How To Free Up Your Weekends To Spend More Time With Your Family

Justin Liller:
The videos that we put out on a monthly basis have created an almost local rockstar type feel to my brand to where it's almost impossible for me to go out to lunch in my area, or to go out to dinner without somebody seeing me and coming up and saying, "hey, you're that real estate guy."

Tim Chermak:
This is the Platform Marketing Show where we interview the most creative and ambitious real estate agents in the country, dissect their local marketing strategy, and get the behind the scenes scoop on how they're generating listing leads and warm referrals. We'll dive into the specifics of what marketing campaigns are working for them, how much they're spending on those campaigns, and figure out how they have perfected what we call the Platform Marketing Strategy. This is your host, Tim Chermak. I'm the founder and CEO of Platform. I love marketing, and I talk too much. So let's dive in. All right. Welcome back to another episode of the Platform Marketing Podcast. Today, I'm here with Justin Liller, and Justin is a real estate agent in Deep Creek Lake, Maryland. And it's kind of interesting we say Maryland, because really if you look at a map, it looks like you're in West Virginia.

Tim Chermak:
You're right on the border of far Western Maryland where, if you're not really zoomed in on a map, you would actually think he's in West Virginia. Right on the border there in Western Maryland, it's this epic recreational lake area where people will drive from hours and hours away to spend a weekend there. So Justin's in this unique market where they have million dollar homes, multimillion dollar homes, as well as the typical modern American middle class 250, $300,000 homes. So Justin's in a very unique market, and he's had great success using these Platform marketing strategies to build a brand there. So Justin, welcome to The Platform Show.

Justin Liller:
Hey, Tim. Thanks for having me.

Tim Chermak:
And I actually just wanted to start by asking you what has been your production the last couple years? Where's your volume at, and where was it five years ago? So just give people a quick snapshot of what your business has looked like the last couple years, and then I want to dive in and ask you some specific marketing questions on what are some of the campaigns that have actually been driving that growth and have helped you get to this level. So where are things at right now?

Justin Liller:
Sure. So right now, I just finished up a pretty big year, 20 million in production. Prior to last year-

Tim Chermak:
And is that a big team? You said you did a 20 million production. Do you have a couple buyers agents that are helping you, or is that all solo?

Justin Liller:
No, that's all solo. I recently did bring on an agent to assist me. I wouldn't necessarily call her a buyer's agent. I have her do some admin stuff for me and show property occasionally for me. But no, that was 20 million solo.

Tim Chermak:
That's incredible then. That's incredible.

Justin Liller:
Yeah. Yeah. It was a great year. I think I've worked with Platform for five years now, and every single year I've seen my production increase dramatically. So prior to working with Platform, I was doing somewhere in the four to $5 million a year range, and in the first year, I more than doubled that, the first year I worked with Platform and employed the strategies, and it's gone up ever since.

Tim Chermak:
That's incredible. So you've gone from kind of averaging four to $5 million a year... So for most agents with typical splits and whatnot, probably around 100,000 in GCI where you certainly were not struggling financially or anything like that, but you had a stable business, you wanted to do more, and now you're up to 20 million plus a year in volume, and the part I want to keep highlighting is that that's just you. Because a lot of agents would be stoked to have a 20 million production, even if that were being split amongst two or three buyers agents, because that's still a pretty good living for everybody, but 20 million by yourself is pretty damn impressive.

Justin Liller:
Yeah. Thank you. It was a good year. I know a lot of people struggled in 2020 with coronavirus pandemic and everything. Our area happened to see a nice boost in real estate, because I think a lot of people wanted to flee their urban environments and get out to the mountains in a place where they could kind of relax a little bit. But yeah, it's a lot of fun. The business is a lot more fun when you're producing like that versus when you're scrapping to get to four or 5 million a year.

Tim Chermak:
Absolutely. Absolutely. It's fun making money, who would've thought. So your market is unique though, and this is a point I really wanted to touch on. Because one thing that's always fascinated me, Justin, about your success with Platform... And it's why you're in the Platform marketing hall of fame. One thing that's always fascinated me is that you are in this recreational second home vacation market, and you have some $200,000 homes, some $300,000 homes just like most markets in the United States do, but a lot of your volume comes from selling $800,000 homes, $1.4 million homes, $2 million homes, and you've used social media marketing and videos and building this local brand to even be selling these million dollar, multimillion dollar homes. And so you've kind of proven definitively that using digital marketing and lead gen and all of the above doesn't just work in high volume traditional markets where...

Tim Chermak:
I mean, obviously you see case studies all the time of realtors bragging about the number of homes they sold, or how successful they were with such and such marketing system, or Zillow leads perhaps, or realtor.com leads or whatever, and they're just in a typical market where there's a large volume every month of $300,000 homes being sold, people moving in and out, and to make a couple hundred thousand dollars in GCI, they probably have to sell 30, 40, 50 homes a year at the price points they're at, and so they're busy all the time. You are selling homes in a market where it's $1 million, sometimes $1.5 million, and the social media marketing is still working.

Tim Chermak:
That's what's interesting to me. Because I think a lot of agents think that, well yeah, spending money on Facebook ads or getting leads from Zillow or whatever can work if you're selling $200,000 homes. And they're almost kind of elitist about it. They're almost condescending of, well, that works in the lower price ranges, but as soon as you get into luxury, social media marketing doesn't do anything, because you have to be more sophisticated at higher price range. And you have completely proven that wrong. You are regularly using Instagram ads and Facebook ads and video to sell $1.8 million homes. And so what has that been like, seeing that work for you that well?

Justin Liller:
Yeah, it's been really great. So that was probably my biggest fear when you and I first started talking about me working with Platform as a marketing company, was this works great in a residential home market, but is this going to work in a market where I'm selling second homes to people who don't necessarily live in my area code or my county. So that was my biggest fear. And it turns out people just like to do business with people that they perceive as fun. So I've found that the ads work great, but honestly, the more I post videos and photos of myself out having fun in my community, the more business comes my way. So I think in a residential market, the ads work great, but in a vacation market, they work just as well, just in a little bit different manner. Everybody wants to-

Tim Chermak:
So when you say that you post pictures of yourself out having fun, what does that mean? Are you saying getting out in the lake or snowmobiling, or what does having fun mean to you in like the Deep Creek Lake area?

Justin Liller:
Yeah. So Deep Creek Lake is a recreational paradise. We have four seasons of outdoor beauty, so there's always something to do outside. And for me, having fun means getting out on the lake with my family, going snowmobiling with my family, we have downhill skiing, a pretty big resort called The Wisp that we go to all the time, playing golf, we've got great golf courses here. So if you enjoy outdoor recreation, you're going to love Garrett County. I do, and I think that comes through in my online marketing, because I focus heavily on the outdoor recreation that I participate in. And I think people see that and say, maybe hanging out with him for a Saturday to look at houses wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. I mean, it makes you seem like a cool guy when you're posting photos or videos of you out wakeboarding or skiing, or I know you've been recently doing a lot of snowmobiling, because we're obviously recording this podcast episode here in the middle of winter, and you recently bought a bunch of new sleds for the family. And you were saying there's such a low inventory right now in your area like, there is across the rest of the country, that there's just not a lot of homes to sell people right now. So hey, let's just spend a couple hours snowmobiling every day.

