On Wednesday October 11, HOA.com CEO Brandon Barnum sat down with CEO and Founder of JMG Jason Mitchell Group to discuss the current real estate market, trends on how to get in front of more homeowners and gain more listings, as well as very specific and strategic ways that Jason Mitchell uncovered and implemented into his business to grow into one of the biggest real estate companies in America.
We welcome you to check out the video below to learn how real estate agents can find success with Mitchell’s business building strategies, planting and standing by your flag in the local communities that you want to serve, and where to focus your primary efforts as a Realtor. Much of what he speaks about is exactly what we call here at HOA.com, hyper-local social farming.
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Transcription:
Brandon Barnum: Well, welcome everybody. Thank you for joining us this morning. My name is Brandon Barnum for those of you who don’t know. And our special guest today is Jason Mitchell, head of Jason Mitchell Group. And this man is amazing.
If you don’t know, Jason, you’re gonna be glad that you took the time to come here and just soak in his wisdom, Jason, you and I met face to face. I guess I got a look here back at the Modern Mortgage Summit, March 9th. We met prior to that years ago, but I was so impressed with what you had to share and to teach.
And the fact that you closed 7,300 transactions with your team last year is just absolutely amazing. And in this economic climate, people need to know what you have to say. So, thank you for joining us this morning.
We’re excited to have you share some of your insights and really help people to know what to do in this economy, to attract more clients and close more deals.
Jason Michell: Well, for sure. And thanks for having me.
As you know, there’s changing times and we’re seeing that, you know, agents need value, they need the ability to work with consumers and the consumers are less plentiful out there. What makes JMG unique is that we work with large organizations across the country, even organizations like yourself, who need services when it comes to boots on the ground, real estate. And so, we’re very fortunate to work with the likes of Rocket Mortgage Veterans, United Freedom, Mr. Cooper, you name it.
We have a laundry list of partners that send us a bunch of referrals. We’ll distribute around 70,000 referrals this year to about 600 agents across the country. And so, our agents have the ability to build their book of business because our partners provide them with these amazing referrals. And so it’s a very nichey platform that we have. But it will lead to us even in a down year for most, we’re up 28%.
We’ll do around 9,500 transactions is what we’re pacing this year for close to 5 billion in sales.
Brandon Barnum: That’s so impressive, brother, well done, well done. And you know, a lot of these people that are listening are not at that level. So why don’t we start at the beginning? Why don’t you just share quickly your story of how you got started.
You know how it started, obviously, how it is going is pretty awesome, but you know how you got started. And if you were to do it over again in this economy. What would you be doing?
Jason Michell: Well, you know, when I’m on stage I get asked the question all the time of, well, that sounds easy for you to do because of what you do.
And my response is always, yeah, but I, I didn’t have this, I had to build it and I built it from square one.
And so, what happened was a long story short.
I was born and raised in South Detroit.
And after college, I started at pty homes, new construction sales.
I did very well there, and I was I went out west to work for Pulte here in Phoenix.
I then went on my own in 2007, selling just residential real estate like any normal real estate professional.
I then started a finance company which I sold at the end of 2008 and did very well on my exit.
And, you know, come basically mid 2009.
I lost everything because I bought a bunch of single family rentals, which I’ll never do that again.
By the way, it’s not the way to make money that just a side note if people want to talk about investing, it’s not through single family homes.
But and not because of what I went through just because it’s not.
But the reality is, is I, I put about 60 single family homes in my portfolio.
And with my earn out and all of a sudden people couldn’t pay rent because great recession hits and I then had to file bankruptcy and start all over again.
So in 2010, I hit the pavement, I built my business on open houses and I built my business on relationships.
And in five years, I became the number one real estate professional in all of Arizona.
I did 100 and 60 million that year in sales.
And I continued that for several years.
And then I focused on building our company, which is where we are at today.
And so when I say, you know, you gotta build it.
I did, I built it by myself.
Oh I didn’t build it by myself, but it was just me.
Then I started with a buyer’s agent, then I hired another buyer’s agent, then we got an admin.
So, so the evolution of where people want to get to, I always say whether you’re doing 5 million a year in sales, 100 million, a billion, I’ve been there.
So I know the struggles that people have to get to what I call the next levels of your career.
I think there’s five levels of a real estate professional level, one level two, level three, level four, level five.
And throughout those levels which is based on volume and transaction count, we have certain things that we’re dealing with like for example, if you’re a level 10 to 5 million, you’re just trying to get into as many people as possible to talk real estate.
You don’t have a lot of capital.
So open houses are critical to build brand awareness to get in front of consumers.
How can I work my sphere?
So, you know, our church, my kids little league team, my community, what can I do to get in front of people at low costs to do so?
And then you go from 5 to 15 and that is that you’re making a decent living, but you’re now getting busier.
So do you hire like once you get to about 15 million, you ask yourself, should I hire an admin?
I really can’t afford one but should I do it?
Should I bring out a buyer’s agent?
And then when you go from 15 to 30 million, it’s more about structure, it’s more about efficiencies.
And then when you get for, you know, once you hit the next level, when you should, once you hit 50 million, it’s now about organization and technologies and process driven ways because you now have created an ability to bring in sales and us as leaders need to make the decision, I need to go be the rain maker and just bring in the business so I can have people work the business.
