What's A "Realistic" Marketing Budget?

Jess LaCour:
The big core part of the success I have today and how I viewed real estate completely different from other agents getting into it. The marketing, number one, I viewed it as an employee basically. So it was a non-negotiable expense. And basically if I'm paying 10 grand a month to have all these different advertisements, I can look at it as just having an employee out there doing all this work for me, bringing in people.

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.

Tim Chermak:
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 this morning with Jess LaCour and it is the morning. I think Jess is recording this at 7:00 AM her time. She's in Gillette, Wyoming. But that's not actually early for Jess because Jess, what time every morning do you typically wake up and lift weights?

Jess LaCour:
At 4:00 AM.

Tim Chermak:
4:00 AM every day, no exceptions. So we will get into how impressive of a real estate agent that she is because somehow she's actually more impressive of a real estate entrepreneur than she is an exerciser. And I'm pretty sure I just made that word up. Exerciser. But she gets up at 4:00 AM every morning and lifts heavy weights. And you've been a body builder and you've competed in figure competitions, right?

Jess LaCour:
Yeah. Yep. National figure competitions. I'm married to a very famous power lifter, Blaine Sumner. When we met six years ago, both our worlds of being in the fitness industry just imploded on each other and that's the lifestyle we live outside of our work.

Tim Chermak:
So what does a typical workout look like for you when you're waking up at 4:00 AM every day? So to be clear, it's not like, oh, two days a week I wake up at 4:00 AM and lift and the other days I sleep until seven or something. It's every day 4:00 AM. I mean, I am imagining you're not working out, doing curls with pink dumbbells that are one pound dumbbells, right? What does the typical workouts look like for you? Just so people can visualize when you say that you wake up at 4:00 AM to lift, what does that mean?

Jess LaCour:
So I train like a power lifter too. And body building is just how you eat and all the posing and everything at the end. But during the off seasons, which I'm doing right now, you just lift very, very heavy. So we have the deadlift, bench and squat and those we just try to ... We have a program. Of course, Blaine writes my programs. And we just try to always lift very heavy. So when you first wake up and you go in and try to lift 200 pounds or whatever you're doing, it's a good mental space. And that's why I do it so early in the morning. So it's uninterrupted. I can just focus on it and it really sets the tone for my day.

Tim Chermak:
Awesome. So that's 4:00 AM every day. It's actually funny because I've had this thought several times because I normally wake up around 6:45, seven. That's my normal wake up time. And often once I take our dogs out and I have my morning cup of coffee, and let's say it's 7:30 at that point, I'll often look at my watch and be like, "Oh it's 7:30. So it's 5:30 AM right now in Wyoming. Jess is probably just finishing up her workout."

Jess LaCour:
You're right.

Tim Chermak:
And you've already been up at that point for 90 minutes.

Jess LaCour:
Yep. I usually am doing pretty good by then. You can test it. You can text me, I'll text you back.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. And I've actually found that it's almost impossible to get a hold of Jess at any point of the day because you're so busy, which we will get into of why that is. But it's very, very difficult to get a hold of Jess at any point in the day. But I know if I text her at 6:30 AM her time or 6:00 AM her time, she will reply. Because at that point you have the endorphin high from your workout. You've already been up for two hours.

Jess LaCour:
Life is great.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah, exactly. So that's crazy. But we will get into how this is relevant to everything. Because I think one expression I've heard you say is that how you do anything is how you do everything. And it's not a coincidence that you are the type of person, the type of achiever that wakes up at 4:00 AM every morning and lifts every day. Again, this is not a twice a week program you're on. It's every day, 4:00 AM. And you're doing hardcore workouts where you're in the gym for an hour. It's not like you're going in there and doing a 20 minute HIIT workout or something. It's full blown.

Jess LaCour:
Right. Yeah. Nothing against HITT, but yeah.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. It's full blown, full body weightlifting, compound movements, dead, squat, bench, all that good stuff and it's 4:00 AM. And that translates, I think, into how you think about not just your business but your life because when I look at what you've accomplished in your real estate career ... And anyone listening to this might have to sit down because it probably sounds like I'm about to start just making shit up here, but this is totally accurate. It sounds too good to be true, but here's Jess's actual production numbers in her real estate business.

Tim Chermak:
So she did over 200 transactions last year. She made over 1.5 million in GCI. I'll repeat that. She does not have a big team. So when I say that she did over 200 transactions last year, it's actually closer to 250 transactions. I'm not quoting, oh, Jess and her team of 12 agents. I'm saying Jess did almost 250 transactions last year. And Jess made pretty close to 1.5 million in GCI in one year. And so that sounds impossible. It sounds too good to be true. It's almost begging for an explanation of yeah but. What's the asterisk? Does she secretly have a team she's not telling us about or does she have some lead pipeline where people are just sending her deals every day from maybe some attorney relationship or a financial ... What's the thing you're not telling me about how she does that? And it's just hard work. And so one of the things we'll say right away is that probably every day ... Again, this is an average day for you, not an exceptional day, but the typical day you are probably working 12 to 14 hours. Is that accurate?

Jess LaCour:
Yeah. Yeah. That's very accurate.

Tim Chermak:
Because you're probably actually starting your workday at 7:00 AM or earlier, and you're very often working seven to 8:00 PM at night or even later.

Jess LaCour:
Yeah.

Tim Chermak:
And so it's almost a short Workday for you if you're working 12 hours a day.

Jess LaCour:
Pretty much. Yeah. I'm usually at the office by seven.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. And obviously before that, before you even get to the office, I imagine that whether it's in between sets or when you're waking up, showering, getting ready for the day, you're checking your phone or emails and that counts as work too.

Jess LaCour:
Yes.

Tim Chermak:
The average day you're probably working 12, 13, 14 hours. So in a very real sense, part of how you've accomplished this ridiculous level of production is that you're almost working twice the amount of hours in a normal day as the average person does. So the average person works, let's say an eight or nine hour day, but they're taking an hour for lunch. They take an hour or two here and there to run random personal errands or dropping their kids off at school. Random things like that. They're probably actually working somewhere like six to seven hours a day. And you are doing about double that every day.

Tim Chermak:
So I'm not saying everyone should do this. I'm not saying this is the way that everyone should work and if you're not doing it this way, then you're wrong. But that's one of the explanations of how is this possible, is that you're simply just working more hours in a day than what most people think is reasonable or possible.

