Ep. 39 | China’s Housing Bubble &NAR’S Biggest Lawsuit | Steve Hawks

[00:00:00] Steve: how do we ultimately convert more of the leads that we have worked our butt off to accumulate? So we get into a perpetual habit of generation and generation of leads, but ultimately we know that it takes time to do that. To close those leads. And so how do you remain laser focused on the leads that are ready to buy and, defining and bringing in a layer of understanding?

[00:00:23] Steve: And we can say intelligence again, but the difference between who's a marketing qualified lead, who's a sales qualified lead, leave it at that and then use all the fancy tools that are at our disposal to ultimately help you convert those

[00:00:41] Suneet: All right. Hey everyone. Welcome back to the reside platform podcast. I'm your host today, Sunit Agarwal. And today we have a phenomenal guest, Steve Gertin. Steve, what's going on, bro?

[00:00:53] Steve: It's been a great day. Excited to catch up and share with your community what we've been working on.

[00:00:59] Suneet: Awesome. Me too. So guys, Steve is the CEO of Asia legend where they're helping over 30, 000. Real estate pros and mortgage pros and my own team turn leads into actual deals. He's got a really cool, interesting background in finance, mergers and acquisitions, which maybe we'll leave to another episode, tan real estate.

[00:01:21] Suneet: so the cool thing about that is he understands not just how to generate leads, but how to actually build real businesses and do the M and A, which is awesome, right? So hats off to you. However, today I want to. Deep into not some bio, not some origin story, although I'm sure it's very interesting, something that every real estate team needs to master.

[00:01:44] Suneet: And that's lead intelligence. All right. What do you think, Steve?

[00:01:49] Steve: I love it.

[00:01:50] Suneet: lead intelligence, dude, that sounds like a fancy word.

[00:01:55] Suneet: does lead intelligence mean?

[00:01:57] Steve: I mean, effectively, it's a more predictable way to generate business within the brokerages that we're working with. So, without going too deep into the background on the bio, but it is The problem that we see so often, and you see the stats that are out there of low, terrible conversion rates.

[00:02:16] Steve: And how do we ultimately convert more of the leads that we have worked our butt off to accumulate? So we get into a perpetual habit of generation and generation of leads, but ultimately we know that it takes time to do that. To close those leads. And so how do you remain laser focused on the leads that are ready to buy and, defining and bringing in a layer of understanding?

[00:02:40] Steve: And we can say intelligence again, but the difference between who's a marketing qualified lead, who's a sales qualified lead, leave it at that and then use all the fancy tools that are at our disposal to ultimately help you convert those. And it is all about. Generating more predictable, more sustainable and more transferable cash flow for all of the clients that we're working with.

[00:03:01] Steve: And that's if we unpack any of that today, I know a lot of the team leaders and the owners that we're working with. I mean, that's the thing. It's you go through these ebbs and flows of markets, but the predictability remains tough and you go through really great years and you go through troublesome years.

[00:03:17] Steve: And so we're hoping to bring in using the great data and insights that we all have flowing through our system on day to day basis and make them actionable, but also making them simple and intuitive actually put into motion. So, I mean, in a nutshell, lead intelligence solutions. It is a simple way of identifying the prospects, whether they're leads and however you define them, or they could be past clients who are also leads who's ready to transact.

[00:03:44] Steve: And how do you direct your daily efforts? That's what we do.

[00:03:47] Suneet: I think you said something that's really interesting is right. Like trying to understand the data, you know, me and my life and career and dealing with sales organizations outside of just real estate, In other markets, in other fields, you can get really predictable with your data, right? Like, you can understand if this one offer hits or this one product hits.

[00:04:11] Suneet: But in real estate, we have a bunch of other shit that's out there that is impacting any thoughts about predictability that you can think of, right?

[00:04:21] Steve: Correct? well, let's use the most common use cases for a lot of our clients are, Okay. When was the lead created? Are they clicking on my emails? Are they viewing properties? Those tend to be the indicators that maybe we should reach out, but we know there's a lot of effort and energy that goes into communicating with the tire kickers.

[00:04:40] Steve: And if we can avoid the sales pitch to the tire kickers, think about how much time that saves your team and how much. More you can do by just focusing on the right people in the database. And I mean, it's as simple, you mentioned it as like large companies and corporations all across the world have understood how to leverage big data.

