Identifying Real Estate Opportunity: Lessons from Listing Leads

And one. One thing. Can you stop calling listing leads little? We are no longer little.

Right?

It's. It's the little marketing company that can.

Exactly. As a marketing guy, I'm like, we do not want our positioning to be little. We are now. We are not. We are no longer little.

It's a rocket ship.

That's it. That's it. We can call it a big rocket ship.

Hey, welcome back to the podcast. I am. I am so fired up about this show, and I think you're gonna love it a lot. First of all, it's my third 300th. I almost said third 300th podcast. So whether you're listening for the first time or you are like me with some of my favorite podcasts, this is number 300 for you. I just want to say thank you so much for being on this journey with me. I know sometimes I put out a ton of content, and then I get complaints that sometimes I'm not as consistent. I hear you, and I appreciate that.

I, in my 35 years, have been very fortunate to start a lot of companies, almost always with partners. I've just found partnerships rule the world. If you do it right, it's absolutely magical. And like anything else, some of those businesses really work, and some of those businesses really don't. And either way, it gives you such great perspective. And I think for the person you listening right now, whether you started one business or five businesses or ten businesses, maybe you were mowing lawns as a kid or your parents said to you, go sell lemonade. Like that was a business, right? What I love unpacking with entrepreneurs is like, what are the Zen learnings? What are the insights? So today I've asked my partner in crime in this rocket ship company listing leads. You know him as Jimmy Mac, and you know him as one of the great direct response marketeers. I mean, people, like, line up saying, jimmy, do my marketing for me. Like, that's Jimmy Mackin's brand. But I know Jimmy behind the scenes. I know Jimmy because we talk about, like, what are other companies doing? What are we learning? What are the lessons? How do we apply those? Can we apply it? Is it applicable? So I thought today I would challenge him to say, you know, you are really the tip of the spear of this rocket ship company listing leads. And you and I both know we have, like, five more companies we want to start together. So heads up, my friends. More good things coming, but let's take a different approach today. I can always ask him about marketing, but why don't we talk Business today. Cause I bet, Jimmy, right now there's at least one person listening who isn't growing as fast as they would like, or they've grown really fast and they scaled the wrong way. Right. They've grown really fast and they're not making any money. Or d. All the above. I don't know. But I can't wait to. To read the comments, whether you're. It's hard because on the podcast thing, we can't do it. So if you go to my YouTube channel or my Facebook or Instagram or wherever you find this, I would love to hear your perspective on the Zen learnings we want to talk about today. So. So, Jimmy, as always, my friend, welcome to the show. Your background looks fantastic. If I said to you, so are we. Are we even 15 months old? 16 months old now?

Yeah, we're still in our infancy. We're still in diapers. We're still crawling. We haven't started walking yet. That's the sort of stage that we're at right now, about 16 months old. You know, it's interesting, though, as you're setting that up and thank you for the kind words and as I agree with you wholeheartedly that you should look for the 2/2 equals 100 types of partnerships in your businesses. I think too many people right now go it alone for no reason other than maybe their ego. But there is some magic when you can sort of find another maniac on a mission, as they say. One of the lessons that we've learned and one of the, I think the opportunities in our space, Tom, that people don't talk about is this idea of identifying underserved markets. And this is something you and I talk a lot about. We try to look at the entire landscape. We try to sort of assess where is there opportunity right now that exists. And part of that exercise from a business strategy perspective is to look at the world through the lens of what has changed and what hasn't changed.

Yes.

And what happens in business oftentimes is you set out on a path. Maybe you've got some KPIs, you've got some OKRs, you've got some goals you set. And then you become so myopic. And as the world is changing around you, you are not in a position to adjust or adapt to that. And so what happens is you miss really big obvious opportunities because you're not asking questions. And by the way, Tom, this happens not just to small companies. This happens to major companies. Look at Microsoft as a great sort of case study. Microsoft Missed the Internet, they missed mobile, they missed social. They just happened to get AI right. So we, we have forgiven all their sins.

So it is common, but they only got it right by investment. That's correct. They were like, you can't do this. Let's give those guys like a billion dollars, go build OpenAI. So sorry to interrupt. So what has changed? What happened? What hasn't changed? And then what I'm hearing is like, there's these underserved markets that people are missing and we could all. We could think of a thousand examples. Think of, you know, Blockbuster passing on by Netflix. Netflix.

They literally laugh them out of the room. Reed Hastings tries to sell Blockbuster trial, sell NetFL $50 million to, to Blockbuster. They laughed him out of the room.

