Episode #56: Marketing Idea vs. Marketing Plan

[00:00:00] So we did the happy hour last night. And whenever I do an event, like a client event, a networking event, I always have at least one or two people at the event that are like, how did you do this? How'd you get 20 plus really good people to show up in Fort Washington when a lot of people live in the city? Like, why did they come out here? And I said, do you know why this is going well? Why it's been successful? Because I've been doing events for 15 years.

[00:00:28] Well, if you go back to like LaSalle, we were doing bus parties. Well, you had that. I used to do keg parties in my house in LaSalle. So that was an event. You have a lot of experience. Exactly. Welcome to the podcast dedicated to real estate, insurance and building your business. Join us as we take you along our own business building journeys with additional wisdom from

[00:00:56] our network of local and national experts. Welcome to Bricks and Risk. Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Bricks and Risk. I'm Timmy G. And I'm Sean Mooney. Okay. What's up, dude? Hey, man. Dude, how about our happy hour last night? Awesome.

[00:01:21] So for those who are listening and watching right now, Sean and I had our first Bricks and Risk networking happy hour at McGurk's in Fort Washington. What's up, McGurk's? Thanks for all the help. Thanks for all the help. They did a great job. They always deliver. What did you think about the overall event and how we put it together and the people who came?

[00:01:46] Place was great. The Walmart gluten-free stateside oranges. They did have those. Were very cold and very delicious. You didn't have to BYO. So that helped. Yep. We didn't want to get kicked out. Yeah. Getting removed from our own event would not be good. Although that's what we did last time. We'll talk about that one another time, folks. Space was great.

[00:02:11] Great turnout from just awesome people in our network. So yeah, overall, it was just a great night. Like it was kind of like, it was similar to like a client event. Yeah. Like we've both done things with clients or networking or just getting people together. And what was cool about this is that, you know, you have your business, I have mine, but Bricks and Risk, it's building community. Like the information we're putting out there,

[00:02:40] why is one of the reasons why we're doing this? One of my main reasons is, is I want to help people get a little bit better at what they do because people have helped us and especially through podcasts. So just doing that event and bringing people in through like the Bricks and Risk community, let's call it. Portal. Portal. We finally got our hats last night. Got the hats. It only took like eight months. How did they look? They were sweet, dude. I dug.

[00:03:07] It was cool because it was different. It's not like we're bringing together from like Tim Garrity and real estate. We're not bringing together through Sean Mooney and insurance. Like we're bringing everyone together because we already know each other. We all do business together and people are into Bricks and Risk, which is great. But let's talk about our topic today. What are we going to be talking about? Well, before we get there, I'm still a little upset about last night. Okay. Sean Gav. Oh, Sean. I haven't met you in person yet. I've only zoomed with you. So.

[00:03:38] Dropped us. I was a bummer. Hot bag of potatoes. I thought he would be the person to be like, yeah, you guys want to hang out until like midnight? Yeah, I probably would be. This thing ends at eight. You guys want to get some food? You hungry? If it was a 9 a.m. hockey tailgate, there's no way. We're all over it. He stood us up for Sturgill Simpson. Hey, well, hey. I think he went with his wife too, didn't he? Heather. Hey, you know, brownie points. Yeah. Good stuff. So what are we doing today? Yeah, what are we doing? Marketing. Marketing. Okay.

