The Real Reason I Moved Back To KW

 Ken Pozak: It seems like forever ago. And I’m sure you’ve thought about this as well, but 2010-2012. It wasn’t as noisy as it is now, at least online. And so for us, like, we put out a video every single week on youtube. And then we put that in our newsletter on top of the written blogs that we do. And so our sphere hears from us, like, 150 times a year. Like, between our client events that we do and our emails, and all the other stuff that we put out, because I feel like you have to break through the noise. And if you do so, with value, I think that it’s welcomed.

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.

Hey guys, it’s Tim Chermak. Welcome back to another episode of The Platform Marketing Show. I’m joined today by Ken Pozak. Ken, welcome to the show.

Ken Pozak: Hi man, thanks for having me. 

Tim Chermak: So let’s dive right into this. I want to talk about why you hate Real and love Keller Williams. No, I’m totally kidding.

Ken Pozak: *laughing*

Tim Chermak: So, we were talking just before we started the show here about how everyone loves good gossip about if you move from this brokerage to that brokerage. Right, what did you not like about brokerage A that you loved about brokerage B. But that’s not really going to be what we talk about today. You know, if you haven’t been hiding under a rock, you probably, you know, have seen that Ken’s team …I think, that last year moved from KW over to Real. Recently moved back from Real to KW. And for a little bit of context on why that’s a big deal, Ken is not a local realtor with 2 people on his team that sells 18 houses a year. Ken, what were your numbers last year?

Ken Pozak: Last year we ended up with $244,000,000 closing/pending. Like, 425 sides. And so we got about 20 … We got 23 agents on the team now, plus operation staff, marketing in-house. Long form, short form, ISA - We’ve got a bit of an operation at this point. 

Tim Chermak: Yeah, so you sold almost a quarter billion dollars of real estate last year. So, not counting the agents, what is the admin staff? Like the ISAs, the marketing people … What does your payroll look like every month? Even if some of them are contractors. What does that look like? How much money is going out the door every month on all your expenses before you even sell a single house?

Ken Pozak: It’s like 45 grand a month. 

Tim Chermak: Okay, so you’re at the part where you are spending over half a million dollars a year just on the foundational support staff. 

Ken Pozak: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You don’t … You add in a lease and you got a lot of other expenses that kind of go into that for the marketing. You know, making sure that we’re out there putting our content marketing in front of  the right people. And yeah, it’s not a cheap op organization. We definitely got a big nut, but we sell an absolute ton of houses. And also, we’re very profitable. So … But yeah, where we’re at does matter, and you know, we had to look at where was gonna be the best place for us.

Tim Chermak: And so did you start your career with Keller Williams back in the day? Or, let’s, back in 5-10 years. I mean we don’t have to take a ton of time on this. I’m sure a lot of people are already familiar with your story. But give me, like, the 2 minute summary of how did Ken Pozak get from selling no houses a year to selling, you know, your team sold a quarter billion dollars in homes last year. 

Ken Pozak: Yeah, so last … So I started off in real estate in 2003. I was like an appraiser, and I was flipping houses in Detroit, Michigan where I grew up. And then the market fell apart. Obviously in ‘08 the recession hit, and all the sudden the State said, “Hey, you have to have a license in order to …” Or like, you have to have a college degree, which I don’t have, in order to be an appraiser. So that, plus mortgages disappeared, so I couldn’t flip houses anymore. And so I got into real estate. I actually started with Coldwell Banker.

Tim Chermak: Okay.

Ken Pozak: I did that for 2 years at Coldwell Banker. I just got to kind of figuring out the whole world of real estate, and in 2010 joined Keller Williams. And that was kind of what really taught me about, you know. It’s funny, nobody at Coldwell Banker even had an assistant at the time. They were, like, doing all of their own paperwork, all their own showings, putting up their own signs, hanging their own lock boxes, just doing everything themselves. 

And I got to a place where I was like, I had literally stacks of closing papers that I needed to process. And I was, like, “I am terrible at this stuff.” And office managers coming in and like, “Hey, I know you got a closing. Where’s that package?” I’m like, “I literally don’t have time. So Keller Williams taught me was leverage. And like, “Hey, here’s how you hire a personal assistant. Here’s how you hire agents on your team. Here’s …” You know, basically how you niche down, and figure out what you’re really, really good at. And do that for a living. While you’re also servicing a lot of people. And so, I was with Keller Williams from 2010 until 2022. And we left in the middle of all that I moved. 

Tim Chermak: The phrase “leverage” that you brought up. You said, “being at Keller Williams taught me leverage.” It’s like well, let’s be honest, what it really is, is they taught you how to run a business. Right? “Leverage” is the one word, it’s kinda the “sexy” way of putting it. Everyone wants to talk about, “How are you leveraging your time?” “How are you leveraging this or that?” But it really, it’s just how to build an actual business selling homes versus being an individual realtor selling as many homes as you can a year. And, it sounds like KW taught you that.

