983: The Dos and Don’ts of Social Media Marketing – Real Estate Agent Julee Patterson

Aaron Amuchastegui  00:31

Real Estate Rockstars This is Aaron Amuchastegui. And I’m back today to interview Julie Patterson. It was funny I was emailing back and forth with Julie yesterday and realize that her office is right by where my old house was that I recently sold from and we didn’t know that when we first scheduled it. Julie is the broker owner of gateway properties in Northern California and I’ve got on here today to talk to her about everything real estate Julie, how’s it going? It’s a great thank you so much for having me. What is life like up in? In the Loomis Auburn area right now? I think it’s hot is is life starting to get back to normal up there are businesses opening people functioning.

Julee Patterson  01:08

We are we’re pretty much open as normal. Now. It is definitely hot. They say it’s a dry heat, I’m sure similar to Texas where it is. It’s hot. So it’s definitely warm here. The after COVID life is is much better than it was a few months back grateful to have, you know, inside dining and those sorts of things now.

Aaron Amuchastegui  01:31

Yeah, so there was a right when COVID hit Northern California, it was a lot of stuff got shut down. And I used to the property I had in Loomis was a 10 acre property. And so we used to Airbnb it. And in July and August, three months into COVID. We started getting booked out like everyday three months in advance because people wanted to get to the country. They wanted to get to bigger, you know, real estate more spread out. And it seemed like at that time, the demand for rural area properties was just jumping up like crazy. And it felt like it was caused by the pandemic. What have you seen with demand for you know, because you’re in ob, you’re in kind of one of those areas where there’s probably a demand for larger properties, you know, larger areas? Have you seen the demand shift over the last 18 months up there? What sort of demands have changed? And is anything? Is it still going that way?

Julee Patterson  02:22

Absolutely. We’re for the first time in a long time. Well, first time ever actually, we when we’re selling rural property, your internet speed is an actual, like people are we never were asked that before when we’re selling a rural property of what’s the download and upload speed for a rural land. So we’ve had this huge, big shifts of people moving up from the Bay Area that are coming to look for a little space privacy, peace and quiet, but then still required to be able to you know, connect to their jobs and connect to the real world. So they’re being able to find a property at the properties that have good internet yet are, you know, in a rural location, at least somewhat have been in very high demand.

Aaron Amuchastegui  03:06

Yeah, yeah, the property I sold there, I learned that after moving there, too. I got there. And I thought, alright, how do I get my internet because I was so close to the city core. And we had a satellite dish on our roof that pointed to a satellite dish up on the hill. And we were getting our internet by like pointing in at this monastery and thought, Wow, this is so so yes, I can see that being a big demand. And even when we went to sell our house, that was some of the biggest questions how much you pay, but where do you get it? How fast is it? How do you actually run an office from home? So people from the Bay Area deciding, hey, if they’re going to be stuck in their houses, they want to be able to have more space, more things like that? Has that started to slow? Is it starting to slow down or as the market because there’s been some stories lately of Alright, we’re not getting 10 offers on every property anymore. It’s starting to become more balanced. Do you feel like it’s slowing? The demand is slowing down at all right now?

Julee Patterson  03:56

Well, I it’s kind of like we were going like 150 in the fast lane. And now we’re like at 100. You know, I mean, it’s still, we’re still in a great seller’s market, it is a little bit slower. We have seen the showing slowed down a little bit. And in some properties we’re seeing less offers than we were but it’s still I mean, we’re still still great. I mean, no complaints, I actually kind of prefer a little bit more normal market. So this is a little bit refreshing. It’s a lot when there’s 10 offer 1020 you know, in some cases like 30 offers on a property and that’s a lot it’s a little overwhelming for both buyers and sellers. So I’ve kind of enjoyed a little bit of a slowdown I it’ll be interesting to see if people are thinking that the Bay Area traffic is going to slow down quite a bit. We’re still seeing a pretty good influx that’s coming in from we definitely and especially in newer construction areas. Oddly enough, we’re getting a lot of a lot of Bay Area buyers still coming up for that. So I mean, how long this is going to last that’s you know, in my crystal balls In the shop, but we do anticipate it’s somewhat consistent, our housing is so much more affordable, we’re in a close proximity to a very high priced area, which makes it it’s a nice, it’s a nice option for people from the Bay Area, because it’s still possible for them to be able to commute if they had to, it may be at a once or twice a week situation. So that should continue to drive, you know, our market for quite some time. Yeah,

