The Anti-Viral Strategy Making "Average" People Millionaires

So have you guys noticed that the way attention and income are distributed in any industry is not fair? No matter what industry you're in, a small number of people are getting the stages, the deal flow, the attention, while the rest of the people are just struggling in this middle muck. The average person is getting punished, but the person who's intentional is becoming famous. And so how do you become micro famous in any industry? Well, today's guest literally wrote the playbook on this. He is Tom Ferry, the world's number one real estate coach. It's been in— how many years have you been doing this, bro?

Uh, I've been in the industry for 36 years, been the number one coach for 13, and that is me. And all my team of coaches.

And today we're going to be talking about how you can become the obvious choice in your industry. Thanks for being here, Tom.

Yeah, man, thanks for having me. It's about time.

Yes, sir.

7 years ago.

7 years flies by like that. It's actually— what is it? The days are long, but the years are short. Yes. And that's what's happened. So pumped to have you here. And, you know, I want to just jump right into this concept of this power curve. I noticed the middle average is getting just kind of wiped out. It's the haves and the have-nots.

Yes.

And I'll go to a conference, I'll go to your event, and there's a guy telling me he's crushing it, making millions of dollars. Making $800,000, $2 million. Cool. And then another guy's like, dude, I'm kind of struggling. The market's slow, right? What's happening?

I think the simple answer is the entire industry and most businesses, most industries are the rich and the rest. And you were kind of talking about that in your introduction. There's always going to be 2 to 3 power players at the top. There's always going to be number one. And what makes that individual or that business stand out is a whole myriad of things that we should unpack. But I think it starts with like timing. When did you get into it? When did you start? How much did you do? It also comes down to product market fit, right? Understanding your customer. What are their needs? What are their pain points? Can you solve them at scale? It also comes down to your team. I don't do this alone. You don't do this alone. Somebody else is going to edit this. Somebody else set up this room, right? So there's just a myriad of factors. But I think it's just at the end of the day, you have to accept if you want to be number one, you're going to become the unrelatable outlier. The unrelatable outlier. And that's probably the hardest part. When you look at like the real estate industry and the mortgage industry, there are— there's a lot of companies, but there's only 5 that are in the top. And if we take UWM out, right, there's really only 4. And if you take Rocket out, there's like 3 that we know of that are more retail focused. All of those companies are led by people that chose to become the unrelatable outlier. They don't care what anyone else thinks. They're going to do everything in their power, everything, every single day to get distribution, to get the right product, to get the right mix, to get in front of as many people as possible, to provide their service. And if they get hated by a whole bunch of people, which you have and I have, that's okay. There's 8 billion people on the planet. We're not gonna please everybody, but I'm gonna be me unapologetically, and I'm gonna find my tribe. So I think it's, it's a lot of that. And we can get into all the details of like the how and the whats, but I think that's where it all starts. It's also just one last thing. No one cares who's gonna be the next great. No one cares. Right now there is someone trying to put an arrow in my back, trying to put a knife to your throat every single day because they see what you've done and they see what I do and they're like, I'm better than that guy. And you know what I say? I celebrate them. Yeah, come and get me. Let's go. Bring it on, man. I'm not going to be number one forever. Eventually I'm going to— I'm going to have my moment. I'm going to— I'm going to pull like a, I don't know, Barry Sanders, right? And just one day out. Yeah, out. And that's okay. And so will you. So we need a bunch of other people in this space that are fighting every day to make real estate agents and tech people and loan officers and home warranty and everything else, make them the best that they can be.

Yeah. And well, the other part is, is there can be so many winners, right? There's room for everybody. I think people have this. Yeah. There's people think like your success is at my expense. Well, no, the pie gets bigger.

100%.

And so this is the part that I think people need to understand is like anybody can do this now. If you guys seen— if you saw my content when I first met Tom, I was just getting started. He was encouraging me, but it was cringe. I was just showing a video. It was— I look back now.

Yeah.

Good thing is I didn't know it was cringe and I just did it anyway.

And you put in the reps. Yeah, you put in the reps, which is how you get good. So, I mean, you know.

Yeah. So that's you. That's the part where I think I'm the least qualified and still did it.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, anybody can follow this new strategy. And by the way, the strategy has changed.

Yes.

There are things that we're going to be talking about today. So we're going to go through kind of the strategy on how you can implement this in terms of distribution. I think attention, as you talked a lot about, is the most important thing because it's not the most, the most qualified person who wins or the best person wins. It's the most known who gets the opportunities today. And then we can talk a lot about how to best monetize in this new world because I think there's different avenues, right? People could use their, their brand to do one way or to do another way. And it's actually a big difference in the amount of money they make. So first things first. We talk about distribution. I think that right now people would argue that it's harder to stand out with content and all these things. I think it's actually never been a better time because you don't need a massive audience anymore. Yes. When we both were going in the beginning, like years ago, you had to have followers and subscribers and some people were just had this unfair advantage. Like I'd be looking at your YouTube, I'm like, well, Tom's been doing it so long, how do I get to him? It's like, but now Every piece of content I feel like is judged on its own merit.

Exactly.

So when you're talking to agents, you're talking to people, even just how you guys think about, uh, Ferry International and growing your reach, what are the things you're looking at in terms of distribution for 2026? What's changed?

So I would argue that the single greatest ROI today is email marketing. Wow. And I would say number 2 would be partnerships, right? Scaling your brand by basically providing immense value to other people that also have a brand. So we would think like influencer marketing, right, is a way to look at it.

Collaboration, right?

I'm an influencer for, you know, several companies that are like, hey, Ferry, we really want you to be our guy. Will you be the face of or be one of the flavors that's out there promoting us? And if I'm in alignment with the product, of course. So they've got a following. I've got a following. I'll give you a really good example. Today I work with Fidelity National Financial, right? Fortune 300 company. They've got 1,700 salespeople. I'm blessed years ago to work with the number one sales manager in the country for like 30 years. I got him, Rod Gordy. He was my personal client forever, and he's just a monster and an incredible human being. He helped create some opportunities for me to actually work with the executives and then ultimately taking over and working with all of the salespeople. Now, they don't all love me, right? Some love me, some are, you know, whatever. They're in the middle and some just show up to the trainings because, hey, why not? But what's happened because of that relationship is they talk to 680,000 real estate agents. So when I say, hey, I'm coming to town to do an event, right, let's figure out a way to like let them know about it. Then I have Cross Country Mortgage, right? And Cross Country Mortgage does the same thing. But back in the day, it was Zillow and Bank of America. Bank of America had, call it, little to no distribution, right? But they had Bank of America as a brand name. So it looked good on paper, right?

Yeah.

So I think it's about finding partnerships that can help you grow your business. This is nothing. This is like Jay Abraham 101. You ever meet Jay?

Yeah. Yeah.

So Jay was a mentor of mine from like back in 1991, and today is a friend. If I called Jay and said, Jay, power partnerships, he'd be like, Tom, if you get 3 people together and they all have a database of 400 people, you now have a database of 1,200 people. So how can you collectively work with each other? So if I was an agent today, I'd be asking myself, okay, who else needs my reach, my 3,000 followers on Instagram? Who else needs and not a restaurant in town, like what's another professional service, right? Does— is there an accountant in town that needs the support? Is there a financial planner in town that needs support? Is there a web developer, small business that they've got a base? You've got a base. I think it's totally underutilized in our space. And the mistake that I see is usually— sorry if you're going to be mad about this, if you're listening— is they're like, what are you going to do for me? Like, pay me and I'll promote you. Yeah. I'm like, no. The number of times I have done for free not, not pro bono, because the right thing is the right thing when you're in a relationship or you want a relationship.

Yeah.

