How to Use Homebot to Partner with Agents and Build Your Future Pipeline with Ricardo Bueno

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Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey, listeners, what's up, Jeff Zimper. Welcome to this episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio Podcast. Appreciate you tuning in as always. Hope you are doing well through the chaos, through the capacity issues we're having in this industry with the REFI boom right now. And hope you're also planning and preparing for your future pipeline, 6, 8, 10, 12, 18 months down the road. We've got to pick our head up. We've got to look down the road. We've got to figure out what's our source of business going to be down the road. Because obviously the REFIs are coming at us fast and hard, but we all know those are going to dry up at some point and we need to get our eye back on the ball, which is the purchase business. Some of you are doing a better job of that than others. And the question I always ask originators when I interview them is, you know, what's your number one source of business? And in most cases, which you hear is a pattern of, you know, people saying, hey, real estate agents are always among the top list, top of the list, right? Top one, two, or three, which makes perfect sense. I've talked about that before in previous podcasts, you know, there's an average of about five million transactions that happen in the country every year. That means five million sales, right? Homes that are sold, realtors still touch 80 plus percent of those. And you get yourself in front of those. You get yourselves attached to the realtors that are actually doing the business. That's called an oil well. That's called an annuity. The question, the struggle, the frustration a lot of originators have is how do I attract agents? How do I convert agents? How do I build loyalty, build relationships and consistency, right? In that business, on one of our previous episodes, you heard me interview Sean Uihara. What's up, Sean? Shout out to you. Sean's online, you know, digital bootcamp process that he has. He's pivoted in a post-COVID world, still leading with an educational platform to attract agents to show up differently, to have different conversations and to be very selective about the agency's using. He's working with today's episode, I special guest. Notice a theme prior to COVID led with an educational platform teaching agent classes. This COVID has pivoted and teaching those classes online in a Zoom setting right now. Guys, have you noticed? Have you thought back? I can tell you of the top producer interviews that I've done and there's well over 150 of them out of these 180 episodes. The bulk of them are leading with an educational platform. Their bulk of them are leading with how do I add value to my agents beyond the transaction, beyond closing on time, delivering great service. That's part of it, but that's not enough. If you have been listening to me for some time and you haven't taken action yet to check out our turn key done for you online educational platform, it's called My Agent Classes. It exists under what's called the Mortgage Marketing Pro membership. Well, you can check that out now, today. Go over to MortgageMarketing.pro, watch the brief video I put up there and know that everything you see and hear there has been adjusted and pivoted for a post-COVID world. We're working with loan officers who are now delivering these online classes over Zoom. Following our signature method, our process that helps get agents to show up, attending your Zoom, doing an incredible job during the meeting, adding tremendous value, and then following our post-class process to be able to have agents book calendar, book meetings on your calendar through a simple link that you give them at the end of the Zoom meeting so you can drive conversations and qualify, sift, and sort agents and start to build your pipeline out for the next 12, 18, 24 months down the road. If that's of interest to you, once again, go to MortgageMarketing.pro. Now, my special guest for today, Ricardo Bueno, good friend of mine from Orange County, good friends with Scott Shang, who owns his own brokerage in Orange County, who's been on the podcast here before, and why I wanted to bring Ricardo in the conversation today is because he's talking about two primary things. One is Homebot, and some of you've heard of Homebot, some of you used Homebot, and I guarantee you're probably not using it in the way him and Scott and Scott's business partner, Josh, are using Homebot, using it as a way to get access to real estate agents databases. Right now, Scott Shang and his mortgage team over there have over 1,000 emails that go out every single month to databases that are not owned by him, but are owned by the real estate agents that he partners with. So he's expanding his fear of influence by a way of Homebot. You'll hear the unique setup for how they do that. Then part two of our conversation is Roberto's process for capturing online reviews, leveling up his Google, my business game, and generating business leads referrals directly off of both Google and Zillow, because people, let's face it, they're searching, they're getting on Zillow. They're looking, they're reading reviews, and whether you have reviews or not, that's going to make a difference. I checked out a loan officer's Google page the other day, he had one review on his Google, my business listing, one, and it was a one star. Do you think that's negatively affecting him? I guarantee you it is. So if you've been reluctant, remiss, need help, want to level up your game for getting online reviews. This conversation is for you today. I hope you enjoy it. Without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Hey Ricardo, welcome to the show. What up? Thanks for having me. Thanks for being here, man. It's crazy to think. I think the last time I saw you was at the aim event in Vegas, what was that like two years ago? When people were socializing and hugging and shaking hands, having drinks, it was a different world back then. I cry for the days to go back to normal, see it's weird, I never would have expected us to be here. Yeah, I know, right? So that's funny, because although a lot of us have pivoted our businesses and we'll talk about that, like how we're doing business in a post-COVID world. But I think what this has proven for everybody is like the desire for human connection, right? It's seeping out of my pores. Seriously. Everything that we did was that we enjoyed or found value in or connection in, like being around people, like you said, shaking hands, looking people eye to eye in person, I wonder people are stressed out. It's wild, man. I thrive on interaction. I say I'm a