Justin Liller:
Yeah, exactly. We've been going out snowmobiling a ton. I think I put almost 100 miles on the snowmobiles the other day. We've had great weather for it. And our inventory's been low, but as you mentioned earlier, I looked the other day, I think I have eight contracts, and they average about $800,000. So the market, it's still really good, we're just kind of waiting for some new inventory to come around. There's plenty of buyers out there.

Tim Chermak:
Wow. Wow. So you have 10 under contract right now, average of 800k price point?

Justin Liller:
Yeah, it's something like that. They're somewhere between eight and 10. Yeah. But it's around-

Tim Chermak:
I mean, you have-

Justin Liller:
... An 800 price point.

Tim Chermak:
That's awesome, man. Good for you. I mean, you have enough under contract right now that most agents would consider that a successful year, selling about $8 million of real estate. That alone provides very good income for you and your family, and that's what you have under contract in the middle of February when we're recording this episode. So that's awesome.

Justin Liller:
Yeah. Should all close by the end of March hopefully.

Tim Chermak:
That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, so Garrett County, this is the other interesting thing to me, is that you're not just in a recreational area, but Garrett County, what's the total population there, 30,000, 40,000?

Justin Liller:
Yeah, it's just under 30, I think. The last census was 28,000.

Tim Chermak:
So again, that's not his town he lives in. That's the entire county. I mean, you're pretty much-

Justin Liller:
Yeah. That's the entire county, and the average income here is actually below federal poverty rate. So while we have the lake area which has lots of million dollar homes, once you get outside of that, the average sale's around 120,000.

Tim Chermak:
So it's a very bimodal market in terms of the distribution of home prices. Either it's very low income, lower price points, or it's a million dollar home on the lake that more than likely is probably someone buying from out of town at those price points. And so again, if social media marketing can work in a market like that, I think it kind of definitively proves that using these strategies should work for anyone.

Justin Liller:
Yeah, absolutely. Majority of the buyers that I work with are driving between two and a half and three and a half hours to get to Deep Creek Lake. So they're mostly in the Baltimore, Washington DC, Northern Virginia, Pittsburgh areas. So yeah, it can absolutely work if you are not selling primarily to people that live in your town.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. I know that you almost consider yourself there in Garrett County culturally more similar to West Virginia than you do to Maryland. And that's interesting that the marketing then still works to attract people that are, you said, coming from a couple hours away. Because at that point, I would imagine they've essentially decided I want to buy a vacation home or a second home in the Deep Creek area, and I just need to find a realtor, but I'm going to buy. And so at that point, the marketing becomes even more important, because you just need to stand out from the other agents in your area.

Justin Liller:
Exactly. Yeah. Most people that come here to purchase are purchasing second homes, whether it's for their family to come use on the weekends, or investment type second homes where they'll put it in a vacation rental market. But yeah, they've made up their mind they're buying at Deep Creek Lake, they want a place that's only a couple hours away that they can escape to in the weekend. So standing out is the name of the game. And if you can reach those people through social media by standing out and appearing to be fun, then it obviously gives you a leg up over the competition over just some name that they see on Zillow.

Tim Chermak:
And so your business wasn't always at the point where you're selling $20 million a year. Because I'm sure someone might be listening to this thinking, well, if I lived in a town that had plenty of million dollar lake homes, I'd be selling 20 million a year too. But I know you've mentioned before there's a ton of realtors in your area, because everyone thinks, oh, I'll just get licensed, it'll be easy to make money when there's homes at this price point. And before you discovered some of these marketing strategies, you yourself were kind of averaging out at selling four to $5 million a year, so it's not as easy as it sounds.

Justin Liller:
No. Absolutely it's not as easy as it sounds. I don't know what the average agent in my market makes, but I would assume it's probably around two to 3 million in sales per year. So the Platform strategies are what have really helped me increase my business. I mean, I went from really not knowing how to market myself to others outside of my area, to having basically more leads coming in on a daily basis than what I can really handle by myself, which is why at the end of last year I brought on an assistant. But yeah, the Platform strategies have helped me break into those markets where the high dollar buyer are coming from, and then in turn, they've also helped me basically get the attention of homeowners in the area when they come in on the weekends and they see my ads on their Facebook feed and have turned into a giant source of listing leads as well.

Tim Chermak:
And so when you say the Platform strategy, give us some specifics, Justin? When you say the Platform strategies started working for me, put that into your own words? What does that mean to someone maybe who's listening to this podcast that has never heard of the Platform marketing platform? What did you actually start doing differently four or five years ago when you joined Platform that you weren't doing before that took you from selling 5 million a year to over 20? What are the specifics of what you do every month?

Justin Liller:
Yeah. So first, I'll throw in a shameless plug for Tim's book. If you have not read High Hanging Fruit, and you are an ambitious real estate agent, I would highly recommend reading that book. Beyond that, the Platform strategy to me simply means creating a localized brand that becomes recognizable throughout your entire market. So I mean, I run the typical homes list ads that a lot of agents run, we market specific genres of homes list ads, might be in my area, maybe the lake front homes list, or the docks slip homes list, or the acreage homes list, and those will all bring in a ton of leads, but-

Tim Chermak:
Which is basically you creating a free recording.

Justin Liller:
... The videos is like a monthly market update. If we go to small businesses and promote them, I don't ask them for a penny. That's all part of my marketing budget. And we promote these local small businesses. So the videos that we put out on a monthly basis have created a almost local rockstar type feel to my brand to where it's almost impossible for me to go out to lunch in my area, or to go out to dinner without somebody seeing me and coming up and saying, hey, you're that real estate guy on Facebook. I see your videos all the time. Awesome example of that would be, two weekends ago, I went out on a poker run on snowmobiles, and at two different stops during the poker run I started talking to some groups of guys that were hanging out, and twice somebody in the group was like, oh, I know you. You're Justin. I see your ads on Facebook and your videos on Facebook all the time.

Tim Chermak:
That's amazing. I mean, that to me, I've always said, that's the proof that you know that your marketing is working. Not necessarily when you get clicks on your ads, or you get leads coming in, because if you know what you're doing with setting up Google ads or YouTube ads or Facebook ads, if you have a credit card and you can fog a mirror, you can get leads. It's really not that hard to set up lead gen ads that get leads. But when you really know that your marketing is working is when you're out and about at town, whether you're at your kids' baseball game, or you're at church on a Sunday morning, or you're grocery shopping, or in your case, you're out snowmobiling, you're out to eat at some local restaurant, that's when you know that the marketing is working, when people actually recognize you.

