How To Sell 100 Homes A Year With Local Community Events

Lana Rodriguez: ‘Cause the community can look in many different shapes and forms. Full transparency, we have tested out some of the community events and that may be a strategy for 2025, ‘cause we’re always looking to add one thing that we're going to do different. But I'm a firm believer to market myself to people who know, like, and trust me and that has been a limiting belief for many, many years. But that’s now I partnered up with you guys, ‘cause I also understand there might be another pool of clients who might be my sole client and I cannot reach them myself. So that's why it's been so effective working with Platform and doing the ads and just helping me to get my name out in the community. 

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. 

Tim Chermak: Hey guys, it's Tim Chermak and welcome back to another episode of the Platform Marketing Show. I'm joined today by Lana Rodriguez coming at you from Colorado Springs, Colorado. Lana, welcome to the show!

Lana Rodriguez: I'm here, Tim. Thank you so much for having me and excited for today. Excited for next week to meet the rest of the Platform fam. Let’s go!

Tim Chermak: That's right. So we're going to be meeting up for the annual Platform Mastermind next week. By the time this episode goes live, it'll probably be this week. But I'm excited to see you in person again. Lana and I just connected and it was probably a month ago now. I was actually in Colorado Springs speaking at your Elevate Conference and before that, I think we first connected in person at the Girls with Grit Conference last year. So yeah, I'm excited to see you again and I'm excited for you to introduce yourself to the rest of the Platform at our Mastermind coming up here.

Tim Chermak: I know you're giving one of the keynote talks on “How to build a referral only business.” So without further ado, I actually just want to let Lana take things from here and kind of introduce yourself, share your story, and how you've built your business to the point now that you're working on referral. You're not buying leads. I mean, like you've hit the point in your career that most agents aspire to where business just keeps coming in from your database and from referrals without you having to spend $10,000 a month on Zillow or whatever. So how did you get to this point? Let's go in reverse 10 years ago or even further back, how did you get to where you are now in your business? 

Lana Rodriguez: All right. Great question and what an intro, Tim. Excited to continue our momentum, you know, third time is a charm. Well, so if you guys cannot hear right now, but you probably will hear eventually, I do have an accent and I worked so hard to speak proper English and communicate effectively. But I'm an immigrant from the country of Latvia and I have been in America for almost 20 years now.

And for some of you wondering, no, accent does not go away. It like dims a little bit, but it's still there. And I had a pretty humbling immigrant journey as most immigrants. I came to America in 2005 and I spoke very little English. So back in Europe, we still study English, but it's like British English. So when you come to America, you actually are insufficient. Like no one can understand you, you cannot understand, and there's a big communication barrier. And for years, I came as a student, and for years I was taking ESL. It's called “English as a Second Language” class, just to get acquainted so I can understand common phrases and words and humor. And man, it was quite a bit of a journey. 

Tim Chermak: So Lana, I actually don't know if I ever told you this but my wife's mother, so my mother-in-law, is also an immigrant. She immigrated here from Panama. She was an ESL teacher for most of her adult life and she actually lives with us now. So my wife's mom lives with us full-time, kind of like a multi-generational household. She still has an accent too, even though she immigrated 40 plus years ago. So yeah. 

Lana Rodriguez: I mean, bless her, bless your family, Tim, and bless all the teachers and ESL teachers ‘cause being an ESL teacher is hard. Not only are you dealing with two different languages, but also two different cultures, that's admitted.

Tim Chermak: Sure.  

Lana Rodriguez: And off topic but my parents, one of my biggest whys when I came to America was actually to bring my parents here from Latvia. I used to joke mother Russia, but we no longer say that for political reasons. So, and in 2016, I was able to do that with the help of my husband, with the help of United States immigration services. My mom came first and then my dad followed. And what I have done since real estate - I'm kind of jumping a little bit over into the real estate topic - I got licensed end of 2014. And fun fact, it was not a dream. Never, ever. I woke up and I'm like, “I'm going to be a realtor today. Let's go.” Me and my husband, we PCS into Colorado Springs area to Fort Carson via military relocation. 

