The Business Model That Sells $20M Of Homes Every Year (Without Buyers Agents)

Shane Saunders:
If we're spending $2,000 a month on Facebook ads and individually, my production is not somewhere in the neighborhood of like 18 to 20 million, then there's probably a problem there. So that depending on transactions that usually puts us somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 to 80 transactions a year.

Tim Chermak:
And I heard your phone buzzing. So it sounds like you have leads coming in, so the marketing's working.

Shane Saunders:
Yeah. I don't know how to turn that off.

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 Platform. I love marketing and I talk too much. So let's dive in.

Tim Chermak:
All right. Hey guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Platform Marketing Show. Today we have Shane Saunders with us. Shane is in the Platform Marketing hall of fame. Shane is a real estate agent in the Phoenix, Arizona area. Shane, welcome to the show.

Shane Saunders:
Thank you, Tim. Thanks for having me on.

Tim Chermak:
So Shane, I'm going to cut right to the chase here. Let's get into some specifics of your marketing because you are an agent that a lot of people in the Platform look up to. Everyone talks about your video campaigns and your business growth and the way that you follow up with leads and the way that you've structured your business with creative use of ISAs and showing assistance and all that. So we'll have a lot to talk about today, and I think today's going to be a very practical episode for those looking for next steps to how to grow their business. So let's just dive right into this. And I want to ask you a couple questions about where things are at right now. So Shane, how much do you spend every month on your Facebook ads budget? What's the actual dollar amount that you're typically putting into advertising?

Shane Saunders:
So we're anywhere from two to 3000 a month right now in ads spend.

Tim Chermak:
Cool. So you're spending considerably more than a lot of agents are?

Shane Saunders:
Yeah, it sounds like it, like we hear a lot of people locally. They'll talk about spending 500 bucks a month on ads spend and they do that once in a while. Every year we spend a minimum of two grand month in ads spend and we have for, I don't know, going on over five years now.

Tim Chermak:
And what is a rolling average of maybe your first and second best year in terms of like, how many transactions you've done or the volume you've done? From that investment in your marketing, do you expect to sell 40 homes a year, 50 homes a year, 80 homes a year? I mean, what does that look like for you? Like where's your business at?

Shane Saunders:
So if we're spending that much and individually, my production is not somewhere in the neighborhood of like 18 to 20 million, then there's probably a problem there. So that depending on transactions that usually puts us somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 to 80 transactions a year.

Tim Chermak:
And I heard your phone buzzing. So it sounds like you have leads coming in, so the marketing's working.

Shane Saunders:
Yeah. I don't know how to turn that off, if I mute that somehow I mute you, so that's my tech abilities. Let's keep it on marketing, not tech.

Tim Chermak:
That's awesome. So right away, and I hear that your Facebook advertising budget is minimum $2,000 a month. What that signals to me is that you look at your career as a realtor, as a business. You're not just thinking about it as like a job that you do or a hobby, you're thinking about this, like a businessman. I know we've had a lot of conversations in the past about how so many agents just kind of show up every month and wing it. I'll make calls if I feel like it, I'll do lead follow up if I feel like it. You have a very different, I think, philosophy about both your business and your life. Like why do you approach it more like a business?

Shane Saunders:
It wasn't always that way. So when I started real estate, the only thing I knew was hard work. So I just had that mentality of I'll just outwork everyone that's smarter than me. And that took me so far but during that time, was pretty easy to identify that I had two jobs as a real estate agent, and only two jobs. Everything else outside of these two jobs, there was someone that was way more qualified and would probably do it for way less than what I was doing it for. So once I identified that my number one job is to get leads, and my second job is to convert leads. And then outside of that, if I'm investing any of my time doing anything other than those two things, I need to figure out how I can no longer invest time elsewhere.

Shane Saunders:
So once I made that mindset shift, it changed a lot for me. Then you see it as a business now, and every time I'm not doing those two things, I'm trying to figure out who can I hire? Who can I pay? How can I stop doing anything other than those two items? So I just evolved from there. Sorry.

Tim Chermak:
So are things like showing a house, for example.

Shane Saunders:
Yeah. So when I started doing this, the first thing that was glaring was transaction coordinating, so I unloaded that fast. The second thing that I identified that I didn't think was really necessary for me to do was show houses. And this took a little while. So this wasn't something I figured out overnight, had a lot of resistance from even mentors and other people in the industry that the showing assistant model had been tried. It had never worked. So what we decided to do was change it a little bit and just pay hourly.

Shane Saunders:
So now we have someone who is not commission based in the field. They're not selling your client and they get an hourly whatever that looks like for the time that they're spent showing. So it allows me to still retain my client, allows me to scale my business, allows me to focus on what I'm good at, which again, getting leads, converting leads, and then still have those retained for my sphere of influence long term as well. So instead of getting leads, converting leads and sending those to a team, I'm still keeping it in house, but leveraging my time.

Tim Chermak:
And what has been approximately the hourly wage that you pay a showing assistant, just generally?

Shane Saunders:
Yeah, so right now we're at $40 an hour when they're showing.

Tim Chermak:
So if someone goes out and spends 20 hours a week showing homes, you have an $800 investment in 20 hours a week showing homes?

Shane Saunders:
Yeah. And so we actually track this. We did this model pretty aggressively for over a year to create some data and kind of just see, is this something that we want to scale? It broke down to about an average of what I would pay per property. I closed on a buyer's side to have someone else show all of those houses. It was about a $700 investment per transaction.

Tim Chermak:
Okay. So per transaction about a $700 investment. So in other words, they're putting in probably 15 to 20 hours per closed transaction?

Shane Saunders:
On average. And part of that is the way we pay them, is they're on the clock showing from whenever they leave to head to that showing until when they get back to wherever they're going. So hours can rack up pretty quick. Part of that $700 cost is I also attach about a $250 cost to that for transaction coordinating, so if we were to pay like a third party transaction coordinating company to just do that, that's probably about what we would pay per file. So when I try to look at cost where money is leaving that I could have done that work, that's how I view it. Does it make sense to pay someone else to TC the file? Does it make sense to pay someone else to open the doors?

Shane Saunders:
Then I look at average commission and is running right around about 6,700, I think, probably bumping up a little more. And then my average expense to get that is less than $700. And then again, it's retained for my sphere of influence, not a buyer's agent.

Tim Chermak:
So essentially what's going on here as I dissect your business model from a marketing perspective, is that if the average commission let's just say is $7,000 for you in your market, in the Phoenix, Arizona area, in the suburbs and all that, $7,000, you're paying about $700 out to the showing assistant to actually do the work of driving around opening doors for people and that's... I mean, that actually is pretty even math that ends up being a 90/10 split, right? With you paying out 10%, essentially, even though I know it's not paid as a percentage, you're paying it hourly. But if you look at the average, it ends up being a 90/10 split, where you're still keeping 90% of the gross commission, when so many people are obsessed with building teams now, and often the teams are a 50/50 split or a 60/40, or 70/30.

Tim Chermak:
And it makes it very difficult to justify investing in all that marketing and converting those leads when so much is being paid out to a buyer's agent. Because if you think of it from the buyer's agent perspective, they're not going to be super excited to grow with you and stay with you. If the best that they'll ever do is making 50, 60, or 70%. And so fundamentally, I think there's a lot of things broken with the stereotypical building a team model that a lot of agents use.

Tim Chermak:
I've always been fascinated by your system, Shane, because you've built the system that scales and it's a 90/10 split where people are happy to do it because everyone's getting paid well. And you're especially getting paid well, because you're keeping 90% when a lot of people building a team and attempting to scale are getting a fraction of that. So the math it just makes sense.