Justin Liller:
Yeah. It's been really cool. And I'm not putting down other types of ads. All of these ads work. The homes list ads, they work. But if you can get in front of somebody with video and just promote others, that's what I think has created the market for me personally to where I get more leads coming in inbound from either a phone call or a text message, people I've never spoken to, than I do people signing up for an ad through Facebook. And so the local marketing that Platform has helped me create has completely transformed my business and my life. I mean, my family and I, our lifestyle has changed dramatically based on the extra income that is produced by converting these leads that I'm generating through the Platform strategy.

Tim Chermak:
So yeah, you get clicks, yes, you get leads, people are giving you their name, their email, their phone number, et cetera, but what you're saying is that it's really the videos that have built your brand. It's people consistently over time seeing you on YouTube, seeing your videos on Instagram, seeing your videos on Facebook, and then when you're out and about, they recognize you and they feel like they know you, even if they've never actually met you before.

Justin Liller:
Yeah, exactly. Get it all the time. People walk up to me, hey, Justin, and I turn around and I don't know who they are, but they know me. And that's cool, because it creates an opportunity to start a conversation that could lead to a potential client down the road. And the marketing, by putting yourself out there on video and showing your personality, it can really lead to some pretty awesome long-term relationships as well, in addition to just the money. I mean, I can't tell you how many guys I hang out with on a regular basis that I met through selling real estate to them here at Deep Creek Lake that I would've never known. I'd have never had those amazing relationships had it not been for the Platform strategy and the marketing that we run.

Tim Chermak:
So the videos are definitely building your brand. What are some examples, Justin, of these videos that you film? I know that you mentioned that you try to promote local small businesses. I'm assuming there that you're referring to the market updates. That's what we call them internally at Platform. Share with us some of the specific marketing ideas of the videos that you're doing, so for those listening to this podcast, that they could think, okay, cool, here are the two or three videos I'm going to go out and film so I can start building that brand like Justin has?

Justin Liller:
Yeah. I mean, the very first thing that I would recommend any agent do that wants to build a brand is to start filming a monthly market update. And when I say monthly market update, what I'm really saying is, every month, pick a local small business and give them free advertising. So I never ask for a gift card or anything like that from the businesses. We used to do a giveaway every month, we've stopped doing that. But just getting in front of that business owner, talking to them, promoting what they sell, whatever their product is. I mean, I've done everything from a car dealership to restaurants, to powersports dealerships, to a charity. So just promoting what others are working for can just immensely help your localized brand, because people will recognize that you are trying to help your community.

Tim Chermak:
Okay. So when you say that you film a video at these businesses, whether it's a powersports dealership, a cafe, a coffee shop, whatever, what does the actual video look like? How long is it? Give us as many specifics as possible?

Justin Liller:
Sure. I try to keep all of these market updates under two minutes, for sure. I love to keep them at about 90 seconds. And basically all I'm doing is introducing the business. If the business owner wants to say a few words, I love to get them into the video. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But just for example, you go into a restaurant, introduce the restaurant and talk to your audience about what your favorite thing is at that restaurant. So if I go to The Greene Turtle, my favorite thing there is their boneless wings. I think they have some of the best wings in Deep Creek. So I'm going to talk about that. I'm going to talk about the location and how it's amazing that you can sit there and look across at The Wisp, and there's 85 TVs playing sports all the time, and then I'm going to show a video basically of the wings once they're delivered to the table, and then talk to people about why they should come visit The Greene Turtle while they're at Deep Creek Lake.

Tim Chermak:
So it's basically a quick 60 second video or so where really you're just promoting this local small business. It almost feels like an ad for the small business, except for the part that it's not recorded like an ad, because you don't want it to look like an advertisement. It just feels like you as a local dude recorded on your cell phone, hey, this is an awesome restaurant and you guys should check it out, right?

Justin Liller:
Exactly. Yeah. All I'm trying to do is promote the small business. We call it a monthly market update, but honestly, anymore I don't even give market stats. I used to kind of talk to people about the real estate market. Truth of the matter is, nobody cares. That 90 seconds or 60 seconds, whatever it is, should be devoted to that small business, and all you're trying to do is just promote others in your community.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. I mean, you want to be seen as being not just a real estate expert, like Justin's an expert on home prices here in Deep Creek Lake, or Justin knows where all the best listings or the best views are, like you're a real estate expert, because that's expected if you're a full-time real estate agent. They expect that of course you would know what's going on in the housing market. That's kind of table stakes. That's the price of entry if you want to be respected as being a top producer. What this market update strategy adds to the marketing mix is that, they know you're a real estate expert, but now they also know that you're an expert on the community, and not just being an expert like you know where all the places are, but you're also a level deeper, you're an advocate of the community.

Tim Chermak:
You're out there on your own time promoting local small businesses. Who wouldn't want to work with a realtor like that if you're out and about promoting cafes, sports bars, bowling alleys, powersports, auto dealerships, coffee shops? If I were moving somewhere... Because I actually live in Naples, Florida now. I was born and raised in Minnesota. I very seriously considered moving to Bozeman, Montana a couple years ago, and when we were scoping out Bozeman, I experienced what it was like all over again to be doing the research of moving somewhere and feeling like, okay, I don't know anything about this place, and so the first thing I need to do is find a realtor who can basically show me around and tell me what areas of town are growing and give me that wisdom.

Tim Chermak:
It's all the qualitative wisdom you can't get by just researching on Zillow or realtor.com. And I felt what it was like all over again to be the buyer, and not really know about the market. And if an agent there had been running videos and ads on social media the way that you said that you've been doing with filming videos at local restaurants, highlighting what some of your favorite areas are... I know you've even filmed, here's my favorite subdivisions, or here's the place where I think you can get the best value in Deep Creek Lake, even if you don't have a million dollar budget. Creating content like that positions you not only as being an expert, but when people see you on video, just by watching one of your videos for 30 seconds, they get an idea of, oh, Justin seems cool. I could see myself hanging out with him on a Saturday going and looking at houses. He seems like a fun guy to hang out with.

Tim Chermak:
And so I totally see how that has driven your business. Because if you put yourself in the shoes of someone who's buying a place somewhere, and they don't really know the area, but they do know the most important decision they make actually isn't necessarily what house they buy, it's what agent they decide to work with, because that's going to determine so much about the area and the house they end up buying, is the wisdom they get from the agent.

Justin Liller:
Yeah, totally. You mentioned earlier subdivision videos, which is another great video idea for any agents out there looking for video ideas. I can't tell you how many listings I've gotten from just going and filming a video in a subdivision and talking about all of that subdivision's great qualities, and then that video launches, and somebody living in that subdivision that's contemplating selling their home sees it, and they're like, well yeah, I'm going to list with this guy, he's promoting the subdivision, so he probably has people looking in that subdivision that want to buy also.