nambiver, there's times where I love being out socializing, networking, I mean, I grew up that way. Scott says he's an introvert, but when we were at that show, he was out networking like the rest of us. Yeah. So we long for that interaction. Speaking of Scott, shout out to our friends, Scott Shane. I think he's been on the podcast twice or call. We need to have him back. I don't think there's been a single person that's been three times, so he might be the first. So hey, tell everybody, who are you? What do you do, man? So I've been in the industry for a little over 10 years now, it's pretty well to think. I started out in the industry as a loan officer before the subprime market collapse. I was still in undergrad in college. I got really good at sort of, I built a website for myself, it ranked on page one of Google for the phrase Los Angeles mortgage rates for about a year, which was pretty well, and then I just got really good at building websites. My pitch became, to realtors, became, hey, I'll help you build a better website and a better digital presence in exchange I want your referral business. And I just got really good at building agent websites, creating systems and doing marketing automation. We haven't doing that for the last decade. Yeah. All right. And so you work with, as we said, our friend, Scott, and tell me what your role with Scott? Yes. So I work for a company called West, where marketing and technology company based here in Orange County. So I do a lot of lunch and learns. I do a lot of, like one-on-one trainings with individual agents and brokers. I do, I used to do office trainings where we pivoted into doing webinars and everything is via Zoom. Right. But Scott and I got together because I remember rates going up and down, up and down, up and down. And we were talking about, we did some lunch and lunch together. We talked about how to thrive in a changing market. And one of the classes we taught was, how do you sell or buy downs so that it's a win all around for everybody. You submit an offer up full price. So the buyer gets what they want, the seller gets what they want, and the buyer gets a house that they can afford at a price, et cetera. Right. So we- Obviously, when rates were higher, right? Yeah. That was when rates were higher. But we did that class together at a couple of associations and we started partnering together on doing these agent lunch and learns. It's a great opportunity for lenders to connect with agents and strengthen those partnerships. And I help with the marketing and automation stuff. Yeah, and I've seen the content you produce and, you know, as you well know, I'm a huge advocate of classes as well. And the content you produce is awesome. So it's no wonder- Well, I always like to ask this question for those that are, you know, that lead with an education platform, which I think is safe to say, right for you. Yep. So how do you rank that in terms of successful activities for capturing and converting real estate agents? Oh. I mean, I think it's, I like content as far as educating. Well, I mean, the using classes as your platform, online or in person, that is compared to co-calling or whatever the classes are, the classes are everything for connecting with agents like for me, because we work with our sister company, WFG, which is a title company. Yeah. The classes are everything. The classes put us in front of agents, the classes, you know, when you can bring value, that's the thing about this business. I think everyone says, I have the best service. I have the best rates. I have, I have the best customer service, you know, whatever everyone says on the best. And so it's kind of a cliche. Yeah. When you bring something of value to the table, I, I think that's a, that's really is a differentiator. 100%. And I know we can talk for like an hour, just about that, right? It's a value differentiator. But we're here to talk about two very specific things that, you know, you're doing with Scott, Scott Chang, and what's the name of his brokerage again? Bywise mortgage. Bywise mortgage. Yep. Yep. Successful brokerage there in Southern California. So let's, we're going to have two things we talk about. First and foremost is home bot. Now I know some of my listeners are familiar with home bot, but what's the quick skinny on what is that really? So home bot is one of my favorite products, one of our favorite products. We don't really have any affiliation with them. I'm a fan of products that just work and it's gotten such a good return on investment for our agents. But it's basically, it's a way to put home values back to work for you. So every homeowner out there today has a preconceived notion of what their home is worth, right? Where are they getting it from? Getting it from Zilla. Right. Zestimate. Right. The dreaded Zestimate. So what home bot does is it sends your clients, your past client database, it could be your prospecting farm. It sends them a home value estimate every month, but what it does that I think is unique or that I think is entirely different is the data that it provides to the consumer is so incredibly transparent just in terms of delivery. It tells them this is how much your house is worth Riccardo, but then it gives them an entire breakdown of their equity position. Here's how much you've paid an interest. Here's how much money you would save if you refinanced and then how does how does home bot know that by the way? It pulls all that data from public brokerage data. Yep. So it like it's data source for the home values is I think core logic and black night. It was more accurate than the Zestimate. But then what it does that I think is very clever and totally transparent that no other company does is it gives them actual tailored scenarios for what's possible given your equity position. All right. So I mean, think about that. You help somebody buy a house, whether you're a lender or a realtor listening to this, you help somebody buy a house. For the next 30 plus years that homeowner is going to undergo a series of life changes in events that is going to raise a lot of questions. You have a growing family, like we just had a baby, you have a growing family. Your wife is thinking, honey, we really should consider getting a bigger house. I'm tired of using the living room as the kids play room. All right. They're having these conversations, but they don't necessarily think to ask the agent who helped them buy the house or the lender who helped them finance it because they don't want to get sold. They have those conversations. They might have it with the coworker. They might have it with a friend who they go watch the game with and they'll say, you should talk to my friend Stacy, she just got her license. What Homebot does is it's giving them that