Ep. 135: What's The Future of Real Estate Marketing?

In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with real estate agents is essential for success. However, finding effective ways to secure agent relationships can be a challenge. With so many mortgage loan originators vying for the attention of real estate agents, it can be difficult to stand out and establish meaningful connections. Our new case study featuring loan officer Chris Cogill is a must-read. This has closed a remarkable 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals. And in this case study, he shares his proven strategies for building strong relationships with real estate agents and leveraging those relationships to drive more business. To get your hands on this resource, head over to LOKestudy.com and download your free copy of the case study today. You'll find actionable insights and practical tips that Chris used to close 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals and how you can too. Don't miss out. Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Welcome to Mortgage Marketing Radio. Brought to you by the Mortgage Marketing Institute, your number one source for truth in Mortgage Marketing. Hey listeners, what's up? This is Jeff Zimper. Welcome to this episode of the Mortgage Marketing Radio Podcast. As always, I am so glad you tuned in and I hope you're going to be as equally as glad as I am after you listen to this week's episode. Before we get into that, I've got to give a shout out once again to one of our loyal listeners who took the time to leave us a brief review online on the socials, wherever you're listening to this podcast and it's by Freebird25, it gives us five stars, a podcast for all levels of MLOs and Freebird25 goes on to say, I've been an originator for many moons and the content and guests Jeff has on is fresh and has many takeaways. Freebird25, shout out to you, bye bye baby, I'm a Freebird yeah, isn't that how the song goes? Something like that. Hey Freebird, listen, appreciate you leaving the review, you've got a podcast swag box coming your way. How do you get it? You just PM me on Facebook, give me your shirt size, t-shirt size, and mailing address, we'll get your podcast t-shirt and some swag. Just as a thanks for leaving us a podcast review and once again, as always, this podcast is brought to you by the Mortgage Marketing.pro membership where we are providing you with the tools and resources you need to be a modern originator and balance both sides of this business, both the offline and online. What is it? It's done for you agent classes, social media courses, skills training and more to help you get more agent referrals, grow your business and become a modern mortgage originator. You want to learn more? There's a brief video we put up at MortgageMarketing.pro and if you didn't hear last week's episode, that was featuring our mortgage pro member of the month, Liz Lefort, where she was talking about as a member just in two months, right? She's been able to generate an additional five purchase loans in her business at her last agent class. She had 40 real estate agents show up to learn all about Facebook ads and marketing and she's just ignited her business in a big way. So if you haven't heard that episode yet, go back and catch that one. All right, so let's get into this week's episode with my very special guest who I'm honored that he took time to be on our podcast and his name is Chris Smith. This is a USA Today best selling author and the co-founder of Curator, a social media digital marketing and sales coaching company and they have just exploded in the real estate space. In less than four years, Chris used the blueprint in his book, which I've read and there's links to all this stuff in the show notes. Everything you hear us talking about, his book, The Conversion Code is just a blueprint and a roadmap for connecting both the online and offline lead funnel sales process and conversion strategy that you need to have in place today. Chris and his team has grown Curator to over 10 million in annual recurring revenue. He's been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, many other publications, they're an Inc. 500 company. And Chris has a really interesting cool background. He actually worked for two billionaires, Dan Gilbert and Lou Perlman, Dan Gilbert of Quick and Loans and Lou Perlman, who's the, you know, the fame is the band boys, right? He discovered like Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, we talk a little bit about Chris's time at Quick and in the lessons he learned in terms of lead conversion, sales scripting, mindset and just lots of great takeaways and lessons there. And he also went on to work for Move, Move Incorporated and Dot Loop, which was acquired by Zillow. And now, of course, Chris is a highly sought after keynote speaker and is one of the most influential people in real estate today. And we unpack just, you know, a crash course in what's the current state of real estate and mortgage marketing? How do we adapt and pivot and some, some aha moments and discoveries in here, which I think you'll enjoy by listening to Chris. We talk about his next book coming out called Exactly What To Say When, which is going to be