Is you just give and give and give and there is no ask, right? That's how I've been able to establish all these relationships. That's how I've been able to create all these great partnerships. And I think that will always be my overall strategy. My dad said to me, God, I was probably 20, and I said to him, hey, I want to move from salesperson to sales manager. And he's like, cool, why don't you do that job for no money and never talk to me about it again? And let's just see what happens. And you know what, Greg Howard at the time, who was the sales manager— hey, Greg, can I do the sales meeting? Hey, Greg, do you mind if I help out with a couple of people? And then I was like, hey, you know what? I'm just going to help. And I just give, give, give, give, give, give. And I became the sales manager without the title and without the compensation while being a salesperson. I think that's the mindset for partnerships. I would go back to email. Um, when I launched MikeFerry.com in 1995 or 1996, it was just a million-dollar website, which we all joke about today, right? Because that's what— that's what it cost. And it took like a year and a half to launch. And by the way, it was just an 800 number. There was no like CTA, there was no LP to actually capture any data. It was hysterical. It's just a big brochure online. But I quickly figured out that I could then create like a registration page, a sign-up page, a get more information page. And we already had like a few emails, but I figured out very quickly at every event we do, we need to ask people for their email address. And what do we know to be true? Email is literally documented right now. If you spend a dollar on email, you make $44.

Yes.

So, so here's my point. Kind of long tangential answer for my friend listening. If you want distribution, find partners, do more for them than they do for you, and be obnoxiously focused on collecting as many email addresses as possible. Double opt-in is key, right? Because of all the rules. Always, always, always. And make that part of your obsession. You and I both know also from a mortgage standpoint, I know from a real estate standpoint, an email address is the world's greatest IP to figure out if that person's most likely to sell their house sometime in the near future. You can't do that from a cell phone. From their email, I can learn everything about that person because it is like their, their IP.

Yeah.

So I would start there and then we can probably go into more detail, but I think those are the two big that most people miss.

Okay.

Quick break.

I hope you're enjoying today's video, but I need your help on something. I notice many of you are watching these videos, but you're not subscribed to the channel. And so do me a quick favor and hit that subscribe button. This is going to help us reach our goal and reach even more people this year. We're putting a ton of effort into these videos so we can help you reach your goals. And so I would really appreciate it if you helped us reach ours. Hit that subscribe button. And now let's get back to the video. Yeah. And I think about the part you talked about in the beginning is very underrated. So think about if you have a micro audience, we talk— the first thing I said was you don't need a ton of audience to make this work, to become micro-famous. Now it will happen on its own over time. You know, it's like the number— the value of a subscriber or follower has gone down over time because it's become commoditized. But it will still grow. And I know it's a vanity metric that matters to some people, but the main thing is going to be how to grow your business. Last time I checked, I can't deposit likes and views and all that. You got to, you got to turn it into customers.

Absolutely.

And so what Tom said, I think, is very important. You need to find somebody in an unrelated business, but also kind of under the same umbrella.

Adjacent, but close enough.

Adjacent. Yeah. And so think about CPAs, financial advisors, attorneys even. I know a guy— agents typically have a relationship with a divorce attorney.

100%.

Or a family law attorney.

Probate. You can go right on down the line of like all the great partners for a real estate professional. And then the key is don't have too many.

Yes.

Right. Start small, overdeliver for 2 or 3. Test, prove it out, do events, have them bring in some of their besties. You bring some of your besties. It becomes kind of a roundtable. How can we all help each other? And then I look at clients of ours that now have like 100 companies like that or 100 individuals like that, that they can be peppered all over their billboards, all over their moving vans, it's all over their website. And they've created this sort of micro-community of people that are all trying to support each other in doing more business together and taking care of their clients.

Yeah. And you guys can both post these on YouTube. Now does collaborations also on Instagram. You can collab and it will appear on both your pages. And also, like, it just— it shows to— it's going to show to both of your audiences.

The key though is start small.

Yeah.

Because if, like, I, I see some of these, um, I, I guess you would call them real estate influencers, and, and, you know, this week they're promoting that, and the next week they're promoting this, and the next week they're promoting— and I'm like, okay, well, what do you stand for? Do you know what I mean? Do you just stand for, I'm going to get paid to promote this? And I'm not knocking you if you're one of those, like, I'm not busting your chops, but like I don't know, maybe you should own a product. Maybe you should build something that's valuable, or maybe you should invest in a company that's super valuable and then say, hey, like I do, I'm like, hey, I'm an investor in this company. I love it. I love it so much I put money into it. I like that old line. So I don't know, just my thoughts on that.

Yeah, I think it's great to put your money where your mouth is. Actually, just go deeper with fewer things than just this variety show that I see people do, because that just makes your brand diluted.

Yeah.

And there is no brand then. And so most people are just trying to make content and they just— they're in the sea of sameness.

Yeah.

So these few things would allow you to stand out because, oh, you're the guy that does the videos with the CPA. So not only are you bringing real estate advice, you're also doing this. So think about no matter what industry you're in, there's probably somebody adjacent who could help you. You could help them. And don't worry about the economics of that at first. It's just about serving the audience and then watch what happens next. Yeah. But the thing that you talked about earlier was standing out.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's very important.

Yes.

Okay. Because there's got to be some differentiation. You cannot care what people are saying. And by the way, whenever I say standing out, people go immediately to saying controversial things, talking politics. You don't have to do any of that. So it can just be literally your thoughts on X or, or why are you passionate about this topic? One of the things I notice with personal brands that stands out is contrast.

Yeah.

So you think about like this guy Alex Hormozi, you've seen him blow up.

Yeah.

Well, there's, there's kind of a contrast there.

It looks like a gym bro, but he's also got the little thing on his nose, right?

Yeah. But, yeah, but he's also super intellectual.

Of course, dude.

He's like a genius, right? Marketing genius, business genius. I think he's like Ivy League kind of guy. So those two things are very in— like, they're just completely disparate.

What he says isn't contrast. It's how he shows up.

Correct.

And then you see that and you're like, oh, oh, Tracy Tutor. Right? Like, I mean, I couldn't even imagine most women ever. First of all, like, she is— she's done everything in her power to make herself as stunning as possible. So if you ever seen her, like, on Instagram stuff, like, she'll show up, like, in these outfits that, like, she's like, like a runway half-naked model and she's showing a house. Like, that's controversial in my world. I'm probably, like, old school right now. Like, I'm like, whoa, like, really? But then I go back to, like, Tim Smith teach me how to Duffy video, which was hysterical. Uh, Brad's Got a Big Deck, that was another killer video that was just hysterical, like it could just be on the edge of comedy and funny.

Yeah. You know, another thing I think about is let's just say you're slightly funny.

Yeah.

And your dream was to be in comedy or music or dance, whatever.

Right.

You go to LA and you want to be in Hollywood. You're going to spend the next 20 years waiting tables, right? If you take mediocre talent and bring it to this boring industry, 100%, you win. You're literally in the top 1%. So that like everybody needs to find what is your thing going to be? You don't want to perform. It's the way you show up. Like I just said, visually. Could be your ideas, your partnerships. Things like this are all going to make you stand out.

Can I give, uh, my agent friend that might be watching right now a quick little pro tip? Even if you're afraid to do video, the advice I would give you is, is first of all, understand number one, YouTube has the highest search for home buyers right now in the world. Yeah, like that, that should make everybody at Zillow, Realtor, Homes.com, Home, and everybody else kind of, ooh, right? Because that's— it's the number one search. Like 51% of people that are shopping for a house are shopping and looking at YouTube around specific neighborhoods and houses, which is the number one thing that they're looking for is property tours. So if you're an agent today and you're not doing property tours on YouTube, like, and I mean literally just you walking around with a gimbal or your iPhone and going, hey, we're at 1234 Banana Street with the agent's permission, always with the agent's permission. Hey, we're here and we're looking at this like charming 4-bedroom. Like my intro might be, this could be the greatest bathroom I've ever seen, ever. Let's go check it out.

