Stop Trying to Beat the Algorithm.

Hey, it's Jeff Zimper and I am back. The voice is a little bit better, perhaps a little bit stronger. It may not sound like that to you coming through your spakers or air buds, whatever we're doing. Still, obviously not there and the truth of the matter is it's probably not going to be back where it used to be for, could be several months. Anyway, enough about that, I am doing better feeling stronger on my post-cancer recovery journey. Here I am eight weeks post-gradiation, still working hard at eating solid food and weeding myself off of the food to feeding to. The goal is to have that out by June 15th because family and I have a cobble trip scheduled for June 29th and that's going to be a celebration of graduation and all that stuff. So I have a reason to do that. Now, what I wanted to share with you today is I'm just going to breath a little bit and I do have an announcement at the end of this, an invitation for you to participate. Would you want to work with me more closely? So stay tuned briefly for that, this will be really quick, riff. I posted this on LinkedIn today and we'll be posting it over to Instagram as well. But it was this concept of, so here's the headline, stop trying to beat the algorithm. It was built to sell ads, let's just face it. The number one reason people, these companies want you to stay on the platform is so that they can show you more ads. Yes, there's engagement, right? There's conversations and they're great platforms for a variety of different things. But what's interesting is how are you feeling? Are you feeling burnt out from trying to be a content creator? So you think about it, every activity in your business has a cost, right? And I'm not just talking about money, what I'm talking about is the constant demand, the pressure to feel like you have to be a creator to succeed in this business. And I'm here to say you don't, am I saying that having an online presence isn't relevant and important? No, not at all. What I'm saying is, let's just face the reality. Social influence is increasingly becoming buried under a mountain of AI slop, paid promotions and recycled advice from people who've never originated loans. So I want to present to you a concept and an idea that the top producing allos I work with and many of whom I don't have never ever got. And that is that real relationships aren't built in a feat. IRL in real life is making a massive comeback. Are you seeing it? Are you feeling it? Heck, even Gary Vee talked about it. So the loan officers I work with aren't stressing out about what to post today. How are they getting margin in their business? How are they accelerating their referrals, their business, their pipeline? This may sound self-serving, but it's the truth. Just like someone who would say post more, right, who has a social media platform for posting would be biased as well. And I try to remain unbiased because the truth of matter is if I felt that all that mattered in your business was to consistently post on social media, post more, post more off and post, post, post. Like if I thought that was the answer, I would be saying that if I saw true real evidence of that. Does that mean people aren't getting loans and deals business from social media? No, but the question is at what cost? How long? How often? What, how much? What percentage? And I've interviewed some of them, obviously, on this podcast, but I think what I'm feeling at least in sharing this is that there seems to be so much external pressure from the gurus, from the talking heads, from the echo chamber that everyone's in and just saying the same thing, which is post more, right? I mean, back to Gary Vee, what is Gary Vee talking about post 10 times a day, right? And so what I'm trying to do is just maybe present to you another option for you to consider. That's it. If you think I think I'm full of it, feel free to DM me, tell me I'm full of it. That's cool, okay? But what I'm finding is, is that because IRL is making a real comeback, what's moving in the needle is getting back face to face, belly to belly. I don't know why it seems like Gary Vee Day, but Gary's got a lot of good things to say. And one of the things Gary also says is scale the unscalable and what he means by that in this particular context is what's unscalable? So what's unscalable is face to face. And if you go on further and dig deeper on exactly what he said around that is scale the unscalable until it becomes scalable, right? So in person can become scalable. You can go from one to one to one to many. That's scalable, right? And so this is what I'm finding with the people I'm working with around the country, instead of moving all the chips across the table on becoming a content creator, they're going all in on local influence, right? They're hosting workshops for agents, they're running events for home buyers, they're getting in front of entire brokerage teams in person and they're becoming the go-to lender in their market. And that's what I meant when I said top-producing L.O.s haven't forgot that. You know, if you look at Champanozin, if you look at Matt Weaver, if you look at Gavin Ekstrom out in Colorado in a handful of others, who my good name, what I see them doing consistently in their local markets is events. Events, classes and workshops like I just described. Why? Because you want to go where it's not so noisy, right? Same with direct mail. Direct mail is doing very well for people in real estate who know how to do it well. Why? It's less noisy. And before you tell me that millennials and next gen don't respond to direct mail, they do. Look at the research. They put together a class referencing that. It's all about database marketing, one of the classes in our library workshops. But I would just be curious as to where you stand on building local