See JMG is just a big leverage play.
I have 700 agents across the country and about 600 of them receive referrals and so on every transaction we do, our agents are closing an extra 30 deals a year at 50%.
We keep the other margin.
And so we’ve created leverage in the sense of we’re gonna give a lot of business out.
And now we just become this what people consider a team in their local market of 510 agents, those agents create leverage.
We’re just at a mass scale at this point.
So all we’ve done was centralize our model and expand that model throughout the M SAS and states that we’re in, it’s the ultimate leverage play, but I am the rain maker.
So my job is to go out and get more business and maintain and grow the businesses that we have, that we do business with.
Brandon Barnum: I love it. I love it. And I think most people that are listening are gonna be at that level one or level two. And I remember we moved from Oregon to Phoenix back in 2014. And the first time I knew of you, you were sponsoring Hamilton High school football where my son played, right? And so that’s funny. Isn’t that cool? So you were engaged in what we call hyper local social farming. So most of the people here are working this local area and that’s really what we want to talk about. I, I think what you’ve done is incredible.
And as I kind of looked at your business from the outside in one of the things that seemed to really be a key factor to your success was the concierge service and really going above and beyond to make sure that your homeowners had access to everyone that they needed.
Was that true?
Or?
That’s my perception.
How important was that to your success?
Jason Michell: Well, listen, if the majority of people are doing between five and 15 million on this call, number one get with my crew because we may have something for you.
But number two, the local agent still holds true in the sense of market domination.
I don’t know where the people listening to this are at, but it still doesn’t matter.
You know that like for an example in Phoenix, we have pockets, we have subdivisions and we have communities wherever you live.
So do you and when you think about those, there’s always two or three agents that come to mind that seem to have the dominant presence in that community.
You know, for example, in Arcadia, which is a Phoenix subdivision.
Robert Joffe is the guy in Paradise Valley, Walt Danley and Joan Levinstone are the guy and girl.
And in North Scottsdale, James Wexler is the guy.
And so when we start thinking about communities and subdivisions, no matter where you’re located, there happens to be a handful of agents that seem to dominate that local area.
And I’ll be honest with you, it’s actually the easiest to dominate.
But what happens is we try to position ourselves too thin instead of being very, very focused on one specific area.
And I coach on this and train on, I’m not a coach, I, I coach my agents on this and we have a lot of coaching videos on this.
But the key is when you plant your flag, your flag needs to stay planted.
If you’re doing an open house in the like first you wanna identify your demographic, that’s where it all starts with.
If you’re newer in the business and you’re trying to sell luxury, stop, people will see through that.
If you’ve never sold a million dollar home, stop trying to sell a $4 million home to somebody that stuff comes.
It’s like bowling, learn to pick up your spares and the strikes will eventually come.
And that’s the reality of people that want to be luxury.
Don’t label yourself as luxury.
I was considered a luxury agent.
I didn’t consider myself luxury.
People thought I was, I was not, I’d sell a $500,000 house all day long.
That was great.
You know, but the reality is when we talk about hyper local, that stuff is critical.
And when I say plant your flag and understand your demographic.
If you’re newer to the business and you happen to be younger, you wanna focus on first time homebuyers.
Why?
Because you can relate to those people.
If you’re in your forties and fifties.
You wanna focus on move up buyers.
Why?
Because you can relate to those people.
If you live in a community that has a good population, you wanna focus on that community because you can relate to those people.
And by doing so you can now identify where you want to work.
Like I live in Phoenix.
It’s a big place.
I can’t say I wanna sell in all of Phoenix because I can’t get to Levine and I can’t get to Goodyear.
I need to focus on.
Do I wanna sell in mccormick Ranch?
Do I wanna sell in North Scottsdale?
Do I want to sell in PV?
Do I want to sell in Chandler?
The reality is, is once you determine who your demographic is and where you wanna sell, that’s the only place you need to be focusing because you can dominate an area and a community very quickly.
If you haven’t seen my, youtube Post, I really, really think you should do, go to my youtube channel and check it out.
It’s amazing this study that was done and this is holding true to what I’m about to tell you about dominating an area.
Two years ago, there was a market study done in California in a, in a community.
There’s about 300 people that lived in this community.
And so what they did is they went and they knocked on every single door in that community and they asked the homeowners, they said, who do you feel is the strongest and most known agent in your community?
And they gave about five or 65 or six different real estate agents each homeowner did and you know, there was about 5 to 6 that came to mind.
One was more than other two, whatever.
So then a month later, as a month passed, they then started marketing to the people of that community.
And every single week they sent a postcard just sold, just listed.
And then two months later, they went back and re knocked the doors and the postcard that they sent was an agent that did not exist.
It was a made up agent.
It was the agent that they gave a name to and they gave a face to 88% of the people that lived in that community said that fake agent was the most known agent in their community.
And that’s crazy.
And that goes to show you you can dominate very quickly, but domination has to be done and not a shotgun approach, but a very strategic approach.
And it doesn’t even have to cost a lot of money.
Number one, your open houses are only done in the area that you wanna focus on.
If you do an open house.
Like let’s say let’s just go to Phoenix.
