The Database 60 Touch Blueprint with Dave Hooke - Part 1

Welcome back to the Real Estate Business Builders podcast. This is Lars Hedinborg, founder Real Estate B School. This is going to be part one of a two part podcast. We were blessed to have Dave Hook who is a past member of Real Estate B School. He came on and delivered it. He brought the heat. He gave us our, his database 60 Touch blueprint and he went through step by step. You know we know that we need to keep in touch with our database but like what is the step by step process to build a referral based business? He has a business that does well over 3 million. I think it's 3.5, 3.5 million GCI. But most of it is generated via this system. So this is a two part series. I want you to stay tuned and do part one and part two and stay tuned. This is going to be a good one. So here's part one of Dave Hook's database 60 Touch blueprint. Dave, do me a favor. I'm going to take myself off video but get into your stuff. But also just real quickly the journey, like what did you do last year? You know how the trajectory was without spending too much on the history. But I want people to know that your business today is this database approach. This has kind of been your journey. Like Alan and Crystal. It's been mostly database driven. But I think you did like three and a half million or something last year.

Yeah. So I mean this, this business is, is one that we have and it's as you know and as you've, you've totally played a huge part in it. It runs with me in it about 45 minutes a week. So it does net a million and did over 3 million in GCI. But it, it did. That wasn't always the, the, the story. Right. So when we first met it was a very different business and I didn't have the other businesses. And I can attribute a lot of it to, you know, just the pain that I was in at that time and wanting to get out of that and, and to you and other mentors and then to, to this database which became sort of an engine that allowed everything else around it, me to sort of build everything else around it and it to thrive. So yeah, so that's the business is, is really healthy right now and it's probably better without me having a hand in it than it was when I was running it. I don't think I know how to work the MLS anymore. Like when I want to buy a property, I have to call an agent. I can't get in. I Don't have the software. So I'm very not involved in in in the real estate sales team but once was just totally in the trenches. So testament to B school and all that you've poured into me. Should I. Can I go ahead and share share my screen? Yep, you should be able to. All right, awesome. Let me know if you are looking at the right screen. Can you see 60 touch blueprint?

Yes, sir.

Awesome. We are going to get into it here. I want to give you guys hopefully a ton of value. We're going to talk about the 60 Touch Blueprint database touch system that's at the heart of a big referral business. So at the end of this I am going to give you guys a gift and I'll get it to Lars, I'll pull it up towards the end and it is truly a 20 page blueprint that is an evolution that was derived from Brian Buffini from Lars and B School from Keller Williams 36 Touch original program way back in 2001 and then from my own team. And it's just sort of a meshing of what I've learned and what is at the center of our business now. So I'm going to give that to you guys and truly like it'll be a blueprint for you to use. It can be used for our agents to onboard in the whole first year of their business. And it has time blocks that you can put in how to actually run this and all that good stuff. So you'll have that as a takeaway. But let's just get into the agenda real quick. So we're going to talk about my business journey briefly and then just cover why the database matters, like why it is different than other lead sources. And then the sort of nuts and bolts are the blueprint of how to run the touch program and if there's notes to take, it's probably in that section. And then we'll briefly go over my handbook close. I'll share a couple of things with you and then any questions Lars have, we can close with that. So just to get to know you guys real quick, I first of all love this community. I was in this community for a long time and Lars doesn't know this. Nothing to do with Lars. But when my journey ended with this community because a whole sort of reasons, I actually cried. Like literally tears, sobs. Because this community has done so much for me. And so I love going through and seeing faces that I recognize from when I was part of this community. And it just meant so much to me. So really cool to be back here, but I'd love to learn a little bit more about you guys. So if you could put in the chat, just let me know. I think there's Lars, correct me if I'm wrong, both team owners in the chat. There's also agents that are watching this.

Yeah, there's a combination of team builders, agents on teams, and even solo agents.

