Brett:

I'm excited about our next guest. He has spent his entire life serving others and leading large teams and volunteers. He found his role as a pastor to be deeply fulfilling, but unrealistic in supporting his family, including six children. What did he choose? What did he choose as a side hustle, it was real estate, and he started flipping houses to make ends meet, and all of a sudden he found himself as a rockstar real estate professional at a place called Keller Williams, which happened to be the place I started to when I first before went to Marcus Miller, by the way, and then he has grown that team to over 21 agents and 15 back-office staff support in the Washington DC area. He's now with eXp Realty, which we'll talk about here as well. Please welcome show with me, Chris Craddock. Chris, how are you doing?

Chris:

Great. Thanks so much for having me today, and looking forward to spending some time with you.

Brett:

We're gonna be talking about all things, monetizing and maximizing your marketing lead. This will be really focused on the business professional, in particular, probably real estate agent as well, or commercial real estate agent, and but before we go there, Chris, would you give our listeners a little bit more about your story and your current focus?

Chris:

Sure. My story started I graduated college in 2001, a staff in the organization called Young Life loved it, it changed my life was amazing. But I made 20 to $25,000 a year and with young life, and when it's just crazy. Because when you have kids and try to live in the DC area, it doesn't work to live with that kind of money, and so what ended up happening was, I just went to the library, check that every book on real estate investing. I could find, started flipping houses, I made 12 times what I made in a year, and about four months, use that money, continued doing ministry, and then as I had more and more kids, the mice are running out. I started flipping houses again, and after the crash, around 2011, and I'd go back to school, I got a doctorate in leadership, and I always lead large groups of people in ministry, and I came across Gary Keller's book, The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, and it just made sense. It was a good blueprint to say, this is how you can make a million dollars. Then this is how you can keep a million dollars, and you're talking about taxes and all the other stuff, and I'll tell you, that's one of the best things that I've learned over the last few years is, you can get to a point where you can make a million dollars in net income, but then the government takes half of it.

If you don't learn how to protect that, that was one of the hardest things for me to learn the hard way, and so essentially, what happened was we started building a real estate business. We're now up to 27 real estate agents. I built a number of vertical integrations around its title, insurance, construction, legal shield, flipping, wholesaling portfolios, just a number of different pieces there, and yeah, and then we realized that with the rental, I guess, with the investor world and the agent world, that they live so far apart, that they really should collaborate together, and that's how we built kind of our coaching program, teaching people how to really monetize those, those leads that you could get into a flip or wholesale or whatever, and yet, that's kind of my story. What brings us here today this last year, we closed on 167 million in volume 501 transactions this year, we're gonna do, right around 200 million, but 600 transactions, and yeah, we got I guess 11 Different businesses a number of the seven-figure businesses.

Brett:

Amazing Chris, so much there. I really absolutely love it before we dive into monetizing, maximizing your marketing leads, and all the secrets behind that. I want to say one other step back, I want to even go baby before the Young Life days, maybe in the high school days, when you're younger, younger Chris, I believe we've all been given certain gifts. Some people call them strengths, some people call them superpowers. I believe that their God-given gifts that are given to us to be a blessing to others. I'm curious, what are those one or two gifts that you believe you were given? How does that help you help and bless people today?

Chris:

Well, it's interesting. It's a great question. I have a sign that I put in my office is are you in your genius zone? I've narrowed it down to four things that I think anytime I'm doing stuff that isn't one of these four things I tried to get off my plate. One is strategic relationships, I'm a connector, I'm friends with a lot of people, and frankly, I do believe your net worth will be equal to your network, and so I built strategic relationships that made me think bigger, and frankly, make me a lot of money because I can add to them, and they can add to me, and it's just great strategic relationships, vision casting. That's one of the things that I think I do very well for my company, I'm able to see a bigger picture and then impart that picture on the people around us, and part of that is the Zig Ziglar you can have everything you want in life can help enough other people get what they want in life, and so the vision casting piece is how do you help even the people on your team see a bigger life for themselves, and as they live a bigger life, we both win. Problem Solving.