Justin Liller:
If you get out there on video and just give a little bit of personality, why would anybody looking to purchase a home not want to work with you versus someone else that they've never met? You just call into a real estate brokerage, and somebody answers the phone, and they put you in touch with an agent, you've never met them, you have no idea who they are, what their personal's like, versus somebody that is on social media all the time posting about the area, having fun, showing off their personality. Well, I know who I'm going to call. I'm going to call the person that looks familiar and seems like they have a good time.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. I mean, with all the information that's available at our fingertips now as consumers, you can pull up all of the real estate data and trends and see all the active listings on Zillow or on the realtor.com app, access to information is no longer the advantage it used to be as a real estate agent. And this has probably been true for 10 years to be clear. So I'm not making some hot take here that hasn't already been true for the last decade. But I still think many, many realtors are failing to understand that your primary value is no longer as a gatekeeper like, oh, if you start working with me, I can send you listings straight from the MLS. That's not the value you provide as an agent anymore, if it ever was.

Tim Chermak:
Recently in the news, as we're recording this podcast, Zillow is making major moves obviously coming into the real estate industry. They're obviously an actual licensed broker now. They've made some acquisitions of companies to try to streamline the buyer's agent experience. Basically a quick summary is, it looks like Zillow is trying to automate buyers agents more or less out of existence, because they would allow home buyers to schedule showings using lockbox technology that they just show up and they can look at houses without necessarily needing a buyer's agent.

Tim Chermak:
If that's not what Zillow has announced, and that's not explicitly what they're doing, everyone knows that's what it's headed towards, is that buyers at some point in the future will be able to just schedule a showing on an app, it'll send them a code, they'll be able to open the lockbox, assuming the homeowner is okay with all that obviously, and all of a sudden, just getting access to a house, having the value you provide as an agent be, well, if you work with me, I can show you all these houses, that's not going to be the value a couple years from now that it may have been this year or at any year in the history of real estate.

Tim Chermak:
But I would argue you have nothing to worry about if you're the type of agent using these marketing strategies and branding strategies that Justin is, because if that's the value you thought you were bringing to the table, you probably deserve to go out of business. If the only value is that, well, I open the door for them because they couldn't do that on their own.

Justin Liller:
Yeah. You and I have talked about this at length several times, Tim. Real estate agents, we're a total commodity. None of us do anything in particular special once we meet the client. I mean, we open a door, we talk. The value we provide comes in marketing ourselves and being able to obtain listings and buyers. We provide our own value through the marketing, not necessarily our market knowledge. I mean, if you're in real estate and you have a real estate license, you should have a pretty good level of market knowledge, but the way that you're going to separate yourself from the rest of the pack in terms of your personal production is bringing in the leads through sources other than Zillow, realtor.com, whatever else you're using. You've got to separate yourself to make yourself look like someone that a buyer would want to go hang out with for a couple of hours.

Tim Chermak:
Yep. And more than ever before in the future, as the industry essentially tries to double down on what I would call quantitative strategies about, oh, we've got to get more leads or more clicks because Zillow is coming in, Zillow is going to make it easier to schedule a showing without an agent... And people worrying about that are worrying about the wrong thing entirely. Because if you build up a reputation in your area as the most knowledgeable realtor, and you have the most wisdom about the market, you're the coolest person that people would want to work with. I mean, essentially you're just building a personal brand about where people would want to work with you, not for quantitative reasons of how many homes did I sell last year, or how long have I been in the business or whatever, but they're choosing you for qualitative reasons of, oh, I've seen his videos, he or she is really cool, they promote local small businesses, they're highlighting the local up and coming neighborhoods or up and coming subdivisions.

Tim Chermak:
They just seem like they have a pulse on the market and they're providing an extra layer of wisdom versus just sending me new listings as they come on the market. Because again, if your value add is, oh, I can get you signed up, or you get automatic notifications anytime a listing comes to the market, it's like, well, they can basically get that from Realtor or Zillow anyways. That's not why you get paid a commission as a realtor, is because you give people access to the MLS. That has never been the advantage. And if you thought it was, you deserve to go out of business. You've got to start building a personal brand with these marketing strategies, or you're not going to last. What I think is going to happen in markets, especially in a second home vacation market like Deep Creek Lake is, is in the past... Let's just say for sake of easy math, let's say there were 100 homes being sold every year...

Tim Chermak:
And I know that obviously every year there's way more transactions than that, but this is easy math if we use 100 here. Let's say 100 transactions every year. Historically in most places in the United States, those transactions are probably 10 agents selling 10 homes a year, and it's pretty evenly spread out. And I know that there's some top producers and it's more of a pyramid, but there were a lot of agents and a lot of transactions being spread out amongst more agents. That would be one way to define the history of real estate agents in the US. It was a pretty democratized opportunity where there were a lot of agents in any given area.

Tim Chermak:
What I think's going to happen in the future is, as technology streamlines the process where you can start scheduling showings with a digital lockbox and an app where you don't even necessarily need a licensed agent to be there with you opening the door for you, it's going to start slow, but it'll catch on eventually when people realize that, oh, I don't need to have an agent drive me there. What's going to happen, I think, is that there's going to be a lot fewer agents in the future, but the same amount of transactions are going to be taking place. So it'll be fewer agents doing way more business. And so if you're the type of agent who builds a personal brand and films videos on a regular basis like Justin was talking about, you're regularly filming listing videos, even if they're not your listings. Even if you right now don't have any listings, you're talking to other agents at your brokerage or at other brokerages, and you're saying, hey, can I film a video of your listing? I'm just trying to create as much content as possible.

Tim Chermak:
I'll even give you credit. I'll say in the video, it's your listing, not mine. You're regularly filming listings, you're regularly promoting small businesses in your community, you're regularly filming videos about, like Justin said, up and coming subdivisions, what the neighborhood is in your area that has the best value right now, things like that, you're going to thrive in the future. This is actually a good thing for you, because I think there's going to be way fewer agents in the future. So you can consolidate a lot of that market share. And I think rather than in a city with 100 transactions a year, rather than there being 10 agents selling 10 homes a piece, I think it's going to look a lot more like four agents selling 25 homes a piece, or whatever that ratio looks like in your market.

Tim Chermak:
So those who have a brand will last, because a brand is what transcends whatever marketing channels are popular right now, whether it's Facebook ads, YouTube ads, Google, WhatsApp, Snapchat, TikTok, whatever the kids are using these days. A brand transcends all of that. And I think you and your business growth and your career, Justin, are proof of that.

Justin Liller:
Yeah. Thank you. I mean, obviously I owe a ton of that to Platform. I think we talked about it earlier, but before I started working with Platform, I was in the four to 5 million a year average range, the first six months that I was with Platform, I did exactly what you just talked about, Tim. I went to other agents in my office who were top producers who had tons of listings, and I asked them to go film walkthrough tours at their listings. So as an agent now, I would allow anyone to go film a walkthrough tour at my listing. Why not? I mean, it's free advertising for your listing. Could you imagine a seller finding out that you're a listing agent and you told someone, no, they could not go film a listing tour at your property. I mean, it just makes sense. And if you're looking to get started in building that brand and finding videos to film, that's a great place to start. Just ask the top producers in your office if you can go film listing tours at their properties.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. I mean, the more listing videos that you put out there over time, the more your brand's going to grow, because those have staying power. Even obviously once the home is off the market, that listing video is out there and it still exists technically, and you still use that to build your retargeting audience. So even if you do take it down... Let's say that a seller contacts you and they're like, hey, I really don't want this public anymore, because it's our house and it's not for sale anymore. Cool. You could take it down. But all the leads that that video generated and all the new people on your retargeting list are there to stay. And so those ads have staying power, and it kind of builds equity in your marketing plan, just like it does if you build equity in a house versus renting. It stays for the long term. So it's shocking to me how many agents aren't doing this when they see results of people like you who are.