And I wanted to really have a kid before I was 30 and my husband didn't. So we came to the meetings of the minds and for us, for Brian and I, it means like finding an ultimatum. What do we need to do for me to start getting pregnant? And he's like, “Why don't you go back to work?” That's exactly what he told me. It's a true story. You can ask him yourself. And I evaluated what I wanted to do when in my new duty station in Colorado. And I did not want it to go back to retail. 

Tim Chermak: And he was in the army, your husband, right? 

Lana Rodriguez: Yeah. He was 12 years in the army and he got out now. He works with me! He's super blessed to have a wonderful boss like myself. Just kidding. It's equal roles. I'm still the boss though. 

Tim Chermak: You're like, “Uh, just kidding. No, but seriously.”  

Lana Rodriguez: No, but seriously. I don't know if he's listening, but I love you, babe. We were buying our third property back then in 2014 ‘cause in Austin, Texas, I bought my first little townhouse. Then we invested into multifamily and we were buying our single-family home. And Brian said, “Well, why don't you become a realtor?” Because see, I come from many years of clienteling and customer service experience. Even back in my country, I was working since I was 14 legally, illegally, it doesn't matter.

But I was in a customer service field and he had a vision that I could become a real estate agent and we both agreed that I can probably do a little bit better job than our previous realtors. And I'm not downplaying anybody, you know, their work ethic is their work ethic, but it was very basic, very bottom line. Our last realtor didn't even show up to closing. He sent somebody to do a final walkthrough. We never even met him ‘till after the fact.  

Tim Chermak: Yeah, you know, I've actually heard a similar story from a lot of agents where like, “Hey, the reason I got into the business isn't necessarily because my mom or my dad or anyone I knew was a realtor. It's that when I bought a house, I had such a negative experience with my real estate agent. And then I saw how much money they made on the commission check and I compared that to how kind of lazy of a job I thought that they did. And I thought, ‘Oh, I can do this better.’” And that's actually the story I feel like for a lot of agents is you just saw an agent who was bad at it and you're like, hey, well, if they can make a living doing this, and frankly, they're not very good. I could probably do a lot better if you actually put some work ethic into it.

Lana Rodriguez: Well, clearly I feel like having a real estate license, it's a privilege. We cannot take that lightly. But I have so many stories and I don't know how much time do we have, but I really want to share this story. My first realtor, it was my friend's dad and it was back in Austin, Texas and he was kind of handling lots of luxury listing on Lake Austin and things like that. And I was buying a $65,000 cash little townhouse. 

So for him, it was like, whatever, let me just service this young girl. And what he did, he was a decent transaction, whatever. And then I was looking for a contractor to help me rehab the place ‘cause the place was in a pretty shitty condition. And he referred me to this gentleman ‘cause remember us as realtors we refer a lot of trades, trusted trades, and he referred me to this guy who ended up being a homeless guy, squatting into my little townhouse unit, going through $5,000 of my savings and we had to evict this person out of my first house. So this was my first real estate experience. And I was so hurt. I'm like, how did this gentleman…

Tim Chermak: It was the agent who referred that person to you. 

Lana Rodriguez: Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.  But once again, it didn't hit me that I wanted to be a realtor, you know? I was like, well, I kind of was done wrong. And then our realtor in Colorado, he never showed up to closing. And when I was getting my real estate license, I was a little bit scared of the language barrier, but I was on a mission. I was like, “I'm going to get licensed. I'm going to rub it off in my husband's face. And then I'm going to get off the pill and I'm going to start having a baby.” Because I'm one of those females who has a couple of hormonal things going on. And I was actually told by a medical professional that I may never have kids. And I'm like, “Uh, forget you, I will have kids,” and got licensed.

And you know, I interviewed small little boutiques here and here in the Colorado Springs and nothing vibed and see my background in retail, I know how to sell brands. I was working for Michael Kors, Kenneth Cole, BCBG, Max Azria. So then somebody's like, “Well, why don't you go interview RE/MAX?” And RE/MAX back then, almost 10 years ago, was a big brand. And I went into RE/MAX office and Tim, I was so naive.

I thought that they need to choose me. I stayed till one o'clock in the morning, preparing for my RE/MAX interview, studied everything. The dates when they launched and they got me. And I was at RE/MAX for five years.  And they made me an agent who I was. Because when we go and compete for buyers or listings. Typically there's three other or two other professional that will be interviewing. It's just a numbers game. 