So you built up to how many homes were you selling a year? How many homes were you selling a year at the point you decided to leave KW? 

Ken Pozak: So that was 2022. We left KW in 2022. So that was last year. So we were in 2021 was the full year before we left KW. We did 127 million, and it was 287 sides in 2021. And in the midst of all that, we -my wife and I - moved from Detroit to Orlando, Florida. That’s where we’re headed now. You know, where we’re headquartered now. And so, then I was running a small team in Michigan. We did like $40 million and 100 sides in Michigan. And it was like, why do we live in Michigan with the snow and the cold? And just, there’s really not a lot to do. So we relocated here.

Tim Chermak: Cough! Cough! Cough!

Ken Pozak: Laughing.

Tim Chermak: Okay, okay. I. It is absolutely hilarious when like celebrities and athletes or whatever ever get interviewed about  “Why did you want to move from the … whatever … Los Angeles Dodgers to the Miami Marlins” or “Why did you move from the New York Jets to the Miami Dolphins?” Whatever. And they’ll say, “Well, the climate and the weather and I need a change of scenery.” Or even when Tim Ferriss talks about why he needed to move from the Bay Area to Austin, Texas.

Ken Pozak: Yeah, yeah.

Tim Chermak: And they’ll just skirt around it and never say the word “taxes.” It’s like they think it’s bad if they admit, “Oh I just felt like saving 10% off the top, you know.”

Ken Pozak: Laughing. That was definitely part of it. Yeah, definitely the climate … the tax climate and the actual climate were.

Tim Chermak: There you go. There you go. So that was in what year that you made the move officially to Florida? 

Ken Pozak: 2016, so it’s been over 5 just over 5/5.5 years now.

Tim Chermak: Okay. Cool. So leading up to all this, clearly you had already built a massively successful organization selling homes. You had, you know, Admin, ISAs. You were investing heavily in content marketing. Obviously, you’ve built a reputation in the real estate world as being, like, Mr. Youtube amongst realtors across the entire United States of America. What are some of the stats on your Youtube reach now? How many subs do you have? How many views are you getting? Just give us a quick snapshot of where the Youtube brand presence is at.

Ken Pozak: Yes, so I’ve got 36,000 subscribers. I think we just passed 5.5 million views total. Which is not, in the grand scheme of things, as a Youtube channel it’s not like I’m in the top 1%. I’m not. I’m honestly not. It’s just I got on average 10,000 people watch my videos every, like, each video. Every month, this is a crazy stat I figured this out, last month alone I had 10,000 hours of watch time. And that’s, like, impressive thing about content marketing to me. It’s like if you can quantify that, I don’t even know how many hours are in a month. That was a lot more than are in a month. And so it’s like the ultimate leverage tool that you can ever hope for. 

Tim Chermak: Yeah, so you’ve built this, probably wouldn’t be an overstatement to say, wildly successful real estate business with content marketing. Everything you’re doing on Youtube. I know that you guys are getting into more written content, and you’re doing it the right way. I know that you actually don’t have a huge paid marketing budget as much as you’re paying content creators to help you create the content. But you’re not necessarily getting all these views and subscribers on Youtube because you’re spending $10,000 dollars a month on Youtube ads, right. So.

Ken Pozak: Oh no, definitely not. I don’t spend any money on, like, pushing the content we create on Youtube. Or even on Instagram at this point. We do some retargeting for our past clients and sphere, like our content shows up from the written blogs that we do. And then we do, we’ve got 3 staff writers that we contract. We put out like 10-15 pieces of written form content a week. And some of our best hits of the week go into a newsletter that we send out twice a week to our database of now 26,000 people. 

Tim Chermak: So, this is actually an interesting segue for us to talk about, I guess, the differences across marketing media of, like, a Youtube sub versus an email subscribers. Because you mentioned you had 26,000 people on your email newsletter list. And what is the approximate open rate you get when you send out that email newsletter?

Ken Pozak: 38% last month. 

Tim Chermak: Okay, so somewhere around 30-40%. Which, if you’re not an email marketing nerd, just whoever knows - That’s excellent. That’s excellent. That’s not good or even pretty good. It’s excellent. Most people on e-mail newsletters the realtors I’ve seen are hovering around 10%-20%. Because they send out crap.

Ken Pozak: Laughing.

Tim Chermak: People stop opening it and eventually it gets rerouted straight to, you know, a promotions or spam folder. So…

Ken Pozak: I mean, it’s funny because a lot of agents are like, “How can I … What program can I sign up for so I can send the same shit to everybody that everybody else is?” I’m like …

Tim Chermak: Yes.

Ken Pozak: Why would you even waste your time? Just don’t do it. It’s actually hurting your brand, not helping if you’re just sending canned content nobody cares about. 

Tim Chermak: 100%. So, what I think is interesting though is that you actually now have more Youtube subscribers than you do on your email newsletter.