Shane Saunders:
It does. I mean, I think the other thing that people will maybe overlook and a reason why a lot of people don't take this on is you're paying those... You have that expense before you ever have a closing. So it's like you said, it's the difference of, are you a real estate agent? Are you a business owner? You're a business owner, you're going to have payroll before you get paid. That's how most businesses operate. Your employees get paid first, the owner eats last. So that's this inside of real estate, which I've learned is not the mentality that most realtors have. They only want to pay people once they've been paid.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. They want to eliminate all risk where someone like you think of it is like, well, if I have to get an operating line of credit for five, $10,000 just to float myself until closing, that's fine, because that's a tiny price to pay for having the scale of a 90/10 split at scale. Right?

Shane Saunders:
Yeah. So the other thing too, that I think people overlook the 90/10 is one thing. The biggest thing for me, wasn't even about how it calculated so much on that initial transaction, it's I spent the time to cultivate, work the lead, convert the lead. I don't want their referrals going somewhere else. So I've been able until now have continued to do my business, but now instead of we reaching a point where I'm too busy bringing on a buyer's agent to take on half of that deal and then have this weird battle of, well, who gets the referral? How do I maintain the relationship for the future? Because that's why I've never been an admin of traditional team model-

Tim Chermak:
Right. Because if that buyer's agent-

Shane Saunders:
It's never really make a ton of sense to me. We've tried it at various levels. It's an interesting model. I don't have a ton of answers on the traditional team model. We've got to a certain point where it seemed effective, but the reality is the way I always get to is it becomes hard to justify the team leaders' use of time. So if you actually look at what the team's producing for no future business of you, so that's the other thing. I don't care what team structure I've seen. You hear people say all the time that, now, when my team member leaves, I take their sphere of influence. I don't believe that to be true because I've seen it not too true.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. That's not how it works.

Shane Saunders:
Think about it this way. When you have a traditional team structure, you have a team member, that's your only way to extract value from them as the owner is that transactional basis, seems a little flaw. That's not a mutually reciprocal relationship. So always thought there was a different way and we're still experimenting with it. But I can tell you the most effective way I've found to continue to scale a business long term, is this showing assistant model admin and our payroll gets pretty high. So when I say we're doing 60, 80 transactions, that showing assistant made a lot of money that year, my admin staff did pretty well that year, but it allowed me continue to grow, cultivate leads. Yup.

Tim Chermak:
Well, I mean that gives you the time freedom, because in the old model, which is building a team and often having a 60/40 split or 50/50, if they get really good as an agent, which you hope they do, the whole point is that they become a better buyer's agent. Eventually they'll leave. And as you said, they're going to take that sphere with them. You can have anything in writing that you want, but at the end of the day, it boils down to you. Those clients are more loyal to that buyer's agent, that's actually spent FaceTime with them in the car, driving around. It doesn't matter what's on paper, they'll be loyal to that person. If they leave to go to another team or another brokerage, they're not loyal to you, they're loyal to whoever they're emotionally loyal to in a piece of paper or a contract is not going to change that, because you're obviously not going to sue them over it. It's not worth, actually challenging.

Shane Saunders:
Go ahead. Sorry Tim, I was talking over you.

Tim Chermak:
I said it's not worth challenging that you can have all the contracts in the world, but if all those buyer clients are loyal to your buyer's agent and then they leave, they will take all of that sphere of influence with them. And that's what I think is magical about your model, Shane, is that you're kind of capturing the best of both worlds. You're hiring someone out to do the kind of dull, boring, mundane, lower value work of just driving around opening doors. But they're still loyal to you as the realtor because you make it clear to them that you're going to negotiate the offer. You are the strategic advisor. This person is just here essentially to open the door and let you in to see homes.

Tim Chermak:
So my question Shane is, this frees up a lot of time for you, obviously, because you're not spending 40 hours a week driving buyers around like so many other agents do. So I certainly see the benefit of it creating a better lifestyle for you and your family. But how do you ensure that the clients are loyal to you and not this showing assistant, who's driving them around.

Shane Saunders:
So pretty glad you asked. Because that's a lot of the feedback I get when people inside real estate industry know kind of how we run our... That's always the first question is how do you know that they're not going to take the client? All the things that they come up with the scarcity mindset.

Shane Saunders:
Here's my thought on this. If you pre-frame it well, and the buyer knows going in how this is going to lay out and what the expectation of the transaction looks like, this is a nonissue. I have never lost a buyer because we used a buyer's agent or a buyer's assistant, whatever I should call it, to show them houses. Not one time have I lost someone. So a lot of this is just converting mindset from the beginning on how real estate is done. Here's something I tell realtors a lot.

Shane Saunders:
I'm a huge fan of Ray Kroc and McDonald's, and this is relevant to both what I've built and the traditional team structure. So you don't go into McDonald's and assume that Ray Kroc is serving you the hamburger. And you're not upset that he's not there serving you the hamburger. You've come to buy a certain level of quality and an experience regardless of the individual. So we have built that. We control everything very, very well so that what the client has is the experience. They don't have Shane, but they have the same level of experience and customer service that Shane brings. And that's what they're actually buying into.

Shane Saunders:
Now, the other thing about that, if you take that same McDonald's concept and you transfer it to the traditional team model that we just talked about, this would be like owning McDonald's and you are too busy, so then you send them down on the street to burger king, but you ask burger king to pay you a referral fee. Over time, what happens to McDonald's business? A lot could happen. Burger king may prove to have better quality. So now you have intentionally given your customers over to a different company. I view this the same way as a buyer's agent. They might be on my team today. They might be on my team 10 years from now, but I'm still sending business down the street. There's no other way to look at it. If I generate the business and I voluntarily give it to someone else, I'm giving business away. Doesn't really matter how much they're giving me back. It is business that has left me. I took the time to generate. So that's always how I see it. How can I keep all that business here and not have it go anywhere?

Shane Saunders:
So yes, it can come up that if you're passing off somewhat traditionally be fundamental core aspects of what a realtor does based on the public eye. The public opinion of a realtor is they show houses. They think that's what we do. So if you continue to let your clients see that's where the value is, is you showing houses, then you're going to be the one always showing them houses.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. How I've heard you say it before is, as you frame it up, let's say that you get a buyer lead, you don't just say, hey, I'm your realtor. And let's say that you're showing assistance name as Bill. This is bill, he'll show you houses. There's much more psychological framing going on where you say, hey guys, I am your realtor. I am your representative. I will negotiate the offers. I will advise you on the strategy of everything at a high level.

Tim Chermak:
This is Bill though. Bill will actually drive you and open the doors if you want to go see a house. The reason I employ Bill is because I have a pretty busy schedule and I don't want you to ever miss out on not being able to see a house when you want to see it, just because I'm with a client or I'm at a closing or a listing appointment, or I'm doing something else and I'm unavailable to meet you to see a house. There's only one of me. So that's why I hired Bill so that if you ever want to go see a house, Bill will always have an open schedule, even when I don't, but I am your realtor. If you frame it that way, it actually looks like a value add that you're giving to the buyer that-

Shane Saunders:
There's one more piece to framing it this way, that becomes even a greater value add. You said it. You said employee. I take time to really explain to the client what employee means to me as a business owner, because this is not normal in real estate. I tell them, hey, we've identified that in the real estate transaction, the most annoying thing is having a real estate agent who is a salesperson showing you a house, telling you how much you're going to love the kitchen and the backyard and the reality is they've known you for 45 minutes. They have no idea what you're going to love.

Shane Saunders:
So it's been easily known that when you do look at all the consumer ratings and polls, the most annoying thing is a real estate agent following a husband and wife around. They can't have a conversation without the realtor present telling them how cool everything is, how much they're going to love stuff. So when we have that buyer consult and we frame it that way, we tell them, hey, now you're going to have a non-commissioned based sales person who's not even in sales. They hold a real estate license, we pay them. They are an employee that we take that cost on so that you can get access immediately, and, so you don't have someone hovering over you telling me what you're going to dislike or like. It allows you to make a decision, to have a conversation without earshot of someone who has something to gain by selling you that help. People love this. And if they still are struggling with it, I will actually use the Ray Kroc example, and everybody gets it. I can't stress that enough.

