Time Is An Ingredient, Not A Metric

Patrick:
Yeah. Yeah. When I'm teaching these social media classes, that's what I'm telling everyone about spending money on marketing. Because every agent is terrified of doing that. By just one lesson for marketing in college that just stuck with me over the years is, hey, if I could sell you a $5 bill for a dollar, how many would you buy? And so by marketing, you have your own printing press because this year for every $20 we spent or every $3 we spent, we made $20. And so why would I limit that? And so I tell every agent, you need to spend money to make money and do the 10%. If you do 10% of your GCI, you are going to get bigger and faster than you can ever imagine in this business, but you actually got to do it.

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. And welcome back to another episode of the Platform Marketing Show. I'm here today with Patrick Chamberlain. Patrick is a realtor near Tucson, Arizona. Patrick, what is the population of the Tucson area, just in general?

Patrick:
The Metro is right around a million.

Tim Chermak:
A million people? Okay, cool. I actually did not realize that Tucson was that big. So Patrick signed up for a Platform and started this Platform strategy back in 2018, I believe towards the end of 2018. So at the time that we are recording this episode, it's now January 2022. I'm still kind of in that zone where I'm not used to saying 2022 so I have to stop for a split second and think about it because I want to say 2021 still, but we're in 2022, right? So it'll be what? Four years at the end of this year that you've been with Platform. So it's been over three years already. That's crazy. So Patrick was in new home sales before he became a full blown across the board residential realtor. Patrick, let's just get right into this, what did your business look like before you started the Platform strategy versus just where things are now?

Patrick:
Versus now. Yeah, I joined the Platform about seven months into my real estate career, the residential side of it. So during those seven months I sold about four houses for about 800,000.

Tim Chermak:
Okay. And prior to that, now you were in new home sales. So you understood what it was like selling homes. You were just on the new build side, right?

Patrick:
Yeah. Correct. I was selling four or five houses a month, but they were all just spoon fed to me.

Tim Chermak:
Sure, sure. So you did that for you said six years?

Patrick:
Yeah. Six years.

Tim Chermak:
Okay. So you had pretty solid experience selling new homes. Then you went into just being a full blown residential realtor. You sold six houses. Is that what you said?

Patrick:
Four houses.

Tim Chermak:
Four houses for $800,000?

Patrick:
Yep.

Tim Chermak:
So way back when you were selling homes in the $200,000 price point, which now is like an endangered species in the United States of America, but you sold four houses and then you discovered the Platform strategy. What has happened in your business since? Again, we're recording this episode just in case someone's listening to this years from now, this episode is being recorded in January 2022. So this is three some years after Patrick started the Platform strategy. What does your business look like right now?

Patrick:
So right now, since it's January I'll talk about what we just completed last year of 2021, I grew a team and then our team did 16 million in sales and 56 units.

Tim Chermak:
That's awesome. How big is your team? Is that 56 sides? Is that spread out over 10 people or five people or two people or?

Patrick:
So I have a transaction coordinator, me, and then two sales agents.

Tim Chermak:
Okay, cool. So it's really you and two agents. That's pretty impressive that you've grown that to over 50 deals. How much of the 50 was your own production?

Patrick:
I did almost 12,000,000 and 38 units.

Tim Chermak:
Okay. That's awesome. So really if we focus to just you-

Patrick:
Me individually.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. You've grown from selling four homes for 800,000 to getting to the 12 million level of production in the last three years. And then, obviously, now your team is starting to produce on top of that. That's really cool, man. Congratulations.

Patrick:
Yeah. Thank you.

Tim Chermak:
What were you doing for marketing in your business before you stumbled upon the Platform strategy?

Patrick:
Yeah, I did what every real estate agent did, go directly to Zillow.

Tim Chermak:
Okay. You were just buying leads from Zillow?

Patrick:
I was just throwing money at it. I studied marketing in college, so I understood marketing and spending money. So I knew I had to spend money to make my business grow. My problem was I just didn't know where or how to spend it. So Zillow was the big player in real estate. And so that's where I put my money. It made me sign six month contracts and then after the six months was up and I was like get me out of here. And now I got to find somewhere else for my money.

Tim Chermak:
So you started the Platform strategy in late 2018. If you remember, Patrick, what did your business look like for 2019? Because that would've been the first full year with Platform. Were you one of those agents where just things absolutely blew up in your first 90 days of Platform and you got a ton of leads and closings or did it take six months or a year to finally start seeing results? Here's my question. How long did it actually take you to see results? Like real results from Platform? I'm not saying when you got your first closing, right? But like real results where you knew okay, cool. I made the right decision here. I just got a bunch of closings, it paid for itself and now I really deep down know that I made the right decision starting Platform versus maybe you get that one closing and it's a little bit of confirmation bias of, oh, okay, cool, this wasn't the dumbest decision I ever made. At least it paid for itself. How long did it take you to really know like, oh man, this is really working?

Patrick:
So it took me over I think about six months to get my first Platform lead under the close. But then that's kind of when the floodgates opened. I would say, I think that in 2019 I did six or seven Platform deals that I closed. And so the first six, seven months of that was one. And then the rest of that year was the rest of them. And so between six and 12 months is really when the floodgates opened with the Platform leads actually getting to that point where they're ready to close and purchase a home.

Tim Chermak:
So yeah. So you would say then that maybe around the six month mark, you didn't even break even, but you got that first closing, but the real ROI started to kick in months six through 12?

Patrick:
Definitely. Yeah. Yep.

Tim Chermak:
Okay. That was basically your year of 2019. Do you remember off the top of your head just generally what your GCI was in 2019?

Patrick:
I did like three and a half million that year, so right around a hundred thousand probably.