Justin Liller:
Yeah. And in today's market where it seems like everywhere in the country is light on listings, I mean, holy smokes, imagine filming-

Tim Chermak:
That would be an understatement.

Justin Liller:
... Five listing videos. You're going to be the only person out there that does it, and you're going to have probably half of that market segment in a high definition listing tour.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the more videos you put out too... And this is key, especially if you're a beginning agent, or maybe you're not doing the volume that you want to be doing, the more listing video tours you put out, the more successful you look. So it's an easy way early on to make yourself look like much more of a top producer maybe than you actually are. Because if the public sees you constantly putting out videos, they're not going to manually look up whose technical listing is this. They just assume that, because you're putting out all these videos, they must all be your listings, and you must be a very successful listing agent.

Justin Liller:
Yeah. And honestly, when you go to a house and you film it, whether you give credit in the beginning, the end, or both to the listing agent, no buyer watching that really cares. They don't care if you take 10 seconds and say, oh, this listing provided courtesy of Joe Smith in my brokerage. Nobody cares. They're watching to see the video of the tour. And they'll probably pay attention to the words that you say, but they're watching the video. They don't care who's listing it is. You are the one that's bringing it to them.

Tim Chermak:
Justin, I think I know how you're going to answer this question, but I'm going to ask it anyways, just because I think it's so revealing of what the actual most effective marketing strategy is. We've talked about these homes report ads, the homes list that generate leads, we've talked about the monthly market update videos you film them at small businesses, listing videos, and there's some more ad ideas that we'll be discussing here that have worked for you in just a second, but would it be fair to say that if you had to stop all of your ads and all of these strategies, the one thing you would keep that would probably still sustain your business if you stopped everything else, the one thing you would keep doing is regularly filming listing video tours?

Justin Liller:
Absolutely, yeah. Because the listing video tours do bring in buyers, what they really do is make sellers happy. And if you get sellers who either they're thinking about putting their home on the market, or they had their home on the market and it didn't sell, and they're looking for something new, when you get sellers calling you, your life becomes a lot easier when you can transition your business to 70% listing sales and only 30% working with buyers. You gain your time. You gain so much more freedom.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. I mean, focusing your marketing around generating listings for the future, whatever the future holds with whether the market in the future is a seller's market, buyer's market, somewhat in between, if the buyer's agent role gets somewhat automated by software, focusing on building a listing agent brand is definitely a way to future proof your business.

Justin Liller:
Absolutely. And the video tours of the houses are the best way that I've found to do that. I get a lot of calls to list homes based on past tours that I completed. Every seller wants to see their home on social media. So if you're the one that's bringing those home tours, then you're the one that they're going to call.

Tim Chermak:
And it kind of has a residual effect, like you said of, yeah, you film it this week, and you'll probably spend a bunch of money promoting that video on social media this week, because you want every listing you have to make a splash, and you really want to promote it obviously, but as you said, six months from now, hell, 18 months from now, people still watch some of those old videos sometimes. Because once they get on your retargeting list, sometimes they go to your page on Facebook and they watch old videos, or they find your YouTube channel and they realize, holy smokes, this guy has filmed a lot of listing videos, I want him to list my house, because I know he'll probably do that, and he'll do the same thing for my house, and other agents won't.

Justin Liller:
Yeah, absolutely. The name of the game is to get sellers to want to work with you, and those listening tours are the way to do that.

Tim Chermak:
Justin, let me ask you a really specific question here, because this is something I would be wondering if I was listening to this podcast right now. How much are you spending on actual ads every month? Because growing your business from four or 5 million a year to 20 million, one question that someone might have is, yeah, but are you spending $5,000 a month on Facebook ads or $10,000 a month on Facebook ads, or what does your actual ads budget look like on a monthly basis?

Justin Liller:
It's probably a lot less than most people are going to think. My monthly ads budget is $1,000. Some months, I don't hit it, some months, we're rolling and leads are flying in, and I increase that by a couple hundred dollars. But on average, it's $1,000 a month.

Tim Chermak:
So you've grown from let's just call it 5 million to over 20 million, because I believe last year you hit over 20 million. It wasn't 20 on the dot. It was...

Justin Liller:
Yeah, you're right. I just used even numbers.

Tim Chermak:
I just rounded down to make it sound less impressive than it actually was. So you've basically scaled from five to over 20, and only spending $1,000 a month on the actual Facebook ads. And I know your mix is somewhat Facebook, Instagram, YouTube ads, but it's primarily Facebook ads right now. Only $1,000 a month?

Justin Liller:
Yeah, that's correct.

Tim Chermak:
So really for you then it is more quality than quantity, because obviously the ads have to be very, very effective if they're driving that level of growth without you spending 10 grand a month on ads. Because with that level of growth, even if you were... This is the crazy thing. Even if you were spending $10,000 a month on ads, it would still be profitable to have that level of growth you've had in your business.

Justin Liller:
Yeah, absolutely. I'm not sure that personally I could handle spending $10,000 a month on ads. Financially, it'd be fine, but my mental wellbeing would be shot. I mean, the amount of leads that come in off of $1,000 a month is enough-

Tim Chermak:
Too much to handle.

Justin Liller:
... To the point where, at the end of last year, I brought on an assistant to help me with that. I couldn't fathom what 10,000 a month would be. I mean, I would imagine there's a saturation point, but the strategies that we use through Platform to bring in leads, you don't have to spend that kind of money. You don't have to spend even 5,000 a month to drastically increase your business. I mean, there was actually a good while probably the first three years I was with Platform where I think my ads budget was only 800 a month, and some months we would only do 500, but I still went from five to I think 12 in year one, and then it's gone up every year since. And we've increased the ads budget a little bit, but it definitely hasn't been linear.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. There's a certain point where you invest in your marketing, and it snowballs, and eventually your sphere and you're retargeting list become large enough that you don't have to keep continuously spending a bunch of money on ads, because that sphere of influence and the referrals... The marketing is like just pouring a little bit of gasoline on a fire. It's going to make the fire go boom. You don't need a massive flame if you just have a little bit of gasoline that you can pour on that.