Shane Saunders:
I've had so much resistance. I've heard every which way of why this won't work. You'll lose your clients. Your clients want to work with you, you need to be the one showing the houses, that's where you build the rapport. That's where you get to know the client on and on and on, and we've never lost one.

Tim Chermak:
Yup. I think the proof is in the numbers, Shane, that you said you would consider it a failure if in any given year, based on what you're investing in marketing, if you were not closing 18 to 20 million, that you would consider it a failure. Like that's how well this is working for you. And I want everyone listening to this podcast to realize that when Shane says the goal is that they close 18 to 20 million, that this is in a market where a lot of homes are 250,000, 300,000. He's not just-

Shane Saunders:
I mean our average sales price just bumped over 300, so.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. So Shane's not just selling $20 million homes a year, there's a pretty large amount of volume that's necessary to make the math work there. So very clearly this system is working for Shane. And this is actually a perfect transition that leads me into my next question about your brand and sense of community that you're building, Shane, with client appreciation events, because that's, I think the real secret sauce behind your marketing plan, that if you're going to hire showing assistance and you're going to expect that your, let's say buyer leads are loyal to you. Again, they're not loyal to the showing assistant employee, they're loyal to you and the Integrity Realty brand. You have to invest in that, you can't just assume. You can't just cross your fingers and assume that you'll get referrals and assume that they're going to be loyal to you. You actually have to take real steps and invest real money into cultivating that brand loyalty.

Tim Chermak:
So I know that you certainly spend a lot more than the average agent on gifts and client appreciation events. I mean like for you, a client appreciation event is not a once a year thing. It's kind of like an ongoing schedule that you commit to. So tell me about your efforts, what you invest in building that brand and that sense of community.

Shane Saunders:
Absolutely. So, Tim kind of hit on it. When we started running this model, immediately it bought back my time. So then I was left with, I wouldn't call it free time, but now I wasn't showing as much. So I now had some time to look at how can I utilize this time. What I learned, I needed to invest that time back into the sphere of influence to make sure that when we are running this model, it is so well known and so ingrained in all the marketing, all the pre-framing that's been done, that it's the experience, it's not shame. So a lot of that comes through like, Tim's saying we do three to four client events a year, big ones. And when I say these are client events, this isn't just like renting a movie theater. That's something we do as well.

Shane Saunders:
However, when I say big client events, these run anywhere from five to 10K a pop, this is pretty much like a wedding, except nobody's got married at one of them yet. Open bar, I mean, we go all out, we treat our clients. They're gifted something quarterly, a little trinket, some sort of gift that's left at their doorstep. I would say the easiest way to think about this is we stock our clients. We have probably given their wife an anniversary gift before the husband has, that is how we operate because it allows us to continue to scale this model. And ultimately, it goes back to leveraging my time now.

Shane Saunders:
When you're investing this much into the experience and the brand and the relationship, they just now know that they're buying into a system and a process that turns out consistent results. It turns out the same quality of French fry. It turns out the same big Mac every single time. So it doesn't matter, regardless of who the player is, who made it, who put them on their contract, they know that they got the same result. So this takes a lot of effort. I mean, we invest a lot into our clients and it's not even so much about putting a dollar amount on it. If you want to build a business inside of real estate and you don't want to always have to chase cold leads, this is how you do it. These are the people that build your career. They are the ones that will call you. The cheapest lead is a referral.

Tim Chermak:
Absolutely. So you put some sort of dollar amount on it, Shane, and I want to emphasize that because I don't want people just to skim over that, or maybe it sounded like a lot and you're listening to this and you're thinking, what? Shane spends $30,000 a year on client events. I'm just going to pretend I didn't hear that because it's almost intimidating to hear that. But as you said, you probably spend $30,000 a year on events because you do four of them a year minimum, and each one you're probably spending seven, $8,000 per event. But that's what it costs to constantly be generating referrals and brand loyalty so that if you're also spending money constantly on lead generation, it's not going in the front door and out the back door. Right?

Shane Saunders:
Absolutely.

Tim Chermak:
You're getting referrals from all those leads.

Shane Saunders:
Yeah. I mean, and there's even been years when we've tried to break it down, like what did we spend per client on our SOI in that year? It averages over $200 per person that year for the lifetime of that client. And I love every dollar of it. That is money I never question. When we're looking at expenses on client events, on client gifting strategies, all of that stuff, it rarely comes down to looking at the numbers. It's just, does this bring value to the client? Does it continue to build our relationship? Does it get me to know them better? Does it bond us? Does it build the tribe? If it does those things, it's really hard to attach a dollar amount to it, because what is the lifetime value of a client? I have no idea. I know it is a lot, especially when it's done this way. The lifetime value of a client keeps going up and up and guess what's really beautiful in this model. The cost of acquisition for a client keeps going down.

Tim Chermak:
Yup. So as we discuss this, I always like to assign a specific dollar amount to something that normally would be qualitative. Because people think about your sphere and getting referrals as kind of like, well, that's the icing on the cake and hopefully I get a lot of referrals, but I can't really quantify it, so I'm not really going to pursue that as a strategy. Because if you can't measure it, you can't manage it and blah, blah, blah.

Tim Chermak:
So let's actually assign some specific numbers to this. You spend about $30,000 a year on client events. What are actually some specific examples of the type of events that you've done, Shane? What are your number one or number two favorite events you've done that seem to be the best received. And what did you specifically spend on those events? What did the line item expenses look like of where that money went?

Shane Saunders:
Absolutely. So the number one thing that comes to mind, it's one of our best turnout events and it's a lot of fun. So we do a Cornhole Tournament. And the other thing that we do when we create these events, we create branding around the event that is independent of Integrity Realty Group, coozies, shots. And I'll explain that in a little bit. And there's a reason why we do that. Again, it's just to build the tribe and build the community. They already know that I'm the realtor. You don't need to continue to bash it over their head. So we have what's called Bags and Beer, has its own logo. We market it as bags and beer. It's not bags and beer hosted by Integrity Realty Group. It's just bags and beer. We put a corn hole and we have an open bar.

Shane Saunders:
We ran out of venue. We've done it. The last one we did was in South Phoenix and like a real retro trendy, like outdoor grungy spot, graffiti everywhere. And we did outdoor at night. We had dancing, live music, open bar, taco cart. So yes, about line item expenses. That's usually what it looks like. You have venue, you have food, you have alcohol. If it's a kid event, so we do a ton of kid events where we do Santa. We do Easter Bunny. We do Halloween thing, these are done at a park. So you run out the park, you have that expense, you get the beer permit for the park. You have to supply alcohol, food, a bounce house, a face painter. We have to run the gamut, a petting zoo. If it's fun and you think you would show up to it and take time away from your busy schedule to go hang out, then it's something that we try to put on. If they feel obligated to go because I'm their real estate agent, they're never going to show up.

Shane Saunders:
You have to build an environment where they actually want to be there, where they are shelving other stuff on their schedule to go hang out with you. Once you get to that point, you've really built the tribe. So what I say that we started to learn after doing all these client events again, Santa Claus at the park, come get a picture of a Santa, Easter Bunny, hide eggs with the Easter Bunny. We would pay someone to show up as the Easter Bunny. We would pay a Santa to show up as Santa. We are going all out to really wow these people and build this tribe that now evolved from, we started learning that we would just post videos of when we go eat or stuff, do market update videos, just being known in the local community, showcasing our friends that own restaurants.

Shane Saunders:
Just getting out there, exposing yourself, showing what you're doing on a day to day basis. Well, what happened over time is the tribes started to be built. People were now saying, well, dude, I'm down the street. Why didn't you invite me to lunch? So this is the type of stuff that started to happen is people were getting offended inside of our network because they would see me, Aaron or maybe a client, who's a good friend doing something. And it got to this weird point where like, they felt like they were left out. They had FOMO. They had like fear of missing out. It was crazy.