really exciting stuff. And we put links in the show notes for you to get on the early bird list for that as well. So without further ado, let's get into this week's show, Chris Smith. Welcome to the show. What's up, man? Pump to be here. Pump to have you here. Appreciate you making time. I know you're incredibly busy. For those listeners that may not be familiar with you, they got familiar with you in the formal interest. So they should know about you. We're going to put links to everything we say in the show notes, including your book, the conversion code. So, but here's the thing, right? My tagline is truth and mortgage marketing. And my goal on these things is to deliver more nuggets per minute than any other podcast out there. So, all right, dude. I wanted to start with this, the big headline, right, because you've been in this industry a long time. What a lot of people don't know about you, though, that I thought would be very interesting to unpack, first of all, is that, you know, I'm going to say you're one of us, because you've sold loans, you, you, and I dare I bring it up for some people in the audience listening, the Q word, the quick and word, right? Some mixed emotions for some listeners out there. But you sold loans at quick and quick and mortgage, didn't you? That's right. Yeah, I was in the belly of the beast is what I think you're trying to say. Exactly, man. All right. So, but what I wanted, why I wanted you here, because I think you bring a unique perspective both for Morgan and real estate side, and you're doing a ton of stuff in the real estate business with like, you know, digital technology and marketing and lead Jan and all that kind of jazz. We're going to get into the quick and take a minute, but I want to start with Chris, what's the current state of real estate and mortgage marketing? Sure. Well, it's usually about five years behind where it should be. And that's always the current state. Our industry is sort of equally excited to change and try new stuff and equally kind of bad at it, right? So, you know, you kind of get caught up in the day to day and you're kind of doing your job. And I just feel like sometimes like social media or video or content or email or blogging or LinkedIn or Twitter or stories is not your job as an L.O. Like I wasn't even allowed to do that a quick and you because I was supposed to be calling people. And so when you have a machine in place where it's a hundred calls a day, five conversations a day, two credit pulls in a loan every single day. You don't really have time to tweet, man. And so I understand how the most successful people also have the least amount of time to adapt. But that's where it gets dangerous. That's where you can get leapfrog to give you a good example in my world. You think loan officers don't like quick and realtors don't like Zilla, like the Z word is more aggravating. But why don't each industry like each entity, they're jealous. They might call it, they suck, they're about at service. What they're really saying is they're getting all my leads and I can't compete. They don't deserve it because I care more. Right. Like get the hell out of here. They out marketed you. They out branded you. They out systems you. They out technology you and you've been catching up ever since. The brokers in the real estate space are trying to catch up now. And the loan officers in the mortgage space is trying to catch up now. And bank rate and lending tree and quick and major life a little bit harder. Deal with it. My life's a little bit harder too. I write books. Go read my reviews. There's people that say I suck. Go read your reviews of your podcast. There's people that say you suck. So welcome to the internet. All right. All right. All right. Cool. I love that. So let's play a little devil's advocate here. Okay. So cool. We're pissed off because quick and eight are launched. Zilla ate our lunch. Whatever. They got better and more efficient work. There's no way we can compete at that level. Right. They're going to outspend us right 100 fold or whatever. So that's absolutely not true. All right. Break it down for me then. How do we compete with that? It's very easy. It's actually super easy because they are never going to be the local digital mayor. They are never going to be able to create unique hyper local content and relationships at scale. Okay. But they are going to be like Amazon, right? They're going to be this layer that authors have to live with. That's, you know, when I do a book, I got to deal with Amazon takes my money. What do you want me to do? Dude, go put my book on freaking iBooks only. Like, you have to adapt to the change and then you have to fucking fight back. Yeah. That's what's missing. Zestimates suck. Where's your version? Why do people like quick and it's fast. It's easy. I promise of it is the loan tracking software, the frickin' affiliation with QuickBooks, which they trust, the speed, the commercials, people like them for a reason. Yeah. And so if you can't get past your bitterness to get better, I'm taking notes, dude. I'm taking notes and I'm fighting back. That's my advice. No, I love that. I agree with that. So it's interesting. I don't know if you've seen, this is some of the kind of threads I've been