For example, if you do an open house in mccormick ranch, because you want to start doing business in mccormick ranch.
It doesn’t do you any good to do that open house on that Saturday and then on Sunday, you’re now in Paradise Valley.
And the reason that is, is this as you start setting up your signs, four days a week, five days a week in the same neighborhood, eventually, people will start equating to you as the person that is the expert of that neighborhood.
And so what I did is I did want to dominate mccormick Ranch and I did mccormick Ranch and Scottsdale Ranch.
No one sold more real estate than me for years because the cool thing about what happens is it starts to have this domino effect.
And so what’s interesting is that it didn’t take long after several months of setting my signs up my 20 signs in, in intersections and busy areas and in the community, what happened was is people started to come in and they started to say, oh, you’re Jason Mitchell, man, I see your signs everywhere.
And you know what’s interesting about that?
My signs aren’t everywhere.
My signs are just where you are because you live here on your way to on your way to lunch on your way back home.
My signs are in a one square mile radius.
You just happen to be in it because if I went to PV or Arcadia, no one would know who I was.
But because I planted my flag in this community, the awareness of who I was started to play through and then what happens is this, then people seek to find you.
So I’d be doing an open house and neighbors would come in and they would ask me, hey, when we’re thinking about selling our home, we know, you know, this area, well, they don’t know that they just see my signs every weekend or during the week.
They equate me to knowing about that community because I have a presence and my presence was free.
I just had to show up to the open house and then I did a few other things.
One I stuck to doing open houses in my targeted community that was first and foremost free branding and marketing with my signage.
Number two, local community presence with my cards, dry cleaners restaurants.
I would go in there and I would say, look, can I put my cards in here?
And if anybody refers to you, I’ll do a free dry cleaner or whatever.
First of all, most local businesses want to support their local entrepreneurs.
So I never had a problem, but there was probably 30 or 40 spots that you could come through in McCormick Ranch or Scottsdale Ranch.
And you would happen to see my cardigan.
Then I went local paper.
So, the local paper is certainly a lot cheaper than the Detroit News or the Arizona. whatever. I don’t even know what we got. Local is cheaper.
So, the back page which cost me like $1,500 a month.
I had the back page every single week that that paper was delivered.
And then I would join local community groups.
What happened was I wasn’t spending a lot of money and everybody in this community knew I was the guy.
And so people started visiting my open houses because they were either considering selling their home or they were considering moving into the neighborhood and they knew I was the guy.
And within six months, I remember driving down, I not driving down, but I was in Scottsdale Ranch and there’s a variety of streets in this neighborhood and it’s a pretty big neighborhood.
And so is McCormick Ranch.
But I remember I, I remember Facebook was relatively new for real estate at this time.
This is probably 2012.
I remember I went down Cinnabar, I went down these streets and my signs were everywhere and it took me like, you know, you start with a few and then because now what happens is this now you start having sign placement.
So now not only do you see my open house sign?
00, the the last thing I did, which I think was very, very, very important perception is reality.
So I would send it just listed or just sold to the neighbors of the community.
And I would say the total cost because I use direct ups.
It was probably maybe 1000 a month to send something like 3000 every door direct pieces, right?
Something along those lines.
But guess what the listing I would send them, it would say in, in like little letters brought to you by Coldwell Banker.
But no one saw that they saw a new listing and had my image and my brand which then also equated them as Jason Mitchell has another listing in here.
Now I start getting listings.
So now they’re seeing my signage in communities.
I built a presence so fast and I stayed so consistent that I just became, I mean, within 6 to 8 months, I was it and then it got even better.
Then I started dominating.
Then it was, you’ve gotta call Jason Mitchell.
You’ve got, if you live in McCormick or Scottsdale, you’ve gotta call Jason Mitchell and then I duped that same model.
So I took that model and I went and I went after Robert Joffe in Arcadia and there was a time when we were about 5050 it took me about a year.
Arcadia was a little bit higher price point, but I just d duplicated my model.
But I used my buyers agents to plant my flag in Arcadia because I can’t do two open houses at once.
So either I was in Arcadia or one or two of my agents were in McCormick Ranch, but my brand was there and I just duped the model.
And what happens is people don’t stay consistent they do an open house here and then they go 30 miles away.
They, they do postcards over here because they just sold a house here and then they don’t do it again.
If you map out five things that you’re gonna do to dominate your local community, you will win.
But people don’t say consistent and they think I don’t have the money to do it.
Partner with a local lender, tell them what you’re gonna do and say, look, I need 1500 a month from you and I’m gonna kick in 1500 a month.
Now, I got three grand to spend three grand.
Open signs are free.
Postcards are gonna cost you 1200 bucks and then going to local businesses that’s free advertising in one or two local papers that’s gonna cost you a grand a month.
It’s not a lot of money to create a lot of presents.
The problem is this a lot of you are hearing me, you won’t do the open houses and that’s the biggest one.
You’ll do it once a weekend.
If I see your signs once a week, I don’t remember you if I see your signs three days a week, four days a week for months, over months, your name is gonna ring a bell.
The other thing that you need to make sure and this is where JMG is so great for our agents, is a lot of your brokerages that you work for.
You have to use their branding.
