Owning The Coast
Owning The Coast is your weekly deep dive into the people, places, and possibilities that make Santa Cruz one of the most inspiring places to live. Hosted by real estate pro Brandi Jones, mortgage and market expert Ryan Buckholdt, and insurance specialist Jerry Seagraves, the show blends their unique expertise with candid conversations and dynamic guests. Each week, you’ll hear stories that go beyond property lines — from navigating the local housing market to discovering hidden trails, tasting the best bites in town, and meeting the entrepreneurs, artists, and community leaders shaping the coast. Whether you’re a long-time local, a newcomer, or dreaming about making Santa Cruz home, Owning The Coast offers the insights, inspiration, and insider knowledge you need to thrive in life and living by the sea.
Owning The Coast
Prospecting Like a Pro: How Not to Hate Sales w/ Jason Flynn
When everyone's shouting that the sky is falling, that's precisely when savvy entrepreneurs find their greatest opportunities. In this illuminating conversation with Jason Flynn, Team Leader at Keller Williams Thrive, we explore how shifting markets separate the strategists from the panickers.
Flynn reveals the truth behind the current real estate market that applies universally to business owners - what appears to be crisis is often just predictable pattern. July consistently shows a slight dip in transactions year after year, yet this normal seasonal variation triggers unnecessary alarm. By examining data rather than succumbing to media narratives, entrepreneurs can maintain perspective while competitors retreat.
The heart of our discussion centers on Flynn's "three stool legs" approach to business development. Each guest shares their unique implementation of this framework - from targeted telemarketing and community involvement to educational content creation and strategic partnerships. The common thread? Creating multiple, personality-aligned channels that ensure business stability regardless of market conditions.
We dive deep into modern client relationship management, revealing how even luxury brands like Tiffany employ sophisticated systems to maintain consistent, personalized connections. Flynn explains Google's "7-11-4 rule" for building trust - prospects need seven hours of engagement across four different communication types through eleven touchpoints before fully trusting a business. This framework transforms how entrepreneurs should approach client acquisition and retention.
Perhaps most valuable is Flynn's explanation of "hockey stick growth" in content marketing - that long period of apparent stagnation before sudden, dramatic results. For business owners feeling discouraged by lack of immediate traction from their marketing efforts, this perspective offers both reassurance and motivation to maintain consistency when it matters most.
Ready to transform how you approach business development? Listen now, then connect with us to share which strategy resonated most for your entrepreneurial journey!
Welcome to the On the Coast Podcast guest today. It's very special. Yes, it's hideout.
Speaker 1:We have Jason Flynn with Keller Williams thrive and he's the business development.
Speaker 4:I go by many titles chief cat wrangler, so we call it team leader. It's essentially office manager slash business developer.
Speaker 1:And I met you a while ago, as in two and a half months ago.
Speaker 4:Jesus, I think we technically met before that, but really got to know you that long ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what blew me away is your entrepreneurial mindset. Well, you and I, we would go on tour talk about business, the questions you would ask. It's unlike any other team lead or broker I've ever met. In fact, I asked him, if he had any choice, what would his top three recruits be? I was not on that list.
Speaker 4:Just so you know.
Speaker 2:One month later one month later I was like oh yeah, going to play hard to get, I'll come to you.
Speaker 3:You've been trying to impress him ever since.
Speaker 4:Yes, I've been trying to impress him.
Speaker 1:Just have to don't tell people who it is, see, what happens and we continue to have these fascinating conversations and really the mindset is coming from. Although this sounds realtor specific, it's not it's business owner specific. Although this sounds realtor specific, it's not it's business owner specific. Whether you are making calls to find a client for insurance lending or a home, it can translate into coaching. You know, whatever they're the CEO of their business, and it gets overwhelming when it's one person. We tend to be our own employee and I like the way that you look at things our own employee and I like the way that you look at things. And then you and Ryan just did something for our office meeting at Keller Williams that I thought was even more cool is in our world.
Speaker 1:I don't know about what you guys hear. Ryan, you probably hear it too and tell me what you're hearing. The sky is falling, it is the market shifting, it's a bad time to buy, it's a bad time to sell, and you really blew that myth, that urban legend, out of the water. But I just want to say, ryan, what are you hearing?
Speaker 2:So yeah, I definitely hear that from my clients. You know I'm listening to people that wanting to get a loan to buy homes, but I think it's the exact opposite. I think now is the time to buy. The sky isn't falling. There's no perfect time to buy. It's buy when you can afford it.
