3 Pillars To Building A Business - Elevate: A Podcast For Driven Real Estate Agents - Episode 7
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This week's episode is shorter than usual but it is still packed with great information! Nathan shares some lessons he learned over his years building and growing businesses. As long as you can do these 3 things you will see success in your own business.
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Nathan Whitworth:
And when you're starting out in the very beginning, it's really, really hard to not only understand your value, but it's also really hard to clearly communicate that value with other people. I would say that once, even if you understand the value, clearly communicating it is tough. Okay? I wanna make the point that says that this takes practice and it's going to take a little bit of time and that's okay. But practice with as many people as you can, communicating the value that you bring as an agent. Do not hesitate to walk up in a networking event and speak to them and talk to them and tell 'em about what you're doing and tell 'em about what your experience has been and tell 'em about what you were able to help somebody to do, right? Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Elevate. This is a podcast for driven real estate professionals and I'm so glad that you're here.
So this is actually going to be the first episode where it's just me. I just wanted to share with you some things that I've been sharing with local brokerages. We've been going around giving lots of presentations, talking with new agents, and this is a common theme that I see come up time and time again, is that there's some agents who are really struggling to get off the ground, they're really struggling to get that first listing, and once they get that first listing, or perhaps they've helped somebody buy their first home, they're trying to figure out how they get to their second. And I wanted to share with you a couple things that I've shared with a lot of agents that feels like it's been very helpful for them and we've gotten really good feedback on, and that's essentially the three pillars that I've been able to build our businesses around.
And I want you to forgive me on this double negative, but the first pillar is that you cannot serve those who don't know you exist. And this is really, really huge. This is something that I tell even when I walk into these brokerages and I'm standing in front of the group of agents and realtors and I say, I understand that in my market, maybe five to 7% of all the agents know who cross gate team media is. And my job today is to get from 7% to 8%. And that's what my whole focus and my whole goal rests on. And I think it's really important to keep that at the forefront of your mind. Okay, so what are we talking about here? We're talking about marketing essentially. And this is not a conversation about lead generation. This is not necessarily a conversation about what you should be doing and what you should not be doing and what's new and relevant and cool for 2022, or what you should be thinking about for 2023.
No, this is found fundamentally coming back to the basics and thinking about the idea here and understanding and realizing you cannot serve those who don't know you exist. So there's two points I wanna make here that I think is really important, and this is new material. This is not something I've talked about with brokerages before, but I think it's important. The first one is be strategic. I know that sounds ridiculous because you're like, of course I wanna be strategic. But oftentimes what I've found is that most agents just throwing things at the wall to try to figure out what sticks and what doesn't hear something on a podcast. They'll see something on YouTube, they'll talk with maybe a top producer who's in their office and they'll say, oh, that's what these people are doing for their marketing efforts. Maybe I should do that too. And then you run out and you half-heartedly try some stuff.
And that inherently is the problem. I'm a big believer that not every form of marketing, not every form of lead generation is right for every agent. And I think that one of the biggest things I wanna share with you, the number one concept I've learned when it comes to marketing, when it comes to this concept, this first pillar, is that you have to be strategic, put a plan in place and then be patient. Cuz nothing's going to happen that first week. Nothing's going to happen that first month, and you're going to be, you're lucky if the efforts that you throw down for an entire week trying to form a plan and then executing on that marketing plan, you're going to be lucky if you get a return on that in six months. You shouldn't expect it any sooner than that because that's how long it takes to go through the process of executing an idea, seeing the results, analyzing the results, shifting and then executing.
Again, you have to go through that feedback loop. You have to, and I'll be honest with you now as a business, we've tried a lot of stuff, but we've tried different forms of marketing, different forms of lead generation. Sometimes I'll give it six months and I'm like, yeah, I'm not sure this is panning out, and then I'll shift. But that's after six months of being consistent on a strategy and ensuring that you're as consistent as possible. Guys, I'll be honest with you, we missed a podcast episode last week. Sometimes you get busy and sometimes you can't be a hundred percent consistent, but you need to work to be 99%. And it's a massively important because you cannot test a theory, you cannot test a marketing strategy to figure out if it's a right fit for you and the people that you're trying to serve, reaching the people you're trying to serve without formulating a plan, executing that plan, and giving it time to work.
So be strategic, be patient. All right, so the second thing I wanna tell you, this is going to be a quick podcast episode. This is a second pillar that I've worked to try to build my business around, and that is the value you offer must exceed the price that you're asking people to pay. And it's funny that I know that for me and I, again, new agents are no different than I am. For me, when I was first getting, I left teaching I taught high school music for 10 years and I left and I started working to build a business, and I was kind of just doing all the things that I thought I should be doing, reaching out to the people I thought I should be reaching out to doing the revenue generating activities day in and day out that I thought I should be doing.
But it took me a few years before this dawn on me, and I think I heard it online and I wish I could have credit it to whoever it was, but it dawned on me that if I'm not providing more value than what I'm asking people to pay for that service, then it's always going to result in a struggle in their mind. And when I go and I talk with someone or I go and I provide a service regardless of the business that I'm in, I always strive to provide more value than what I'm getting paid for because I know that if I can do that, I can 10 x multiply my efforts and be able to grow the business way faster. It should be a no-brainer. Your offer for people should be a no-brainer. I wanna give you a quick example, and this is something I use often.