following on social about the Ibuyers, the fleecing of America because they're making lesser offers and people are losing equity. What's your take on that? We already have written articles, done email campaigns, done ad campaigns and lead generation and education. In every market, we have curator clients in the newsfeed and put significant budgets behind it. Have you? So your answer is, what are you doing about it? How are you? Exactly. Yeah. Do something. So, okay, are you trying to say there's a hidden cost to selling your home, the Silicon Valley way? Is that what you're trying to say? Because that's the name of the article we wrote six months ago. And that's the name of the ad we put out. And that's the name of the emails we did. We're doing something about it. We're not just bitching about it. And you can fight back. So screw that mindset that quickens going to crush me. Yes, they have a bigger budget. Yes, they're going to generate more leads. Yes, they're going to do ads and things on the Super Bowl that you can't. Who cares? Mm-hmm. What do you think? What do you say to the people who still have their heads stuck on the sand? I was like, you know what I mean? That's a bunch of noise, that kind of stuff. Hey, I've been doing it X, the 17 years, not in my area. You know what I mean? Those naysayers? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Well, first of all, they're wrong. Okay. So they're wrong because if they're complaining about how it is and they're romantic about how it was, they've already started to lose. Mm-hmm. So you better be prepared with my world, man, you tell me, and I'll ask you, this is your space, Brad. You know, I've been in it, but I'm not in it right now. Here's my question to you. If you're consulting a large mortgage company in a large city, would you tell them to buy leads from Zillow, Bank rate, and lending tree or not? That is a good question, and to be honest with you, from a mortgage side, I'm going to have to say my gut answer to that is no. Okay. So on the real estate side, that would be the same as you saying, do not buy Zillow leads, correct? I think where I personally stand, and I'm not saying I'm an expert on this, but I think it's a different conversation for the real estate agent than the lender. Mm-hmm. Right? Because, I mean, if it depends on the context we talk about, because I buyers, we know they're doing. Bank rate don't have really good leads, because I know quickens getting lower my bill leads too. So that's my whole point. It's like, you can compete and fight, like I mentioned, through content, right? Yeah, yeah, right. You can also co-opitation. Right. My client and the other building named Veronica Figaroa, she's not really excited that Zillow is buying homes, but she's listed in the ones they don't. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. That's what I'm getting at. There's a lot of people just frigging throw Zillow out of the bathwater, right? Like, agents because of a whole about I buyer thing, but like you and I both know, they're generating thousands of listing leads for the ones that they don't take. So are you getting yourself in the flow of that as a real estate agent? Let's have your cake and eat it too. If you think you're feeding the beast and you're going to put yourself out of business, you're just too, like, egotistical to understand that you don't matter that much. Like, the industry might go away, and the I buyer might work, but has nothing to do with you. Like, get your paper right now, be their partner, be their enemy, do something. What I learned about lending when I was at Quicken was that we wanted the mortgage rates moving. We didn't necessarily care if they were higher low. We wanted them changing because when things change, it creates new conversation opportunities. And so if things are changing with I buyer, or if things are changing where these technology companies, quite frankly, are coming in and acting like their local banks and stealing all your leads, because I mean, let's be honest here for a second. If I'm open door and I'm Zillow, and I'm getting the leads that are saying, buy my home, you don't think I'm going to start getting those loans too when they buy the one after they sell them that one? Like, careful, guys, careful, you see what I'm saying? So we can get really apocalyptic, but again, do something about it. Fight back. What's your instant offer? What's your lending tree? Right. What's your bank rate widget? Let me give you a specific question then, mortgage related when it comes to Zillow, right? Because now we know they are a mortgage lender. And you alluded to this just a moment ago, they're getting all the eyeballs for traffic. People are stopping there on their journey, et cetera. And they're going to get an offer to get a home loan, a prequel, whatever. And so I'm having these debates and conversations with lenders who are paying Zillow for leads or partnering with real estate agents. And there's this right-growing fear of Zillow or growing discussion around, stop giving Zillow money if you're a lender because now you're feeding your demise, your conversation. What do you say? I just said it. So even as a lender, you think still cool, just keep throwing money at Zillow. I