What Finally Worked After Wasting Money On Radio, TV, And Direct Mail

Dan Whitacre: I just listed and sold, got both sides of the highest home sale in Winchester City history directly from a Platform video. I listed a home for $1.49 million in Winchester, shot a video, wore a tuxedo, said, “Hey.” I had to class it up, gave a tour. I think it's important, with the video, I just use, literally, cell phone, no microphone. Some people are way better. I see other PlatFam’s videos, I'm like, “Man, that guy's real good,” but just do it. People don't care. They just want to see me or see the house. 

Tim Chermak: This is The Platform Marketing Show, where we interview the most creative and ambitious real estate agents in the country, dissect their local marketing strategy, and get the behind the scenes scoop on how they're generating listing leads and warm referrals. We'll dive into the specifics of what marketing campaigns are working for them, how much they're spending on those campaigns, and figure out how they have perfected what we call The Platform Marketing Strategy. This is your host, Tim Chermak. I'm the founder and CEO of Platform. I love marketing and I talk too much, so let's dive in.  

Tim Chermak: Hey guys, it's Tim Chermak. Welcome back to another episode of The Platform Marketing Show. I'm here today with Dan Whitacre. Dan is real estate agent in Winchester, Virginia. Dan, welcome to the show. 

Dan Whitacre: Thanks for having me, Tim. Excited. 

Tim Chermak: Dan has a pretty interesting perspective to his Platform story of how he came to work with the Platform marketing program. Often, when you hear marketing companies talk about their success stories and case studies, it's someone who wasn't very successful and then they tried insert-name-of-marketing-program, and then their business became successful. It's this rags to riches narrative. Dan, however, was already an incredibly successful agent before he ever signed up for the Platform marketing program. 

Tim Chermak: Dan, I know you got licensed in 2014. As of this recording, you've been a realtor in Winchester for eight years, coming up on nine years. Before you ever took the plunge with Platform marketing, you already were selling over $20 million a year. You were already at the point that I think most agents hope they get to someday, that's their long term goal, is, “I'd love to sell $15 million, $20 million.” You had already surpassed that. Actually, my first question for you is, when you were already that successful, why did you even feel the need to sign up for a new marketing strategy? 

Dan Whitacre: Sure. Great question. Thanks for having me. I was busting my ass doing $20 million. On Facebook, and this guy's videos kept popping up all the time. He's in a different market than me, a couple of counties over. We got Ryan Clegg, and his videos would pop up. I just thought, “Man, those are great videos. It's super cool.” I picked up the phone and called him and said, “Clegg, it's Dan Whitacre. We have some mutual friends. I'm over in Winchester. You're in Loudoun County, 45 minutes away. Our markets don't really interact that much. I'd love to take you to lunch and pick your brain on what you're doing. I love your marketing.” 

Dan Whitacre: We grabbed lunch. He was happy to do it and said, “Man, I use this company, Platform. They're fantastic, make everything simple,” gave me I think Andrew's information at that time, reached out to him, got the spiel. One thing I liked, everything was upfront. It was, “Hey, this is the cost. Here's what you do. We ask for,” I forget how long the obligation was at that point. I said, “Sure, I'm all in. Let's do it.” It's been great for me. I swear by it. 

Tim Chermak: Now, that was over two and a half years ago. You're actually coming up on three full years with Platform. What has happened to your business since then? What's the before and after growth of whether it's how many transactions or sales volume? 

Dan Whitacre: Sure. I think Platform’s not fully to credit. The booming real estate market of 2020 and 2021 certainly helped. Before, I was doing $20 million, did about in 2019, look at a number, 69 units, $22 million. In 2020, after joining Platform, that number grew to $30 million with 96 units, and then 2021 up to $32.2 million. I tried everything. I guess six years prior to joining Platform, I did direct mail, radio, TV, everything. I was always a strong proponent of Facebook, but managed it myself. I hadn't shot video, but I would post, “Just sold. Just listed,” like everybody else and get 17 likes. That was it. Platform energized that and showed me how to properly market on Facebook. 

Tim Chermak: You did grow from $20 million to $30 million. Technically, that's an increase of 50%. We want to emphasize here that you already had a really, really successful business. It was building off of a very, very strong foundation that you had built before you ever signed up for the Platform marketing program. As you were saying all that, the first question that immediately jumps out that I'm sure everyone's thinking in their minds right now who's listening to this podcast episode is, “Wait, you did basically 70 transactions by yourself? How did you do that? What is the time management, work-life balance look like? Do you have a big team behind you? Do you have a full-time executive assistant? How are you handling 70 transactions a year?” 