Shane Saunders:
So then we started doing bruise and booze. So this concept is we load up on a Friday night in a party bus, any client that wants to show up and we go visit like three local bars, and we do a quick little... Like, hey, we're at this local spot. This is a cool spot. So we're showcasing a little bit in the community. And the last one we did, we had 15 clients on a party bus. This is just like what we get to do on a Friday night now.

Tim Chermak:
Well, that's the kind of thing that they will actually talk about the next day and tell their friends.

Shane Saunders:
Yes. Not only do they talk about it, they post about it while they're at the event. Not because you've asked them to, because they're actually genuinely having a good time. And then what involves a natural conversation. Like, hey, it looks like you're having a blast last night. Who are you out with? Oh, that was all with my buddy Shane. Well, I don't know Shane, we've been friends. Who's Shane? So now it comes up organically, truly organically that this dude's my realtor. And their first thought is, I don't want to buy a house from that guy and his team. I just want to get into their SOI so I can get invited to the client events, all of the gift and fun for free.

Tim Chermak:
Yup.

Shane Saunders:
We have people that show up now to these events that I've never sold houses to. And I know what it costs every time a head walks through the door at one of these events. I know my heart would cost. I mean, sometimes it's $15 ahead. Sometimes it's more, because these are massive costs that we take and I'm totally okay with it. I love when they bring their friends and family. I love it. I welcome them. I tell our clients, don't come alone. Bring someone.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. Word has spread that you guys know how to have a good time. And that's when you hit that level of client event excellence where it's just a good time and there's no awkward real estate speech about, by the way, if anyone here knows anyone, please refer, please fill out the form in the back. It's just a good time.

Shane Saunders:
No, we don't do a sign in sheet. We don't do a presentation. I don't do a talk. There is nothing. We are there to hang out just like we were friends. I don't even wear a shirt. There's no logo, there's no branding at these events. You got to strip all that away and just genuinely invest in people. And if you just show them you care, they already know who you are. You don't need to keep putting it out there. It takes away from the event. So that's been huge for us, man. It's something I really genuinely enjoyed doing. And then when you actually try to quantify what that does for your business, it's incredible.

Tim Chermak:
You said there that you know the cost per head coming into a lot of these events, is 15, $20 a piece. Right?

Shane Saunders:
Okay.

Tim Chermak:
Let's just say it's 20. Let's be on the conservative side and say it's a little bit more expensive. It's $20. That is absolutely as a marketer. That is absolutely fascinating to me, because lots of agents might be spending a thousand dollars a month on a paper click ads, let's say, right?

Shane Saunders:
Yeah.

Tim Chermak:
Or buying leads from realtor.com or Zillow. And if they spend a thousand dollars a month on ads, they would be thrilled, Shane, to get like three appointments in person with potential clients. So like, they'd be in... In other words, they'd be happy to pay $333 per in person appointment, spending a thousand dollars a month and getting three potential appointments from those leads.

Tim Chermak:
And yet, you're doing a social event that people are actually having a good time. They're actually going to post photos on Instagram and Facebook and Snapchat and whatnot. Not because you're asking them to, because they technically have to post a photo to be entered to win some stupid giveaway. They're actually doing it because they're having a good time. Right?

Shane Saunders:
Yeah.

Tim Chermak:
And you have that number down to 20 bucks, which is basically 5% of the normal cost that a realtor might be willing to pay. So in other words, you're doing it 95% more efficiently than what most agents do paying hundreds of dollars per appointment. So if you're looking at what does the numbers of this look like. If you actually track this stuff like Shane does, you can actually quantify the numbers in building a brand and a community and having this referral culture with your clients. It's not just something you cross your fingers and hope it has a positive ROI. You absolutely can track this and the results it creates.

Tim Chermak:
The other cool thing that I just thought of again, from a marketing perspective, Shane, as you're talking about these events. You're basically giving yourself four additional opportunities every year to create more interesting creative marketing campaigns for your retargeting list that most agents don't have. They don't have those four opportunities to create photos and promo videos, and after the event, you upload a photo album. And then what everyone does, is they click through all those photos because they're trying to see if there's any photos of them. Most agents don't have that opportunity to run ads like this and stay top of mind with their database and their sphere, because they're not doing events like this.

Shane Saunders:
Yeah. So when we do these client events, it's not even about who shows up. I mean, obviously that's amazing if they actually show up, but you have to think about how many... Like, how much now you're given the opportunity to get in front and market to your database and you're not marketing them about a new listing. You're not marketing to them about interest rates. The weeks prior to these events, you can call people. It's okay to call someone and invite them to an event and you don't have to engage them in a real estate conversation. These are just easiest touch points ever to build a relationship.

Tim Chermak:
If you have call reluctance, if you're the type of agent who doesn't like making follow up calls, it is way easier to psych yourself up to make calls, inviting someone to go hang out over beers and play some Cornhole than it is to psych yourself up to try to set an appointment for like a listing appointment.

Shane Saunders:
Totally.

Tim Chermak:
Right?

Shane Saunders:
Yes. So the other thing, Tim, that you kind of mentioned, because I'll be honest. There's times when I look at what the ticket is going to look like on cost to do a client event, and then immediately, my brain goes to, well, what if we took that eight grand and put it into Facebook apps? I know what my cost per lead is. I know with what, how effective you and I market Tim together that will generate a lot of quality leads for 8,000 bucks. So that's something that I do think about. It's like, well, is this the best use of the money spent? The answer to that is, I don't know. Here's what I do know. I want to build a career to where I have people calling me that already know me. So I want to make sure that I'm spending as much, if not more of my marketing efforts, time, energy, and dollars on my SOI than I ever am on converting and getting cold leads.

Tim Chermak:
Right.

Shane Saunders:
This is where I see a lot of agents make this mistake. They hear these numbers that we just talked about. Obviously, these numbers weren't this big when I started, when my SOI was smaller. There's always a way to pull this off. You can get partners to help. You can seek out lending partners, beer vendors, a lot of people will help do this. We got to the point where it took longer to mooch and try to get free stuff than it wasn't worth the time investment. Point of all this is like, what do you want to build? This ties back to what you said at the very beginning, is how you go about building this as a career. If you're always chasing cold leads, that means you never know where your next deal is coming from. That's a real concern I have. That's not a career. I want at some point, all of my traffic and every deal that I do will have come from 100% of SOI.

Shane Saunders:
Because it could be the biggest cost you spend in the most effort you ever spend inside of the real estate game, getting a lead, converting lead, is getting them to know and trust you. These people already do that. They already know what I do. They obviously, they already trust me, if they're there's point. I would much rather have their friend who is my client now telling their friend and doing all the sales and conversion of why they can trust me and why I'm the expert before they ever come to me. So we will continue to scale this. I didn't always see it this way. You've helped me a lot even over the years, we do as much video marketing to SOI, to pass clients, however you want to define this, if not more, than we do to cold traffic. And a lot of this has been from your advice. It gets really hard for me at times to even understand why we're running video ads that don't have an opt in.

Shane Saunders:
It's like, wait a second, 10, they didn't have my phone number on there. It doesn't have a link for them to click. This is just a waste of money. Now you're just making me popular. And there's some element to that, but it all has a strategy, works at a high level. Thinking again, guys, the biggest thing is just, where do you want your lead source to come from? And do you want to build a career or do you always want to be chasing those cold lead sources? Quick story on that a few years ago to help me get to this place of being so willing to invest so much money into client relationships and building that database and mentor challenged me a few years ago to stop spending money on cold leads. So I shut off all lead gen and I took that money for a period of time and invest it all into our database, and everything changed.