Yeah.

Or, you know, this is the smallest toilet I've ever seen, whatever it is, right, to hook them and get them to watch. But those videos right now, you're putting out content that is what people are looking for in your local marketplace, your listings, and more than likely never your listings. And you will get deals from it. I promise you, even if you're in one of the most competitive places, if you're in Toronto, if you're in New York City, if you're in Palm Beach, Florida, you're in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, it's all competitive, but in those areas it's really competitive and you will still stand out and get deals.

Yes. And then the amount of consistency you can have through one of these is going to be crazy because part of this game, which we're about to get into, is distribution in terms of, okay, we got one idea— partnerships. We got home tours. If you're an agent, what's your thing that— what's that you're going to own that you can post every week with the least amount of friction? Yeah, because we were just talking about this. People are in their own head. They're worried about all this stuff. Yeah. And so I think a lot of people watching or listening now are like, at least in my world, they're like, okay, I got you, Neil. I'm going to post content. Okay, maybe I'm not as consistent as you and Tom, but I'm going to post content. Cool. But I have found that my content isn't performing. And so part of that is because you are just doing stale content. There's no— if it would have been like if I could have gone to GPT and got it. Yeah. So home tour of 123 Main Street, that is unique content.

Exactly.

Nobody's made that video except you. So what are the ideas or topics that you can package in a way where it stands out?

Yes.

One way could be that. Another way I think of is to share kind of like what are your isms, your thoughts on things. Like I know certain things about you because you strategically put them in the context. Even if you're talking about something else, you put them in your content. Even the way you close it, key phrases, whatever it may be.

Stories.

Correct. So how do you get someone when you're coaching people to get comfortable sharing some of these personal things? Because I feel like if it's all info and it's just the how-to and the 3 tips to do this and the 7 tips to do this, those videos are okay. It's better than nothing, but they're kind of just stale now. You need something different.

So the thing I would tell you is, you know, 100,000 years ago, Neanderthals weren't sitting around the campfire saying, here's the 7 things you have to do to avoid saber-toothed tigers. Yeah, right. They were telling stories, right? So I think the storytelling— the storyteller today is the one that wins, right? Like, anybody could do a house tour. But someone that could tell a story about the house that is interesting, provocative. And that's where, like, Neel, it's so unfair today. My goodness. Like, the stuff that we had to go through in the— I started my YouTube channel in 2007.

Yeah.

You know that in 2004, when I launched my company in January, I started an audio— we didn't know what a podcast was. So I recorded audio messages every day, 7 days a week for like 3 years. And then this guy, David Onn, who then was, uh, at— in charge of media and the homepage of Google, said to me on the golf course one day, hey, what you're doing is stupid. You should go on YouTube. Like, we were just getting up in the morning and just recording stuff. We had no idea— did I do a hook? Did I tell the right story? Did I captivate the audience? And ex— like, there was nothing. You just— we just talked, right? Today, that is not the game.

Today you have to be good at packaging.

You look at what MrBeast does on thumbnails. You look at the way you You're doing it, I'm doing it. And I would say like, God, it's just so much easier now, right? So if you're not using Grok or Perplexity or ChatGPT or Claude or whatever device you want to use, whatever app you want to use to figure out like, what is the highest performing way I can deliver this message, this story, and then do what I know you do and I know I do, which is I practice it over and over and over and over until that story comes out so electric that literally people walk up to me and go, dude, your Uncle Frank. Oh my God, that story. Like, yeah, that example, which I've told that story, I don't know, a couple hundred times. And he passed away, what, almost 2 years ago now? Died 2 days before his 101st birthday. Last survivor of the 101st 506th Dog Company paratrooped in on D-Day.

Like, the story— I heard that at the end of your keynote, right?

The story is insane. But it's— but, but it's also a story that gets people to realize it's not like the story is compelling. Right. And there's a million stories about, you know, World War II as an example. But, but the way I deliver the story is like, hey, my Uncle Frank went through 7 major battles and got hit with scrap metal, was told he could go home. And all I'm asking you to do is create some content.

Yeah.

And the room just goes, oh, yeah. So there's an art and science to telling stories. There's a way to tell stories that actually has people captivated in the story, interested in the story, but also like they see themselves in the story. They become the hero in the hero's journey.

Yeah.

Not like, oh, that's nice for Tom, but like, he's right. Action does solve everything. I need to get my butt in gear.

I think the easiest way for people to do this would be to start with the end in mind. Yes.

Let's think of what's the outcome.

Yeah. So you think about what's the— this should not be a story you tell on social media or YouTube that doesn't have a point to help somebody.

Let me give you the actual tactic. Shout out to my— one of my coaches, Eli. Every time I'm developing a talk, what he taught me was you start with what is the belief I'm looking to instill or install, right? What is the belief that I want people to get right? And is the belief that I want them to shoot more videos? Is the belief I want them to, you know, take their videos up to the next level? Is the belief that they can, they can, that they can empower themselves, whatever that is. And if you write your message, in this case, like a keynote or a training or a book or whatever it is, You're trying to get them to instill that belief. So you're just weaving it through as the through line of the entire story. So I start all my talks with like, action solves everything. Why is it that some are the rich and some are the rest? And you know, what's the contrast between the two? And then when you end with Uncle Frank, you realize Uncle Frank was an average guy, but what he did is he just did a little bit more than everybody else. And if he can go through 7 major wars, I think you could shoot a video. Stop being a candy ass.

Yeah, this works. And so it's in the process, where does that story fit? And also, does the lesson apply to what you're talking about? So I think sometimes people tell a story and you're like, well, why did you tell me that? You should never think that. You should think there's a reason why I'm telling you this. And, and so I think there is a framework for this. The other thing I noticed when people do storytelling content, which is your way to stand out right now, would be they ramble, right? And so, you know, it's like land the plane. I'll ask anybody watching or listening right now, what's the thing that bothers you the most when someone tells a story? It's when it just keeps going on. So if you can make it tighter, people will stick around.

Yes.

And so there's a 40-second version of that story.

100%.

There's also an 8-minute version.

An 8-minute version.

Yes. You can have different versions depending on the context. So realize who you're speaking to. So storytelling is another one.

And, and what medium are you in?

Yes.

You on YouTube or you in an audience?

Yeah. Or you're in on social media, on, on Instagram, Reel or TikTok, whatever you're using. So for me, I think platforms right now where we're seeing the most lift and maybe you, you you guys are seeing something similar is for buyers on both businesses, which is real estate mortgage, but then also even in media, I found success and it might be just I'm finding my tribe. I found success on Instagram and YouTube. Now I don't really get much from TikTok. I don't really get— I love writing, so I write every day on X and I write every day on threads. I haven't got much business there, but it's more just for the screenshots that I throw up on, of course, on Instagram.

Of course.

So those are my platforms now.

We're almost identical on that. Yeah. Yeah.

I noticed you, though, you'll talk about all the things and— but sometimes is it like, do you, do you recommend narrowing your focus? Because once I started getting traction on Instagram, I'm like, I'm all— it's linked to my Facebook. So I hit one bird, two stones or one stone, two birds. Yeah, whatever. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So that's— do you recommend narrowing the focus?

So I think it's also the attention game, right? So Instagram still gets a tremendous amount of attention. Facebook still gets a tremendous amount of attention. But, but YouTube crushes all of them. And you know what's better than all of them? Email.

Yeah, you want back to email.

Email, man. The average professional opens up email like 7 to 10 times a day.

But you're getting these people from social onto your email list.