Tim Chermak:
Okay. So I mean, that's actually still pretty impressive going from under a million in 18 to almost four. Because sometimes it's easy to take for granted that even if you're doing about four million a year, you're probably in the top 10% of realtors because most realtors-

Patrick:
You're making six figures.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. Right. Most realtors are not selling nationwide the average, right? They're not selling $4 million a year. I'm not sure what the actual stat is, but I definitely know the average is not four million. So you already were doing pretty well in 2019 and then this has become a theme of recent podcast episodes and then the COVID pandemic hit. Right? So most people would expect that your business takes a huge hit, things slow down, maybe even in 2020, maybe you even regressed, did things go backward? What happened to your business in 2020? Because that would've been the second full year of Platform, right?

Patrick:
Yeah. The second full year of Platform, the pandemic hit, we stayed open in Arizona because we're pretty conservative here, but I did 20 deals I think for about five million that year.

Tim Chermak:
Okay. So your business still increased?

Patrick:
It still increased, yes.

Tim Chermak:
So basically in your first two years with Platform, you went from selling under a million dollars in volume to over five million in your second full year?

Patrick:
Yes. Yep.

Tim Chermak:
That's awesome. And again, in the middle of a lockdown pandemic crazy year where the world just went insane for well, not just 12 months, but really a couple of years.

Patrick:
Right.

Tim Chermak:
What happened then in 2021? Where did you end up in 2021? Which would've been your third full year.

Patrick:
So yeah, so it was actually dramatic at the end of 2020. I don't know if it was a burnout or what I was going through, but I actually had zero closings in December 2020, 0 closings January 2021, and zero closings in February 2021.

Tim Chermak:
Oh, that's fun.

Patrick:
And so it was working great until it wasn't and just from the understanding of marketing and branding and building everything, I knew it wasn't that my marketing that wasn't working, it was me. And so I had to do a huge self-check, find out what I was doing wrong and then not only did I fix what I was doing wrong, but then it just amplified me to dive deeper into it. And I think that was the reason why 2021 was such a good year for me was because of that pivot at the beginning of the year. So 2021, I ended up doing personally 12 million. I grew my team in 2021. So we did 16 million. So from 700,000, 800,000 before Platform to 16 million in one year.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. And in terms of just personal production, you went from yeah, 800,000 to 12 million inside of three years.

Patrick:
Not only did I sell more last year, but because I grew my team, I was able to spend more time with family because we did actually expect, we had our first child in 2021 as well.

Tim Chermak:
Oh, congratulations. That's super cool. So that gave you a little bit of time leverage and scale and well, that's incredible. So when you look at what most realtors are doing with their marketing, or maybe just looking back at your year of 2021, let's dive into the specifics of that challenge that you overcame. What did you find that you were doing or not doing where you had that gut check in January 2021? And you're like, okay, there's been no closings, what am I doing wrong? What needs to change? What was it when looked at your check engine light? What was wrong? Why weren't you getting closings? Because I think anyone would probably freak out if you've been using a marketing strategy at that point for two full years and you've seen it grow your business from zero to three million, to five million.

Tim Chermak:
And now all of a sudden you're starting to taste that success and you're like, wow, cool, my career is really starting to take off. And then you have not one, not two, but three months in a row with zero closings. I would imagine you're starting to think maybe that was luck. What if it was luck and I'm actually not as good as I think I am? When you looked at that check engine light of your career, what did you find that you weren't doing or what did you change that got things turned around? Because clearly, we cheated ahead to the end of the story, right? You ended 2021 with 12 million just of personal production. So clearly you figured that out and 2021 was actually an incredibly prosperous year for you. What was it when you looked back and had that dark night of the soul that you looked like, okay, here's what I need to change. What was that?

Patrick:
It was probably the fact that I got comfortable and when I got comfortable, I got lazy and excuses started coming in. And so I wasn't spending as much time doing my follow up because I have enough deals in the backlog and I'm going to be fine and I don't need to go shoot those videos or make these ads because I have enough running right now, it's fine. And so that's what I found the problem to be. And I figured that if that's the problem, it's pretty easy to fix that. You just go make videos and you do the follow-up. And then I started doing that and then I really started doing it. And then we really started seeing the results.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah, I think that's so valuable to hear that. So often it just comes back to the fundamentals, right? Even someone like you who at that point, even if Patrick, even if you never grew your business beyond five million, you would still be considered in an incredible success story using Platform because you went from under one million to over five million. Right? So basically, even at that point it had quadrupled your business. So you were already successful. And even at that point, you realized like, wait, I'm starting to get lazy on this. I'm not doing my follow-up with leads. I'm not filming as many new videos. I'm not creating the content the Platform's asking me to create. And you obviously self-corrected, you got it done and then your business just absolutely blew up in 2021.

Tim Chermak:
So even people who are multiple years in who are already successful, still have to stay vigilant on the basics on the fundamentals. Right? Because often we think when we get to a certain point in our businesses, that it's because we're just more advanced or that we're so much wiser or we have more nuance than the newbies that are just getting started. And honestly, even when I look back in my business career in investing in Platform and growing Platform, it's not even necessarily that I know so much more now that I've accumulated so much more knowledge than I had seven years ago, eight years ago when we started Platform and I probably have, right? But it's when we really started growing. It is because we just consistently did the things that we know work and that's following up with leads, right?

Tim Chermak:
And creating content so people that are on your retargeting list and your database keep seeing you, and they're not seeing the same ads over and over and over again. So speaking of the ads, in the context of this idea of the Platform strategy, what have been one or two of your favorite ads that you've run? When you look back on the last three some years that you've been working with Platform, what have been some of your favorite videos or they could be photo ads, maybe some photo retargeting ads that just got a ton of engagement where you know that those were resonating with your sphere because people actually told you in real life, oh, I loved such and such video, or I loved seeing that post you made on Facebook or I saw it on Instagram or whatever. Are there any that stick out to you that you just know that they were really effective?

Patrick:
Yeah. So probably the best two ads that we've run, I'm going to say it, God loves a small business man, but everyone says that.