Tim Chermak:
But that's actually one of the reasons I wanted to record this episode with you, Jess, and have this conversation on The Platform Marketing Show is that seeing your story and what you've been able to accomplish I think will reframe what people think is normal and what people think is possible. Because all of a sudden, if you know that there's an agent who's in the platfam, who's literally doing over 200 transactions a year by herself ... You don't have a team, right? It's Jess did over 200 transactions. All of a sudden that reframes what's possible of oh, can I hit 50 transactions this year or 60 transactions this year? Or when people are feeling busy, like they need to hire an assistant because they hit 20 or 25 transactions. It's like, well, that's what Jess does in a month. She will close in a month what a lot of people think is a good year. Doing 20, 25 transactions a year.

Tim Chermak:
So it's interesting how some people think they're getting so busy that they need to hire assistants or TCs or buyers agents. And again, you're doing the volume they'll do in a year in a month. And you're in Gillette, Wyoming. So let's just give some context here. Gillette, Wyoming has 30,000 to maybe 40,000 people in the broader area if you count some of the small towns around it. So Gillette is a small town, right? It's not a big city like Atlanta or Dallas or something. It's a small town in Wyoming and there's really nothing near it. I mean, you can drive literally a couple hours in either direction and there's still no big cities. What is the closest city to Gillette that would even have half a million people? Is it Denver?

Jess LaCour:
It is. And that's three plus hours away.

Tim Chermak:
Oh, it's way more than three hours away, right? I mean, Denver's got to be-

Jess LaCour:
Well, yeah. Okay. You're right. It's four and a half. Cheyenne's three hours away.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. I was going to say Denver is probably closer to five hours away, but I guess people in Wyoming drive 90 miles an hour so I'm probably-

Jess LaCour:
We do.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah.

Jess LaCour:
It's open highway.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. I'm probably getting my math mixed up, but Denver is the nearest city and it's basically five hours away. So you are in a small town in Wyoming. So when we say that you're doing 200 plus transactions a year, it's not like you're in this big city where there's so many transactions to go around that it must be so easy to do that much.

Jess LaCour:
Oh yeah.

Tim Chermak:
You're in very much what we would define as a small town.

Jess LaCour:
Very much. Yeah. It is tiny. So 30,000 people, but it's spread out. It's very rural. The average purchase price is like 225 to 250.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. And that really puts things into perspective. So when we say that you hauled in over a million dollars last year in your personal GCI, it's not because you're lucky enough to live in one of those areas of the country where the average home is 800,000 or the average home is 1.2 million or something like that. Most of your homes are just typical middle class American $250,000 homes. And I was in Gillette last summer. We hung out for a couple days and I got to see your office and meet some people that you work with. I met with Laura, the lender you do a lot of business with and we toured some of Gillette and we created some content, filmed some videos together. I saw Gillette and it's like, yeah, this is absolutely a small town. I mean, there's just no way around it. Gillette is a small town and yet, you did over 200 transactions there. So what's the secret advantage you have? Was your mom or dad in real estate or did you inherit a book of business from some friend? How would you answer the question, yeah but what's your secret? What are you not telling us?

Jess LaCour:
That's a good question. I think my secret advantage would have been having all the disadvantages at the beginning of my life that made me have that drive to want to fully commit to be the best I can be at everything I do. My parents weren't in real estate. I grew up pretty average household. We were never given anything to just go start like here's college. Nothing like that. I actually left my parents' house when I was 16, because I was pregnant and my parents did not approve. So it was tough figuring life out. And then I just had to always figure things out on my own and it gave me a drive to produce a good life for my son. And now he's in college and things have worked out good, but it set the habits. The habits to work smarter and not harder and to just be all in on anything I do.

Tim Chermak:
And so I would imagine a lot of this throughout the years has been like, I want to be able to provide a good future for my son that you had pretty young.

Jess LaCour:
100%. That's my why in life.

Tim Chermak:
And so you said you were how old when you had your son?

Jess LaCour:
16.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. So by the time you were really 30 you had a teenager on your hands and I imagine that gave you huge amounts of motivation to like, okay, I need to really make some serious money because I don't want to be that stereotypical story of someone who has a kid really young and it's just woe is me and then the rest of my life is a failure or something.

Jess LaCour:
Exactly.

Tim Chermak:
I think it's probably fair to say at this point, it's been quite the opposite for you. Where you're now hauling in over-

Jess LaCour:
Definitely not a statistic. No.

Tim Chermak:
Yes. Yes. You've risen above all that. You're hauling in over a million dollars a year. But you didn't immediately start crushing it in real estate. So let's dive into some of the specifics of your story. Because I think we've framed pretty well where things are at now. I mean, you're absolutely dominating. You're clearly the top agent in the Gillette area. I mean, you're probably the top agent in the state of Wyoming if you're doing that many transactions a year. But it wasn't always that way. It's not like your first year that you got licensed, you did a hundred deals. So you actually owned a clothing boutique, a local brick and mortar store, before you got into real estate. How long did you own that? Was it successful? How did that lead you into a career as a realtor? Because I just want to frame this that this is not one of those situations where the reason you're doing so well now is like, oh, I got licensed as an agent when I was 16 so I had so much experience that eventually-

Jess LaCour:
Yeah, yeah. I started that clothing store when I was 21 and I had it for 10 years, so until I was 31. When I started it, the internet wasn't quite what it is now. So people actually went to brick and mortar stores to shop. And then when I phased that out, I had just gotten my license because I realized I couldn't do both. So I closed it down because the internet just dominated. There was no competing with it. People would come in and be like, "Oh, I love how these pants fit, but I just ordered them online." I'm like, "Thanks." So anyways, I phased that out because I had just gotten into real estate. Reason being, selling pants and designer clothing was great and all, but there was a cap to it. There's a limit to how much you can make. And especially in a small town. So phased that out-

Tim Chermak:
You owned that business for 10 years. Did it actually make money or was it just paying its bills?

Jess LaCour:
It did really good. We live in a little town where it's surrounded by oil and coal industry so I was very lucky that I opened it right when everything was booming here. And so it gave me a little kickstart. And let me clarify, it was booming here, but I wasn't living the high life. I was living off of about $40,000 a year and I thought it was great because I just lived very simply. I was able to work for myself. I did work every day, all the time and the sole provider for my son. But it made a good little life for us.