If I were to walk into your office today and I were to say, Hey man, I have got a car outside that I will sell you for $10,000 <laugh>, right? You didn't see the car, you have no idea what I drive. Would you take that A, would you take that offer? Would you take that deal? And you're probably sitting there right now shaking your head no. You're just like I, there's no way I, there's no, I would take that deal. The reason being is because you don't know what the car is on the other side of that door. That's the reason you won't take the deal. That's why you're not wanting to spend $10,000. You have no idea what it is that you're getting outta that deal. But then if you were to walk on the other side and you saw a Ducati motorcycle for $10,000 or a high-end Ferrari or whatever, I'm not a car guy.
Whatever you saw, you saw a car worth a hundred thousand dollars that I was going to give to you for 10, you wouldn't walk to the bank, you would run to figure out how you're going to pay for that car you would run. So I talk to people all the time. The $10,000 in both situations was the same amount of money I was asking for. I didn't change my ask. All that changed was the value that you were getting out of the deal. Once you understood the value, then you were more than happy to pay that price. So it comes back to the idea that you want to make sure that the value you're offering must succeed the price that you're asking people to pay. And I wanna, on this pillar here, I wanna finish with this idea, and I think this is really massively important.
Be honest with yourself about the value that you're bringing. I know there's a reason why top producing agents can earn top commissions. A reason is because the value that they're bringing to the table is worth that commission. So as a new agent, it's really, really tough to understand what the value is that you're bringing to the table. And especially when you're early and you don't have a ton of experience yet, it's really kind of hard to solidify and to have a massive amount of value outside of all the normal responsibilities and roles that real estate agents bring to the table. And this is important too because the reality is most people don't under even know what a listing agent brings to the table. And when we're talking about this whole concept as a buyer's agent, it's relatively easy. It's why people start out as buyers agents for the most part.
But as a listing agent, this concept gets really, really important. The final thing I want to wrap up with here is you have to clearly communicate your value. So once you have established that you're bringing more value to the table than you're asking for them to pay, then you have to clearly communicate that value. And guys, this is a lifelong skill that needs to be worked on. This is probably the thing that's the hardest for me, the thing that I spend the most time with researching, understanding, trying to nail down. I firmly believe that this is a skill that can get better. Most people, when you start out as an entrepreneur, and that's really what all, every agent is a small business, an entrepreneur, and that's what it is. And when you're starting out in the very beginning, it's really, really hard to not only understand your value, but it's also really hard to clearly communicate that value with other people.
I would say that once, even if you understand the value clearly communicating it is tough. Okay? I wanna make the point that says that this takes practice and it's going to take a little bit of time and that's okay, but practice with as many people as you can, communicating the value that you bring as an agent. Do not hesitate to walk up in a networking event and speak to them and talk to them and tell 'em about what you're doing and tell 'em about what your experience has been and tell 'em about what you were able to help somebody to do. Right? Don't bombard them. That's the worst form of network networking. You don't wanna walk up and be like, Hey, you need to buy or sell a house. That might have worked two years ago, but I think it's massively important to get in as much practice as you can.
It's going to feel weird, it's going to feel awkward at first, but the more opportunities you have to talk about what you do, the more opportunities you have to speak about what it is that you love, then at that point, you're going to find yourself getting your voice. You're going to find yourself finding your voice, and at that point, you'll be really, really surprised how quickly your business can take off. I'm going to recap really quick. First off, and again, forgive me for the double negative. You cannot serve those who do not know you exist, okay? You cannot serve those who do not know you exist. You must market. You must market all the time, whether times are good and whether times are bad. Never take your foot off the pedal. This is the most important. Probably one of the ways I was going to just recap really quick, but I wanna finish with this.
One of the best pieces of advice that I got when I was starting my business was that, hey, there's going to be a point where times are good money's rolling in and you're going to feel like you could take your foot off the pedal. And she said, don't never, ever, ever take your foot off the pedal. The agents who I see, I mean the typical thing is, hey, I've got the spring, I've got the fall to saw houses summer. And then the wintertime is kind of when I'm working on my marketing, like how you work. It's okay to reevaluate and shift and change a strategy once a year or whatever in the winter, but your marketing efforts should be year long and they should be synergistic. Okay? So I'll finish it with that. So you cannot serve those who don't know you exist. Number two, the value offer must exceed the price that you're asking people to pay.
And number three, you must clearly communicate your value. Guys, if you do these three things, if you think about these three things daily, you work, you work tirelessly to lock down these three principles, I promise you, you will grow a strong business. You will grow a strong business that you're really, really proud of. Guys, I hope this has been helpful. This has just sharing with you some of my experiences that I've had building a business. Take care. Have an amazing day and we'll see you next time. Go out there and crush it. Hey everyone, thanks for listening. Hopefully this was really helpful to you in your journey of building a business. If you like what you heard, please click subscribe and go to iTunes and give us a rating that helps us out tremendously when we are producing hopefully content of huge value to you. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it, and I hope that you have an amazing week. Go out there and crush it. I'll see you soon.
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