Starting a service business for real estate agents

[SeanODG]

Hi everyone,

Hope you all are doing well! This is a first post in a process thread. These threads are so infinitely valuable (longtime lurker here-thank you to all who make this forum valuable!) that I hoped to give back by writing one of my own. To be fair, TBD on if I can actually do anything to make this thread valueable. My goal is to keep this up to date for the next few years with a post every week or so. It’s on my calendar so I don’t forget!

Background
I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I studied entrepreneurship at Wharton for business school and worked in management consulting for BCG for a couple more years to learn about business. Most importantly, I met my now wife there!

Here’s the really interesting thing: that’s the number one business school and either one or two consulting firm. I didn’t really learn anything about business at those two. I can make a really A+ PowerPoint presentation though.

There’s no class about how manage a P&L. Nothing about customer satisfaction. Nothing about how to sell.

The entrepreneur classes were largely focused on how to start the next Uber. How to take the path of 0.0001% success rate, competing against millions of smart people, but could get you on Forbes. The exits from BCG send you into a "strategy and analtyics" role at doordash.

Nothing about how to start a really good business, without venture capital, that makes you and your family a few million per year. Nothing about the fast lane. Everyone I graduated with makes a few hundred grand in private equity, but it’s really just the high paid slow lane. And means NYC taxes too.

MJ has played a bigger role in my business life that the fancy education and work experience has. Thank you, MJ!!

Business
The business is fairly basic. I’m planning to provide outsourced services to real estate agents. There are hundreds of freelancers and a few companies doing exactly this. None of them seem like they’re doing a great job, and there are >1M agents in the country, so there should be room for all of us.

Plan for the next month
Today is when things get started! I filed the LLC today and will spend the next month or so cold emailing agents to ask to interview them. I’m going to email agents who represent a wide variety of homes to understand what type of agent is the best customer here

I’m also going to start writing. I’m planning on inside sales until SEO takes over, so getting some good content out there can help to get that going!


A good result for the next month looks like:

• Filed LLC, opened bank account
• ~5 blog posts written
• ~50 realtor interviews, leading to:
  • Understanding of why someone would/would not work with a company instead of a freelancer
  • What are their biggest pain points? How are they being met/not met by freelancers?
  • What would they be willing to pay for someone to solve this problem for them?

 

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[Johnny boy]

I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I studied entrepreneurship at Wharton for business school and worked in management consulting for BCG for a couple more years to learn about business. Most importantly, I met my now wife there!

Here’s the really interesting thing: that’s the number one business school and either one or two consulting firm. I didn’t really learn anything about business at those two. I can make a really A+ PowerPoint presentation though.

LMFAO



A word of advice for finding a business opportunity by interviewing people...people are usually pretty stupid and very often don't know what they need.

Better to shadow them for a day and ask questions as you watch them go through their day. You'll see opportunities that they don't see.

Go ahead and interview people, but if someone lets you shadow them for the day, that would be even better.

Sounds like you're doing it pro from the get-go, best of luck to you.

 

[SeanODG]

Hey Everyone,

Back with another update! I'm still working ~80 hours a week consulting right now, but this is also my last week of consulting so I'll get a lot of time back very shortly.

To that end, I'm looking to fill my calendar for end of January/February with interviews. Back at BCG, we used to use Alphasights to find interviewees for us and then we'd pay them $1,300 an hour. Absolute ton of cash, and I don't have near the budget to do that.

So, I need to solicit interviews myself and I'm doing that by pounding the pavement.

Most interviews are going to be realtors (customers), but a lot of interviews are actually going to be my competitors. The largest competitors I actually have are freelancers. The fact freelancers are so successful actually is why I'm confident a business here can succeed. I'm literally doing exactly what the freelancers are doing, just wrapped in a stronger offering with systems and technology.

But, why would freelance competitors want to talk with me? Because I'm paying them

I went on UpWork and found ~15 people who offer transaction coordination and hired them all. Price ranged from $15-$45 an hour. I'm going to talk with all of them on the phone for an hour Zoom call. I'll ask their strategies, their tactics, what works, what doesn't, etc.

At the end of it, I'll have paid ~$700 for a multi-month head start on my competiton

 

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[Real Deal Denver]

Wow, are you making this hard.

As a real estate agent, my number ONE best purchase is a TC. The vast majority of agents would agree with me.

My number TWO area of assistance would be marketing.