Ken Pozak: Yeah.

Tim Chermak: And the casual person listening to this podcast might infer from that, “Oh, it must be easier to get a Youtube sub than a normal email subscriber. And actually, I would actually say it’s the opposite. It’s almost harder to get a Youtube subscriber because what you have to do on Youtube to subscribe to a channel is a lot more of an involved process than just clicking this whatever. “Oh, yes, I’d like this free ebook from Ken.”

Ken Pozak: Yeah.

Tim Chermak: It’s more of a leap emotionally to subscribe to a Youtube channel, and yet you actually have 36,000 Youtube subscribers. I mean, I don’t want to put an exact ratio on it, but I would probably say it’s easier to get 100,000 normal email subscribers on your blog or your website than it is to get 36,000 Youtube subscribers. And yet, as a local real estate agent - You know, you’re not creating content for people all across the United States of America. You’re creating content really focused on the Orlando Area. 

Ken Pozak: Yeah.

Tim Chermak: 36,000 people following you. How did you achieve that?

Ken Pozak: You know, I started off early on just doing, like, house tours, and they were terrible. On my cell phone, walking through home tours, telling people what I liked about it and what I didn’t like about it. Trying to create my own little HV TV vibe, and it didn’t really click. And eventually I had gotten a lot of questions from people that knew I moved from Detroit to this area called Celebration, Florida which is a town Disney created. And I was like, you know what, a lot of people are asking me about it. I should do a video. That would be cool. 

So I just grabbed myself a phone. I walked around town, and I just talked about the 10 things you maybe didn’t know about Celebration, Florida. From the HOA fee to how it became with Disney and that sort of thing. And I edited it myself on my i-Movie, you know, on my Mac. And it wasn’t even great, but it popped off like 45,000 views in a month. And I started having people call me. And I was like, “That’s the content I should be doing.” And so I completely pivoted from Ken the realtor to Ken the humble concierge that just wants to show off cool stuff in Orlando as it relates to real estate. So I don’t even start my videos off like, “Hey this is Ken Pozak.” I don’t even say my name. I’m like, “Today you’re gonna learn about 5 things about … I’m excited to come to this area of town … and why that matters to you if you live here.”

And then I’ll get right into it. And then right at the very end, once I’ve earned the view and they watch that 10-15 minute video, at the end I say, “Hey, by the way, I’d love to be your real estate resource of choice. If you’re looking at buying or selling a house anywhere in Central Florida, email me,” Info at Pozak group dot com. And that’s how we end every video.

Tim Chermak: It’s only very deep into the video that you mention that.

Ken Pozak: Yeah.

Tim Chemak: Because at that point you can reasonably assume they are emotionally invested enough to where, “Oh, this guy’s a real estate agent. I didn’t know that.” You know. 

Ken Pozak: Yeah, yeah, exactly right. So yeah, that’s the way we roll about it. And it’s a very targeted … Yeah, they either have to really care about Orlando, already live here, or are considering moving here. And that’s our ideal client. So that’s the content we create for them.

Tim Chermak: Ken, you said a really interesting phrase there. “Earn the view.” Would you mind expanding on what you mean when you say that when you’re creating this Youtube content that you have to think about “earning the view?” 

Ken Pozak: Yeah I think, you know, many agents they create content for either themselves or other agents.  Which I don’t understand why other people do that, but they do. And I think for me, I really think it’s about if I’m gonna take somebody’s time - 15 minutes of someone’s time or 10 minutes of someone’s time is a lot in today’s ADDish kind of world that we live in. And so for me, I’ve got to deliver on some value. And so to me, earning a view would mean keeping somebody around enough to have them watch my content, care about my content, and then you know - at that point I get to ask. It’s the whole Gary Vaynerchuck “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook” vibe, right? Where you’re like, “Hey, I’m gonna provide value, value, value. And if I do provide enough value, then me asking you for either to reach out when it’s time to buy or sell or to subscribe - it is like a very small ask in comparison to the value that I’ve now provided you.” Whereas most agents kind of flip it the other way. They’re like, you know, “I’m an agent. You should want to work with me. I’m amazing, you know? Call me.” And so anyways, that’s the way we go about it. 

Tim Chermak: What would 3 examples of Youtube topics or Youtube videos be that are maybe like adjacent to real estate maybe agents aren’t thinking of? Because you mentioned that, “Hey, I started doing the traditional thing most agents do which is I filmed some listing video tours. And I said, hey this is the kitchen. I really like the living room.” You know, that’s what most agents are doing. What are 3 kind of examples that agents just wouldn’t think of, of videos you have done that actually ended up becoming really successful, got a lot of views, but they weren’t really “real estatey”? 