Speaker 3:Is it? Is it a lot of comparison based off of old rates and the? Maybe the the opportunity will be missed when the rates fall again in the future. Is that what I think makes a lot of people?
Speaker 2:Like, for example, I get clients that call at hey, I want to buy a house. We run the numbers, we do everything, everything looks good, it fits in their budget and they ask what the rate is. Six and three quarters, 7%, oh my gosh, I'm never paying that interest rate. I'm good, I'm like oh my gosh, we just talked about the payment and you said you could afford it, so your mind is getting stuck on this 7% possible interest rate. So people like to walk in herds, not be individuals, and in order to take advantage of stuff, you have to be an individual. You got to go when people aren't doing the exact same thing.
Speaker 1:So, jason, you're not necessarily talking face to face with well, your clients are your agents, right, my clients are.
Speaker 4:we have about 70 agents, so we're talking to them. I don't interface with buyers and sellers as much other than the typical, like friends, family, all those that are coming to me saying what's happening. But yeah, for the most part I'm talking to agents and learning through them. What are they seeing in the market?
Speaker 1:brokerage that has. Well, first of all, keller Williams is national, but you're working with Cupertino Santa Clara, so we have a close relationship.
Speaker 4:It's us, cupertino and Santa Clara, but then really just are the franchise within the Bay area we have, I want to say it's three to 4,000 agents and just in the Bay area and that's covering all the way up to like the, like Richmond area down Right. So it's a wide swath, but we communicate a lot amongst the offices, although we're closest with Cupertino and Santa Clara. We just had a meeting yesterday with the leaders of all the offices in Northern California and Hawaii. We're all talking about it because it is when people say the sky is falling, is it consumers or is? And when you say when people say the sky is falling, is it consumers or is it agents and business owners? It's a little bit different there. On the agent side. Yes, we're hearing it a lot that things are harder, things are different consumers. That's where Ryan might have a better perspective of what of like what he's actually hearing from buyers, cause I don't know how much we're hearing it on that side.
Speaker 1:Well, I think and you guys can correct me if you're wrong I mean Jerry gets the call after the realtor has talked to somebody. Typically, ryan gets the call typically after they've met a realtor, and then in I've noticed more than ever, as you said, ryan, people are sheeple in the best way.
Speaker 1:You know, there we, we do have a herd mentality for safety, so that it's the realtor that's getting in the way. The realtor is the one that's translating the energy of what's going on. So to me, the realtor doesn't understand a shifting market. Now, this is not a plug for Keller.
Speaker 4:Williams, but there is a book from Keller.
Speaker 1:Williams called Shift.
Speaker 4:That's available to anyone that can read or listen. It's actually a good one in audio book.
Speaker 1:Well, I want to throw this out there to anybody that will be listening to. This is chapter four of shift talks about what you need to do as a business owner and it's the prospecting. We never think prospecting is what we need to do and we just finished a podcast talking about, like it's word of mouth Well, that is technically prospecting, networking, networking, networking and, I think, as a post-COVID Silicon Valley fed market for the last four years, this fifth year 2025, is a shift where things are different, it's harder to predict and when there's a lack of predictability or a trend that's on paper, people freak out. Except when you guys show up and you say July, we are July 2025. Can you go over what you guys discovered about July and what it means historically and what we're at in July?
Speaker 4:So, and I don't know how it works nationally, but at least in our market, we always see a little bit of a slowdown, right, whether that's going from number of new listings, number of appendings, there's always a little bit of a dip in there. Then that leads to closings, obviously too, but we always feel a little bit of a slowdown. So if we know that we always have that and when we drew it out on the chart, it's like clockwork. It was, I don't. I think we went back five or six years. I don't think there was a single one where there wasn't the little dip in July.
Speaker 4:And so when we know that's going to come, is it so what we're feeling right now? Everybody, oh my goodness, like it's feeling a little different. It's taking longer to sell houses. This didn't sell right away. Things like that is we have to be careful of. Is careful of? Is that only because we're in July, or are there bigger things at stake? And that's like where? Then I bring Ryan into the office to say I don't watch macroeconomic, I don't watch mortgage rates, the bigger picture. I'm only talking to our agents about what we see like right here today.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we did a little deep dive on July just to see what July numbers looked like, took 20 transactions that I have in escrow right now that got into July, got into escrow and out of those 20, I transactions, 15 of them were under asking price by quite a bit and we're talking $100,000, $200,000 that in some of them were. And now it's a great time for a buyer to be taking advantage of that. Typically, july families are on vacation, families just got out of school, so the buyer pool is a lot smaller typically in July and this usually will last into August because they're going back to school. But that's what we usually see in the summer months of when properties go a little bit softer of a market.