If you work at Compass, you need a compass sign.
If you work at exp it’s exp those brokerages like realty executives.
I got in a lot of trouble, which is why I left because they wanted me to use realty executive sign, not Jason Mitchell’s brand.
Screw that.
I don’t care about realty executives.
I care about me.
They’re hiring me, not my brokerage and that still holds true to this day unless you’re in a very, very nichey market like my friends, Matt and Josh Altman, for example, they’re with Douglas and in, in Beverly Hills.
Well, Beverly Hills is very itchy like Ryan in New York, right?
He gets buildings to sell.
Josh and Matt have a carve out in Beverly Hills for a super high end clientele.
Most of us work in reality and the reality is not reality TV.
It’s the real world and that is, most of us aren’t in these very nitch nichey markets.
Most of us service the average consumer and in the average consumer space, all this will play true.
You need to be doing your brand.
You are what matters, seeing your name, your face, your colors, not your brokerages, colors and schemes and compass, compass, compass.
Who cares?
It’s about you.
They don’t hire compass, they hire you.
And so I left realty executives because they wanted me to have realty executive signage.
And I said I’m not doing that.
I’ll be in compliance but it’s gonna be my name, my brand and then I’ll have you on there but it’s gonna be me and and it needs to be you because they need.
So my point is if you’re doing open houses and you’re using your brokers standard open house sign, that’s not building your brand, you’re building realty executives brand or Compass’s brand or Exp brand.
Go spend $400 and go get 15 open house signs with your name and your brand and put them all over the market and the subdivision and community that you want to dominate start there.
And if you’re not willing to invest in your business, you gotta get out of real estate because you have to make investments in this business.
I mean, it’s always scary when I hired my first assistant.
I was like, oh my God, I gotta hire an assistant.
What am I like?
Can I afford 15 bucks an hour?
This is in 2012.
I was nervous because I was making like a couple 100 grand.
Maybe.
This is 2011.
I was making a couple 100 grand a year.
I still had expenses when it comes to marketing my CRM, all that stuff and and I was bringing on a person, but she helped me create leverage so I could get more business.
And now fast forward 12 years later, we spent $800,000 a month in expenses at JMG, right?
Like we just kept building and building and building and building and building.
And so you don’t need to worry about JMG or where we’re at.
Just know wherever you’re at in the process of building, you have to make investments in certain things.
In order to get to the next level.
You as an individual real estate agent will get to a point to where you will hit a peak and usually that peak is around 20 million where now you need an assistant.
You need a buyer’s rep because you won’t be able to go out and get more business because you’re worried about.
Ok, I got eight listings right now.
I got six buyers in escrow.
I still got a prospect and you reach a point where you’re also never off of.
This is my daughter.
By the way, you’re never off of this, which means that you can’t go be the rainmaker.
So you gotta put people in places to take those, your internal referrals, your past clients, you need to be on listing appointments to go get more business and give those listings to a coro agent so they can manage the traffic, the traffic report, so you can go get more listings.
You can’t show up at a first listing and think that you can continue to do that.
You need your cob broker agent to do that.
Your Cob Broke agent should be showing up the first listing.
Why?
Because most of the time the first listing doesn’t sell the house.
They usually come back for a second showing.
And on the second showing, that’s when you show up because you can close them.
But I’m not showing up to a first showing when 90% of the time the home doesn’t sell, I’ll have my coro agent take care of that.
I’ll have them give my traffic reports to my clients so I can go get more listings like it’s, this game is about leverage.
It’s all about ultimate leverage.
If you’re the leader, if you’re the one that is the leader of the group, you have to simply be focused on getting.
Now you gotta build it.
So you gotta do it on your own for a little bit.
But once you start getting busy and closing deals and now you have some business coming in.
That’s when you gotta think about, I need to create leverage.
Another thing that happens is people get greedy with their own clients.
If you’re doing $15 million a year in business, even 12, you have no business working with a client.
That’s 100 or $200,000 consumer.
Your assistants do and your buyer reps do.
Number one, the clients better served because they want to work with that client.
They look, they don’t look at them as a time suck.
I’m only gonna make five grand working with this person.
I gotta drive 45 minutes every time I go show them a home and it’s kind of a pain in the butt to only make 4500 dollars or five grand.
That will be your mindset in the future when you’re doing 1215, 20 million a year.
So the clients better served by having your buyer assistant who would love to make 2500 because you’re gonna split it with them by working with this client and showing them at any given time whatever they want to see because they need to build their book of business.
But you can create leverage by not spending any time on this because you got a buyer’s agent that can focus on these type of consumers.
Why are you driving 45 minutes away to service a client that with all the time effort and energy that you’re gonna spend on them, you’re only gonna make five grand.
Why don’t you pass that to somebody that’s happy to work with that client and split it 5050 you don’t have to spend any time.
That’s leverage.
That’s all we do at JMG.
All leverage 70,000 referrals a year to 600 agents.
So they can close an incredible amount of business.
Be super happy, build their self gen business from the referrals that we send them from those people’s aunts, uncles, friends and family and we just continue to pour on new, new business.
It’s the real estate is the ultimate leverage game.
I I love it and it all started with those local markets, right?