Aaron Amuchastegui  05:25

something that you and I talked about before we hit record was kind of the unique layout of the Sacramento area when it comes to real estate, because within a 30 minute drive, you can be driving touring properties that are, you know, 150 to $250,000 properties, two to three 510 million dollar properties. And most agents up there is they aren’t niched into an area where they’re only doing the zip code, or they’re only doing this area or only doing this price point. It’s kind of like you have to be an expert in all aspects of real estate out there. Do you feel like that’s the case, the still and and I mean, I guess it’s the only way it is Northern California.

Julee Patterson  06:08

I didn’t know any different. When I start getting out and talking to people across the country, I didn’t really realize that there was people that only worked a specific neighborhood. There’s a few around here that do there’s like a gal it’s really heavy in East Sacramento or whatever the case might be, and you know them for that area. But for the most part, the majority of agents have a pretty wide geographical. And, you know, like you said condos to multimillion there’s not, there’s very few agents that highly niche and a certain and a certain, you know, type of property or location. And so I didn’t realize that that was fairly unique to our area. But we see, in any given point, I can have a condo listed in Sacramento, and it’s you know, low end and we have a high end property, one of my girls has a $5 million Napa listing right now. So I mean, it just there’s a really wide range.

Aaron Amuchastegui  07:03

Yeah. When did you get in real estate?

Julee Patterson  07:06

I got into real estate on in the lending side way back in 95. So I’ve been in for a hot minute.

Aaron Amuchastegui  07:12

Yeah. So if you were in from 95. And then were you in Northern California during the late 2000s.

07:19

Yep. Oh, my

Aaron Amuchastegui  07:20

gosh, that was quite the time up there. And my listeners have heard my stories of us buying houses on the courthouse, we were home builders in oh five and oh seven. And then we didn’t know how we were going to feed our families. And then we discovered this courthouse step auction stuff in 2009. And at that time nobody was doing and we first did that. So we’ve seen all of those cycles of ups and downs out there. And you’re in one of those areas where it was pretty extreme. Real Estate Rockstars. This is Aaron, and would you stay for a quick commercial break. So during 2020 and 2021, the real estate market completely changed. There’s so much competition in the market, so many people trying to buy and sell houses. But there’s hardly any supply hardly any product, or anyone willing to list their homes. It’s time for every agent out there to become a hybrid agent investor to be able to reach out directly to homeowners to try to get them to sell or list their house. We’ve got a new website, go to lead propellor.com. And you can set up your own investor buyer website in just minutes. You’ll set up your own URL, set up phone numbers help go through leads help reach out to people that aren’t listing their their property currently, and have them fill out a form that says hey, I want to sell my house. And then as an agent, you can go through and make them a hybrid offer, you can tell them hey, I think your house would sell for $220,000 on MLS, but I can either write you $180,000 cash offer right now, or I can help you fix it up. And you’ll listed for 220,000 on MLS, these are buyers that are looking for quick cash offers 10s of 1000s are submitting these forms every single day. And they’re skipping the listing process. It’s so many of you guys out there are such good agents, it’s a great opportunity to get that lead and help them maximize sales price for their home. So again, go to lead propeller calm and think about signing up for your own investor site. So buyers will start reaching out to you asking you to make an offer on their home. See, we’re in the real estate industry in 95. When did you become a licensed real estate agent and what made you decide that you wanted to be an agent?

Julee Patterson  09:28

In 2002, I got my license, but I was on the lending side. Um, I had a branch of it for a mortgage company that I had that I actually sold in 2006. So that worked out pretty well. Um, timing, timing wise

Aaron Amuchastegui  09:42

for that anything. Yes.