Ken Pozak: Yeah, so I have 3 different content buckets. And this will answer your question, but one of them has really very little to do with real estate. It’s just “coming soon to Orlando” is what I call it. So this is me scouring the internet for typically one or two hours for articles that have happened over the past week. I dig into permitting. I call into cities and go through council notes, figuring out what’s coming. And I wanna be the … I want to break the news that, like The Orlando Business Journal or The Orlando Sentinel doesn’t think is important, but local homeowners actually do care about. So here’s a great example. 

So Desantis and Disney were going back and forth here around Reedy Creek. And when that story broke, I literally jumped in this office. This is my home office that I’m working with. I usually have a much nicer camera and all that kind of stuff. And I decide, “Hey listen, so there’s something going on here in Orlando. It has to do with Governor Desantis and Disney. I’m not taking a side either way. But let me explain to you what Reedy Creek is, and why what is going on is important to an Orlando homeowner as we move forward. Number 1…” And then I just got into the top 5 things. 

And then because I news jacked that the day it happened, and I got it over to my editor. I’m like, “I need this back today, and I’m gonna get it up today.” I was actually getting ready to fly on a plane, so I shot it, sent it to him, and when I landed I uploaded it, put a thumbnail in and sent it out. I got 40,000 views in like 30 hours. It was like one of my fastest going videos we had ever done. But it really had a little to do with Orlando homeowners. Right? Because if you live here and that whole thing went to where the bond money ended up getting passed over into the taxes. Your taxes could have potentially gone up $800-$1000 dollars a year. Right?

But it wasn’t like, “Hey this is a video because I want you to call me to buy or sell a house.” It was, “you live here. You’re a homeowner, or even if you rent this is going to affect you. And I just want to be the that kind of, like, concierge to that information” So, coming soon to Dallas. Coming soon to L.A. Coming soon to Seattle. That’s something that every agent should do as one of their content buckets. Because you can talk about local news from a homeowner’s perspective and a realtor’s perspective, put a little spin on it and people eat that stuff up. 

Tim Chermak: Now you spoke at our Platform Mastermind last December, and you were one of the attendees’ favorite speakers. And I think what you’ve shared so far really proves why. I mean you are putting deep thought into the content you create. Again, you are not just showing up at a tour and listing, “this is the kitchen, this is the living room.” You’re actually doing research.

Ken Pozak: Laughs. 

Tim Chermak: Before you’re … You’re probably actually spending substantially more time researching the videos than you even are producing and recording the videos.

Ken Pozak: Yeah.

Tim Chermak: Because you want to actually have something to say.

Ken Pozak: Yeah, and that’s going to the whole scripting versus off the cuff kind of thing. I think because I put so much research into our videos, it comes naturally after that. Like, if you’ve like … Tim, nobody has to ask you to go study or put a script together if you want to talk about Bella. Or you know, your family, right? You just know off the top of like why you love them, what you like doing, what you guys ate last week. Because it’s just you, right? 

So for me, I don’t get nervous on camera because A. I’ve done it a lot. But because I’m just so well researched on the topic, I just show up and I can riff. And so, instead of a script what we do is, I send show notes to, like pre show notes to my staff or my videographer and I say, “Hey, we’re gonna do an intro. Here’s where I think would be a cool place to do the intro. And then here’s the 4 bullet points we’re gonna hit. And then we’ll do the outtro. When I’m thinking about b-roll, when I think of this video I think we should get shots of a b c and d. That have nothing to do with me but kind of show off the town. Show off whatever it might be.” And that’s how we put the video together. It’s actually a really simple format. 

Tim Chermak: What percentage of the homes that your team sold last year did the leads come from the marketing that year that you’re doing? With all these videos and everything.

Ken Pozak: So last year, we closed $107 million dollars from Youtube. So it was like over $3 million dollars in revenue that came from Youtube. And the rest of it was kind of a smattering of agent referrals, sphere referrals, a lot of other things that kind of like also a lot of it came because of our videos, right? So that’s 107 million that I can say, “Hey, they emailed me and said hey we want to move to Orlando or we already moved here, we want to sell and buy something else.” That I can 100% track that came from Youtube. The rest of it was just made easier because of the videos that we do.

Tim Chermak: So last year, I’m just gonna repeat that because that’s an incredible statistic. Last year, your team sold over $107 million of real estate specifically from the Youtube content that you created which  of course generated over $3 million in GCI for your team directly from Youtube videos. So when agents are hearing this and thinking, “Yeah, that just sounds like a distraction or a waste of time. I don’t want to create content. I need to be doing the important things like calling expired listings or calling FSBOs or doing pop bys to my sphere.” You know, there’s value in all of that, but I think it’s pretty ignorant to be dismissive of digital marketing and creating content here in 2023 and beyond. Because most people are not selling $100 million a year period. Much less directly from Youtube on top of all the other homes you guys are selling.

Ken Pozak: Yeah, 100%. So, that’s - for us it’s a noisy world out there. And so we take it - When we first started with Keller Williams it was, “Hey, put together a 33 touch program. Maybe send one email a month, one postcard a month, do a couple client events and a couple pop bys. And that’s gonna be able to get in there. But dude, I don’t feel very old, but it seems like forever ago - And I’m sure you’ve thought about this as well, but 2010 and 2012 wasn’t as noisy as it is now.