It's so funny, my brother my dad used to put together puzzles in the basement when we were growing up and the idea of putting together a puzzle was about as fun as getting hit in the head with an attack hammer to me, but the reality is I love putting together puzzles in my mind, the visit, there's a problem and you just solve that that problem and business. Then the last thing is, I do believe that I was born with and just an incredible amount of energy. But not only that, I nurture that, and Brendon Burchard, in his book, high-performance habits says that high performers tend to have a lot of energy and impart energy into the world that they're in. Those are the four pieces of my genius zone that I tried to live my life in.

Brett:

Absolutely love the clarity on that and the reminder you have on your wall, and that is fantastic. That gives us the context to jump right into monetize and maximize your marketing leads. What is the first secret to doing just that? How does a real estate professional or business professional, maybe it applies to all kinds of people who are serving high net, worth clients? How do you monetize and maximize your marketing leads?

Chris:

Here's what I would say first, if we're it depends on who we're talking to right now. if we're talking to a wholesaler or a fixin flipper, you're spending a lot of money to get marketing dollars out to find people that have raised their hand and say, I want to sell my house at 65 to 75 cents on the dollar, and if that's the case, you are going to want to find, you're going to want to find a real estate professional an agent that can list the properties when somebody says I want to sell at 90 cents on the dollar 95 cents on the dollar 100 cents on the dollar, so that those leads don't die because usually if you are marketing for those, you'll get 20 people that raise their hand and say I want to sell in the next six months, which is the pre qualification question, you need to find out six months or less, and those of those 20 people 16 will want more retail value or very close to retail value, and then four of them will be willing to sell under market and of those four, you'll probably get one of them under contract.19 others are going to sell with somebody or sell somehow and somebody is going to get paid, it's just not going to be used.

You need to figure out how to monetize those. Now, if you are a real estate professional, one of the things that I learned in scaling my business when I hit a glass ceiling, somebody told me as the Rainmaker, and as the leader of the business, I've got to figure out how to make again goes back to strategic relationships, how I can make one relationship not equal one deal. Because that's usually what happens. For most real estate professionals, one relationship equals one deal, and so when they said, you need to figure out how do you grow that? That one relationship equals 10 deals, 50 deals. I thought about it, I'm like, where are 50 deals, 100 deals, and I realized, okay, builders, or investors. Since I came from the investor world, I realized that the opposite of that is true. If you're an investor paying for those leads, then I can go to those investors and say, let me monetize them for you, and that's how we really grew that that side of the business right there is by creating a way to monetize those deals.

Brett:

I think the first thing is, knowing your numbers. But as well, a couple of that finding a strategic alliance relationship with a real estate professional, and working together, I guess you help enough people get what they want, you get everything you want. You can monetize that instead of giving away 80%, 90% of your leads that lead the zero. Make a warm introduction or set it up a time for those two to connect and get a referral fee. Is that a fair summary so far on that first point?

Chris:

That's exactly right. But I'd also say this, this is one of the areas in life where it makes a lot of sense. If you're are a real estate investor, you're like, that makes a lot of sense, and then people try to do it, and they make no money like no money and agents go to it and they're like, this is a no brainer. We'll send them over but they don't realize these people called an investor for a reason they want certainty. If you ever read the Jordan Belfort book the Way Of The Wolf. He's really good at sales. I don't know how good he is at life, whatever. I don't know but, but I do know he's a great salesperson. One of the things he says is that if you want to be a great salesperson, you need to help the other people get to certainty right, and the reason why people call an investor is that they want certainty, and when you're talking to a real estate agent, they don't feel like they have the same certainty.