Those local communities that you absolutely just farmed and dominated.
And that’s at the core of what we teach here at ho A dot com is that hyper local social farming.
And I love what you said that it’s all about leverage, right?
You’re getting other people to help do the work and what you did with the, the just listed postcards is brilliant.
So I hope everybody caught that right?
Because what Jason just said is that even if there was a new listing from another agency, he was marketing to every single homeowner in his farm area.
And their perception was that was another Jason Mitchell group listing.
Now, Jason in your partnerships, I know you get 85% of the deal flow is coming through your partnerships.
Does that number still hold true?
Yeah, it’s over 80.
It’s probably in that range about 85% correct?
Ok.
And I, and I recognize you’re at a totally different level now, but partnerships have always been important to you.
What do you look for in a partner?
How do you know the right partner to work with so that you’ve got that superior service and make sure that you’ve got the marketing budget that you need.
Well, you know, our partners are, you know, major institutions at this point that are preca thousands and thousands of consumers and then giving it to us when, when we need to step in and service that client.
So for most of the people on this call, what I’ll tell you is this from a national perspective?
We’re a player now.
But everything I started was started with local people.
My first relationship when I, that I would call a partnership was with a local divorce attorney.
And what I did was whenever he had somebody that needed my assistance because they were going through a divorce, he would recommend me and I would give all of his clients a discount.
So he looked good to his clients, but he also knew that they could trust me.
That was one.
Then I did it with an accounting firm and then my third one was an apartment complex.
Why an apartment complex?
Because what happened was a apartment complexes are licensed so I could pay them a referral fee.
So any tenant that left the building and wanted to buy a home, I would give the tenant a discount and I would pay the the apartment complex a referral fee.
So I could be the main exclusive agent for that apartment complex.
And I did a lot of business from that.
And then they bought another apartment complex and because it worked, I was the guy for that one.
When you start thinking about individual transactional people in this business, we need them.
Yes, channel accounts are the way to go because channel accounts lead to multitudes of transactions.
For example, we have veterans United as a national partner of ours.
To give you an example, they will send us this year about 15,000.
Now, maybe about 12,000 referrals.
We will close over 2000 transactions this year just with veterans.
United Alone Rocket is very close to that as well.
When you consider that I’ll do 3500 transactions just with those two partners.
It’s because we have a relationship built on trust, they trust us with their client.
And you can take that to your local market and you can find ways to partner with people and with decision makers where they have influence.
Let me give you an example.
As I mentioned, I’m from South Detroit.
Ok.
So is quicken loans, which is now Rocket Mortgage.
I became the guy at Quicken loans here in Phoenix.
I got a big branch out here when I moved from Detroit, moved to Phoenix.
Rocket opened up in Phoenix.
A few years later, they got 1500 people at their headquarters here in Phoenix as I started to service Rocket employees all of a sudden once a month or once a quarter whenever it was, I don’t remember, but I did it a lot.
I would just send lunch to the entire office.
Now that cost me like, well, not the whole office but like the sales team.
So there was probably like 500 loan officers 600 loan officers and yeah, it cost me, I don’t know, probably 4 to 5 grand to do it.
But I had my lender kick in half.
So I maybe spent $2500 to do so.
Now, why did I do that?
I did that because I, and when that lunch showed up it was brought to you by Jason Mitchell.
And every single time I closed a quicken loans team member, they got a big balloon on their desk with a nice closing gift.
And people started to realize when they started seeing those balloons.
That was a Jason Mitchell client.
So what did they do?
Hey, I just saw you closed with Mitchell.
Can you give me his contact information?
We’re thinking about buying a home.
All of them were first time homebuyers, all of them.
And I did everybody.
It’s influence.
So think about the people that you’re working with, who has influence, who was a director, who works with a lot of team members that because you service them, can you open up their sphere so you can now service their sphere.
That’s all I did.
I strategically worked my way into quicken loans and then what happened was three years later.
So not only am I servicing all these people now?
And I mean, hundreds and hundreds of people all because I made a presence, but I also was taking care of them before they even worked with me.
Meaning the lunches, I made awareness on the people I took care of and I created awareness for the people that I haven’t yet, but here’s where everything worked out full circle.
Three years later, four years later, they were all selling their home and buying their move up home.
So not only did I get their future, not only did I get their first sale, I got their future listing and their next sale.
That’s when the beauty of real estate plays through.
That’s like for our agents at JMG, they close on average an extra 30 transactions a year at my company from the business that we give them, that leads to about an extra 170,000 a year in new commissions found with our clients.
That’s great.
But the beauty part is two and three and four years down the road.
Those people start referring their friends and family, those people start selling their home, those people buy another home.
And so we see our agents self generated business really take off in year 23 and four because they keep servicing more and more and more people.
The holy grail to real estate is your book of business.
It’s how many people can I service.
So they can refer me to the people that they know that’s all real estate is how many people can we have in our book that I can service.
And when you start figuring that out, that’s why Zillow, for example, when they had premier agent pricing, people would say, and even they still have it in market based pricing now.
But really it’s flex, it’s referrals.
We’re a big flex partner of Zillow’s.
but agents would say $600 for a lead.
Sounds crazy.
Especially at a 10% closing ratio.