Tim Chermak:
Sure, sure, sure.

Patrick:
I'm going to put that one to the side because that was a great ad. But one of our best ads is our top five videos that we do.

Tim Chermak:
Okay.

Patrick:
So it's like the top five tacos in Tucson or the top five coffee places. So we're trying to do those once a month and those always get great engagements. We actually have some businesses reach out to us and say, hey, how do I find a way onto this list? You missed us or people commenting saying, that's a horrible talker. You got to go to this place. What are you thinking?

Tim Chermak:
I always love any ranked top three or top five video because it kind of just creates controversy in a good way. Right? It creates controversy. Because if it's a top three tacos and someone doesn't see their favorite taco place on there, they will comment holy hell.

Patrick:
It is personal.

Tim Chermak:
Well, why didn't you include such and such taco truck or such and such place on this list? And then that just gives the ad more engagement so more people see it. So it starts organically popping up in more people's newsfeed, the more engagement it gets. Right? So I love those.

Patrick:
It just creates more content because then where you're going to have lunch the next day.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah, exactly.

Patrick:
You're going to the taco place, you can take a picture of a taco just to make that one guy happy.

Tim Chermak:
Yep. Yep. And the ad campaign takes on a life of its own. So I mean, there's almost just an infinite possibility for different ways you can leverage that model of a top three or top five ads whether, like you said, taco places, coffee shops, burgers and shakes, pastries.

Patrick:
Yeah. We have a list of 16 or 17 just on a brainstorm session that we're just slowly making our way through.

Tim Chermak:
Yep, yep. Absolutely. Even one video I think more agents should do... So for our Platform agents that are listening to this, here's just a free idea for you is top three favorite neighborhoods, but it's not all just the same neighborhood. So your top three favorites. So you're saying, hey, these are my personal favorites. I'm not saying these are the best neighborhoods, but these are my favorites. But each one is like here's my favorite luxury neighborhood in Tucson. That's one of them. Here's my favorite first-time home buyer or best value neighborhood. So that's the one where you can get in a great neighborhood for still a reasonable price point. Right? And then the third one can be the best condo area or HOA or you can pick what you want for that third one.

Tim Chermak:
But the point is, the top three neighborhoods, but they're all different categories. So it's like, if this is what you're looking for, here's my favorite. If this is what you're looking for, here's my favorite. Or if this is what you're looking for, here's my favorite. Right? Those get tons of engagement as well. For the same reasons, people love commenting. How did you not include this one on your list or, oh, Hey Patrick, I'm interested what you think of this neighborhood. Right? And then, boom, you're going to go film a video at that one and post it next week to make sure that person knows that you're responsive. Right? But as an agent, obviously it shows your expertise if you can profile different neighborhoods and those videos get tons of engagement for all the reasons that we just said. So awesome. Have you had videos Patrick that, or again, videos or photos that people were mentioning to you in real life? Like, oh, I loved such and such ad.

Patrick:
I had the one, we ran an ad, I've actually ran it a couple of times. That's evergreen, but it's like here are the five or six reasons not to use me as your agent.

Tim Chermak:
Sure, sure.

Patrick:
So it just plays on the psychological fact that everyone's trying to convince you to use them and now you're hitting them with the other end of it saying, if you want someone who's pushy, don't use me. And so people came up to me and were just like, that was so clever and I don't want an agent like that. So I called you and things like that. And so those are just fun ads that just go against what people expect to see on Facebook from a real estate agent.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah, exactly. It's like a pattern interrupt where they weren't really necessarily expecting that to be the headline of the ad or the narrative of that ad. So since your business has blown up, I know that one thing that's been cool is that you've almost been asked to share or teach social media marketing classes at your brokerage because the agents around you started to take notice that like, hey, this new dude, Patrick, sold less than a million bucks his first year and now all of a sudden you sold three, then five, then 12 million in personal production plus you built a team that produced on top of that. And so perhaps not surprisingly other agents at your brokerage have been seeing that growth and they're like, hey, clearly you're really, really using social media really well. And they've started asking you to teach them about social media and about marketing strategies. What has that looked like? And I mean, were they classes you were teaching or how did that come about?

Patrick:
So I started teaching classes here at our brokerage here in Tucson, but it's a national brokerage. And during COVID our national brokerage realized that social media is the way it's going right now. And National United Real Estate reached out to me and asked me to do a Zoom call for all the agents across United States at United to join in and see what I'm doing with social media and what they can do to implement it. So that's how that took off. And I mean, it's fun to just get recognized for teaching social media or being able being good at social media, literally right before I was coming in here to do the Zoom call or this podcast is that someone could say, hey, Patrick, I love your videos. I was literally Facebook stalking you today. Just like cool.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah, cool. And that's just proof that the ads are working when you get that fuzzy ROI where it's not even necessarily a lead that came in your CRM. But when people are telling you that they're looking you up because they've been experiencing your marketing, that's when you really know that the marketing is working, right? Is when people are actually telling you in real life. So what does your ads budget look like Patrick? Because obviously you've had this massive growth, but I know a ton of people listening to this are probably thinking, but yeah, as you spending five grand a month on ads or $10,000 a month on ads, or is it mostly advertising that you're doing with Platform, with Facebook, and Instagram ads, do you have a bunch of billboards in the Tucson area? Are you sending out a ton of direct mail or what does the total marketing spend for you look like on a monthly basis that's been driving all of this business growth?

Patrick:
90% of my marketing is just through Platform, just through the social media ads and the ad content there. We put away 10% of our GCI for our marketing. So it used to be a little bit higher just because we didn't know where we wanted to be yet. But as that grew and grew and grew, we kind of settled in about 10% and just left it there. And so as we get bigger and bigger, as our GCI increases, our ad spend is just going to naturally increase as well and just kind of snowball and snowball on top of it and just get more and more results, which drives more GCI, which drives more marketing and just that warm buffet snowball.