Jess LaCour:
And then I got into real estate because I wanted to make more. I mean, 40,000 is great, but I wasn't going to be able to send him to college on that or anything. And I realized real estate was really hard, but I had some great connections because of that store and I just kept cultivating the relationships. I'm in real estate eight years now this year, but it was a really big grind probably until about year five. And then I started seeing all the consistent work payoff.

Tim Chermak:
What did your first year or two look like in terms of how many deals you did your first year or two?

Jess LaCour:
My very first year I did about 15 million in production so it's not that great. But for a first year person, it's pretty good.

Tim Chermak:
I would say that's very good if you did 15 million in your very first year. So what I'm hearing in this conversation, what I'm picking up on is that you have invested in a major way in cultivating your sphere. Because there is no way that an agent in their first year does $15 million in volume unless they have a very robust sphere of people who know them, like them, trust them. Because I mean, there's just no way that you were able to generate that many leads, right? And even in a booming market. I mean there's agents that work with Platform that have been licensed as an agent for a decade and they've never hit 15 million in sales volume. That's not anything to look over. That's a big amount of production. So if you were able to do that even in your first year or two, what that tells me is that you had a very strong sphere. And I would also imagine you learned a thing or two about marketing after owning the boutique for a decade. Would you say that's accurate?

Jess LaCour:
Yes. Very accurate. The only thing I knew how to do was sell. Whether it was pants or houses. So I applied the same concept. I'm not a super salesy person. I just am friendly and try to relate or see where my clients are coming from regardless of who they are. So I took those same concepts and the same marketing. When I started the store, Facebook had just cracked open. And what I had done on there, I had developed a really good platform. And so I just tried to do the same thing with real estate and it did well, but I realized that there was a plethora of other ways I could advertise real estate too. And so I just dabbled a little bit in each and saw what they gave to me. And advertising is always changing. So now I think I have a good mix of where I just have a little bit in everything and it works pretty well. I adjust accordingly of course, but it works pretty well.

Tim Chermak:
Where things are at now ... I know we were chatting right before we actually started the recording, but you're spending about $12,000 to $13,000 a month on marketing. Is that accurate?

Jess LaCour:
Yes.

Tim Chermak:
Okay.

Jess LaCour:
Yeah. That's probably an underestimate too.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. That's essentially if you round up, it's about $150,000 a year. So $150,000 a year is your marketing budget. And as you said, it's actually probably more than that because I'm sure there's some things that are really technically marketing advertising that you're forgetting. But 150 grand a year. So you are spending more on marketing yourself as an individual agent than most real estate agents make in an entire year.

Jess LaCour:
Wow. Yeah. When you put it like that, yes.

Tim Chermak:
That's your marketing budget, right?

Jess LaCour:
Yeah.

Tim Chermak:
And also I want to emphasize again that you're not promoting your team. You're not advertising the big Jess Lacour team as if you have eight or nine or 10 other agents or something. This is all spent on promoting you. So you are literally spending $13,000 a month promoting Jess LaCour to the Gillette Wyoming area. So once you grasp that intellectually, you understand how Jess is able to roll the snowball to where she does now over 200 transactions every year. She's hauling in pretty close to 1.5 million in GCI. It's because she's simply investing more in marketing and creating more deal flow therefore, than most other agents do.

Tim Chermak:
Because I think the easiest thing to assume from this conversation, if someone's just casually listening to this podcast episode is that, oh, she must have some super lucky streak or there must be something she's not telling us. Maybe Gillette's just ... There's no competition there and maybe all the agents suck or something and that's-

Jess LaCour:
Oh, gosh no.

Tim Chermak:
When I think of Gillette, Wyoming, no one there probably uses computers. I wonder if they have the internet there. It's not nearly as tech savvy as where I am. If I move there, I'm sure I could sell a hundred plus homes a year too. It's like, well, if you look at the production of all the other Gillette agents, it's the same distribution as in any other city in America. Where there's a lot of agents that are selling 15, 20, 25 homes a year, in that range. There's a couple more who do sell 40, 50, 60 homes a year and then that's about it. It's just like any other city in America. So there's nothing different about Gillette that allows you to be so exceptionally successful.

Tim Chermak:
The one thing you do differently is really what explains it. And that's you're just investing literally 10 times as much on marketing as the average agent does. Yes. And actually it's more than 10 times because when I say 10 times the average agent, that's assuming the average agent is spending 15 grand a year on marketing, because you're spending 150,000 and the average agent absolutely does not spend $15,000 a year on marketing. So you're actually probably spending more like 20, 25 times a year on marketing. If we're looking at truly average agents, so not even a Platform agent, because Platform agents are probably in the top 10% or top 5% of all agents nationwide of what they invest in marketing. But I bet the average agent spends $5,000 a year or less on marketing. Because it's usually a couple hundred bucks a month on whether it's a newspaper ad or they just randomly spontaneously boost some Facebook posts here or there with really no strategy to it other than they'll just spend 20 bucks here, 50 bucks there. And that's most agents.

Tim Chermak:
And so the fact that you are spending $13,000 a month on marketing, that's what explains the crazy amount of deal flow and transactions that you have is you're very simply spending more. It's just math. If you spend that much on marketing, you're going to get that many more phone calls and leads and emails and everything. It's just math. One thing that we've identified at Platform in the last couple years is that if you zoom out and you look long term at someone's business, you're typically able to observe ... Again, this is painting in very broad strokes here, but big picture, usually what you see is about a 10 to one return on ad spend over the long term, assuming your ads don't suck. So a 10 to one return means that if a Platform agent tells me that they're spending a thousand dollars a month on their Facebook ads, so that's about $12,000 a year right in the actual ad spend, over time, they should be able to track probably like $120,000 a year in GCI to that ad spend. They're getting a 10 to one ROI on the actual ad spend. That's pretty consistent over the years we've seen that relationship.

Tim Chermak:
So actually when you told me originally that, "Yeah, I spend about, 150 grand a year on my marketing," and then I asked you, "Wow. That's incredible. What's your GCI?" And you said, "Oh, almost 1.5 million." It's like, oh cool. That's just another example of that 10 to one rule working. Yeah. It's just math. You're just spending more than they are and that explains it. You're not necessarily smarter or have more education than them or have more ... You haven't taken more certifications or classes or anything like that. It's very simply you have the courage to invest more and therefore you're getting more out of it. I mean, it's really that simple.