Tim Chermak: We were talking before the show, your average price point is just shy of half a million. It's not like you sold $30 million because every property you sell is $1.2 million or something like that. You're still in that general middle class, or maybe we should say upper middle class, price point where a lot of the homes are $400,000, $500,000, $550,000. They're not incredibly expensive homes. To do that level of volume, you have to be selling 70+ homes a year. How do you find time to do that as an individual agent? 

Dan Whitacre: Sure. Great question. I personally am anti-team. I know there's a lot of teams out there and it works for some people. That's fantastic. I take the approach, when people call Dan Whitacre, call me, they want to work with me. They don't want to work with the buyer's agent. They don't want to be passed off to someone else. 

Dan Whitacre: That happened to me early on in my career. I sent a buyer to a lender who I really liked and respected. Next thing I know, they were working with somebody else on his team. I really didn't like that. I operate as an individual agent. I am a part owner of our brokerage, which Colony Realty, we're kind of a boutique firm, about 18 agents. We've been around since 1963. Next year will be 60 years. 

Dan Whitacre: Where was I going with that? I have an assistant. She is full time. However, I split her with two other agents in my office. I'm a big proponent of, it doesn't matter how much money you make, it's how much money you keep. That's the other issue. I've seen on, I don't know if it was on the PlatFam page or something else, but an agent said, “Hey, the market slowed. I've got $16,000 a month in overhead.” I'm thinking, “How in the hell do you have $16,000 a month in overhead?” 

Dan Whitacre: I do it all by myself. I have a full-time assistant who's fantastic. She works remotely since COVID. She used to sit in my office with me, but I also went to two other agents in my office and said, “Hey, would you guys benefit from an assistant?” I think I hired an assistant in 2018, probably, 2017 or 2018. That was a big leap to do, to say, “Okay, now I'm gonna have a salaried employee I'm responsible for.”

Tim Chermak: Dan, when you say assistant, sorry for interrupting you, do you mean a TC, a transaction coordinator? How do you define what the job role is or job description for that assistant? 

Dan Whitacre: That's another issue I have. 

Tim Chermak: Are they licensed? Are they showing homes? 

Dan Whitacre: No, she is not licensed. Some of these agents have transaction coordinator and a settlement coordinator and input listing coordinator. 

Tim Chermak: Lots of complexity. 

Dan Whitacre: Yeah. I have an assistant, Shannon, and she inputs all my listings, she handles all the paperwork, getting it into paperless pipeline and the drop box, etc. She orders termite inspection and makes sure the attorney's office has the contracts. She's handling all of that. She's very efficient, as am I. We are great with time. She's done that for two other agents. One who's probably doing $10 million, the other's probably doing $15 million. We split her salary, which is $45,000 a year. 

Tim Chermak: Okay, so that was actually gonna be my next question, is how much is this person paid? Okay, it sounds like you're paying about $45,000 a year for this position, so not super duper expensive. It's not like your assistant is a $100,000-a-year employee or something. You're probably getting about 15 hours a week of their time, give or take? 10 hours a week? 

Dan Whitacre: That's the nicest thing, she is full time. She's 9:00-5:00, Monday through Friday, but she costs me $15,000 a year because I'm splitting that with two other agents. We each pay a third, a third, a third. I have a full-time agent and there's some days she probably doesn't have anything to do for me. Other days, she's hustling. She's great. Also, if I call her on the weekend to write a contract, I've told her, “Look. Anytime I call you on the weekend, I'll give you $100 bill.” I try not to call her, but she's willing to, “Hey, I'm out showing property. I need you to write up this contract,” takes her 20 minutes to write a contract. 

Tim Chermak: Is that sarcastic or you’re actually serious? If you ever call her on the weekend, you give her $100? 

Dan Whitacre: No, if I call her on the weekend, because she's Monday through Friday, 9:00-5:00. She said, “I don't mind. I don't mind at all. I can do it. I'm just at home.” I'm like, “No. If I call you, you're getting $100.” 