Yeah. So, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna redirect it for my listener. What is the market that you're not paying attention to right now? What, what part of real estate or mortgage or title or tech or whatever industry you find yourself in? Like in residential real estate, I think Silver Tsunami, first time buyers, first time Hispanic buyers is totally.

Yep.

Bananas. Right? Like there's just, there's these. We get so myopic on our own database, which, listen, we want to take care of our past clients and sphere, my goodness, let's, let's pay attention. But, but don't, don't overly pay attention to them and then miss adding thousands, hundreds, tens, whatever the number is of new people to your database. That open up a whole new door for you to grow.

Tom, it's such an important point. It's a very dangerous business strategy to let your market choose you. And I'll give you an example of this, which is, let's say I'm an agent who's selling starter homes, 400,000 to $500,000 in my area. And let's say that inventory now is ballooning. We went from two months of inventory now because of new construction, that now all of a sudden we were at, you know, 12 to 17 months of inventory. What happens is that agent now has all this downward pressure from buyers who are getting incredible deals on new construction. So they can't sort of help with the residential resale. They're, they're not getting, they're getting listings, but the listings are sitting really long and they're having to invest capital in those listings. So all of a sudden they Woke up in 2025 and they had this incredible business that, that now has become this albatross because the market has shifted. This agent here, what happens is they're just looking, right? They're saying, well, how can I move these houses quicker? How can I, you know, keep these listings from expiring? When the real question they should be asking is, what are the parts of the markets that are healthier, that have maybe less inventory, that are selling faster that there isn't. They're not being sort of the, you know, attacked by new construction, if you will. And what am I doing to get my name, my face, my brand, my marketing in front of those individuals? And so for our listeners who are, who are, who are listening to this pod right now, if you find yourself in a position where the market's pushing against you, don't push back. Instead, take a step back, assess your market and say, where is there opportunity? Where is there an underserved part of the market that I can adjust to? Cause you get to choose your markets. Your markets don't choose you.

It feels like an easy exercise to do a CSV file from your MLS download 30, 60, 90, 120, 180 days of data, drop it into ChatGPT, Revy, Grok, whatever, and say, I'm trying to understand where the underserved market is, where everybody's operating, what the outlier opportunities are. Please analyze all this data and tell me where I should spend my time, money and energy to attract clients and let it just narrow it down to like this pocket, this price range. Here's what's going on and it'll tell you if you ask for the underserved communities or the, the markets that no one's paying attention to. I also love, like we've done this before with clients where I say, let's analyze. Like, do I go after this geographic farm as an example? Right? Like a very easy, relatable, you know, not experiment, but opportunity. Well, the first thing you want to do is you want to analyze the last as many years as you can, who sold a house there. How many times did one agent sell one house versus, you know, you got, you know, Brian over here who sells, he has, he controls the market and does four deals a year. But 25 other agents all got one. Do you need to beat Brian or do you need to beat why you shouldn't list with your, your aunt? You know, I almost said Aunt Larry that have been weird, you know, Aunt Lucy who's five towns over and has a real estate license. Like so then you could start to analyze the data to say, wow, there's like a, there's a big opportunity here that there's no clear resource. All I got to do is become the obvious next choice. Like that's when you, when you say to me, underserved markets. It could be expired, it could be geographic farming, it could be silver tsunamis, it could be Latino first time homebuyers. It could be home sellers above age 70 that are living in two story houses. There's just, I don't know, I get too excited about this.

Well, there's, there's. If Tom and I were your chief marketing officers, this is what we would do. Let me give you three things. Tom and I would say the number one thing to look at is competition. Is there a dominant agent or is it dispersed amongst 10 or 20 agents? That tells me there's an opportunity. Number two, we would look at demand and we would measure demand by how quickly are homes selling in that area relative to other homes. And number three, we would look at your tam, total addressable market, how much, how, how much volume is being pushed through that particular market. So we would look at competition, we would look at demand and we would look at your tam. And if Tom and I were your chief marketing officers, we would analyze, and this is why you should use AI to do this. We would analyze your, your market. Hey, draw a map on how far you'll drive to go on a listing appointment, right? And we'd say, hey, these three areas, this is where we should be deploying our mailers. This is where we should be door knocking. This is where we should be creating content. This is what we should be emailing about. This is what we should be texting people about. Like we're going to establish a presence here where there is movement and opportunity instead of again being sucked down to whatever the market is in our particular area. So I would say, you know, our big zen learning, and this is a business principle that we adhere to is find the underserved markets and, and take full advantage of them and take them seriously. If you want to grow, love it.

I don't think we've ever talked about on the show. You want to share the origin story of listing leads of how this company came about?

Well.