Tim Chermak:
I really like that model philosophically of, hey, let's basically tithe back to our marketing budget where 10% of everything we make is just taken off the table and that goes back into marketing, right? Because so many agents when they're first getting started, they might have $200 a month for marketing or $300 a month for marketing. And it's like, no more than that. Right? And they're not realizing that you have to invest massively into building your brand and generating leads and retargeting and all that if you ever want to make enough money to where you have a larger marketing budget, like having a larger marketing budget is the effect of having the courage to spend money on marketing technically before you have it. Right?

Patrick:
Yeah.

Tim Chermak:
Your business is not just going to spontaneously grow and hey, someday I'll really have the money to invest in marketing. And then I will, but I first got to just get to my business to the point where I can justify spending it. It's like, well, if that's your attitude, you'll probably never get to that point where you have enough GCI to "justify" spending money on marketing. Right? You have to spend the money before you can technically justify it if you ever want to get to that point. Right?

Patrick:
Yeah, when I'm teaching these social media classes, that's what I'm telling everyone about spending money on marketing, because every agent is terrified of doing that. By just one lesson for marketing in college that just stuck with me over the years is, hey, if I could sell you a $5 bill for a dollar, how many would you buy? And so by marketing, you have your own printing press because this year for every $3 we spent, we made $20. And so why would I limit that? And so I tell every agent you need to spend money to make money and do the 10%. If you do 10% of your GCI, you're going to get bigger and faster than you can ever imagine in his business, but you actually got to do it.

Tim Chermak:
So you've actually kept a spreadsheet. I know this is one thing that Andrew Madson told me. And Andrew Madson is the marketing manager at Platform who works with Patrick. So Madson hops on weekly phone calls with Patrick where they discuss their ad strategy and he manages all the ads for Patrick and his team behind-the-scenes. And he mentioned to me that you have a pretty detailed spreadsheet that tracks where the leads are coming from, where you can attribute all these closings to, and that you look at your Platform strategy and from a statistical perspective, every dollar you're spending with marketing on the Platform strategy is creating almost a seven times return. Yeah. Where it's like you spend a dollar, you get seven back.

Patrick:
Yep. Yeah. What gets managed gets measured. And so I'm a super analytical guy. So I have an Excel sheet for everything. I probably have seven open right now on my computer. But yeah. So we figured out last year we made 20 bucks for every three. So it'd be 6.5 next day. Yeah. So for this year essentially we put our goal out there for whatever our GCI was going to be. And then we divided it and said, hey, that's our marketing budget.

Tim Chermak:
Yep. Just reverse engineer it.

Patrick:
Yep.

Tim Chermak:
That's awesome. I mean, if more agents knew that a strategy like this existed and don't want to hint at it. Right? Like we're obviously talking about the Platform strategy.

Patrick:
Right.

Tim Chermak:
If you knew that you could get five to one ROI or a six to one or 6.5 ROI for every dollar you spend $6.50 are coming back to you. Or maybe to put it in terms that are a little bit more real life because no one literally spends a dollar on marketing and then gets $6.50 back. Usually what it looks like over the course of a year is you might spend $20,000 on marketing and let me just type this in and see what that is.

Patrick:
Maybe 130.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. $20,000 times 6.5. Well, yeah, apparently you are better at math than me because I had to type that into a calculator. That's $130,000. So imagine if every year you spent $20,000 on your advertising, but you knew even that might sound like a lot or feel like a lot. And because $20,000 on marketing, emotionally conjures up the fear part of our brain where it's like fight or flight. And you're like, oh my God, $20,000. If my wife finds out, she'll kill me type thing.

Patrick:
Right. That's more than my mortgage.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. $20,000. It's like, well, all of a sudden that $20,000 relatively is completely meaningless if it brought in $130,000. Right? I mean, I could even make the argument that if you're not doing that and now that you know that you can do that and there is a strategy that allows you to have an ROI like that, it's actually costing you $110,000 a year if you're not doing opportunity cost. Yeah. If you're not spending that $20,000. And so when you look back at your career, really the big opportunity cost is like, man, I should have started doing this sooner or I should have started investing more money in ads sooner because I think so many agents, especially those first couple of years, they're just throwing a couple of hundred bucks at marketing here and there maybe they'll do a super small newspaper ad or they'll boost a post on Facebook for 20 bucks or 50 bucks every now and then and if someone asks them, hey, how's your marketing going?

Tim Chermak:
They'll say, oh yeah, it's fine. I definitely spend a little bit on marketing every month, but I'm still trying to find what works. And at the end of the year, if you add everything up, maybe they spent two or $3,000 and it's like, well, it's not surprising then that those agents are struggling because you have on the other side, people like you, who very aggressively invested in building your brand and generating leads. And it's like, well, that's why you grew from less than a million in production to over three million over 12 million. And now you have a team that you said, did what? 15 or 16 million?

Patrick:
16 million. Yeah.

Tim Chermak:
16 million. And you're only in your fourth year, really as a full time agent, it's not a coincidence that your business has grown that much and that you've so aggressively invested in marketing. Those are not just a random coincidence and it's not just correlation, it's causation, right?

Patrick:
Yeah.

Tim Chermak:
That your business has grown because this also happened overlapped onto a pandemic crazy economy. The world shut down for six months in 2020. And for much of 2021, a lot of things were still shut down and people were fearful and afraid and all this and your business has grown throughout that. Right? So imagine where your business will be, Patrick, when the market returns to some level of normalcy. And obviously, we're in a crazy once in a lifetime seller's market right now where inventory, I mean, homes for sale are like an endangered species, right?