Tim Chermak:
So as we look at that spend, that $13,000 a month that you're investing into marketing, what are some of the specifics of that? Where is that money going? Is it direct mail? Is it newspaper ads, billboards, social media? What's a quick breakdown of some of the different things that you're investing that marketing budget into, the $13,000 a month?

Jess LaCour:
Sure. I have it split up all over. I wish I had that little list that we had before in front of me, but most of it is to online presence. So we got Google, we have Platform, we have some side Facebook ads. I have some pretty big billboard contracts throughout the town at each point of entry. I did a study with the University of Wyoming about five years ago before I contracted those certain billboards on which had the highest hit rates and I secured those. And I'm really glad I did because it took a while. It took some consistent commitment knowing that they would pay off and they have and I'm really glad I have them and I won't be giving those up anytime. I'm very committed to my marketing. It doesn't really show right away. So if I could say anything for agents that are starting, you need to have faith in it and you need to commit to maybe even a few years of solid marketing before you see big results.

Jess LaCour:
So that money going out, it's doing its work, but people have to see you I heard an average of seven to 13 times before they know, like, and trust you. So me being on those billboards or just having that friendly reminder on their phone when they see a Platform ad, whatever, it takes those multiple times before it clicks in those people's heads and then that's when I get recognized around town and they're like, "Oh, hey, I see you everywhere." So it's probably about 10 to 13 different sources that I'm advertising on consistently over the last eight years. It's not just maybe a little bit here and then I stopped that and then it was a year of this. No, it's consistent. I don't do much print, but everything else online and visually in our town, I am there.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. And most of that budget, if I remember correctly of the 13, the majority of it was billboards.

Jess LaCour:
Yes. Yeah. Because they're expensive. They're the traditional ones. I do digital ones too. But those traditional ones, yeah, they're expensive.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. So again, that's actual majority of the 13,000, but I still think if I remember correctly probably 4,000 or 5,000 a month of that is being spent online, both with Platform, social media ads. You have some Google spend. So really it's impossible for someone in the Gillette area not to know that Jess LaCour is a real estate agent.

Jess LaCour:
Right. Right.

Tim Chermak:
Even when I drove in, before you even told me, "Hey, I have a bunch of billboards around here," I saw your billboards driving into town.

Jess LaCour:
Good. They're doing their job then.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. Yeah. When I mentioned to another Platform agent that, "Oh yeah, we have Jess LaCour. She's our Platform agent up in the Gillette area." They're like, "Oh, I know Jess. I think I've seen her billboards." That's exactly what they told me.

Jess LaCour:
Perfect.

Tim Chermak:
Obviously that's what you get when you invest that much over time. And I think it's really important what you said too, that hey, I didn't half ass this for six months and then I didn't get an immediate return so then I tried something else. This is the result of sticking with the same marketing strategies for years. Not weeks or months or even quarters, but years. And then you create that reputational snowball where now people just know who you are. And it creates a one plus one equals three effect because if you just had a killer social media game, let's say, you would still have a really successful business. You would still probably be honestly selling a hundred plus homes a year I bet just from all of the Facebook ads that you do and the videos and all this stuff.

Tim Chermak:
But it's combining all of the billboards and Google pay per click and then all the Platform type ads and all the retargeting that you're doing on social media, the cumulative effect of all that creates a one plus one equals three effect. Because if people have been seeing a bunch of your social media ads let's say, and then they see a billboard, they're like, "Oh, that's right. I've seen her before. I constantly see her online." So it actually makes the billboards more effective. But then it works in reverse. Because maybe someone has seen a bunch of your billboards and then for the first time they find you on Facebook or they find you on Instagram or they see you somewhere online because of a Google PPC ad.

Tim Chermak:
If they've been seeing your billboards, then they're like, "Oh, okay. Yeah. I think I know her. I've seen that agent on billboards around here." So in that instance, the billboards actually make the social media ads more effective because they felt like they knew you before. And so when you run all of these things simultaneously, over time, that's what creates that reputational snowball where just no other agent can compete with that if they're just haphazardly boosting a Facebook post every now and then for 50 bucks or they run a newspaper ad one time and they spend $500 on it. It runs for one day. Or they spend a little bit on radio here and there. It's the consistency over time of multiple channels that creates this. So as you invest all this money every month, again, $13,000 a month, where do most of your leads come from? Is it people emailing you? Is it people just calling you where you get a ton of phone calls every day? Is it people inquiring on your website? Where do the actual leads come from?

Tim Chermak:
Because I know that at this point in your business, you can't really be like, "Oh, I got this many leads from this, this many leads from that." When your business is that big, the honest answer is I have no idea where it's all coming from because they probably all saw my billboards. They saw my Google ads. They saw my Platform ads on Facebook and all that. So it all works together so it's really hard to attribute which lead is coming from where. But in the sense of how do they contact you, do most of your leads just come from people just calling you directly or texting you or emailing you or where do most of the leads come from in terms of how they first contact you?

Jess LaCour:
I do try to track all of that as much as I can because I'm super analytical. But you're right. It gets to a point where it's really blurred and you don't really know. But I would say it's direct calls, texts or messages from social media platforms is probably 90% of it. And then about year four to five, I got started getting referrals. So I would say another 10% is referrals.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. And that's actually really fascinating to me because I think when people hear that you're doing ... Again, it just sounds so absurd even saying it out loud. 200 plus transactions a year. They just assume that, wow, you must have this just mother of all lead gen funnels and you're driving people to some form online and they're filling out your lead gen form and then you're getting lead notifications of this person gave you their contact information and then you follow up with them. And they submitted some web form where you're grabbing their name, email, phone number, all that. And it's like, no, that's not how this is happening. You're just marketing so much and they're seeing you so much on social media, the billboards you've done, Google, all of the retargeting that Platform is doing as an umbrella strategy over all this that people see you so much that when they're ready to go, they just call you or they text you or they message you. There's not some super duper secret stealthy lead generation form that you're driving people to. It's just, when they're ready to go, it's like, "I'm going to call Jess. I'm not going to interview other agents. I'm just going to call you."

