, because originally it was I was going to go to la, I was going to move there. And then like, my worldview, I think, was so small, where it's like, okay, I'm gonna go to la. I, I, and I still love that. Like, I'm literally headed back there next month for a conference. But then I started traveling around Latin America and I'm like, oh my goodness, like, this world is so much bigger than I thought it was. And entrepreneurship has given me that ability in order to see that the world is so much bigger, there's so much more opportunity out there. And yeah, it's just been a, it's been a journey of like, realizing like, that the only way I create the business I want is by fit, physically sitting down, getting introspective, getting it out of my head and onto paper so that I could actually create the life that I want, the business I want. And I need to, I need to form things around that.

I. You know what, it's funny that you talk about thinking small and you're thinking la, right? And it's funny from a perspective standpoint because I think so many people would think that, you know, moving to LA is, you know, creating that sort of vision and, and the direction for your business that is thinking big. But then you got out there and you started traveling other parts of the world and you're like, hold on, North America is just this smaller sort of, you know, ideological place to have a business when I have the entire world, you know, we think of Elon, Elon's thinking beyond Earth, you know, and creating travel to and from other areas in the universe, which is pretty wild. That's thinking big. But for so many people, you know, you moving your business to completely online and moving to la initially, that was thinking huge. So kudos to you, man, because it's not easy to change those perspectives of, you know, this is what I've been told that I need to do to be successful. You've totally blown that up and created what you want. And that's, that's super cool. So amazing job for you. I want to circle back. Obviously you are a marketing lead gen expert. That's what you guys do. I know you have a major focus on real estate business, home service businesses, but let's talk about a Few things from a lead gen standpoint that you would say are must if, if businesses are looking at maximizing their new leads in what are a few things maybe give your top five of what we should, what we should be as business owners looking at to add those leads into our business now.

So I any agent, real estate agent, home service business. I try to get them to think about lead gen in three categories. There is your now business which is created through activity. So it could be door knocking, it could be cold calling, it could be. It's the thing, it's the activities you do. It could be cold email. There's so many different ways to generate leads to get people to essentially a lead is like a name and email address and phone number. Somebody that like somebody that has expressed interest in your product, your service. Like. So there's activity based business where it's like we're and we, we personally pre. Like we practice this. Like if it's not just one lead pillar it's it's thinking of, thinking of things in like you know, what are the activities that I can do on a day in day. Maybe it's cold dms, maybe it's cold email, maybe it's door knocking, maybe it's cold calling. Finding the activities that if like I invest an hour of my time a day, this is the result I'm going to get. These are how many many conversations? Really everything in my opinion in all service based businesses come down to a fundamental core belief that I have all conversion happens in conversation. So it's the activities that we do on a day in and day out basis that create those conversations that give us, that afford us the ability in order to, to essentially have conversion. Because if we don't have conversation there, there's no conversion. The second pillar of business that I try to get every business to think about is like referral business but like not in the way that you think. No one wakes up in the morning thinking Bob, how can I refer you more business like doesn't happen? Like no, like come on Cody, that.

Doesn'T happen every day.