Yes, you’re spending $6000 to get one closing because Zillow is not stupid even if you break, even with that one closing.
So I closed one person out of my $10,000 budget.
They bought a $400,000 home.
I made 10 grand but I spent 10 grand.
So is this worth it?
And Zillow knows it’s worth it.
You know why?
Because when that person sends you their aunt, uncle, friend, family member or ret transact with you, you don’t have to pay for that one in the future.
So if they become a client that gets you 10 more deals, would you gladly pay Zillow that 10 grand for that first transaction?
Of course, you would.
But Zillow knows this.
And so that’s why they charge you what they charge you.
So when people post on real estate mastermind and lab code agents, hey, I have a somebody that wants to sell me, you know, 100 li for $2000 does it seem worth it?
And they say they close at 10%.
The reality is, is if they say for two grand, you can get 200 referrals that close at 10%.
I’d walk away immediately because if they could really do that.
They would charge you a hell of a lot more than $2000.
So it’s kind of like what seems to be too good to be true.
You gotta think about it.
So just be cautious with some of those things.
But, but my point is this going back to the point, find people that can be influential to help you grow your book of business and take advantage of the people.
I would stalk people on Facebook.
If I had a director or something, I would go in or linkedin, linkedin is even better.
I would go in before closing, I would go in and see who they work with and I would start following them on linkedin or Facebook and they would see this like, OK, who’s this?
Oh, they’re mutual friends with so and so I’ll accept that.
And as I went through 2030 40 people strategically, the minute that that person closed on their home, I posted a picture with that person.
Thank you to the Smith family, blah, blah, blah.
It wasn’t about saying thank you to the Smith family.
It was because I got 30 or 40 people that work with Mr Smith or Mrs Smith, that’s gonna see this post.
And then if they’re thinking about buying or selling, they’re gonna ask Mr and Mrs, hey, I saw your realtor posted your new.
Congratulations.
Yeah, we’re actually thinking about selling.
Did you have a good experience with Jason?
Yes.
He was amazing.
I got him, Jason, you’re actually talking about farming a channel partner essentially, right?
It’s kind of the same strategy that used on a neighborhood, but you did it strategically in a company, an enterprise channel partner.
Is that right?
Yeah.
And then I used influence from an individual to open me up to their sphere, especially if they’re a person of influence.
And a person of influence is somebody that works with a lot of people.
Somebody that manages a group of people.
Somebody that’s a person at the church that’s influential.
Like it’s just about thinking, does this person know a lot of people?
And if they do, I wanna, I wanna know those people when we, when we sell a house to somebody, you know how many times I’ve thrown a welcome.
What do they call it?
a house warming party.
I don’t even know how many I’ve thrown and my client would always think it was about them.
Oh my gosh, Jason’s throwing me a house party.
I would have it catered.
It’d be beautiful.
And I tell them to invite 20 or 30 people because I’m gonna cater it for 20 or 30 people.
Why did I do that?
I did that because when their friends showed up, I had the microphone, they were signing into my, it was basically an open house.
But yet with their friends and family who of the 20 or 30 people that showed up one or two of them was certainly thinking about real estate.
I got them too.
So it’s about using what you got to your advantage.
And when you start thinking out of the box with these ideas, it’s amazing because everything starts to steamroll.
You mentioned a divorce attorney and right now, a lot of transactions are happening because of life events, right?
Divorce marriage, downsizing you mentioned as well.
And so how important are life events in that client journey?
And are you specifically creating programs and campaigns to attract people and partners that are involved in those life cycle events?
It depends on who you’re trying to get in front of.
So for example, let’s say that you wanna focus on apartment complexes, you wanna service the tenants that leave and service them as buys side, which is a big market right now.
It’s there are no move up buyers right now.
Given rates.
First time home buyers still make sense.
So if you request a meeting to meet with somebody, you better have your ducks in a row because if you ask me to coffee and I say yes and I can be influential in opening and be a gatekeeper.
If you come to me with a concept, I’m gonna say this was a waste of time.
If you come to me with a plan, I’m gonna say you were prepared.
A plan is, here’s the deal.
We’re gonna, I’m gonna offer this consumer benefit to your people.
This is how you’re gonna win.
This is how they’re gonna win.
This is how I’m gonna win and this is how I’m gonna manage it and you have it all laid out in a wire frame and you have it strategically like the, so you got marketing awareness.
This is how we’re gonna make the program available to your people.
This is how they’re gonna apply for the program on this landing page from there.
I’m gonna service them and when I close it out, I’ll pay you a referral fee.
They’re gonna get a discount at closing and voila.
There we go.
But the problem is is that everybody wants to have a discussion.
They don’t wanna take the time to build the plant like that’s part of the deal because think about how many times you got called by a title company?
You wanna have lunch with me?
No.
What do you mean though?
Because I know you’re just gonna try to get my business.
I have something different and unique for you.
Well, let’s talk about it.
What is it?
Why do I need to have breakfast with you?
Like all it is is a discussion and a discussion is not gonna get people to move the needle with you.
All you’re talking about is hearsay.
If you say if I call Brandon up and say Brandon, this is Jason Mitchell who’s Jason Mitchell.
I’m a, I’m a local real estate agent.