[00:04:08] Like in what sense? Ins and outs. Tips, tricks, ideas versus the marketing plan. Okay. So putting it together, implementation, and then kind of what you want to get out of it in the end. I think a good way to start this one off and structure it is really in like a marketing idea versus a marketing plan. Those are two completely separate things. A lot of people,

[00:04:36] I feel like, get ideas all the time, every day, every week. And a lot of times we get those through social media. Yeah. So social media, you see hacks, you know, DIY, you know, here's how you increase your business. Do a video like this with something scrolling in the background. And then like, you're just talking about your neighborhood. You're a hyper local expert. And don't get me wrong. Like

[00:05:00] all this stuff works. But I think when we get all these ideas, these tips, these tactics, we're like, I'm just going to go try that next week. I'm going to throw it on. If you're me, I'm going to throw that on my counter. I'm going to time block for it. I'm going to do a video with the stuff scrolling in the background. And basically when we do that, I feel like we start to kind of lose focus. Meaning if someone gives you a new idea, a new insurance idea, here's a way

[00:05:30] to grow your insurance business by 10% that you're probably not doing. Of course, we're going to listen. Like you're going to be like, yo, why, why would I not try that? Well, I think there's the reason. So if we're talking about it, there's so many components to a marketing plan, right? Like who's your target audience? How frequently do you want to like drip on them? Right. You know, what, what do you hope to gain out of it? There's some

[00:05:54] your budget. Right. Whereas an idea is just, Hey, do this, do this and you'll get deals. Right. Uh, it's like a drive by, right? Like it's a quick one hit do this. It'll generate X. Yeah. And it's like, so we had the episode, the episode recently released with Garrett Maroon. Yep. And we were talking to Garrett and the one thing that he does that we very firmly believe in

[00:06:21] is consistency. Yeah. Like it's not about the idea and doing it two or three or 30 times and then just stopping. Cause as soon as you stop something, you move on to something else, you're going to start to lose some of that consistency of why you did it. So sometimes with a marketing idea, you know, what I see is like one or two things you should do to market yourself better. So someone says, if you're not doing this, you should do it because here are people

[00:06:50] that have done it and they've seen results. Like if it's a video, which seems to be one of the most popular things now, do this video, have this message or script and do it this often in this way. And you will get deals. The problem with a marketing idea, there's a lot of assumptions. It's like, do you have the time to do it? Are you good on video? Do you want to be hyper local?

[00:07:18] Like, you know, would you rather pay for things instead of just like, you know, sweat. And I think because of the assumptions, people just think, oh, this expert told me to do it. I should go do it. Whereas you and I, you know, through this podcast, we've learned a ton about ourselves and our own businesses, but it's bringing up the things that we have done. It's really getting to know who you are yourself. So like for me, for example, for my marketing plan,

[00:07:47] I do things weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually, year in and year out. Do I try different things? Of course I do. You know, do I drop certain things? I have, but most of the stuff I do, I've been doing for a long period of time. And the reason I have things on a schedule and the reason I have a marketing plan is I know what I like to do. I know how much time I want to devote to marketing. I know what kind of budget I have for marketing. I know how much business

[00:08:14] I want to get out of that marketing. So knowing those things, doing real estate now for 15 years, doing a marketing plan for me is easy because I've just been doing it year in, year out. Like, and I'm, I'm pretty self-disciplined. Like I've been able to stick with it. I've been able to hold myself accountable. Like a lot of people can't do that. So what about you? Like talk about like marketing ideas and how they relate to money insurance brokers. Yeah. I mean, you always come across the ideas. They're always there. There's a new idea.

[00:08:42] Yeah. This insurance agent did this, did that. Um, I just, I think that you really, if you really wanted to like, what's your end goal, right? Is like, you want more phone calls, more deals, whatever it may be, more money. It's trying to formulate a plan to kind of reach that goal.

[00:09:11] And I don't think that an idea by itself is going to necessarily get you there. Yep. But I think you can do it, um, and done the right way, like take an idea, like video, right? Maybe it's a niche video, right? That's getting a lot of traction with other people. And you're like,

[00:09:37] uh, I mean, you can do that, institute that, but I think the real way to kind of approach it is, okay, take that idea and now build a marketing plan to incorporate that as part of your marketing plan. Yep. So I think on its, on its own may not be very effective long-term, right?