I wish, I wish it worked that way. If it worked that way it'd be amazing. But how do you. The referral business in my view is, you know, and I think you've done this so beautifully is like who are the strategic partners that if I add value to their business they're likely to talk about me? That to me is true referral business strategic partners that you that and it's not just one strategic partner. It's like how Can I have a multitude of strategic partners that if I add value to their audience, they can refer me business? That's true referral business in my view. Or affiliates. You know, like you look at a lot of SaaS companies, a lot of software as service companies. The reason why people are consistently talking about them is because they're getting money or they really like the product, they really like the service. Referral business is often created through like, like do what you say you're going to do. But a large portion of how these SaaS companies scale are through affiliates. They're cutting the person in on a profit sharing model. And I would consider that affiliate to be referral based business. Now the third element of business, which is what we specialize in is pipeline business. It's like do you have a customer relationship management software of people that, because like, you know, like our, our mutual mentor talking more talks about this consistently around pipeline business is like really like if you generate a lead online through Facebook, Google, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn ads, really only 10% of the marketplace is going to do something immediately. And that's being generous now, especially with a more, a more savvy market that we're in, whether it be a coaching service you sell, a lawn care service that you sell, maybe you're a real estate coach, maybe you're a real estate agent. 10% of the leads that are sitting in your database that come through immediately might make a decision to have a conversation with you. But then there becomes the further conversation of like, how good are you to actually convince that person to work with you over the 90 other competitors, competitors that sit in your marketplace. So the pipeline business is like, how can I add names, email addresses and phone numbers? How can I own as much traffic as I possibly can in a, in a, in a, in a database? Because that's really what Facebook, Google, TikTok, LinkedIn, really what they do is they, they own the data. We're paying them to essentially get the data off their platform into our CRM to essentially be able to build a relationship and have a conversation with them. And, but that takes time. It takes just like it would take time to tell your story on social media. Takes time to tell your story via email. Email absolutely works. And like you know, we would generate the lead, we would nurture the lead, we'd get them to an appointment. But that's really, in my opinion, the three ways that, and the three ways to think about lead gen in order to generate conversations for a business like this now business, the referral Business and then the pipeline business. And, like, what we really help people do is not rely on an Instagram account that, knock on wood, say, for example, gets shut down. You're screwed. The reason we have multiple sources is because, like, for example, right now, I'm in Facebook jail. My personal Facebook account, I cannot send any messages. I have, like, 27 messages sitting there. And that is my. That's. That's a Legion pillar for me. Like, people fall. I have over 10,000 followers on Facebook, and that's a really large. But I'm in Facebook jail. I can't message anyone. I have 27 messages sitting in, and I'm in Facebook jail. And if my Facebook account gets shut.

Down tomorrow, what does Facebook jail look like? Is there a period of time before you're out?

Yeah, I. I was. I got. I put myself in Facebook jail, I guess, for sending too many messages to people that wanted a tool that I had created. They asked for it, I slid in their dm, I sent too many messages, and. And they put me in Facebook jail for 10 days. I literally just officially, just now am no longer out of. I'm. I am now out of Facebook jail.

You got your get out of jail free card?

Yeah, I got my jail out of free cards. I'm good.

But, like, you, you've passed go. You've collected your $200 and you're now out of jail. Listen, I. And I want to maybe just talk about that. And I agree, you know, strategic partnerships are such a valuable, valuable resource. And, you know, and you and I have similar philosophies with this. And, you know, it's so important when you have these relationships that you are in a giving sort of environment, and you want to go and connect with these people who have your audience, right? They have your audience. You go to their audience, which is your prospects who don't know you, and you offer them significant amounts of value. And in exchange, if you do a good enough job, they can't help but tell all their people because it makes them look good. Right. That's the intention. We create these. These partnerships or these strategic relationships where we make the partner look good by introducing people. And it's something we. We focus a lot on. I personally focus a lot on partnerships because I agree there's no Facebook jail when it comes to, you know, strategic partnerships. But you do have to continue to give that value, otherwise those. Those partnerships go away. Now, listen, I. I appreciate those three elements of generating leads, and I think they're so valuable for everybody. And I want to Maybe take this to the next level of, you know, what do we do after we have those leads? And I want to talk about one thing that's really been burning my ass, to be honest, over the last probably 12 months. But I think it's been, it's been evolving. And I'm going to drop this on you. I also know how you feel because I see you comment about it online as well. But what's your take on, you know, we get these leads in and it's great, right? We've got these leads, but then we don't actually pick up the phone and call. Yeah, tell me, give me your take on this because I know it pisses you off and it frustrates me because, you know, we all spend. We can have the best marketing agency in the world generating us all the leads, but if we don't actually take action and, and make that call, or at least dm. But you know, I think that there's just the missing art of picking up the phone and actually calling somebody and saying, hey, can I help you? And how do I help you? What do you, what's your thoughts on that, Cody?

We build our entire business around this void. You know, I think fundamentally you as a business owner listening to this podcast, need to understand and like that. My fundamental core belief is all conversion happens in conversation. And that has, that has driven our, the structure of how we've essentially like throw filled the void because there's so many, like we work with a ton of large real estate teams that have 20, 30, 40, 50, 60,000 leads sitting in their database that no one is reaching out to. And in the real estate space specifically, a lot of team leads are delusional and thinking that their agents are calling their lead. They're not.

So.