Tim Chermak:
There is just no inventory on the market. There's more licensed realtors out there than there are homes for sale. So imagine how much your business is going to grow now that you've planted all these seeds and have a retargeting list of 10,000 plus people and thousands and thousands of people in your database, imagine how much your business is going to grow when you can actually start finding homes for all these people. Because right now, I haven't even asked you this, but I'm assuming you probably have a ton of buyers you're looking for where it's like, hey, we just can't find them a house because there's nothing for sale.

Patrick:
Yeah, definitely.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. And yet you still manage to sell $12 million personally last year despite that. Right?

Patrick:
We're a heavy buyer too. We're probably 75%, 80% of our sales we're buyers and not listings.

Tim Chermak:
So yeah. I mean, so imagine where your business is going to be dude, when the market... Like I'm not saying it'll become a buyer's market, but if it even becomes just a little bit more balanced where it can still be a strong seller's market, but it'll be a strong-

Patrick:
A little easier.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. Like a strong seller's market and not a once in a lifetime low inventory market. I was just telling another realtor, Beth Lynn in Georgia, that I'm like 30 years old and it's very possible. I'm not making a prediction because obviously anything can happen. But it's very possible that if I live another 50 to 60 years to the average American age, that we will never see a market with as low inventory as we have this last year, it might never happen again in the next 50 years.

Tim Chermak:
So I think people maybe don't realize the extent to which we're in a low inventory market. This is not normal, right? If you've been a realtor for any less than 15 years, you don't even remember the last great recession and the mortgage meltdown in oh 708, right? What we're going through right now with this basically there's just no homes for sale, right? This is not normal. So when things kind of thaw out and more inventory comes on the market and the builders can catch up and provide more new homes for sale and all the supply chains and timber from Canada comes down and all the building materials catch up. Right? You are going to absolutely crush it. If you sold 12 million in the midst of all that, and you somehow figured out how to get it done, imagine what it'll be like when you have all your buyers and you can actually find them a home they're looking for at a price point, they're willing to pay like, dude, you're probably going to be at 20, 30 million.

Patrick:
Yeah. And it was even exciting about that, it was just going back to that 10% of it as you grow, as things go well, and your GCI increases just the thought of having a 50% bigger marketing budget and then the thought of just what that can do. And it's just if it's a big rabbit hole, you can go down of excitement, but just got to stay where you're at and it can be definitely exciting.

Tim Chermak:
Who have been some of the most inspiring or encouraging agents to you, Patrick, in the Platform? Because now you've been in Platform, you've been implementing this strategy for more than three years. I'm assuming you've gotten to meet a lot of the agents in person. How many masterminds have you attended now?

Patrick:
Three. Yeah. I started in San Antonio, Minneapolis, and Naples. So three.

Tim Chermak:
Okay. So you've been to three different Platform masterminds. So I'm assuming that you've met a lot of agents. Are there any that stand out, are there two or three or four agents that when I ask the question of like, who are the most influential or encouraging agents to you, who would you name off the top of your head?

Patrick:
Yeah. So definitely be the Remys. Just how they build their have built their business is what I'm modeling mine after. Justin Willer, you got Shane and Aaron in Phoenix just because they're right up there I see them often and talk to them often and Angela up in Boise trying to figure out how she got all those listings this year. Because as I said earlier, in light on listings, so I'm talking to Angela, trying to be more creative, I actually talked to her a couple of days ago and help me as a creative idea.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah, Angela is absolutely killing it. I actually spent a couple days at her house with her and Justin last summer because we were up in Boise training actually a new Platform employee. So we just figured, hey, let's take a summer road trip, drive up there because our new employee lives in the Boise area. And it was actually someone that Angela had helped buy a house. So it was one of Angela's clients and we hired them for Platform to join our team. So we drove out there, me and my wife, and Bella, and when Angela found out we were going out there she was like, oh yeah, cool, you can stay at our house. So I got to actually hang out with Angela for a couple of days. And while Bella was doing the training with the new employee, I kind of just hung out with Angela for a couple of days.

Tim Chermak:
We filmed some videos, launched a bunch of ads together and she's absolutely killing it, dude. I think her GCI is going to be... I think it was like close to 300 last year. And who knows what it'll be this year? Because she's in that same deal where yeah, she got some listings, but she's also like there're tons of buyers that she could have helped, but just you can't always find a house for them when we're in this low inventory market. So I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if she cracks $500,000 in GCI at some point in the next couple of years when things kind of normalize a little bit, but she is really good at create that extra element of creativity into videos where it's like, hey, I'm not just going to film a boring walkthrough video tour. I'm going to find some way to make this a creative video that people comment on and share and have fun with.

Patrick:
Yeah, it's not like Platform tells me I got to do a listing video so I'm just going to go through the motions and just talk about this house. And she actually puts it in effort and makes it interesting. And then I'm sure sellers call her and say, hey, I want you to do something interesting for my house. And so I'm sure that snowballed for her.

Tim Chermak:
Yep. Yep. So when you look across the rest of the videos or content that people in the Platform have done, whether it came from the Remys or Justin Willer or Angela or whomever, right? Are there any ads that you've seen other agents do or videos where you remembered and you're like, oh that one was really good. I have to do that. Are there any videos or ads that other people have done that inspired you= that you remember?

Patrick:
Man, I steal so many ads from Platformers that I almost feel guilty. I follow everybody. I go through their pages and someone has a good idea. And I said, I'm stealing that one. Hey Andrew, I'm sending you a picture. Here's the link to so and so's page, this is the ad we're doing. I think recently I just ripped one off or borrowed stole from was-

Tim Chermak:
Was inspired by.

Patrick:
Inspired by, there you go. Oh man, what's his name? Lincoln or in Nebraska?

Tim Chermak:
Bill Catlett.

Patrick:
Bill Catlett. He had a seller that was going to sell his house and he said, don't sell it. And he has this sold sign in a trash can. And I was like, totally relatable. Shot a picture similar, but different, told Andrew to run it. And it's doing great. People are like, I'm so happy that I've found you as real estate agent. You're honest and you're trustworthy and all that stuff. And it's doing pretty good. Yeah.