THREE would be a virtual assistant that would answer the phone 24/7 - and follow my basic script. I want more than "I'll have him call you as soon as he's available."

How long did that take to figure out? You don't need interviews. Just call a few good agents and ask them how they handle each of those tasks. I guarantee they know, and most engage with, these services. This is like selling hamburger buns to McDonald's. They are interested and are already going full speed ahead.

Ask agents if they're happy with their service - and what they pay. Ask them if you gave them a VIP membership at LESS cost, would they sign up? Many won't because they have a great working relationship and won't sacrifice that for a few bucks. Some will. Using this direct and simple method, you should be able to sign up 3-4 a day with practically no effort.

Then deliver results. There are great software programs that do most of the work for you. No sweat.

I had a "virtual office" leave me a text message. I could use them, so I called them. My call went to voice mail. They called me back - good technology there, as they knew who I was even though I didn't leave a message. I didn't call them again. They failed their test. And that was that - not rocket science.

Have I ruined your day? I hope not, cause now it gets worse. I like your name. I don't like your website - it's way too pale, unexciting, no hook to grab my attention, and your pricing plan sucks. I pay $350 per transaction for a TC. Simple - I build it into a deal. I don't give a whit what you pay your people or how long they've been with you. Do you care what I pay my hired help?

I know several TCs. I also am on the edge of hiring a 24/7 phone/chat service. That's about $800 a month, and it's a live person. I like it. I have a gazillion marketing people that can do digital ads for me.

So - you're not doing anything new. But, you might be able to do it better. And the services are in demand. Need a few more weeks to figure this out? This post just handed everything to you. It's no secret, and you could do well with it. So do it.

I seriously thought about doing this myself, but my time is better spent doing other things. So I have looked at this much deeper than typical agents would.

One more thing - there are dozens of website designers that could crank out a stunning website in less than 48 hours for you. Probably less than 24, even. Although you have a catchy name, throw your website out and start over. Tell me what I want to hear to help ME. Don't tell me what you do - every agent knows that. Don't tell me how you run your business or how you treat your people - I don't care. It's all about me, baby! Get that straight right now, and have some head-to-head ABC conversations with agents. (ABC = always be closing, i.e. what could I do to earn your business TODAY - right NOW!... The gold level at Silver level pricing - intro offer - VIP extra services included at no charge - get it?)

This is a slam dunk business. But don't take it for granted - your competition has the experience and a reputation that you have to compete with on their terms. Don't underestimate them.

Hope this helps. Stop being a professor and start grabbing this bull by the horns.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Business
The business is fairly basic. I’m planning to provide outsourced services to real estate agents. There are hundreds of freelancers and a few companies doing exactly this. None of them seem like they’re doing a great job, and there are >1M agents in the country, so there should be room for all of us.

I like the niche approach. You might have something here.

Thanks for sharing your journey.

 

[Walter Hay]

It might be a while before you reach the scale of Boston Consulting Group, but I think you have it in you to make a big impact even if you don't get that far.

Do agents have quiet times at similar times during the day? If so I would hit the pavement hard during those times and try for an unscheduled quick chat. I built both of my businesses by doing that, with the secret sauce being an envelope containing: (Business#1 Industrial Chemicals: An offer of a production size free sample) (Business #2 Image Boosting Products: A high quality but irrestible novel free sample)

If the person I wanted to see was "not available" I simply asked the receptionist to give the envelope to that person.

Walter

 

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[SeanODG]

Another update here. It's been extremely busy, so figured I'd follow up with at least an update or two!

There are two big pieces of work going on.

The first is my consulting. Consulting has been my business for a while and how I make money. It's also something that will eventually be replaced by this new company. It's my business, but in effect, it's my 'day job' that will be replaced.

I've signed on a bunch of new clients to help keep the lights on for the next few months while I work to get Close Concierge up and running. It's certainly a time commitment, but I think the smartest possible thing to do right now.

Outside of consulting, Close Concierge has been full of progress. Here's a bunch of updates:

Website is live at closeconcierge.io
I hired a developer to get it designed and launched and I wrote the copy. Took a few days but that's now good to go. Let me know of any feedback!

Sales deck is ready
I have the sales deck in place, which is great so I now have something to show people when I pitch them after they respond to a cold email.

Email Domain Warmup is going
We're two months into domain warmup. I'll give it another few weeks and then start emailing prospects.

CRM is set up
Hubspot is good to go. I really want to ensure I'm tracking conversion rates carefully from the get-go.