It was about a three minute phone call I think it says is the short version. You know, the funny thing is with listing leads is.

Tom has a disease. I'm not sure people know this, which.

Is something I've tried to stage interventions for, but he's been resisting. Tom likes to buy domains. Okay, like he likes, he likes, he likes that. I mean he has, he has more domains than any other person on the planet at this point. So he Has. So he has domains for everything you possibly imagine.

So are you saying I'm the, Are you saying I'm the daddy of Godaddy?

I was.

That's going to be the clip right there. That's going to be. That's. That's going to be. That's going to be it. If I start calling you Daddy Tom, that's going to be a bigger problem here.

But the, you know, the interesting thing is, is with, you know, Tom and I were discussing, we were. When we looked at the market, we were looking at, you know, how can we better serve agents? Because we just, you know, Tom and I saw the market shifting and we just saw people really having a difficult time adjusting. You know, we've never lived through a period where we've got. We've lost 2 million transactions in less than 24 months. I mean, that has actually never happened in the history of real estate. And so, you know, for us, when we, when we decided to start listing leads, it was a conversation where we say, listen, let's create a product, let's create a service that people love, that adds a ton of value, and let's spend all of our time building and none of our time having conversations or meeting about what to do. And so we have a rule at listing leads, which is no meetings. All we do is spend our time building. And, and both of Tom and I have a passion for Rockefeller. And there is a great quote, if you want to give it Tom that talks about the importance of this.

He says action solves everything. Action solve. I want to, I want to double down on it. And it's a great insight for everybody. Part of our conversation was there's all these companies that are charging 25%, 35%, 40%.

Right.

$10,000 up front, and we'll, we'll get you 10 listing appointments. And we were like, could we help somebody extract maximum opportunity from their database and around other pockets of barking for like, next to nothing? Yeah, it's like, it's, you know, I'm not, we're not, we're not Jeff Bezos. But it was like the Amazon model. Like, how do you, how do you do it as close as possible to a super low price that, that drives tremendous value that people literally go, like, when they maybe first hear about, like, oh, you know, 99amonth, whatever. Like, oh, it's one more thing. And then they get inside there and they're like, holy. Like, there's a lot here.

Right?

Ask yourself this question. You and I, I sent you a podcast recently. And I'm sure it's, you know, I'm sure it'll come up today. Jaw dropping client experiences. Jaw dropping client experiences. How do you have somebody meet you for the first time, you're an agent and you're going to do your buyer consult. How do you have it become a jaw dropping client experience? How do you make the listing launch a jaw dropping client experience for the customer? Um, it's such a great question, right? It's such a, it's such a huge opportunity. Because how else does an agent create a moat in their business that is impenetrable other than, you know, build their brand on social? That's one way, like become so recognizable that they can't avoid you or you do something so refined, so beautiful, so extraordinary that people talk about it all the time. And I think that was, you know, like a lot of that stuff was sort of the. Could we build something like this that is so beneficial to people? That is, we don't want to say, hey, we're like, we're trying to say all those companies that are charging referral fees are jerks. Like, no, we just think you have enough inside your own database. Like, let us just show you how to extract it. You know what I mean?

What you're describing is another principle that I think is worth sharing with everyone here today and something that we've observed being students of business, which is results come from repetition. And I'll give you an example of this.

In marketing. It is not necessarily one campaign that's going to make or break your year. In fact, it's the exact opposite. It's oftentimes the accumulation of just consistency across all these different channels that compounds over time, that builds that momentum, that builds that moat that you're all trying to achieve. And what happens right now is that I think the riskiest thing that we can do in business, and you, and I give you a lot of credit for this, Tom, because you are incredibly good at this, is this idea of dabbling.

You are the guy who was always saying, let's focus, let's focus, let's focus. And I think a lot of people right now who are listening, they dabble. Not because they know it's bad, they know they shouldn't do it, but their expectations as it relates to getting results is so skewed that they don't give themselves the sort of time horizon right needed to be successful. And a great business example, Tom and I are talking about this off air. Like, what's a company that's dabbled and what's the cost of dabbling? HBO recently has gone through yet another. I can't even call hbo, but they've gone through yet another rebrand, whatever they're called this week. So let me give some context here. It went from HBO to hbo, now to hbo, go to HBO Max to then just Max and now back to HBO Max. If you're confused, guess what? So is everybody else. Yeah. And so you look at this company that has an, I mean if you think about hbo, this is an iconic brand, Tom Sopranos, Six Feet under the Wire, Game of Thrones, like this, they have created some incredible tent pole, you know, creative ip and they have, they have done everything in their power to screw it up. And if you look at the impact it has had on their subscriber base, just look at it. In contrast to Netflix, last time I checked, HBO has now 122 million global subscribers. This is a 45 plus year old brand, whereas Netflix is well over 300 million global. They're, you know, two and a half.