Jess LaCour:
No. Yeah. That's seriously what happens. Very rarely do I have a listing appointment where they're saying that they're talking to other agents. It's usually all mine just because the familiarity and the trust is already there.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. And very naturally in a listing appointment ... I mean, you probably don't even have to say it out loud. I imagine that it's basically implied. That's it's like, "Hey, if I'm this good at marketing myself, I'm going to do a really good job marketing your listing."

Jess LaCour:
Exactly. It is. I don't ever have to say it. They know.

Tim Chermak:
How did your experience owning the boutique shape the way that you think about your business? Because I have to assume here that being you owned a brick and mortar small business, you had a clothing boutique, that you just accepted that, hey, when you run a business as a local small business owner, there are expenses associated with that. There's rent or there's the mortgage on the building if you bought the space, there's utilities every month. There's inventory that you have tens of thousands of dollars sitting there at any given time just in inventory. There is marketing costs because I would assume that you were spending money marketing the boutique. There's all sorts of expenses that get paid out every month, fixed expenses every month, regardless of whether or not you're making sales. And so how did that shape how you think about your real estate business?

Jess LaCour:
That's a super good question. Because I think it's the big core part of the success I have today and how I viewed real estate completely different from other agents getting into it. The marketing, number one, I viewed it as an employee basically. So it was a non-negotiable expense. And basically if I'm paying 10 grand a month to have all these different advertisements, I can look at it is just having an employee out there doing all this work for me, bringing in people. So that's how I've perceived it from day one, because that's how it worked for me with the boutique. Why wouldn't it be the same for real estate?

Jess LaCour:
And then another thing was inventory. You always want to keep a good stock of inventory, right? So when I first got into real estate I was super aggressive going after all these listings so that I could have a lot of signs around town. And then when things like last year happen, that is fantastic. It doubles down. So I've always kept a very strong amount of listings. Probably those two are the biggest things I think that shaped it. And then just knowing you've got to stick out the hard times. Some months may not be great. You just have to keep on and be consistent with everything. Follow up. All of it.

Tim Chermak:
I love what you said there about thinking of your marketing as an employee. Because so many agents ... Just because this is taught at many seminars and lots of brokerages teach this about, hey, as soon as you start to get busy enough where you feel like you don't have time, you need to immediately go hire a full-time assistant or a TC or a buyer's agent and start growing your team. And it's just like agents have this mentality that when they're doing 20 deals a year, that they're somehow busy enough to justify bringing on an assistant or a buyer. And again, you laugh at that because you're like I do 20 deals a month. It's like, how do you do 20 deals a year and you feel you're too busy to do it by yourself? But you have this mentality of rather than going out and hiring someone and paying someone let's say a $50,000 a year salary to help you with your business, whether that's a full-time TC or a licensed buyer's agent or a licensed assistant or anything like that, it's like, well, the first $50,000 I have is going to be spent on marketing.

Jess LaCour:
Yep. And then I'll do the rest myself.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. Because that's the employee that I need is someone out telling the community about me, but rather than literally hiring a person, I'll spend $50,000 a year on marketing because that'll bring in more business. And then only when I just literally do not have any more minutes in the day would you think about hiring someone. Because most people, I think greatly underestimate how much business they can do by themselves if they just had more deal flow coming in.

Jess LaCour:
Oh my gosh. Yes. There was a saying that was said to me early on in my lifting years that you will want to quit when physically you are only at your 40% max. So I take that mentality into business. And when you say most people say they're so busy they need an assistant, mentally yeah, it's rough. It's hard. But I tell myself that I can do it. My mind is just playing tricks on me. Saying that I need to quit or it's too hard at that 40%. You still have way more to give. And it's true. It's so true.

Tim Chermak:
Now, early on you were still investing a lot into marketing. You weren't maybe spending 12,000 or $13,000 a month early on.

Jess LaCour:
Oh. Gosh no.

Tim Chermak:
In your marketing. But I remember the last time we talked, one thing that emerged that stuck with me from our previous conversations were that when you were getting started, both at the boutique that you owned for a decade and eventually in your real estate career, in your personal life, you lived very, very humbly so that you could afford to pour everything you were making back into marketing. And so when people say, "Oh yeah, well, I mean, I could probably make a ton of money too if I was spending $10,000 a month on marketing or 13,000 or frankly, even four or 5,000 a month on marketing." It's like, well, everyone could. The problem is that most people don't because as soon as they hit, I don't know, 100,000, 150,000 in GCI, which is a pretty good living. If you're making a $100,000 a year plus, you're absolutely making an above average income in the United States. You're doing well. You have money to vacation, go out to eat, drive a nicer newer car, all those good things that we associate with the upper middle class in America.

Tim Chermak:
Let's just pick a specific number to make this really concrete. Let's say that you're making $115,000 a year in GCI as a realtor. Well what happens is an agent eventually gets to that point and they get addicted to the lifestyle that making 115,000 allows them to live and that amounts to just shy of about $10,000 a month. So after taxes that person's probably bringing in, let's say $7,000 a month. And they get addicted to living off of $7,000 a month after taxes.

Tim Chermak:
And so to be clear, the point I'm making is to be clear, they could afford to spend, even at that level, $3,000 to $4,000 a month on marketing and still have plenty of money to pay for their basic living expenses like mortgage or rent or groceries and their car and all of those things. It's that they choose not to. Rather than spending $4,000 a month on marketing, they're spending $7,000 a month on themselves and their family because they got addicted to the standard of living that that luxury lifestyle provides once you hit that point and then their business often never grows beyond that, because they're not pouring any fuel on the fire. Where what you did is even as you hit those levels of production that allowed you to probably start living a more luxurious lifestyle than you did when you owned the boutique and you were making $40,000 a year, as soon as you started hitting those higher levels of income, you didn't think, "Oh, this is great. I'm a top producing realtor now so I'm going to spend all this money and enjoy my life for the first time in all these years because I'm finally a hundred grand or I'm finally making 150 or 200." No, you basically plowed all of that back into marketing.

Tim Chermak:
So even when you were making 100,000, 150,000, 200,000, you weren't living off of 200,000 or 150,000 because you plowed almost all of that back into marketing and you kept living on that $40,000, $50,000 a year standard of living and you basically invested everything on top of that back into marketing. So what did that look like the first couple years of what you lived on versus what you reinvested back into marketing and Jess, how do you think that built the foundation for where you're at today, which is obviously doing 200 plus deals a year in a small town?