[00:10:03] Maybe your video goes viral. I don't know. Get you a bunch of looks. Does that translate to deals? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe, maybe not. Um, I just think that the emphasis should be on, as we always talk about the consistency of doing these things. So like maybe not necessarily that video, but maybe you're like, maybe I should be doing video. Right. Yep. That's a really great way to put it.

[00:10:31] And so taking that one piece, finding why it's effective, it's effective because you're gaining exposure, you're growing your network. People see it, you become, you know, like last night, uh, one of my favorite stories was Mikey mortgage. Um, what's up, Mike was sitting at the

[00:10:54] table and he's talking to people and someone came in and they're like, Oh, Mikey mortgage or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. And then the person was like, wait, you're, wait, you're Mikey mortgage. Come on. And it's like, but the ability to like take, and they know him now they know him because of the video. Yep. So I think it's something like taking an idea

[00:11:19] like that and, and building out a plan to, you know, consistently deliver from that. I got a really great one. This podcast. Okay. Yeah. So when we, when Sean and I started the bricks and risk podcast one, again, you and I were like, we love the medium, right? We listened to it all the time and or watch we've used some of the marketing ideas or

[00:11:49] use some of the philosophies that we've heard from podcasts to either reinforce what we're doing or give us perspective is maybe we could do some things differently. So when we first started talking about it, like, we're like, wouldn't that be great to do it because we're interested in doing it. We're passionate about it. When we can help people, that's one of the reasons why we're doing it, but that's not the only reason. Like we wanted to do podcasting.

[00:12:12] This is a form of content marketing. Like podcasting is a form of marketing. And when we started this, I don't know if we fully grasped how much marketing content we would get. Thanks to our boy Dill over here from Yunk Junk, Dylan tear, you guys crush. But like when we first started doing episodes, we do like 30 minutes when we first started and then Dill would get us the content. Okay. We get

[00:12:42] the audio content, the video content. We get two to three YouTube shorts or social media shorts. We get a thumbnail or YouTube for social media. So just committing to podcasting technically was a marketing idea. It was an idea. It's like, yo, we both believe in it. We see people do well with it. We want to help people. Now we have this content and we're doing content marketing and we're getting business out of it. I've gotten business through podcasting and I've, I've built additional relationships

[00:13:11] and you've definitely gotten business too. Like, you know, I'll meet real estate agents. They're like, yo, can you send me Sean's information that happened today? Like literally people are just like, I didn't really know him before. I know you guys have known each other forever and you've been working forever, working together forever. Brian Beshera. Brian Beshera. That's another one. It's like connecting the dots. Podcasting is connecting those relationship dots and it's turning into business. So that's a marketing

[00:13:40] idea, but podcasting is not either yours or my marketing plan. No, it's just a part of it. You know, last night, Brian Figgs, what's up, man? He came to the event. We're hanging out. He's like, how much time does podcasting take? Like how many hours in a week do you do it? And I'm trying to be like, okay, well, we go in like every couple of weeks, a couple hours there. Okay. Then we get the content

[00:14:06] every week. You know, we got to put it on LinkedIn. We got to put it on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, you know, Buzzsprout. Like we got to put it in these different places. So it takes time, but how much time? It's not that much because we're working with Dil and Terry. They save us time. Like we're spending money to do this because again, it's marketing content. It's a marketing idea. They save us the time. We use that content to help you. If he's thinking of starting a competing

[00:14:33] real estate podcast, think again, buddy. I'll kill him. It's a good, it's a good thing. We're all friends. We've known each other for decades. So you can say in that vein, but if you said to someone else, you might be in some trouble. I hope his parents don't listen to this podcast. They're like, was Sean serious about that? Yeah. We've known him for a while, but is something wrong? Is something wrong with him?