That are looking to grow and scale. Perfect, perfect. So if you could just let me know if you're an agent. Put agent, agent on team or team owner. Just throw that in the chat and then. And I'd like to see just what the breakdown is. Awesome. Solo dude, look into scale. Love that. Team owner. Operant. Team owner, team owner, team owner, agent, agent, partnership. My brother. Awesome. That's really helpful to me. So I can tailor this and give you guys the most value and I can speak to all of you. The second thing I would love for you to put in the chat is just, do you have a touch program? I'm going to qualify this before you enter your answer. A touch program that you've worked consistently for a year, and it can be any amount of touch. It doesn't have to be 60, but that you've touched in your. With your database consistently for a year or more. Just put no or yes. It's a good mix. It looks like. No, no, yes, yes, yes, yes. No. Excel sheet, but needs work. Buffini half ass. No, I love it. It's awesome. All right, cool. So it's a good mix. And so for those of you who do. I can't. My hope is that you'll take a couple pieces of what we do and be able to optimize yours. For those of you who don't, just know that what I'm going to give you guys today was a journey. And so what. Lars has done a really good job in my business of making me be patient and remember good, better, best. And so I'm going to give you a lot of information today that you could take with you. Don't feel like. Don't fall into the trap that I did. And I looked at somebody who was giving me some information. I'm like, I have to implement it tomorrow or I suck. Right? It's just. Let's take. What are three things that you could take from this? If you don't have a touch program that you can implement in the next six months and make it good. And then what. What are three things the next six months and make it better, and a year And a half, two years from now, you have a really killer 60 touch program that runs at the heart of your business that makes everything else more profitable. And we're going to talk about how, how it does that. Um, so thanks for stepping into that. So my business journey real quick. There is me really early on in my journey. I think I weighed about 65 pounds. I have the, the camera, I was the picture taker. I had a hammer on my belt so I was putting the sides in. Back then I was running a brokerage. I was, I was trying to sell around 60 homes myself and I was managing about 15 properties and it was all prospecting based. Nothing wrong with that by the way. I was going door to door. I went door to door for two years and, and I started to, to build a bit of a database I would say people that know knew like to trust me through my door to door in the 300 home farm that I was working. And my answer to everything was work, work harder, not smarter. I didn't have a coach and I completely burn out. And I'll go over that in a second. I quit real estate in my early 30s when on the outside everything looked amazing and on the inside I was just a total mess because the business was not serving me, I was serving the business and it was running all over me. And if there's anybody that's sort of in that phase of their business right now, like I totally, totally get that. And then I stumbled on sort of the concepts and the principles of a scalable database. And it is the thing that I can tell you is the first step is focusing all my attention on that particular lead source. Nothing against other lead sources will tell you some of the other lead sources in our business. But when I started to focus on that, things did get easier. So that's a picture I've shown in B school before in my time management training. So that's the, the vein that appears on the side of my head when I get a migraine. And so I look at that because it literally represents a picture my wife took of me. I was going to neurologist, CAT scans, the whole thing. When my business was putting me in pain, like physical pain, it couldn't have been more literal. And that was 2012 and I was doing 60 transactions, had a brokerage I was running and then, you know, some properties I was managing. And in the sales business, not the other businesses, the profit was about 250,000 and my time in sales was about 60 hours a week. And I do track my time, so I have, have all that figured out. So, and it says at the bottom, no business compassion program. Lars mentioned that we're going to get into that in a second, and that's part of our database program. I'll talk about that. But my business didn't serve me, it didn't serve any team members, and it definitely didn't serve the community. But I want to just pause because Lars taught me something that I've held onto, and I've kept it in my computer and around me for probably seven or eight years. And it's an idea that has changed what I decided to do. So I'd love for you guys to get your calculator out, pull your phones out, if you all have an iPhone, if you would. I'm going to ask you to get in the chat in a second. And this was a life changing activity for me, and it's one of the things that drew me to the database, actually. If you could just put, put in your calculator how many hours a week you work in the sales business. So if it's like, you know, 60 hours a week, that's fine. 30 hours a week, that's fine. If it's more than that. But my only request is just make sure you're calculating in the time away from the office that you're texting, emailing, that you're brushing your teeth and running a tape on, like the hard conversation you need to have tomorrow when you're not present, I want you to type that in and then multiply it times 52 weeks. And you should have a number there. So throw that number in the chat for me. If you could mine. Mine at that time, I think was like 3,000. So we got 20. 83,000. 120, 2600. Sandy, I love that. 1560. 