And the same goes for like, you know, the home service businesses that we work with. Like when we work with home renovators, we're implementing the same process where the, the national stats are this, like, the stats are out right now in the marketplace. Like for example, like my, my call center last week alone set 217 appointments across all of our client accounts. We set on average anywhere between 780 to about a thousand appointments a month across all of our client accounts. And what we've come to realize is that. And I'll talk real estate for a second and I'll filter this to any service business. The average touch points that is is required to create a meeting is 35 touch points to get a meeting, 35. But the average agent follows up with their leads. 1.4 times. Those are national stats. So they're like, you just like, it's very hard to compete with somebody that is dedicated towards just calling leads to get them on the phone. I'll give you, I'll give you a quick that. I think that because a lot of people are like, well, who the heck wants to call somebody, you know, 34 times? Give you a quick story. So I was in a lease with a. I'm living in Medellin, Colombia. I had my lease with Ford and I had intent to get out of this lease. I needed to get this car. But I had so many other things going on in the business that while it was a priority, the salesperson, it took the salesperson 14 phone calls to my phone in order to get him to actually get. Get me. For me to give him the right information for me to get out of lease. I was spending a thousand dollars a month on something I wasn't using. So I had pain. I had pain. I was spending a thousand dollars a month I needed to get out of this lease. But, like, it was like, I have other things going on. It's like, that's people like, we have to think about when we pick up the phone to call somebody. And in our, in our attempt, intent, follow up. Like, even when we look at like tech sales or sales, the buying journey could be 18 months. So even if like somebody has pain and they want to, they want to relieve the pain, they often don't necessarily, they won't necessarily admit that. Like, think about even the way that you interact as a consumer, not just you, but think about everyone else around you. Everyone buys differently and everyone makes buying decisions differently. The stats are the stats. Like, we need to be consistently following up with people, whether it be through email, whether it be through dm, whether it be picking up the phone to call the person. I see this happen a lot in the home service business where it's like we generate an appointment, they give a quote, and they. And they're like, oh, the person will just follow up with me. I'm like, no, they won't. They're not gonna follow up with you. Like, you should be scheduling in your calendar if you really want. There's probably money sitting in your pipeline as a home service business. And we're seeing this now that we're working with more home service businesses. It's like, if you just scheduled once a week to follow up with that person, I guarantee, like, I would be willing to bet that you would add 30 to 40% in revenue to Your business. If you were just to follow up once a week, I'd be willing to bet that you would add 30 to 40% in revenue in your business. Because all the fortune in my opinion is in the follow up, the phone call and getting intentional. We tell our agents like, you know, maybe it's picking up the phone and calling them, maybe it's finding them on Instagram and sending them a text message, maybe it's sending them an email, maybe it's sending a loom video if you want to get really good, maybe sending them a loom video of like, hey, the last time we chatted we chatted about X, Y and Z and I was thinking about you with this information. I recently got this new information about the market and that's your entry point. I think where a lot of people struggle with their follow up or calling their leads is like they, they, they get paralyzed paralysis analysis. They're like what do I say? And that's really now where the sales conversation comes in. Because it's like there's marketing and there's sales and they're two totally different things. And be like, I think I take the sales for granted because I come from a sales background. But the more and more I sit down with agents and with home services businesses, I'm like, they just don't know what to say. And, and then they, they, they get a freeze and they're like, what do I say? That's why when we work with our clients, we're like, okay, this is exactly what you say to a lead in order to get this result. So we've been working with our clients over the last couple of years. I'm like, originally I was just listening to what our ISAs were saying, like our appointment centers. So we were coaching them, but we were never coaching our clients on what to say. And once we started coaching our clients on what to say, that's when things started to skyrocket.

Yeah, I love that. And you know, I can tell you as well, you know, we've brought in setters for meetings from a lead gen standpoint and they're doing a lot of legwork and follow up up front. And I know your, your team does that for agents and man, oh man, these guys. I can, I go back through the correspondence that my team is, is sending to these people and you're right, like the large number of messages just to get them booked on an appointment. But it also gives the client the appreciation of what an experience of working with you is like. Right. Like if we're not following up. When we've got a prospective person who wants to give us money, imagine what happens after they give you money. They're thinking, man, if they're not following up now, am I going to just, you know, sign a contract, for example, with a real estate agent? Am I just going to sign a contract or going to sell my house? You know, 90 days from now, when somebody just shows up, are they going to actually hit the trenches for me? And it, it is a difference. Right. So right from the initial contact, we need to be building out, you know, the journey of what somebody is going to experience working with us. And if we don't want it early, we're definitely not going to be wanting it during the delivery portion. So super valuable. Cody, I want to talk about one more thing because I think it's really relevant right now, the change in the economy. You know, I remember 2008. 2008, well, that's the year I started my business and very similar sort of economy where there was a bit of a housing crisis. You know, especially in the US A lot of people were over leveraged. The values of real estate dropped. So there were houses just being abandoned. Obviously caused a lot of financial turmoil. Specifically in the U.S. you know, we're sitting in a similar economy where we're watching the values drop for real estate values across North America, across the world, really. And I know in your business that has an impact financially on the agents you work with. Right. Because they're getting a commission based on the sale price. When that's dropping, that impacts them. When the volume of transactions are happening because people are less willing to invest. Right now, that's having an impact. So I know, and we've talked about this. This has made you, you know, look at your business and, and sort of adapt to this changing environment. Give me your take on it and you know, some of the things that you've learned from having to adapt in this circumstance.