[00:04:59] Steve: You think about, your credit card provider, you think about the companies that repackage and resell that information out into the marketplace. Our company takes that information and now injects it into your CRM of choice, whatever it is that you're using. And so now not only do you get. The great insights from all of the calls, texts, the daily first party data that your team has, but we overlay that with what the heck are these people doing when they're not engaging with their brand?

[00:05:28] Steve: Because that's where the true secret sauce is. And if we can bring that into the fold, it again just brings a little bit more clarity and focus as to how to maximize those daily efforts. And that's the intelligence part that we bring into the mix. So it's the big data component that You know, for years has been lacking and I've always been a data junkie.

[00:05:45] Steve: So, we're excited that, the thesis was there, but now the proof is in the pudding. And so, the results we've generated for your team, as well as other teams across the country. It's now just harvesting the information that to date, most people just don't put action behind and that's what we do.

[00:06:00] Suneet: Yeah. Why don't you give us an example of like a scenario where something happened?

[00:06:07] Steve: let's just take yours, right? So. you're a great use case of 120, 000 contacts in a database. Imagine handing that off. And you're also generating more every single day. So you become the hamster on a wheel to a certain extent.

[00:06:24] Steve: And those that are blindly and arbitrarily choosing leads at random to communicate. You're gonna lead leads to a lot of inefficiencies, higher expenses with the people that you're paying to make that outreach. So as your database grows,

[00:06:38] Steve: Margin control is really problematic. And so we take 123, 000.

[00:06:43] Steve: We whittle it down using our data and insights very simplistically is understanding and, you know, in your marketplace, What activities are important to the homebuyers and sellers? We analyze that background data. We actually help you understand which prospects of the 123, 000 are eliciting those behaviors.

[00:07:02] Steve: So now we've taken 123, 000. We've whittled it down to 13, 000. And now you have a much Better ecosystem to focus on a lot more palatable, right? You're not eating the whole elephant and then over 13, 000. Now you can use those metrics like property views and communications or anything else that's involved.

[00:07:22] Steve: And you just focus your efforts and time and energy there. And that's what we've been able to do. So our, are key performance indicators. pride ourselves on like measurement. So about optimization and efficiency. So if we're doing our job, right? The number of calls, the number of texts, the number of emails, the number of where we see really great when we talk about reducing expenses.

[00:07:46] Steve: You think about all the third party platforms that you may be investing in as a team later, think about the usage that goes behind us. The more context you have, the more expensive it is. Well, let's suppress some of the leads that we actually send into those systems to create efficiencies. Please.

[00:08:01] Steve: And so now your team is making fewer calls, fewer texts, fewer emails, fewer outbound communications because they're focused on the right subset of customers or prospects, and that leads to a either baseline or, you know, similar or higher appointments and conversations. And we all know that if we get to those.

[00:08:23] Steve: It leads to great handoffs to our teams or whoever the agents are that are working them. And that's the layer of productivity that we want our teams to be focused on so i'll go back to It's your data. Like, you have 123, 000 people in your database,

[00:08:38] Steve: And so with the consolidation.

[00:08:40] Steve: So we won't spend too much time there. But as you think about the next chapter about, you know, ultimately, we all exit our business. And so our team is focused on like, Let's focus on the root, which is the CRM of everything that drives the behavior of the rest of your organization. And if we can dial that in and make it more predictable and what it's able to accomplish.

[00:09:00] Steve: And now you use your platform. You use your leadership. To direct the efforts of the team on the right people that's going to lead to more efficiency, lower expenses, higher conversions on the leads that you're spending money on, or maybe not spending money on and now you hire margin business, which guess what?

[00:09:19] Steve: A little bit more appealing to anybody else that you want to hand that off to versus, most agents or teams, they let that database go to waste. We shouldn't be doing that in today's age with everything that's at our disposal.

[00:09:29] Suneet: no. And I think that a lot of people don't have a plan around this either. Right? Like I am really focused on this kind of thing. Like I do have a big team of, ISAs full disclosure. I wish I had zero ISAs. I'd be saving a bunch of money every month. Right. However, I do have a big team of them and I do want them working on the right stuff.

[00:09:50] Suneet: Because like you said, if they try to eat that whole 120, 000 lead frigging elephant, that shit's never going to be done.