Justin Liller:
Totally. And my ads budget is really, it goes somewhat to Garrett County, but a lot of my ads budget goes to three or four cities that are within a couple hour radius of me. So it absolutely works in a vacation market, but imagine if I was in a more residential market and you're spending a 1,000-$1,200 a month marketing to just your county, I would have to think that would be a pretty good situation for a real estate agent.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. It would work even better, because you're getting more saturation in the communities. Your ads are, especially with your retargeting list, are sometimes being shown in areas hours away, because if a person gets added to your retargeting list, they'll still keep seeing your videos. Even if they drive home to lets say they live in Pittsburgh, they live in Baltimore or DC or something, they'll keep seeing your ads. And so your ads aren't even all being spent in your area that you're in, and you're still seeing that level of growth. Well, Justin, we talked about listing videos and how effective those are for you. I mean, you said that if you stopped doing all of your other marketing, the one type of ad you would still keep running is listing videos. The market updates and featuring local small businesses in these quick videos have been super effective for you. What are some other videos that have kind of gone viral in your community? What are some of the specific videos that you feel have helped build your brand?

Justin Liller:
Yeah. I mean, the one that really, really sticks out to me is the So God Made a Small Business Owner video. That was a purely a Platform ad idea that was probably one of the most brilliant pieces of advertising that I've seen in a long time. I'll let you fill in the details on that one, Tim.

Tim Chermak:
Sure. So what we basically did is, we took this old speech that Paul Harvey had given I think at some trade show or convention back in the 1980s, So God Made a Farmer. And most recently, I think an entire generation of Americans had grown up not really recognizing that reference, because they weren't a regular listener to the Paul Harvey, his radio program. And Dodge Ram used it in a Super Bowl commercial... At this point, it's probably five, 10 years ago now-

Justin Liller:
Eight, believe it or not.

Tim Chermak:
Okay. Yep. Yep.

Justin Liller:
I couldn't believe it.

Tim Chermak:
Yep. And so Ram used it in a commercial, and they had the voiceover of Paul Harvey talking about, So God Made a Farmer. And it's this really emotionally stirring script about all of the hard things that farmers do, waking up early, how much they actually care for their animals, or if they're not livestock, their crops, and the things they do for their family, and just kind of thanking farmers for the work and the contributions that they make to not only our economy, but just our culture. And so it gives a shout out to farmers. It's this really emotional, inspirational script. And we thought at Platform, well, could we take that idea and kind of rewrite the script from scratch. So we'll take the idea of, So God Made a Farmer, but we rewrote an entirely new script of, So God Made a Small Business Owner, because this is something I believe actually as the CEO of Platform that, I believe small business owners do not get enough credit.

Tim Chermak:
A lot of politicians and stuff will give lip service to entrepreneurs and small business owners, just because it might score them some political points to say, I love small business owners, but really, honestly, small business owners don't get enough credit. I think a lot of people don't realize how low the margins are in most businesses. I saw a poll recently that said that the average American thinks that a regular small business makes about a 35% profit margin, and the actual number is closer to 5% if you get an average. And so people think essentially that small businesses are making way more money than they actually are. And I still think to this day, the public does not appreciate small business owners enough. Whether you're a realtor, whether you own a car dealership, maybe you're a local dentist, you might have a CrossFit gym, you have a local clothing boutique, or a retail store, or a gift shop, or a coffee shop, or a taco truck, whatever, I think the public does not appreciate small business owners enough.

Tim Chermak:
And so I think this is simultaneously a marketing opportunity for realtors. And it's become a regular part of the Platform Marketing Platform where, as Justin hinted at earlier, he regularly features small business owners in his marketing, not only because we feel it's the right thing to do, but also it's a brilliant marketing strategy, because you want to be known as the type of person who's an advocate for local small businesses in your community. That's just good marketing because it makes Justin seem like a cool guy, like, oh awesome, if Justin supports that and Justin feels strongly about that, I want to support a guy like Justin, because we have those values in common. Once you connect with people at the level of values, there's really no way at that point that they're going to work with some other realtor, because they feel like they emotionally have bonded with you and what you stand for.

Tim Chermak:
So we took this idea of, So God Made a Farmer, rewrote the script to be about small business owners and all the trials and tribulations that they go through. What Justin did is, he went out and he interviewed a bunch of small business owners, he recorded an audio narration of the script, but when we edited the video for him, we layered in a bunch of clips and photos and video of local small businesses that was spliced in with Justin recording this narration of, So God Made a Small Business Owner.

Tim Chermak:
And if you go search for it... I'm sure you could find the videos on Justin's Facebook page. Just go on Facebook and search Justin Liller, So God Made a Small Business Owner, and I'm sure it'll pop up in the search results on Facebook. But Justin, how many video views did that get? Did it get a lot of comments, shares? I mean, I know it went viral for you in your area, tell us about the impact it actually made in your business? Because I know that you've mentioned people were calling you, texting you about it saying, hey, I saw that video, that's absolutely amazing.

Justin Liller:
Yeah. I had tons of feedback from especially local small business owners that were both in the video, and others that just saw it that weren't in the video that really appreciated the fact that someone was standing up for small business. I think part of the impact that video had was that we launched that late spring of 2020. So-

Tim Chermak:
In the middle of the lockdown.

Justin Liller:
Yeah. I mean, it was such perfect timing, because it was right at the beginning of everyone thinking, oh my God, I'm never going to get out of my house, because it was at the end of the two weeks to slow the spread. So we were all ready to get out, and nobody was allowing us out. So it really had an impact there. I mean, actually one of the girls that was in the video, a girl named Brandy, owns a hair salon here, and she was in tears when she saw the video. She just thought it was the coolest thing ever and was so appreciative that someone was supporting local small business.

Justin Liller:
It's hard to say exactly what kind of impact that had on my business. It's a great impact. I mean, I had one guy here locally that owns several small businesses, local entrepreneur, everything from ice cream to a subway to several other businesses, and he exclusively works with me now in his real estate because of that video. So those types of videos that can prop everyone in your community up and really tug at people's heartstrings are incredible videos to film if you want to build your local brand and be instantly recognized.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. And that took a little bit extra work, because you had to go and get either film footage or get photos of these local businesses. And then what Platform did is, we edited the video for you, and we set up the ad campaign. But you still had to do some work of grabbing the photos and the video clips. But the cool thing about that is, no other realtors can copy that once you do it. So it's a strategy that if you are putting out videos like that, it would look totally inauthentic for some other agent to just copy you and do the same thing. And so it's marketing that actually makes you stand out from other realtors, which gets us back to the whole purpose or the whole definition of marketing, is it should make you stand out. It shouldn't just make you look good in a generic way, it should actually make you stand out from other agents.

Justin Liller:
Yeah. And I think, like you just said, any agent can go out and film a walkthrough tour or launch a homes list ad. Those are great tools to have. Anyone can do them. The coolest thing in my mind about working with Platform are the video ideas like, So God Made a Small Business Owner, or the July 4th video, or the Thanksgiving video. The ones that really impact people are those ones that, if another agent went out and copied, they'd look like a complete idiot.

Tim Chermak:
What was the Thanksgiving video that you referenced there, Justin?