2080, 2340. Nice. I love that. Good. And then I don't need to know this next number, but just tell, just get in your calculator how many, how much money you earn, net profit from your real estate sales business in the last year. That'll be awesome. Just put that in your calculator. So for me it was 250. Put that in your calculator and then divide that by the number of hours that you put in the chat. So for me it was like 3,000. And then just give me your. Just give me your hourly. What's your hourly? Put it in the chat. For me it was 83. $83 an hour. What was your answer? Throw it in there. 110. Awesome. 58. 21. Awesome. 64. 50. Yep. 78173 I love the vulnerability. It's so good. Perfect. So that's the number that I put on my computer. Too low Joe Grant says Troy 100 I love it. So I had that on my computer. Lars helped me with this and it was my dollar per hour that that I earned. And it there was like no judgment around that number. It's sort of irrelevant. Like we all are at a dollar per hour and I put in what I wanted to earn. So at that point I put up $400 an hour is what I wanted to earn with my time. And the thing I loved about the exercise is that we all platform growth in this industry and we get into the comparison and envy and all of the stuff that steals from us and steals our joy. And it's not a representation of a healthy life. Like you could have amazing growth and GCI and units in your business and still have the picture that's on my slide. Like I'm in total pain and even profit. While it's more of a representation of a healthy business. I could have a million dollar net profit and still be in a lot of pain. So one of the things that has been helpful to me over the years is just putting that dollar per hour because it allows me to decide what activities I'm going to work on. And when I looked over all of the activities that would I would be able to get to a $400 an hour in in my life and business by spending my time I landed over and over and over again on the database as as a lead source. And so this is just fast fast forward out of the pain. With the help of B school and and so many others the business is in a much better place. So 350 sides last year it did profit over a million and it's about one to two hours a week for me. So that that dollar per hour for that particular business is up to 9,800 an hour. And that it's serving life. It's serving the community. It's able to give 90,000 to people in need in the community and it's serving our team members. So it's just a different picture. And there's other things of course that attributed to that business. But the database was the first step. It was the first pillar that allowed me to grow other things onto that. And that's why I'm so passionate about speaking about a referral business and the database. So why did I land on the database as the highest dollar per hour activity I could do as an agent in the business at that point. So the first was pre built trust. So like when I was going door to door to all of those people for two years, it took me seconds and minutes and hours and weeks and months to talk to them and then do what I said I was going to do to where those 300 people knew me, liked me and trust me. If I go and pay for pay per click leads or run radio ads, there's a build phase to where those people warm up to who I am. And it takes time and money to build that with the database. It's the one place and I'm going to show you how I define the database where there's pre built trust that already exists. And so we're leapfrogging ahead of the time it takes us in most other lead sources. So the second reason the database is related to the first, it's the highest ROI and ROE return on energy. So return on investment, return on energy. So because they're pre converted, they give us the highest return on investment in energy of any lead source in the business. And scalability is the third reason. So the math works. So there's been a lot of books written on 36 Touch program 20 years ago and our business has tracked for the last five years that one in ten that receive 60 touches a year from our database convert to a closing the next year. So if you have, you know, 1,000 people in you and your team or multiple agents on your team's databases getting touched 60 times a year with quality information from multiple sources, which we'll talk about In a minute, one in 10 of them on average converts to a closing. And the mindshare principle is really simple. So every year the same amount of people tend to buy and sell homes due to pain that arise on their doorstep. So this year it's lower than 2021 and 2022 because the market's a little, a little shaky. But, but on average over the course of 10 years, the number's about the same. And whether it's a divorce or an upsize or a downsize or a job loss or promotion, people have pain in their life and then they run towards pleasure. And so the principle is that we just need to solve for one problem. If the people already know like and trust us, we simply need to touch in with them enough times so that they think of us in their mind when they have life change. So I've never. We're not trying to convince people to buy or sell a home. We're simply showing up multiple areas when they have that life change. They think of us. And 76% of people in 2022 called the first agent that came to their mind. And so we're just trying to earn that mind share. And then the ROI amplifier is the fourth one and it's one that I learned in the last three or four years and it's my favorite one as a reason for building a database touch program in your business. I'm going to talk about it in a second, so just if you would, I'd love for you guys to put in the chat so I know a little bit about your businesses. No judgment. It could be like anything. Just give me your lead source, your top lead source as