Jess LaCour:
Right. It was a lot of sacrifice. It was not fun. Especially when it would've been so easy to be like, hey, I deserve a new car. I'm in it every day. We deserve to eat out because I'm working really hard 12 hours a day. All of that stuff. My friends are buying bigger houses. It took a lot of sacrifice, but I was committed to that big end game picture. And there's not really an end game. It's just knowing that there's more out there and I just had to believe in what I knew would work with the marketing. And being consistent and not just doing the easy route of being like, "I'll just do a little bit less marketing." I had to stay committed to my original plan.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. Frankly, there's just no other way of saying it. You had the courage. There's no way of getting around the word courage. You had the courage to invest almost every dollar you were making right back into marketing even though you could have started living this great luxurious lifestyle. I mean, I'll be honest, when I swung by Gillette last summer and we met up that one day, we filmed a little bit I remember even at your house and I was like, "Oh wow. I expected Jess to have a bigger house than this." Because I knew how much you were making in GCI. So that even proves the point that it's like, you made enough last year to pay off that house you lived in multiple times over.

Jess LaCour:
Yes.

Tim Chermak:
You could have basically paid off that house I imagine in what, four or five months of your earning?

Jess LaCour:
Oh yeah.

Tim Chermak:
You could just pay it off entirely. But that's just how you've lived your life and it's what has set you up to be able to invest so much money in marketing is you've always lived way below your means in terms of what you spend in your personal life as compared to what gets spent or I should say invested in your business. So to be clear, Jess drives a badass brand new Jeep. It's not like she's living in poverty or something with a 20 year old car. But with the amount of money that you're bringing in ... You also just built a brand new office. Brand new for yourself. Clearly you're investing the money in smart savvy ways. I know that you and Blaine have bought some investment properties as well.

Tim Chermak:
And so you're making very smart plays with your money. But most agents get to that point where they just taste a little bit of success. They make 150 or 200 and then they just enjoy that because they're like, "Wow, finally we have money to take vacations or eat at more fancy restaurants or I'm going to go buy Lexus when my whole life I've driven a used Toyota or something." And then whoosh, there goes all the money they could have spent on marketing. And that's the reason that there's so many agents making 200 grand a year and not very many making 400 or 500 or more.

Jess LaCour:
If they only knew. If they just toughed it out for a little bit, made some sacrifices and stayed committed with that larger amount. Whether it's five grand. It doesn't have to be 10 or 13. It would really show a difference if you gave it a few years and you'd be surprised. That 200 would be nothing to you.

Tim Chermak:
I just again, think back to your experience as a boutique owner, because I've worked with many, many small business owners in my marketing career. It's not just real estate agents I've worked with. I've worked with many, many different types of local brick and mortar small businesses. In fact, one of my very first clients who's become actually a really, really good friend is Allison Werder. And she owns a clothing boutique in a small town in Minnesota and she's actually a marketing wizard herself now where she has all sorts of businesses that hire her to help them with their marketing, because she's grown this boutique to be ... I think they'll make 150, possibly even 200,000 this year.

Jess LaCour:
Wow.

Tim Chermak:
At her boutique. And she's in a small town in Minnesota that actually has 2,000 people.

Jess LaCour:
Oh my.

Tim Chermak:
So she's absolutely crushing it.

Jess LaCour:
She's online?

Tim Chermak:
No, that's all in person.

Jess LaCour:
A physical boutique?

Tim Chermak:
Yep.

Jess LaCour:
Wow. Good for her.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah, she's absolutely crushing it. But we've had all sorts of interesting conversations over the years about marketing because I helped her launch her, I guess, marketing campaigns. I mean it was probably now seven or eight years ago that helped her get to where she is today. I gave her some of the initial ideas. And as we've had these conversations over the years, one thing that's always came up is that, you know what, part of the reason ... And I'm speaking for Allison right now. But she would say, "Part of the reason I'm successful when so many other local small business owners don't make any money at all ... They may have been in business for years, but they're not actually showing really any profit. Is that I just invest more in marketing. It's really that simple. It's like they spend 200 or $500 a month and they think that's a sufficient marketing budget." And she's like, "I'm typically more spending $2,000 to $3,000 a month marketing my clothing boutique and I'm in a small town of 2,000 people."

Tim Chermak:
I'm spending more on marketing just on social media ads than most other small business are in their entire fixed expenses when you're calculating utilities, rent, I mean everything. And having that mentality of there is an amount of money I have to invest every month if I'm going to make this work completely shapes how you go about running your business. Because this is a reality that is just true for a local brick and mortar small business owner. There's no way around it. If you want to make money running a brick and mortar retail store like your boutique, Jess, you have to spend money every month.

Tim Chermak:
Again, whether that's inventory, sales, marketing, obviously rent, paying employees, potentially, all the various things that you have to spend money on to run a retail store. There's a lot of expenses every month. You probably have I would guess two to three to possibly $4,000 of expenses every month, regardless of whether you make a single sale or not. Because all the actual inventory, the cost of goods is on top of that. So even if you don't make a single sale, there's still at a minimum $3,000 to probably $4,000 a month that you have to clear just as fixed expenses.

Tim Chermak:
And so that absolutely shapes how you think about business I think for the rest of your career. Because when you went into real estate, you didn't have the mentality of, "Oh, this is great. Now I don't have to spend anything because now I just make money and I don't have all these fixed monthly expenses." It's like, well that's true. I guess technically you don't have to have high monthly fixed expenses. But that's why most agents never really hit elite levels of income and production is because they think it should be a 100% margin business where I don't have any expenses. It's like, well I got news for you, that's-

Jess LaCour:
No good businesses is ran like that.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. That's a job. That's not a business, right?

Jess LaCour:
Yes.

Tim Chermak:
Pretty much the one thing, if you think about it philosophically, that distinguishes an entrepreneur from an employee is the entrepreneur absorbs fixed expenses every month. The employee does not have any expenses associated with their job. They just get paid. They have money coming in, but it's not like there's any money going out every month. Really the thing that distinguishes the entrepreneur from just the W2 wage employee is that the entrepreneur understands that, "Hey, if I want to make more, I'm going to have to spend a bunch of money every month in order to make more." I mean even Platform now, our expenses every month now are over 150,000 a month. So it's like, cool. I don't make a single dollar until we clear $150,000 a month. That's not a year, that's a month. And yet, there's agents out there who, let's say they have a goal of they really want to hit ... I don't know. 400,000. Because maybe they've been stuck at 200 to 250,000 in GCI for a while and they really want to hit 400,000 for whatever reason. It's like, "Cool. How much are you spending on marketing?" And then they'll typically say, "Well my ads budget every month is $1,000."