Ok.
How can I help you?
Because like I’m already having press of time.
Like, because I hear from a lot of new agents, Brandon, here’s the deal.
I know I’m gonna disarm him.
I know you hear from agents all the time.
I don’t wanna take your time.
I have a strategic plan where not only can I provide a lot of benefit to ho a dot com.
I think there’s an avenue with providing even greater consumer rewards if you don’t have time for coffee.
Fine.
Can I get 15 minutes on a zoom with you?
I have everything prepared.
I promise you it’ll be worth your 15 minutes.
Can I get 15 minutes with you on a zoom?
He’s got to say yes to that.
Right.
It was be, it was how I pitched it.
I wasn’t saying, can I go take you to coffee or take you to lunch?
That takes up too much time and I don’t even know what you’re gonna talk to me about.
I made him interested.
I told him I’m cognizant of your time.
You don’t have to have lunch with me.
Can I get 15 minutes on a zoom with you real quick to show you what I have planned?
I really think you’ll like it.
Can I get 15 minutes if somebody called me and said that to me as busy as I am, I’d give him the courtesy of 15 minutes.
It’s like when you go shopping at a at a at a clothing store when I walk into a clothing store and the person comes up to me and says, what they always say is, can I help you with anything?
My immediate reaction is.
No, thank you.
I’m just browsing.
But if I’m looking at blue jeans and someone comes up to me and says, oh, you’re looking at blue jeans today.
Yeah, I have a pair that just came in last week.
I’m telling you if you’re blue jean shopping, they would look amazing on you.
I’m gonna go grab him real quick and bring them back and if you want to try them on, we will give me one second and I walk away to go grab these blue jeans and I bring these blue jeans back to you.
You gotta try him on, you just gotta try them on.
But if I just ask you a general question of, can I help you with anything?
My meeting answers?
No, I’m good.
It’s the same thing at an open house when we try to get information from people at an open house.
And we say I know some good houses available, blah, blah, blah.
Can I get your email and I can say no, I’m good.
No, you warm them up through discussion.
What brings you in today?
Do you live in the area if they have kids?
How old are your Children?
If they come in and the kids got soccer gear on, hey, did you did you win today?
I’m building a rapport.
I’m finding out about them and after 5 to 10 minutes of discussion, I simply ask Brandon.
I say, look, I’m not sure if this one works well, I’ll find that out through knockout questions.
Brandon.
Look, I know this one doesn’t work for you and quite frankly, it’s overpriced as well.
But here’s the deal.
I do know several homes that I really think would work for you.
You don’t want to see them fine, but you should at least look at them on your phone because if you wanna see them, I can get you into those houses.
What’s your best email?
And I put my head down and I wait for your response, you’re gonna give me your email.
But if I’m staring at you and just saying, hey, I can send you houses, Brandon, what’s the best email for them to send?
No, I’m good.
It’s intrusive.
I warm you up and I put you in a position because I’m not looking at you and I got my pen ready and I’m waiting for you.
I’m asking you a question and looking down, you’re gonna give me that information because if you don’t, it would be awkward.
There’s ways that we go about doing things in our business and you gotta start sharpening your saw and realizing that there’s an art form to what we do and there’s strategic things that we do as real estate professionals to get us into these higher levels as I call it, I love it.
And I know one of the things that you want to do is be everywhere, right?
Have people see your brand everywhere they look, especially on a hyper local basis.
And so how important were events to you?
I know, you know, back in the day when I first learned about you, you were sponsoring football games and they were calling your name from the stadium.
How impactful has local community events and to your business, it’s everything.
If I didn’t build this company, I would still be hyper focused on a few communities because look, the reality is, is those two communities brought me 100 and $60 million in volume a year, right?
I made millions of dollars just selling houses.
You gotta build that.
But I built it through community, whether it be sponsoring Hamilton High School or whether it be most importantly, if I wanna dominate mccormick Ranch every quarter, I would do an event on Saturday and I’d have an ice cream truck, I’d have ponies.
I would do a barbecue cookout and people would show up.
Why?
Because families are bored on the weekend, they don’t have anything to do.
So they’re gonna go get ice cream for their kids.
And so they would just come to my event and I’d have them register and then I’d do a raffle my past clients.
I do quarterly events with my past clients, I picked 20 clients, my past clients so they could mingle and interact.
Why?
Because I wanted to stay top of mind with them when they had a friend or family member that needs.
Here’s the thing too.
If you’re going to do something, go above and beyond.
And what I mean is this people cheap out when you cheap out, you lose, it becomes irrelevant.
As an example, if I had a client that bought a 67 $800,000 home for me and I made 24 grand, I spent 1000 plus dollars on their closing gift.
Why?
You know what?
I did a lot, I sent them to the Suns game courtside.
Why?
Because if I send you to section 208 row 16, that’s not special.
If I send you courtside, you owe me one.
And you’re telling everybody about it too.
I’m telling everybody about how Jason Mitchell is the best realtor and you gotta work with him.
So the difference is this, I either spend 300 to put them in section 208 or I spend an extra 700 that clients telling everybody how awesome I am.
I’ll spend the extra 700 bucks.
If I send you a bottle of wine, I’m not sending you a box of Peter Villa or you know, Josh or Justin, I’m not sending you that stuff.