monthly home equity report and it has a section. Here's how much house you could afford. If you used X percent of your equity as a 20% down payment, you can afford your dreamhouse up to $2 million or you can buy an investment property worth up to $750,000, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's what I love about how Homebot delivers that information. It doesn't just blanketly say your house is worth $700,000, it says your house is worth $700,000. There's so much equity you got. Here's what you can afford to do with it. Does it also, when you say, here's what you can afford to do with it, is it that specific in terms of the language? What does it typically say? Yeah. No, literally there's a screen on Homebot that says, if you bought a different home, here's how much house you could afford. Yeah, I see. Okay. And it'll show them based on your equity. If you took $200,000 of your equity, you could use that as a 20% down payment on a new home purchase. Yeah. Or you could take $140,000 and use it as a 30% down payment on an investment property up to this much. Well, I'm hearing that the open rates on the Homebot emails are like unheard of. Ridiculous. I think a lot of my agents and even Scott, it's an email that goes out just depending on whether you're targeting homeowners and past clients or you're working with buyers. It's just one email that goes out every month. So on the sell side or the homeowner side, it says, your home value has been updated for one to three main street click here. That email every month is getting a 90% open rate and it's getting like a 35 to 39% click through a rate. Show me anything in our industry that gets that level of engagement. Wow. You'll find nothing. Yeah. And so if they click on it, they're going to some kind of a customized or personalized dashboard. Yep. It takes them to their personal landing page, which is basically like your credit says to me. Yeah. Right. And is it branded? It's branded to you, the agent or branded to you, the loan officer. So it'll have your picture, your contact information, phone number, email address, your NMLS number, your DRE number. Right. All the way at the bottom. It says, if you found this information useful, would you mind referring it to a friend or sharing it with a friend? Great. What's their name? Email and phone number. Wow. I'm going to have your logo and all that good stuff. How long have you guys been using it? We've been using it really aggressively for like the last year and a half. Okay. All right. So appreciate the setup on Homebot. That's kind of transition into that you guys aren't your average homebot user, right? Knowing who Scott is and, you know, the intelligence and like the minds combined between the two of you marketing minds, tech wise, all that kind of stuff, some serious automation geeks here. Is that fair to say? We talk to each other almost twice a day in the morning and the afternoon, yell at each other several times. That's awesome. Well, but it's funny because I have this saying, right? In terms of a business and how do you improve your business if, you know, so to me, it always comes back to people process and technology stole that from Marcus Lomonas, the profit. But anyway, so you, yeah, I think it's right on. So technology with Homebot is something you're leveraging. So we've talked about like the past database with Homebot sending out to them. That gets them thinking about possibilities. Plus, you get the metrics on. You get specifically who opened it? Yep. So you'll have, it's, it's really cool when you log into your dashboard, you get this activity timeline and that activity timeline, I'll tell you, you also, Homebot recently has a new daily like, I forget if it's daily or weekly. It's an activity email that says, here's what's happening in your account. So you'll be able to see who's doing what? Wow. So you'll be able to see that cliff opened his digest 12 times in one day. Wow. What do I know about Cliff? Yeah, Cliff's interested in something. Like, we had one guy who opened his digest 30 times in one week. Wow. That person literally converted into a listing. Is that right? Yeah, because they're, you know, Homebot said your house is worth $665, they opened it 30 times in one week, the agent called him, hey Jason, just checking in, looks like you got the Homebot digest okay, wondering if he had any questions, he's like, yes, this thing accurate. If, if so, I may reconsider selling just now, I don't want to keep losing equity. They just had to put the house on the market and voila, you got a new listing. Wow. Now, was that a realtor that you guys had teamed up with on that, yeah, so it was okay. And you were sending, you approached the realtor on this Homebot thing? Yep. We did a class on either Facebook ads or we did a class on Homebot and voila, he, you know, got connected with somebody that he hadn't spoken to literally in six years. Wow. I'd say that that solidifies your relationship with the agent, huh? Yeah. That's pretty strong. All right, let's talk about how you're doing that though, because most people don't use Homebot the way you and Scott do. They use it right just to send their past clients and database. Talk about, I mean, did, are you guys the only ones who saw this opportunity or are there other people? What are you doing exactly? You know, I don't, I don't know, it, for us, it became part of a process. So, so Scott will we say this, we're big fans out of, get everything you can out of everything that you've got. Yeah. Homebot appealing to us is a couple of different things. First is really, it's really inexpensive. It's for an agent to sign up for Homebot. It's $25 a month for up to 500 contacts. Uh-huh. I mean, that's a no-brainer. Right. $25 a month is, is, is, is nothing compared to, you know, you close one transaction that pays for it several years over. Please. Yeah. Um, and when you think about the tools that are being pitched in our industry, this, like having Homebot as a system really is kind of a set it and forget its system. So once a year, a lender might sit down and do an annual review with a client, talk about, you know, hey, um, it's just about that time to do an annual review. Have your plans changed this year? Are you thinking of buying a new home? Are you thinking of buying an investment or no, nothing's changed? Hmm. There's a lot of manual work. If you're a lender that goes into creating that, there's a whole like level of automation, like Homebot could do that for you in a minute or less if you just set it up and let it run. Right. So for us, it was, you know, how can we, we, we also do a lot of digital marketing. So we run Facebook ads for agents all over the country. Um, when we run Facebook ads, we put them on an aggressive like seven day