Julee Patterson  09:45

That worked out. And then in 2008, I got my broker’s license, I’ve never worked as an as an agent for another broker. So as selling real estate, I’ve always just done my own thing and been my own broker. So I think that’s kind of it. usual, but I feel blessed that I’ve been in through all of the cycles. And some of my best years have been when there’s been a pivot or a shift when the market has adjusted and then you just need to be able to be, I feel grateful to have had the opportunity to go through some of that already. So I’m already kind of prepared if there’s, if there’s an adjustment, I know that you’ve got to make fairly quick adjustments to your business and be able to survive and write it out. So I don’t know I it’s weird that I come from a slightly different perspective with I’ve just, like I said, just been lending and, and a broker. And so some of the some of the struggles or things that I hear people saying on the agent side, I didn’t, I’ve only known, I’ve only known been my own broker when I’m selling. So it’s kind of hard to hard to gauge with the with the struggles on the just the agent side when they’re working for someone else.

Aaron Amuchastegui  10:52

Yeah. And that’s also something that’s common for your area. Right? So in Northern California, it’s very common for small broker owner shops, it’s very common for people to you know, be licensed for a couple years then go out on their own, the it’s less common to be part of a larger kW XP, thing like that up there was the same thing that we we experienced when we were up there. So you’ve seen a bunch of ups and downs and quick pivots. So tell me about in March and April of 2020. Right, so as everything starts to be changed pretty quickly, pretty easy. It caught up in the fear. Did you have any sort of mantra that you told yourself or story that you reminded yourself to let you know that it was time to quickly pivot instead? Like, don’t get it? How did you get through? How did you succeed during that time?

Julee Patterson  11:45

Well, we had been set up luckily that we’d already been doing heavy video marketing and video tours and video, everything was already I was already doing that. So the nice thing once the once you know kind of lockdown started, and really, the only way you are selling for the most part was doing video tours. We were already prepared for that. So that made it that part of it a little bit easier. I had we started using oddly Marco Polo became a very the app Marco Polo the video, it’s like video, walkie talkie almost. And we were using that for showings quite a bit. And it was working really well because people could actually instead of like FaceTime, you could only see it the one time you did a walkthrough and again, a lot of the people were coming from the Bay Area, so they weren’t here. And so we would do these Marco Polo tours where they could rewatch it at or show their partner or whatever the case is that at a later time. And that worked really well for our pivot there. And when we’re dealing with the fear of the clients, I mean, I always feel like the best time to sell is when you’re comfortable. If you’re comfortable with the price, if you’re comfortable with the payment, you don’t know what’s going to happen. And it worse, did some people sell too early, you know, they should have waited? Possibly, but it was hard to know at that point. The advice I would kept giving my clients are you happy with the price that you’re going to be getting as a seller? Because there was some fear during that early times of like, Oh gosh, what if we don’t know what the world’s gonna do? You know? And if there were some people selling that weren’t sure, should they hang on? Should they should they sell now? Should they hang on what’s the best? What’s the best thing to do? And at the end of the day, if people wanted to sell and move on with their lives, that was the best time and you can’t really look back and be like, oh, gosh, you know, real money lost is a lot worse than fake money gained, you know, like, just, if you’re comfortable right now just make the move, whether it’s buying or selling. And if you try to gauge and time the market just perfectly, very few people do that even the most, you know, highly trained economist, they might not always time the market perfectly. So really just housing is a thing that you just got to kind of go for it. And that was a lot of stress during that time of timing wise. But luckily everybody kind of pushed through and I can’t believe how many people bought houses sight unseen during that timeframe, using video marketing, how many people we got that really never had seen the house before we handed over keys. And that’s kind of a crazy. I mean, when you think about it, that seems nuts. But luckily, for the most part, everybody worked out I had one lady wasn’t super, super love the house when she got there. But she’s gotten used to it. The husband loves it, it’s all good. But for the most part, people were completely okay to buy a house from another state or another location without ever seeing it in person.