Speaker 2:And now I think we're in an age where information is so quick Like I've been in this business 27 years Since COVID interest rates are being like published everywhere on national news. It was never that way before. It never made the news Like who cares about what interest rates are being like published everywhere on national news. It was never that way before. It never made the news Like who cares about what interest rates are doing? It's you know what are the economies doing. So I think information is getting out to people quicker and that's what's shifting markets so much quicker these days than you know. An average six month that used to take a market to shift and now it can shift within a month.
Speaker 3:And the news cycle is faster too, right? So all this bad news we get hits and it's forgotten. And something new next week and it's it's interesting seeing how that drives the economy or you know in a direction can make it. You know, we can hear that the, you know the, the S and P is at all time high and consumer confidence is all time high and yet we still kind of don't feel really secure because of all the other baggage that's going on in our news cycle Tariffs and everything else and yeah exactly.
Speaker 4:There was just the other day where it was. The false report came out that Jerome Powell resigned right. Oh, I saw that and what happened to mortgage rates in that blip of a second? I'm guessing. I don't even know for sure. I'm guessing like, oh, all of a sudden markets start moving off of a false report because we're so connected now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, so that's really interesting. So it's even more about in my position as a realtor working with other realtors. We all need a higher level of education. One is it's not what you say, it's how you say it. And then do you want the deal? I know a lot of realtors don't want to be the salesman of like just buy it, just buy it. There's nuances to it. So in the July numbers we are from 2024 till now, basically even right when it comes to new listings and pending sales. I don't remember exactly.
Speaker 4:I think we were just ahead, or we're far ahead in active listings from last June. In pendings, I think we were just ahead. Closings we were just ahead, but it's still higher. And that was the thing that we were trying to talk to our agents about in that meeting was that it may feel like the market has slowed, but what metric is slowing? The sales price went up. The number of sales went up.
Speaker 4:If you're an agent, if you're a lender, if you're an insurance, if you're anybody in this industry, the opportunity actually went up. And I don't know the number of like number of lenders or number of agents in the business this June versus last June, but like it feels like it's maybe lower. So that means there's actually bigger opportunity. It's just that. To your point about prospecting, there's other people out there out prospecting those people. Because out of you three, how many people got into your respective business in order to prospect? You were like, yes, I'm going to go get into mortgages because I love lead generation. I was in a group coaching thing. I was like, oh man, like I just hate sales. And they were like what?
Speaker 2:are you doing?
Speaker 4:here it turns out I love sales, sales is fantastic. But no one got in in that mindset of like I'm going to own a business, I'm going to go do lead generation. They said I'm going to go sell some houses, I'm going to go do mortgages, insurance, whatever. I'm going to make some money. Eventually I'll retire. They don't have the business mindset. It's a little bit different.
Speaker 1:Since you brought up lead generation and I want to ask you about three stool legs. Okay, so let's just say we're we're talking specifically about real estate, but people listening might be in, like I said, their own business owners. So you put out the word we're going to go prospect or lead generate and that gets overwhelming. I don't want to come off sales money. I don't want to tell my best friend to buy my products. Watching you is like a mastermind. You'll take an agent and you'll be like okay, how do you break that down for an agent? Or how can you help somebody who's listening to it break it down?
Speaker 4:I was going to say. You've mentioned a couple different times now about how it could be anybody and that is a lot of what we're teaching is like. I literally took one of our courses at KW and gave it to my sister who bought a tanning salon and I was like here, like take, like 90% of what we're teaching is just business and then we're going to throw some real estate flair on it. So it does apply to mortgages and insurance and anybody that's in a small business. Because even if you own a bakery, if nobody comes in and buys your bread, you're out of business really quick, right, and so three legs to the stool. It really just has to do with like you can't ever rely on one source of business. We often talk about sphere like the people you know, the people you know like and trust, or that know like and trust you, they're going to be your number one. Just because you've already broken through the barrier of I know you, I'm going to work with you. Just because I know you, I might go to your bakery just to help you out. If they know your exists. And that's where we have people say, well, I don't want to sell my sphere, who cares? Like they want to work with you.
Speaker 4:Like in fact I my very first sale was somebody who I actually thought didn't like me because I was his supervisor in the military. I might've been a jerk and I might've not been very nice to him. I put on Facebook I want to help. I got my license, I want to help people buy and sell houses. He calls me and said I forgot, I'm moving to Hawaii and I need to sell my house. Or I'm moving to Hawaii, I forgot to sell my house. So I sold his house. It was great. I didn't know like if I never asked for that, like I would have never gone to him because I thought he didn't like me. But it turns out he just he knew I was brand new, he knew I didn't have experience.