drip campaign. And if they don't convert our last attempt email says something like, uh, stay in touch question mark, it'll say, Hey, Ricardo, I'll take your not responding as a sort of back off signal. I totally get it right now. It may not be the right time to buy for you, but whether you're looking to buy in two months, six months or two years, my team and I are here to help. In the meantime, I'm going to set you up with the Homebot Monthly Market Digest. Here's what it'll help you do. It'll help you explore markets based on, uh, what's most important to you. If you have any questions, you can get in touch with me through Homebot. Otherwise, I'll be in touch with you from time to time to, uh, to give you the latest updates on, uh, changes to loan programs or, you know, whatever. So then we just let Homebot take care of the automated long term nurture process where Homebot is going to email that person once a month. Here's the latest hits up, Ricardo, the markets around Costa Mesa are changing. Click here to see what's new and that consumer will be able to see the change to the average sales price in that area, uh, the current active listing inventory, the change to the average days on market. But then Homebot does something unique that I like. A lot of agents will tell me, well, Ricardo, I don't want more buyers. I want more listings like, okay, some percentage of those, about 10% of all of your buyer leads are actual listing opportunities. So Homebot, Homebot's onboarding sequence on the buyer side. As it's nice little onboarding sequence where it'll ask, hey, Ricardo, where are you searching? I'll say Costa Mesa because I live there. It says, great, when do you want to close? Let's say I'm renting. So I have a lease that doesn't expire until February of 2021. Homebot knows that the average days on market is 85 days in Costa Mesa. So it's going to say, great, you should get pre approved on this date. That means you can start the home search and bidding process on this date. If you submit an offer on this date, you'll comfortably be in your new home by mid February of 2021. But then here's what Homebot does that I think is valuable. Homebot will say, are you looking to purchase your first home or are you looking to buy a different home? Somebody says, the first home, nothing happens. If they say, I'm looking to buy a second home, Homebot says, well, hold on a second. It looks like you currently own. Why don't you give me your address? And I'll add you to our monthly wealth digest as well. Now you've identified a potential listing opportunity out of that new buyer lead that you got. Right. And so that's where we saw, we have this faucet of online, online leads that we're generating using Facebook ads. So we take all of those buyer leads and we automatically dump them in the Homebot and we let Homebot take care of sort of, yeah, so you're building your future business pipeline a future business, baby. Yeah. And it's all happening automated and you can track the interest level for each individual as it spikes up because they're going to log into their dashboard more often. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And now you can filter your database when you log in the Homebot. You couldn't, they really didn't have a way to filter before, but now you can filter by closing date. So you can see, well, I don't even know what month we're on August. You can see who scheduled to close in, you know, September, October, November, December. Really? So you can see how far along people are and reach out and sort of prioritize your follow-up. Okay. So you're doing these, these classes, Facebook ads classes and you guys get on Homebot. You have a light that pops on and you're like, hey, my gosh, you know what? So these leads were generating for agents from these Facebook ads that we're doing on their behalf. Homebot would be awesome to snap onto that, right? That's right. Okay. So who's following, who's handling the follow-up with those ready to list or whatever, you know what I mean? Where it's just like, hey, green light, buyer's ready, you know what I'm saying? Who handles that? You're the agent. So that goes to the agent. So the agent gets a newly notification email from when we start running the ads, the agent will get a newly notification email that will automatically get added to their CRM. The newly notification email says something like, heads up Ricardo, you have a new buyer lead on your listing at once to their main street. Here's our first name, last name, email and phone number. Here are their answers to our qualifying questions. We asked them a lot. Do you already have a pre-approval letter? So yes, I'm already pre-approved or no, I like to speak to a lender. And then we say, when would you like to close 30 to 45 days, 3 to 6 months, 6 to 12? You guys, if I recall, nothing to wrap, but you have a lot of questions you ask somebody. On your lead form. Just those two. Oh, I just thought it was more than that. The qualifying. We were doing a lot more, but what we noticed is when we narrowed it down, when we trimmed it down, our conversion rate went up. Oh, really? Our conversion rate went up and our cost per lead went down. So the fewer the questions, the better. And one of the questions people hate is, do you need to sell a note or to buy? Why do they hate that? I have no idea. How do you know they hate it? Because we tested it. They don't answer it or what? They don't answer it. We could literally see our lead costs going up. Because they see it as a pitch, probably. Probably. Yeah. But get to the point of like, now you've got these leads generated and you've got, and you're automatically adding these people to Homebot, 3, 6 months down the road. Who's getting on top of that hot lead, 3, 6 months down the road where Homebot identifies it? That's the agent. That's the agent. That's how I was going to ask, how can you ensure that the agent will do that? So that's a, that's a hard one. That's a hard one because so for half of these agents, like it's totally up to the agent and I don't, I don't necessarily spend time with them to micromanage them that far out. Now what Scott and Josh, what's unique to them that they've tried to implement is they'll do accountability calls once a week. And so those calls are one-on-one. No, they'll try to do like a one-on-one. So they'll have somebody on the team call the agent, especially if we're running ads for the agent. They'll have somebody on the team call the agent to say, hey, how did it go this weekend? Do you have any buyers that we need to qualify or cross-qualify? By the way, how's it going with all these other records in your account? Yep. So, so there is that layer of accountability there, but, but I don't know. It's, well, up front you guys are doing some, some qualifying though of the agents. You're not going to approach every, you know what I'm saying? What is your criteria for teaming up with an agent on this Homebot or Facebook ads strategy? So the criteria is that you have to have the long-term mindset, and there's, you have to have a long-term mindset. So you interview them? Yeah. A lot of agents will have a, I feel like a lot of agents are hungry just for that next transaction. Right. I want something right now. I want something to close right now. Yep. So we tell them, if you're going to run ads consistently, you have to have a minimum commitment of about four months, because you're not going to see results in the first 30 days. You have your outliers, and sometimes you do, but it's not the norm. And a minimum requirement, they have a CRM. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. They don't use yours, right? No. They have to have their own CRM. And if they don't have one, then we go with Lyandesk, because it's member benefit through the MLS, or you can use follow-up boss, or usually the agent work, like if you work for first team, EXP, you have KB core. So we're kind of like product agnostic or CRM agnostic, but we'll help you set it up on whatever system you're using. But yeah, we say, set the minimum expectation that you should think of this as, it's a flywheel. Minimum advertising budget of about $400 a month, run it for four months. And if you're consistently doing these things, or following these steps, you should experience like what we call a compound effect by month four, five, and six. Like we had one woman who was running ads last year in September, October and November doing a $400 or $500 ad spend. She didn't close anything in September, didn't close any October, didn't close anything in November by December. She closed four transactions for a total sales volume of about $1.2 to $1.4 million each. Yeah, take that. Yeah. Wow. Do you ever run into agents? Are they skeptical? Oh, yeah. All the time. How do you get over that? So who are you, are you the guy running the ads, by the way, and choosing like, you know, images and, you know what I'm saying? So by now, we have it down to like a pretty consistent formula, specific types of ads. Yeah. We're running for sure running specific types of ads. Okay. Usually on just listed, not just listed, price reduced, virtual open house, you know, usually on listings. Okay. Right now, we're doing some rent versus buy ads. By the way, just to clarify, that's what people are looking at when they're clicking those because they don't come, you know, that we've talked about this listeners. You know this, nobody gets on Facebook to look at homes. However, when you interrupt them on their feed, what's going to catch their attention is that listing, that cool looking house or whatever they've been in their back of their mind. And they're like, Hey, I got two minutes. Why don't I click this, you know, right? So it's either me, Noah or Scott running the ads at this point, and then yeah, when the newly comes in, we just have it run through those automations. Yeah, good. The biggest challenge is the agent sort of coaching and accountability and like, if they don't sign up for Homebot and give us their database, not even give us. But like, if they don't have their database ready within a week, if we met on Monday, I give you till Friday to hop on a follow up Zoom call with me and go over your database to upload it to Homebot. If you don't do that, that's literally like, we see that as minimal effort. If you can't even get past that hump, then we're not going to work together because if you can't do that, then I can't expect you to do all of these other things. Are they giving you their database in like a CSV? I don't tell like, sometimes I have them give me their database if they want us to like scrub it, go through it, get rid of any duplicates or, you know, help, help them basically get organized. It's not, they don't have to give us their database. We just help them clean it up. Well, what I want to get to is, are they concerned, you know, the whole access to my past clients? Is it in a separate silo in Homebot that you couldn't let's say? Yeah, so, yeah. So, like, there's always a firewall between agent and lender. So if you are connected. So you can't like rape and pillage their database, right? Correct. And every now and then we do have some of that, like, it's not an overbearing concern. Yeah. If ever it is, we tell them, look, it just get your database organized. If you email Homebot, they'll take care of uploading it for you. You don't need to give it to us. Got it. Got it. Okay. Very interesting. You mentioned a figure to me, the, the, the, the closing ROI, 34. Oh, yeah. You have how many agents on the platform with you right now? So we have about 34 agents that are currently sponsored by, by one of our lenders, Scott. They've closed about 24 listings in 10 months. Just from marketing to their past client database. And do you have a sense of, like, how many loans you got out of that? So I don't know because I remember at month six or eight, Scott and I were talking about it. We're trying to figure out, like, who's, who's active? Who's not? Who do we need to boot? Correct. Who's upload it, you know, et cetera. And so I think we were at like six refives and a couple purchases. Okay. So let's just call it eight in, in your loan, average loan size out there is probably around three or fourish, right? So people listening to the math on that. And the other important point here, however, is don't just focus on what are the loans you got out of just that, but knowing that to your conversation when we first started value to the real estate agent, you're generating 24 listings for these 34 different agents. That's like gold to them, right? And you're creating this loyalty and reciprocal relationship. So they're going to be fighting for you on future deals and they're going to get, you're going to get their business, yep, which is really the end game of what we're trying to do here. Yep. Yep. Wow. And home bot for the loan officer side, the investment on that side is, like you said, 250 a month. Yeah. So it's 200 a month. If you want to sponsor an agent or the ability to sponsor agents, which, which I think is the value. Yeah. It's the value, but it's also kind of like I can see where it's difficult. You have to be willing to work on the relationship. But it's $200 a month plus $25 for each additional agent that you sponsor. Okay. So if I was the lender and I had four agents I was sponsoring, I'm paying 200 plus another 100. I'm paying 300 a month. Yep. Yep. However, we know we've got some toads. We've got some princes when it comes to agents, various levels of participation. But