Shane Saunders:
So then when I look at bringing on a marketing company or how I'm going to continue to market and where my funds are going to go, if I'm looking at a marketing company, thankfully I haven't had to for over five years. But if I am, and there's a lot of conversation on how many leads they're going to give me and how often, and no conversation around how to get the fourth and fifth, sixth deal from that lead, it's not a marketing company for me. So I think this is where a lot of agents really go wrong. They get so focused on getting that new lead, getting that name and number, email, someone that didn't know who they were yesterday. And they leave a lot of these people behind.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. At the end of the day, you're either building some equity in your business or you're constantly renting other people's attention. It's just like buying a house. You're either paying rent to someone or you're building equity in your own house. And if you're paying to generate leads and those leads aren't staying in your database and then referring more people to you, it's kind of just a churn and burn operation where they're going in the front door out the back and you can be a real estate agent and you can preach all you want about, buy your house and build equity for yourself. But if you're not doing that in your own business, it's kind of hypocritical.

Tim Chermak:
So Shane, I know that your business is obviously very successful. Now, you've built this brand, you've built this community. You get referrals all the time. Your clients rave about you because maybe you never even showed them a house. I'm sure there's been times that someone closed on a house and they never even met you in person. And you negotiated their offer. And then they saw you for the first time at an actual Integrity client event. So clearly what you're doing is working. If you're selling 18 to 20 million plus in annual sales volume, clearly what you're doing is working. But I know that your real estate career wasn't always sunshine and rainbows. So walk me through how you became a real estate agent, because I know there's a crazy story here that involves short sales and foreclosures and shotguns and some real heartbreak. So how did you get into real estate?

Shane Saunders:
Long story, I'll try to make it as short as I can here. I got into real estate. I was basically working in construction. We were doing basically furnishing and building schools. So we were buying a first house together with my wife. We weren't married yet at the time. She brought a realtor to help us purchased our first home and the wheels fell off. So we were young kids, didn't make much money. Showed up to the closing table, found out about an HOA that we didn't know. It was 140 bucks a month. Our payment was about $600 higher than what we were told originally.

Tim Chermak:
Wait, what?

Shane Saunders:
So we still closed on the house fast forward a few months from that point, we get a letter in the mail about a balloon payment. Again, I have no knowledge. I'm not in real estate. We assume that our realtor was just looking out for some young kids trying to buy their first house and start a life. So my naivety led me there and get a balloon payment letter in the mail. Basically it says that we owe $43,000 in the next 90 days, or we go into foreclosure. So my wife and I are at a point now in our lives then where we don't have 43 grand and there is no way in hell should robbing a bank that we're going to come up with it in 90 days. So I was already pretty upset from the way the purchase went down on how it was handled, the position that I felt we were put in, there was some experience and if someone that cared we should have never been in.

Tim Chermak:
So you got to closing table. Let me just be clear here. You got to the closing table and what the agent had told you, what the monthly expenses would be were actually off by over $700 a month?

Shane Saunders:
Yeah. So this is being back in early to like 10 era, when everyone could get a loan, it didn't matter how ugly that loan would look in the end. You were always going to close. So that's what they did. They tacked on a bloom payment. They bumped rate a ton, all the dirty stuff. All the ugly stuff that they used to do in lending, they did it all. Waved the appraisal because it wouldn't have appraised at the time. So it was an interesting time. Through that I learned, but I remember when we signed at the closing table at that time, it was line 701 around the hood. Closing document used to be called the hood for all the newbies. So I was working in construction. This was in the summer, probably about 120 that day and frustrated. I just told you the story. We don't really have a choice at this point. We're going to lose our earnest money if we choose to cancel it's every dollar that we've had, so it's like-

Tim Chermak:
And when you say it was 120 that day... I also just want to clarify. Shane lives in Arizona. So I'm assuming he's talking about the temperature in Fahrenheit.

Shane Saunders:
Yeah. So it was 120 degrees. We were working inside of a building with no AC all day, probably lost 15 pounds. I was not in a good place anyway. And then we found all that out. So I remember thinking in that moment, I looked at line 702 and I saw what my realtor got paid, and I enrolled in real estate school right after that. My mindset was, I don't know anything about real estate. Here's what I do know. I work way too hard for too little money, and if that's what you get paid to do this shitty of a job, I'm going to go do that.

Tim Chermak:
And I'm going to do it better than you.

Shane Saunders:
So this was before the bloom payment even came. So I was already in real estate school. This is kind of funny, but at this time you got to keep where the market is. Nobody was paying to go get a real estate license. Realtors were pretty much public enemy number one, there was a tossup between them and lenders. So this was an interesting time. Went to school. The teacher used to call me every day to see if I was going to show up for class that night, because I was the only one in the entire real estate class. So he didn't want to show that I wasn't going to be. That's how these times were. So I get licensed then I'm left with back to this question, what's my number one job? Get leads. Well, I don't know anything about real estate. I don't know anything about how to get leads. I don't have any money.

Tim Chermak:
So this is basically before YouTube, before Google ads were really a thing, before Facebook ads.

Shane Saunders:
I mean, maybe even if they were a thing, the reality was it wouldn't have mattered because I wouldn't have had the money to do anything. I mean I was flat broke. I could barely afford to get licensed. So I'm still working my full-time job, which is 50, 60 hours a week in construction. And then I learned that there's other people like me. So now I'm licensed. I'm going through foreclosure and or short sale because I can't make this balloon payment. So as I'm going through this process of short selling my own damn house, the heartache, everything Eric and I are going through the fights that now ensue from financial issues, losing our first damn house. This is an ugly time. Well, I learned that there's other people like me. And then I learned that there's a free source of leads to identify people like me in the State of Arizona. Trustee sale notice is posted 90 days out.

Shane Saunders:
So I had the bright idea that I would pull trustee sale list and I would look at everyone that still had at least 60 days before the bank was taking their house and evicted them. And then I thought, I'm going to go knock on their door because tax records don't have phone numbers sometimes, but they don't ever work. So then I thought I would just go knock on their door and ask them if I could help them short sell their house. I actually thought this was a good idea. There's probably a lot of agents here in this thing. And wait a second, you thought it'd be a good idea to go knock on the door on a distressed property. And those people are losing their home because they hate realtors and lenders. And then you're going to be a realtor that's going to tell them you're going to fix the problem that you created.

Shane Saunders:
I was like, yeah. It sounds like a good idea. That's what I'm going to do. So I did that. I'd work my construction job, I'd change in and do my fancy suit. Well, I thought was a fancy suit at the time and I would pull that subdivision that I was working in that day or that zip code. I'd pull that trustee sale list in the morning. I'd get off work. I'd change. I'd go knock doors. So you can imagine, you get met with everything from crying so much for trying to help, to like [inaudible 00:48:13] called some new. That's something I never heard before. Then-

Tim Chermak:
Hey Shane. I think I just lost your audio for the last five, 10 seconds there. You said what would happen when you would show up unannounced at the doorstep?

Shane Saunders:
Yeah, so I would show up and I would knock on the door, tell them who I was and why I was there and how I knew what they were doing. So basically, I'm showing up telling them that I'm a realtor. They probably already hate realtors. So terrible opener. Hi, I'm a real estate agent. I know you're in risk of losing your house. I can help you with that. Worst opener ever, because they're losing their house because a realtor put them there and now I'm the realtor telling them I can fix the problem that we created, but I didn't know what else to do. And I didn't really have any mentor. I had no one helping me. I didn't have anyone, really it was a terrible idea. I just identified it as elite source and it worked. It was exhausting. I learned a lot very fast and I learned a lot on how to care about people to actually see it closing through and why this matters.