And we're having a RE/MAX balloon in the beginning before I had my own brand. It helped because people like, “Hey, how many homes did you sell?” And I say, “Well, I haven't sold any homes in your area, but RE/MAX here!” you know? So it was a good strategic move on my career, especially the first few years when I was running and gunning as a solo agent. 

And the real journey has begun in 2015. It was my first year. Keep in mind for all our audience listening, I, we just moved to Colorado in 2014. So did we have a sphere? We did not. We had a little bit of military friends. So in 2015…

Tim Chermak: And so you're in a brand new city, obviously, still more or less in a brand new country, it goes without saying you don't have the sphere, you don't have past client relationships, you don't have a database in Colorado Springs. Like you are truly building a business from scratch.

Lana Rodriguez: From scratch, scratch. And for some who's thinking, “Well, you’re a military spouse, it's easy for you to get acquainted.” It's not. Because people look at you as a temporary friend and temporary solution, and no one invests real relationships in you. I have learned that the hard way and it was interesting. 

And very early on, I got introduced to Brian Buffini Systems. At our RE/MAX office, we had Brian Buffini poster. I'm like, who's this guy? “Oh, it's some immigrant guy who does calls, notes, and pop-bys, working by referral.” And I heard that he was doing something with the pies. And my mind, just like a lot of… I know you, Tim, you're a _mind, I'm a _mind. I was like, okay, pies, let me see what I can do with proper due diligence.

My husband was deployed in Germany back then. I went to Costco out of my own little savings, because me and Brian had little separate savings, I didn't want to tell him ‘cause he would think I'm absolutely nuts. I bought 85 pumpkin pies, $5.99 Costco, still the best deal. The three and a half pound pies. And I created in Facebook, one of the Facebook yard sale pages, I created event “Free Pumpkin Pie to your Door Before Thanksgiving.” And within hours I got RSVPs and I did it through a Google Drive sheet and I had their names, their emails, their addresses. And for three days, I drove in my little Kia Soul knocking on strangers’ doors, delivering these pies. 

My RE/MAX people, they were making fun of me. My husband thought I was crazy after he found out I'm doing this. But you know, that particular move in 2014 actually gave me five opportunities to buy or sell in the next year. Because once again, friends, we're in a numbers game. And when you come into the new city and you're trying to jumpstart your business, we have to do something uncomfortable. 

I'm not of a doorknocker, okay? I have doorknocked in the past and I freaking hated it, excuse my language. And I'm probably never gonna do this. But when you doorknock to somebody who actually is expecting a little free value from you, it works! And people are like, “Hey, wow! You, who are you? Why are you giving out these pies? Are they safe to eat?” 

Tim Chermak:  laughs] “Are they safe to eat?”

Lana Rodriguez: Well, you know, like strangers coming to you with some treats. Are there poisons? There’s hidden agenda?

Tim Chermak: Now, actually there's a principle here I want to pause and just kind of reflect on because the point you just made is actually pretty profound that, “Hey, I don't like door knocking.” No one likes door knocking, right? But it kind of changes when you know that when they answer the door and you knock that you have good news to share. It's like, “Hey, here's a free pie,” right? Like you're not door knocking with some awkward sales script. If “Are you thinking about buying, selling or investing in real estate?”, right? You're just offering a free gift. So you don't really have to like motivate yourself to go do it because every conversation is going to more or less be a pleasant conversation because you're giving them, the only reason you're there, is to give them a free pie and just kind of build up some social capital, right?

The same thing is true when we tell all of our Platform agents the importance of following up with your leads and calling your leads and calling your database, is that if you're just calling through your past database or calling a list of leads or whatever, and all you're saying is, “Hey, I just wanted to check in. Were you still thinking about buying a home this year?” that's annoying and you probably will have to psych yourself up to make those phone calls ‘cause those aren't pleasant phone calls. They're awkward. No one wants to take that phone call from a realtor if it's just you checking in to see if they're thinking about buying or selling, right?

Tim Chermak: However, if you change your script and you say, “Hey, I'm just calling to invite you to a client appreciation event. We're buying movie tickets for everyone to see such and such new movie,” or “I'm calling to invite you to this,” or “I'm calling to see, would you like me to deliver a Thanksgiving pie to you? I'm ordering a bunch of pies from a local bakery and I can drop them off. Would you like me to bring you a free pie on Thanksgiving or Christmas?” or whatever, right?