Tim Chermak: That's actually a really interesting mental model of, “Hey. If I ever call you on the weekend, it must be that important or I'm willing to pay you $100 just to take the call.” That obviously also is self regulation for you so you're not just going to blow her up on a Saturday night or Sunday night with something that could totally wait until Monday morning, unless it truly is important. 

Tim Chermak: I actually did something similar in my personal life a couple years ago, where I realized, “I think I'm flying too much to go to conferences and random seminars and random business meetings just to feel like I'm doing something.” I felt like I was traveling too much for business and I was rationalizing it. I'm like, “It's to grow the business. I have to attend this marketing conference or that Mastermind or whatever.” I realized, “How might I make different decisions if I just tell myself from now on, I will not travel anywhere unless I buy a first class ticket?” It wasn't even as much about, “I want to travel first class.” Who wouldn't? 

Tim Chermak: A first class ticket now often costs $1,000, sometimes more, depending on where you're flying. A normal ticket might cost $500, something like that. If I'm looking at attending an event, I look at the cost of the event, the hotels, whatever, and then I look at, “Am I also willing to spend, let's say, $1,200 on a first class round trip ticket?” If I'm not, that's totally fine, then I just won't go. That's my litmus test of, “If I'm not willing to spend the money on first class airfare, this event clearly is not that important to me.” If an extra $600 or $700 or $800 makes me not wanna go, that event probably actually isn't that important to go to. If it is important, then I won't think twice about spending $1,200 or $1,500 on airfare because maybe the event could help our business grow by $100,000. It's a useful litmus test. It sounds like you're using that same psychology with this rule of your assistant of, “If I ever call you, I'm going to give you $100 so that you know I'm not wasting your time.” 

Dan Whitacre: Same deal. Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes, “I've got time. I can get home, write that contract” Especially during the craziness of the market in 2020, 2021, sometimes I needed to get that offer in and I still have appointments after that on Saturday, so I pick up the phone. I think I called her twice one Saturday and so it's $200. We get one of those contracts. That's the thing, in our industry, $100 is nothing. We make so much money. Even a $300,000 house, if she writes up that contract, takes her 20 minutes, costs me $100, and we get that contract, that's a $7,000 to $9,000 commission. What's $100? 

Tim Chermak: Yep. What do you do in terms of the client experience, Dan? I know there's some agents now that are hiring showing assistants and they hire this out to a contractor and that out to a contractor. Are you doing everything from you actually go on showings with your clients to you attend the closings to you're doing everything yourself? 

Dan Whitacre: I do it all myself. That's the point. The team members out there may say, “You're an idiot. You're working too much.” I'm always on my phone. I answer my phone, call people back. I attend all the showings. I'm there at closing. If I'm on the listing side and there's a septic inspection or I meet the appraiser at the home and butter them up and make sure the appraisal comes in okay. Yeah, I'm one stop shop. They only talk to me, deal with me. 

Dan Whitacre: Shannon, my assistant, they may get emails from her. She also has my Gmail information. Sometimes, she'll send emails directly from my account, looks like it's coming from me, depends on what it is. It's also nice if I'm driving down the road, “Hey, Shannon. Email Tim. Tell him, ‘Hey, please find attached a copy of the listing agreement,’” or what have you. 

Tim Chermak: I think some agents, it seems like they're getting a little carried away with trying to outsource so many parts of the job. I think you worded it perfectly when you said, “Hey, if someone sees my ads, and it's advertising Dan Whitacre and I'm in all the ads, and then someone calls and inquires, and then they end up meeting with some other agent or some other person comes and shows them a house or some other person comes over for the listing appointment or whatever, but they wanted to meet and work with Dan Whitacre.” That's the ad they saw. It's a little bit of a surprise when they respond to an ad that was all about Dan Whitacre and then some random person shows up to do the listing appointment or to show them a house. I think there really is something to what you're saying that you should be the agent. 

Dan Whitacre: I agree with that. Also, I love money. If somebody else is showing that home, I have to pay them. I have to split the commission with them. I think in our industry, if I were an agent the past couple of years, or I was an agent, but I want to eat everything I can. I want to get as many transactions as possible because I know it ain't always going to be like it was this past couple of years. 

Dan Whitacre: I think if you have a large team and they're saying, “I've got to give this person this buyer lead, this person this buyer lead. I've got to pay my settlement coordinator and my transaction coordinator,” it's just money out of your pocket. I think if you can streamline it in how to find one great assistant and maybe split the person with other agents, it's just more money in your pocket. That goes back to the you can make a million dollars a year, but if you're only bringing home $250,000, who cares? 