Justin Liller:
So this past Thanksgiving, we took I think it was five things that I'm thankful for, and basically we just took local small businesses... I think one was donuts at Deep Creek Donuts, omelets at the Second Street Diner, five things that we're thankful for... And one of them was kind of silly. I think I said fresh cut fields and wide open throttles in the video, and I had my daughter in the side by side with me, and we took off and spun a big donut in the field that borders my house, which was a lot of fun. But that video, we talked about five things that we were thankful for, and then at the end of the video, we just kind of said this year's been tough on everyone, and small business owners have done their part in keeping their business open, so now it's our turn to go out and support them, let's give thanks for their impact in the community. And that video in a town of 28,000, I think that video had 37,000 views.

Tim Chermak:
That's incredible. So basically every person in the county has seen it. Especially once you factor in that a lot of the county's obviously children, so you could say that actually every adult in Garrett County saw that video multiple times.

Justin Liller:
Yeah. I would say that's fair.

Tim Chermak:
I mean, when you just think about what I just said there for a second, Justin is putting out videos that every adult in his county, statistically, they saw that video multiple times, every adult in the entire county. You can kind of see how he doesn't necessarily need to track, well, what buyer or what listing did I pick up from filming that specific video. Over time, if you're regularly putting out interesting videos like that that highlight the community, and it's not just template crap that you copy and paste from some social media company that does your posts for you, it's actual videos and content that you create that you're putting out into your community, if you're putting out videos like that on even a semi-regular basis, and every adult in your county is seeing it multiple times, it's going to impact your business.

Tim Chermak:
You are going to get more referrals and more business from your sphere over time. It's a certainty. And that's why Justin has grown from selling 5 million a year to over 20 million a year, is he's just constantly in front of people in his community. They're constantly seeing his videos on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook. I mean, they probably see you... I bet the average person in your community almost sees you every single day online.

Justin Liller:
Yeah, you're probably right.

Tim Chermak:
And we can say this with a certainty... And this is a great segue to the last thing I wanted to talk about here, Justin. We can say with certainty that the branding and that your videos are driving this growth in your business, because you suck at follow up.

Justin Liller:
I do. I'm absolutely horrible at follow up.

Tim Chermak:
With leads, we should say. I'm not saying he's bad at following up with clients, but with the leads coming in. This is something that Justin and I have joked about all the time, is that he's constantly getting messages and stuff from these homes list ads when people give their name and email, and he just often doesn't have time to follow up with everyone, but he does follow up with the people who actually call him and they go out of their way to text him or call him, because his phone number is obviously in the ads. And so Justin has grown from 5 million to 20 million basically by only answering the phone calls of the leads who were warm enough to call him. That's how effective his videos are. So Justin, walk us through that, just the fact that the ads work so well that you're probably actually just scratching the surface of how much business you could be doing with the actual marketing results that are coming in from these campaigns.

Justin Liller:
Yeah, totally. We do joke all the time about the fact that I am horrible about opening up the backend software and responding to the emails. That's gotten a lot better since I brought Joanne on, and-

Tim Chermak:
Yeah, but you've hired an assistant to help you.

Justin Liller:
... I have her responding to the emails, basically getting them to the point... She's responding as me, by the way. Nobody cares. But she gets them to the point where they're ready to schedule an appointment or make a phone call and then hands them off to me. So we've gotten a lot better with that, but yeah, we talk all the time, Tim, you and I about fuzzy ROI. And a lot of agents will get kind of stressed out thinking that the ROI isn't what they were hoping, but if you really sit down and think about it, would you have gotten that phone call to go list a home if you didn't film the video? I mean, I get calls all the time from people I've never met, and they're asking me to look at a house or to sell a house for them, and a lot of times they are not in the lead database that we have through Platform. Their name doesn't appear there, because they've never signed up for anything. They just see the ads.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. They're nowhere in your CRM. You can't track when did this person click an ad or become a lead. At some point, they just got warm enough where they actually took the initiative to just call you.

Justin Liller:
Right. Right. And going from 5 million to 20 million in volume in less than five years, and only spending $1,000 a month on ads, something happened there that didn't happen by accident. It's the fact that I'm constantly in front of my community on Facebook, and people see that, and then they call me and want to work with me. You can't track that, and I don't even try. I've given up caring. I don't care what the numbers look like, what I can directly track back to my Platform lead database. I know that my life is considerably better now, and business is better, it's more fun, and my lifestyle is better and more fun, and so I don't even try to track it. People will ask me all the time whenever I talk to them about Platform, well, what's your ROI on Platform? And my response is usually, just a great life, because I really don't know what the numbers are.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. And obviously I'm a poking fun at you here, and I bring this up not to shame you on the podcast of, oh, Justin hasn't been following up with his leads, it's more actually to point out how insanely effective your videos are, that you will admit that I haven't been the greatest at actually following up with the leads in my CRM as they come in over the years, but it's because I'm constantly putting out videos... I know you've mentioned before every month you're probably filming four to five videos. So this isn't something where Justin films one video a month or maybe two. For every month that he only films four videos a month, the next month he might film seven or eight. Over the year, it averages... I think last year you had over 60 videos that our team tracked that they did the editing for you and launched out.

Tim Chermak:
So I mean, you're actually averaging five a month if you were to average it out on a monthly basis. And so when there's that many videos going out, not that we want to let leads slip through the cracks, but if there's that many videos coming out and it's generating that much inbound phone calls where it's like, hey, come over and list my house, they're just ready to go, because all those videos and you're marketing has warmed them up to the point that they're not going to interview other agents. You're not going to play that game where you go over for a listing appointment and they tell you, well, I'm also interviewing two other agents. A lot of the phone calls you get are just, hey, I've been following your videos, I know we haven't spoken before, but I'd like you to come over and list my house. You don't necessarily have to be a ninja at follow up and have a team of ISAs and have all this structure to your follow up when your video and your branding are working that well.

Justin Liller:
Yeah. You know the other thing that you don't have to play games with when your video and branding works really well? Is commission. I can't tell you the last time I had a seller try to beat me down on commission. The videos and the marketing that you do just tells them that you're worth it. And they know that you're worth it because they see you all the time.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. Because it worked on them. I mean, that's one of my favorite things to actually say when someone calls us, and let's say I do a sales call of a realtor who's interested in hiring Platform, and they ask, well, what does the ROI look like, or does this work in a more sophisticated market. That's a very common question we get, because everyone thinks their market is different. Like, oh, it'll work for all these other markets, but... They think it's not going to work in mine, because my market's more sophisticated. And I just asked a simple question, well, what got you on the phone? Obviously you were interested enough, you saw our marketing, you scheduled the sales call, and now we're talking.

Tim Chermak:
So I think it might be fair to say that our marketing strategy will work in your market, because you're now on the phone with me. And that's the same thing for you in your listing appointments. They know the marketing is going to work, and they're happy to pay your commission and not haggle you down on commission, because they wouldn't be sitting there across from you at the table unless they knew your marketing had worked. Your marketing is what got them to that point.