That's why agents have a really hard time with these people that called investors. It's the same reason why, like, I know when I, when I got my truck, I traded in my car, I could have made 2500 bucks more whatever if I sold it on Craigslist. But I didn't want people coming over, I didn't want the hassle of it. I didn't want people to test driving and try to beat me up over a couple of bucks. I'm like, what, it's 2500 bucks, I'd rather my time I'd rather the convenience, I'd rather the certainty of just go in and trade it in, get my truck to be done. That's how people are. But people, agents will walk in and they'll open up their listing presentation, not realizing that everybody's brother’s uncle is a real estate agent. There are more real estate agents that are active listings, they don't want to talk to a real estate agent, they want to talk to an investor, and so unless you can solve their problem, then they don't want to talk to you.

Brett:

I can't believe agree with you more. I say we're not in the business of selling real estate, and I'm with eXp Commercial and Chris's eXp Realty, and I'm the founder of Capital Gains Tax Solutions. I'm not in the business of selling tax deferral. I'm just in the business of solving people's problems, and so is curious. The moment you solve the problem that they are trying to solve is the moment you start adding value or the moment more about their problem, or their property, or their value, or something that's valuable to them to help drive price, or terms or outcomes that are the solution to their problem is the moment you start adding value and guess what your business naturally grows. Any thoughts on that, Chris?

Chris:

I think that's it. One of the things that I always talk about. I think we think of ourselves as salespeople, but if you start thinking of yourself as a doctor, I think that's the best way to do it. Because, what is a doctor do they walk in? First of all, they come in as a professional right there. They're not coming in as a salesperson. But doctors are salespeople, and I'll tell you what, there's a doctor that told me I've had four shoulder surgeries, three on my left one on my right, play rugby, wrestled soccer goalkeeper. I had all these things where I beat myself up. The doctor told me some of the things I need to do for my shoulder. But like, I just didn't want to do it. Because I didn't want to take the time to go to rehab and, and all the other stuff, and so my shoulder still bugs me. But that's the whole thing. When you walk in, you ask the questions, what's going on? What's the problem? Then you get a solution to the problem, and then you write the prescription for that problem. That's the what the best salespeople do you ask the right questions? If you are right, ask the right questions, everybody will tell you how to sell them, and if they're not telling if you don't know how to sell them.

You haven't asked the right questions. They tell you how to sell them, and once they told you how to sell them, what they're telling you is if you can sell them, there is some sort of pain in their life. Maybe they live in a smaller house, maybe they need maybe they're out of depreciation, and they need to, sell their place and start that depreciation clock over again. Whatever the problem is, there's some sort of pain and you think, these people don't have pain. They're just they're buying a bigger house, they're buying their dream house. Well, the pain is that they're stuck in a house. Like right now I live in it's not a small house, 4500 square foot house. But I've got six kids, we're building our dream house. There is a pain in the house that we have right now. Because literally, I've got six kids that that are all home, and everybody's on top of each other, and so we're moving to the other house. Now, it's easier to say, the dream house there. But if you can write the prescription for the pain, then you can solve the problem and the people that solve the most problems and people that make the most money.

Brett:

I'll say I love the way you put that, being like a doctor who walks in with a lab coat professional, ready to go in, take their polls, you're gonna gather all the facts, you're gonna investigate, you're gonna hear your feelings and their thoughts and what's going on, maybe what hasn't worked, what they may have tried, make and then essentially diagnose the what's actually happening the reality of it, and sometimes as part of professionals, you're actually diagnosing what the reality of the pain of the reality of the cause of the pain is, and I mean, the pain is real. The problem is real, but helping them understand like, this is the reality of it, and this is why you're here where you're at. Like, we'd be like a 1031 Exchange. You're like, well of course you feel pressured and you feel you feel you're racing for this property, and you're overpaying because you're stuck under the 1031 timelines.