Yeah. So I think that the real estate space specifically is so interesting and like, it's funny because when I'm on a call with a real estate agent, like I've done so many, like I like one of my best friends, you know, Vikram, really, really successful real estate agent, know the Seattle area. We talk a lot about this. And then obviously Shiron Srivatsa, a really good friend of mine, you know, president of Real Brokers, we chat about this consistently. So like when I'm on the phone with an agent, like I understand them probably better than they understand themselves. What I'm seeing happen in the marketplace across the board is like a lot of agents, they get into that. Like, we first have to understand why agents get into the business. Agents get in the business because, like, Uncle Tom or Aunt Susie said that you're a really good talker and, you know, you'd be good in real estate. So the cost of entry is so low. So unlike another business where there's a lot of overhead, there's a very little overhead in real estate. So, for example, in the Toronto market, I think, I don't quote me on this stat, but we're close to down. But we're. We're down close to 42% transaction volume. That's a big, That's a big thing because, like, you know, that's, that's like transaction volume. Like we chatted about earlier, you know, price points and transaction volume dictate how much money they make. So there's agents that I'm speaking with on a consistent basis where last year they made 500k and this year they're sitting at 60 and we're going into Q4. So the, even the buying power for them to buy leads, for them to invest back in their business, they don't have the money to do it because they didn't set their business up in a way that to thrive to begin with, they relied solely on the one pillar we chatted about earlier, which is referrals. But, you know, people like the general population is not buying property right now. Like, it's the investors that are still buying. It's the relocation. It's, it's. But the business was never set up in a way in order to grow. Like, even when I chat with these large teams, we have a podcast called the Podcast. We interview some of the top agents across the country, what they're doing to stay in line with the market. Even these top performing teams are down 20 this year. But 20 is good because that's the, the transaction volume is down. They haven't lost any market share. They're sitting in line with where the market's at. So one of the things that Shrona said consistently and something that I think that I think Simon Bowen has said this before, is like asking the question, did the market grow or did your business grow? And I think a lot of people had delusion in this real estate market that their business grew. When the business didn't actually grew, the market grew. So it's like the, the. If the market went up by 70% and your business went up by 30%, you didn't. Your business did not grow. The market grew. And you just, you ran in life, you actually ran. You out underperformed the market. So if the transaction volume went up 70%, which in a lot of markets it did, it's different. And every market's different. Like, like Calgary, for example, in Canada is up 21% year over year. And that's just based on people relocating and moving to that market. So I think it's important. Immigration as well. I think it's important for people to understand the stats. And I've been saying this on to everyone in, in, in this space. It's like, you know, are you actually underperforming the market based on your local market stats? Do you. If the market is down 20%, but you're down 70%, you have a massive hole in your business. And you have to figure out, how do I repair that hole? Do I add more activities? Do I do more cold calling? Do I add another pillar? Finding ways, like right now, in this market, finding ways to make money without necessarily spending money is a good option. But if you are sitting on this is part of the reason we, we transitioned a lot of our model over to a free trial and is because there's a lot of large teams sitting on large databases they're not doing anything with. So let's extract some of that money from the database without having to advertise more. So there's other ways for us to generate revenue, for us to generate income without necessarily spending additional money. But I think everything starts with understanding what's happening in your market and what's happening in your industry. For us, for our business, we branched off and we said, not even at the beginning of the year, literally a month and a half ago, two months ago, we said, okay, real estate in the US right now is down 32%. Will that, will that change? Of course it will. The market will correct eventually. And, you know, like, the market will eventually correct. And when it does and when transaction volume increases, we're set up to absolutely crush it in the real estate space. But when the market volume is down 31%, we said, okay, what's the easiest second niche for us to enter into? It's home services. Because we're like, we already have the infrastructure. We already have the call center, we already have the media buyers. We're still targeting homeowners. So, like, we already have the infrastructure. Let's just open up and create a standard operating procedure around how to serve this market now. So I think it's important for, like, really, if you're a real estate agent in your local market, the first thing you need to sit down and figure out is like, what is my mark? How is my market performing? And then how do I beat the market? The only way to beat the market or to run in line with the market is to increase activities. Like, so what we're a lot of our agents and a lot of team leads are saying is like, we need to triple down on something. Like, like, I think like in you, you do this with like, clients so brilliantly is like, a lot of clients will come to us and be like, I want to go to two deals a month, but they're not even doing one right now. It's like, well, what are you going to do in order to generate those two deals? There's a lot of wishful thinking around. Like, there's not actually a lot of, like mapping out the, the things they need to do. They look at the, the lagging indicators versus the leading indicators. And I think that, you know, specifically in the real estate space, they would just like really benefit from looking at what do I need to do in order to generate this many appointments. And if I need to generate this many appointments to get this many sales, they just, there's a lack of understanding. And like, I know that, like, you obviously work with a ton of, in your CFO program, work with a ton of people in order to map that out. I just think there's so many people out there right now that just aren't looking at what they need to do from an activity perspective in order to generate the income and the revenue that they want to generate.