At least online.

Tim Chermak: Of course.

Ken Pozak: So for us, we put out a video every single week on Youtube, and then we put that in our newsletter on top of the written blogs that we do. And so our sphere hears from us 150 times a year between our client events that we do and our emails and all the other stuff we put out. Because I feel like you have to break through the noise. And if you do so with value, I think that it’s welcomed. Like, I get an email from, you know, every newsletter that I enjoy I get, like, once a week. But you just think about Orlando business journals like somebody, I’m gunning for them basically. I’m trying to like take over the news for Orlando. But I get 3 emails a day from them. And I subscribe and I like it, because I’m like, “Hey, what’s breaking news? What’s going on.” You know that sort of thing. 

So me sending out 2 emails a week and one video a week is not overkill. It’s actually, I think, the barrier to entry in today’s market if you want to dominate. 

Tim Chermak: Yeah, it’s not excessive at all, as long as what you’re sending out is good stuff, and you have original, interesting, local content. The problem with most realtors, why they complain about, “Oh, no one’s opening my newsletter. I’m only getting a 12% open rate.” And it’s like, well that’s because you’re taking syndicated copy and paste template crap from your broker about, like, 5 tips for better curb appeal. Or 6 kitchen trends for 2023. Everyone knows you didn’t write that. Everyone knows that you just copied and pasted an article from somewhere else, and now you’re spamming your email list with that. If you actually created interesting, original content, then you can get an open rate of 30-40% at scale. So Ken, before you built out this huge team, what were your production levels as, like, an individual realtor back when you were still in production?

Ken Pozak: Yeah so, in like the last 2 or 3 years. So 3 years ago, in 2020 I sold 73 houses myself. Last year I sold 42 houses myself. My goal this year is to just sell 24. And I know a lot of agents are aching to get out of the business, and/or not have to sell. I enjoy it, actually quite a bit. It’s not my highest and best use of my time anymore. But for me, it feels like I stay relevant when I have to go toe to toe with other agents to get a deal done. Or I have to go knock on a door. Yeah, it keeps me sharp. And then it makes my content relevant as well. Because I could very easily see, like, especially with how fast the market’s moving. I mean, we went from 25 offers on every listing to none, like, overnight it felt like last year. And so if I wasn’t out there belly to belly with other agents, I don’t know that my content would have been as relevant and as fastly updated as it is today. So that’s the goal. So I’ll sell 2 houses a month forever. That seems doable, and where I’m still giving good clients, and I’m able to stay relevant. 

Tim Chermak: Yeah, and I ask that question because I know there’s probably some people listening to this podcast episode whatever months or years in the future that they’re thinking, “Oh well Ken Pozak is this digital marketing Youtube guru. He’s all about, you know, content. He probably hasn’t sold a lot of houses. He just is really good at marketing.” No, Ken is someone who has known what it’s like to sell 70+ homes a year by himself. It probably puts you in the top 1% something of agents. Most agents are considered top producers if they can sell 30-40 homes a year by themselves.

Ken Pozak: Right.

Tim Chermak: You’ve sold over 70 homes a year by yourself without any team. That was just   your individual production.

Ken Pozak: Yeah, just me and an assistant. 

Tim Chermak: But since then you’ve built a team. That kind of brings me back to the original question of what we were discussing on this podcast episode is, you know. You were with KW for a long time, built up a really successful business. Then decided in 2022 to move to Real which is one of the newest brokerages on the market. What was just the 60 second summary of what appealed to you about Real that made you make that move?

Ken Pozak: So for me, I had been doing a lot of content marketing, and there was really nobody at KW doing content marketing. And so I had friends of mine that were doing Youtube fairly, like to success.  A good friend of mine lives in Calgary and did $100 million a couple years ago, a lot of it from Youtube. And so a lot of those creators were moving over. To me it seemed appealing, and then really probably to quantify it, a third of the reason was that. Another third was I thought it would be an opportunity for my team. Because they give you stock, and they give you revenue share. I was like, hey this will make a little bit of a stickier opportunity for my team members to not want to leave. 

And funnily enough, looking back, my team members don’t leave. Like, we have - someone was telling me this morning. We have 24 agents, and in the past 3 years 21 of them are still with me. The 3 of them that left it’s because their husband or spouse got a job outside of the State and then they left. Everybody else stays, and so I don’t know why I was looking for that thing. But, I did. And then the third thing was revenue share for me. Revenue share seemed like a really great opportunity. I’ve got a decent National presence at this point. A lot of agents reach out to me for advice. And so I thought I could very easily just say, like, “Hey, I’m just gonna keep doing what I’m doing and attract these people. Get some mailbox money and let’s go. 

Tim Chermak: Passive income, baby. Passive income!