Uh, yes. And I'm emailing them the most popular social video or whatever it is that I created that week, or the inside of the week, the blog of the week. So I think—

so this is something you talked about even at our event in 2021. You said how many times you need to be emailing your list. Okay. So if— yeah, I believe email. I believe in it. I send an email once a week, a newsletter. I make a short, sweet text-based only email that goes out and crushes. So for someone that's watching, listening, they want to grow their email list. They're like, okay, I got you guys. I'm going to— I'm going to go hard on email right now. Yeah, I'm doing social. Maybe I'm doing YouTube, but I'm going to invest in deplatforming people, get them onto my list. What's the best way to grow that list?

Uh, the best way to grow that list is have QR codes at every open house. It is, would you refer a friend? Competition. All the same stuff that we did in the early days to grow our Instagram or Facebook or whatever else. It was like, hey, could you refer a friend? You tell 3 people, tag 2 friends, and I'm gonna give one person a— yeah, it's the same exact thing. But like, I am very focused. Like, if you go to like tomferry.com or any one of my companies, there's always like a like join the community, right? VIP, right? Like I want people to say, yes, I want to be a part of this. I want to learn more. And if they unsubscribe, that's okay. But I do want to touch on something you said earlier. When I say to you, like email, if you're sitting on an email database right now of 1,000 or 100,000 or whatever the number is, right? And your current, your current focus, your current cadence is like once a week, don't go to 3, right? Test 1. Right?

Go to, go to 2.

And, and hey, I'm doing something new and different. You know, I always yell at me on Fridays, but I had this insight and I thought I would test this out. Give me some feedback, hit reply and let me know what you think. And if you get enough people that like it, then you start a second, right? So I tell agents today, like all the time, mortgage people, same exact thing. Like the minimum is once per week. But in that one, like you got it down, like I'm just going to give them some cool insights. But if I'm a real estate agent or a loan officer, like there's just a myriad of things that I should be discussing with my community if I want to stay top of mind. Right. So you could have things like Deal of the Week, which is an interesting kind of piece that people are all excited about, like the perceived value of a deal. You should definitely be talking about what's happening in the market. And that's— there's a lot to discuss in there. And there's so much happening right now in the world that is impacting residential real estate. Like, my goodness, you could probably do a daily email, like shout out Resi Club and Keeping Current Matters, right? And these other companies, it's every day, multiple times a day. But you got to do something there. But you should probably do something that's like more the human side, like, hey, what's happening at DFW right now with the new park, right? Hey, what's happening with this new school? Hey, what's going on with this new business that's moving into town? That you're not doing a CTA, but you're like just informing people via email what's going on in their community so you can start to see open rates, what they're interested in, what they're not interested. You can do polls inside there. You can do a SurveyMonkey, something old school like that. And then when you hit something that's hot, they can create some long-form content about it because people really want to know about it. And sometimes vice versa. So the thing I'll tell you that Jimmy Mackin and I, we created a company called Listing Leads and then we created Better Email because we saw this gap between like, I'll just say people thought like Outlook and Gmail were like an ESP. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. HubSpot's an ESP, Marketo's an ESP, like, you know, MailChimp is an ESP. So we created a super low-cost deal. And the goal was, could we get higher open rates and more engagement? And we, we've been able to do that because our listing lead clients needed something like that. Yeah, I would just challenge you, start with one, go to two, and be really clear. You could be at three if you're delivering interesting, unique value every single time.

Yes. And so, um, the— what's the company that you use on the, on the real estate side for email?

Uh, we created it. So Jimmy and I created a thing called Better Email.

Better Email. You can use Kit, you can use—

I mean, there's hundreds of them, hundreds of them.

And I'll just give you some tactical things that we've seen that have helped on email a lot. So one has been getting, like you said, double opt-in. The way I do this, Tom, is I'll offer something. Sign up for this thing. Join. Now here's—

here's the friend.

Honestly, the way I've been growing them is through webinars. Yes. So webinars lead, come to this thing. Now you'll notice that half the people that sign up to webinars don't come to webinars. Depending on your—

100%.

And so what—

I have a crazy hack that I probably shouldn't share.

Yeah, what is that?

On the—

on webinars?

I'm not going to say who did this, but, uh, what if I told you if you had a, uh, prospect list and you had a compelling offer directly from a Zoom account, you could email all those people an invite that'll automatically populate a scheduled Zoom meeting in their calendar with the headline? And we're showing 10% of the people show up. Wow.

So one, two.

So instead of sending a marketing piece that says, hey, would you like to go to this? We're sending 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 people in a test on a Zoom account, and Zoom emails them directly and says, you have a scheduled meeting Tuesday at 2:00 at this time. Test this. I'm sure there's something about it that's really crazy that we shouldn't be talking about. Yeah, but we're averaging 10% show rate.

Yeah.

When I say we, this is not my company. This is a company that I'm a part of.

Yeah, this is great. And so, yeah, because when Zoom sends it out, it shows up as great on your calendar.

Exactly.

It hasn't been accepted yet, but you're like, oh, what's that?

Yeah, what's that?

And so you might show up and 10%.

Yeah, 10% show.

So this is a—

you might lose your Zoom account, so maybe try it on a separate Zoom account.

But here's how you can implement what you just talked about tactically is when— whenever we have somebody opt in for Zoom right now, that puts them in. They get a confirmation email from our ESP, all that stuff. I also have a Zap from Zapier just Zap that data over to the Zoom.

100%.

The Zoom registration sends them this calendar, might puts it great on their calendar. So anybody registers, this is how you can improve show up rate. Same kind of hack.

Okay, but real estate agents and loan officers and title execs and, you know, other— probably aren't doing webinars.

They should be, honestly.

I, I agree.

And during the pandemic, you know, pandemic, they were.

We were doing like how to buy a house online and, you know, how to—

what are the— buy a house in Las Vegas.

Yeah, 100%.

Some ways to find a deal.

But what I would say is, at every open house they do, right, with, with every one of your CTAs, if you really want to collect more emails, say, would you simply email me here? And, and you see a lot of direct mail, you see a lot of marketing that it's like, you know, it's call me, follow me on Instagram. Do like— you're telling them to do too many things.

Just email me.

Pick one thing, do it over and over again. From their email, I can get everything, right? Like, so, so I would say concentrate on building your email list. Double opt-in, always. And understand that there's just a percentage of the people that are going to opt out. Who cares? Yeah, right. Who cares? Right. But like, if you get a base of 500 that are opening it up at 60 to 70% because you're providing that much value, that core group of customers, they're going to do a lot with you. They're going to refer you a bunch. They're going to talk about you.

It's funny you said this too, because there's a guy in my group and it happens all the time. He's like, what's your strategy? He's making millions of dollars a year and he's like, email once a week, twice a week. That's it. And it sounds like, oh, that was 10 years ago. No, it's still the thing. But you— the thing is, is email is a decaying asset if you're not using it. So like if your email— we're talking about once a week, all these things. If you've never used it and you're sitting on it, you might want to send like a warm-up thing. Hey, I'm going to— I'm going to start sending out emails. Yes. If you want them, you know, click here or reply. Let me know. I don't want to bother you otherwise. And that way you're not like spamming people.

I would start with a survey.

Yeah, that'd be great.

You know, hey, as a real estate professional or a loan officer now for 27 years, I get asked these 3 questions all the time. And then from there, it's 100 other questions based on people's, you know, specific issue, whatever it may be. I'm thinking about doing an email newsletter. If I answered questions like this in the form of an email once a week, would that— would you think that would be valuable? Yes or no? Give me feedback. What are the topics? I just did this on my Instagram on the flight over here. I'm like, hey, hey, my summit's coming up. We're doing all of our research right now.

What topics?

You know, what do you want to talk about? What do you want to hear? What do you no longer want to hear about? You know, like I'm asking all those questions because I want that feedback. And I think if you do that before you start sending that first email, you'll get a much better response because then you can say, I heard you.