Tim Chermak: Yeah, it really does always come back to what's your net. Who cares about your gross, what's your actual net take home? If someone can build a team, and their team structure is really efficient, and it allows them to actually net more per hour with their time, and by all means, go do that. 

Tim Chermak: We've had some interviews on this podcast with people who have really successful, efficient teams. It has increased their net and their lifestyle is better for it because they built out a brand and a team. There's a lot of other people where the opposite is true because of how they were doing it. They're way better off solo and their take home pay is much higher because they're not overloaded with all this overhead and expenses. 

Tim Chermak: The other thing is, when you build out a team, you've got to really crank up your marketing budget. I don't know why you would ever build a team and not supply them with leads. You have to spend more on lead generation marketing, not just for you, your own production, but also to feed the team. Very quickly, the overhead starts to become a pretty big deal if you go that route of growing wide, but not deep. 

Tim Chermak: I just saw in the news a couple of weeks ago that Elon Musk buying Twitter has laid off, whatever, 3,000 employees. I think it's being overblown in the media. Lots of tech companies are announcing big layoffs right now because the overall tech sector is obviously not doing super well right now. I know Facebook made, as announced, they're about to lay off 15% of the workforce. To put that into perspective, Facebook's free cashflow is, I think, $7 billion a quarter. They're making nearly $30 billion a year of straight net profit. Now, much of that is being plowed back into R&D for this metaverse stuff that who knows if that'll ever turn out.

Tim Chermak: It's like Amazon back in the day where everyone thought Amazon wasn't making a lot of money. “Why is their stock price so high? I'm not seeing any dividends paid out. There's no net profits.” Amazon, for a long time, has been very profitable. They plowed so much money back into R&D and growth that, on paper, they weren't showing a big profit. If they ever just made the decision to, “Hey, let's slow that down for a quarter,” they would have crazy profit. That's like Facebook right now. They actually have incredibly, incredibly healthy profits, they're just putting it all into Metaverse development. Even Facebook is laying off a ton of people right now. 

Tim Chermak: I saw Salesforce is making a huge round of layoffs. Airbnb made massive cuts a couple years ago. It's really affecting all these tech companies. I say all that to say that Elon Musk comes in, lays off whatever half the staff at Twitter, it's like 3000 people gone, I think something like that, and a week later, Twitter works the same as it did last week. Nothing has changed. As a consumer, I look at, “What were all those people doing every day if you can cut 3,000 jobs and Twitter works the same as it did a couple weeks ago?” Nothing has changed. It's not like it lost any functionality. 

Tim Chermak: Apparently, they had dev teams that were working on human rights. They were human rights software developers, whatever that means. There's a ton of fat built into the payroll and it didn't affect the actual product at all. I think that's true, a lot of real estate teams. Where I'm going with that is it's very easy to have expense creep where you're like, “Let's have a TC for this,” or “Let's have a coordinator who oversees listings,” or “Let's have an ISA,” or “Let's have a full time person who does our video and photography.” All of a sudden, like you said, what started off as an innocent goal of, “Let's build, scale, and leverage our time, and build something beyond just me,” now, you have $10,000 a month of overhead or $15,000 a month of overhead, and now you have to sell a couple of homes every month just to break even. That's a crappy way to start every month psychologically, of knowing that the first $15,000 that comes in is just paying for your expenses. You've obviously gone the opposite route. 

Dan Whitacre: Keep it low. People were selling real estate before the internet and before GPS, which how they ever did that, I have no idea. This isn't rocket science. Answer your phone, call people back, and have a great marketing team, which you guys take care of. Everything else, it's just time management and I'm efficient with that. Now I say all this and I started selling real estate pre-having kids. Now, we have a two-year-old and a three-month-old. I'm sure as they grow and get involved in sports, I'm not going to want to go out on Saturdays and show property on Sundays. 

Dan Whitacre: I think another thing I have done is just refer business. If I was super busy and had a $200,000 buyer that I just truly did not have time to run around town, then I'd just give them to an agent in my office and say, “Hey. Can you help this person out? Give me a 25% referral.” I'm getting money, losing a little bit, losing 75% of that commission and getting 25%, but it's better than just turning them away. I have done that. I think that's a great way to do it. 