an agent or team member. So could be knocking on doors, could be circle prospecting for fsbo. John says throw it up in the chat. Google past client, cold call Fizbo, repeat referral, 96% referrals. I love that referrals, cold call expireds, word of mouth referrals, database. I love this group referrals. Referrals, perfect. So the ones that are up on the screen are just random. We have about 18 or 20 lead sources in this particular business which I'll warn you is not that helpful because most of them are attributed to like three or four sources. And I just had somebody just grab a couple of them that you guys might recognize as an example. But I think last year, the year before our OpCity returned, for every dollar we spent, we only earned one back. It wasn't very profitable at all. Zillow is 1 in 3 expired. FSBOs was 1 in 13 just based on we had a handwritten letter program and some resources on a provider for data. Our 60 Touch program For every dollar we spent, we've always earned over 30 back. For every dollar we've spent in our touch program to our database, we've always earned over 30 back. Google Local performed really well last year for us. Radio was a three to one. We haven't done pay per click in a little while, but previous years it was a 4 to 1. So nothing special about that slide but I just wanted to contrast that in our tracking for the last six, seven years over and over again it's outperformed every other lead Source by like 4 or 5 times. Now this is just the real pie graph looked a lot more complicated but I asked them to break it break our business down into just four general quadrants. So on the right half in the blue you can see light blue and dark blue is 60 touch and agent soi. So our agents on our team and I could talk if you have questions around like this in our team, but our agents, their SOI is on our 60 Touch program. And so everything on the right side where it says 60 touch and agent SOI, that business is getting touched by our 60 touch database program. So half of our business, 25% from agents, 25% from my SOI and the teams comes from the touch program. And that means that out of the 350 transactions that we did last year, 175 of them are from that program. Then you see the bottom left, paid leads website, Google, sort of all of the paid digital marketing. About 25 of our business came, percent of our business came from those sources. And then the upper left, signed calls, miscellaneous, sort of everything else comes from those things. So I say that just to dig in and slow way down on the next slide because this is like this next slide is one of the most important reasons to me that the database has changed and given me my business, the freedom that I have. And it's because of how it amplifies other lead sources in our business. And this is what I said I started to get a knack for this and learn this in the last few years. So let me walk you through this. If I started doing social media cold without a database touch program, it would have looked very different from when I added social media to our database touch program. So what it looked like is we built a database. I'm going to show you how to build that in our in a blueprint in a minute. We build our database of people that sort of peripherally knew, liked or trusted me and each of our agents. And then we put together our touch program, direct mail, which I'll show you in a minute, three emails a month, which I'll show you in a minute, four promotional packaged things each quarter, there's four of them. So one a quarter for four times a year. And then four client events. And our database in our community started to get invited to the events. They started getting all of these touches throughout the year. So they started getting value. Once we launched our social media platform, which you can find me on Facebook, the next thing we knew is we got into our social media or our database audience and pulled all of those people into our social media audience. We friended them all, we asked them to follow our page. Now all of those folks are getting our direct mail touches, our digital email touches, our video videos, our client events, our value. We're loving on them. And, and now our content is showing up also in their Social media feed. So we were able to amplify, amplify the return that we get on social media. And we track all of our social media because of our database touch program. But then we, we decided to go into radio. Now, I'm big on profit, so I'm not one to wait for a return. What we're able to do, though, with radio, it's expensive, is we were able to partner with our radio provider in our community and we're able to negotiate with them and simply say, and since then, a lot of other people have followed this exact plan and I highly encourage it. Is we're able to say, hey, we know you're going to endorse us six or eight times a day and we're going to get leads for that. But they're very expensive. We need you to amplify our database touch program. And so what they did is they started to do a cat a gas and groceries giveaway every month where they drove the audience to a landing page to register for the Dave Hook team's $100 gas and groceries giveaway. And they checked a little box that said they're happy to be invited to client events and get information about the local Carlyle market from the Dave Hook team. And so I wouldn't normally add cold people to our 60 Touch program, but these were people in the radio audiences database that were getting endorsed with my name six times a day. So they're already warmed up to us and now they're getting stuff deployed from my office and getting invited to the client events, the direct mail. And now we're pulling them over to social media. So now what originally was a 60 touch program, now they're hearing us on the radio and it's a mutually beneficial relationship