I’m sending you a bottle of opus one because you’re gonna say, holy shit.
He sent me a bottle of opus one.
Yes, because it’s worth the extra 250 bucks.
I spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on our relationships.
Why?
Because I know I’m the only one doing it and I know it means something but it’s worth the money.
It’s worth it to not seem cheap if you buy a $500,000 home for me and I make $15,000 off that transaction and I send you a $50 gift card to go somewhere.
Why even send it?
Just send a card.
Forget the 50 do something.
Especially if they’re a person of influence, a person that works with a lot of people.
I’m doing something really nice for that person.
And here’s the other kicker too.
When you start working your way into higher price points, this is what you’ll learn.
Million dollar buyers roll with million dollar friends, $100,000 buyers roll with $100,000 friends.
Most of the time in life, demographics are hanging out with similar demographics.
Like my friends are uber successful people.
Do I know people that aren’t successful?
Of course we all do.
Do I hang with people that aren’t successful?
The answer is no.
So the reality is, is that’s the reality for most people that live in a $800,000 community don’t usually hang out with people that live in $100,000 community.
It’s just a matter of fact, however, you want to cut it and the people that have $4 million homes, they don’t hang out with people that have $300,000 homes for the most part.
Ok.
So the reality is when you start picking and choosing how you wanna host these events, based it on the demographic of people that you wanna host it to.
Because my million dollar client, I’m gonna do a little bit more because he has million dollar friends.
And that’s just a matter of being smart.
Like I’m not sending $100,000 client $1000 bottle of wine.
That just doesn’t make common sense.
Sorry.
But it just doesn’t however big ticket items, I’m gonna yield big ticket gifts and things that I’m gonna do because I know when it comes full circle.
Like for example, I had the back page and the center page of the biggest luxury magazine.
I had a lot of print, but I was always front and center in the main one and on the back of the main one.
And that cost me like 10 grand a month when I was doing it.
But guess what?
I would get a couple people a month that were buying or selling three and $4 million houses.
1 $4 million deal paid for the whole year one.
But guess what?
Now I got that person in my arsenal.
I have a $4 million buyer or seller.
That’s now my client, I represented a lot of builders in town, luxury builders.
So I got to work with a lot of high end architects.
These architects loved me and so they started sending me more of their builders and it just became this whole, I’ll give you another quick example.
I ended up through, through one of my architect friends.
His name is Bing Hu who was a big architect here in Phoenix.
He introduced me to Robert Sarver who owned the Phoenix Suns before Maia just bought them.
Who I know really well as well too.
Robert Sarver.
I go to his house and he needs to sell his house.
Well, being told him I was the best.
He didn’t even interview anybody else.
I sold this house.
Quite frankly, I didn’t really like the guy, but instead of me taking a $600,000 commission, I said, hey, how about season tickets on the court with the Suns?
Can I get two of those?
And he ended up giving me five years, five years, two seats, courtside at the Suns.
Not only did I get that, he was so like blown away that I didn’t want the $600,000 check that he was my biggest advocate and I really didn’t even like the guy, but he’s my biggest advocate.
And so every person from the Suns organization players included came to me because I was smart.
I said if I can be on the court and I’m visible and Mr Sarber is gonna recommend me, I’m gonna get everybody and I got everybody.
It’s just about being strategic.
And therefore I ended up servicing.
I didn’t even know how many.
But then it led to those guys knew people on the Cardinals.
So I ended up doing like eight or 10 of the players on the Cardinals.
Then I started doing their managers and then their managers referred people like the by-product of me doing that with server was a by-product of hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions because everything comes from somewhere.
And so much of it pointed to the fact that I knew Bing from one of my developers who Bing introduced me to server, who got me the court side tickets, who in introduce me to the players and staff who led to the Cardinals, who led to some Diamondbacks players as well, like it just steamrolled because everything is a byproduct’s service that walks into the door of an open house when they start referring their friends and family.
That’s another domino effect of the people that they know every person is important.
It’s all connected, it’s all connected.
Jason, thank you so much.
This has been amazing.
Now, if people wanna learn about you, find out how they can partner with JMG, how do they do that?
The best place is first you can follow me on Instagram, Jason Mitchell underscore JMG.
That’s fine.
But if you’re interested in JMG, go to join JMG dot com.
And when you go to join JMG dot com, it’ll give you all the information about us, our models, everything that we got.
Like I said, we’re in 41 states, I think today.
But anyways, I, I I talk a lot but hopefully you got some value out of this.
Oh brother, you gave so many golden nuggets.
Some of the things that I took away are be the rainmaker.
Start looking at your business and really be the rainmaker to grow your company.
And then one of your quotes, I’m gonna, we’re gonna use this when you plant your flag, keep your flag planted, keep working those local markets so that everybody sees you everywhere and then influence influencers, right?
Be strategic.
Look at how can you make a difference in people that influence others so that you become the only recommendation that they make, Jason?
This was absolute gold.
Thank you for your time.
We’re so excited to be in partnership with you in JMG and we look forward to doing a ton of business with you over the years to come.
Thanks guys.
Thank you so much.
Thanks everyone.
Have a great day.