Most exciting: Twitter is growing
I've been doing "build in public", as you can probably tell. This has been super interesting. I had a tweet get retweeted by a fairly large account and my follower base 5X'ed overnight. It's been interesting because it's lead to a lot of people to reach out and ask questions about my business/how they can help.

In terms of next steps, I just have a dozen small thingss and then I'm ready to get selling. I should be running outbound campaigns in early April!

 

[SeanODG]

Hey squad!

Busy few weeks here but wanted to come back here and post an update. I know this isn't actually being read that much (if at all!), but I actually have found writing this out publicly every once in a while is actually super helpful. It's a form of mental accountability.

So, let's talk progress and what has been done.

The headline is this: I'm officially in sales mode now!

And, the first few days were pretty fricken awesome. I've been trying to sell for 3 business days now and I have 5 sales meetings booked/held. More are trickling in. This is awesome because my business model assumes 3 customers by the end of April.

I'm expecting a close rate of ~10% to get started, optimally scaling up to 30% once I get better at selling Close Concierge.

Even at the 10% close rate, with the response I'm getting thus far, I firmly expect to hit that 3 customer benchmark. That would be $3K MRR, and pretty good for month #1.

How I'm booking sales meetings
I'm using a couple of different tactics.

The most scalable one is cold email. I know my ICP extremely well. It's not "a realtor." My ICP is someone who has been a realtor for a certain number of years, has a certain number of listings, in a certain price range, and specializes in a certain type of buyer and transaction.

I have my team finding these people from realtor.com and I'm loading them into a cold email sequence. It's been crazy: my open rate (for email #1 in a 7 step sequence) is >80% and my reply rate is 15%. If you haven't done cold email before, those numbers are bonkers. I highly recommend cold email, as long as you really know your ICP.

The other tactics are also bearing fruit. A TON of people post on Linkedin that they are looking for transaction coordinators. I'm searching for people who post that, then I drop them into a sequence as well. That's booked two meetings.

(BTW: I've been using Reply.io for all of this, but I want to make this time as efficient as possible because my days are slammed. I'm actually upgrading to Outreach.io this week. It's way too powerful for my company, but that's exactly why I'm going to invest in it).

Outside of that, I haven't really done much. Nothing else matters than sales

 

[SeanODG]

It's (again) been a while. I have a reminder on my calendar to circle back weekly and write an update but I don't actually get around to do that all the time. (since it's been a month....I've actually circled back to only 25% of the reminders that tell me too!)

Worth giving a quick update then on what's going on and how things are moving.

Short answer is: very well.

MRR is strong, at roughly $5K a month. Since my cost structure is fairly lean (just software and insurance, roughly $1K a month), it's about a $4k a month profit now after a few months here.

The majority of my clients have come the good old fashion way: hustle.

Since this isn't innovative, and there are a lot of realtors out there, it's simply a matter of getting in front of them and then offering a value that they're excited to pay for. Bonus points: realtors all have their contact information online. Once COVID is over, I'm going to walk into brokerages and pitch the business as well.

I still have some outbound sales sequences going, but I'm spending more time on the fulfilment side of things now.

For next steps, I'm:

• Bringing on an assistant to help
• Working to increase sales

Super short post here: I'll be back with an update later1

 

[sfarieri]

A TC is a transaction Coordinator. It's the title of a full time job or freelancer, or the job I'm trying to replace with Close Concierge

Thank you for the information. I'm just starting as an agent. Got my license last week.

 

[SeanODG]

I hadn't realized it, but it's legit been 3 months since posting an update here. Time is flying here

The short answer is that things are busy.

I still have a consulting business and two clients right now: one is a F500 where I'm helping to streamline operations and one is a PE company where we're evaluating a target. All in, this is probably 40 hours a week for both

Close Concierge is the focus, and it's probably 50 hours a week (but random when "work" lands)-lots of weekend work here.

We also have a little baby who just turned 13 months old so.

So, it's been BUSY as hell.

However, busy is good in this case

The consulting business, like all consulting, is super high margin. That's enabling me to invest back into Close Concierge to grow MRR. That's why busy is good

Growth wise, I'm:

• Doing cold outbound myself
• Facebook ads (just hired a badass agency to handle)
• Outsourced cold outbound (just hired a different agency to handle)

Operations wise, I'm:

• Hired first team members
• Hiring more when needed (I've had a bunch of people reach out and ask to work here, so I'm building a bench of future hires)
• Streamlining things by building out process and training documentation for new hires

Results
The business is profitable and growing strong. I added in some capital to help fund the agencies hired and I'm anticipating that will add to the top line for the next few months

Plan for next few months
Two fold: continue to grow topline and then continue to grow the team to optimize bottomline.