Ken Pozak: That’s what a lot of people will tell you. And I’m not gonna, like, I wouldn’t hammer any of these guys. I think they’re all, a lot of them are really good. eXp, Real, Fathom. There’s a bunch of revenue share companies now. 

Tim Chermak: Yep.

Ken Pozak: It’s not new.

Tim Chermak: And that was something that KW was not offering at the time, and I don’t think plans to offer anything like that in the future. At least the way brokerages like eXp and Real are structuring the rev share.

Ken Pozak: Yeah, exactly. So, I got over there and very quickly started making 5 figures a month from revenue share. It was very quick that it happened. But the thing I realized is, it’s like a more than full time job. If you want to make a lot of money in revenue share, you have to be on fraction calls. And you need to be helping the people that you attracted now attract other people. And they’re calling you about Youtube and team building.

Tim Chermak: Yeah, yeah. You have to be mentoring and training and managing them. So in a sense, people call it passive income, but it’s anything but passive.

Ken Pozak: Yeah, it’s a business that you actually don’t own. Because what I found was that these companies can change their model at any given time and greatly affect your bottom line. So you could … I had friends making 70, 80, 100,000 dollars a month. And then the company comes in and changes a couple things and then they’re down to $30,000 a month. Ånd you’re like, there’s literally nothing you can do about it. It’s not like you’re gonna sue for them to change their model back or something like that. You just take it.

Tim Chermak: Especially if it’s a public company.

Ken Pozak: Yeah they have to make … the company has to make a profit. Right? That’s why these guys make changes. Like EXT made changes early on. Real has made changes recently. You know, LPT is still new. I’m sure they’re gonna make changes as they scale and get bigger. And so, it just is what it is. And so I kinda stepped back and said, “Do I love the attraction game? Do I love having a revenue sharing business, or do I love creating content and growing my team which I own?”

And the answer was very clear, and to me it was just, like, “I want to go back to spending most of my time building my team and creating content. And so I thought, “Where’s the best place to do that? Is that the biggest brokerage in the world where I have a lot of connections and can make an impact?” So I decided to move back to KW after 5 months at Real. And it’s been actually great. But yeah, I don’t … Someone asked me if I regret the move. I, not at all actually. I’m actually glad I tried something because I wouldn’t have known any better had I not tried. And I would have always wondered what if. But tried it, and here we go. 

Tim Chermak: There’s a quote from a poem by T. S. Eliot that I’m totally gonna mangle right now. But I’m gonna attempt to paraphrase it where sometimes you have to go far far away from where you were born and live elsewhere. And experience elsewhere so that you can come home and experience it for the first time. Because you actually realize what makes your home town unique, once you’ve gone and lived elsewhere. 

Ken Pozak: Yeah.

Tim Chermak: And it sounds like you’re kind of getting at that dynamic or that vibe of, like, “Well, I was at KW for a long time. I went and tried something different. I don’t even dislike this other brokerage I went to. I’m not gonna bad-talk them because a lot of people love it, and it works for them. But now that I’m back at KW, it feels like maybe I understand why this is the place for me now in a way that I didn’t before. 

Ken Pozak: That. You nailed it. Couldn’t have said it better.

Tim Chermak: So you had mentioned to me when we talked a while ago that obviously larger, you know, larger companies - especially the kind that have rev share as their business model - And I’m using kind of a phrase here, larger companies with rev share, because I don’t mean to pick on specifically whatever : eXp, Real, whatever. Just this category of real estate brokerages. Right?

Ken Pozak: Mhm.

Tim Chermak: Where rev share is one of the leading benefits. That they can make small changes in their structure that can completely change the economics for your business once you’re operating at scale. I know that you had shared with me - We don’t have to go into the really granular specifics, but that I think they changed something with the transaction fees? And because of the scale you guys where operating at, like, what was the approximate cost that would have hit you guys with?

Ken Pozak: So for example, this year we’ll sell somewhere between 500-600 homes. And so they upped their - They added an ENO fee and a transaction fee. They bumped it up a little bit. And so it was, like, an extra $85 for transaction. 

Tim Chermak: For most agents, let’s be clear, it’s not a big deal. They’re probably gonna pass it on to the buyer. You know, who cares? $85 a transaction, not a big deal.

Ken Pozak: Not a big deal, right. Exactly. And so for us, 500 transactions and $85 is $42,000. And I’m like, I could almost hire another person for that on my staff. And they could have a massive impact on the business because of the time that other people will now get back to go do other cool shit. So yeah, I sort of it was that plus a lot of other things. And so yeah, these little changes. Many times I called in, I was like, “Hey, you guys got rid of your digital signature product, and I have to go now and replace it with Sky Slope or DocuSign or something else for my team times 25 members.” It ended up costing me like $6,000. 