that's why you have a very tight timeline and you probably make it clear up front. That's why that's why we make it crystal clear up front. This is the commitment we want from you. We will help you every step of the way. But I need to know that you're going to do your part. How about is the price for homebot if you're not going to do, so it's the same price for homebot, 200 bucks out of the gate, regardless of you. If you're not going to sponsor agents, I think they have a lower price plan. I think it's $100 a month for up to 1,000 contacts. Okay. That's what I thought to. For those of you who are listening and you're not on homebot yet and you want to start with that, that'd be a good place to start. Because I mean, look at you're doing with the Facebook ads thing that you're doing. I'll be honest. Not everybody can do that. Because you're skill set and so forth, but the point is you could learn or team up with somebody who can help you do it, which is what you've done with Scott. All right, so I'm doing the math in my head on that currently right now. Your investment on that is, I don't know, grand or so, give or take. But we said it was like five loans to roughly, it was like 15, let's say five, like 1.5 million into a loan volume through the math on that. It's about 15 G's just at 100 bips. Some people make more than that. Scott's got his own brokerage, so we know that's true. There you go. And then if you think about, like, so let's say Scott has a thousand contacts in his home bot account, that's how many emails are going out every month that says, you know, how many refund opportunities or cash out opportunity or purchase opportunities. But by partnering with other agents, you're not just connected to your database. Now you're exponentially connected to everyone's database. Yeah. But if any of those consumers have a financing question, you know, you're the loan officer on that account. Yeah, a great point. You're expanding your sphere of influence through a, is there an introductory email that goes out from the agent, you know, that introduces home bot or and or the lender partner? No, I don't, there's the introductory emails always come from that user's account. So it'll come from the agent whenever it's a financing question, there's an email that goes out to both the agent and the lender. And there's not, there's not really like an introductory email that says, this is your preferred lender, et cetera. Yeah. But the dashboard. Is that co branded? No. No. No, it's just branded to the agent. But if they, if, if, if, if, if I understand correctly, right, if they click on a link in the email, that's a financing related thing, is that still just go to the agent's website? I think, no, I think it, I think that'll be co branded or I think the email goes out, like it should have, I, I forget, I have to look at the emails, but I'm, I'm pushing you here. Don't worry about it. All right. So that's cool. So that's for anybody who's like interested in learning more about home bot, what it is, what it can do. If you really, you know, at some point, want to level up and, you know, use it as an agent, you know, nurturing tool to help them with, that'd be curious too. Look, Orange County, a lot of very successful agents, very competitive. You're doing these, these, these classes, showing them how to generate leads on Facebook, offering to do it for them. What do you run into? How broken, because I know you work with successful producing agents already, right? And when they come to you, they're successful, right, air quotes, they're generating transactions. But do you often find that their systems are still broken? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because I find that people jump from one solution to another to another to another. And maybe that's an industry problem. Everyone's pitching like our solution is the best or this system is the best. Right. And so you, you do also run into a lot of snake oil, right? Yeah. So, so yeah, I tried this, but it didn't work. I tried this, but it didn't work. I tried this, but it didn't work. And it's like, okay, well, you don't have a lead problem. You have a conversion problem, and it's because you can't, you know, right. So, so true. So I just want to bring that up for everybody listening. I remember here in Vegas months ago, before COVID, I was doing in-person classes, and you know, meeting afterwards to consult this agent team. And they literally have been in the business 20 years. I'm serious. And they're successful agents, like very successful. And, you know, what was their answer to, well, where's your database? Well, you know, as soon as they start with that, right? Well, no. Well, it's in Excel. I hear that from so like nine out of every 10 appointments. Seriously, man, I'm like, you've been in business for 20 years, you're kidding me. I had somebody who was working off of 10,000 records on their phone. Oh, my God. How's that possible? I was like, I was like, you know, on the one hand, good for you. On the other, what? Well, so that's the old cliche that they're not, they're not succeeding by design. Right? That's right. By deep. Maybe they're doing a good job and stuff that reminds me the, you know, the quote I love from Tom Ferry is what he calls fading winners, you know, which is the people who are doing well because they're like, they're good with customers and they've been around a long time, but they're fading away from attention, right, because they're not where consumer attention is. Yeah. Or they're not good at keeping consumer attention. That's right. All right. So that's good. That's good part one there. Part two. Let's position and talk about another one of my favorite topics, which is online reviews. I've heard of a five star customer experience. You have a what? An 11 star. So, so this one was a, who did I hear this from? So a buddy of mine, one of the companies that I worked at was a startup that I worked at was a web personalization software. Mm hmm. It was actually pretty cool, not real estate related, but you can personalize your website and the consumer experience on your website based on what consumers are doing. Anyway, one of our clients was this guy who runs a, a coaching company and, and, and business and whatnot. He works with SaaS companies and he works with these other companies, et cetera. And it's this sensational sort of 11 star experience. And I think where he, I heard it from him and where he got it from, he got it from Brian Chesky. He's actually the co funder and CEO of Airbnb. Oh, wow. Okay. The point isn't to build an 11 star experience or even like nine star experience, but the ideas that you come up with while you're sitting down to ideate, like what goes into building a five star experience. Great. Yeah. And