Maybe you're not ready to overpay for a property take on too much debt and too much liability, too much more responsibility, especially if you're a baby boomer looking to retire or downsize for your primary home and then it's figuring out well what's the thing that's blocking that outcome on the other side by the way I can relate with you I got five kids. Our house is like 2600 square feet California and we got like the park across the street you got, but still like five kids. We homeschool too by the way so it's a little bit crazy. But I can relate with that so so we could probably go on that for a little while but I want to take to the second go back to the kind of topic at hand monetizing maximize your marketing leads. We talked about knowing your numbers right finding the real estate The professional teacher strategically aligned with or the, or the wholesaler districts you can align with that would be step number two to making the next that a reality.

Chris:

You got to help them understand how they need to go through their process. Because they need to ask the question. Is this the right deal for me their pre-qualification process? Is this the right deal for me, and once they realize it's good for them, then they're going to go on the appointment, if they realize that it's not a good deal for them, but they're willing to sell in the next six months. Then they need to set it up for the agent partner. But here's the biggest key, you've got to find the right agency partner, and this is the question you need to ask. If you're the investor, you need to find this person, and if you're the agent, you need to be this person, and if you have a business with anybody in your world, these are the people you look to hire. It's somebody who's happy, hungry, humble, and smart. That's who you want in your world, always, and that's where you need to find because I'll tell you if you have leads, and you're looking for an agent, partner, if you don't get this person, that partner is really a partner is not a referral source.

Literally the investor I went in that I'm closing their leads, we're helping them close about, we're sending them about 60,000 a month in referral fees, that's almost three-quarters of a million dollars a year for leads, they've already paid for three-quarters of a million dollars a year of money that cost no additional overhead to bring in, that will change anybody's business if you're able to do that. But you've got to realize this person is more than just a referral source, it becomes a business partnership for you because their upside will equal your upside. Happy. Why do they need to be happy? If you're asking for a pretty hefty referral fee. It's slightly average, slightly bigger than the average referral fee, but you're giving them listing appointments. You're asking for that, and if they're not happy, they're just gonna complain, they're gonna be a victim, they're gonna always blame other people start pointing their finger at somebody else's fault, and here's the thing, they may be happy the beginning but happy people tend to be happy and unhappy people tend to find a reason why they're a victim and why things are going bad for them and why they're going to not be happy later. Wherever they go, there they are. Just understand that look for patterns, not potential. What is the pattern if they were unhappy with this one relationship and this relationship and this relationship? Do you realize patterns? Not potential.happy hungry? I'll tell you there's not a world in which I could see people that are hungry, just sit on their button, like take a year off, take downtime, be okay with being okay.

As for me, the door is shut I'm going to climb through the window right now. Now somebody can call the police that I'm a stalker creepy or whatever, but not like that. But that but I have climbed through the window like on houses where, they're like, go to the house and nobody lives there. Nobody's been living there. It's a vacant house. The door should be unlocked. I go the doors locked. We go through and we try to open windows. They climb through the window and open the door. We were given permission. We're not breaking in. But that's the whole deal. Like I mean, but I know lots of people who see the equivalent of like, the door shut the doors locked. Guess I guess that's a no right. You don't take no for an answer. Happy, hungry, humble. This is one of the things that I think is really huge. A lot of people think that humility and confidence are two opposites. They're not humility and competence are brothers. Arrogance and confidence are different. But humility and confidence. A go hand in hand. Humility means that you can sit at somebody else's feet and learn from them. Humility means that you're a learner. Humility means that you do not think that at all, that you're always always always trying to get better, and that every single person you meet is you're better in some area, and that you've got something to learn from them.

Happy, hungry, humble, and then smart doesn't mean that you've got a perfect LSAT. It means that you're a quick learner just finished reading the book, The Road Less Stupid, which I think is so amazing, but Keith Cunningham and one of the things that you realize is the whole idea behind it is are you paying a stupid tax? Are you learning the same lesson over and over and over again? Another one of my favorite books is called The Art of Learning, and that it's that same idea, are you learning fast? Or do you have to learn the same lesson over and over again? Because that, everybody makes a mistake once but if you make it a second or third or fourth time, it becomes very expensive mistakes. Are you learn are you with people that are quick learners?