Yeah, thank you so much. Quick tactic on this opt-in, something that's helped us improve open rate quality, all these things is getting— when someone first opts in, getting them to reply to that email, it's a huge signal that this is legit because you wouldn't reply unless— so what we do is obviously getting them to click on something is great too. But when they opt in for webinar, when they opt in for a lead magnet, they get the email and it's— and then on the thank you page it would say, hey, check your inbox, it's there. By the way, do me a favor. If you're serious about this or if you got value, please reply. Just say I'm in or I got it. Just something to let me know you're alive and we'll send you even more stuff. Same thing in the email. It asks them to reply. Or you can ask a question like you said, what are the things you need help with? Now here's the thing I noticed. If you leave it open-ended, they won't— like some people are just too lazy to respond.

Sure.

If you put like, hey, what are the things— here's the things I'm thinking about writing more emails about. Number 1, this. Number 2, this. Just simply reply with a 1, 2, or 3 so I have an idea what you want. You get so many replies because all they do is type one, one letter. So just make it easy for people essentially to respond to you.

I think that whoever's listening right now needs to just think about what does my email list look like today? What is the cadence of my current, you know, emails that I'm sending out? What's my frequency? And then number 3, do I really know what my customer wants to know about? Right? And if I don't, maybe I should ask, form of a survey. And otherwise, like if you just asked yourself, like, are you on Grok?

Yes.

Right, so Grok, ChatGPT, they're all now building these sort of like, almost like the modern version of like a Google search. Not Google search is the wrong thing. Like when Google tells you, hey, Neel, they're talking about you, right? Whatever that device is called. So Grok launched a couple weeks ago. I've got like 8 things in this like daily task from Grok that it's like, here's what's happening with interest rates right now in Canada. Here's the Canadian real estate news of the day. Recurring thing, like a recurring every day, every day, every day, every day. If you just said like, what's happening right now in Las Vegas? What's happening in Las Vegas real estate? What's happening with new construction in Las Vegas? Grok or another is going to tell you every single day. You have unlimited amounts of content. You can now just start to talk about whether it's an email or other, you know, mediums.

Or just, just to take your concept here, I literally got one of those updates.

Yeah.

And these are the biggest things happening in Las Vegas right now.

Yes.

There's this team coming. This is the status of the— of the stadium. Right. All the things. Here's a news. Metallica's taking over the Sphere.

Yes. Right.

They just announced. Right. So I just made a list of these things. I pop on camera and just literally, here's some crazy shit that's happening in Las Vegas right now. I start reading it. What do you guys think? I'm excited about Vegas.

And if you do that on a green screen on Instagram, it's going to blow up because now you're not just talking to people about mortgages or real estate. You're just talking about what's happening in your hometown. And I think that's, again, that kind of content.

But that's email and video.

Yes. It's not going to get you immediate business, but it does create awareness. Yes. You know my guy Ken Pozek?

Yes.

Right. So Ken's like the perfect example of this. Like, there's just all things—

what's real in Orlando, right?

And like, and Disney isn't even in Orlando, which is hysterical. But like, you know, most people don't know that. But he literally says to me, he'll do 800 transactions this year and the vast majority are coming from his YouTube channel. Yes. Now, what's hysterical is how often we talk about how many people watch his content and tell him, oh my God, I see you everywhere. I love your show. And he's like, hey, I'm just curious, have you bought and sold real estate in the last decade or so? And you ever use this? They're like, no, we used our friend.

Yeah.

I'm like, yeah, but you're still doing 800 deals a year. So like, you're doing okay.

Attention's working out.

Yeah. And everyone knows who— everyone knows who he is. And then most buyers just use— they just choose convenience. Yes. You know, can you show me a house today?

And this is the other part. I think he could do more prompting.

Sure.

To get people. And sometimes he's just putting out the content to be seen by more people. If he asked more, he probably would get more.

Yes.

But yeah, they're crushing it.

That goes back to Gary's best book, man. The whole like, like ask. It's give, give, give, give, give, give, give, ask. And I think he was like, jab, jab, right hook. And I was like, I think it's like 62 more gives. Yeah. And then an ask.

Yeah. But I think like once you've got the asset, you can do an ask in a way where it is kind of not a hard sell. And so that's where the email comes into play, is when you have this owned asset, it's not subject to Zuck and the algorithm of the day. It's just you can send people. And so that's going to be the number one thing to monetize when we wrap up. But thinking about this—

I hope people get this because you just nailed it. If you look at the open rates on email versus the— I do a tweet or I do— Like I've got 580,000 followers on YouTube and if I just left it just to YouTube, I'm going to get 1,800 views, 2,000 views, 7,000 views, 10,000 views. But if I email that to my entire database of 500,000 real estate professionals around the world, you're going to get a lot of people.

This is the— this is the game. This is it, man. So having your own owned thing and then using it consistently because it will decay if you don't email, of course. And then it becomes useless. So that would be the way that you can turn this attention into more revenue, more deal flow, all that stuff. Because you can put calls to action in there. You can do all kinds of things. But going back to how people can just become that industry influencer, right? So we talked about posting more, obviously. But then what are the things you can post? Well, a lot of it's going to be giving what people want to watch, your thoughts on this, storytelling. These are all ways you can stand out. But when you were doing it for your brand, separate from like the real estate agents?

Yes.

Because there was other real estate coaches, of course. And then you became the, the guy, right? And your name is kind of just like the, the brand. That is the brand. So if somebody— obviously not everyone's going to be Tom Ferry in your industry or your brand.

By the way, if you would like to be Tom Ferry and take over for me, you got it.

Yeah. Just— but how does somebody start to do that on a micro level? Because one of the things you did—

easy. So first of all, I spent a lot of time, as you do, outside of the real estate space trying to figure out what works out there that isn't being done in here.

Yeah.

So when I bring it to people, they're like, whoa, that's new, that's different. So when I look back over my career, whether it was like, hey, you should get on Beluga or hey, you should get on MySpace or hey, you should get on this thing called the Facebook, like being early on all those things, like always being open-minded to what's new, what's next. And you and I both know it wasn't that I was better at any of these things than anybody else, but I was the only one talking about it.

And AI is the thing now.

And we— so Jason Pantana and I have been talking about AI. I mean, I got early access to ChatGPT for whatever reason. Like, I got a one-month pass before everybody else. And I immediately sent it to Jason and said, Jason, you're the best social media trainer we have and coach in the company. I want you to become the best at AI. So just dig into this thing and we're going to own this space.

And he's been doing it.

And he— he is so busy right now, whether it's, uh, companies hiring him for consulting, people wanting coaching. He's got AI Marketing Academy now, which is just skyrocketing in terms of, you know, new subscribers and, and people that want to get training. But, but the point is, you have to accept that you're not always going to be right, that you are— like, I, I was on Beluga. Did you get on Beluga?

No, I don't even know what that is.

Exactly right, exactly. Uh, it's just an early, early social media site, right? I, I was on Vine for 7 seconds. I'm like, what in the world am I going to do in 7 seconds? Like, This is insane. But that set us up for Reels and TikTok and stories and everything else. So just understand you're going to have some misses. But if you want to crush your industry, you got to go outside the industry and try and bring new tools, new insights, and/or you can do what I see a lot of my friends do. They just do the news of the day, right? They just— they make up— I mean, it's, I don't know, Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, shocking news stories, you know, more to terrify than to clarify. And then occasionally give your opinion on that. And I've been guilty of doing a few of those, but it's not really my bag.

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean? Like, I don't want to terrify people. I want to inspire people. I want people to, like, figure out, like, how great they can actually be. So to bring you the news of the day about, you know, Compass bought this company and what's going to happen with Redfin and like, yeah, I get it's, it's, it's very easy elixir. It's just not my bag.