[00:09:58] Steve: I ran a real estate team here in the Minneapolis, St. Paul market. That's where I'm from. And my team would always say the leads suck you know, you get that feedback as well. And that goes back to the definition and the understanding of where.

[00:10:11] Steve: Each prospect or each, line item effectively in your CRM because you don't know the person most of the time behind the scenes, where the heck are they at in their path to purchase the teams that win are those that understand where they're at in their path to purchase and they're having the right conversations with the right people at the right time.

[00:10:29] Steve: How do you do that? And so that's the layer that we bring into it, which ultimately trickles down. And there's so much application around, you know, your use case, sunny, right, is it. 123, 000 contacts in a database. How do you prioritize the right contacts? Because ultimately your sales were sales organizations at the end of it.

[00:10:53] Steve: you know, I follow along. I see all the coaches out there. You guys do a phenomenal job at the training and making sure the agents can be productive and they're focused on the right activities. you can help there. But there's a bigger opportunity here. Not only the, you know, this, it's more expensive to acquire a customer, but most teams do that.

[00:11:12] Steve: How do we also layer on? How do we increase the lifetime value of every prospect?

[00:11:18] Suneet: That's what it's all about. And no one talks about it, dude. No one talks about it.

[00:11:22] Steve: yeah, well they do. I mean, you guys do, right? The transaction doesn't stop there. People view people as past customers. Heck no, they aren't past customers. They're still leads. They're referral sources. And that lead is going to transact again. They're going to buy or sell again.

[00:11:37] Steve: We all know the stats. Most agents don't stay in touch effectively because they're busy and they're chasing the next deal as a team. As an organization, you can now build a defensible moat to take that off the plates of the agents. You want the agents to do what they do best. Go out, shake hands, kiss babies and sell real estate.

[00:11:56] Steve: It's the team owner. It's the owner's responsibility to build the ecosystem that makes it an engine that's on autopilot, which is really exciting about where the industry is today. They're just starting to adopt things like we hear ai, right? Our stuff is all AI driven, but it's boring. It's data and insights and.

[00:12:16] Steve: know when we talked, it's like, you're like, just make sure it works. Like at the end of the day, it's gotta work. And if it doesn't work right away, the system continues to learn because guess what it's plugged into your database. It's learning every single moment that you're adding data into the system.

[00:12:32] Steve: Think how much time your ISA spent adding notes or adding appointments. sending text. All that information is feeding. It's feeding the engine and real estate. People know this better than anybody. Is it order to rent or own? You want to own the system? You want to own the data? That's what we want our people to think about.

[00:12:52] Steve: And that creates something that provides you that predictable, sustainable and transferable.

[00:12:58] Suneet: sure people watching and listening, right. Wondering like, so what happens? what is this? It's all sounds good.

[00:13:05] Suneet: what do I see in my follow up? What do I see in my

[00:13:08] Steve: if you want, I always try not to get too technical. But

[00:13:12] Suneet: let's just do it. Let's do the surface level just so people can maybe visualize it in their head. Because I know, once I saw this, all the sense in the world for me.

[00:13:21] Steve: yeah, the big thing is that we're using our customers information. So we connect directly. Our team is a bunch of data scientists. And so we connect directly into the systems. So each unique CRM. So we'll use follow boss. But in the case of let's say you're a follow boss user today and you decide I want to go to Sierra or close or any of the other platforms know that you can

[00:13:43] Steve: always.

[00:13:44] Steve: Add that to your list. they're coming. but the follow up it's such a phenomenal platform. And so you think about we connect directly into the system. And when I say we, we create AI driven models that are outside of the ecosystem and the modeling that we do is taking into account, I mentioned first party data.

[00:14:06] Steve: that's the, email opens property views. The things that most teams use to filter their smart lists, But we know that there's a lot of, I'm just looking entire kickers that exist out there. We bring in rich third party information. So we actually are able to match one to one.

[00:14:22] Steve: With every lead in your database where we can. So if I know the name, phone, email address, property address, we have a one to one match using big data. We buy this information from the experience, the trans unions of the world that as a consumer, you've opted in to provide that information. That's your credit card behavior.

[00:14:38] Steve: It's what you're watching on Netflix. If you ever picked up your phone and you're talking about babies and all of a sudden you get a diaper ad, that's, what's at play here.

[00:14:45] Suneet: That's the stuff. Third part of the data.