Tim Chermak:
Bill Catlett is one of my all-time just favorite people, whether he was even a Platform realtor or not, he's a super cool dude once you get to know him. He used to tour the country actually in a band.

Patrick:
Yeah.

Tim Chermak:
And he's like super musical. He does some music videos where he actually writes custom songs for some of the listings and then actually plays instruments in the songs and sings and records it in an actual professional recording studio. But he's just a super genuine guy. He's a cool dude. So yeah, I think that's actually one of my favorite elements of the Platform business model is that because we only work with one agent per market, when someone comes out with a new idea, it's like open season. It's like, yeah, cool, copy that idea, implement it in your market because that's the whole point of Platform only working with one realtor per market is that if someone in Phoenix has a super creative idea for a retargeting video or for an ad, like cool, copy it and do it in Tucson because there's no one who's your competition who's going to be doing that ad in Tucson.

Tim Chermak:
Or if someone in St. Louis or the Remys are in a McKinney, Texas, or Angela is up in treasure Valley, Idaho. I mean people across the country, it's like if you see anyone who has a good idea, it's like cool, copy it and make it your own and make it relevant for your market. And then you run the ad and you don't have to feel bad about it because that's the whole point of the Platform family, right? It's this collective marketing brain.

Patrick:
No one in your audience is going to know and it's not going to have any negative effect on the agent that you stole it from. And so it's just everyone helping each other.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. Because in the future, you will probably come up at some point with some super cool original ad idea where you and Madison are brainstorming and you just strike gold and you think of this awesome ad. And then other people will probably want to run that ad in their market too and customize it for them. So I mean, eventually it all comes back and everyone is contributing. So yeah, I think that is one of the most underrated parts of the Platform experience is that it's not just the ads that you come up with for your market. It's like having access to basically the creativity. I think Platform is at about 170 agents as of this recording. Maybe people are listening to it in the future and we have a little bit more than that. But right now, as of this recording in January 2022 Platform has about 170 agents across the country that work with us.

Tim Chermak:
And so when you join Platform, you're essentially getting access to the creativity of all those 170 agents. But because we're only working with you in your market, you can run all the ads they come up with and just make it relevant for your market. There's no other marketing companies that do that because all the other ones, whether it's Ylopo, BoomTown Sync or obviously Zillow, realtor.com, they're going to take as many clients as they possibly can. Like if you have a credit card and you can fog a mirror, they will let you sign up for their service. So they'll take 50 people in the Tucson market if there's 50 people that are willing to pay. Right?

Tim Chermak:
But yeah, obviously Patrick here is our only realtor that we work with in the Tucson area. And by the way, dude, we get inquiries in Tucson all the time. I don't know what it is. There's just some markets that seem to get more requests than other ones. So maybe it's actually that a lot of realtors are following your marketing. And then they find out through the rabbit hole somehow that you're working with Platform. But we actually get a lot of realtors who inquire about Tucson.

Patrick:
I tell people when they ask me do you work with someone that helps you with your social media? I'm like, oh yeah, I work for Platform, why? Because you ain't getting it. Yeah. Or you want to, but it's mine.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. Well that may be it. Because we do get a lot of random people and leads that are inquiring about Tucson. So that's cool. Yeah. So what is your goal for 2022?

Patrick:
It may sound crazy, but our goal is 50 million for a team.

Tim Chermak:
Wow. And you said it's you and how many agents?

Patrick:
So right now it's me and two other agents.

Tim Chermak:
Okay.

Patrick:
I have a transaction coordinator. I hired a marketing coordinator. So I wouldn't say give me excuses of not shooting videos. His sole job is to go out and shoot videos.

Tim Chermak:
Oh, cool. Cool.

Patrick:
And then I just hired someone else, but we also landed a pretty big investor who's buying houses here in the Tucson area. So that's why the number's a little bit higher, but we found that investor probably through Platform. So yeah. Add that to the fuzzy ROI.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. I was going to say, you said probably so that immediately makes me think of this phrase fuzzy ROI that we use a lot. I mean, actually Patrick, I'll just ask you, how would you define fuzzy ROI? In your own experience in the last three plus years, you've been a Platform. When I say, hey, define fuzzy ROI. What does that mean to you?

Patrick:
Anything that comes from your brand, just straight and simple. Just anything that you've done that probably created it. Did I get a referral? Yes. How did this referral remember me? Well, they probably see my Facebook stuff, so they remember who I was. Because I didn't call them. I didn't send them emails. I didn't stop by like I should, as some agents say, but they still remember me two years later. So that's probably fuzzy ROI from Facebook.

Tim Chermak:
So it's just people that see your ads enough that when they are ready to go and the time is right, it's like, oh that's right. Well, I've always liked seeing Patrick Chamberlain's stuff on Instagram or on Facebook. I'm going to give them a call.

Patrick:
Yeah. Just staying top of mind.

Tim Chermak:
But even if you've never even talked to them.

Patrick:
Yeah. Yeah. People say like, oh, people always talk to me office about how they stay in touch with their past clients. My transaction coordinator is also our team manager and he's like 65, 66, old school business. And he always tells me that you need to spend more time with your past clients. I'm like, yeah that may be true, but it's working. So just make these ads, they see the ads, you stay top of mind and they know you're a real estate agent and they'll call you when they know somebody. It's a super non-aggressive just laid back approach to handling your past clients.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. I think a lot of agents were taught in the last 10 years specifically with email auto responders and drip, because those weren't really technically possible 15 years ago, there wasn't a lot of marketing companies that even had software that allowed you to do that. But about 10 years ago, all that changed and it really popped up where email drips and auto responders became a thing. And so agents, I mean they frankly abused it like every other industry did. I shouldn't say that real estate agents specifically abused it, but all companies realized holy shit, we can email people every day and it'll basically be popping up at their inbox every day. And it was like, imagine if you could send direct mail that popped up in someone's physical mailbox and they got a letter from you every day, it's like, well, that would be super-duper expensive because postage costs money.