how can we take that further to build a seven star experience? So the ideas that you're going to come up with to build that seven star experience are actually a lot closer and within your reach than you might even think or consider. I love that. That's actually a great point. It's all about like, you know, like you guys talked about getting everything you can out of everything you got, right, Jay Abraham book there and it's like optimization, right? So how can we optimize? So if you're just thinking at a level of, hey, what's a five star experience? Well, that keeps you here. But if you go like, hey, man, how can we do for an 11, right? That's right. And then we're going to pick the five. That's right. And so a lot of our clients out here, like in Newport, higher end areas, we have to think that way, right? So, you know, one of the exercises that we oftentimes do is we have them go through this exercise and the way we do it is we say, okay, let's sit down. You are your team and let's kind of reverse engineer this thing. So we start by, you know, sitting down and jotting down. What does a crappy experience with your service look like working with somebody on your team? What does that look like? Literally. Initial, like prospect contact all the way through to close and post close. So then we say, great, what is an amazing five star experience working with you or someone on your team look like? And then we just keep going until the experience gets so absurd that it just sounds ridiculous like possible. How a copter rides in the post, pretty much. But then, you know, you find opportunities for like services like a client giant. Have you heard of client giant? Freakin' amazing. So, you know, a lot of my agents who service Newport and, you know, those sort of like higher end markets where the sales price is two million are up, they purchase that platinum package on client giant all the time. Because what is it like two days before or two weeks before you close? It says, hey, I have taken care of the following for you. What do you want? Your car detailed, like a housekeeper for the day, landscaper or handyman for a few hours. Most people choose the car detail. Uh-huh. So, two weeks after the transaction closes, it's, hey, I want to say congratulations. Thank you so much for trusting us with your transaction. Here's a complimentary dinner for two of BlackHero come pick you up and take you to a place of your choice. Wow. That's for those higher end transactions. Yeah. The experience that that delivers is like, are you freaking kidding me? I'll never use somebody else ever again. Right. That's, that's worth the, that's pays for itself, you know, X amount of times over. I have an agent who got six referrals, I think, in three months from somebody they close the transaction with. Wow. Yeah. So client giant, I'll put the link in the show notes, but I think it's client giant.com or search it. Yeah. All right. So tell us about your, how do you get online reviews? You have a specific process. So one of the things that we teach our agents, you, the ask doesn't come at the end of a transaction. You have to set the tone and expectation at the very beginning. So hey, Ricardo, I know you're going to be so satisfied working with our team. We're going to deliver through and through and I know you're going to be so happy. So here's what I'm going to ask you to do. Can I count on you to leave us a five star review when we're done with this transaction? And that happens on day one when you're sitting down for that initial, yeah, when you're sitting down for that initial buyers console, when you're sitting down for that listing console, you're just planning seeds or setting the tone and expectation. Because if you go all the way through the transaction and it's like, boom, can you leave me a review? It's, you know, you haven't really baked it in. And then I love that five word phrase. It's, it's, it's, it's a powerful five word phrase. Can I count on you, right? What's a person going to say? No. Right. They, they, they want to, you know, they want to say yes. So can I count on you when we're done with this transaction to leave me and my team a five star review? Well, you ever hear it's like, well, yeah, if it's good, you know what I mean? I'm sure. I'm sure. But yeah, like you're kind of just planning seeds and setting the tone and expectation. Do you think that would work as well on the lender side? Oh, yeah. I mean, I feel like Scott and Josh do that already. They have what? They have 50 five star reviews on Google and Josh is the one that's pretty adamant about chasing those down and Josh wants to know, especially with the realtor partners. He tells their realtor partners, look, we're an extension of you. So if we don't deliver a good service, then they'll never use you again. They'll never use, and you'll never use us again. So it's our goal to deliver that 11 star experience because we want to get a five star review. I want to keep, you know, building this relationship. Good point. So he plants those seeds early. And like I said, they have what, 55 star reviews on Google and they've gotten loans out of it too. Where Josh asked, hey, how do you hear about us? And he goes, well, I was Googling. I know interest rates are low, and I was Googling local company and here in Hunting and Beach and I came across you guys. Right. So, so, you know, I always tell our agents, we live in a five star review culture, and this stuff absolutely matters. Yes. So then the other part that we do is we, so I have an email that I send out, and we make that part of the automated lead follow up. So when you add a tag in your CRM, lioness, follow boss, whatever, when you change a tag, it automatically triggers an email to go out to the client. And what I try to do is I try to spoon feed them exactly what you want them to say. Because if, like I had an agent yesterday, ask me, I get stressed out asking people to leave me reviews because sometimes I feel like they ramble. Sometimes I, you know, I feel like I don't know what to tell them to say. I feel like if I don't tell them what to say, then they're just going to, like I said, ramble. So I say, no, no, no, you have to spoon feed them. So here's what I say. We ask our clients to give us a public testimonial. Here are the quick steps to follow, take less than two minutes, click on the link below to leave us a review. You can scan the other reviews to see what previous customers have said about us. And if you're thinking about what to write about, many of our clients have read the reviews, have told us that these are the following characteristics that have been useful to them. And then I just have a bullet list. They chose us because we had five star reviews across the board. They chose us because