[00:15:00] All right. So here's like a negative on like a marketing idea versus a marketing plan. A marketing idea, I feel like lacks vision. Like there isn't, there isn't much vision with a marketing idea. You're looking at it as like, if I get some more deals, that's great. Now, again, if you already have like a sense of what you'd like to do in a year, let's say you're a solo real estate agent or like a solo insurance rep and you're trying to make more money. You're like, how do I do that? Maybe I got to market myself a little bit better. A marketing idea,

[00:15:30] it's like, hey, I did that marketing idea. I made a little bit more money. And that's how a lot of people start out. They just start out trying things and be like, did I get business from that? Did it work? How much did it cost? Like how much of a pain in the ass is that? Like there's lots of reasons why marketing ideas either stay or leave. But I think if you're hanging your hat on just

[00:15:52] the ideas, you're going to lack vision in your plan. And another thing, I go down this lane now because as we've done so many episodes and I just did that agent workshop, I was telling you the other week, trying to keep things simple. When I was at the workshop, I was like, look, there's, let's call it two main lanes in real estate. If you're an agent or your team or your, brokers, it doesn't matter what you are. You had the lead gen lane, more, more cold marketing

[00:16:20] focus, cold calls, door knocking, postcards, all that stuff. And then you have the referral lane, the warm lane. That's more relationships. That's getting additional business from people you've helped, people, you know, family, friends, coworkers, like content marketing plays into that. I think the marketing ideas sometimes are a little bit more lead gen focus because you're going to do this idea. Like even podcasting, like we were hoping people we knew would listen, which they do. Thank

[00:16:49] you everyone. I appreciate the support. I was hoping we would get six subscribers in the first year. You're like, yes, six people listen to our episodes. You're like, I got three cousins, a sibling and an aunt. So I'm good. Yeah. Um, but it is, it's podcasting is more lead gen focus. It's like we're trying to get in front of people we don't know and we want them to learn more about who we are. It's a long form content. You can build trust with people through long form content. So that's more of the marketing idea.

[00:17:17] Like let's talk about the marketing plan. Yeah. So if you don't mind sharing without making, you know, crazy comments about our friend, Brian Figgs, um, why don't you talk about Mooney insurance brokers and, and how you go about like, let's say like planning for like a year or years ahead. Like what are the things that you have done? Really? I mean, I hate to say this, but we 90% of our business is referral, right?

[00:17:47] But that just doesn't happen. No, it doesn't. Um, but what I would say was from a purely marketing standpoint, we don't have a developed plan like you. In a traditional sense, like something that I would do. In a traditional sense. Yep. Um, that delivers us business or phone calls or, you know, new business or prospects. Yep.

[00:18:18] It's really, and I, someone on our show, uh, said it at some point was like, I hope that I deliver for my clients. I hope that I deliver for the people that refer us the business in the hopes that our delivering for them is going to create new opportunities for our agency. Yep.

[00:18:40] So I guess in saying that is that we don't like have the dedicated, you know, we don't do postcards. We don't have like formal marketing activities that are like, I'm doing these kinds of things this often to reach this goal. That's not how you run it. Yeah. Yeah. Which is different and counter to probably most. Um,

[00:19:06] Well, let me, sorry to interrupt. Let me give you some feedback. You, here's something that I've noticed about you and how you grow your business growing it through relationships. A lot of it, in my opinion, is you showing up like you show up to like everything, man. Like we get our college boys together. You're there. We get our like high school friends from growing up in the neighborhood together. You're there. You know, we do the, the happy hours, the podcast networking. We do all these

[00:19:32] things. We do pot, you know, podcasting here, like you show up. So you're very present. I feel like in a lot of your relationships, which I think feeds into your business. And then also you're, you're very thoughtful in like your followup and your follow through. Like the great example that you've given on this podcast, like you have your intake form, you're trying to find the right clients, but you're also building a strategy for once, you know, you can help them. You're like, I know that they're a Gmail person.