The agencies should bring in roughly $10K MRR per month for the next six months. That revenue will help fund future hires of fantastic team members who will continue to deliver great service

Goal is to get this business to 1,000 closed transactions per month (north star metric and goal). That will be well into six figures a month of profitability.

Message:
The above writing is slightly disjointed and all over the place.In an effort to simplify, there are a few messages I'd like to add

First, business should be viewed as simultaneously the easiest and hardest thing to do.

It's the easiest in that the concept of what you need to do is beyond basic. .1 Find people to deliver value to, 2. deliver said value, and 3. do so cheaper than it costs you to do it.

#1 is easy. Grab a phone and start dialing
#2 is easy for Close Concierge, because I know real estate. Pick the industry you know best
#3 is easy because of software

Business is hard though because it's emotionally taxing. You need to be OK with an absolute crap ton of work to get something started without any sign of progress

Said differently: apply a ton of hours across three basic things, and you'll have a profitable business

 

[Gabbe18]

Quite interesting thread.
Made me think of another business Smart Alto | An Appointment Setting System for Busy Agents and Growing Teams
I don't know if this relates to you or is even useful for your business but I thought it's worth mentioning
The CEO of also posted a thread on reddit a few months ago where he outlines how he started the business.
You can find it here

Keep working and good luck on your journey!

 

[SeanODG]

Thanks for sharing Gabbe!

Funny you share that one actually; Smart Alto is a company I'm familiar with and a very similar business. My company and Hassan's solve different problems, but the target user (high performing agent) is the same person and the cost is a high monthly subscription!

They're definitely an interesting one to benchmark off of!

 

[SeanODG]

It might be a while before you reach the scale of Boston Consulting Group, but I think you have it in you to make a big impact even if you don't get that far.

Do agents have quiet times at similar times during the day? If so I would hit the pavement hard during those times and try for an unscheduled quick chat. I built both of my businesses by doing that, with the secret sauce being an envelope containing: (Business#1 Industrial Chemicals: An offer of a production size free sample) (Business #2 Image Boosting Products: A high quality but irrestible novel free sample)

If the person I wanted to see was "not available" I simply asked the receptionist to give the envelope to that person.

Walter

Hey Walter, thanks so much for this tip!

Just to make sure I'm really understanding this (because it sounds like this tip has helped build multiple businesses!!)

Go into the offices during their downtime on the day with a printed out envelope full of detail. If they see you, give them the envelope. If they don't, give the receptionist the envelope

Is that right?

 

[SeanODG]

Hey everyone,

It's a new week so time for an update. My guess is reading this will look glacially slow to some people. I think this is my third or fourth update and I don't have the bullshit rented Lamborghini yet. My hope is that this case study on building a real business is a giant middle finger to the "make $10K a month after two days of work" crowd. This doesn't happen overnight.

I digress!

Progress is happening, even though it probably doesn't look like it. I wrapped up one of my last remaining consulting contracts within the past week. That's great to be wrapped up because these contracts are well into five figures per month and 70+ hours a week, so I'm using that cash and free time for the business growth here.

Last time I talked about how I scheduled a bunch of interviews with current freelancers in the space. Those are starting today and I'm excited for them. I'm also hitting the pavement for interviews with realtors (read: potential customers) as well.

From a technical standpoint, I also have my email warming up with lemlist so I can do cold outreach and my bank account setup. Website coming shortly (website content will take longer).

The goal of my conversations is to understand:

• What agents are most willing to pay for this kind of service? (target customer)
• What matters most to these agents? (how to provide value)
• How competitors are doing this (the benchmark)
• How competitors are getting customers (how to grow)

If I have these four, I can grow this business. Then, it's just a function of scaling sales to get there.

The good thing about my target market (realtors) is that everything I need to segment them already exists online, as well as info to personalize.

For example, let's say I figure out the standard customer is an agent who specializes in $1M+ homes in urban areas. This is now a done-deal.