Shane Saunders:
So I thought I got into it for money, like I told you that story. I saw how much you got paid on the hood. And I went and got a real estate license. Working through the short sales, it was neat. I got to help people. I started to build my listing pipeline. People are starting to wonder like, how's this dude got all these listings. He just got licensed and they're all short sales. Then I knocked on a door and surprised. It was a Thursday night. I'll never forget construction guy. He looks like me, same type of truck. I'm like, this is my people. This one's going to go well, I can help this guy. He probably hates realtors. I'm not a typical realtor. I've rolled my sleeves up. You know what I mean?

Shane Saunders:
I had most houses. I show up in suit and tie. This one I ended the tie and rolled my sleeves up. I wanted this guy to see my tattoos. I'm like, I can relate to this guy. He's super nice. Tim, he opens the door and tell him who I am. I get through my 32nd intro, which is about 27 seconds too long for anyone in sales. And then he says, hold on. And he leaves the door cracked a little bit I can't see, he walks back and I heard it. And it took me a second to realize what I heard. And then as soon as it registered, I ran, I jumped in my truck, got the hell out of there, just in time to see in the rear view mirror. What I heard was confirmed that dude ratcheted at a pump shotgun. I don't know that guy was going to shoot me or not. Maybe it was to intimidate me, but it didn't matter, because in that moment I realized there has got to be a better way to generate leads. So that's how I started doing this.

Shane Saunders:
That was my perspective on what's required and how hard you should have to work to get a lead, never mind to even the point where you get to talk to them and try to convert them. I was willing to knock on doors for people that were losing their homes and the most stressful point in their lives, arguably, and tell them that I was the one that could help fix it when I was the guy in their mind that put them there. So you learn a lot fast.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. I'm sure that experiences like that probably have shaped your business philosophy to this day on why you invest so much money on the backend keeping a lead and keeping them happy to ensure future referrals because of how much energy and money you invested to get a lead in the first place. You know the real value of a lead. And you're certainly not just going to leave them alone and chase the next shiny lead when you worked that hard to get a lead in the first place. Because I think a lot of agents, especially today, if they don't have those formative experiences of door knocking, people about to lose their homes in the short sale foreclosure process, if that's not the emotional energy that they associate with acquiring a lead, it makes perfect sense that they don't really spend a lot on client depreciation events and quarterly gifts and building an actual relationship with their sphere, because they take it for granted.

Shane Saunders:
Absolutely. I think at this moment in time, there's 43,000 licensed real estate agents in Maricopa County. I'll say that again, there's 43,000. That means at any moment in time, no matter where you are at Maricopa County, you can throw a rock and it will land on a realtor. So I take the mindset of every time that I get a client, I'm lucky they chose me. They chose me out of one in 43,000 and then when treat them as such. I treat them and I frame it in my mind, in my team's mind when we service them that we should just be grateful that we get the opportunity to serve, because there's full 2,999 agents that didn't get the opportunity.

Tim Chermak:
And again, the proof is in the numbers because maybe you're listening to this and you're like, hey, that sounds great. He invests a lot in client depreciation. He invests a lot in his brand and gifts and all that, but that's just really expensive. Well, not really. Because if you're making 18, 20 plus a year in sales volume, obviously what you are doing is working.

Shane Saunders:
Sure. And on that, it's expensive. So client gifting, client events are always very, very expensive with time. The dollar amount is irrelevant, because if it's working, I will continue to scale it. So where this gets really hard is in the beginning actually, it's not really hard when you start to get some money and you have a big enough database and you want to start doing cool events. It's in the beginning where the only thing you have to build the relationship is your time. You can't wow them with a gift, but you can always give someone your time. And I guarantee they will always appreciate that more than any gift.

Tim Chermak:
Now, Shane, as you've scaled this, you've kind of done the opposite of what most agents do, because most agents early in their career when they have more time, but they don't have money, it's easier to justify taking trips or taking time off work. And it seems like as you become more successful, you start making more money. What you don't have is time. And then there's a lot of agents that might be making a lot of money because they're selling a lot of houses, but they're totally absent fathers or they're bad husbands, and they're not spending time with their family. They don't have anything remotely resembling a work life balance. And that's not really how you live your life.

Tim Chermak:
I know that you often are taking probably several months, a year of vacation, spending time with your buddies, spending time with Erica and the kids going hunting in Mexico. I know that you guys have a cabin in Northern Arizona that you spend a lot of time at, your daughter is racing around the country. I'm not even sure what the term is for the type of racing she does. What is it?

Shane Saunders:
So she does short course off-road racing.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. I mean, you guys are literally traveling around the country, attending these racing and tournaments and that's not just something that happens in Phoenix. You're driving all across the country. So you have this incredible life of making pretty good money, let's be honest, as an agent and yet you actually have a life. How have you been able to set up a business that sells $20 million a year of homes, but still allows you to take off, 4, 6, 8 weeks a year to be with your family?

Shane Saunders:
So it was very difficult to get here. And let me just start by saying none of that would be possible without an amazing team. And when I say a team, it's probably not the way people think of a team inside of real estate. These are employees, these are people that get paid. This is staff, it's not commission based team. The reason I say that why that's so important, is when I'm not working guess who is.

Tim Chermak:
It's not just contractors.

Shane Saunders:
They want a paycheck, they have to still work. So that's been a huge part of it. The other thing is just really how you control your schedule. So this is where I think it's like the older Instagram versus reality. Yeah, we do all these things, but what nobody sees is, it just changes the hours that I work and when I work and how I work. Wasn't always that way. I mean, there's a period of time for probably three solid years that I didn't see my daughter, because she went to bed before I was home and I left the house before she got up. So I think that's the biggest thing like we talked about is you have to decide what you want. I wanted to make a lot of money in real estate. The only way I knew how then was to work a lot.

Shane Saunders:
Well, that got me so far and then I realized this isn't who I want to be. I'm not a good dad. I'm not a good husband doing okay in real estate. So it forced me to shift some stuff and see it as a business. Your payroll's going to go up a little bit, but that's for every business. So yeah, like Tim said, we have, what I would say is a pretty great lifestyle. It provides an amazing life for me and my family. You just have to read very diligent and very, very consistent and committed on how you allocate your time. That's the biggest thing.

Shane Saunders:
Yeah. When we're racing, we might be in Missouri racing, but I'm still up at 4:30 before we go to the racetrack getting done what has to be done to keep business moving forward. So it's kind of a long answer there, but yeah, I mean it. Real estate, if done well and I would say I'm just learning even in the last few years, someone kind of showing me how to build a business from day one, then once you get to that point, you can still make money and you don't always have to be there.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. I mean, what this all comes down to kind of the summary thesis statement of what ties all this up together for you is that you really think like a businessman, not a real estate agent. You're really a business owner who just happens to own a real estate business. You don't really think of yourself as a realtor, like my job is showing houses and going on listing appointments and coordinating home inspections and photography and all those things. You really think of yourself as a businessman who just happens to own a real estate business. And then because of that, you spend your money very differently than most agents do you, you spend your time very differently than most agents do.

Tim Chermak:
You structure your business very differently than most agents do. Because you see yourself as the Ray Kroc owning a McDonald's empire doesn't mean Ray's in the back flipping burgers or serving customers at the cash register. But he makes the whole system work. Shane, just give me a couple examples of trips you've taken with either you, your family or Aaron Alvarez, the lender, I know that you do a lot of work with. What are some fun trips or experiences you've had in just the last year or two?

Shane Saunders:
I think the biggest one that really stands out, Tim, is for two years in a row, Aaron and I went down to Mexico. We lease a large ranch down there to hunt on, and not the fact that we were able to get the opportunity. That was an opportunity we didn't have 10 years ago because for a lot of reasons, we didn't have connections. We didn't have the financial capacity to do something like that. But it wasn't even that, it was the fact that I was down there for 10 days with a satphone only, you couldn't contact me. There was one person in the world that could reach me and that was my wife. And we didn't have a disruption in business for 10 solid days. That to me was like the first time like men, what I've actually built here is working and it's working at a high level.