[00:20:00] And therefore this is what we're going to do to get a Google review through that person. That is a marketing. That's part of your marketing plan. Now it might not be, I do this once a week. I do this three times a month, but you're like, every time you've built processes. So I feel like you've done a little bit more of that. And the perfect example, like just the other day was, and this was the one

[00:20:24] I was showing Justin last night, but property in ocean city, you know, we, we do the insurance for someone. We do their primary home. We do their short property. And they had someone that was making settlement in a couple of weeks. And it was like, you got to talk Sean. Right. And so it's my thinking

[00:20:48] of we delivered for them. We take care of them. Like they call, we answer, we respond, we make their problems go away. We solve their issues. And so by way of that, it's opening the doors and creating those prospects on a weekly basis. I mean, we are to your point, it's the Google reviews, you know,

[00:21:13] people are out there looking online. Our process is generating the prospects, the new prospects coming in by way of having that process in place. Yep. Hey everyone. This is Tim, your favorite bricks and risk co-host, but don't tell Sean. I hope you're enjoying this episode and I'll get right back to it in a moment. Our audience grows through word of mouth. So if you would please take a moment of your time

[00:21:41] and give us a review on the platform you're on, that would be fantastic. Please also help spread the BNR word by sharing your favorite episode with a friend. We greatly appreciate your time and trust. Now back to the show. It's awesome that we're talking about this because again, like a marketing plan

[00:22:05] doesn't have to be this big formal, you know, time blocked event. Like for me, most of my marketing plan is that's just how I operate. That's how I function best is through organization. Like I live and die by my Google calendar. Like if it's not on my calendar, I don't even know it exists. Yeah. So sometimes people look at my Google calendar like, what are you crazy? Like, look at your, it's the every minute of every day. It looks like it's filled because I know where I have to be and why

[00:22:33] like, is it important? I'm going to be there. And if it's, if it's, if it can wait, guess what? I can move it. So I, I shift my calendar all the time, but I do live and die by my calendar. So for me, like a marketing plan, some of the things that I do, you know, once a month, I do a monthly email newsletter. I never miss, you know, I've missed a couple as, as we've talked about and you know, the months and the years and you sent me an email saying like, I know

[00:23:01] I do, I do the, I'm like, oh shit. I do the anniversary text to you like, Hey, this is four years ago today that you forgot to do your newsletter. Just as a reminder. I know it's, we can keep it fair. We can poke fun. Um, so I do that monthly. Um, you know, I'll try and do like a client event or a networking event, like, you know, a couple of times a year, you know, I do a holiday, uh, Popeye gift. You know, I dry, I started doing that a couple of years

[00:23:30] ago. I do quarterly magazines through reminder media. What's up, Luke Acree. Um, fantastic marketing tool that I have just completely gone behind. I've gotten business out of it. Everyone talks about, it's just amazing. So, so most of mine, I would do, if I were to do one, yeah, I would do, uh, and maybe Luke can, um, yeah, why aren't you doing one? Why am I not getting a

[00:23:52] Mooney magazine? I would do a, uh, a graffiti coffee table book with, um, graffiti art all over the country. Okay. It'd be like a picture book that has nothing to do with insurance, but I guess it's got everything to do with you. So that's cool. Um, so yeah, so like the magazine, email

[00:24:18] marketing, Popeye gifts. And then again, I have similar things like you, like, you know, as we've talked about before, like real estate is not like, I'm not servicing a hundred, 200, 500 clients, you know, every day, every week, because you know, you buy a house every five, 10, 20 years. So again, it's, it's a different business or it, and everyone runs their marketing differently, but I've always been more of a marketing plan, real estate agent. And I brought all that into Copper Hill.