Tim Chermak: Prior to the Platform strategy, you said that you tried everything. You had tried direct mail, you had tried radio, even TV ads. Let's get into more specifics of that. What were the advertisements you tried? How much did you spend on those? What led you to make that evaluation of, “I tried everything and it didn't work?” 

Dan Whitacre: Sure. Let's rewind. Prior to selling real estate, I owned a sporting goods store in town for seven years, bought that business in 2007, been told to buy a business. I worked there in high school, it was called Instant Replay Sports, new and new sporting goods, heavily focused on ski and snowboard. We're a Burton dealer, North Face dealer, etc., only ski shop in town. I worked there. I went to college as a teacher for one year, said, “I don't want to do this. What the hell am I going to do next?” moved to Australia, dipped around there for a year. 

Tim Chermak: Naturally moved to Australia. 

Dan Whitacre: Me and a buddy, so that's around there. I came back and I looked around. I was like, “What am I going to do?” In our market, there's only one young guy selling real estate. All the other realtors are 60 years old. Nobody was using Facebook except for one guy in my market. I said, “Give this a try.” I met with the partners at Colony Realty, which is where I'm a partner now, John Scully and John Schroth, and they are old money guys. They've been selling real estate forever. They're 70 years old. They said, “Look, Dan. You're from here. We'll pay you a salary to start,” which is unheard of in real estate. I was broke. The store, two of the warmest winters in recorded history and lost my ass on that. I was in debt. They paid me $30,000 to get started. I was on salary for four months and said, “Look guys, I'm good. I'll go commission.” 

Dan Whitacre: Where I'm going with this is, the reason I got into this is Facebook and this realtor, Dave Spence in my market, who I would just see his, “Just sold. Just sold,” he was the only guy posting on Facebook. When I started, I said, “I want to just use Facebook.” I did that. What I was doing was, “Just sold. Just listed. Just sold another one.” I started to get organic traction and people would say, “Dan, it looks like you're doing great.” I posted the same house when it was just listed, under contract, and sold. In those days, those 42 days on market, so over a three-month period, they think it was three different homes. 

Dan Whitacre: I always said, “Facebook's great. Facebook's fantastic.” I tried doing boosting posts or what have you. I'm not a tech guy at all, I'm out selling. Facebook was good to me. I developed a decent organic audience there, had no clue what I was doing, spent some money there on boost, did direct mail. 

Dan Whitacre: My brokerage has been around for a while. They said, “You've got to mail postcards. Postcards are great.” The good thing is they pay for that. I've done postcard, direct mail. I've done those magazines that everyone does, which I think they're a big waste of money. I've done radio. In a moment of weakness, I said yes to radio. That was $800 a month. I was thinking, “Who the hell still listens to radio?” I tried that, and then did a Comcast sales rep, been hounding me for years. I did agree to do a Comcast commercial. That was, I don't know, $1,500 a month, maybe $2,000 a month for a six-month period. I'd have some people who said, “I saw your ad on TV. Your ad looked great.” I just don't think people are watching TV anymore. We don't have live TV at my home. It's very expensive to do. 

Tim Chermak: The really hard thing with radio and TV is that, unless you have a dedicated phone line number that is only for that TV ad where you're actually using a separate phone number to track any phone calls that may have come from that TV ad that's separate from the normal number that you use on your website, same thing with radio, it's notoriously hard to track. If someone contacts you, you really don't know if they saw the TV ad or the radio ad. There's no direct response mechanism built in the way that there is with a social media ad where someone messages your page, obviously, you know that came from one of your ads or else they wouldn’t have messaged your page, or if they call you and they say, “Hey, I've been following you on Facebook.” There you go, they just told you how they found out about you. 

Dan Whitacre: That's been, as far as marketing goes, I really have tried a lot of different things. Platform’s the first. I didn't do any of the other, I don't even know what else is out there, but online places. I think just bang for your buck, Platform has been a godsend. It's just mindless. I have my call with McCall every two weeks. She says, “Hey, here's what you need to do.” Now, I'll admit, I'm awful at sometimes getting my homework done, especially when you're busy, you have 15 transactions going at one time. You're like, “I'm good,” but then all of those close, and that's when I'm like, “Okay, McCall. Here's a shitload of content. Let's get out there.” It's just keeping on top of that. 