It's clickbait.

But you could do it. You could do it and you could become really big doing it. And you'll get a lot of followers. I don't know how much that's going to translate for a real estate agent or a loan officer unless all they're trying to get is agent-agent referrals and create some awareness. But I mean, if you want to get more listings and sales from it, more purchase loans and refis from it, wouldn't be my strategy.

So then when you're thinking about when, okay, people want it, you got Tom Ferry, he's doing these new things, he's teaching new things, and that becomes the name. But then that doesn't like translate into all these other coaches that you brought in and all these things. So you scaled it. At some point. But how did you end up taking that and then making it so much bigger than just you? Because like, when they come to the event, yeah, it's, it's massive, but it's not just about Tom Ferry anymore.

No, no. I mean, I— so this is funny, I talked to like my quasi-board, all my advisors, and, and I tell them all the time, I'm like, I am a flavor. And knowing what I know now, I would have never built my personality this way.

Really?

I wouldn't have. I would have built a system over a personality. So this is going to twist some people's minds because like, I remember sitting with my wife, we were in Hawaii, we were actually flying to New Zealand to do a Harcourts conference with my son who was maybe 10 months old. And I remember we stopped over in like Waikiki and we were sitting on the beach and I told my wife, I'm like, I am going to become the most recognizable person in real estate sales training. And like, I didn't think coaching existed at the time, but it did, but lightly. And I said, remember saying that? Knowing what I know now, I don't know if I would have done that. I would have created a better system and I would have sold the system over the individual. Now, my, my counter to that is I knew early on, and this is going to mess with people because they're like, well, you were talking about how to build personality, how to become—

Well, because you're saying you have key man risk now.

100%. Yeah, 100%.

But if you didn't care about key man risk, then you did the right thing.

Well, but see, knowing what I know now, like I was smart enough very early on when I launched my company, January 21st, 2004, on a— I think it was like on a webinar, right? You know, just it was a conference call, one of those kind of things. And I said, I want you to like my 7 coaches. So when I started the business, I left my house one day and I said to my wife, I'm going to go meet with my mentor, Bill. She's like, what are you doing? I'm going to work on this new concept of this new company. I had left my dad's business maybe like 2 months before, and I came home with 11 employees, $55,000 in payroll, 3,000 square feet of office space. And like 7 coaches. My wife's like, I thought we're going to do it in the garage. I was like, I don't do things small. We're going to go big. But I came out of the gate with 7 because I'm like, hey, he's really good at management and running brokerages. This one's really good at mortgage. This one's really good at running a team. This one's really good at expired listings. And I had all these niche experts. And that's been the game. Like, I have people that are like coaching clients of mine that don't like me at all, but they love their coach because their coach is amazing. So I'm like, hey, I'm Baskin-Robbins. I'm 31 Flavors. You with me? So I get the most press because I've been doing it for the longest. But the reality is, like, out of all my coaches, like, I have the things that I'm good at, but I've got all these super deep, super rich experts. And the hardest part is— yeah, the hardest part is like, how do I promote all that? You know what I mean? Like, that's the game I'm always playing. So if you have good ideas, please DM me.

Yeah, it's like, how do you get them to be the star?

100%. And I'm actually— I'm working on— you'll see maybe off camera, I'll share with you something I'm working on. Give me some feedback.

That's a tease.

But it actually is real. I'm working on something that I think is just going to completely flip the entire industry.

That's huge. And this is always the way your brain works, is thinking of what's ahead.

100%.

And skate where the puck's going.

Did you ever see Lords of Dogtown?

No.

Do you know?

I know what it is, but I haven't seen it.

So Jay Adams, who is arguably the greatest skater ever, passed away recently. God bless. People that watched him skate said what he did better than anybody else is in the moment he was innovating, even as he was like doing a flip or like first aerial moves or whatever it was, or like pool riding, all stuff like, like he was always innovating, trying to figure out what's next. And it was the first time I was like, well, I'm not a good skater, but like, that is the way my brain works. Like, what's new? What's next? Willingness to test, willingness to fail, willingness to get the bumps, willingness to learn. And then, hey, if it hits, Let's go. And by hit, meaning it's valuable to the people I'm communicating to.

Yeah.

You with me? And it's always, always, always because I get bored, right? You get bored. The person wants to get bored. We all get bored, right? So, you know, ideas create inspiration. Yeah.

You know what I mean?

And inspiration means by definition you're imbued with the spirit to act, right? That's all I want. I want like more action. So I need more ideas.

Yes.

Create the inspiration, right?

No, I love that. And then so it's just new things you're doing. What's also cool about this is the amount of respect you get, like you said earlier, because you were doing new things, even if they don't work out, 100%, you're bringing new ideas. People want you on their stages. They want you on their podcast. They want you in the network. And also you stick out in their head. Yeah, because I'm thinking about network now as kind of the last component of this, because I have done a lot of work making calls, knocking on doors.

Yeah.

And it's just always shocking to me that the number one lift for me, and I'm sure you would say that something similar, has been through relationships, through people I met.

Always.

And so you've, you've got a Rolodex like nobody else, right? You know everybody and everything. If I need somebody, I'm like, hey, Tom, you know this guy? And then I think before I'm done sending the text, you've put me in a joint text with a guy for this person that you're like, hey, you guys are good to go. And then I'm like, okay, it works. And now I can give you the origin behind that. But why? Yeah, how did you— why did your brain work like that? And then also, is there a time when you just that I'm going to go all in on building my network, or it just happened organically?

I think the day I got into business, that was the way. I mean, okay, I went to 4 high schools before I graduated with a GED. And at every high school, like, I was the guy that are like, if Neel Dhingra's parents were gone, we're throwing a party. I'm going to get 2 bands and a keg somehow at 13 years old, and we're going to throw a party and we're to sell, like, you know, tickets at the door for like $5. I've always been in that world like that, like getting people together, creating community. Like I was jokingly saying, this coaching thing doesn't work out. Politics.

So what's the best way to build your network if you're thinking about— if you're the average person right now?

Bring more. So first of all, have a lot of questions that you're prepared and ready to ask. Second, realize that the billionaire you're sitting in front of or the person that is just getting started, we're all humans. Everybody's exactly the same. So if you have good questions like, hey man, where'd you grow up? What was your highest high? What was your lowest low? Did you play sports? Not play sports? Like, I have like all these questions in my head, and I'm not asking because I'm trying to get something from them. I'm trying to find connection where I can bring value. Yeah, right. My— one of my mentors, Mike Vance, worked with Jobs and Mother Teresa. He was right, right-handed for Walt Disney for like the last 8 years of Walt's life. When he and I worked together at the Fontainebleau in Miami and he said, observing you, what I see that you do that's exceptional is you coach, you create, you connect, and you contribute. And he said, when you're doing those 4 things, like, that's you at your sweetest spot. So I think it's just the desire, like, I want to be that person. I've always wanted to be that person that a CEO called and said, okay, I'm in trouble. This just happened. What do you recommend? Yeah. And not that they're always going to take my advice, but I love the fact that I've been able to earn the right to be on the text. You know what I mean? Like, when you text me and say, hey, who do you know that— that, right? Like, it's why I give my cell phone out. It's why, like, way too many people probably have my cell phone, but I think I have like 9,200 contacts and I know every one of them. Like, that's insane. So I think it's intent.

Yeah. And that's the part where those relationships have brought you in as early stage investor in this company, this opportunity, this doors up, these partnerships you talk about. We just launched a company here. We just did this. And so I think Jesse Itzler told me this at my event. He's like, hey, Neel, you know, he's a billionaire, of course. Yeah, he married well, too. Yeah, he did. That's probably through another networking story of his. But he talked about the biggest opportunities were things that weren't on the roadmap. It was a conversation over here that led to this dinner, and then that launched this new venture. And then now they're selling coconut water to Coca-Cola or something. It's just crazy.