[00:14:48] Steve: listening, right? And so we bring that third party information in, because like I mentioned, you don't know if that lead that's in your database, they may be searching on Zillow, still, they may be watching certain shows. They also may be eliciting the behaviors that people in your market have recently elicited.

[00:15:06] Steve: So, Sunny, with your database, right, we create a custom model. Hey, Sunny, tell me the people that you have done business with. Great, let's understand their behavior. Then we apply that behavior to all the other contacts who have not transacted with you.

[00:15:20] Suneet: Let me stop you right there because I thought that was okay. I'm a geek. 100 percent right. I like AI. Maybe I should have been an engineer. I have 10 uncles minimum who are freaking engineers, probably 100. But that's a cultural thing too. But it was really cool on one of our first calls real. Hey, dude, send me all your past sales I was okay And you guys went in and trained the model on what the behaviors were for my past sales here in the little Sacramento California and we're able to get that data dude and use it on the rest of that shit is so cool.

[00:15:55] Steve: it's cool, but it has to work, right? And so, we do that because we understand. So I've, I've always used. Predictive analytics in the businesses that I've ran because data informs every decision, right? It should

[00:16:08] Steve: you're using in real estates. How many conversations have you had?

[00:16:10] Steve: How many calls did you make? That's data. I'm using it behind the scenes to make sure that we don't. Waste dollars on people we shouldn't be wasting dollars on. I mean, that's how you increase your margin. And so, that's where we pride ourselves on creating regional or custom models in your case, we create a custom model versus if we just create one big model for the entire United States.

[00:16:31] Steve: My consumer here, my customer in Minneapolis is much different than yours in Sacramento, and so that's the importance of that local feel. But then what we do is once we turn it on, and you know this, our results weren't staggering to begin with you mentioned your data junkie AI. Let's just use the AI example.

[00:16:50] Steve: Chat GPT. Most people are familiar with that. Just like chat GPT. The more context you give our system context being it. Activities. I mentioned the the data every single day. You're pumping it full of data. It doesn't feel like data, but it's really your agents logging activities. It's moving people in pipeline that is informing something.

[00:17:12] Steve: And ultimately, we just feedback into your system. So back to the core of the question is like, what do we feedback? It's a score. It is so simple.

[00:17:20] Suneet: when he showed me those numbers. I was, Wow. You guys are lead scoring, right? Because I use that in other systems without the 3rd party data. for example, in GoHighLevel, I'm doing lead scoring based on first party data, based on email opens, based on going back the website, which is not a column I can create yet in Follow a Boss.

[00:17:40] Suneet: Not not to follow boss at all. Right. I love it. I think I'm on the website. Sometimes I think I'm on your guys website sometimes too. Anyways, I really like seeing a number there that, Hey, is this guy an A or is this guy an F right? Like call the A's call the hell out of the A's the F's put on some automation and wait for them to raise their hand.

[00:17:59] Suneet: Right. Am I seeing this the right way?

[00:18:02] Steve: You are. Yeah. And that's the basic principle is and I remember this conversation even with you is like lead scoring has been around. We use actually lead scores from other vendors that are first party data vendors, right? That use email, opens, clicks all that to indicate. Hey, am I like we do that with our hub spot customers, the fellows, real scout, the others platforms.

[00:18:23] Steve: We use that to inform ours. What we bring to the table is that third party data set, the 1, 700 attributes that we're analyzing, and that's tremendous. And it's a holistic view and a deeper level of insight that we're talking sunny about your use case about lead prioritization. That's what most teams care about, we've now been able to do, and as we continue to evolve, we're predicting other things.

[00:18:48] Steve: So the items that now is. Which agent on your team is the one that should work the lead? So we know now, based on each agent's history and this is really applicable when you raise, you know, hey, how many different generations are buying and selling real estate right now? Five, right? You got boomers, gens all the way down to Gen Z, or I don't even know if there's a new one that's entered the marketplace, but you also have five different generations of agents that, how do you connect the dots?

[00:19:17] Steve: And so If you can get to that layer of a systematic approach in your business, but making it super simple, now we're predicting, hey, lead a, that's, you know, they're here in their path to purchase. They're further down. And they also, because we know who they are. Because we have the attributes. You've seen this, the personas that we feed in, we know the approximate amount of income we know in what life stage do they have kids?

[00:19:42] Steve: Do they like dogs? Do they like to read sunny in your specific consumer profile for whatever reason, your people don't like to read books and they love, cruises. I don't know where that comes from.