of our expertise and our accessibility. They chose us because, you know, there was something in particular that we did that they appreciated. Was it our knowledge and expertise over the local area market? Was it our patience, communication, and education throughout the process, especially if you're working with those first time buyers? And then would you work with us again? So I love those guys from BioWise Mortgage. They were entirely patient with these, you know, newbie first time buyers. And I would absolutely work with them again. Wow. You're literally just spoon-feeding them what you want them to say. I love that. And you raised such a good point in that it's hard for people to write, you know, testimonials, book reviews, whatever. I mean, half the book reviews you've seen that was written by the author, you know? Yep. But I love that because you're giving them something to focus on and grab a few nuggets and make that a lot easier. So you're conversion right now and that's going to be a lot higher. Yep. Absolutely. Wow. That's fantastic, man. And by the way, is Google your number one focus for online reviews? Google my business. I do say, you know, Zilla, I know how a lot of people feel about Zilla, but like I had one agent who's been in the business for 25 years, 35 years, she's an expert, right? She's great at what she does. She was losing, but she has like three reviews on Zilla. She was losing business to a competitor who was in the end, who's been in the business for less than a year and a half, but has like 18 five-star reviews. Yep. Yep. This is why I say like we live in a five-star review culture and, you know, unfortunately, it's a level of social proof that consumers do pay attention to. Yeah. It's, they, you've seen the stats. They trust online reviews almost as much as a peer review, from a friend or a relative. Yep. Yeah, that's, that's a great example there. Wow. I'm not a fan of Yelp mostly because they're, they're super aggressive about, right. You know, they're advertising practices. I have maybe one company who specializes in rentals and they've been doing an amazing job just to advertising on Yelp. Yeah, I'm just an American company. I wonder to what degree Yelp's even a factor anymore to real estate specifically, I mean. Yeah. Like all the other, all the other services like plumbing, heating, air conditioning, all that. Sure. But it's clearly, it's, it's Google My Business in Zillow. Yep. In the mortgage and real estate space. Yeah. So, so if you're listening, that's where your online reviews are. And by the way, do you send them an email with a, how do you handle them actually inputting it? Is it choose one or is it? Yep. So I, I try not to give them a menu of services. I always say just pick one. You can say pick them. You give them the link then or? Yep. Yeah. Okay. Yep. In the email, just say click the link below to get started. Right. So my business will give you a nice short URL that you can, you know, pop into that email there to some people to do it. And if you don't have a Google My Business page and you're listening to this, you may, you may hit stop right now. Go look on YouTube or come to me, I have a Google My Business class. It'll take you 20 minutes or less. Well, you got to get the postcard though, right? How funny is that, right? To get very, I understand it because you're a local business. Yeah. But you got to wait for this postcard from Google, man. It took me like three weeks, not a month. I know. It's crazy, right? But well worth the wait. That's for sure. It'll be interesting to see how that platform continues to evolve. Do you guys do, you know how you can do photos on there and videos? Yeah. Are you doing any of that? Yeah. So I always recommend it because that's the one thing, especially in our industry, real estate, blending that I feel like nobody's taking advantage of. So optimize the real estate opportunity there, upload as many photos as you can. What I tell my agencies, maybe pre-COVID, but you have a photographer who is shooting your listing, right? Ask them to do at least three lifestyle photos, three additional lifestyle photos while you're at the property. This way you have some time. What do you mean by lifestyle photo? A photo of you walking around the house, touring the house, holding a contract. Something that you can repurpose or use as part of your marketing, you're already paying for professional quality photos. Why not get some that you can use in your business? Interesting. Yeah, there's lots of different ways to leverage the Google My Business platform. So focus on the people. All right. Cool. Listen, before we go, I know you're busy. I appreciate you making time. You yourself have a podcast. Tell everybody about it and how can they find it and subscribe. Yeah. So the podcast is the weekly boost. The idea being I consult with some of the best agents in the country and I just want to share what's working for them and what you can apply to your business. You can find it at ricardabono.com forward slash podcast and check it out there. All right. So you also have a special gift just for my listeners. Tell us what that's about and how we can find that too. Yep. I have a couple of awesome follow-up scripts. One is that you can use related to homebot to make it rain CMAs. That's the one time email that we send to people after you upload it in the homebot to get some more of those listing opportunities coming in. And the other one is my template for getting more online reviews. So if you just go to ricardabono.com forward slash MRR, you could download those templates for free. Awesome. Love it. Thank you for sharing that. I can't wait to get my hands on both of those because people need help with these online reviews. You know, you've done this classes with the agents. The joke is, hey, who wants to learn how to get more online reviews? Here it is. Big secret. That's right. Like you said, the agent, she's like, I'm afraid. I don't know how to like ask my, you know, okay. All right. And you're selling, you know, a million dollar homes. It's so funny. A lot of things I feel can be solved like if you just ask. Yeah, for sure. Like have you tried asking? No. All right. Exactly. I don't want to burden them. Okay. All right. Fair enough. All right. So listen, we're going to put links to all that kind of stuff in the show notes, man. Appreciate you being here. Hopefully we get to see you in person sometime in the near future sooner rather than later. All right, man. Appreciate you being here and listeners. You know what to do. If you like this episode, hey, leave us a review and we appreciate you and we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. Hey, guys. What's up? Real quick. 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