I'll tell you, one of my mentors, not to be named, but he's someone that I just— I refer to him as the Yoda of real estate. He and I became friends because I wanted him as a mentor. Like, I identified, like, this guy knows more about our industry than anybody else. And if they actually published the top 100 most influential people, He'd be like number 1 or number 2 on the list every single time behind the scenes for like at least the last 40 years. Like he's, he's the puppet master, right? That nobody talks about. So I started doing research on him. I started figuring out what does he own? What does he like? What does he do? Who are his friends? And I made it my mission in the early days, like to just bring him ideas of things I knew he'd be interested in. And that was the beginning of our relationship. So I think that like, right, how do I deliver more value?

Yeah. You know, with no expectation, really no expectation. Yes.

I actually, I have a crazy origin story. Yeah, but only if it's appropriate.

What is it? Go ahead.

When my parents got divorced, my mom literally hung up the phone. And as a young child, this is what I remember. She basically said, hey, your dad is leaving us. And all I remember saying, Neel, is, hey, Mom, how can I help? I was 6, right? How can I help? And I think that's been like the pull-through of my entire life. How can I help you with me? It's why I will sit with people for sometimes way too long and disrupt the next meeting or miss an airplane. Because at the core, like, I think on my deathbed, when I look at like the dash of my life and all those dots, it's really going to come down to how many people that I help, how many people that I impact in a positive way that got them, you know, they're not— nobody's broken. Nobody needs to be healed. Yeah, but you know what I mean? Hey, a text connect. That's being helpful.

But then it's the energy behind what you do.

Yeah.

Which is why people want to hit you up.

Yeah.

They trust you, obviously, but then they want to connect you with opportunities too in the future. So it's really cool to see when you have the deal flow or the all these cool things or the lucky moments. How did those happen? It's because of your energy of just being there and giving first.

Right.

So that's the— I think you can tell when someone's doing it with an outcome in mind.

Yeah.

Because we've been hit up by those people all the time. So think about this. Networking is important. But then one thing that I wanted to make sure that we cover today was right now, one of the things that I think has helped you along the journey and the people that you think of that are most influential is they change the way you think about things.

Yes.

They speak on these stages. They're on podcasts. They have all the platforms. They have distribution. How important do you think it is to have your thing that you're going to like focus on, on changing? You know, because I think like people can— anybody can educate you on this to be the expert of or not. Not just the expert, but to shift someone's perspective. So like, I'll think about you. Yeah, I would think, what has Tom changed the way I think about? Well, he thinks he first changed the way I think about how anybody— he empowers people to do the thing, just to go for it. Also that it's not that difficult when you think about it. When you think about all these platforms, all these things, it sounds crazy, but it's actually not when you— you just simplify the complicated. That's the part, I think. So these are like your—

that's my superpower, which is— and it's weird to say my superpower, but like Enough of my partners and friends, like, your ability to synthesize things down and make it simple.

Yes.

And like actionable. Like, that's a gift.

So that is the part that— do you need to find that thing or do you just find it accidentally through the work? Because I think that's the part where people's stuff just kind of blends in with everybody else's because they don't have their thing.

I, again, I go back to imagine, imagine in 2004 when I started this company, if I had ChatGPT or Grok or Perplexity or Cloud.

You could run it through there.

I mean, I would just say, hey, I'd like you to interview me. And understand everything about my psyche, my background, my past, everything I've done in my past that connects the dots to helping somebody today go.

Yeah.

And then I want you to synthesize that into my unique selling proposition. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And then create my next 100 pieces of content versus how many times I'm sure you have and I have where I'm like hiring a brand agency and spending 2 days and they're like, the color blue works for you. And like, hey, if I'm walking by in the airport and I only got 2 seconds, what do you say? You know, like, all those things, which they all work. But today, anyone watching this, if you just allow like your AI tool to really help unpack who you are, and if you have nothing unique about you, that's okay. You could just be the hardest working non-unique person.

Yeah.

I mean, like, there's an angle.

That's your thing.

There's an angle everywhere. There is an angle. I'm the everyday guy's real estate agent. You with me? I'm not flashy. I don't drive a great car. But I negotiate like a badass. And if you want a boring, get the deal done, I'm your guy.

Well, there's a gal in my group. She's like nerdy, kind of very soft-spoken, introverted. She's super into all the AI stuff.

Yeah.

And how to use it to get more reach, to sell houses, to market, do all the things. So she's in it and she goes, okay, you know what? A year ago, I'm going to start talking about these things. And she became micro-famous because it was the new thing. She's talking about all the things and she really went deep on a few of the tools and just became an expert. So in her free time, she used it to develop expertise. Of course, that became her thing.

Of course.

So I think everybody's watching and listening. Maybe you don't know it today, but you're going to come across it. And then that just needs to be the thing that you continue to talk about. I think people need to be reminded more than they need to be taught. You just need to— once you have your thing, you just keep— you've been saying some of the same things for 20 years.

And I will continue. I mean, it's, you know, like Chuck Berry is going to do certain songs the same way the Beatles, God bless them, would have done the same. You know, like they're going to keep— but you're going to keep innovating around it. I mean, how you do an open house is how you do an open house. Now, can I add a QR code that makes it modern? I don't know. QR codes were around in 2011. We just never used them right until the pandemic. So it's about taking what is tried and true and then always innovating around it. How do I add in the new layers to make it more special? Like I'm excited about like the next 10 years in real estate. I'm really excited about what I think is going to happen and how real estate agents will have a role and where they will no longer have a role. And like, everything is going to change.

Yeah.

And I think it's only going to change for the better. And in case you're wondering, real estate agents will be here in 10 years and so will lenders. But if I had to put a prediction on it, I'd say that let's say in the next— well, let's say right now, I would say 99% human, 1% AI. Right now. And there's some outliers out there that are like, yeah, maybe you're like 2 to 3%, maybe you're 5%, but nobody's more than that. Like, I don't care what you say, but in the next 3 to 5 years, I think we're going to see some people that are like 35% AI and the balance human. I also think we're going to see like some 65% AI. Every workflow that you do in a transaction in your marketing can be done by an AI right now. Yes, but, but it takes time. You know how long it took DocuSign until it finally hit where everybody in real estate was doing it? 5 years.

Yeah.

You know, they're like, I'm old school. There was a time when people were faxing offers and they were afraid to send it in email because what if it went to the wrong person? You with me? And then eventually faxing goes away and email happens. I think—

I—

this is my hallucination— is that, you know, in 3 to 5 years it's going to be 50/50, right? Which means there's a good chance we'll need less real estate agents and less loan officers and less probably of everything else, because those that are doing it will be selling way more in the same amount of time. Yeah, but I think 10 years out, I just— I was having this conversation with a pal of mine who's a private equity guy, not to be named, and he's like, I don't think the future of real estate agents— I just think there's just no way, man. I'm like, yeah, we've been talking about that like since like dial-up. Like, it's not going away, but I think it's going to be like this. I think it's going to be like 90% AI and 10% empathy, handshaking, relationship building, trust. Here's your keys. Communication. The stuff that the stuff that we love about being a human being, right? Like, that's going to be the job. But that person's going to sell like 500 homes a year and do what they do best, and AI will take care of everything else.

So it's going to enable you to just do 10 times the volume, 100 times the volume.