Shane Saunders:
I was completely off the grade for 10 days. We put deals in escrow, the machine kept going. So that's the one that stands out, like the trip. Yeah, that's great. We can all buy some memories and buy experiences, but that just really hit home. And it was just validation for me. This is working, it's heading in the right direction. I don't know too many real estate agents that can be off grade for 10 days. One without having a freaking panic attack and two not have a disruption in business. Like I've always joked, you want to see a realtor squirm, grab their cell phone.

Tim Chermak:
Yup, absolutely. So you've built a business that exists independent of you?

Shane Saunders:
Yeah. I mean, it's right there. I won't say that if I stopped working tomorrow that there wouldn't be a reduction in income, but we are absolutely headed in the right direction. Just the way we've now learned to market, really just trying to take myself out of the equation and really just make sure that we're marketing towards and experience a value, and just what we bring to the table as a brand, not as an individual.

Tim Chermak:
Shane, the last thing that I want to talk about real quick here is, you're in the Platform marketing hall of fame. And what that means is that of all the real estate agents across the country that have ever joined the Platform Marketing program, you are in the top, top, top of that pyramid of agents who have had success with the system and acted as kind of a model for everyone else. So share with us real quick. What has your relationship been working with Platform marketing? How long have you worked with Platform Marketing and how do you see...? What is the role of Platform in your business and how has it helped you achieve your goals? How does Platform fit into your whole story?

Shane Saunders:
So I'll try to make this quick for you, Tim. So I came to Platform in December of 15, Tim and I think were on each other's radar on some level we've kind of done some marketing events, probably together, past cross paths in the past. So it's not that, I wouldn't say we knew of each other, maybe. I was at a point in my career where I was doing a ton of flips and investment stuff. I was getting burned out on it. I kept always thinking in the back of my mind, I'm only as good as the market. I knew I was good, but as soon as the market shifts, these guys will pack up and they go to the next market. I've seen it. So I saw that coming. It's probably about a year out and I realized I need to build more of a traditional real estate business, where I control my destiny. I control my leads. So I reach out to Tim.

Shane Saunders:
I was going to a lot of the same marketing conferences that looked like he was going to, just to learn how to market, how to run, funnels, how to run ads heavily invested in. And at that time to do his lead pages, I don't even know if lead pages is still around, but every type of software, Kajabi lead pages that turned into click funnels, had some success doing it, but it was so much time to build, launch the ads, create the sales copy and then the worst part was, I was always launching blind, meaning I had no case study. I had no proof. I was spending my money to test. So I knew this wasn't going to work very long. Had a quick conversation with Tim, learned a little bit about what he had gone with a few realtors across the country. There wasn't many at the time.

Shane Saunders:
I said, okay, cool. Let's launch this, man. I need some feedback. I need to kind of know how to make this shift now to a traditional real estate agent and get out there. And it just kind of rolled from there, man. I would say in the beginning it was back to the same. I don't know anything other than work, as you know, you saw it. I was working a lot. It probably wasn't all that effective at times, but you learn fast, man. It was just trial by fire. And then having a platform, that was the biggest thing for me, the value add in the beginning, Tim was just... I had some confidence knowing that if I'm throwing my dollars at an ad, probably going to get me some leads, just because of your experience, you have other agents and other markets that are testing stuff.

Shane Saunders:
So it's been huge, man. I mean, whether it was Platform or some other system, I was seeking something and then this just clicked for me. I think just because of the biggest emphasis on relationship building... I hate using the term, building a brand, because I think the way you and I view is what building a brand means is a little different than what most people would say.

Tim Chermak:
Sure.

Shane Saunders:
I don't think either of you guys spent much time working on a logo from Fiverr, that's not the brand we're talking about. So it took some time and just a ton of effort and then just being very conscious and strategic with the type of content you're putting out there. It requires help, man. I can't create all these ideas on my own. So having you guys come in and help. I mean, as we were getting on this call today, I think both of us realize that we're rolling into year six.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. That's actually crazy.

Shane Saunders:
I put that in perspective guys. For anyone listening this as an agent, show me any kind of a marketing MSA, whatever you want to call it, agreement inside real estate that has lasted that long. And I'll just say it to make it upset here. Platform's not cheap. The monthly service, this ain't buying some Zillow leads at a small chunk. This is not a cheap service. I will say that I've never regretted what I've spent in a given month for the service, but you got to utilize it. If you're not out there grinding and working the leads, it's going to be really hard to justify the investment.

Shane Saunders:
So again, I mean long story, but it's been huge for us. I was at a point where I was going to have to figure out a way to generate my own leads and I had no real knowledge of how to do that effectively, and it was collect, man. We came together at a good point and haven't had to look back. I do investment deals and I work for hedge funds when I choose to, not because I have to, to pay my bills.

Tim Chermak:
Shane, where was your business at, in terms of annual sales volume before Platform? If now we know it's like 18 to 20 million a year or more. What was that number before you joined the Platform program?

Shane Saunders:
Well, so this comes up a little bit and you got to explain a little bit, so before Platform production was still pretty good. I would say probably 13 to 17 million, was about what I was averaging in the two to three years prior. However, what I think is really relevant, you couldn't say that there was a gap between the 13 million to the 20 million. And you could say that came from traditional business, which then you could say was a result of learning how to market and working with Platform. That's not actually what happened. I went cold Turkey. I literally called everyone of my investor clients. I was working with one of the largest hedge funds in the state for acquisitions. I always could write an offer at any given moment with the opportunity to get a paycheck. And I shut it all off overnight. We stopped writing offers.

Shane Saunders:
I had a full-time employee that wrote 50 to 60 offers a week. That's all she did, write offers. So you have to think when that stopped, my income stopped. I mean, literally at that time, had I not figured out a different way to generate business. If when I stopped all the investment stuff, I'd be lucky to scrape out million and a half, 2 million in sales volume in a given year. So I don't know how you want to quantify that. So the way I kind of look at this is the day I turned off the investor pipeline and decide I wasn't going to be that guy anymore. I was broke.

Tim Chermak:
You were essentially starting from scratch.

Shane Saunders:
Starting over. Yeah. My wife was freaked out. She could not believe that I was burned out and I was saying I'm done completely. And it didn't matter. Like within 90 days it was a non-issue, the pipeline that was coming in and it had now been rebuilt. And then we haven't looked back. Don't really do investment deals, so.

Tim Chermak:
So you basically have, I mean, just re-rebirthed yourself, started from scratch and then joined the Platform program, worked your ass off and now you're 18, 20 million a year probably taken, 4, 6, 8 weeks off a year. So you're making money and you still have a life, which I think is the important thing.

Shane Saunders:
Yeah. I mean, and I look back at this a lot, Tim, because I'm like, man, I was looking at conversion. I was looking at BoomTown. I was looking at a lot of the other services, somewhere a little more, somewhere a lot less. I think what it really just came back to is I really felt like with what I was trying to build and the direction I was trying to go, I needed a lot more than just leads coming in the door. I needed some overarching strategy on how to actually build a business here. I just didn't need Zillow pumping me leads. I need to figure out how to market to actually build relationships and do lead conversion through marketing instead of always on the phone and through email, and this is pretty unique, man. I mean, it worked well. So definitely not like a Platform infomercial.

Shane Saunders:
I don't think you guys are having much time recruiting markets anyway. I already know how many you're open, but I mean, there was a huge investment at the time, man. I'll be honest, when we committed to working together, I told you then, I said, I can commit to paying for this for six months. If it don't generate some business I'm out. And it was a loan. I took out a loan to pay Tim and pay for ads, just with the gamble that this would work. I gave myself six months, gave Platform six months to prove itself and here we are.

Tim Chermak:
That's awesome. Shane, the last question I'll ask you is, if someone's listening to this podcast right now and maybe this is like the first time they've ever even heard of Platform, because a friend told them about it or whatever.