Times bigger and, and doesn't put out even close to the quality of content.

Exactly. So this is, this, and this is, goes back to what Thomas saying earlier about jaw dropping. Jaw dropping. Customer experience, client experience. Is that the only way you can deliver that is through repetition. Yes, that's the only way you can deliver that is through repetition. So I think one of the lessons that we, we, we, we try to embrace is this idea of like the, the marketing that you do right now to help attract customers. You have to have this mindset where you have to detach yourself from the short term outcome and start thinking about building this momentum. And so too many times someone will send a hundred mailers, not get results and then throw out the idea of mailing and then move on to what's next. Move on to what's next. Go through another rebrand, go through another rebrand, go through another rebrand. And that switching cost is killing your production, it's killing your productivity, it's killing your momentum. So I think the second lesson here that I think that we embrace, that we try to try to try to embody, but also think it's great for everyone as it relates to marketing is this idea that repetition results come from repetition. You got to make sure that you are investing heavily and being consistent with otherwise, like you're never going to experience the outsized gain that you're trying to achieve.

So let's, I'd love for us to also unpack one of the, one of the mistakes that I see A lot of people make and you know, shout out to my coach and, and good friend Rory Vaden. He talks about Sheehan's wall and, and today certainly in residential real estate, we, we see this a lot. We see it, we see it. It's funny, I was like doing a look back over how many times I've seen this occur in real estate, and it's like five times where what happens is people, people want to do things other than their current business.

Here's the challenge, right? Instead of doubling down on what works and going through this cycle, the economy, they start to chase fast money. They start to chase what they perceive as an easier way to do it. Now the challenge is she Han Swall, as my coach Rory describes it as if you're basically unknown, you can't bring anything to market of substance until you're well known. So here's the challenge. My business isn't performing well. I'm not doing as good as I would like. So I'm going to figure out like three side hustles, three different things I can do to make money. And then you realize because no one knows who you are, you have now massive diluted focus, which creates massive diluted results. Now I'm not saying you can't eventually break through Sheehan's wall and then do a whole bunch of things outside of it, but I think the most important Zen learning around listing leads around other businesses. A lot of my guidance to people when they're like, I'm currently doing X and I want to start this new venture Y, and I'm like, no one knows who you are. Do you know how much money it's going to cost you, how much time and energy it's going to cost you to have this service that you're so in love with, this new solution, this new way to make money with this easy path, this super fired up emotional experience you're having. Do you realize how much that's going to cost? And do you realize how much it's going to cost you in actual dollars because of your diluted focus on your current real estate practice, on the current thing you're doing? You with me on this?

Yeah. Yeah.

So for my friend that's listening like, it's easy to have a hundred ideas. This results comes from repetition. I want to double down on it.

If you commit to becoming.

Michael Jordan, I'm going to become the most exceptional basketball player on the planet. And as I, as I do that thing, I become so well known that I can do anything versus I'm Going to bounce and try this and try that and try this and try that, and I'm going to try and look for the fast way to make money. Is this making sense to you?

What's interesting is you can look at athletes, you can look at coaches, you can look at businesses, but you can even look at companies that appear to be doing many, many, many different things, but in fact, they're only doing one thing. And the best example you and I both love is the story of Amazon shareholder letters. So Jeff Bezos writes shareholder letters every year for the last 25 years before he retired as CEO and started spending his time on rockets and yachts. And he would have, he would have, in his very first shareholder letter, this basic flywheel around why we exist. And he would cover three basic things. Selection, convenience, and price. And so whereas Amazon now is known as the everything store, it appears that they're in everything. But the reality is that there's an underlying operating principle that they have around selection and convenience and price that drives everything that they do. Todd Graves, we love Todd Graves, right from raising Canes. He's got a chicken finger dream. I mean, like, it's that level of focus and that discipline that you're describing. I mean, behind every single person that we study and we admire, there is oftentimes a simple idea that they took seriously. You know, to quote our friend David Senra. And like, that's, I think that's what you're describing. I think right now, for the agents who are listening today, the most important thing for them to do is not to have a to do list, but to have a to don't list. What are the things I'm not going to do? I'm not going to get distracted. And by the way, you know who loves new, cool, interesting things? We do, of course. I mean, we love it, right? I mean, if you're watching right now, if you're a high agency, high ambitious person, you like the new stuff, we all do. But that discipline, you know, that work that you're describing, Tom, I mean, that's where the magic really happens. And, and you just see it over and over again when we look outside of real estate industry.