1,000%. And, you know, who knows where it shakes out in terms of the number of agents and yada, yada, yada, right? I mean, maybe we'll be at 10 or 15 billion people on the planet at that time. I don't know, right? Like, if we finally have another revitalization of more people having more kids, because right now If I was a real estate agent or a loan officer, if you look at the data on everybody past millennial, it's like this 91 million millennial and then it just drops off dramatically, which tells me like most people should be thinking about how to retire in the next probably 15 years. Yeah, because there just won't be enough humans. You with me? Or you'll only specialize in like what'll become the boomers at Gen X. You with me on this? But then who's going to buy those houses? That's a whole other trip. But I'll end with this. I think it's important because someone's going to say, Ferry, you're nuts. You know, I don't want real estate agents to go away. I don't want lenders to go away. And when people say to me like, hey, we think AI is just going to solve everything, my response is, until every home in the world, in the world is exactly the same, there will always be the need for a human to unpack it.

That's true.

Always going to be a need for someone to say, Neel, you and your family, this side of the street, that side of the street. Here's why and here's what's going on. And let's walk through the house together. And we're all going to have a robot. You can have a robot.

Yeah, dude.

And people, I'm going to talk about—

there's a company called Figure AI.

Yes. Yes.

I'm an investor in that.

Right on.

Yeah. So hopefully that company takes off. Again, the humanoid—

we started this conversation, but there's always going to be number 1, number 2, number 3. I'm so long on all things Elon Musk. I'm an investor in the chip company Groq. Everything I get my hands on.

Yeah.

Tesla's going to rule the world, right? I can't wait to get my robot in November, December. I can't wait. And right. And people go, oh my God, man, didn't you see iRobot? Didn't you see Megan? I'm like, yeah, I also saw Star Wars. I want C-3PO.

There you go.

You with me? So I think it's going to be next 10 years can be super fun.

So what— just to wrap up, what would be your advice if you— to somebody who's building their personal brand, trying to get more attention, trying to become micro-famous, if you didn't have to worry about hurting their feelings or all these different things that we have to go through as coaches, what would you just tell them? What's the straight up Truth from Tom Ferry.

Not everybody's built for video. But you know what I would do? Like, if I was afraid to do video, then I would probably use like HeyGen or another and at least create an avatar version of myself. And then I would just go hard on content. But my content would start out like this, like, hey, it's Phil's AI. Once again, want to talk to you about the 3 things you need to know about buying real estate today in Dallas. and I would just go hard on that. And I would be like the first in my marketplace to say basically, and I would like say in the comments, you know, as you know, I'm, I'm a very shy individual and not super comfortable on camera, but for some reason Phil AI loves creating this content. So let me know if you like it.

Yes.

And I would just go hard on that because at the end of the day, like attention is everything, right? Attention and monetization like that. That's the game. So if you're not going to do it, like, don't make that a cop-out. Like, I can also be very internal and very shy when I want to be, right? It just doesn't pay well, right? So I put on the Todd Herman— you have Todd Herman on your show yet?

No, not yet.

Todd's a great— I'll connect you, right? Wrote a book called The Alter Ego. Like, you know, in the first, I don't know, 5 years of my career, I had to put on the mask, if you will, of who is this guy going to be? And then eventually you wake up like 15 years later and you are that person. Do you know what I mean? And like all that, that old identity is gone. So I would say that you act as if 1000%, which is cliché, you know, like Napoleon Hill, 1934. But, but it's real. The second thing I would say is if you didn't hear email on this show, I don't know a successful personality, a successful brand, a successful business that, that somewhere in the core of how they grew and how they maintain their success is an email.

Yeah, you know, um, Sharon, obviously, uh, I was Ron's coach for a while.

Yeah, back in the old days.

Back in the old days.

Love Sharon. Shout out to Sharon.

Yeah, he's working with, um, I know Alex now.

I know, I know.

Just did— this is so funny, you just brought up email today because I had no idea you're gonna talk about email. Yesterday they did a whole workshop on email.

Yes, email.

They're all in on it.

Of course they are.

So, uh, this is the way, you know, to wrap up is like, this is the way you guys can—

this is the way—

this is the way you can take the attention get it off the platform and then do whatever you want. You, you own the list.

Easy one. On that note, uh, people like, how did you build so much traffic to your website? I'm like, well, I did a Tom Ferry Show every Tuesday. It was released and I emailed it to 100,000 people, then it was 200,000 people, then it was 300,000 people. And I didn't let them go to YouTube. They went to tomferry.com on my blog where they could watch the video and then download the goodies And then, hey, there's some CTAs on that.

Yeah, like email marketing. Since you brought up email too, as the last tip here, what is a way to use AI to do these emails to make them— I know you mentioned you could have the latest news, latest updates, you could put those in the emails, but are you guys using AI to actually get the emails out, get them written and published?

So, so Better Email as an example is— was all my new companies are— they're built AI first. Okay. Right. So everything is AI first, which means Hey, Neel is a loan officer in Las Vegas, but he's licensed in 42 states. Here's the 42 states. So we want to know everything that's happening in these 42 states. Every person that's up for renewal on their refi or whatever you like, we want to do all that stuff every day. The emails are— the AI is basically extracting that content every single day, all those insights every single day. And then depending on what I'm going to have built in, could be Better Email, could be Claude, could be something else. But like, we're doing all of that AI first. So I don't know if that answers your question, but the answer is yes.

Yes, yes.

If you're sitting around doing research right now, you're a fool.

Yeah.

Now, on the actual written emails, I'm a fan of AI writing the email, but I add humanist to every one of them. I may use it for the hook, I may use it for the thumbnail, I may use it for the CTA, I may use it for a transition. But, but I think you could lose your authentic voice if you suddenly just have AI doing everything for you.

Yeah. I would say the number one email tip I would give everybody right now is I'm using Claude.

Yeah.

Instead of ChatGPT, I think Claude's better at writing. I agree. I gave it a format.

I don't trust ChatGPT as far as I can— I don't trust Sam Altman as far as I can throw him.

Dang. Okay. Well, yeah, I'm glad I switched to Claude a couple of years ago then.

Sorry if you like— you like him because they were first.

So this is Claude. I have a format. I started a project in Claude. Yes. I put in the format of the email I like. I got some examples in the project and then I just brain dump. So I use Whisper Flow. I don't type anymore. I push a button and I just talk. Yes. On a walk.

Yeah.

At night, whenever you do it and say, here's what I would like the next email to be about. Tom and I were talking about this, this, and this. Also do some research on this because I don't know all the logistics. I don't know these stats, but put all that in and then put it in the format. Let me know.

Boom.

It spits out the email. Now it's not verbatim, but it's pretty much done.

You know, Prompt Cowboy. Oh, this would be the opening of the show. Prompt Cowboy. Yeah, Prompt Cowboy. I think the headline on the site is Your Lazy Prompts Turned into Magic.

Wow.

So the, so the search bar, Prompt Cowboy. I'm not an investor. I don't own the company. If you can get me in the deal, I want to get in the deal. I want to own this company. The search bar says in, in, in the search bar, it says, I want a prompt that you just fill in the blank, fill in the blank, and then it builds a beautiful prompt for you knowing how to actually prompt engineer, which most people don't. And then it's like, let me ask you 4 or 5 questions to make it even better. And then all of a sudden your prompt is like 9 pages long and then you drop it into Claude and it builds a whole new company, the financial plan, the website, everything like that. Yeah, it's bananas. Prompt Cowboy.

Okay, cool. Well, we'll wrap with that. If you want to get in contact with Tom, can they just DM you on IG?

Of course.

So just pull them up on IG. That's how I think I reached out to you for the first time. Shoot them a DM. And then also leave a comment. I know we talked about a bunch of things today, but what do you want me to go deeper on on any of these topics? Because we can make a whole episode honestly on any one of the things. We could go deep for an hour on just email if you want. 1000% how to grow your list, how to monetize it. And so if that's interesting to you, let me know in the comments. We read every single one and this is going to help us for future content. But until then, thanks, Tom, for being here and we will see you guys on the next show.