[00:24:47] Copper Hill had a marketing plan. We had time blocking, we had things we did. And now that I'm back running a team and I've never stopped practicing, like I've always been helping people buy, sell and rent. Like I just like went right back in to my marketing plan for the Tim Garrity team. Like it's been really seamless. It's been phenomenal. Um, so a marketing plan is like, what I'd like to say is a broad marketing perspective on what you have to do weekly, monthly, quarterly,

[00:25:13] and annually. And we talked about the different ways that we do that. But the one really important thing I think a marketing plan or a process provides is it provides vision. Like I remember you had said recently on an episode, it may not be out yet, but you said like you had your list of a hundred people. Yeah. Like when you first started and you're like, I want to grow this thing through word of mouth. That's a vision. Like you knew you're like, that's what I want to do. I'm going

[00:25:43] to try some marketing ideas. Someone, I go to a conference, someone shows me, uh, an idea or like, Hey, I get coffee with Tim or Sean Gavigan or someone. And they're like, they're doing this. I'm going to try that. Like we're sharing tips. Like you're going to do those things. But your vision was like, I'm going to grow this thing through word of mouth. How do you do that? You have all, you have a team, you have processes. It was Garrett Maroon, uh, that episode. Cause he had 40

[00:26:08] on his, uh, like name list on his list. And it was, for me, it was, I'm going to, you're absolutely right. I was going to start the business. I was going to start with that list of a hundred names of people that I had relationships with that I had either done business with before or saw them as a prospect that I could potentially convert into a client. And so the thought behind it was

[00:26:35] start with that. And then, and then that will grow right. Year by year. So, you know, if you start with a hundred, maybe you write 30 of them. Right. And then from that you get 15 referrals. Right. And then it's just kind of that snowball effect. Yep. Just gets bigger.

[00:26:58] That happens just over time. Yeah. So it's awesome. But that's, that's a million percent why I started that way. And, and really hasn't changed much in terms of the direction of our brokerage. Yeah. We still have a, have a distinct, um, focus on our core bookings,

[00:27:24] of business, growing that core. Yep. And then having that snowball. Yep. Like even further. And dude, it's, it's, I feel like the more we do this, the more we podcast, the more we learn about each other's businesses. And it's the same thing for me. Like when I started same thing, I maybe had like, I don't know, 500 email addresses and I had a pretty good network from corporate America, like meeting people from all over the country. I was pretty good on LinkedIn, things like that.

[00:27:49] And I just started doing my monthly email newsletter. And that was how I started doing the no like and trust method. It's like, I already know them. Most of them, we like each other because we've either met, we've hung out, we've done business together, we work together. But now I want to build their trust through my content. So if I send that email newsletter, if it just says like, Hey, you know, welcome to spring, here are three of my listings, see you next month. Not getting a

[00:28:16] whole lot out of that. But then I started blogging. So then it's like, all right, when I send the email newsletter, the blog content is helping build trust. And the newsletter is the vehicle is the medium that gets it out there. So then people would read my blog. I'd be like, you know, I do an article about like development in Philly. And then I go out to like a happy hour, like a alumni event or like a birthday party or whatever. And someone be like, you know, I read that post that you did about like,

[00:28:43] you know, best place to, you know, get breakfast, like in and around Philadelphia. Like that was awesome. Like I already went there, had breakfast. I'm like, no way. Like people would say these things, which it encouraged me and reinforced. It's like people are reading, people are finding value in that. And then what happens is when they have a need or someone else, they would contact me. Hey, my cousin wants to buy a house in Maniunk. I know you live in Maniunk. Can you help them? I'm like, a hundred percent. They could want to buy in South Jersey. I'm licensed in Jersey

[00:29:13] as well. But the fact was like, I was getting business through building that trust. And same thing as you, like we built a brokerage because we had three agents, me, Ryan and Andrew, who all had networks that trusted us. And we formed a company out of that. We just had three times of the network because we had three co-founders. So that's, that's really how it went off and running. And, you know,

[00:29:39] I will say as part of that is when you have that plan in place as, as one of the benefits of having that weekly, monthly, quarterly, it's, you just never know where your next deal is coming from. Totally. And so by staying consistent, by staying top of mind, it's, you're, you're just increasing the percentage of hitting on that person.