Dan Whitacre: I told McCall this story a few weeks ago. I just listed and sold, got both sides of the highest home sale in Winchester City history directly from a Platform video. I listed a home for $1.49 million in Winchester, shot a video, wore a tuxedo, said, “Hey.” I had to class it up, gave a tour. I think it's important, with the video, I just use, literally, cell phone, no microphone. Some people are way better. I see other PlatFam’s videos, I'm like, “Man, that guy's real good,” but just do it. People don't care. They just want to see me or see the house, whatever.

Dan Whitacre: Anyhow, I got a call. “Hey, we'd like to see this home.” “No problem,” showed it to him. “If you guys been looking.” “Actually, we weren't even looking. My wife saw your video on Facebook. This is perfect for us.” It was on two acres. “We want to be in the city, but have a little bit of land.” We closed, I don't know, two Fridays ago for $1.45 Million. I made $65,000.

Tim Chermak: That pays for several years of Platform. 

Dan Whitacre: Correct. The other ad, and I might be jumping ahead Tim, but I did the Fall in the Pool ad. It got 66,000 views or something crazy. I got a $1.6 million listing off of that, signed a listing agreement. We're not listing it until the spring. It's a 50-acre farm directly behind it. The lady contacted me on Facebook messenger. “Hey, I saw your video. We'd like to meet with you,” met with them a couple of times. The last time I did, the husband who's a radiologist said, “Honey. Donna, do you want to meet with anybody else? Are we going with Dan?" She said, “No, we're going with Dan.” I said, “Okay, cool. Sign right here.” I think shooting the listing tour videos, which I get a lot of listings, certainly helps. 

Tim Chermak: What have been some of your favorite retargeting ads? It sounds like doing listing videos is incredibly important to you. I always say that listing videos are the Swiss army knife of the Platform strategy because they accomplish so many things at once. You're opening your generating leads. You're building a brand at the same time. You're helping people get to know you because they actually see you on video, they hear your voice, they know what your voice sounds like. Listing videos accomplish so many things. They check so many boxes in terms of marketing. I love listing videos. We always encourage agents, “If you do nothing else, do as many listing videos as possible. That will build your brand in your community.” 

Tim Chermak: Beyond that, what are some of your favorite Platform retargeting ads that you've run over the years? I'll ask you to filter it by not just necessarily maybe what got the most clicks or likes or views or anything, but which ads have you done that got the most engagement from your actual sphere of people telling you in real life, “Hey, Dan. I saw such and such post. That was so creative,” or “That was so clever,” or “I love that video or post you did about such and such.” What are a couple of your favorite retargeting ads that people actually told you in real life that they saw them and that's how you know that it's working to keep you top of mind? 

Dan Whitacre: Sure. I think Ducks in a Row was a fantastic video. That was a great retargeted ad. Like you say, I measure it by running into people and being like, “I saw this ad.” I'm trying to remember, there have been so many of them. Recently, the Police Officer ad and the Elephant in the Room ad. I got a screenshot text message from a friend of mine, who's a local celebrity. Her college group of friends that have this text chain, and one of the girls said, “Dan Whitacre’s marketing makes me LOL.” She screenshotted it and sent it to me. I think that getting people talking about it is huge. I think Ducks in a Row, I really like the Elephant in the Room one that you guys did recently. I apologize, Tim. I'm trying to remember all the content that you guys put out. 

Tim Chermak: You actually had an ad, now that I remember, that I remember telling our team, “This ad from Dan Whitacre is one of the most successful engagement ads I've ever seen.” I think it was the one where it was three homes that sold below asking price or three homes that sold above asking price. I can't remember which one it was actually, but I remember you got a ton of engagement on this post. 

Dan Whitacre: I think I recall that. Also, I think one strategy I've had from the beginning when I started is there's a million realtors. In our association, there's 535 realtors. I told you earlier, there's 125,000 people in the area. There's a shitload of realtors. I've tried to make all my marketing very personal. The Christmas cards that we send, it's me and Marybeth and our dog, Marybeth's my wife. It used to be that. Now, it's the kids. I have people email me, “I love watching your daughters grow up.” They really just want to feel like they know you. 