influence. Because the people I'm interacting with, they didn't necessarily go viral, they haven't become influencers, they've built that local influence, real relationships to generate new repeat and referral business without depending on the algorithm, right? So if that's of interest to you, I'm launching the next agent referral accelerator cohort in June. This is the window of opportunity you have to get this in before we get into the summer months. So the agent referral accelerator, it's the full system for hosting events, getting in front of agent teams and building a referral pipeline that doesn't depend on your next post going viral. And I want to share with you some quick success stories from people who've been running this local influence play for some time. There's my man Kevin Dwyer with South State Bank in Atlanta added $20 million in production to his business. Travis Newton has been doing this for several years, Travis and James added $30 million in production to his business. Tiffany Saxon has been doing this for a while, doubled her production. I could go on. There's Anna who taught one of our classes a few months back and out of the blue, an agent popped up and sent her a buyer referral. There's Glenda who's getting in front of 20 plus agents every single time, seven appointments scheduled just from one of those classes before she walks out the event. And an agent now saying, Hey, you're now my preferred lender. Thanks for pouring into me to grow my business. There's Michelle and Mike who have been teaching classes and workshops, as I said, in person for quite some time. And one of the real estate offices who they did the workshop for were hesitant to have them in because they already had a lender partner. But Michelle was very convincing. She did the class, the content blew them away. That real that brokerage invited them back for another class. And their team lead asked Michelle and Mike to be part of their national sales training the following week, which should have around 400 agents on the call. They said their current lender partner doesn't do anything like this for them. And that they're realizing Michelle and Michael are much more aligned with their goals and now promoting them as one of their lender partners. So I could go on and on and on. And you've probably heard me talk about this before and if you've not acted, if you've been sitting on the fence, if you've been waiting, whatever the story is, you're telling yourself in your head, I would say set it aside, suspend whatever that story is or that talk that you have in your head and investigate. Go further. And you know what? You can kick the tire. Now, why is this timely? Because you know what happens every summer? And with all those ease off around July, right? Fewer calls, fewer agent touches. By the time they wake back up in September, they're starting over from scratch with agents who forgot their name three months ago. And so that's why we're doing this in July is because the people who join us next cohort won't be starting over. They'll have spent June, July and August getting in front of rooms full of agents, skin relationships just like you've heard, 10, 20, 30 at a time. So I'm opening the next cohort on May 21st. That's when it's going to launch with a live workshop. It's going to be a 12 Pacific three o'clock Eastern. And as I said, this is the last one until September. So you'll be one of the long officers who built something the summer of one of the ones who didn't. And if you want to check it out, learn more, see if it's for you or just kick the tires. There's a link in the show notes or you can simply go to get more agents. Doc, going by the way, you know the cool thing about doing these events and workshops and local influence is that the online and the offline actually feed each other. Yeah, that's right. Like if you're, you know, if you're hearing this and you're like, you know, hey man, I like online. I like my posting and engaging and DMing, well, that's cool because that's actually part of it. So as I said before, I'm not anti online. I'm just really questioning right at what cost are we trying to be content creators? And where is the ROI or I should say ROE return on effort? And I've been in this game since 2003 as an originator. And as I wrap up with this, I remember one of the quotes Jeff Bezos said instead of asking what's going to change, right, like technology, consumer behavior and stuff like that, you said what they like to do is is spend an equal amount of time asking what's not going to change. Obviously with Amazon, right, what's not going to change is people are always going to want fast service, right? They're going to want great selection, great pricing ease of use. Right. So that's obviously where Amazon has invested a lot. And so I'd pose the same question to you. What's not going to change? Right. Because I can tell you with the IRL in real life coming back in a big way, that is your opportunity to get in front of that. And what will never change is the human connection. The most human brand will win the only difference between you where you are now and the results you want is how well known you are, the relationships you have, the influence you have essentially that sort of comes down to. And if that sounds enticing to you, I'd like to help you. So once again, you can learn more about this upcoming cohort on May 21st and go to get more agents.com. Check it out. And I appreciate you tuning in. If you've got questions, DM me on Instagram or LinkedIn, you know where to find me. And stay tuned for some more cool stuff coming on the podcast on the last episode I talked about pivot. I haven't announced it yet, but it's coming soon. And I just appreciate you tuning in and listening. I'm going to go give my voice a break and hope to see you in the upcoming cohort. Bye for now.