mean, I think there's either fight back or throw money, that's what I said, right? So either fight them or cooperate with them. The difference is you can't be so idealistic to think that there's only one shade of white and black, man. There's different shades of gray. So one of the shades of gray is you get their leads and you say they suck in your market. Right? One of the shades of gray is your marketing is non-existent. And so you've got to use all their leads, right? And what if they move to, by the way, you don't think it's coming in the lending world where instead of paying per lead, you're going to pay out of that mortgage, origination fee. You see what I'm saying? Because Veronica down the street here was paying thousands and thousands of dollars for multiple, multiple years. And then they said, we'll just do a commission share. They literally let realtors that look up Op City after the call, that's a realtor.com zone. They're letting realtors pay zero for the leads. In exchange for a more traditional referral fee of 25% of the sale is commission. They're really smart. They did the math. Right? So if I'm right now, as an example, I do go all in. This is why I would usually try not to go all in on anything, so if I'm saying, because if you do go all in on just buying all your leads from one place, and then they change that term and you don't like that new term that you've got to give them a percent of every loan you close, your boiler room gets really bored right away, because that was your whole funnel, you know what I mean? So I'm more of a, I remember talking to Ben Kenny and Tom Fary and some of the gurus in real estate, you want your pie to have many, many, many, many pieces. You want your fence to have many, many, many, many panels. And I think that would be my advice for your audience, whether they're in the yellow side or working with agents, you really want to say, I've got Zillow and a blog and a good email strategy and some SEO working and I'm doing paper click and I'm getting some referrals from Instagram, not to mention my past client marketing's on point. I'm building my brand, I'm growing my database, I'm working my leads, right? Like if you start doing all of those, you win trivia pursuit. Yeah, right. Okay. When you, when you, your book, the conversion code, when that come out 2016, 17, which country are you referring to for the release date? Are you referring to Brazil, Poland, India, Japan? I'm not sure which, which continent. Worldwide, maybe it's been, it's been out for about three years. All right. So what I'm getting to is this is you were very bullish, obviously, on Facebook advertising, right? And a lot of things have changed and evolved. What you're, how do you feel about Facebook running ads today? Yeah. Facebook is the internet. Still the internet. Yeah. And what's funny about that is like, I, I didn't say in my book that people wouldn't get mad at the internet, right? Right. Right. I didn't say the internet would have changed, you know, and I didn't say the internet wouldn't evolve. But let me be very clear, because most of the people listening and watching don't know what they're talking about, I do. If you need traffic to your website, and if you need leads for your business, Facebook is by far the best place to still do that, period, end of story, 2019 edition. Now, the change, which I think is really relevant, two huge changes since I wrote the book. Number one is that if we're saying Facebook is Google, right, Instagram just became Google images. So I'm saying Google, Google, Facebook's the new Google, Instagram's the new Google images. There's, there's just people not pages, right? People and people pages and pictures. So, but I think you may have seen the story on this. Do you know who owns Instagram by any chance? A little company called Facebook. So, I'm pretty sure I'm going to stick with my prediction, Facebook is the internet. Now, if you're not using Instagram as well, it's sort of like being in 2013 and saying Facebook's dumb, right? It's sort of like that moment where Twitter was dumb and hard to figure out. And Facebook was a little complex to understand the value prop. That's Instagram today for many people. The other thing that changed is stories are a phenomenon and they are overtaking the newsfeed in popularity, which is a really big deal. It's a very, very big deal that that's the case. And that ironically like literally like flips marketing over because if you've even been like me, like active on social, active on YouTube, active on Twitter, active in blogging, I've been kind of a content machine. I consider myself a media company. Yeah. Well, all of a sudden I got to do vertical media. And after doing horizontal media for a decade, the story format and kind of having to learn a new way to post the decade in is also the other thing that if and when the conversion code 2 came out, it would start with stories and Instagram, meaning those are the two big things that truly took off between the time I finished the last book and today. Beyond that, not a lot's changed. I mean, I work with thousands of business owners and dozens of large companies. They're still trying to crack the conversion code. Yeah. Okay. Is that something that's hard