Speaker 1:Oh, the tables turned.
Speaker 4:He knew I didn't have experience. However, he knew I was trustworthy, I wasn't going to screw him over, I wasn't going to backstab him or I wasn't going to waste his money, right. And so that's like really why we have those conversations with the people we already know, because they at least trust you to bake the bread right, hopefully.
Speaker 1:So how do you help people find the other two?
Speaker 4:personality person, like a big one's personality because, like, again, we'll just using real estate. People say, oh, go door knocking, go knock on neighborhood doors. I hate. My hands sweat so bad when I do that. Like I'm pretty outgoing person person, I can't door knock. I did it not too long ago when I was on a team. I was like, oh, we're open house, I'm just going to go knock on doors and drop off flyers. Hated it, it's not my thing.
Speaker 4:So we work with people to say, okay, what's your personality type? Like, how do we? We have a couple of different assessments that we can use to say if, if you hate door knocking, then don't door knock, like you're going to hate it. And a lot of people like open houses. I have one agent that's like, oh, I hate open houses, I I'll do it if you make me, but I hate them. I was like don't do it, you know. And so there's gotta be okay, great, you're not going to door knock, you're not going to do open houses. I think we have a hundred other sources of business and we figure out with them. You know, do they have money already through some other source or not? Great, then do more marketing and less hardcore prospecting, but a lot of business owners, real estate agents included, are sitting there waiting for the business to come to them. We just have to find the things that work with their personality and then get specific and go focus on it.
Speaker 1:So we were talking about how we really do network in this town. So I want to ask Jerry and Ryan just expenses-wise networking costs money. So do you double down on networking Like what would be your three legs?
Speaker 3:I mean that's a great question. I've talked a lot with my staff about this because of what you said. Personality types are so different and you know I'm not a hard closer, yeah, right. And so I use that as an example. With my, with my people, I'm like I'm not the guy who's going to be like can I get you to sign today? Because I'm based off my value and I want my value to win that sale and if they don't value me, I don't want them as a client. But I'm in that position that I can do that.
Speaker 3:My new guys maybe not, right? So my three legs are I have an in-house telemarketer. As much as I hate doing that, I stopped doing personal lines telemarketing about 15 years ago and I just market to businesses and the thought behind that is I get a two for one. They have homes and autos and a business and workers comp and group health and group life, right. So I just go to that source. And so this guy calls all the industries that I want. I lay them out every Friday, he reviews it with me and then the next week he goes out and he gets me 15 leads a week and I give those to my sales guy. So that's stool leg number one.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's a beautiful leg.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it works good. I mean I, you know he's full time. I would kill myself if I had to do that full time. That's the worst job, but he loves it.
Speaker 3:Stool leg number two would be like my community stuff that I do, whether it's this or taking, you know, some of my, my best clients out to lunch and talking about you know how their businesses are going, and that brings up topics that we talk about, you know, or we go, we go about. You know I'm on a school board as well, so that's part of the community stuff, right. So, and then we have our internal marketing, and so the biggest source of revenue for me is looking at the policies and policy holders. I already have things that I may have missed, like a closing that I did for you right, like I just did the home because they were in a hurry. But you know we offer auto as well and we offer all these other products.
Speaker 3:So because I'm not a high pressure guy, I make it conversational and usually I'll call them up and say, hey, I'm just wrapping up your stuff and I couldn't help but notice that you guys have, you know, some other lines of business that we do. When you're ready, let me know. We do all that stuff competitively and I'll put it out there. But then behind the scenes I make a file note like hey, in six months I usually ask to you like, do you know, when you renew, that's the big one and they'll sell me. Oh, I think it's like October, and so in September or or August I'll make a note for somebody in my office to present a proposal for them. So those are our like three key legs. I mean there's other stuff that we do, but those are the main ones.
Speaker 1:Ryan.
Speaker 2:So I'd say my three key legs. I do have an in-house telemarketer also, like Jerry does, but mine calls past clients and so his job is to call 300, 400 people a day and kind of, I give them the. This is what to talk about right now, like, for example, right now we've gotten a lot of appreciation. If you have equity, you should do a home equity line of credit and a home equity line of credit for emergency purposes. I don't suggest taking it out and buying boats and RVs with it, but I suggest having it just in case something were to happen. For example, when COVID hit and they sent us home and said, hey, you're working from home, I had no idea what that meant. Told my wife, I'm like, hey, write a check for $250,000. Let's just throw it in our account, let's just sit on it, because I have no idea if this is going to stop business or if we're going to keep transacting. Two months went by. We just paid it back because I was like, okay, we're still alive, we don't need to move to New Zealand. So just trying to give my past clients just opportunities and knowledge and you know, things that can help them out, and I'd say I'd say my second pillar is I do a lot of teachings of classes where I'm helping people kind of understand.