I use VA's a ton in my consulting business. I'd use them here as well by:

• Telling them to go onto Zillow for a major city (e.g: Chicago)
• Fill out an Excel database for me of all houses for sale >$1M, including the listing agent
• I can then filter to see which listing agents have multiple listings (they're busy...and would pay for a service like mine)
• Then, I upload that filtered list into Lemlist and let it do the rest.

My personalized email outreach then sounds like (example):

Hi Susan,

You must be extremely busy: it looks like you're representing both 123 Main St and 456 Poplar. That kitchen on Poplar is amazing BTW!

Since you're clearly busy, have you looked into a transaction coordination service to gain ~15 hours back per transaction?

Happy to chat in more detail about how agents use our service to eliminate busy work in order to focus on growing their business.

This is personalized, short & sweet, and I'm excited to A/B test it. The hope is that it's compelling enough for 5 demos out of 100 emails sent.

Interviews need to happen first. But, this is the direction I'm heading in.

 

[sfarieri]

Hi everyone,

Hope you all are doing well! This is a first post in a process thread. These threads are so infinitely valuable (longtime lurker here-thank you to all who make this forum valuable!) that I hoped to give back by writing one of my own. To be fair, TBD on if I can actually do anything to make this thread valueable. My goal is to keep this up to date for the next few years with a post every week or so. It’s on my calendar so I don’t forget!

Background
I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I studied entrepreneurship at Wharton for business school and worked in management consulting for BCG for a couple more years to learn about business. Most importantly, I met my now wife there!

Here’s the really interesting thing: that’s the number one business school and either one or two consulting firm. I didn’t really learn anything about business at those two. I can make a really A+ PowerPoint presentation though.

There’s no class about how manage a P&L. Nothing about customer satisfaction. Nothing about how to sell.

The entrepreneur classes were largely focused on how to start the next Uber. How to take the path of 0.0001% success rate, competing against millions of smart people, but could get you on Forbes. The exits from BCG send you into a "strategy and analtyics" role at doordash.

Nothing about how to start a really good business, without venture capital, that makes you and your family a few million per year. Nothing about the fast lane. Everyone I graduated with makes a few hundred grand in private equity, but it’s really just the high paid slow lane. And means NYC taxes too.

MJ has played a bigger role in my business life that the fancy education and work experience has. Thank you, MJ!!

Business
The business is fairly basic. I’m planning to provide outsourced services to real estate agents. There are hundreds of freelancers and a few companies doing exactly this. None of them seem like they’re doing a great job, and there are >1M agents in the country, so there should be room for all of us.

Plan for the next month
Today is when things get started! I filed the LLC today and will spend the next month or so cold emailing agents to ask to interview them. I’m going to email agents who represent a wide variety of homes to understand what type of agent is the best customer here

I’m also going to start writing. I’m planning on inside sales until SEO takes over, so getting some good content out there can help to get that going!


A good result for the next month looks like:

• Filed LLC, opened bank account
• ~5 blog posts written
• ~50 realtor interviews, leading to:
  • Understanding of why someone would/would not work with a company instead of a freelancer
  • What are their biggest pain points? How are they being met/not met by freelancers?
  • What would they be willing to pay for someone to solve this problem for them?

I'm in the process of taking the real estate course to get my license. When I get my license and my feet wet, ill look you up. Sounds like a great idea.

 

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[SeanODG]

Time for a new week and update. Excited to share progress:

Tactical things complete;

• Interviews with freelancers (AKA competitors): 4 of them
• Interviews with real estate agents (customers) 1 of them
• Bank account set up (Mercury)
• Cash Transferred in ($10K; all I'm giving myself to get this started)
• Lemwarm set up to warm up my outbound email
• Wordpress guy hired to build the website

Overall, this past week was highly productive. The key item were the interviews. I've spent a decade in real estate, but I'm still doing interviews to learn and confirm

There were a couple big themes coming out of them:

This is a strong market
There are a ton of freelancers in teh space and more every day. A ton of brokers are hiring for full time TC's and there is a lot of interest. The value prop is clear, which means my job is to sell 'why me', not 'why you need this solution' AND 'why me.'

This is a profitable market
I spoke with a couple freelancers who are making >$200K a year doing this. Roughly 50 hour weeks right now and just them with limited tech, systems, and no employees. Adding in those costs lowers my margin, but enables me to be confident I can grow a business here.

I have a large financial model projecting expenses and this business will be profitable from day one.

Clear customer profile
This was fantastic news. The freelancers all confirmed who their customer is and it's largely who I thought it was. Even better, I can scrape Zillow to find their names and email addresses in bulk.