Tim Chermak:
And it's like, "Cool. So what universe do you live in that you think you should be able to haul in 40 grand a month, but only spend $1,000 on ad spend?" Those ratios just aren't realistic. And I say that optimistically. So I probably sound like I'm being sarcastic or cynical, but this is actually good news because it means there's not any secrets or magic recipe or information that Jess knows that you don't know. It's literally just that an agent like Jess has the courage to spend more on marketing. And so if she knows that over time, she's going to get approximately a 10 to one ROI out of the marketing, she knows that if she wants to make $40,000 a month, she probably needs to be investing $4,000 a month into marketing. And if Jess wants to be making $100,000 a month, she probably needs to be investing over time consistently $10,000 a month if you keep that 10 to one ratio.

Tim Chermak:
And so whatever your goal is, one very practical takeaway from this conversation is just ... Again, this is not going to happen within a month or 90 days or even six months. But over time, if you look at your business in terms of a one to two year macro big picture period, over time, you should be able to observe around a 10 to one ROI on the actual advertising spend. So one practical takeaway is whatever you want to be making a year ... Maybe that goal is 200,000 or if that goal is 500,000, whatever your goal is, as an agent, just divide that by 10 and that's what you need to be investing in marketing. And if you're not willing to do that, you're probably never going to hit that level of production.

Tim Chermak:
I think you would probably agree that you would probably still be a moderately successful agent if you didn't spend any money on marketing, because you have a very strong willed personality. You're great at sales. You're great at talking with people and building rapport and all of those things. You're a good salesperson. I bet you'd probably make 100,000 , 200,000 a year as an agent if you never spent a dollar on marketing.

Jess LaCour:
Probably.

Tim Chermak:
That would probably be the upper limit.

Jess LaCour:
Yeah. But then I'd hit a ceiling where that's it. And then probably fall trap to, like you said, be accustomed to the lifestyle and then what?

Tim Chermak:
And you basically just stick there. There are so many agents, like I said, who hit that point where they're making 150 or 175 or whatever, and then they just stay there for 10 years. And I've always thought that's interesting because just with basic referrals, how are you not growing your business at least a little bit every year just from referrals? Because it should be compounding every year. Something is actually wrong in your real estate business if you're not growing at least 10% a year just from referrals.

Jess LaCour:
That should be ... Yeah. Natural.

Tim Chermak:
Because that means that you're not staying in touch with your sphere enough. Not even to get into cold marketing and reaching the general public and all that. But if your business isn't growing 10% a year just from your past client referrals, something's wrong.

Jess LaCour:
Agree.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. It's a math problem to solve and it's pretty easy math. We're dividing by 10. This is second grade math here.

Jess LaCour:
That's cool. That gives it the reliability I think people do not perceive when they see marketing and they're like, "What am I going to get out of this? I want to see a direct return right away." I think it's cool to have those numbers. And they're very reliable from what you've said. It hits dead on with my numbers over the years.

Tim Chermak:
Yep. To be very specific though, what prevents people from doing that, if I could just get as granular and tactical practical as possible here, is that even hearing this 10 to one rule most people do not have the courage to wait it out 18 months to see it work.

Jess LaCour:
Yes. I would completely agree with that.

Tim Chermak:
That's what prevents people from getting the results that Jess LaCour gets. Is that they think that, "Oh, if I try something for 90 days, that's reasonable. And if I try marketing for six months, that's super ambitious. And holy cow, if I try it for seven or eight months, I am really, really ambitious." It's like, well, you'll probably start seeing pretty good results I would say in six to nine months where at least it's paying for itself. You're breaking even. But the real results ... And I've seen this pattern over and over and again with Platform clients. The real results typically kick in in the 12 to 18 month mark.

Jess LaCour:
Yep. I would completely agree with that.

Tim Chermak:
Usually people have a positive ROI if they start the Platform strategy in month six to 12. They're not losing money. Where they're not spending more money on marketing than they have coming in. It's at least breaking even typically at that point. Very often they have a healthy ROI at that point. But the real big time ROI that kicks in almost always happens in that 12 to 18 month mark. And that's the entire explanation right there is that most people never last that long. They don't stick it out long enough to actually see the results.

Jess LaCour:
Yeah. How sad to do it for six to eight months and then stop right before it gets good? And then keep going while it's good. You have to keep that there.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. I mean, it would be like in the power lifting world that you're very immersed in with you and Blaine. If you started this hardcore workout program and you were taking all the supplements you need to be and the creatine and everything, and you're getting your 200 or 300 grams of protein a day and you're spending two hours in the gym a day and then you do it for a week and you're like, "Oh, I didn't hit my goals. This didn't work."

Jess LaCour:
Yeah. That's laughable.

Tim Chermak:
How stupid does that sound that like, oh, I didn't hit my goals of having a six pack or I can't bench 300 or I can't squat whatever your goal is after a week of doing it. It's like, well, that's not an accurate reflection of the accuracy of the program. Judging it off of one week.

Jess LaCour:
Right. It's your lack of commitment.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. It's that you weren't willing to do it for six months. Because even doing a workout program for a month is not really going to change anything.

Jess LaCour:
No.

Tim Chermak:
You only really see results once you start doing something three plus months. Then you might be able to look in the mirror or look at your past workout journals and see progress of your lifts going up and all that if you look in 90 day increments.

Jess LaCour:
Exactly.

Tim Chermak:
But even then it's like, long term is much longer than that. I mean, you've been investing in marketing now for what, seven, eight years?

Jess LaCour:
Yep. Yeah.

Tim Chermak:
And you've seen the results like this. And most agents are frankly, not even willing to invest in a marketing program for seven or eight months and they demand that why hasn't my business blown up?

Jess LaCour:
They could be me so easy.

Tim Chermak:
You just have to stick with it. It's courage.

Jess LaCour:
Yeah. You do.

Tim Chermak:
It's courage is a competitive advantage. So when we look at some of your ads ... Let's get into some of the really specific stuff because I know that you have to go here soon. Jess, what are some of your favorite social media ads that we've run using this Platform strategy? Are there any ads that maybe stick out? One or two that you remember that got a lot of buzz around town or word of mouth where people were actually telling you that they saw this particular ad?