Speaker 2:You know most people think all debt is bad debt. Where I don't necessarily agree with that. Mortgage can be good debt. Mortgage can be something that you have a payment on. That's actually appreciating assets, not like a car. A car, you buy it at $40,000. The day you drive it off the lot it's worth $30,000. You're making payments on it. It's going to go down to $20,000.
Speaker 2:House is different. Now you have a mortgage and a house and the house is appreciating and maybe you shouldn't use your cash and pay off the mortgage. Maybe you should be investing and letting that money grow. So I'd say that would be. My second pillar is basically being out there teaching the different phenomenons of interactions within real estate and building wealth and mortgages and so forth. And I'd say probably my third pillar of business is I work with a lot of financial planners too, because I do talk with my clients in regards to how do they build more wealth, how do they keep what they have and how do they have it grow for them. And not a lot of mortgage companies do that, not a lot of mortgage people do that and the conversations I have with financial planners. They always tell me wow, these are actually fun conversations, I enjoy it when you call. So that's been a real benefit for me.
Speaker 1:I like that segue because I like professionals that can take it to a scope where you can see what your net worth or your value is once you hire these professionals. And having a financial planner and somebody well, you talk like a financial planner. I would say Jason has helped me with my three pillars. I'll tell you what they were before. All right, I absolutely was like just networking. I didn't advertise anything, so it was like my sphere obviously, and I don't have kids, so it was like you know, whoever I knew, just through the community, I absolutely loved helping realtors. So that's when I was like volunteering for a lot of things like WCR or other things so that realtors could grow, and I got a lot of referrals from that.
Speaker 1:And then what nearly killed me was distressed properties. It could have been anything from a lawsuit to somebody passed away, whatever it is. It was distressed. I was just strong, I could handle it. And then as I got older I couldn't handle it. I had my own health issues and I was like, okay, I don't have to have a cape to save a human who wants to either buy or sell a house. It doesn't have to be that dramatic. So Jason helped me figure out.
Speaker 1:It's obviously my sphere and for me it's like, in a professional way, it's your sphere. Keep track of who they are. I mean this sounds so rudimentary, but again, I got away with it. For years I didn't have a CRM. I actually now have 169 people in my CRM Nice which to me, it's a different perspective when you're not an ER nurse or you're not trying to just help other people with their business and you actually focus on yours. It's like they're in your nest egg. You care about them differently than transactional. So that's one of the biggest things.
Speaker 1:The other one is this like podcasts, getting online, being more visible. When you're working distressed, you don't really want to be the one like they don't want to recognize you in public because you're solving a really embarrassing problem for them. So I got to hide behind the scenes and not really like promote myself in the sense of like hey, let's have a party Like my parties I'd have is like you lost your house, you got a divorce, your parents died. You know, to me I didn't see the joy. Well, I had so much thrill in helping people. Now I love the idea of this getting online doing fun things, and then I say business to business. This translates into more like I love promoting other businesses because it's like I love my business. You love your business, jason loves his business. Brian all of us really have a passion for this and I watch how it you change everyone's life, that I've seen you. Well, I was going to say tickle, but no more tickling.
Speaker 1:Everyone that I watch you guys interact with. Somebody walks away lighter, happier or an aha moment, and that's who I want to be, and those are my three pillars, jason.
Speaker 4:In one of our offices you just brought up CRMs right and in one of our offices they hired someone that used to work at Tiffany, like at the jewelry store. They have a CRM right Because they'd have to track those people. They're not. You're not going into Tiffany and spending $250,000 once a year, once a month, once a week, I'm not. But they have people that they will every several years, five years, 10 years. So they have them in CRM, so they're tracking them to keep in relationship with them. Ritz-carlton is the same way that they're high important clients, if you will. They're keeping track of them. Who are their kids? Who are there? Where do they work, so that when they show up at the Ritz-Carlton, they have special things for them at their room.
Speaker 4:People tend to think like, oh, a CRM is just like, it's too impersonal. I, a CRM is too impersonal, I don't need that because I just have enough relationships. You can only be in deep relationship with 18 people at a time. I think it is in a sales role 18 people in your pipeline. If you're going to have more communication with them, it's not that you like them less or care about them less that they're in your CRM. It's actually that you care about them more. When you mentioned CRM, it popped in my head.