Here's the lesson: if you actually think of something creative, so when you're doing these cold reach outs that you're actually sharing good news, like you're offering something for free, then you don't have to motivate yourself or psych yourself up to do it because it's kind of actually fun calling people and giving them good news, right? 

Lana Rodriguez: Yeah, no, a hundred percent. You're so right, Tim. And I don't want to misspell it, but there's this word. It's the Principle of Reciprocity. 

Tim Chermak: Reciprocity. There you go. Yep. From Robert Achildini. He wrote the book “Influence” and that's probably the most cited chapter in the book is the Principle of Reciprocity. Yep. 

Lana Rodriguez: Yeah, because if you keep being a serving leader in your community and your community can be small or big, there will be a time when somebody’s going to notice your kindness and they're going to want to pay you in a very organic way. Not like, “Hey, I did this for you. You owe me this.” That's not how we do business. But pretty much another thing, what has really, really worked with me in the beginning of my career is discovering what I will do for my business and the things that I will not. 

Let me tell you a short story of 2015. It was a year also when I was blessed with my first pregnancy, God is good. And I knew I had nine months. My baby was due in October and you know, my mind is like, okay. I was also a very naive young mom-to-be. I was like, “Baby's gonna come, I'm going to go on maternity leave,” all this. None of that worked out that way. That's a different story. But for next nine to 10 months before I gave birth, I actually worked up to 42 and a half weeks pregnant.

Lana Rodriguez: I was this little tank walking around showing homes. People assumed I was having twins and I just had a big baby. But that particular year, first year in business, I tried everything. And by everything, it meaning I did open houses, I did door knocking, cold calling, everything that old school RE/MAX mentality told me to do. I was like, “Let's go!” Social media and Facebook ads, it was not a big thing back then. Because I'm sure as a professional marketer, social media just started kind of coming back to life 7, 8, 6 years ago. Ten years ago, 11 years ago, it was like, “Hey, let's just do traditional business practices!” 

And I even joined… Do you remember the platform called Meetup? Like Meetup, it's an app and you can go and join all these different meetups, you know, knitting moms, hiking moms-to-be, moms who love dogs. It was a real thing. So I also plugged myself into all these groups and sometimes I'm sitting at these groups, I was like, I'm wasting my time away. But it granted me a permission to connect to somebody powerful, maybe a host of the group, and to develop these relationships further. Because I don't necessarily need to meet every single person in that group or in that room. But as long as the alpha person knows who I am and possibly that I'm a real estate agent who's aspiring to be a great influencer in the city, that opened up a lot of doors for me.

Lana Rodriguez: And the numbers speak for themselves. The first year right before end of the year, I did 32 transactions. 32 transactions, my first year of business. And then I had a birth of my daughter. And of course, there was some complications at birth. We ended up being in NICU for 10 days and I came home with her. I was trying to do the breastfeeding, but also somehow with God's grace, my business was taking off, and I was able to stay at home only for two weeks with her. That's when my mother came. I handed my baby to my mom was like, “Mom, I have to go back to work.” And the following year, 2016, it was a record breaking year, not only for me, but a lot of agents in our MLS because that particular year I did 119 transactions as a solo producer, second year in the business.

Tim Chermak: How many? 

Lana Rodriguez: 119.  

Tim Chermak: So you did over a hundred transactions in your second year as a real estate agent. 

Lana Rodriguez: Second year as a real estate agent. Yes. 

Tim Chermak: And did you have any paid marketing sources? Were you buying leads from anywhere? Was it just strict, like building your network? I mean, I want to say sphere business, ‘cause normally that's what I would say there, but you didn't have a sphere ‘cause you'd only lived there for a year. So how did you get that many contacts just in only having been there for what, 18 months? 

Lana Rodriguez: Yeah, yeah. Well, I'll tell you what. Number one, I was working within my superpowers. And I think one of my superpowers, besides the charm, just kidding, is that I'm a professional connector. Okay? If I can have somebody face to face with me and if I can spend with them about 30 minutes to an hour, I think there's going to be a relationship built.

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