[00:30:06] Holy man. I think another thing we talked about how like a marketing idea sometimes can fall a little bit more into like the lead gen lane, you know, it's an idea. Let me go meet some more people and hopefully we do business or I get a larger audience or a bigger network. I find that with a marketing plan, again, yours is a little bit more process driven. Mine's a little bit more like time block, like task driven, but that has more of the referral lane. You're doing that because

[00:30:33] you're like, if I keep doing this, the snowball is bigger as it goes down the hill and the bigger it gets, the better it's going to be for my business and my family. So I feel like at that agent workshop that I did a week ago from today, when we were doing it, some of these people were in the business for like 10 years, you know, five years, three years. You know, I've been doing it for 15. A lot of people in that room, we had like 15 people there. No one had ever said this to them.

[00:31:02] So think about doing real estate for like a decade and someone comes in and says like, what's your marketing plan? You know, maybe like some tasks that you could do to grow your business. And a lot of people were like, well, I do this and I do that and I do the other thing. And they've tried different things. And that's not to say other people don't have a plan. Of course they do. But for me to structure it that way. And then what was really effective is when I came in with

[00:31:27] my little bag of tricks, I open it up. I'm like, here's the magazine from ReminderMeetup. People are like leafing through it. They're like, you know, this thing is killer. I'm like, here's my handwritten note card. Look at that. That's how I brand it. I do this once a year. Like, this is awesome. I'm like, yo, here are my trucker hats. Like I wear these on the podcast. I wear these out. This is like subtle marketing. This is reinforcement of my brand. And, and people are like, look at this stuff and they're like, this is incredible. Like,

[00:31:55] where do you get this stuff? Like, who do you go through? Like, why do you do it? Like, how much does it cost? It's such a, like, I can't like, imagine doing business a certain way where to us, it just seems like second nature. Yeah. But to these agents and, and really it doesn't really matter like what type of business you're in. Yep.

[00:32:19] But like to, to have never been exposed to that, like to never have like thought like, Hey, there's a lot about our industries. Right. And it's like, wow. I never thought of like doubling. I didn't know you could do that. Yeah. Like, Oh, doubling down on, on your network and your referrals and your business connections. Like you're extracting the most, you're getting every ounce of juice out of that,

[00:32:48] uh, out of that orange. Highest ROI. Yeah. And usually done in less time. Because if you do it over and over again, it just gets easier. Yeah. Some of it's not very expensive. I mean, what were some of the, I mean, you said some of the reactions, but like, I imagine if people were like, well, one thing I think that reinforced it because a few people, someone even reached out to me on social media and said, what, what was your agenda? Like they were curious. I'm like, this was our agenda. First we did an annual plan. So that's like

[00:33:15] units, volume and income. So that's going to, that's you committing to something. I think I'm going to do 20 deals, which turns into X volume, which turns into Y income. You just take a general percentage. You're going to know how much you're going to get paid. And then you have a split. Usually, or a structure with your brokerage. So have goals first. And then if you're like, okay, if I want to do the 20 deals, where are they going to come from? Are they going to come from social media and get a lot of ideas,

[00:33:43] try different things, see what sticks, see what you like, see, you know, social media is a strategy to grow your business. But if someone says social media is my strategy, I'm like, then your annual plan should be like, how often are you doing social media that you can hold yourself accountable to, to do those 20 deals? Yeah. So as I'm like saying these things, I think people were, they were finding value in the structure. Like they're like, this just sounds too easy, but they're like, I don't really hold

[00:34:12] myself accountable to any of this. Yeah. Kind of just go like this. And I can look at the last five years and be like, well, I've made money every year. I've grown every year. And then it's like, yeah, but you're probably constantly stressing out over where the business is coming from because you're like, I keep doing social media. I think I got to keep doing email marketing. I think. And what else are you missing out on? Right. Like, okay, you had a good year last year, but like, could it have been better? Like if you had this process in place, how much more could you have done?