Speaker 2:That's funny because Tiffany's, so Tiffany's would call me my wife's birthday, christmas and our anniversary. They knew those three dates and they would call me hey, ryan, they knew my budget. They'd always call me this is what my life likes. They would say, hey, this is what we have, perfect, send it.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah. And do you think that that one person you met the first time you went into Tiffany happens to remember all that? No way.
Speaker 1:Do they?
Speaker 4:even still work there. Who knows it's probably it's in the system.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And what they do. They followed up with you essentially four times a year. That's what we teach as like a minimum is four personal touches a year. That it's like that's especially if if you have all those states scattered out into like a quarterly basis, that's gold for them. Yeah Right, that it's like they're touching you four times a year and you're saying, yep, send it.
Speaker 2:They were solving a problem, they were making sure it was on time.
Speaker 4:Put it on your Apple card. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:You have some other numbers. So so many numbers I know. So it is to touch people four times a year. Go into that, and then there's the number 32.
Speaker 4:So 32 kind of it actually changed. It's more like a 36 with with research over time and these come out of just research KW has done over years. It's in the millionaire real estate agent book but again you could cross out real estate in there and just be like any business. It's being in communication with someone 36 times a year. To stay top of mind, it's not 36 phone calls Cause if I call you 36 times, ryan, and I say how are you doing? How are you doing? How are you doing Three times a month like you're suddenly and I'm not bringing you business You're blocking my number, it's cool.
Speaker 4:But so it comes down to like what are the different ways? And then Google has a whole different thing called the 7-11-4 rule, which is seven touch points over. Or it's seven hours that someone has to spend with you, whether that's over four different types of communication over 11 different touch points. Just saying that like one time of talking to someone is enough to build trust. So we need to be in front of them with email and a newsletter and a podcast and all these different things. And so it's both of those like there are two different things that we could rabbit hole another time about with saying nobody is talking to people enough times. It's like we. The noise got so loud with Facebook, instagram, tiktok emails. I literally just paid for an AI to go sort my emails for me because it's getting too confusing, right. It's like there's so much noise that it's like we have to hit all the touch points all the time. That's not something you can't do without systems or AI or technology helping you.
Speaker 1:So I just want to go back over those numbers. It doesn't have to be exact, but really what I'm hearing you say is that calling somebody as your one way to stay connected with them is no longer enough, and having four touch points a year is no longer enough, according to Google.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's not enough. But at the same time we do see if someone makes just a quarterly phone call to somebody, so four times a year a quarterly phone call, that'll get them like 70% of the way. And so that's why if an agent's going to kind of buck us on all of it and say, no, I'm not doing that, I'm not doing that, fine, make a phone call. Well, I want to send a text, like, okay, but text is a great secondary. You know that a lot of younger generation have now shifted over to text and DM and that's fine. But the phone call, because then we get the voice to voice, you get the inflection, you get the attitude. If you will, you have a longer conversation by accident. If I call you and we accidentally talk for 10 minutes, that's more than two or three texts back and forth. So add a minimum that.
Speaker 1:But otherwise, you're looking at a perfect plan is 36 times a year. So let's say I own that bakery we were talking about and, okay, I'm listening to you, and now I'm, okay, I'm going to call people quarterly, like, whatever my bread's on sale, or now I'm featuring this, all right, but I want more cause. I want to be an influencer around bread. What does that look like online?
Speaker 4:What we see a lot is YouTube and Instagram, different algorithms, but there's a free way you can get in there, which is just posting consistent content that people want to consume.
Speaker 4:Totally changes basis off based off industry, but there's the free way of doing it that way, or the marketing side, which and that's where we get into do you have more time or do you have more money right now, like, especially like people new in a business, they probably have more time than money. Then go put time into you know a YouTube channel. It's free to start, it's free to run, free to do Instagram, Facebook, tik TOK, like all those are all free things where you can depend on a tech algorithm to get your message in front of who it thinks are the right people and sometimes that's right. Or if you have more on the money side, where we go into them, marketing on the marketing side, go put money, make that same video and put some money behind it and Google or Facebook will push it out in front of more people for you. But that's how you start to kind of expand that circle out more. Or then we get into prospecting, which is go hustle and go boots on ground, talk to people face to face, belly to belly.
Speaker 3:Do you guys have analytics built up on success rate of like, say these, these Instagram reels, for you know how successful they are at leading to sales, for how successful they are at leading to sales.