Dan Whitacre: McCall has encouraged me, “Dan, post the kids. Post the wife. Post what you're doing.” I think that's one of the reasons my business has grown, is before I just posted real estate stuff. I'm not a big Facebook or Instagram poster in real life anyhow. I'm more of the one just stalks everybody else. I would strictly post, “Hey, just sold, just listed.” 

Tim Chermak: It was only ever about real estate stuff. 

Dan Whitacre: Only ever real estate. “Join me at this open house.” After joining Platform, they said, “Hey, you got to post your daughter.” I did a changing-diaper picture the other day, people just love that. It's amazing how random people will come up to you in Costco and say, “Dan, how's Eloise doing?” our two year old. “She's just so cute.” I'm like, “Lady, you're scaring me.” 

Tim Chermak: “I have no idea who you are.” 

Dan Whitacre: They want to know you as a person before doing business with you. I just try to make myself approachable. The other ones that have done great, I did one at Jiffy Sandwich Shoppe. It's a hole in the wall sandwich shop. I just said, “Hey, here's why I like coming here. Everybody knows your name. It's great place.” That got so much engagement. The owners of the business thanked me multiple times. 

Tim Chermak: It doesn't look like an ad. Those do the best because it's not just you bragging about you, it's actually you shining a spotlight on a locally owned small business. Yeah, you're in it and people see you, but the ad isn't about you. It flies under their bullshit radar that they don't realize they're being advertised to because it doesn't look like an ad. I think those are the most brilliant ads, ironically, are the ones that don't look like ads. 

Dan Whitacre: 100%. You just talked about that at last year's Mastermind. That really resonated with me. Now, I hardly post anything about, “Hey, look at this house I just listed,” or “Look at this house I just sold.” People know I sell real estate. They know that if they want to sell or buy in Winchester, call Dan Whitacre. They wanna see the kids growing up or the funny ads or whatever we're doing. I think that just makes them know me and sets me apart from the realtor down the street who's just posting, “Just listed,”or “I just sold this.” No one cares. 

Tim Chermak: Dan, you've mentioned McCall a couple of times. I know that McCall is your account manager at Platform. How does Platform's business model of having a dedicated account manager, how does that add value to you? I know that many clients have told us that was something that they didn't expect when they signed up, is that you would have a dedicated marketing manager working with you that calls you regularly. Obviously, you don't get that with any other company, with Zillow or something. There's not a marketing coach built in who holds you accountable. How has working with McCall helped you get better results above and beyond what you may have gotten on your own before, like getting to work with a Platform account manager? 

Dan Whitacre: Sure. No, that's an excellent question. One thing I'll say is from day one and up at this two and a half years, she has been my point of contact, period. That's it. You guys have not said, “She left. We're gonna put you with someone else.” As I mentioned before with the team concept, I like having that one person. We started in the beginning. We were doing weekly calls, which was fantastic. She'd say, “Hey, how are the conversations going?” which I don't follow up with the leads. I have asked the agent in my office if he wants to do that. He's doing a great job with it, but I was just simply too busy. 

Dan Whitacre: Having McCall has been awesome. Also, it does hold me accountable. It's like a business coach or what have you, where I know that every Wednesday at 10:00 A.M., I better have my homework done or McCall is gonna say, “Dan, I need this content. I need this.” Also, we bounce ideas off of each other. I've said, “Hey, I'm thinking about doing an ad like this. What do you think?” “That'd be great. If you could do it this way, why don't you do that?” or “Let me run it by the ads team, see what they think.” She's getting back to me that same day. If not, it will certainly be the next day. 

Dan Whitacre: I look forward to our bi-weekly call, and it's not long. This is not an hour-long call. Some weeks, it's ten minutes. “Hey, here's the ads we want you to run. Any questions for me?” “No, I'm good. I'm rocking. Everything good with you?” “Yep, we're fine.” It's not a meeting just for the sake of having a meeting. It's purposeful and it's ten, 15 minutes at most, and, “See you later.” 

Tim Chermak: It's like you have a personal marketing coordinator who holds you accountable. They're not just doing the ads, they're also contributing to the strategy itself. I think that's a super important part of Platform. The reason I asked that is, obviously, I know that's a super important part of Platform. I was curious how you would put that in your own words, what that relationship means to you and your business. Some of the really creative ads that we see agents come up with, it's because their account manager worked with them on one of these phone calls to ideate and develop that idea into the ad that it became. I love our team of account managers we have. I think that's a major important part of the success we see a lot of clients having. 