Aaron Amuchastegui  14:37

B that is funny. I mean, only having one person disappointed is is that’s kind of a big deal. Like that’s because yes, I imagine. I mean, we’ve seen enough properties to know that once we show up, they’re different. And there’s the picture left this part out or the picture didn’t show or didn’t tell us about this neighbor or this dog barking and so there’s always things that are going to stick out Later. And so that’s a cool tip to that Marco Polo app, because not only can you send videos back and forth, but it’s also the higher rez ones, she could FaceTime someone, but you’re gonna get a little bit diluted of a picture. But when you use those other apps that record a lot higher resolution, they can look at it later. I think that’s a great tip that people can be using, you know, now, you know, now even as they’re, you know, doing other types of showings. So how do you get most of your leads right now, so So are you mostly buyer’s agent, mostly listing agent, your your team,

Julee Patterson  15:30

we do both. So we don’t really lean one more than the other, we’re fairly even on buyers and sellers, the majority of our business does come from social media. So we are heavily focused on social media, a lot of inbound leads are coming from that we have a lot of leads, you know, when people, there’s a lot of folks that people think, oh, they’re gonna get a call today, and they’ve those people want to buy a house tomorrow. And that’s not really the case. I mean, even with social media, or anything, their real estate kind of is a long game. And so you’ve got to have stuff set up and prepared. So when you get those leads coming in from social media, you have a follow up plan in place to stay and communicate with them throughout, you know, it could be we have some people in our pipeline that came in two years ago that are just getting ready to buy a house. So they come in, we make sure that we have them set up on an on an email sequence that’s not I, I kind of am a I’m a cheesy kind of dorky type, like I like goofy silly things. We’re pretty silly. We do pretty dorky videos and cheesy videos that we do. And so the emails and the nurture sequence that goes out is like that. You want people with social media, the nice thing is people get to know and see you. So if they like you, if you’re your authentic self, when you put yourself out there on social media, they’re probably going to like you when they contact you, as long as you’re being your, your true self. If you’re if you’re trying to pretend like you’re funny, and you’re not funny. Well, I mean, don’t don’t do that. So my email sequence is similar to how I present myself in real life and on social media. So we connect with people over a long term, timeframe. And then when they’re ready, we are hoping to be the be the person that they reach out to at that time, and we stay in communication with them. So social media has been a game changer for us.

Aaron Amuchastegui  17:18

Real Estate Rockstars This is a commercial break from our podcast, sponsor house folios. We’re in real estate, find the next big deal, right, we want to find the deal, make money and then turn around and do it all over again. It can be frustrating having to search through 1000s of properties, trying to find that Goldilocks property that is just right for your investment goals. That’s why we’re here to tell you about house folios. House folios is a management software for single family home investors that makes it simple to find good deals, get financing, and manage your property portfolios, all from one platform. They’re an all in one app that lets you easily search for properties both listed and unlisted. Analyze numbers based on your specific assumptions and provide resources to get you through underwriting and closing. This is a feature we like most, you can track your numbers at multiple levels want to see the returns on a specific property in seconds, check about an entire portfolio of properties you’re looking to buy, check, and then being able to present these properties to investors to become the go to real estate agent for their investment needs. How awesome is that? managing your investment properties has never been easier. The best part it’s affordable, plans started just $29 a month 29 bucks unlocked the tools demand your entire investing cycle all in one place, check it out at house folios calm and if that’s not enough, house folios is giving our listeners a special rate on an entire year of house folios just 99 bucks. So instead 29 bucks a month 99 bucks for the year head on over to house folios.com forward slash ar e rockstars. To sign up again, head over to house folios comm forward slash ar e rockstars to get an entire year of house folios for only 99 bucks. So the so if somebody came to you for advice and said, Julie, I’ve been an agent for a while but we have not crushed social media. What are the first two or three things you would tell them to go do

Julee Patterson  19:04

in your in your social media, make sure that when people look at your page, first of all, make it public, social media social. So stop trying to be private on your I mean, you can still be private and be careful with what you putting out there. But have your page be accessible to the public so that they can see. Secondly, when I go to your page, it needs to say who you serve what you do and where you do it from? Because I’m shocked at how many agents I go to their page and you can’t even really tell they do real estate and you certainly don’t know where they do real estate from. So it’ll say realtor You know, I’m Julie I’m a realtor and you’re like well where are you a realtor? Where are you Where do you sell homes? I mean I can’t tell so those things I think right there that is an important factor and will probably be pretty change you know pretty game changing for a lot of people if they just made their stuff public and be be be aware What you’re putting out there. So if you don’t want to be perceived as like a drunk or something, don’t be putting a bunch of party pictures, making a fool of yourself, like when people understand that you’re gonna have a good time. But be cautious of what you put? I don’t know.