[00:19:56] Suneet: love cruises.

[00:19:57] Steve: You should start promoting cruise lines on your site, but those

[00:20:00] Steve: are

[00:20:01] Suneet: also love cruises.

[00:20:02] Steve: maybe that's why, but it was, it's phenomenal to see some of that, but then it's got to be actionable.

[00:20:07] Steve: So you see the evolution of where the data informed decision making. First and foremost, let's figure out which leads to work because that's a problem. I got teams all across the country that are cutting expenses and if they can figure out how to optimize the current systems that they have, Now they don't have to when they go through the ebbs and flows as real estate does.

[00:20:28] Steve: They don't have to get rid of people. They can keep the team intact because it is a sustainable ecosystem.

[00:20:33] Steve: And now we get into rep assignment. Let's do that because I've seen the tiers that people do just based on experience or price points. But there's an angle of emotional intelligence involved in this business.

[00:20:44] Steve: The ability to have empathy and certain agents like that is critical. And so it's been fun to see the evolution of getting down to that. And then we're working with teams that you're, you've noted my background in M and a, but it's the consolidation that's taking place. We have teams that are growing, not by Just going out and recruiting agents.

[00:21:02] Steve: They're acquiring brokerages. They're acquiring teams across the country and they leverage us. So they first look at like sunny in your case, they're looking at who's my I. C. P. Who's my ideal customer profile? Which areas around the country have the highest match rate for that profile?

[00:21:17] Steve: And now let's Really get laser focused on those markets versus the more arbitrary assignment that you have. So that's been a fun experience. And again, it's all rooted in the data that's already at your fingertips. It's your information. you gotta harvest it and use it and make it simple and actionable.

[00:21:34] Steve: And that's what we're, we're efforting to do. Yeah,

[00:21:38] Suneet: to open up follow up process. This call right now, I gotta go in here and play a little bit more, because I know you meet with my office manager every week and my ISAs and they freaking love it.

[00:21:48] Steve: like I said, it is just like AI, it learns every week, every day, so it's getting better, right? So the performance and we can talk about specifics, but like the performance just kids, it's a gradual incline, which we're all attached to the shiny objects that are out there. You want the immediacy, you want the ding factor, you want those things.

[00:22:09] Steve: But ultimately those things dissipate and we get into this perpetual motion of plugging in new systems. Cause they promised me the world and then they don't deliver on their promises and you rip them out. Incredibly counterproductive. Start with the data you have to inform everything else, it'll take care of itself, but you root it in that decision making, that is, again, our value problem.

[00:22:32] Steve: We're trying to make sure people are focused on as they grow their team, as they think about the next step, use the information that you've been investing in to do that.

[00:22:42] Suneet: Yeah. It's not always, it's an easy answer to say more leads,

[00:22:46] Steve: It is

[00:22:47] Suneet: More leads are expensive. More leads require manpower.

[00:22:50] Steve: It requires more people. Exactly. And so you build up and then as a team leader, you're looking at conversion rates and you're like, you wanted more leads? Why aren't we converting them? And you get that feedback loop of, well, leads in this industry are not like a plumbing H back window inciting lead, right?

[00:23:07] Steve: They're much different. Those folks have, it's a much longer purchase cycle. The teams that win the ones that Yeah. We're seeing are the ones that you know, this, your lead, the 120, 000 plus leads are in probably your top five competitors databases as well. And, you know, the ones that win are the ones that follow up at the right time and they have the right message But that's the tricky part is making sure that you're not putting on the hard sales pitch to somebody who is still not ready. That's a recipe for opt out. You lose that opportunity. You bring that layer of Intel into your communication track and you're treating people with the emotional intelligence That they are seeing with bigger companies that are out there.

[00:23:50] Steve: We bring that into the real estate world and mortgage. But the mortgage Fascinating, right? And those are our two big verticals, right? We're serving both our FUB users. It's really, really powerful. because the lenders, they also, they want more repeat business. They want to understand, Hey, who's a candidate for a refi or a purchase loan link.

[00:24:07] Steve: Great. We can help you figure that out. And that's where the lifetime value really becomes powerful. And they rely on automation and bland messaging to everybody, where this becomes powerful and where you really see people getting creative is like, think about customer journeys that you can do.