Low Churn
The answer I kept getting was the average customer stays with freelance TC's for 2-3 years. Factoring that in as an average LTV of 30 months, that means monthly churn will be 3.33%. That's a slam dunk.

High expectations
This is the kicker.

TC's will interact with highly sophisticated people on a daily basis: homebuyers. It clearly takes a lot of money to be able to buy a home, which automatically raises the sophistication of the buyer. Then, keep in mind that buying/selling a home is a highly emotional process.

That leads to an environment where you have highly sophisticated people with incredibly high emotions during a legal transaction. The logical implication is that the margin for error is basically nothing.

A lot of people would try to outsource this work to the Philippines. And I probably will have international VA's for data entry work and similar.

However, I think I need absolutely INCREDIBLE stateside employees due to the low margin for error. But, not just regular employees. We need the culture.

From day one, the culture of this company is going to be focused on two things:

1. Our north star metric
2. How we will achieve our north star metric.

The North Star Metric here is the number of transactions we support a month. The goal right now is 1,000 transactions a month. I'm going to say this 100 times a day.

How we will achieve that goal is by being the number one customer service company in the world, regardless of industry. Better than the Four Seasons, The Ritz Carlton, Nordstroms, etc.

Lots of updates and thoughts here on how I'm thinking about this....be back next week!

 

[SeanODG]

A TC is a transaction Coordinator. It's the title of a full time job or freelancer, or the job I'm trying to replace with Close Concierge

 

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[Real Deal Denver]

Hey @Real Deal Denver-thanks for the feedback! I'm not totally following everything though so playing this back so I'm understanding your points. I'll also push back in a couple of places

• I'm not sure what you mean by making things hard. I did talk to a bunch of agents before starting (took a few weeks, no big deal) but the business is wildly profitable now and growing fast.
• I hear you regarding giving discounts to sign up and that you prefer a pricing plan at $350/transaction. $350 is already cheap (market average is closer to $450) and I do not want to compete on price.
• The problem with your recommended per-transaction pricing is that the business is now entirely dependent on the agent's business. That means Close Concierge is worth about 1.5X EBITDA.
• With a recurring monthly fee, the business is now worth ~7.5X EBITDA. I'll take the "Hit" monthly for the enterprise value
• The website feedback is actually extremely surprising. I've had a ton of great feedback from agents, and agents who told me they've signed up because of the website.

Happy to talk in more detail. I understand this model might not be a great fit for your business, but I am growing super fast

Well, I was wrong. The websites I found were pitiful. I've seen plumbers and electricians (boring!) have better sites.

But here is one that is one of the best I've found, although I think it is still lacking in some areas; Transaction Coordinator | MyOutDesk Virtual Assistant Services

This site has an eye-catching header - a video - a great CTA (call to action) - and testimonials. In short - that's pushing buttons for me - that's what I want to know about. That website feeds my desire to know more.

If you get compliments from agents, that could be because agents rarely know a good website. Their own websites are too often nothing more than a glorified billboard with their smiling face with a background view of a home or a room in a home and some WEAK tagline, such as "put my experience to work for you." For those of us that don't think drinking yesterday's leftover cold coffee is THAT bad - that's a great website! It says nothing - it doesn't grab attention - and it does nothing. The only thing good about it (and I use that term very loosely) is that it is a clone of so many other sites, so by comparison, it blends in, and - bland as it is - it isn't actually "bad."

And speaking of agents - most of them somehow manage. It's a mystery to many top agents how they do it - but they do. Your business is a numbers game - there are so many agents out there that you are all but guaranteed to NOT fail. It's a lot like a commercial cleaning business - the demand and the market are definitely there for the taking.

I read once that a person is the average of the five people they associate with most often. So, with that said, average (or above average) is certainly a sliding scale that is highly individual. Do your thing and even have fun in the process - that's success. Of course, success has degrees from 1 to 1,000. As far as success is concerned, I know agents pulling in over five mill. That's a whole lot of success.

After seeing the sites of TCs in my market area, I may have to revisit getting into that biz. It's scalable and has huge demand. I am not impressed at all by the competition I see here, although I do use a lady that is an excellent TC - even though she uses the most basic marketing possible. This is a business ripe for conquering.