Tim Chermak:
But they just figured, well, email is free. So let's just email people all the time. And I've even seen marketers give speeches where they call it the 10 days of pain. Yes. And it's like 10 drips in a row or sometimes multiple emails a day for 10 days in a row. And what happened as a natural consequence of that is a lot of the email programs out there, whether it's Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook, I mean basically all of them got their spam filters became very, very fine-tuned in the last two years to where you have something with your IP that's called the sender reputation. Right? And if people aren't regularly opening your emails, but also replying to them. So that's another thing that I think a lot of people don't realize is factored into that sender reputation.

Tim Chermak:
If all that ever happens is someone opens your email, but then immediately deletes it, that hurts your sender reputation over time. Because if there's not actual conversations happening, in other words, it's not a real human who's emailing and you're getting into a conversation, those IP's eventually pick up on that and they realize like, oh this is just marketing spam. Like, no one's actually ever replying. There's not a human here, they're just blasting out marketing emails. And so eventually your emails will start going straight to people's spam. Right?

Patrick:
Yeah.

Tim Chermak:
Which would be the equivalent of sending physical direct mail and the post office driver, even though you paid for it, just delivers it right into the garbage because the person never even got a chance to see it. Right?

Patrick:
Yeah.

Tim Chermak:
And so I think as marketers, as real estate agents, we just abused this privilege we had over the last 10 years of emailing too often, but now we have a new opportunity and that's retargeting ads. Like retargeting ads are the new email.

Patrick:
That's right.

Tim Chermak:
Like staying top of mind never went away as a strategy, that never faded in importance. It's still just as important, it's probably more important now than ever to stay top of mind with your leads because now people are being bombarded with so many advertisements on so many different new media channels, right? It's probably more important now than ever of staying top of mind, but you don't do that by sending out hundreds and hundreds of spam drip emails or autoresponder emails. What you do is you run retargeting ads because when a retargeting ad pops up in someone's Insta or their Facebook newsfeed, if you do it right. You know, and this is kind of the whole point of the Platform strategy is you make ads that don't look like ads.

Tim Chermak:
Because if that pops up in someone's newsfeed and it's so casual and it doesn't even necessarily have anything to do with you being a realtor or a new listing or something like that, but they don't even realize it's an ad, then by definition, they don't realize they're being advertised to so you have this miracle of staying top of mind without annoying people. Because with past email drips and email marketing, there was a cost and a benefit, right? The benefit was you stayed top of mind for a split second when they saw that email in their inbox. But the cost was you annoyed them a little bit. Yeah.

Patrick:
I think that really changed how our clients look at us as well. Because not only did we abuse the system and the system change to push us towards that is that everyone's BS radar is super high these days. And so you have to be explain under the radar with these ads that don't look like ads. I've had people think that we're Facebook friends because they saw my ads and they didn't know it was an ad.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah.

Patrick:
We're Facebook friends and I'm like, no we're not.

Tim Chermak:
Exactly. You're not actually Facebook friends with them, they've just been seeing your post so long from your business page. What's the name of your page? Patrick Chamberlain, what?

Patrick:
Oh, Continental Realty Team is our Facebook page.

Tim Chermak:
Okay. But they see you so much that they actually think-

Patrick:
It's me.

Tim Chermak:
They actually think that you're Facebook friends. When in reality, they've just been seeing a ton of your retargeting ad campaigns.

Patrick:
Yeah. At least talking about these ads that don't look like ads, one of our best photo ads was a picture of me and my wife when my wife was pregnant and we just said, hey, what's your best parenting advice? What kind of ad from a real estate company is going to have that on there? Nothing about real estate, nothing, but we have like 111 comments and 25% engagement rate. And I got things in the mail from people saying congratulations. And it was definitely a good one.

Tim Chermak:
Oh, wow.

Patrick:
I should've brought that up earlier when you said what's one of the best ads.

Tim Chermak:
But yeah. Yeah. So people are actually sending you stuff and like actually giving real advice. And again, that flies under people's bullshit radar because when that pops up, it would never even occur to them that's technically a sponsored ad. Right?

Patrick:
Yeah.

Tim Chermak:
It just looks like a personal post maybe Patrick made on his Facebook profile, and if you do that enough consistently over time, people actually feel like they're getting to know you. And this seems to support my hypothesis because I'm actually going to release not really a study I guess, but I'll release a statistic next week in the Platform Facebook group that talks about, hey, one thing that a lot of people I've interviewed for the Platform podcast have in common is how long they've been with Platform. So I think people are like, oh man, like what's the secret sauce?

Tim Chermak:
What are all these people doing? Because obviously when I interview someone on the Platform marketing show, I'm not interviewing people that don't have incredible results, right? I'm obviously interviewing the most successful, amazing case studies where it's really impressive business growth where your GCI grew by a hundred thousand or 200,000 plus. Right? Where it's really inspiring. Right? Because we want to shine a spotlight on those inspiring stories to encourage everyone to stick with it. Right? And so when I was looking back at it and I was trying to think what do all these people have in common, right? Is there something that they're doing that other people aren't? And I just realized like, oh, it's now January 2022, again, as we're recording this. But one thing almost everyone has in common that I've interviewed is they signed up for Platform in 2019 or 2018. In other words, they've been with it for at least two years.

Patrick:
It goes back to that snowball I think. It's just the fact that three years in and our snowballs are ginormous by now. And so now you've cherry picked us just because how big our business has grown from that snowball.