And they’re like, “Well Ken, we looked at it, and we looked at the entirety of all the agents. And like 92% of the agents weren’t using our digital platform anyways for the signature. So we just got rid of it.” I’m like, “I appreciate that, but what about the 8% that do? And then somebody  like me I know would have to drop another 6 grand.” And so that’s like, I mean, they’re a growing company, and again they have to make a profit. And they have to look at scalability. And so again, there’re some amazing people at Real. I love them. There’s amazing people at eXp. Love those guys too. But for me it was like, I need to find that place where I can get in a wheelhouse. Where I can count on what my outgoing expenses are going to be, so I can continue to scale and not think about all the other stuff.  So you know, KW has been around for damn near 35 years, and I think they’ve got something going on so. 

Tim Chermak: Which is an eternity in real estate if you’ve been doing the same model for 30 or 40 years. 

Ken Pozak: Right.

Tim Chermak: So you know, if that increase in the transaction fee has cost you approximately $42,000 a year, that’s about $3500 a month. Which means, let’s say you put that into a paid ads budget, because this is a marketing podcast. Right? 

Ken Pozak: Of course.

Tim Chermak: That’s about $100 dollars a day you could spend in paid ads. Now, with social media CPMs typically being about $10, that means that you could reach an extra 10,000 people a day …would be seeing your content. Every day. Not every month. Every day 10,000 more eyeballs on your content.

Ken Pozak: Yeah.

Tim Chermak: For $3500 a month. So there’s a massive opportunity cost. It’s not the $42,000. It’s what the 300,000 eyeballs on your content every month of 10,000 a day times 30 days in a month. How many more transactions would you be doing with that much more attention on your content? It’s a multiplier, $42,000, right? 

Ken Pozak: It is. And a lot of these companies will tell you, “Well hey, listen. Just go make it up in rev share. Go recruit more people, and you’re gonna be fine.” I’m like, “Okay, guys. So I have to now go take on another job essentially, in order to just go break even?” That seems like a losing prospect for me.

Tim Chermak: I want to interject here just to pay you a compliment on your character, Ken. Because I think it speaks to your integrity that you’re capable of having a nuanced conversation about this without trashing any other brokerage. It’d be very easy for someone in your position doing the scale and the volume that your team is doing to make this high profile move, whether it was from KW over to Real or now back from Real to KW. And then just trash the brokerage that you left, because of everything they’re doing that’s wrong and stupid. “And here’s why the new brokerage I’m at is way better.”

Ken Pozak: Laughs.

Tim Chermak: Both instances, when you left KW and now that you’ve come back to KW, you have taken the high road and not said any bad things. I think that you’re basically being honest that it just wasn’t a fit “for my strategy.” But, you’re willing to intellectually acknowledge that it could absolutely be a fit for someone else’s strategy, but just wasn’t aligned with the way that you wanted to run your business. And I really respect you for being able to have that nuanced conversation without getting into, you know, mud-slinging. 

Ken Pozak: Thanks. I feel like we are in an emotionally-driven business. You know, people typically don’t move for many reasons. I mean, sometimes they do. But many times it’s emotionally driven. So I don’t want to get into leads that way. I think that, you know, I was talking to a new agent who’s joining our team today. And she said, “Well, I was interviewing at this other brokerage and this other team. And what makes you two different?” Right?  And so, “Listen, that team over there, they buy Zillow leads and Realtor dot com leads, and they have high turnover in their agents.” And that is a business model that I know some very successful people use, and they crush it. It’s just not my business model. And so, here’s what we do, and that’s a little bit different. And whatever one you gel with, you should do that. Right? And of course she was like, “No, I’d much rather be with where you’re at.” I’m like, “Okay, that makes sense.” Right? So I think, like, anybody … Tom Fiore always says, “Everything works.” Right? Everything works. It just has to be what works for you. And I think that if you can get really clear on that, it makes life easier. 

Tim Chermak: So, last question, because I know that you have to go here quick. There’s … and maybe this is a pretty large question to unpack, we were talking earlier about once you hit the scale - the volume that your business is at - There seems to be, like, 2 different ways of thinking about growing your business. And that’s growing via rev share, of essentially building a big organization or a down line - however you want to think about it - with these companies like eXp, Real, LPT, etc. Being a rev share agent where that’s how I’m trying to build my empire with rev share versus I just want to build a team that sells as many homes as possible. Like, we’re actually selling a lot of homes, and there’s nothing “passive income” about it. It’s just a team that is selling a ton of homes. You have chosen the latter. Explain to me the differences of the mentalities. So, what that means on an actual day to day basis that you are doing differently. What is filling your calendar when you look at that model versus the agents that are pursuing rev share as their business model?

Ken Pozak: Yeah, so for me it’s growing the asset that I can control the most, which is my team. So you’ll notice my content on Youtube and Instagram. None of it is agent facing. Right? You’ve got a lot of influencers online that thought, “Hey, eventually I’m gonna be a coach and go for rev share and do all this stuff.” And they just completely leave their real estate team behind. So for me, I’m just very focused on who I … who my perfect consumer is. I know who that is. I know what they look like. I know what their spending habits are. I know how they’re gonna find me online, and I create content for those people. 