to do? Crack the conversion code? It depends on where you're at today. So if you're starting with a, if this is your current strategy, a lot of white space. Yeah. Like think of it this way. If you need my whole book, it's going to take a while because the first part of the book is about capturing leads through great marketing tactics. That could be its own whole book. So if you need section one, you're going to have a while to really get that in place and get it right. There's some tactics that in there you can do on day one. It's a really build the conversion code marketing machine. That's not an overnight thing. Section two is about now that you have marketing happening, being much more efficient with your follow up and your focus when you follow up. And that's more through like email and text and CRM and like lead tracking and stuff. So what I'm getting at is if you've got the marketing and the funnel and the leads coming in, it's actually incredibly quick to apply the conversion code to the back end of that. If you don't have the marketing piece and you have to build that and you don't have the team behind it, the last part of my book is about sales. You can start using the advice in section three on your next call. Right. You can use the tactics in section three, which is, okay, the marketing's working. The appointments are being set. Now I want to win on the phone. Every person listening to this, every person that watches this, they can win on the phone better today because of section three. So to do the whole thing, I think it's going to take some time. If you've got the marketing and the leads stuff happening, sections two and three are way faster to do. And if you actually have, like I go to some companies, like I went and worked with homes.com. Homes.com has I think 250 inside salespeople throughout the country selling products to agents. And they had the marketing and the leads and the systems and they had the sales people and they had the sort of call it, here's who to focus on. They had sections one and two. There are salespeople really needed some help with section three, the script. Like, okay, I've got the guy on the phone and in the first 30 seconds, he says, I'm already using Zillow. Thanks anyway. Oh crap. Kind of like a quick one. What are the rights? So, so there's an art to the conversation with and internet late. Right. And if you've got the marketing and the systems setting you up like a quick and a curator does for you, then it's really easy to use the conversion code because you get to go straight to the sales part. Yeah. And it was funny and reading your book. I get a sense that you are really passionate about sales and marketing obviously. But what I didn't know or wasn't so clear to me is that you seem to be a freaking sales animal. You love sales. I'm one of the best salespeople in the world. Yes. And where I really shine where others don't is selling to large groups. That's actually an incredibly different skill than selling one to one. Like, I started in the boiler room with Lou Pearlman selling boy band auditions. Okay. Like I go way back. I know I look young and I look like I'm going. But I go way back. You're 40, man. Happy believing. Yeah. Thank you. But I'm in Orlando. It's the boy band Britney Spears capital of the world and I worked for the guy that discovered that. Right. And so to be selling vacations and then to go sell loans and then to go sell software and then to go sell sponsorships to conferences, right. Whatever it may be, I've just figured out that there is a science to sales. There is a better way to have a conversation with someone that's interested in buying than most people have. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, man, like when we started Curator, I did all the sales myself. I closed three deals yesterday, more of a B2B enterprise, large partnership at this point. But, you know, I hang up with you in about 30 minutes later, I'm doing a sales webinar today where two or three inner people are interested in Curator. And yeah, I have a better closing rate and a better pitch and a better set up and I tell better stories than most people. But it's just because I put in the 10,000 hours. Right. I went from the boiler room doing inside sales, calling internet leads for years. Yep. Then I went into offices doing outside sales for years. Mm-hmm. And then I went on stages doing sales and keynote speeches for years. Yep. So, if people want to know how to get good at sales, it's learn it and love it for a long time. Mm-hmm. And then what I just learned is that like the difference between selling alone and a piece of software is not that different. And the difference between selling over the phone and in person is not that different. And the person between selling one to one into a group is not that different. But they are all different. Mm-hmm. But wherever you're at in your career, just get better at that one. Yeah. And your learning will help you if you decide to get into a different product in the future or maybe trying to get outside, get out of that boiler room, you know, get out and see some sunshine. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Well, there's a couple of things specifically in your book, tactically, when it does, you know, part three of the book is about sales and scripting, which I've always been a big believer in and some people have resistance around that because it's, you know, quote, hey, not natural, whatever. But you reference Quicken, right? Hey, I just want to know what the rates are. A lot of our listeners obviously get that question a lot. Hey, man, I just want to know the rates. And you've got this process called ARP, right? Acknowledge, respond, pivot. And I love the fact that you actually say, be first and talk to them the longest, right? I think that's really cool because a lot of people feel pressured as just like get the answer and get, allow them to get off the phone. You disagree. Completely. Yeah. Like you say, as an order taker, that will be like working in McDonald's versus a good restaurant. Like if somebody says the number four sold out, like do you want a number three, they're not a salesperson. That's good. Customer service. But I think you said at Quicken, your average time conversation was like 30 minutes. Yeah. 20, 30, 40. We call it 2020. So what we would do is we'd go really deep for 20 minutes and make it all about them. And then we would get that credit poll and we'd get that sort of mini commitment to where they weren't going to disappear on us, right? Because they wanted to know what their rate would be. They want to know what their payment would be. Right. And so we would go 20 minutes all in on them. And then we would actually call them back like 15 or 20 minutes later after we would sit with our manager and come up with like the best way to present the right loan to them. So it was sort of like 20 minutes all in on them, 20 minutes to prepare your pitch. And then the last 20 minutes was pitching, closing, and either battling for or getting the payment or the denial. And by breaking that down, it's either that or it's like maybe a 40 minute call. And so it gets incredibly difficult to like slowly crescendo to that point where they want to buy if you talk to them for an hour, but you can get them like really pumped in 20 minutes and then kind of excited enough to give you their income and their credit. And then you start over in the second part and then you just build them right back up and another five or 10 minutes to get them more excited than the cost of the loan and you close them. So it's not a straightforward 20, 40, 60. It's situational. Now we'll say there were some people at Quicken that were very talented at the one call close where they actually just were able to sort of figure out the loan and the right amount and the right terms and they could just go all the way through. But it was actually very rare. And those people usually weren't really closers. They were more consultants doing math with their pocket protector and they didn't actually sell a lot of loans, so they just wanted to be somebody's friend for an hour and a half and then they would sign. You know what I'm saying? And I ain't got time for that. I'm not trying to go too long. Yeah. Yeah. Well, in your book, you talk about how you called more than 10,000 internet leads working at Quicken and this is back when the rates are over 7%. And that you wrote more loans in your first week at Quicken than most of their season bankers wrote in their entire month. What do you think attributed to that trajectory huge success quickly? Three things. I was confused, right? I was pumped about getting that job. I had worked in the restaurant business my whole life and to wear a tie and to be in a nice office in a downtown like a Cleveland, Ohio. Got it. Mentally, I was just pumped. I just felt like, okay, this is my first real job. So that was part of it. Part of it was that I got that job because my girlfriend was pregnant. My wife of 12 years now, but you don't really know that that's going to be how it turns out. And so the reason I left was because my wife had gotten pregnant. My girlfriend at the time and I just had this weird dang in my head that changed, which was like, okay, now you have to provide for three people, not one. And so my goal became to sort of triple my income and sales was definitely a path to being able to do that. So I had the right motivation, I had the right mindset, then the last thing would just be your tone. This is something people really struggle with. People like I think somehow I sound trustworthy, which I know is a weird thing to say, but you got to remember on the phone, you don't see the person. And so when you're on the phone and you're not seeing the person, it's just a little bit awkward. And so if they don't feel your vibe, if they don't, if you don't sound smart and trustworthy and confident and humble, like it's a really hard thing to explain. I've got a chart in my book about the importance of tone, because without physiology, that's all you got left. And so I would say that I've always really thought a lot about my voice. I know people are born with a certain voice, but what I found is that if you don't have a natural sort of DJ quality kind of a voice, you need to pretend you do when you're working. So there's actors, right? You do a lot of these actors, you know, if you meet them day to day, they're sort of introverted and they're sort of quiet and then