Tim Chermak: Dan, last question as we wrap this up. What do you typically spend on your ads? Obviously, I'm sure there's people listening that are like, “Holy cow, he's selling $20 million, $30 million a year of homes. Is he just spending $5,000 or $10,000 a month on ads?” What is your actual advertising budget look like every month with the Facebook ads? Are you currently doing any other marketing right now beyond the Platform marketing program? Are you buying leads from Zillow? Is there anything else that's part of your marketing mix? 

Dan Whitacre: Sure. My ad spend is whatever McCall tells me to spend, which I might get her in trouble because she doesn't typically tell me, “Let's add some more behind this.” I really let her do it. I think I spend $900, $1,000 bucks a month, so it's not a huge ad spend. Now, I think if I was looking to grow more, I would absolutely increase that. I'm pretty happy where I am now. There again, I really lean on her. I think you guys do a great job of not overspending. If she does say, “Hey, Dan, this ad is really performing well. Can I throw another $500 behind it?” “Sure, go for it.” 

Dan Whitacre: That's one thing I will give your company credit. I'm very pleased with the way it's not the Zillow call where, “You're paying for this zip code. This one just opened up. For only $500 more, we can get you that one.” I think McCall, my account rep does a really good job of just saying, “Hey, we started with $200 behind this, it's doing so well, let's put another $400 behind it,” or whatever. Go ahead. 

Tim Chermak: As I say, I think our business model is really important in preserving the integrity of that dialogue between you and your account manager, McCall. You know that because of our business model that if McCall tells you, “Hey, let's spend an extra $500 on this campaign because it's going really, really well,” so essentially let's pour gas on that fire, that you know that we don't benefit at all from telling you that because none of that $500 is going to us. We don't take any upcharge because you increase your ads budget. 100% of what you spend goes directly to the ads. We don't have any hidden motive to ask you to increase your ads budget other than we think it's going to help grow your business more. 

Tim Chermak: Obviously, we have flat fees every month. A very important part of that dynamic is that you know that if we give you advice, it's because we actually think it's what's best for you, not just because it helps us make more money. The way that Zillow upsells, it's because Zillow wants to make more money. 

Dan Whitacre: Correct. Previously, I paid Zillow $1,200 a month for leads and they’re garbage. I ended up making a little bit of money. I think I spent six-months contracts. $7,200 to make $9,000, it came out $1,800 bucks in the black. $1,000 a month and spend $2,500, whatever she tells me to spend, that's where I'm going. It's money well spent. 

Tim Chermak: All right, Dan, last question as we wrap this up. This has been a great interview. What encouragement or what advice would you give someone who maybe started the Platform program, let's say, six months ago, and obviously this has been a really weird year of 2022. The market nosedived in terms of transaction volume because interest rates went up and people's monthly payments on their mortgages went up so much that it spooked a lot of people out of the market. They're just scared. It's been a tough year for realtors overall, much worse than 2018, 2019. It's been hard. 

Tim Chermak: What advice, what encouragement or insight would you give to someone who may be signed up for Platform six months ago, but they haven't yet seen the results that they hear other people are having and they're just waiting like, “Hey, when am I going to get the results that I hear that other people are having?” What, maybe, perspective would you share with them as someone who's actually been working with Platform for not just three months, but three years now? 

Dan Whitacre: My advice to be, it takes time. You're really building a brand. Once you get that brand recognition, the transactions just come to you. Do the homework, produce the content, be real, don't worry about, “I feel like I sound dumb on camera,” or “I look dumb,” just put it out there, whatever it is, it can be garbage. People just wanna see you out there. Do the homework, create the content, and the brand building, your brand does take time. It's not going to be a three month or six month, but it will start to come. Just be patient, listen to the advice of Platform. Nobody told me to say that, but I just think if you do what they tell you, put out their ads, the business is going to come. 

Tim Chermak: All right. Thanks, Dan. I appreciate it. This has been a great conversation. Your business is obviously testament that something you're doing is working if you've built your business to $20 million. The last couple years, you're at $30 million of sales volume by yourself without a team. By yourself, you're selling $30 million a year of real estate in a market where your average price point is $500,000 or less. That's really, really impressive. Hope this conversation was valuable to everyone. We'll see you on the next episode of The Platform Marketing Show.