Shane Saunders:
Sure.

Tim Chermak:
What would you tell them? What is Platform? What do we actually do for you? What are the specifics of what it means when you say, I'm a Platform client? What does that actually mean?

Shane Saunders:
Well, let me put it this way to a lot of realtors because I think they'll get where this is going. Inside the real estate industry, a lot of lenders and title companies will have business development reps or business development managers. So this is the person that goes out and tries to take realtors to lunch and ball games to get their business. I would say Platform is my business development manager. This is a partnership. It's not a paid marketing company that I just pay to market and then they give me leads in return for what I pay them. There's services out there, everywhere that do that. So it's a little hard to quantify, but I think that's really how I would view this. It's more of a business development manager relationship. You guys know with no contract that I'm not going to keep paying you every month if I'm not getting results.

Shane Saunders:
So it forces you to be tied into my business a little more than just this overarching. We're going to launch a whole list ad, here you go. Good luck. Here's how you close leads, have fun with that. I think all the agents inside a Platform would probably say that, that's really what the sweet spot is. There's fancier CRMs. There's other ways to get leads coming in. There's something else going on here that it's really hard to quantify to be honest, we call it the Plafam for outsiders. That's the group that we call ourselves of agents that are inside Platform along the country, been in part of a ton of masterminds for a long period of time. This is business, Tim and I have butt heads, Tim and I will butt heads again, and we're still here doing this. Every one of these people that we were around, genuinely care.

Shane Saunders:
And it sounds like fruity and woo woo, but it matters. It's a weird environment, Tim. It's hard to really quantify to someone that hasn't been to a mastermind that doesn't just see how many people are actually cheerleading. You have it, no one shares a market, so everyone can just cheerlead for each other. It's finishing, man. It's been very, very different. I never thought that it would last this long. Like you see lead gen services, they come and go. They serve their purpose. So this is definitely not that.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. It's not a pay per click company. It's not a lead gen company. Platform isn't a coaching program or just a mastermind either. It's kind of none of the above and all of the above. Yeah. At the same time. And you mentioned something real quick that I want to touch on too. You said everyone's in their own market. Why does that make Platform unique?

Shane Saunders:
Oh, man. For the biggest reason for me, and I wouldn't say I have to worry about competition, because I think there's a lot of other lead generation services that they really use that as a value add like, oh, you'll be the only person in this zip code. The reality is for most markets, at least my market, I could have four other Platform agents in Maricopa County and I would probably still dominate them. So there's some sauce there. I'm not going to say Platform doesn't help. But when you only have one agent per market, now the beauty in this is one. I don't have to worry about competing against another agent. There's no scarcity mindset. So now when we roll into these masterminds and these group of people that are in the same paid service, we can share best practices and everybody wants to execute on those best practices because it allows all of us to learn and grow.

Shane Saunders:
When you're sharing Zillow zip codes in a market, it's a little tough. Even with people that have the most abundant mindset, the reality is you still feel like you're in competition a little bit. So I think that's huge. And I will say, Tim too, you're one of the few marketing services that I've seen that when they say one agent per market, it's not one agent gets these type of leads in this one city. It's one agent per market. We have Maricopa County, it's one of the biggest markets in the country and Tim has always helped to that.

Shane Saunders:
So I think that to me where I'm at currently, this probably changes for a new agent that just got into Platform. But that's the continued value add as the years go by. In the beginning it was helping me get leads. It was helping me even convert some of those leads, you guys provided some knowledge there. Now it's no longer that, it's how do we continue on a business level? And I still get that out of Platform. So it seems like the conversation continues to shift, but we continue to grow, so.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. And I mean, we've had several kind of business conversations and calls and even helped you build the handyman business on the side of that. I mean, now is that doing about a million dollars a year in volume?

Shane Saunders:
Looks like this year we will. So I guess, yeah. Let's talk about that for a minute.

Tim Chermak:
That's probably a whole another podcast-

Shane Saunders:
But it's relevant to marketing. So what we learned there, short end of it is what I learned through what we had built through Platform and how fast we had built the way we market. I took that to a different industry and we got results inside of that industry even faster, same methodology. So like you had said earlier, yeah. I try not to label myself as a real estate agent, because I think that puts you in a very, very small box. So I'm very intentional. I don't tell people I'm a realtor. I just refuse to say that. If you ask me what I do, you will never hear me say I'm a realtor. Because that's not what I do. So I think just little keys like that, you see things differently. And you talked about the Platform family.

Shane Saunders:
The result of conversations inside of masterminds and working the system, allowed me to see an avenue to disrupt an industry and then go into that industry and take market share fast. And we did that. So it ties back to your question of like, why are you still here basically in Platform after all this time. You said it a little more eloquently, but that's what we're really asking. Why are you still here?

Tim Chermak:
Yeah.

Shane Saunders:
I mean, it's hard to quantify, but that's why. Those are ideas. Those are skill sets that I don't know come up if we don't have all of this. Like you said, it's not the coach. It's not coaching, it's not how to do videos, it's not when to do videos. It's not how to follow up, but it's all of it. So it's not any one thing. It's all of it combined. Then you jump in with the mastermind of different agents across the country. The other thing that I think is huge in this, Tim, and a lot of agents maybe not realize is, correct me if I'm wrong. But most of the Platform team, they are not licensed realtors nor have they ever been. This always appealed to me.

Tim Chermak:
Correct.

Shane Saunders:
As we just said, I don't want to be known as a real estate agent. So I don't want to pay a realtor to tell me how to market, because I've only seen a few that I would ever trade places with. So that's been one of the beautiful things I've really seen about this too, is you guys see this from a different angle than most realtors see it from. And that works. Cuts through a lot of noise. It allows us to be a little more unique in a marketplace to run ads different than what a lot of people might see. It works.

Tim Chermak:
Cool, man. Well, I'll have to have you on again for another podcast episode because I'm sure there's a lot of people listening to this when I kind of teased it with saying, oh yeah. And by the way, he started a side business that now makes a million dollars a year in gross sales that they're probably like, wait, what? So we'll have to have you on for another podcast episode to discuss that. But Shane, thanks so much for coming on. And by the way, I'm going to officially ask you right now. Do you want to speak at the Platform mastermind later this year?

Shane Saunders:
I would love to. Yeah. If you can give me an hour stage time, man, I got a presentation, a little keynote that I used to deliver, well, that I have delivered over years. I would love to, man. It's a good time for me. And I think the room would get some value out of it.

Tim Chermak:
All right. Awesome. So for those listening to this, if you're in the Platform Marketing program right now, it sounds like we just booked Shane to speak at our mastermind event later this year. So Shane, thanks so much. Let's connect again for another-

Shane Saunders:
Hold on. I got to say something real quick now.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah.

Shane Saunders:
This would be the first time, Tim. And the only time that you have given me a heads up to speak in a mastermind.

Tim Chermak:
Fair enough.

Shane Saunders:
I'm going to actually be prepared this time.

Tim Chermak:
Shane always finds his way on stage, but it's usually me telling him like a minute before, hey, I want you to go up and talk about this, and-

Shane Saunders:
Tim, I just want to say thank you to you, man. I appreciate you having me on and never mind on a Platform level, but it's just, I think it's worth repeating, man. It's odd in this industry regardless of how the relationship evolved, what the relationship is for anybody inside of the real estate industry to work together for this amount of time. It says a lot, man. And again, I know I'm not the easiest person. We've butt heads and dude it's always been what you thought was best for my business, and I appreciate that, man. You've built an incredible team and the agents you guys have around, you're very selective on who you let into the fold and the shows.

Tim Chermak:
All right, man. Thank you for coming on the show. I hope this is valuable to everyone listening and Shane, next time I'm in Phoenix, let's hit up San Tan Flats.

Shane Saunders:
Who's John Goltz.

Tim Chermak:
All right. Thanks man.