I agree. So for my, my friend that's listening right now, you know, how many different ways do you have to hear focus? Focus isn't always, you know, the, the A1, B2. If you've seen me do that example, like everybody can count from one to 26 pretty fast. Everybody can do the Alphabet A to Z pretty fast. But the second I say go, A1, B2, C3, D4, E5. You know, notice I stop at E5 because I've memorized that part. From there, it's like. It gets hard. That's what I see a lot of people do in their business, especially when they're. When you make that mistake in the first 10 years of your career of starting a new venture, you might as well call it quits. Now. I'm not saying, jimmy, don't test things, because we're always going to be a testing machine, but I mean, once you understand the core purpose of the business, I'm in the job of housing. I think housing will always be around. I think people will always need shelter. How they get shelter, what they pay for shelter, what the terms are for shelter, the location of shelter, the size of shelter, all that may change. But I'm in the business of shelter and I don't think it's going anywhere. So I'm going to become world class at helping people move from this shelter to that shelter. If you could take on a method like that. I think, again, listing leads us as a coaching company, right? Like, at our core, what do we do? We help people sell more houses to have a better quality life. And you know what we also do? We attract people who want to sell more houses to have a better quality life. That's it. 22 years of doing it. People like, how did you become number one? Focus. Yeah, Focus.

What's interesting is this is something I've learned from you that I think everyone here can. Can take away from this idea of just sort of like establishing, kind of recalibrating yourself. Going into the latter half of this year, one of the worst sort of kind of PR nightmares the last 12 months was the story of Jaguar. Jaguar, which was a, you know, iconic UK brand, was struggling as a car company.

And so one more time, say the name.

Jaguar. Jaguar.

He has no R in it.

Oh, you say Jaguar.

Yes.

Yeah, we said Jaguar.

Yes, I know. Welcome to Boston.

I know. Every other. I know. The person listening right now was like, Jaguar, J A G W. Jaguar.

Jaguar. Jaguar. I've done. I've done my best to suppress my boss an accent here.

Yes.

So the story, though, is that this company was struggling and they went through a major rebrand. And the rebrand objectively and categorically was a disaster by any and every measure. And the challenge was you had all these people, the intellectual elites and marketing and branding, talking about how amazing this was and the typography they used, but they just lost sight of their actual customers. And the lesson there around Jaguar is this idea that. And this is something I've learned from you, Tom, because I'll call Tom and I will brainstorm on ideas. Hey, listen, this is an opportunity. And I'll come to. I'll pitch Tom on some ideas that are like massive overhauls of strategy, massive overhauls of direction. And one thing I've learned is that big problems oftentimes have small fixes.

Yeah.

And so that is like, if there. You're going to have problems in your business, and the natural reaction is, for some of us, if the problem is persistent, Tom is like, man, I just want to burn the whole damn thing down. Like, the hell with it, we're going to start over. And I think what's interesting is these big problems that you're facing. Let's say you have a lead conversion problem, and for whatever reason, you spent tens of thousands of dollars a month on advertising, and for whatever reason, you cannot generate a positive ROI on that spend. The natural tendency is, well, let's stop, let's restart, let's fire the isa, let's. Let's retrain our age. But oftentimes it's something really small. Something like maybe, just maybe there's one person on the team who is dragging everyone else down, or maybe there's. You don't have an accountability meeting or something you need to put into place, or maybe your incentive structures are a little bit out of whack. And so these big problems in your businesses that feel insurmountable, that feel like you're going to require you to retool everything, oftentimes have very small tweaks, which is something that you can talk a lot about, Tom, with this idea, this mentality of, like, being not falling in love with the product, but falling in love with the customer. And this idea of testing, testing, testing, testing and not falling in love with. I think, Tom, the idea of, like, you being right, rather like, let's just find what right is.

Yeah. I think that, first of all, there's a lot to unpack there. Totally unrelated and we'll come back to it. Do you know the company Slate? Were you and I talking about Slate?

Yeah. Yeah, that's.

So if for my friend listening, if you haven't checked out Slate, I'm looking at the site. This truck can be anything. Even an SUV like this is. This is selling a low cost. If I go, great cars got too pricey. We fixed that. That's on their website.

Think.

Think about that, my friend. Like, you know, you could argue 25 different ways. You could take that exact concept and bring it right into real estate. If you called out things like homes have become too expensive. We help you though. Find the X. Right? Totally love it. So back on the. Back on the. The point, it actually dovetails nicely to this. Most people don't have time to test.