Tim Chermak:
I mean, because there's a ton of agents in the Platform right now. And there's probably many listening to this who are nodding their heads right no as they're hearing these words come out of my mouth that they've been with Platform for nine months or maybe even 14 months or something like that, and they've noticed some closings have trickled in that maybe they otherwise wouldn't have gotten, but their business hasn't really blown up yet. And so I'm talking to you specifically right now, if that describes you, that you're not doing anything wrong, as long as you're filming your videos and you're following up with leads and you're creating new content every week, you're not doing anything wrong if your business hasn't yet blown up. What everyone has in common who's been interviewed on the Platform podcast who has an awesome success story is probably that they've just been doing it longer than you have.

Tim Chermak:
So they've rolled that snowball bigger than you've rolled it because they have an extra year of retargeting their leads and building the database so, of course, their business has grown more, right? Because if I would've interviewed you in your very first year when you'd only been doing Platform for 12 months, it would've been like, oh cool. Well, yeah, platform helped me grow from 800,000 in volume to three point something million, and that's like still pretty impressive, right?

Patrick:
Yeah.

Tim Chermak:
But it's not earth-shattering life-changing. I grew from 800,000 to three million, but the second year is also still pretty impressive. You grew from that and you grew from three million to five million, but in the third year it was like everything came together converged into this perfect storm of like, hey, I went to 12 million in personal production.

Patrick:
What's interesting is, so it took me six months to get that first real Platform deal. But then once I started growing my team and I started giving the Platform leads to my team, I saw that six month again was that once I hired them, once they got to that six month spot, they're busier than busier right now, just because of that six months. And now I understand that whenever I get someone onto this lead program is that six months is going to be when they're going to be going. It's just crazy how it keeps repeating. That was one of the fun things I was at Naples Mastermind just meeting all these new people and just thinking who's going to stick it out for two years and be the top dog in the room in two years from now.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's actually something that's something that I talked about at the Mastermind in my final talk at the most recent Platform mastermind is you need to relearn the concept of time. Start to think of time as an ingredient and not a metric. Time is not a neutral metric where... We don't think of time as just a metric like we think of GCI as a metric or your production volume as a metric or the number of sides close as a metric, right? Time is not this neutral metric of way just of measuring how long you've been doing something. Time is actually an active ingredient, right? Because if someone has been doing this for 18 months let's say, they're going to have way better results than someone who's only been doing it for six months, even if they spent the same amount of money as the person doing it in six months.

Patrick:
Yeah.

Tim Chermak:
So if you took, let's say that in six months you spent $5,000 on ads or something like that, right? If you spread out that $5,000 over 18 months, that's not ideal, obviously, because then you're not nearly spending enough money on ads if all that you spent on ads was five grand over 18 months. But I can almost guarantee you that the person who spread it out over 18 months would have way better results than the person who spent five grand in six months only because they have an extra 12 months to see all the ROI role in from those early investments. Right? So time is an ingredient, it's not just a metric.

Patrick:
Yeah. I think a lot of it has to do with just the type of leads that we get with the Platform strategy is the fact that all, most of our leads are four to six months out. Some of them are six to 12 months out. And so just naturally as you get farther away from the starting point, more and more of the leads that opted in four, eight, 12 months ago are now ready to go.

Tim Chermak:
The high hanging fruit starts falling.

Patrick:
High hanging fruits, the longer you're in it, the higher up to drew you're picking, everything becomes business.

Tim Chermak:
Yep. The longer you stick with it, the more results you're going to get. That was the big light bulb moment I had when I looked back at all the people I've interviewed on the podcast. I mean, I've interviewed Heather and Justin Willer and Veronica Bradley and Karen Hall and you, and recently I interviewed Karen [inaudible 00:56:31] I think has been with us now for like five years. Diane Thug's been with us for over five years. Someone recently I interviewed, who's been with us for six years. I mean there's six years, yeah. I can't even keep everyone straight, but that's what they all have in common, right? Is no one that I've interviewed who has this incredible story of like, hey, I added $200,000 to my GCI. No one who has those stories has only been with Platform for nine months.

Tim Chermak:
Because it frankly just takes longer than nine months if you really want to see those life-changing results, it typically happens in your second year and in your third year. Right? Of course, we're not saying that you'll lose money up until the second year, that you'll lose money up until the third year, but the real big time results where you see people who talk about adding a hundred grand or 150 grand or 250 grand to their GCI more from when they started. Right? That's not happening in your very first nine months of Platform. Right? Those are typically people that have been with it for two years or even three years like you. Because if your personal production was, you said 12 million, what was your GCI then in 2021?

Patrick:
So 12 million would be 400,000-ish.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah, exactly. That's what I call life-changing money. If you go from 400,000 to before you started, you were probably making a hundred thousand or less.

Patrick:
Yeah.

Tim Chermak:
So I mean now literally in one year you made the equivalent of four years worth of income in one year. That's the kind of thing that actually changes you and your family's financial future, right?

Patrick:
My wife's literally able to be a stay at home mom from the success of what the brand has done for me.

Tim Chermak:
That's that's super cool, man. Well, I think this is a perfect time to end the interview because that's really encouraging. I kind of feel inspired just listening to you talk about that right now. So Patrick, thank you for your time. I know that obviously you're busy if you're growing a team and they did 16 million last year and the goal is nearly 50 million this year. You're obviously a busy dude so your time is very valuable. So thank you for investing your time in recording this podcast episode with me.

Patrick:
Of course.

Tim Chermak:
For all of you guys listening, I hope this episode was super valuable to you. Patrick, would you be willing to just real quick share your cell phone number in case anyone has any questions? If they want to pick your brain on anything, what's your cell phone number in case people want to get ahold of you?

Patrick:
Yeah. Anyone can call me on 520-345-4947. Call and text me any questions you got for real estate

Tim Chermak:
Or if you know anyone who's moving the Tucson and needs an awesome realtor.

Patrick:
Hey, I love referrals. Don't we all?

Tim Chermak:
So cool. All right. Thanks, Patrick. Guys, thank you for listening and we'll see you on the next episode of the Platform Marketing Show.