Aaron Amuchastegui  20:13

Yeah, I like that. So first make it public so people can see you tell people who you are, and where you served. I think that’s important too. And someone’s looking for an agent, especially for the ones that do really niche down into an area. So you’re like Kate, say Where you go? And then be careful of what gets put out there? How often are you putting out content on your social media? How often are you recording videos and putting them out or posts the what should people have as a goal? So

Julee Patterson  20:40

first of all, whatever you can commit to, so don’t, I mean, I post a lot, because that’s been a pillar of my business that’s been very successful. So obviously, I’m going to stay consistent with something that is helping out and, and working in my business. So we’ve I post daily, sometimes multiple times a day, on different platforms. So I’ve got multiple stories, typically, that go out of day, I do reels on Instagram, I’ve got Instagram newsfeed posts, we do igtv, with with videos on, say, with Facebook. So knowing what it’s a little bit when you first start out, it’s kind of hard to know where to put what type of content. So you certainly once you’re watching your insights, and you’re finding out what your audience is liking and what they’re what they’re wanting to continue to consume, you can kind of target your content to be appropriate for that particular platform. But if you if somebody wants to say that they’re going to post, I think a lot of face to camera video, you need, don’t people want to see and you’re going to your best performing posts are going to be with your face in it, with your family, with your kids, with your pets and with your clients. And the beautiful kitchens are great and all but that’s not really going to get you the brand recognition that for yourself that you probably need. Now, some people do a really amazing with that I’m just I their accounts that are crushing it with just, you know, beautiful kitchens, so more power to them. But for most people, they need to have a face to camera and be able to see our faces our brand. So be able to see your face be able to relate to you and be able to know, you know, you as a person, I’m shocked at how many people will come up to me and like fully know my life and like be like, Oh, I loved that, you know, you guys got that frozen yogurt the other day or something and your husband is so silly or whatever. And it’s shocking to me, because they didn’t, a lot of these people don’t engage back with you. So you think that they’re not watching or paying attention because they didn’t make a comment or like your post or whatever. So you don’t you have no idea that they’re even watching or paying attention to you. And then you see them in person. And they like know all the details of your life they are following. And they are soaking that in and want to be a part of some of the nonsense that goes on in your day to day life. People enjoy that. And so be put that, put that stuff out there. I mean, put your fro yo when you go Get yo yo or whatever it is. So it’s interesting to me how, how much of that I get more comments about my personal life that gets posted than I do about, you know, work stuff. So I don’t know, I think people people get a little caught up with. They don’t want to post things about their personal life on their business page. But people really need to understand that people want to get to know you as a person. This is a this is a service based business and knowing you as a person definitely matters.

Aaron Amuchastegui  23:36

It’s a great point, too, that not everybody that watches actually tells you they’re watching. It’s really easy to get discouraged if you put something out there and it doesn’t get the likes or the shares the interaction you’re hoping for. But Julie’s point there is that still even if you get no reaction back people are watching there are people watching that are paying attention. And you’d be surprised when you figure that out. So you talked about you also have this email campaign. So get people how do you transition people from social media to your email campaign? Is there a way Is there something you do to actually capture them to opt in an email or is it two totally different, you know, outbound marketing efforts.

Julee Patterson  24:16

So if we are running an ad on social media that is for a homes list or something, Roseville homes with pools or whatnot, so they will sign up to get an email from that that will stay we will stay in communication with them from that we then so a lot of the stuff before marketing to another area, whatever. We’ll talk about that particular community. We have videos about Roseville for example. Then we have a guide specifically that’s put together and so we tried to hit them we have a nice, I say print but it’s done in an ebook style. We have a guide of sorts we’ve got the video we’ve got fun storytelling. I tried to tell a fun story about the the you know the family And Roseville that why why we love them. And you know what, what can happen there. So people that are coming into our area are learning about the area from a storytelling standpoint, that is a fun, communicative, you know, email, I have some of those that people will open the same email like 25 times and read the story about, you know, Frodo or something. So to me, I’m some I’m surprised again, I’m, I’m often surprised that people are that interested in that. But it’s, it’s edutainment it’s entertaining, entertaining them, while educating them about our community and about what’s available here. And so putting them on that process and getting them to learn more about the different areas that and the different things that we have to offer is, if they were just sort of that, you know, they didn’t really know much about Roseville, for example, if they were able to learn that they may be more inclined to move here and be, you know, want to take the plunge and buy a house here in Roseville. So we do try to educate them. That’s an important part of the of the process. And I think, like for me that the boring drip emails that are like, Hey, are you still looking for a house? You know, like, I, I don’t think that you’re going to get as much out of that as if you put actual content in it in a fun way that makes people want to listen and want to read

