Hey guys, as you're preparing for the new year, you should start to think about what you can do differently for 2023 that you have never done before?

A lot of you have a listing presentation. Some of you have a buyer presentation. Some of you have a pre-listing kit and a pre-meeting buyer kit for buyers. And a lot of you don't have those things.

But if you do have those things and you're saying, what's the next thing I could add to my overall mix of marketing materials?

I'm gonna give you an idea right now:

It's called my "success portfolio."

If you were gonna go to an architect, photographer, or even a baker or wedding planner, when you go into those places and you talk to them about doing business, a lot of times they'll bring out their portfolio. And their portfolio is kind of a graphic representation of what they've done. A visual representation of what they've done in the past for other clients.

So the...

If you're looking for a way to quickly ramp up your business—if you're having a little bit of a slow time, or even if you're not—and you want to lead generate in a simple, easy, and organic way, let me give you the 20 messages a day strategy.

The 20 messages a day strategy is very, very simple.

I'm gonna use my social media account. You can pick your one: Instagram, Facebook, wherever. I'm gonna go to my friend's list of my following, my group, my audience, and I'm just gonna pick 20 people. And I'm generally just gonna start at the A's and work my way down. Or start a Z's and work my way up.

But I'm gonna click on each individual profile of those 20 different people. I'm gonna find something interesting, something they've posted that really catches my interest. Maybe they went to a restaurant, they went on vacation, they went to a certain business that you frequent, they bought something super cool,...

Hey, you know what's interesting? The least interesting thing about you.

And you know what the least interesting thing about you is? That you sell real estate.

I know it's hard to hear, but that's the truth. When people look at you, if you're just one dimensional, and all you talk about is real estate pretty soon they're gonna get bored with you as a person. Why? Well, they're gonna relegate you to noise because every time they listen to you or look at your feeds, they're only gonna hear about real estate. And people get tired of it.

What people want is fresh, new, exciting, and different content. So I want you to think about the five persona strategy.

When it comes to your tombstone, what do you wanna be known for after we're all gone?

You're probably not gonna talk a lot about real estate. You might say you're a REALTOR, but what else was exciting about you? What else was different about you?

Could be that you're...

A recent study by Bloomberg shows that by 2040 electric vehicles will make up the majority of new car sales worldwide, and account for 33% of all the light duty vehicles on the road.

Because of that, electric charging stations at homes are gonna become more and more and more valuable.

So think about this when you're working with a builder or somebody that's doing a remodel or flip on a home. Would it be important, would it be something valuable to add that charting a station to the property as a way to create more value in that property to a pretty large segment—and growing—segment of home buyers?

By the way, an upgrade in capacity for electrical load, according to Seth Cutler, is that it's gonna cost between about $1,500 and $7,500 to upgrade your electrical system to handle that capacity.

But what can you get back when you sell the property? Well, we don't know that hasn't been studied. But we do know that it's among...

My guess is that you're somebody that gives back to the community. Now, you might do it in small, subtle ways that people may not notice. But what if you could give back to charity in a way that helped you, the charity, and also helped your business at the same time?

It's a true win-win situation.

How could you do that?

Well, one of the ways is to pick a charity that you really care about, that you're passionate about, and then secondly, tie that charity to closings in the new year.

So here's an example:

What if you sent out an email, a text, social media post, and you said something like this:

"Hey, in 2023, I've set a goal of selling 30 homes. And I want to help that number of families achieve their real estate goals. But I want to go bigger and also help my favorite charity achieve their goals. So for every closing I have between January and March of this year, I'm gonna donate [fill in the blank: $100, $200, $500] for every...

Five things to do in the first quarter of the new year:

1. Refresh your brand

Refreshing your brand means getting new photos taken. Why? Because you are first and foremost your brand. So you need to get a new, fresh photo. You should do this every year, maybe twice a year. But that new photo is not just a straight headshot, it's multiple photos in different settings. Why? Because your photo is the most used branding element in your marketing arsenal.

But what happens when you don't do this? What happens is people then meet you and there's an immediate brand disconnect. There's an immediate feeling, at least at a subconscious level, that they've been deceived. If they can't trust you with your branding, what else can't they trust you with?

It's more important than you think it is. So get that brand updated and refreshed.

Also, look at your bio. So once you get this new photo, you're gonna update your bio for the new year. And...

Join the podcast today as we chat with Steve Rath. Steve along with his wife Chris have built an incredible Real Estate business in beautiful Sacramento California. With 34 years of real estate experience Steve has keen insights on how to build your business and how providing high level service can differentiate you in a challenging market. His story of going from an Engineer to a thriving Real Estate Entrepreneur will inspire you. Learn how client preparation can be used as the ultimate tool for building raving fans and why your sphere of influence is so important today!

Hey guys, some new interesting information from NAR regarding how far people move when they buy a new home.

For decades, the number was about 10 to 15 miles from where they were moving to where they were going to.

Now that shot up dramatically last year to 50 miles—an unheard of number. And where are people heading?

1. Small towns: up 9% from last year.

2. Rural areas: up 7% from last year.

So people are wanting to exit urban areas, kind of that urban exodus we've talked about for a long time. And why are they doing it? Well, they have remote working, they have a remote school, and they want to get out of the urban jungle. And affordability is a big issue. They can buy a much bigger house, much nicer house by going out to these rural and small town areas.

So what about your market? Are you starting to see this in your market?

Maybe you're on the flip side where you live in a rural market like I do and you're benefiting from people coming to you. And on the other side, maybe...

Only 16% of buyers believe it's a good time to buy a home today. That's according to a new study from Fannie Mae. So when we hear that number, it's kind of a shocking number and it's a record low. Let's not put any sugar on this. It's not good.

So when we're talking to our clients that may have thought about buying but are on the fence right now, how can we have just an honest conversation about the market today?

Well, I like this idea of a "then versus now" conversation. The "then versus now" conversation is dealing with real world numbers. And so let's assume you have a situation where you say, "Hey listen, I know you're kind of on the fence about buying right now, but I just wanna walk you through something to think about. If you were back in time six months ago when we started talking about buying, and you bought a house back then, let's just run through some numbers. I'm gonna compare that to where we're...

Hey guys, here's a fun idea you're probably not doing now in terms of marketing your listings, which is doing a behind the scenes viewpoint of what you're doing to market listings.

And I what you're thinking: What does that mean? Well, a lot of us that watch television today, we'll see a lot of behind the scenes. Everybody loves to see behind the scenes. Like if you're watching your favorite show, whether it's House of Dragons or The Handmaid's Tale or whatever, at the end of the show, they'll circle back and they'll do behind the scenes interviews and so forth.

And people love it. They eat that up. That's when you bought the dvd—yes, we used to do that—we would get the DVD extras and that's what it would have on there.

You can do the same thing with your listings.

What if you started doing some behind the scenes work? And what do I mean by that?

What if you had you taking some photos or some, some...