Speaker 4:It really depends on how the people get started with it, because what happens is it's either inconsistent or they're doing the wrong message for what they're looking for. So when you see people that are just constantly posting just kind of like, whatever like, it's not a clear message and there's never a clear call to action in it of follow me, dm me, do anything besides watch this video. It gets difficult. So I want it. I don't know if I know of any statistics around like kind of like those metrics stacking down, but on the Instagram side we know three to five posts a week, as long as they're quality, right, if you're literally. I mean, there is a thing. If you're just getting started, hit record, say some stuff, it'll work out fine.
Speaker 4:Youtube one video a week done well, over eight minutes. Focus on thumbnail, focus on your title. You can build. You do that once a week for six months, kind of no matter what industry you're in, you're going to start getting traction of subscribers. Then you have to work on the okay, now call me, dm me, whatever call to action you're giving them.
Speaker 1:You have a successful story. We won't mention her name, but you worked with an agent who was a top agent and I love her.
Speaker 1:No one will guess if they know you, nobody will know who my little, okay, but she used to make videos. She really got into videos, I'm just going to say it. She make a fox. Yeah, she really got into videos, probably 10 years ago, and they were fun and quirky. And then when COVID hit, she didn't feel like doing fun and quirky anymore and then at some point she was all over the place with her business. She wanted more control of who's coming in. And all over the place with her business. She wanted more control of who's coming in and so she was just making I won't say pointless videos that had no direction, or call me. What did you do?
Speaker 4:So this is where we get into what we call models and systems. Right, we found she had come to one of our events saw an agent out in Florida who runs he runs a large team. He's in Orlando, so it's a very different market than what we have, but he had a lot of success with YouTube, Took the same exact model that he did, brought it here because he has it literally broken down into a two-page document of this is how I do this and I then can break it down just to say it's a video a week with a bunch of rules around it. Starts doing it. And there was another agent out in Georgia that had copied his model and had done that too, and she had seen both of them do it. So she was like, okay, I could do it here. Just starts doing it once a week.
Speaker 4:Now they both said it's six months until you start getting success. Three months into it she's like it's just not working, Like I'm getting nothing out of this. Six more months in, she's like, well, I got one lead, but it was kind of a weird one. Like it was kind of they weren't interested in buying real estate, they were interested in just they needed, like a land use consultant. One month later it was like 5 million in escrow and like consistent leads coming in. And the big difference was the first several years was I'm trying this, I'm trying that, Like all these different things, found a model. And if she had broken that consistency? I think she only missed two videos in six months and if she had broken that consistency, that's where the failure would have been. Like you can kind of post about anything for six months.
Speaker 1:Well and visually. What does that look like? You call it a.
Speaker 4:Oh, it's the hockey stick growth. So it's literally like slow, slow, slow, slow we say slowly. Then suddenly, and then all of a sudden, if you watch it on a little chart, it just all of a sudden whoop like at the end of the chart it just shoots up Like Bitcoin no, I'm kidding Like it goes slow, slow, slow and then that's an algorithm thing. It's just as she starts sharing it to more and more people and they gain that trust. Video is maybe the number one way to gain trust with strangers. Teaching seminars I think you both talked about teaching. Yes, absolutely Teaching teaching online. You can get in front of more people, but that's all she's doing is teaching. She's doing short videos once a week about where to live, how do mortgages work. One of her top ones is taxes, because people don't understand property tax at tax time.
Speaker 1:How many hours does that average out till you start getting the hockey stick piece Meaning online views? You're saying eight minutes a week minimum.
Speaker 4:Yeah, like the videos are minimum eight minutes long. That's just a weird YouTube thing about. Then Google can monetize it and put an ad on it, and once they do that, they'll promote your video more. I'm not sure what you mean, though. Seven hours.
Speaker 4:Okay, seven hours. Oh, yeah, seven hours. Well, so that's Google seven 11 four rule, which is seven hours of content consumed with someone. So even if I meet them at an open house say I host an open house, they come in, we have a great conversation, maybe 20 minutes long. Now I need to go find six hours and 40 minutes of content for them. So if I have then an email campaign already set up where it's going to send them four emails with my buyer guide here's tips to buying a house, tips to getting pre-qualified, all these different things Then they're consuming that information a little more, a little more, a little more.