Aaron Amuchastegui  26:22

54. Yeah, like a newsletter format of here’s what I’m doing. And here’s the there’s a big difference. I get so many emails out there from marketing companies, and some of them are, here’s the news. And here’s some interesting stuff that I like reading them and others is the is the boring stuff. And you’re right, the more people that provide value in those emails, the more likely I am to read it, the more likely Am I want to give business back if someone’s providing free value to me, then later, I want to keep them in mind for when I need to pay for a service. And if someone is blowing up my inbox, and I keep unsubscribing and somehow I keep getting re added to their list. I’m never gonna pay them for something or hire them for something. Real Estate Rockstars This is a commercial break from our biggest podcast sponsor we have right now rent ready, it can be fun getting a new real estate deal. But it can be tough managing your properties after the fact, especially if you’re long distance investing or trying to manage multiple properties by yourself. That’s why we’re here to tell you about rent ready, raise a property management software that not only makes it easier to manage all your real estate deals from one platform, but they also have the best customer service support in the biz. They’re an all in one app that lets you easily manage properties, collect rent, lists, units, screen tenants, sign leases, all from your phone or computer. Imagine all of your real estate doors right in your pocket. How awesome is that? The best part? It’s so affordable one flat price for everything, unlimited properties, tenants and support with a real life human and I have to add in there. That’s a new business model that not a lot of people are doing. There’s like this freemium model where people say hey, you can try this but as soon as you grow, it’s gonna cost you a lot of money or they kind of punish you when you get too many emails on your list or too many comm they aren’t going to punish you and you grow they’re not going to charge you more when you get 10 2030 rentals, they’re just charge you the same when you have two or three as they will when you have 50 or 60 Do you have a nice fixed costs, all software all in one place? Check it out rent ready, r e n t r e vi.com. And that’s not enough rent rate is giving our listeners a special code you can use to get a whole year rent ready for just $54 use code. RO ck sta our 50 that Rockstar 50 instead of for rent raise annual plan at rent ready calm. Again, r e n t r e di comm with code Rockstar 50 to get rent ready for only $54.

Aaron Amuchastegui  28:50

So you build up your social media first people get to know you, you put lots of videos out there lots of content of all of your life, you tell them where you want to go. So now people get to start learning who Julie Patterson is they get to learn who you are, they get to feel like they know you the first time they actually talk to you. They already feel like they’re your best friend. And I think that’s one of the keys of video that so many of the people that we’ve interviewed have said, and then sometimes you’ll probably get just some leads from that some people that reach out directly on social media go, Hey, I’m looking for an agent. And then you take that and you go a step further and say now that you have an a social, an established social media brand. Now you’re going to go run ads and you’re going to do campaigns for little giveaway type things where you run an ad but it says the example was do you want to list of houses for sale with pools in Roseville? Right? Then people click on that. They say yes, they give you your email address. Now they’re gonna get that free thing, but then they’re gonna get added to your newsletter, where they get to learn more and more stuff about you. When really the goal of those is that they might reply with a question, right? They might say like, what about this house? Or what about this and then that starts this direct sort of communication. Do you know how much you like if someone has never heard run ads before and they’re like, Okay, I think I’ve got it, I think I’ve got a pitch here. Do you know how much it costs you, for every sort of opt in for an email is it for every, you know, 10 bucks you spend for every 50 bucks, you spend less than that you have any idea.