between the radio station and our client events. And now they're seeing us on social media. And I normally wouldn't spend any money on billboards, but if I already have a database touch program and those people are in my social, I'm in their social media feed and they're hearing me on the radio, at least a subset of them. And I know there's only two or three thoroughfares that they're going to go through to and from work every day. I have, I. I have a less hard of a time buying a small billboard or bus stop shelter with a call to action for a free home value estimate or a cash offer program on the way to and from work. So now they're in our 60 Touch program. They're hearing the talent endorse us on the radio, I'm in their social media feed and they're passing my billboard. And all of those lead sources tend to be amplified when it's centered around that 60 touch program. So the end result is just that omnipresence that you get. So let's just recap real quick and then we're going to go over the blueprint. So pre built trust, highest ROI and ROE return on energy, it leapfrogs the other lead sources, scalability. So 1 in 10 convert because 76% of people call the first person that comes to their mind when they're in pain and need to buy or sell a home. So we're just earning their mind share. And then it amplifies all the other lead sources. So when I think about just back before the presentation, that pain I was in, in my business, it was always work harder, prospect more, beat people over the phone with, you know, the head with the phone. And when I looked at the database and why it mattered, I kept arriving at these, these four reasons which ended up resulting in just a different business that we continue to just build lead sources off of. So here's where we're going to get into the blueprint. So exactly how we run a database touch program. And I see there's some questions in there which we'll definitely get to at the end. So remember, I'm going to give you a blueprint, a copy of it. I'll make sure Lars has it after we wrap up. But the part I'm going to go over right now is the blueprint for a team owner for real estate team. And then I'm going to go over an actual document. I'm going to give you four agents in the business to do this themselves at zero cost. So when I'm talking to team owners, I'm talking to somebody who has margin in their business. They're comfortable doing client events. There's a little bit of an expense to it. But when I give you the, the database playbook, I'm talking to agents or somebody who wants to do it at zero cost. So I, I built it two ways. I'm going to give you both of them. So here's for team owners and agents, listen up, because you're going to take a lot from this particular part. So there's three simple steps to building, to running a database touch program. Step one is build it. Step two is feed it, and step three is communicate with it. We'll go over three concepts in that. So step one. Now here's the thing that this is the biggest objection we get when we talk to people about database and we're consulting with them about it. So and I just want to help you guys with the mindset around this at the, at the outset. So to build it we have to come up with a list of people that at least peripherally know like and trust us and, or our agents that are on our teams. And so the first step is to time block 2 to 3 hours in our calendar and this whole process, these next, these five bullets on this page, it's going to take, it takes our agents an average of 9 to 12 hours. And that's the part where like hearts start beating fast. It's like that's a lot of time. But here's the thing, I promise you guys, if you go out and you decide open house is your lead source, which open houses are a great lead source in the next month, if you're going to do open houses, right you're probably going to do one a weekend and it's going to be two to three hours at the open house each weekend. It's going to be an hour or two to prep and circle prospect and stand out door hangers and an hour or two after to follow up. So minimum four hours per open house. If you do four of them a month, that's 16 hours. If you do three of a month, it's 12 hours. And so just to do one month's worth of open houses, you're spending the same time it will take you to document properly and build a database audience that's going to last you for the rest of your career. So it's going to be the launching board. When we onboard clients, this is the launching board that positions them to, to run their, their systemized database touch program. So I know we always procrastinate, I'm a victim here. We procrastinate like the non urgent but important things so that we can tend to the urgent things. This is like the most non urgent important thing in our business because it's the highest return on investment and it's the most systemized thing we can do for our businesses that operates whether we're there or not. So we time block two to three hours in the next month to start. I'm going to give you exhibit A at the end which will help you build a minimum of 150 people on your database to launch it.

All right, so hopefully that was awesome. I know it ended there right in the middle. So part two is coming on the next episode. But if you're at the point in your journey Dave mentioned, you know, working with Real Estate B School changed his perspective in terms of being able to launch or think about his business like a business owner. So if you're at the point in your journey where you think a conversation with a US at least is going to get you clear on if that double, triple, quadruple your business over the next two to three years. But while most agents are struggling, just go to rebs growth assessment.com that's Real Estate B School, which is rebs growth assessment.com and we'll see you over there. Stay tuned for part two.