So my week is content creation and then attraction for my team only. So I have conversations with new agents every single day. What are they looking for? How can we be a long term partner together having you in my world? And how can I provide value? And that’s what I spend the great majority of my time on, instead of having to constantly teach or travel for new events and attract people to the company and that kind of thing. So that’s, I think, the fundamental difference between me and maybe some other people chasing rev share. 

Tim Chermak: You know, it’s more like being a business person versus being an influencer.

Ken Pozak: Yeah, yeah that’s the big difference. And I, you know, I care about the weeds too. 

You know, we had this client event and we’re trying to bring the online offline. And so we have like 500 people who have RSVP’d which I’m still stoked about. And I’m going through the line items, and I, like, the bathrooms - the port-a-potties are $2500. I told my admin to go back and ask them. Say we’re looking at other vendors, and we need a coupon code from them. And she got, like, $600 off. I’m like, great. I care to those details because to me 

Tim Chermak: You’re actually like still spending more on your port-a-potties than most people are spending on Zillow leads. 

Ken Pozak: That’s true I guess. I guess that’s for sure. But think about it, getting in front of 500 people.

Tim Chermak: A client appreciation event with 500 people RSVP’d? 

Ken Pozak: Yeah.

Tim Chermak: That’s badass.

Ken Pozak: It’s so cool. It’s our biggest one ever. Most of them are like 100-200 people. This one we’re knocking out of the park. We’ve done a really good job with executing on this one. So, it’ll be cool to see that many people in person. We’re gonna document it, obviously. And put it online for FOMO and continue to roll from there. So I’m excited.

Tim Chermak: Alright Ken, I lied. Final question: What big, new marketing initiative or project are you working on that will come out at some point in the next year that you’re the most excited about?

Ken Pozak: Man, I would have been able to answer this a month ago more honestly. But right now. You’ve already been seeing it if you’ve been on my Instagram. I already went from 8,000 followers to darn near 13,000 in the past 60 days. And we brought short form. We are going hard after short form. So, how can I take news, and I’m doing the same thing on Youtube already, but how can I make it a 30-40 second clip and make it relevant and useful and push it out in short form? So we’re doing Youtube shorts and Instagram and TikTok. I’m not a huge fan of TikTok, but it’s just there. And it’s just the same content anyway. So we’re just putting it out there. But that’s actually going really well. And the algorithm is working really well by picking up locals. And so I’m picking up a lot more followers, so we’re going to go hard after short form while also doing the newsletter and Youtube the same way we’ve been doing. I think that’s a big opportunity that we’re not tapping into, and so hopefully we’ll continue to see me grow on those platforms

Tim Chermak: I love your business model. I love your strategy. Obviously, this is a marketing podcast for realtors. And I look at your business model from the outside looking in. And essentially you’ve taken this concept at scale. Like, some agents might spend $5000 on Zillow leads or, like, PPC leads with boom town, Sync, whatever. You’ve said, “Hey, if I’m gonna spend $5,000 a month on marketing, let’s cut out the middle man. Let’s spend that $5,000 creating content by hiring writers and video producers and creating our own content. So that the leads come straight to us, and there’s not this middleman of Zillow or some other leads website. And then we own that relationship, and we own this asset for the long term.”  And you’ve basically taken that and scaled it at, like, you know, 10x the example of spending $5,000 a month.

I’ve never … like, l love it. This is what agents should be doing. And you’ve executed it at an extremely high level. 

Ken Pozak: Yeah, I would tell any agents, if you are looking at building a content creation bucket, the reason why I think it’s … A: I think it works better. It’s actually way more profitable than Zillow. Like, I don’t have to pay anybody referral fees. Like yeah, we have a high spend on people, but, like, I own it. And even if I stopped doing videos for the next 6 months, I’ll still have leads coming in every single month. And so that’s a really big opportunity, I think, for people to fully grasp. Like, you own that channel. You own the inbound, and if I stop spending money, like, stuff still comes in. Whereas, if you stop spending money on Zillow, you don’t own those people anymore.

Tim Chermak: No.

Ken Pozak: And so, in fact, they make you sign something that says if those people sell again, you have to pay another referral fee. And so the whole Zillow flex world, again, for some people works very well. For me, it just wasn’t what I wanted to do. So that’s the difference.

Tim Chermak: Well, it’s what realtors have talked about for decades of “build equity in your house. Don’t rent your entire life, because someone is holding equity in every transaction you want to do.” You are building equity in your database rather than renting leads from a company like Zillow. So Ken, I know you have to go. Thanks for joining me on the show. And let’s talk soon, next time you're down in Naples or Marco.

Ken Pozak: Look forward to it man. Thanks.

Tim Chermak: Cool. Thanks again.