Julee Patterson  30:15

So for Facebook ads, we’re probably at five to $10 an opt in, it’s going to vary depending on I mean, if you were to average the whole thing out, probably around seven, I would guess, um, some, some particular types of lists are going to generate you more quantity of leads that will come in that will be of less quality, some types of lists, you’ll get very few that they will be of higher quality. So you have to kind of weed through an app like that, on average, I would guess around $7.

Aaron Amuchastegui  30:47

Yeah, I guess so that sounds about right. So for every 1000 bucks you spend, you’re going to be adding between, you know, 100 to 150 people, various levels, some of those will be very serious. And some of those are people that you’re adding to a campaign that maybe there’s a chance you’re gonna do business with them a year or two from now, do you run, when you think about your plan for the next couple years? Do you run the same amount of ad spend every single month trying to bring people into the sphere, do you have certain goals at different times where you boost that

Julee Patterson  31:17

we it’s different. So if if I want to if I got a vacation coming or something I will so ease off because you don’t want a bunch of stuff coming in that you can’t serve. But that’s a waste, you know, so we adjust that if my son’s away in college, though, when he comes home for Christmas, or whatever, I tend to ease off because I want to be able to spend time with family and that kind of thing. So it varies depending on the time of year and my interest in working, frankly. But the nice thing is when you have less leads coming in, you have more time to be able to focus on like revamping the the email sequence or redoing things. So when you don’t have the leads coming in that you need to serve, you can spend time on the systems on the back end, perfecting that and and improving on what you have. And so if somebody is just starting out with the leads, I do encourage the or with the with the ads to have Krista make sure has a great program as far as learning funnels and learning of you know how to structure an ad campaign, because you’re really bringing people down an emotional journey. And at the very end of the of the, you know, the funnel per se is them giving you their contact information. So you first need to have a broader it needs it needs to you can’t just put never have done an ad never done anything and try to run something and think you’re gonna have this wildly successful, you’re going to get 100 people come in that raised their hand and said they want to buy a house from you, when you’ve never put anything out there of content prior to. So they need to get to know you a little bit better. You put more community based, you know, type stuff out. Then the very bottom of the funnel is a home’s list and give me your email. And so I think a lot of times people jump in too quickly and say, Oh, I’m just gonna run a home. Listen, they’re like it didn’t work. I know, I know, I’m not gonna run Facebook ads, it didn’t work. But the truth is, there’s a lot of prep work that has to happen and going through a training program kind of like Krista has of training you how to do that is is powerful and definitely has helped my business tremendously.

Aaron Amuchastegui  33:24

Yeah, we recently had Krista on the podcast guys it hasn’t published yet at the time of this recording. And so I won’t be able to tell you guys which episode to go back and listen to. But I do know that she’s got a great program with that. And it would probably be you know, six or seven episodes before this one so you guys can go look back and see that to learn a little bit more about Chris. So Julie, how big is your team right now.

Julee Patterson  33:46

So we have nine and some like my stager is she’s licensed and has her license, but she’s not really an active agent, but she’s considered obviously one of the team. She’s our stager, and my TC is licensed and but she just got licensed and she’s amazing. But she’s not not selling a ton quite yet. She’s kind of still learning the ropes and everything, but of my girls that are actively selling, all of them are ambassadors clubs of my active selling girls, so I’m super proud of that, that we are a team of producing agents that are out there, you know, serving clients to the best of our ability. And even though I’m the broker and kind of the team lead, I’m still in the trenches with them every day. So I’m a producing broker, I have not taken a step back so I’m still doing my thing right alongside with them.

Aaron Amuchastegui  34:35

Yeah, what advice would you give to somebody that want I mean, you’re you’re a broker owner, right? But the but running your business is kind of like how team leads do it inside these bigger brokerages? What advice would you give to somebody that wants to be a broker owner or run a team for how to manage that teams, your strategies, any sort of big picture stuff that you’ve learned from running your team in your office?