So they unintentionally test every day with what they do. They just try stuff. If I could get you, if we could wave a magic wand and I could accelerate your business maturity, I would say to you, you should have an Excel file or a Google Doc or whatever you want of every test you've ever done in your company. And you should celebrate the fact that you had 497 donkeys last year and you had three unicorns that absolutely crushed. Which one's more valuable, the 497 donkeys or the three unicorns. Everyone's going to say the unicorns. I'm going to go, no. You learned 497 ways to not make a light bulb. You learned 497 ways to NOT surprise and delight your client. You learned multiple headlines that didn't connect, multiple direct messages that didn't connect, multiple approaches that didn't work. And what it does is it then refines and refines and refines. Our mutual buddy Dan. Dan who? Danimal Dan Williams. He's the chief revenue officer of a company called Three Day Blinds. We were in a mastermind and he said, you gotta, you have to be testing all the time. Testing your email, texting, your test your text, testing your scripting, texting your landing pages. Like you ought to be testing those. And he goes, I'll give you guys an example of Three Day Blinds. And I forget the number. He said, like, we've had like a sub 200 landing pages. He goes, but number two, still outperforms all of them. But we will build a new landing page every month and test it against it because they're constantly trying to refine the experience to make it as cost effective as possible. Great for the customer. Everything that we want. So stop for a second, maybe just for my friend listening, ask yourself, when was the last time you tested email? Like tested the headline, the subject? When was the last time you tested something? Because Instagram lets you do it now a reel before it actually goes live? Like, if you could take on a culture of testing, what you're going to discover. Yeah, it takes a little more time in the beginning. Yes, it's a new discipline. Yes. It's another thing to track and measure. But man, the learnings you get from it are so extraordinary. Like, I know if I curse a little bit at an event, it makes like 3% of the audience go completely insane and hate me. I get it. But I also know like, like 76% of the people get the punchline that I'm, I was raised well and my mom's a good person and my dad's a good person, but, you know, as a comedian does, sometimes you throw the punch in there. And then I have to ask myself, can I live with the 3% of the people that say I don't like when he does that? And I can't believe he said, you know, the S word. And I can live with it. So. But I've tested it. I know I tracked and measure it. Does that make sense? Weird example, but you know what I'm talking about.

Well, the thing is, on that same line, what's a lesson we've learned from testing? Because, you know, we are, we certainly embrace the culture of testing and speed. You know, we sort of, you know, we like to joke. Our love language is progress. And there is something we've learned that everyone here can apply to their business as it relates to simplicity. Special K, I told the story recently. We were on stage in Las Vegas last last week. It's probably the craziest business story I've heard in a long time. Special K obviously has been around for 75 years. They sell, you know, pretty average cereal. They were losing a lot of market share to a lot of the up and coming companies selling more exciting, more exciting cereal than Special K, if you can imagine that. So they brought in Leo Burnett, who is a famed advertising executive, runs that runs an agency. The same guy behind the marble man, the bounty, quicker picker upper, you know, Crest toothpaste, a whole bunch of other companies and they came up with this idea to help sell more cereal that is so absurd and so insane that I can only imagine if you and I are sitting, if us are, everyone who's listening to the podcast is sitting in the, in the room. We would all laugh at this person. They said, listen, we have an idea to sell more cereal. We're going to invent a diet. We're going to convince people to not only eat special case cereal for breakfast, but then to also eat it for lunch. So we'll double our sales by just convincing people to eat, to eat it for lunch. And then, you know, we're going to do. Right. Like we're going to, we're going to do that. And here's how we're going to do it, we're going to invent a diet. Okay, cool, Great idea. How are we going to communicate this? And this is where it gets really interesting. So what they did is they came up with Special K challenge, and it was something that was so simple and so easy to understand and memorable. Two bowls of cereal twice a day for two weeks.

And listen, it probably took them 300 hours of creative just brainstorming to come up with two bowls of cereal twice a day for 2 weeks. They had tens of millions of people participate in a Special K challenge. They doubled their market share in 18 months. So a test and a learning we have had and when it comes to marketing and messaging and positioning is simple, almost always wins. And right now, Tom, I think everyone who's listening today probably needs their own version of two bowls twice a day for two weeks. And they need to have that clarity. And that would be like my four action for everyone here. What's your two bowls twice a day for two weeks?

What is that?

And is that being communicated through all the channels that you're reaching people? Think about that.