Yeah, 100%. And you know, again, this type of economy, not even just the real estate, real estate is a good indicator of, of where everything else is going in the economy for sure. And we've talked about this before where we head into difficulty economic situations and we talk about it our survive and thrive, where it's like, okay, let's make sure we've got the working capital and the security we need. Let's adapt to our business model. Right? Like you're doing that. You're, you're looking at your business model and saying, okay, if our market is shrinking with active real estate agents because the transactions are going down, how do we continue to serve a market? How do we adapt to that? But then third is, and I think, you know, this applies for your real estate agents and for anybody who's struggling with surviving right now is that the opportunity is coming, right? And if we have the resources from a working capital standpoint, you know, have cash, have a security blanket available for us that when we withhold this storm, at the back end of this storm where so many agents, for example, in real estate have bailed out, right? Because they're like, oh, this is too hard. And I get it. It's too hard for a lot of people. But you're. But you're not other people, right? We are not, you know, the listeners here are not other people. They are the ones who are going to persevere and go, you know what heart is. Okay, let's get through this. And then on the other side of this is the opportunity that, you know, we all want and we all need to position ourselves for right now. Cody, this has been amazing, man. I could chat with you all day. I want to. I want to maybe just end here with sharing how people can get in touch with you now that you're at a Facebook jail. You know, what's your socials, what's your podcast, what's your website? How do people reach you?

Yeah, you know, I appreciate the time today, man. Like, I always love jamming with you. And like, I remember back, you know, kind of like just one. One quick thing before I give the information. Bob has been such a wealth of information. Like, I remember, like, when we started doing content in the very beginning, just turning on the camera and then pressing pause on the camera, being like, what do you mean by this? Like, and. And, yeah, like, I know you have so much content in your CFO program. I just, like, just want to say thank you more than anything. I wouldn't be here where I am today without the knowledge and expertise you've kind of implanted of the me. So I want to say thank you more than anything, but for me, like, honestly, the easiest place to reach me is Instagram is just literally at cod may C O D M A Y. That's kind of like where, you know, a lot of people connected. A lot of my contents there. If you're a real estate agent, we have a. We have a podcast called the RE Agent Podcast. We essentially interview agents all across North America about their wins, losses, losses and stories. Help you in your win in your local market. Today I have a co host, Vikram. We run that podcast. We produce and publish five episodes a week, which is crazy, but that is something. Sharon encouraged us to do it. We did it. And I still sometimes wonder why. Why do we do this? Nuts, but we do it. And yeah, if you're a real estate agent, we. We're running a free trial right now, a free appointment trial. If there's leads sitting in a database you're not doing anything with. It's just Sheridan street IO, forward slash, trial. But yeah, just reach out to me on Instagram. We can have a conversation at COD May. It's probably the easiest way if you're a home service business or you are currently a real estate agent or team lead.

Amazing. Thank you, Cody, Always a wealth of knowledge. Always a pleasure. Reach out to Cody. Connect with him. Always a great resource. Guys, thanks for tuning in. This is the Wealthy Entrepreneur podcast. Can't wait to see you next time.