Julee Patterson  34:57

I think culture is super important and So setting it up, just because somebody says they want to join your team doesn’t mean that they should join your team. So I mean, you really need to be careful of who you’re bringing on. Because the best part of our group is that the dynamic that we have, and so being able to be fun and enjoy each other’s company and being able to I can send any of the girls out to serve my client, if in my absence, if I needed to send one of the other girls to help my client, I know that they’re going to treat that client just like they were their own. And the client is not going to feel like they got handed off to somebody less, you know, less than, or that doesn’t care as much, they they all care as much as we do. And so that is you. And they’re not, there’s no profits from that. So it’s really nice between the, you know, just because you know, Paula might help Melissa or something doesn’t necessarily mean Paula is generating is going to get money from it. And so but knowing that you’ve got somebody that’s got your back, and is and is amazing, and is caring, and all these things make such a huge difference. So the knowing who you’re who you’re working with, and being careful and selective of who you choose, I think is really important. I’ve seen a lot of people that they’re like, Oh, we need to get we had we just had 14 new members join our team. And I think that sometimes while while growth is great, and of course, we’ll have it a lot of people are aiming for too fast of growth that you can’t serve and get to know those people and everything could really end up being a detriment.

Aaron Amuchastegui  36:35

Yeah, the I got a great example that you gave there of why culture is so important. It’s It’s so simple, right? So if you call in sick that day, you and you need to have somebody else fill in for you. If you’ve got great culture, there’s no change. There’s no somebody saying, Hey, where’s Julie? Today? There, it’s if everybody has the same culture, the same goals, the same personalities, and it’s so much more interchangeable and makes everything so, so much easier. The people that decided to come work with you because of your goofy personality, they’re gonna get the same thing from your assistants when they when they jump in for you. So if you’ve been an agent for a long time, you’ve been you’ve grown this business, you’ve been really successful. What advice would you give yourself as a new agent? Or what what would you have told yourself that you’ve learned when you just got started? Hey, if you’re going to be in real estate, you need to know this isn’t this,

Julee Patterson  37:25

push yourself out of your comfort zone. That’s where all the good stuff is. So like, doing video, for example, is really scary. And when, when I get people to join our team, everybody’s really freaked out about video. And if you’re not doing video right now, you’re really missing out as a new agent. So if you could, if you could start in the business and know that, I think, yes, we need to know real estate, for sure, you need to know the back end. But you typically as a new agent, you’ve got a mentor or a broker, or somebody that’s working with you, that can help you on the real estate side. What we also are marketers, and so knowing the marketing side of things, and being able to market yourself and your listings to be different than everyone else to be distinguished as yourself is really important. So being yourself trying not to be afraid of video and and pushing yourself in doing that. I wish I would have done it before. So I’ve been a I’ve been a fairly early adopter of video, but I could have done it sooner and probably would have, you know, been had a lot more opportunities had I done that before. So I wish that there was more new agents. I mean, we we frequently get people like oh, no, I just do I can’t do video I don’t want I don’t I don’t look good on video. It’s not natural to me. And I will tell you, it’s not natural to me either. I hate ever. I don’t like it. I don’t enjoy doing video. But I know it’s an important and integral part of my business. So I do it anyway.

Aaron Amuchastegui  38:54

And it gets easier with practice. So it’s like anything at the very beginning those first videos you record, you can get really insecure about it and you can be worried about the outcome. And then once you put a couple out there and you don’t have 100 people telling you they hate you then you realize, Oh, my worst fears aren’t as bad as I thought it does. does get easier, but I think it is videos are made just like this podcast, like anything else. So many of the people that reach out to me, and you and my listeners, you guys do know me right? We do know our personalities because there is so much time and I’m the one as if I’m putting out a bunch of video and a bunch of content. Then when I meet someone I feel like I’m falling behind because they already know me. They already know my secrets. And now I’ve got to play catch up and really try to dive in to learn about them. I don’t have to spend time telling them about me or introduce that we can spend all the time getting to learn about them and their needs. So even as an agent it can be so much more important. The you know Julie, we’re so we’re running out of time here any last thoughts you want to tell anybody and or if not, how can they reach out to you people are going to have questions. They’re going to reach out to you for advice. They’re going to want to learn any other secrets that you’re doing.

Julee Patterson  40:00

Oh, I’d love to connect on social media. My Instagram is my name. Julie JU, l. e. Patterson. So definitely reach out to me there. I’d love to connect. I love meeting new agents from other areas as well, building a great referral network. That’d be awesome. So please reach out to me on Instagram.