I just wrote down five ways to improve your home's value in five weeks. Someone needs to take that on. Make it better. Make it better. Five ways to improve your home's value in five weeks. Wouldn't that be a cool thing to see get launched out in the marketplace where people start saying, well, you, you and I both know, like, what do they have to do to improve their homes? Do they have to improve their front yard experience of going into the house? Do they need to paint some walls? I mean, my goodness, if you could do five ways to improve your home's value for free in five weeks, that would be bananas. But that may not be the case. But what a wonderful catchy. Who doesn't want their home value to go up, right? And there's enough DIYers in the world that would eat that up. And all you're doing is just becoming. You're just going to become like the guy, the gal, the one they're like, oh, yeah. Well, it's because, you know, Sarah told me to do this, Jimmy told me to do this. Something like that, I think would be really fun to play off. By the way, this is like we're doing a podcast, basically. This should just be called every conversation Tom and Jimmy have when they get together for 15 minutes. Right? What do you think about this? What do you think about that? By the way, the this show title, Brian, is going to be called what do Jaguar Special K, Netflix and skate slate trucks have to do with selling more real estate. Jaguar spelled J A G W A.

H, W A, A, A, A, A H, Jaguar. All right.

Hey, Jim, I love that if there was one final marketing lesson you would want to share with everybody today. Like the thing that you and I both know to be true, like I wrote down just while we were chatting. I'll give you an example for all my friends out there that, that walk up to me at events. You've had me do this to you before. I get it all the time on Instagram. Hey, Tom, will you take a look at my ex and give me feedback? X could be my social channel, this video, my direct mail, my listing presentation and. And the note that I wrote down is being different matters today. Being different matters today. Like the audacity to think you could send a just sold card and get an unbelievable response to me is just insane. Right? But if you did a curious how we did it card and you told the story, like with a QR code to learn more or to watch the transformation of, you know, how you took the house and cleaned it up and did that and then finally released it, like, that's a more compelling story. It's different. Mutam. That takes time. Yes, yes. But like, if we're doing marketing, don't we want to optimize every opportunity? I would say yes. Or the world famous. Did you hear about your neighbor? Shout out to all my friends at FNF, the massive title company in the U.S. i told them just sold cards are stupid. And they're like, but wait, all of our agents send these out. And someone finally said, what would you recommend? I'm like, I do a black or pink or blue weird postcard that just said, did you hear about your neighbor with an arrow? And they turn on the other side, there's a QR code. Your face isn't on it. Your information is on it. Nothing's on it. I literally want the consumer to go, did I hear about the neighbor? I knew that, you know, Brian was having an affair. You know, I knew that, you know, Sarah was sleeping with the pool boy. Like, I want, I want to invoke curiosity.

I think difference is just one example. What are other examples of marketing you know, works today? Yeah.

Nick Shoemaker, Shout out to natural Nick. I think she works with Pantana right now. An amazing, amazing agent.

Yes.

She, she, she shared a story with me just two days ago where she had this awful buyer who was out of state who kept trying to put low ball offers on Every single property. And after a while, after ignoring their advice, the buyer eventually fired Nick. And while Nick was servicing the buyer, Nick did something that every agent should do, which she was sending out magic buyer letters. And so what a magic buyer letter is, is saying basically, hey, listen, we have a buyer who's serious about moving in your area. We promised them we would do everything we could to help them find a house. The reason we're reaching out is because we haven't found one. And your home meets the criteria, like give us a call if you, if you're open to the idea. And so she sent out 250 letters for this buyer.

You know, Sarah was sleeping with the pool boy. Like I want, I want to invoke curiosity.

I think difference is just one example. What are other examples of marketing you know, works today? Yeah.

Nick Shoemaker. Shout to natural Nick. I think she works with Pantana right now. An amazing, amazing agent. She shared a story with me. Just there for this awful buyer. She got seven responses. Fast forward a few weeks, the buyer fires her. She's like, you know what? Okay. It's part of the game that happens, right? Let's move on. The next week, she gets a phone call from one of those sellers that got the 200 or 250 letters. They said, we loved your letter. We would love for you to come by and list our property. And so she picked up an $800,000 come list me on the back of that. I mean, so first off, Nashville, this is not the first time she's Nashville Nick. I mean, just an incredible entrepreneur, hard worker. Everything you'd love about a real estate agent. I mean, shows up and does the work. So Nashville Nick is a great example of like, just do the work and like regardless of the outcome. So the magic buyer letter is an incredible strategy. It works every time. Fall in love with the boring. You know, if I was, if Tom and I were the chief marketing officers of your company, we would force every agent on your team to do 50 to 100 two days ago, where she had this awful buyer who was out of state, who kept trying to put low ball offers on every single property. And after a while, after ignoring their advice, the buyer of every week, right? And then guess what? All those other problems you have would just evaporate because you've got too much business to support. You wouldn't worry about what to do next. So I think that's a great example, Tom. Something that's working literally right now that most the people who are listening right now have heard of. But maybe actually fired Nick. And while Nick was servicing the buyer, Nick did something that every agent should do, which she was sending out magic buyer letters. I've been taking the plunge actually do.