Justin Liller:
Yeah, absolutely. Following the Platform strategy and marketing the way that we do can completely transform any business. I was very skeptical when I first talked to you five years ago, and today I would tell any agent in any market in the United States that if they wanted to improve their business, they needed to talk to Platform Marketing and develop a localized brand.

Tim Chermak:
Justin, you said it's made your life a lot better. I know that you get to hang out with your family a lot more. I would love to wrap this up by just asking you a very materialistic question. Because I think you and I have this in common that we're not necessarily afraid to talk about money and business and talking about sometimes the things that we're able to buy with profit because we work hard in our businesses, we're not embarrassed or ashamed about that. Because that's actually one of my favorite things about Platform, is seeing clients like you and all the clients we have across the country, when we get messages that, hey, we were able to buy a brand new car this year, I've never had the money to buy a brand new car in my life, or we were able to finally take this dream vacation and take our kids to Disney, even though it costs $10,000 or whatever, and we never thought we would have the money to do that, or we were able to pay for our kid to go to college, or all sorts of stories like this.

Tim Chermak:
And that's what gets me fired up about Platform, is knowing that we're changing the lives of agents that we work with, where it's not like we added $20,000 to their income, but when you start talking about doubling or tripling agents GCIs who join our marketing program, that's often life-changing money. It means you can provide a completely different standard of living for your family than you could before. So for you in your specific situation, Justin, what has that looked like about the life you're able to provide to your wife and kids compared to maybe five years ago?

Justin Liller:
Oh man, where do I start? So let's see. We go on multiple vacations every year. Half the time-

Tim Chermak:
By the way, I will see you in Naples in just a few days, because I know that you're coming down to the Platform Mastermind, right?

Justin Liller:
I am. I leave tomorrow actually. I cannot wait to get down to some sunshine. It's been cold here and snowy. I love snow. I bought four snowmobiles this year because I needed one, my wife needed one, both my kids needed one. But yeah, I love the snow, but God, I can't wait to get down to the sunshine. But yeah, we take multiple vacations. Last year in February, right before the coronavirus shut down, my wife and I flew to Thailand and we stayed in Koh Samui, Thailand for two weeks. We flew the entire way in a Q suite in Qatar Airways, which-

Tim Chermak:
Wow. That's not cheap. That's not cheap.

Justin Liller:
... I don't if you're familiar, but they're pretty sweet. Been able to buy really, really nice cars. My wife drives a Mercedes-Benz, and I drive a brand new diesel Chevy truck. Side-by-sides, all the toys, boats. We've been able to buy all of that stuff in the last couple of years. Never would've been able to do that previously. First of all, I spent way too much time working to even enjoy it, but second of all, I'd have never even considered going into debt to buy any of that stuff. I won't buy anything that I can't pay cash for, other than a house. We have a mortgage payment, and everything else we earn outright. So the change in my lifestyle has just been... I like to think anyway that I'm the same person I've always been, but we certainly get to have a lot more fun with a lot nicer toys now than what we did years ago.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think the icing on the cake for you has been more time with your family too. I know that you've mentioned you've been spending hours snowing with the kids, and in the summer, you can take them out on the lake, because this branding you've created with Platform has positioned you in such a way that people understand that if you say, hey, I'm not working on Friday, or I'm not working on Saturday morning, because I'm taking my kids out golfing, or we're going to the lake or whatever, people say, oh okay, and they're willing to wait for when you are available because it would never cross their mind to work with another realtor in Deep Creek Lake whose name is not Justin Liller. So that branding has also given you more time to where you're not worried about, if you tell a client, hey sorry, I'm busy Sunday or I'm busy whenever, that you think you're going to lose the client.

Justin Liller:
Yeah, absolutely. This past Saturday, we were out snowing literally the whole day. I mean, I think we pulled out at 11:00, and I got home at 8:30 at night, and I had a ton of missed calls, probably seven of them were for work, and all seven of those calls I sent a text message back to that evening and said, Hey, I apologize, we were out snowmobiling all day, can I call you in the morning? And to a T, every one of those seven was like, well yeah, no problem, just get back to us at your convenience. The branding that we've created that just kind of portrays the outdoor lifestyle and getting out with family has created a dynamic with buyers and sellers to where they don't expect to get me on the call. They're just trying to figure out a time when we can sit down and talk, because they know that my lifestyle is the lake lifestyle that I sell them.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. And if you're listening to this right now... I'll end by saying this. If you're listening to this podcast episode right now, and you are thinking, well, I would never be able to do that, that wouldn't work for me, if I just didn't work with clients on Saturdays, I would probably lose those clients because they'd want to work with some other realtor, you're probably right. You're probably right that it wouldn't work for you, because you haven't built the brand that Justin has built. And so the takeaway from that is that there's a cause and an effect.

Tim Chermak:
This is the effect of the fact that Justin has invested in building this brand over these years so that he can now enjoy the dividends of that respect and that positioning that brand has created for him. So you have to get to that point by investing in your marketing and constantly filming videos and becoming the go-to guy in your market so that you can enjoy not just making more money, but having more time, because who really cares about how much money you make if you don't have time to actually enjoy it with your friends and family?

Justin Liller:
Yeah. And I would add to that, Tim, that was a Saturday, and in my market, Saturdays and Sundays are when people want to look, because they're here for the weekend on vacation. They're going home tomorrow. On Sunday, they're going home to get ready for their work week. So the branding that we've created has allowed me to go out on a Saturday and miss calls and have people that are willing to wait and come back the following weekend to work with me, because they're not going to call someone else.

Tim Chermak:
That's amazing. Well, Justin, thank you for joining us on the Platform Marketing Show. I think this episode will be really, really inspiring for people who want to take their branding and take their business to the next level. Your story is amazing. I think the specific examples you shared will be really helpful and really practical to people that are looking for those takeaways of, okay, not just getting inspired, but what can I actually do, what are some video ideas I can actually take action on? And I think you are a model realtor using this Platform Marketing Platform. Your success is an inspiration to everyone who looks at what you've created. So thank you for being such a model for real estate agents around the country. And I'm sure if you guys have any questions for Justin, I mean, just Google him like any other realtor. You'll find his cell phone. You'll find his email address.

Tim Chermak:
He wants to be found. Duh, he's a realtor. And so you'll be able to look Justin up. And I know that Justin has always been super cool on talking on the phone to anyone who's interested in the Platform Marketing Platform. So look him up. I'm sure you can find his information online. Go on Facebook and search Justin Liller or Railey Realty. That's the name of his brokerage. And you'll find his page on Facebook in Deep Creek Lake, Maryland. All right, man. Thanks Justin. And I'm sure we'll chat soon, because it sounds like you're coming to Naples in a couple days, and we'll get to hang out at the Platform Mastermind.

Justin Liller:
Anytime, Tim. Thanks for having me. Look forward to seeing you here in a couple of days.

Tim Chermak:
All right. Thanks everyone.