[00:24:23] Steve: Think about conversational AI. we have those platforms that are out there, but where this is all heading is again, I mentioned right people, right message, right time to be able to understand who is on the other side of that outreach and what to say to them. You nail that and nobody can catch up to you.

[00:24:45] Steve: And most conversational AI right now, right? It's they reach out and are you looking to buy or sell and you hope to have that conversation with them or they clicked on a property. If you know, am I talking to somebody who's making 300k a year? They got a couple kids. They are tech savvy. that's some insight versus am I talking to a baby boomer on their own, using social security, has three properties.

[00:25:08] Steve: Now the insights that you have just have a much better consumer experience. That's ultimately what we're trying to do.

[00:25:14] Suneet: The cool thing with all that information is it allows for more meaningful and thoughtful follow up rather than just something that conversational AI could do. Hey, just checking in. You've seen any houses online that you want to look that you want to see. Right. And that kind of shit that raises people do not like that.

[00:25:34] Suneet: Like when you get those text messages, everyone viewing and listening and everything, everyone checking this out, like it annoys you guaranteed. So do you think that when you drop those messages on someone who met you from. Clicking a button on a Google form. You think that they're going to feel any different?

[00:25:50] Suneet: No, but now when you know about them and you see the stuff that they're interested in and you can see where they are on the customer journey, that is like a superpower of this software that I think I personally don't think about. Enough

[00:26:06] Steve: Yeah, yeah, it'll be fun to, again, as we're continuing to learn, right? We We're new in the marketplace. We have the luxury of getting the early adopters on board. And so, it's been great to see not only the teams that were assisting the coaching platforms now that uses like, how do you first audit the existing system?

[00:26:26] Steve: Like, okay, let's do that and understand. Are you talking to the right people? How do we help you squeeze some more opportunities out of the existing database you have? And then how do we help you generate more leads? Because you get back to, like, everybody wants leads. Well, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We can help you inform your Google pay per click, your Facebook ads, those things, but you're no longer saying just arbitrarily, or maybe there's some, a few different parameters, but it's specific to the customers that you serve, which again, lowers your cost per lead and ultimately brings in the right leads and away you go.

[00:26:58] Steve: So there's so many different use cases for how to apply it.

[00:27:01] Suneet: for sure, big companies like Zillow, big companies like Redfin are using some version of this and charging us that referral fee, right? And getting the same stuff. Think about what's available. Yeah, bro, I'm about to get a follow up boss as soon as it's over. he, cause there's so much information that we aren't using.

[00:27:23] Suneet: Man,

[00:27:23] Steve: You mentioned a couple of players, right? we do work with some of them, right? And we're informing their systems, but we are bringing it to the, community that that's the community I came from. it's being able to hand this over because. We want to get people out of the perpetual reliance on third parties.

[00:27:41] Steve: You see this, as I talk with the easy home search guys, right, they're building ecosystems that allow you to build a business that you're not dependent upon. Third party renting systems anymore. You're building your own defensible strategy. and so that's the community that we want to assist.

[00:28:01] Steve: And ultimately it's got to be profitable. And that's how we're tasked every single day is how do I make sure that I'm increasing the profitability of. The customers that we're working with and and ultimately adding that value and then you inform all the fancy fun objects that are out there at our disposal.

[00:28:17] Steve: So start with the data that you have at your fingertips and then go deploy it to. All the great systems, all the great new solutions that are out there. But now you aren't just relying on them to tell you what to do. You can say, here are the people that I want to inject into your system. Here are the people that I want to inject into your system.

[00:28:37] Steve: Go have at it, but these are the right people that we need to message based on wherever their secret sauce is.

[00:28:42] Steve: Your

[00:28:44] Suneet: we talked about this a couple of weeks ago when we were on a call, I was in my backyard. One of the only zoom calls I've taken in my backyard Where do you see? Like the future of lead generation, bro, Where's the lead industry headed?

[00:28:58] Steve: It's a great question. ultimately, I think we were talking about communication and how they're handed it over. my vision would be that we're no longer relying upon. the big vendors that are out in the universe, right? I want teams to build their own defensible moat and generating and being able to do that with high margin sales.

[00:29:20] Steve: I think that that's the ideal getting there is difficult because these platforms have generated, you know, they generate the traffic. it's how do we squeeze out more margin when they're charging you more and more and more, which they're going to continue to do.