All right, so. So if I'm blockbuster, I should have bought Netflix. Jaguar had a massive error. Slate is going to take over the world of truck sales, I hope. I mean, what, what an exciting company. And results come from repetition. Take a simple idea, take it serious. My love. Language is progress. Five ways to improve your home home's value in five weeks. In case the people are wondering if I remember taking notes during these podcasts, the answer is 1,000% yes. But it all started with serve an underserved market. Serve an underserved market. Ask yourself where transactions happening and you're not a part of it. And maybe the only reason you're not a part of it is you haven't thought. Let me get outside of my database and let me go see if I can help those people and have them become more loyal past clients and send.

Us and so what a magic buyer letter is, is saying basically, hey listen, we have a buyer who's serious about moving in your area. We promised them we would do everything we could to help them find a house. The reason we're reaching out is because we haven't found one and your home meets the criteria like give us a call if you. If you're open to the idea. And so she sent out 250 letters.

For this bible and people that I get to work with. So a lot to unpack your partner. I got a bounce to stay on.

Track for this awful buyer. She got seven responses. Fast forward a few weeks.

The buyer hashtag 300 podcast Brian in the. In the can, right? I feel like that, that could be a milestone. Who knows? I don't know. I've got like thousands of videos on YouTube, but what the heck. All right. For my friend out there watching. Thank you so much. Or listening. Thank you so much. If, if you're listening right now and you're in your car, take a photo and, and you know, if you post it on social. Make sure you tag myself at Tom Ferry at Jimmy Mackin. We would love to share that and give you a shout out. So Jimmy, thank you so much for your time, brother. And I will, I think I'll see you like I'm sure tomorrow or the next day.

We'll see. We'll see.

We'll be talking again soon. Keep learning, brother.

Congrats on 300, man. Thanks, bro.

Let's.

Fires her. She's like, you know what? Okay. It's part of the game that happens, right? Let's move on. The next week, she gets a phone call from one of those sellers that got the 200 or 250 letters. They said, we loved your letter. We would love for you to come by and list our property. And so she picked up an $800,000 come list me on the back of that. I mean, so first off, this is not the first time she's Nashville Nick. I mean, just an incredible entrepreneur, hard worker, everything you'd love about a real estate agent. I mean, shows up and does the work. So Nashville Nick is a great example of, like, just do the work and like, regardless of the outcome. So the magic buyer letter is an incredible strategy. It works every time. Fall in love with the boring. You know, if I was. If Tom and I were the chief marketing officers of your company, we would force every agent on your team to do 50 to 100 these every week, right? And then guess what? All those other problems you have will just evaporate because you've got too much business to support. You wouldn't worry about what to do next. So I think that's a great example, Tom. Something that's working literally right now that most the people who are listening right now have heard of, but maybe haven't taken the plunge actually do.

All right, so. So if I'm blockbuster, I should have bought Netflix. Jaguar had a massive error. Slate is going to take over the world of truck sales, I hope. I mean, what an exciting company. And. And results come from repetition. Take a simple idea, take it serious. My love language is progress. Five ways to improve your home Home's value in five weeks. In case the people are wondering if I remember taking notes during these podcasts, the answer is 1,000% yes. But it all started with serve an underserved market. Serve an underserved market. Ask yourself where transactions happening and you're not a part of it. And maybe the only reason you're not a part of it is you haven't thought, hmm, let me get outside of my database and let me go see if I can help those people and have them become more loyal past clients and centers of influence and people that I get to work with. So a lot to unpack here, partner. I gotta bounce to stay on track. Hashtag 300podcasts. Brian in the. In the can, right? I feel like that that could be a milestone. Who knows? I don't know. I've got like thousands of videos on YouTube, but what the heck? All right. For my friend out there watching. Thank you so much. Or listening. Thank you so much. If. If you're listening right now and you're in your car, take a photo and. And, you know, if you post it on Social, make sure you tag myself at Tom Ferry at Jimmy Mackin. We would love to share that and give you a shout out. So, Jimmy, thank you so much for your time, brother, and I will. I think I'll see you, like, I'm sure, tomorrow or the next day.

We'll see. We'll see.

We'll be talking again soon. Keep learning, brother.

Congrats on 300, man. Thanks, brother.

Let's go.