they get up into a scene and they go really big. And you have to understand that if you don't have an excited, enthusiastic, infectious tone and you're doing phone sales, you're never going to be an elite salesperson. It's really that simple. So you might need to kind of turn it on when the light goes on and then sort of turn it off when you clock out. But I can promise you that the person on the other end of the phone wants to hear somebody that's excited, somebody that's confident, somebody that's sharp, articulate, somebody that's soothing. And you're born with like, I've had clients say, I sound like a bitch when I talk, you know, or like, and it's like, I don't want to judge if that's true or not because everybody picks up a tone different. That's the other reason tones tricky because like sometimes, you know, you can say the same thing to your wife and it doesn't go the same way, like, how's it going good? Yeah. How's it going good? Yeah. Same word, right? So if you feel like your tone is not called it razor sharp, you've got to be willing to kind of fake that and turn that up and, you know, there's a movie I remember years ago called, I was like about a bunch of waiters. I think it was called waiting or waited. Yeah, yeah. Full of actors. Yeah, there was, there was a girl in the movie and she was a server. And then when she would get back into the kitchen, she was a nightmare. And she was like a little tornado. Yeah. And as soon as she would come around that corner, hey, how are you guys that you sort of have to be able to do that to be great at this job. Well, you have to remember it's a performance, right? I mean, just like public speaking, as you know, it's a performance. And like you said, I think the study, I forget who is credited with it, but it's the 738 55, right? Yeah. It's actually about how do you create an emotional response and so on. So it's what they found is that to create an emotional response, your tone and your body language are more important than what you say. And in sales, of course, anyone who's been in sales and done a lot of sales, like it is usually a very emotional process, especially if you're buying a home or maybe you're refinancing a huge loan where you have all this debt that is a part of that process that you're eliminating. So buying people buy on emotion, but they don't buy until that logic makes sense, you know? And that's where that tone can really help. You got to equally be able to be kind of their best friend, but then you got to be able to get into that closer mindset and rattle off those terms and ask for that credit card and ask for that social more of like a professional. So it's a dance, basically. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And be prepared, right? You know, scripting I think is important, right? And the whole reason for that is because like you talk about in your book is that you should maintain control of the conversation. You should be in charge. And oftentimes the person asking the questions, right? They maintain control of the conversation. 100%. The person who is asking the questions is in control. And my next book is coming out very soon. It's called exactly what to say. And the guy that I co authored it with, he has this really smart little clip that I always remember, which is the worst time to figure out what to say is while you're saying it. Yeah. He meant to that. That's awesome. Man, I'm making notes here, because I want to put, we're going to put links in the show notes to help people can get on a list for that book or whatever, okay? Great. Exactly what to say. Okay. Cool. Yeah. I'm kind of back to, you know, what I see is your sweet spot, which obviously is kind of, you know, modern marketing, if you will, digital media. So I took a survey, a poll in one of these, you know, Facebook groups with 100,000 agents and all that kind of stuff. And the question was, my last transaction came from. And the majority of responses was pass client referral, social media, paid and organic, and then right, door knocking, yard sign, et cetera, et cetera. You deal with a lot of people. But before we hit record, you talked about how Curator, your company, which is amazing, you guys are, what ink, ink 500? Yeah. The 300 and third fastest growing company, the year that we made that list. Yeah. And so you guys, I think you referred to it as the Ferrari of, you know, marketing tools and solutions that you provide, which, which, by the way, obviously there will be a link in the show notes, but please, people that are listening or watching, go check it out, curator.com, C-U-R-A-Y-T-O-R. There's a lot of tons of great information and free content there as well as on your YouTube channel. We'll put a link there also. I've learned a ton just by watching you guys. But here's the thing where I'm curious, just to kind of, what I'm getting at is this. You kind of alluded to this, I think, early on, which is the state of where we're heading for real estate industry marketing is in for everybody. And some people are going to be left by the wayside. Yeah. And is that because they just choose to not adapt, right? And realize that the attention is, like, for instance, door knocking, right? Do you still think that's a relevant strategy? Yeah. You