Speaker 4:I say, hey, check me out on Instagram too. Okay, now I'm moving to the third platform and they're moving over to Instagram and they watch a few of those reels. Then maybe that kicks them over to a podcast, right? Then, all of a sudden, they have four different touch points. So it's not just hi, I'm Jason, I'm at an open house. That's great. That might convert some people, but we can convert more people as we lead them through these funnels. And again, that's any. But Google did not go do that for Santa Cruz Realtors. That's. Google did that for business, for Google, because Google wants you to be successful on Google, so you keep giving them money.
Speaker 1:So I love that you guys learning anything.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I need to do more, it's always more.
Speaker 1:So if there was one thing that you learned from Jason just now, ryan, what would you do one thing differently? Or add to, or would you just do some tick tock dancing. I know seven hours.
Speaker 2:I need to.
Speaker 3:Consume seven hours of tick tock dancing.
Speaker 2:I was sitting here thinking what the hell am I going to do for seven hours.
Speaker 4:I mean, I think I might have listened to you, for it's not seven hours yet, but we're adding it up when you come to the meetings, weekly, the meetings, the meetings. It's a different Santa Cruz podcast, you know, and you start adding it up. I get your emails. I get your emails that have the. They're four minutes, five minutes probably.
Speaker 3:I get your chicken recipes. I guess it all adds up.
Speaker 1:It's a different time, those seven hours.
Speaker 4:It adds up over time. It all adds up. It's a different time those seven hours. It adds up over time.
Speaker 1:Jerry, what would be the one thing that you pick?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean pick for me to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you were listening to this instead of getting overwhelmed. What would be the one thing you'd just add to your?
Speaker 3:You know, I know what I need to do and that's start a business-level Instagram page that I'm consistent on with navigating my marketplace right, navigating the things that customers always ask me, but I've just been too lazy and overwhelmed to do it. But that would be the next thing that I'm going to do is, for sure, be consistent at doing that.
Speaker 1:You know we could start here.
Speaker 3:Let's do it.
Speaker 1:Let's have our next show be on.
Speaker 3:Instagram live. Well, no, but I mean we have one viewer. Yeah, no for sure.
Speaker 1:So that way you could like start getting that onto the other things. I definitely, jason, would say, you know, coming from more of a hidden perspective of being the realtor, that doesn't get in your face just hearing those numbers yet again like, yeah, just go record yourself. Yeah, you know, just get out there Like the super secret agent. Even when I play volleyball I'm like so stealth Sometimes they're like it's not. We have to communicate. You can't be the super secret stealth agent. Well, jason, I want to thank you.
Speaker 4:I want to make one quick point though. Actually, if you hate video, you don't want to be on camera, then don't be on camera. There's written word, there's audio and then there's video. Video, it's just engaging. It's a little bit easier to do, but I just talked to a friend that he's like a business performance coach, trying to figure out okay, I really need to get into social. I know he's a writer, like go get on LinkedIn. He's looking for business professionals and he's a writer LinkedIn. There's a whole different opportunity there, because something like 99.9% of people on LinkedIn don't create content. It's a very small number compared to the billion or whatever they have on it's. Might be a billion, I don't know, but they. So it's like if you're just not comfortable with video, maybe try it, just because to me, covid made it real simple because we're on zoom all the time anyway. So I was like okay, I got comfortable with it. Do podcasts.
Speaker 4:I worked with an agent before that. He was very robotic on video. When we sat down and did a podcast, I could ask him questions. It breaks them out of his shell, the passion comes out and he's like I don't understand why buyers are doing this. You know, like why did this buyer do this again? And you start to feel like that passion. It's like, oh, like this is a real emotion. It's not welcome, you know, welcome to the show. It it comes out and so you could. Now podcasts are overlapping with video a lot. Maybe that's a way to get comfortable with video, but it doesn't have to be video. That would be my one caveat to the whole thing.
Speaker 1:You know you have a great voice for not radio video you have a great voice. So we are wrapping it up now. Jason, when can people find you?
Speaker 4:Instagram. That's my favorite one, jason the Flynn, but you can find me, jason the Flynn, at Instagram, facebook. I think everything.
Speaker 1:Spell it out, jason.
Speaker 4:J-A-S-O-N. N T H E F L Y N N I'm military too, I'm very findable.
Speaker 1:Ryan, where can they find you?
Speaker 2:Phone Phone's the best Eight, three, one, eight, one, eight, two, three, three, nine.
Speaker 1:Jerry.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 1-870. I'm going to go phone as well. Brandi Jones 831-588-5145.
Speaker 4:Now I want to plug in my phone 831-219-8282. But text me, don't call me.
Speaker 1:Wow, I like that. All right, Thanks guys.
Speaker 3:Thank you, thank you.
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