[00:29:35] Steve: so. We always viewed it as you play with the monsters because at the end of the day, it brings volume into your business, which I don't foresee that going away there's massive opportunities.

[00:29:49] Steve: How do you use those transactions and have a more predictable engine that can successfully increase the lifetime value of every customer that you get from those? So, you know, there'll be new entrance into lead generation as we continue forward, you never know who's going to pop into the scene.

[00:30:05] Steve: But those that are making the investments now To create their own, you know, lead gen ecosystem are the ones that I feel are going to continue to grow at an exponential rate versus those that they choose the easy route. It's a quick payday, but again, you're going to be that hamster on a wheel because they're charging you such a hearty percentage.

[00:30:26] Steve: that's just my thought. We work with all of the lead vendors, and it's fascinating to see how they're getting smarter. They're driving their cost per lead down, but they're not passing that along to their, customer.

[00:30:39] Steve: They're not doing it yet. and so I think that'll change as more folks become privy to it.

[00:30:45] Steve: , I love all the lead vendors ultimately,

[00:30:46] Steve: I think, you know, you talk about, we can use Z and the elephant in the room, but heck, they hand over, our data shows you that they're the best leads there.

[00:30:55] Steve: . Automation only gets you so far. Humans will never leave this industry. It's proven time and time again, AI adoption is skyrocketing right now.

[00:31:04] Steve: Everybody's trying to incorporate AI. I think how you use it in your day to day still needs to really be flushed out because consumers, they're becoming wise. So it's, it's as effectively like, how do I take the 123, 000 people that are in Suneet's?

[00:31:20] Steve: Database and how do I whittle it down to a bite size portion where his human capital can go out and do their job and then you automate the others. I think that that's the proven formula, whereas most people are like, let's automate everything

[00:31:34] Steve: if you go to agent lunches website, we're communications platform at our core.

[00:31:38] Steve: That's what we've been for nine years we've adopted or we've changed. We've adapted, I should say, in the form of like, we just want to help you have talked to the right people with our automation. Because if you try to talk to everyone, you're going to rack up a hearty bill and that's not sustainable for anyone's business.

[00:31:55] Steve: So we just got to get smarter with what we're doing. And it starts with lead intelligence as to like, who do I talk to

[00:32:01] Suneet: Awesome. So, last question. for anyone listening right now, that they want to level up their business, besides calling you and signing up for AgentLegend, although they should do that too, what's one thing they should start doing today inside of their CRM? Do

[00:32:18] Steve: Inside their CRM, I was going to say get a rock solid coach and mentor in the industry. Like that's, that's bar none in anything else. I would say, develop systems and processes to do it and use that data. To inform every decision that you should be making moving forward, you follow the formula, follow the people that are a couple of steps ahead of you. again, if I'm a few steps behind Sonny, I would, I would hire you. I would say, Sonny, I'll pay you.

[00:32:44] Steve: Just help me get to where you're at and so AgentLegend's one of those assets. And the thesis that we have behind it is all backed on the data that we had at our fingertips. So

[00:32:52] Suneet: no, the data, so many of you guys listening and watching don't know your data and are making decisions based on feeling.

[00:33:00] Steve: Correct.

[00:33:01] Suneet: Stop that shit.

[00:33:02] Steve: or you go to a Facebook group and you see somebody's post, you're like, I should do that. I would stay true of that. Get somebody who can manage social media. But again, you're totally right. It's instincts and people kind of shiny object syndrome. I would look at your current system, identify the flaws in it, and then you go out and make the modifications.

[00:33:21] Steve: Small improvements every single day. It's not a, there's no secret formula to it. Okay. But that's how you make those little minor improvements and continue to get better every single day.

[00:33:29] Suneet: love it, dude. If somebody wants to reach out to you and, talk to you about anything, how should they do it?

[00:33:34] Steve: linked in. I'm a big linked in fan. that's my preferred platform. Feel free to connect with me on linked in message me. And then obviously you can go to agent legends website to learn more about our product and service..

[00:33:45] Suneet: Hopefully you got value from this episode. And if you did awesome, do me a favor, share it with your team. Another real estate promo or a friend that needs to hear it. And if you haven't already subscribed to the reside platform podcast, so you'd never miss an episode, dude, Steve, thank you so much.

[00:34:03] Suneet: Everybody watching and listening. Thank you guys so much. And we'll see you in the next episode of the reside platform podcast.