do? Mm-hmm. And it's actually more effective when you do digital before you do it and after you do it. Okay. All right. Got it. I like peanut butter and jelly, man. Everybody always asks me if peanut butter is good. You know what I'm saying? It's not always the or, you know, it's like, geez. Well, I mean, you know how this is like people, I understand, I understand. Like, the way I think of myself and this probably will go over people's heads because if they're not real estate agents, they might not know Mike Ferry. Oh, sure. Yeah. Mike Ferry is a legendary sales coach. He's like a Zig Ziggler. He's like a Jordan Bell Ford. He's like a Grant Cardone. He's just this no nonsense fastball traditional sales coach. Mm-hmm. And I feel like I am equal parts Mike Ferry and Mark Zuckerberg. Mm-hmm. So I, and you said this, I'm a sales guy, you're a sales guy, so I like Mike a lot. But I like Mark a lot. And I think that's probably what differentiates me from the world that most people consume. People are either all about marketing and all about branding and all about content, right? Or they're all about expires and fizz bows and ads. And I actually think the best companies do both. They take an inbound marketing mindset and then they apply an outbound sales philosophy. And that's really where the clients we work with, double triple quadruple and already very successful business. They're good at their piece. They add our piece, combined. It's really magical. But at the end of the day, the people that are going to fail by not adapting are the people that would just fail in general. If you have a budget, hiring curator, hiring a local marketing person, going on sites like freelancer, going on sites like 99 designs, you know, we have marketers that we pay almost six figures. But when our clients use their services, it's like a thousand bucks a month and they do Facebook and blogging and email and they do all of the marketing for like 250 to 300 bucks a week. So what will happen in my opinion is that like if you're a real business or you're semi successful, you're going to just invest in getting help with these things. If you're not a real business and you've got more time than money, you shouldn't really be challenging people's advice anyways. I like that, I like that, that's cool. All right, awesome. So look, I know you're busy for a sake of time. We're going to have to end it here. Like I said, I'm going to put links in the show notes to your upcoming book, exactly what to say next, which sounds like incredible. Like, you know, talk about a talk track scripting dialogues, how to create connection, rapport, how to overcome ejections, all that stuff. Man, it looks really cool. For those that don't know, he was showing me kind of the cover of and stuff before we went live. So, but if you want to get on that list, check the show notes, all that stuff people will be in here. Chris, for anybody who wants to learn more, obviously about Curator, go to Curator, follow you on the socials, whatever, right? Yeah, Curator.com slash Chris, they can read more about my books. They can follow me on Instagram. I'd love to keep up my YouTube channel. Most popular speeches are on that one page. And then, you know, people know how to use the internet. They can track me down if they thought I did a good job. Yeah, and listen, I recommend for anybody listening, right? Who's in all my audiences in sales. So, if you don't have Chris's book yet, you've got to get it. Because obviously, we didn't have time to go into everything here today. But part three, alone, like, which is all about a lot of that dialogue and scripting. That's going to hold you over until his new book comes out, which is, you know, he's got some cool stuff in there. About the two-step lead stock, which I love. You have some great ideas in there about how to prep for a call. And I love, I love, I think this is what, this is funny, man. Because what I love about you is, like, first of all, you're no BS, right? Love it. And you have this sign on your wall, I guess, a quick one when you're there back in the day. Dig deep or go to sleep. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, what I took away from that is a sales guy. And I try and coach people on this as well. He is, um, do the research before you're going to call somebody. Like, in my world, long office, there's calling real estate agents, friggin' spend 20, 30 minutes and, you know, get online, learn about them, what are their interests and all that kind of stuff. So you have some type of connection point when you're calling it. Great advice. Yeah. Yeah. Amen to that. All right, so let's end it up here. People appreciate you listening. Chris, as always, keep doing what you do. I made you do an awesome stuff. Thanks for having me on. And everybody, as you know what to do, we appreciate you tuning in. If you like this episode, please leave us a review. And we'll see you on the next one. Thanks for listening to Mortgage Marketing Radio. One more truth in Mortgage Marketing. Get more free training and resources at MortgageMarketingInstitute.com. Hey guys, what's up real quick? You've heard about the Mortgage Marketing Pro membership before. 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