One more thing - the monthly hit you talk about taking will buy a LOT of marketing. Marketing is the lifeblood of a biz. When that is done well, everything else falls in place. There is a reason agents don't buy the newest computers, cell phones, and any other type of overhead. It's overhead. A G a month will get me well over 50 leads. I don't need a new computer or any other overhead expense - I need more customers and more cash.

Oh well - I think I've wasted my time here. You missed all the information in my earlier post - so take what you can and use it the best way you can. Just remember - I don't care about how you pay your people or the hours you work. It's 7:00 am now, and I'm typing. My earlier response was several hours ago. Do my working hours matter? Does anyone care that I put in 16 hour days sometimes and work 7 days a week? Nope. Your customers care about THEIR world - not yours or mine.

 

[Real Deal Denver]

Oh, just give me a break... I just took a look at one of the TC websites...

Remember the story about me calling the virtual office people - and they didn't answer their phone? Well, here we go again. This TC office doesn't even know what they're selling - it's supposed to say PEACE of mind. I also highlighted how they say I will be impressed with them. Everyone on the planet says that. Why even say it - just do it.

Call me a grammar nazi. Call me unreasonable. Call me a crybaby. In my world, there is VERY little room for mistakes. Most professionals think the same way, so this is something to know and get used to - real fast.

No, I'm not impressed with them - and no, I'm not using the virtual office people. But they sure don't hesitate to tell me how impressed I will be...

Right.

Your customers with the highest expectations are your best friends. Learn from them and exceed their expectations.

 

[Real Deal Denver]

Thank you for the information. I'm just starting as an agent. Got my license last week.

IF you don't have a backup plan on paying your bills, real estate can starve you to death.

If you need a backup plan, being a TC or getting into rental property management are two areas that can supplement your income.

It's a tough business - so have a working backup plan. Don't depend on being an agent for all of your income right away. That is a slow process and can starve you out.

 

[SeanODG]

Great question (and a helpful thought exercise for me). I also just sold more consulting work this morning so I need to keep the balance between that and the business in mind

I actually struggled to come up with three things though. There are really two that are top of mind

Enhanced documentation on internal processes for both my existing and future team members
Real estate is complicated and there are a 1,000 ways a transaction can go. Better documentation and processes on my part can help streamline operations and make onboarding of new hires significantly easier

Outsource lead gen to ensure my focus is on closing leads
I have a ~70% close rate when I get someone on the phone, but I'm not great at creating the lead in the first place. Outsource (already hired two agencies) the lead gen I'm not good at so I can focus on closing that I am good at

 

[SeanODG]

@MJ Thank you for all you've done for everyone!!!

 

[mattierocks]

Interesting! What kind of services? Like transaction related stuff?

 

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[SeanODG]

That's

Interesting! What kind of services? Like transaction related stuff?

That's right. At least, that's the hypothesis since there's a freelancer market for it. I'm currently in the process of getting in touch with real estate agents for an interview process to find out if that's actually the case though

 

[mattierocks]

Gotcha. If you’re talking to agents who do a lot of deals, I’m sure there’s a market for it. That saves them from hiring team members just for paperwork, which gets irritating pretty fast. Good luck and I look forward to seeing your future posts!

 

[SeanODG]

Thank you!!

 

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[SeanODG]

Hello everyone,

Not much to report, but I promised a weekly reporting schedule and I plan to stick to it. I'm wrapping up a consulting engagement that is scheduled for completion on Jan 21st. After that time, I'll get started on the business. The consulting engagement (and consulting in general) has been how I've made money in the past and will get startup capital for this business.

I'm planning on depositing ~$10K from the consulting into my business bank account to help pay for the launch of this business. Of that, probably ~$2K will go to a website, probably ~$500/month in subscriptions for different software (Lemlist, Leadfuze, MeetCrystal, Reply.io, Loom are just a few that come to mind).

Regarding action steps upon completion of the project Jan 21st, I'm going to spam every realtor I've ever met to ask for 20minutes of their time, then, at the end of the call, thank them for their time and ask if they know of anyone else I should be talking too. Mentally working on a list now of who to reach out to on this front

Looking forward to it!

 

[Gabbe18]

Thanks for sharing Gabbe!

Funny you share that one actually; Smart Alto is a company I'm familiar with and a very similar business. My company and Hassan's solve different problems, but the target user (high performing agent) is the same person and the cost is a high monthly subscription!

They're definitely an interesting one to benchmark off of!

Well, I hope the link about how he built his business comes in handy!

 

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[SeanODG]

It does-thank you!!