[00:34:42] Yeah. And Garrett, you know, the Garrett Maroon episode was, was probably my favorite to date, my favorite guest episode. No offense to anyone else. Cause I love all the episodes. I'm offended that one of our, uh, two person tandems. I mean, that wasn't even a question. So let's, you mean after, let's be serious after hours. Um, Garrett is very, uh, numbers and stats driven about how highly effective having relationships in business are like, what

[00:35:11] are the percentages? What's the likelihood, you know, how many, what's the average amount each person knows 256 people. Okay. I got a hundred people. That's 25, that's over 25,000. People that you're reaching out to. And he's like, I got my marketing plan and I never miss. And because of that, here's what I've done in my first nine years, a hundred percent through relationship, which is not what the high, high majority of real estate agents, even business

[00:35:38] owners do. Like they just look at us like, I gotta do another postcard. I gotta put another ad out. I gotta spend money on, you know, on this, uh, but it's also too, I think one of the key elements in this is that that mindset is a reactionary mindset, meaning our sales are down, but we got to step it up. What's the tactic that we can implement to get more sales, right?

[00:36:06] Rather than, Hey, if you just start, put this in place, be consistent. You're not good. It's not, you're not reacting, you know, you're, you're proactively putting this in place so that you, your results at the end of the year are probably a lot more, you can forecast almost to Garrett's point. Here's a really good example. So we did the happy hour last night.

[00:36:33] And whenever I do an event, like a client event, a networking event, I always have at least one or two people at the event. They're like, how did you do this? How'd you get 20 plus really good people to show up in Fort Washington when a lot of people live in the city? Like, why did they come out here? And I said, do you know why this is going well? Why it's been successful? Because I've been doing events for 15 years. Well, if you go back to like, let's say how we were doing bus parties and like-

[00:37:03] Well, you had that. I used to do keg parties in my house in LaSalle. So that was an event. You have a lot of experience. Exactly. But it's like Northwest Philadelphia Network, the networking group. We did events in that monthly, five years. It's like, I've been doing client events, Copper Hill Real Estate. I've been doing networking happy hours at Copper Hill with agents, with vendors. And then when we started this, we said, why don't we do an event for the podcast community? Because it's just, it's been so great. Like the outpouring of support and the people that have been listening

[00:37:33] and watching are saying like, thank you for that tip. Or like, I really like it. Like people are enjoying it. And we did the event last night and I think maybe one or two people had asked me like, how'd you pull this off? And I said, because I've been doing this for 15 years. That's the easy answer. If you want the specific answer, I have to sit down with you for like an hour and say, here's my method. We do it through this vehicle. And then I hit people this many times. And I text

[00:37:58] people and I email them like there is a strategy to it, but because I've been doing it for so long, it's just like second nature. Um, let's do this. Is the next one going to be at barge on? The next one I think is going to be a barge on. So Anna Lee and Dave Lee, if you're listening or watching right now, we're coming to your place for the next one. Just so you know, uh, just be on the lookout. Just be prepared. Uh, so go ahead. Why don't you close us out?

[00:38:25] Yeah. So, uh, thanks to everyone for listening to the show. If you want to reach out, we can, uh, get an email bricks and risk at gmail.com. And you can hit us on the social channels, Instagram. I prefer LinkedIn. I think you prefer Facebook or Facebook, Facebook. Um, do not like Facebook at Bricks and Risk. Uh, shoot us a note. If you leave a review on Apple podcast,

[00:38:52] we'll be sure to drop that in the beginning of the show. So, uh, we got awesome. Well, that's all we have for this one, folks. So thank you for tuning in again to another episode of Bricks and Risk. See you soon. Thank you for joining us on another episode of Bricks and Risk. Our goal is that you walk away with one or two valuable nuggets. And we greatly appreciate you sharing

[00:39:16] your time with us today. You can find all BNR episodes on Spotify, Apple music, YouTube, and anywhere else you get your podcast content until next time. Keep learning and keep growing.