Jess LaCour:
I think my very favorite one was the one where you edited the sign. I think I got turned into the commission probably four times for that one. So not only was it a hit with just the general population, it was a hit with other agents too.

Tim Chermak:
That was the one where it said-

Jess LaCour:
It did its job. It really got people talking. I loved that ad.

Tim Chermak:
It said not technically for sale. That one, right?

Jess LaCour:
Yes. Yes. That was a great one.

Tim Chermak:
You were turned in four different times for that?

Jess LaCour:
Four different times.

Tim Chermak:
From different agents. That's funny.

Jess LaCour:
Yeah. The commission finally just called me and they're like, "It's the same thing again." And I was like, "Okay." I got to keep it up. We didn't do anything that was wrong. Just other agents were just all rumpled. All their feathers were rumpled over it. But it shows how much it got people talking and I would dare to say, I got quite a few listings from that.

Tim Chermak:
Yeah. And I know that you also had that one that we did the for sale by owner one.

Jess LaCour:
Yeah. That was a good one too. People were just so shocked and it got them engaged in reading it and the way you wrote it was so good.

Tim Chermak:
That one got a ton of engagement I remember.

Jess LaCour:
A ton of engagement. Yeah. That was a real good one.

Tim Chermak:
In a somewhat small community like Gillette. Because again, Gillette doesn't have 100,000 people or a million people. On a good day, Gillette might have 40,000 people in the area. And if you get a ton of people talking about you, commenting on something, people around the community notice that. They see it.

Jess LaCour:
They do. Yeah. Like you said, it's a small community so everyone's going to talk to everyone about the same thing usually. So yeah. I get all the time stopped. "Oh, I see your face everywhere." Which is odd. People will talk to me, like we already know each other and I have to quickly rack my brain. Who is this? How do I know them? But it's just because of the familiarity of it all.

Tim Chermak:
We also did that ad that I'm actually just remembering this now when we staged basically a fake PR campaign that we were going to try to petition to move the Olympics to Gillette, Wyoming.

Jess LaCour:
Oh yeah. That was a good one.

Tim Chermak:
And that was fun. And that got I remember a ton of video views. I mean, I think that video got 15,000, 20,000 video views. Which again if Gillette has 30,000 people total and a video has 20,000 video views, you have to assume that usually about half the population are children under age 18. So there's actually probably about 15,000, 16,000 adults in the Gillette area. And so if that video about ... You filmed this video around town saying, "Hey, I think Gillette would be great for the next Olympics. Let's move it from Paris to Gillette instead and host the next summer Olympics right here." If that spoof PR video gets 20,000 views, it literally means every adult in the Gillette area saw that video at least once.

Jess LaCour:
That's so awesome. It's true.

Tim Chermak:
If you think about it that way. And that's cool because you were in the video the whole time. So if anyone watched the video, they were just constantly seeing Jess and that creates long term brand awareness. And that's why when I asked you earlier about how are the leads coming in, that's not just a minor detail. Because if you're doing 200 plus transactions a year and you say, "Oh, honestly, the way that most of my leads contact me is they just directly call me or they text me or they message me on Facebook."

Jess LaCour:
Isn't that the call to action on all our ads?

Tim Chermak:
Yeah, exactly. There's not necessarily a lead form that people are filling out or you're not driving them to some capture page on the internet where you ask them for all their contact information. It's just, your marketing is doing such an excellent job of keeping you top of mind with everyone that when they're ready to go, the marketing has already converted them. They're just like, "Cool. I'm going to call Jess. I'm not going to interview other agents. That's not even a conversation or a decision I have to make. I'm going to work with Jess." It's, "Hey, Jess. I'm thinking about selling my house this year. What's the next step?"

Jess LaCour:
Yeah, exactly. That's how it goes down too. It's really awesome. And I love that everyone just warmly greets and acts like they're my friend even though I've never met them in person before. And I think that's highly due to those ads and just seeing the constant face of Jess everywhere in Gillette.

Tim Chermak:
So Jess, what would your final parting advice be for an agent listening to this? And let's just say that they're making $115,000 a year in GCI, but they so desperately want to get to 200, 300, because that would just radically change their family's life, where they could probably afford to pay for their kids to go to college in cash and they could really save for retirement if they could get from 115 to, let's say 200, 250. If there's an agent right now that that describes them, that's where they're at and they're listening to this, what would your advice be to them?

Jess LaCour:
If you are scared to invest, fully trust the process because numbers don't lie and you and I both discussed earlier about how the numbers are dead on. Commit to that amount that could change your life. If you could double your income just for committing to a year or two of a certain advertising amount, trust the process, stick it through, and it will be far better than you can ever imagine.

Tim Chermak:
Awesome. Well, again, these numbers sound too good to be true, but you just listened to an episode on The Platform Marketing Show of an agent who's personally doing over 200 transactions a year. She personally made over a million dollars in GCI last year in a market where the average home is only $250,000. So these are the kinds of numbers that are possible if you think big about marketing and stop limiting yourself with these false beliefs about what is a lot of money to spend on marketing. Because it's entirely mental. Some people think $1,000 a month is a lot. Other people might think $2,000 or $3,000 a month is a lot to invest in marketing. Well, you just have a very different mentality. You're like, "Well, I spend $13,000 a month on marketing." And there's probably some months that you spend 15,000 a month on marketing. Because it just doesn't occur to you to think of that as being a lot of money.

Tim Chermak:
Because once you commit to that, it's like, "Well, yeah. I mean, I guess it's a lot of money, but I'm also bringing in over a $100,000 a month." So relative to that, it's really not a lot of money. You just have to have the courage to get to that point where the income greatly exceeds the investment and that's the issue is people have to muster up the courage to get there and stick with it in those first six and 12, eventually even 18 months where maybe they're investing the money, but they're not yet seeing the return. Don't quit because the return will come. You just need-

Jess LaCour:
Stay the course. Yeah.

Tim Chermak:
Keep making that investment. Stick with it. Courage is a competitive advantage. All right. Thank you guys. Thank you, Jess.

Jess LaCour:
Thank you.

Tim Chermak:
And we'll see you on the next episode of The Platform Marketing Show.