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Tristan Ahumada, CEO at Lab Coat Agents - The Biggest Trends/Topics We're Seeing at Lab Coat Agents That Will Make A Difference In Your 2021 Business

[00:00:00] And I'm going to bring you on, man. Let's do it. How's it going? I love it, dude. The only thing I can think of is a famous line from the office

Zac Muir

Zac Muir

VP of Sales & Marketing
Zac was one of our first hires. Outside of waging war on spreadsheets and time-killing systems, Zac loves to push the boundaries of what's "safe" on a wakeboard, spend time on the golf course or tennis courts, and more than anything, live life with his beautiful wife and 4-pound dog, Twix.

[00:00:00] And I'm going to bring you on, man. Let's do it. How's it going? I love it, dude. The only thing I can think of is a famous line from the office. My how the turntables. Because now we're interviewing you and you're always the one interviewing all of us.

[00:00:15] So very funny. That's very true. Very true indeed. How's it going, man. Good man. Trying out a new connection here with my family for a kid with my Kenyan 8D and I'm trying to remove the brackets. But you know what? It looks good.

[00:00:32] So I. I'm going to keep the brackets for now.

[00:00:38] I love the baby Yoda. You always have the cool things in your background.

[00:00:41] So, dude, and you know what? You got to check this out. It's it's called the roost. This little device and it props up your ear, pops up your your Mac or your I have a Mac PC like this, so it's elevated and you can look directly into the camera. I've got to. So this one always goes with me. We do that easy. It's called the roost if you want to check it out.

[00:01:11] I love it. I will actually check. I was just thinking that actually earlier when I put my my standing desk up now is like pointed up weird. If I had had that it could have angled a little better for me. Right.

[00:01:22] I carry an extra one of my backpacks is the case because you're always streaming pretty late for for those of us out here that don't know you or mean everyone knows you.

[00:01:36] Let me ask you that. Give us about your background, where you're coming from.

[00:01:40] Awesome. I'm a real estate agent out here in Southern California, out of Los Angeles, Malibu area. And I've been really busy since 2004. I started speaking for Realtor Dotcom back in 2013, and that led to me creating lab coat agents, which is now the largest online community for real estate agents in the world. And so from there, we got connected to Facebook and all of these other amazing companies, which started a whole different venture, which now I can sold to a real estate agent runtime. Now I can sell companies like Facebook and other tech companies out there that you may have heard of. So that's a little bit of I mean, I don't know.

[00:02:26] You're so so you consult them on on marketing.

[00:02:30] I can focus specifically on marketing to real estate agents and breaking into that whole world. So we were we were very integral in them creating the things that they've created over the last three years that help real estate agents use Facebook. Right. And so a lot of the connections that they have, we connected them to those to those big companies. Number one killer Williams. Right. We made that connection and we showed them, hey, this is what we should be doing. So, yeah, that's that's a really fun partnership, by the way.

[00:03:02] Yeah. So were there certain like are you talking, like, features or some of the things that they come to us?

[00:03:09] I'll tell you, like on the on the detailed side, they would come to us and say, well, how does this how do you guys see this working for real estate agents, brokerages, teams or in the real estate world in general, they don't come to us for the consumer side. They come to us for helping them understand how to make the product work for real estate agents better on the back end of lead ads, what they should add, what they should and things like that, all of it.

[00:03:37] So getting a little bit into our topic today, you have lab contagion's, which is just high. There's always conversation going on there every quarter.

[00:03:47] A couple hundred kind of good and bad.

[00:03:51] There's all that.

[00:03:52] You know, when I first got started at Sisu, that was like, man, this is where I'm going to learn how this industry works, how we we wanted to talk about the trends because you kind of have this unique perspective on all these things.

[00:04:07] You're interviewing all these people, a lot of talk about trends that you're seeing that you think will be impactful for your team leaders and brokers that are listening here. So we dig into those a little bit. What are some of those things that you're seeing that could be impactful moving forward?

[00:04:23] All right. I just sent you a number, if you could throw that into like a banner. So if anybody has any questions, they could just text me as well. I love that during or after. And I'll it goes directly to my phone here, so I could definitely see that. Well, let's start with the biggest trends. I actually outlined this because you said, hey, well, let's talk about the biggest trends in real estate. And so I've got some great ones for you. But the very first one I want to talk about is, is this. And that's. Even in real estate, we've got so we have one hundred and twenty thousand real estate agents in a lab coat, agents, OK. And out of those, we have one hundred and nine thousand engage every twenty eight days, we have five hundred thousand plus comments like posts in the community every twenty eight days. So it's insane. Like I can go in there and take a look at it and and I can give you it's like a survey. We look in the back and we're like, okay, here's our demographic, here's exactly what you should be doing.

[00:05:24] And so the topic that you picked was perfect, because I'm going to start off with this. People right now in real estate are getting a lot more comfortable with. With just seeing what's on their mind, and I don't know if that's a great thing or not, because in the business we're in, we have to protect that perception that we have the perception that consumers have of us. Right. And whether it's the consumer or other real estate agents that may work with you in the future through referrals or just in partnership, because we represent the buyer and they represent the seller. Right. And so I think that that's one trend I want to talk about first and then we'll get into the all the other good trends. But just be aware, be more aware of what you say and how you say it to people, because especially in Lapkin agents, there's thousands of people watching and you make a bad move and all of a sudden people will know who you are and what you said and they'll snapshot it and send it over to who knows where you're going to get it.

[00:06:29] As they say these days, you're going to get canceled for sure.

[00:06:33] So if you don't do it because you actually care and you want to be a better human being because you want to be more aware of socially, socially aware or just emotionally aware, then do it for the simple purpose of not screwing up your business. And we see that so often because we get bombarded with messages. Oh, did you see so-and-so? Hey, what's happening over there? You've got to shut this thread down. So I'm telling you, because we have a pulse on what's happening in real estate. And I don't want it to be a reflection, unfortunately, of what's happening in our country where everybody's got an opinion and you think you're right and the other person is wrong. I want you to come in and be open to listening to what the other person has to say without having an opinion or shutting them down. Just realizing that we're two different people like Zach could be a Republican or a Democrat and I could be a Republican or Democrat. We could still talk it out and love each other. It doesn't matter. Yeah. So just have that awareness when you're dealing with your personal business, because once this is all over and our country is back on track. It's going to matter. Yeah, that's true. No one's at all, and that's all across social there. So train number two is cool because I don't know how many people have been paying attention to to Snapchat and Instagram and now Tock and what you go back and you go and you say, well, Snapchat was cool, but it just never got to that hype that most people wanted it to get to.

[00:08:04] But we can learn one thing from them, that they started doing stories, which is in shorts like these shortened clips of either video or or shortened pictures length that you can take a look at it and then it disappears. Well, Instagram took that and then it made it extremely popular to the point that we're now doing a billion stories a day all throughout Instagram across the world. Right. So that's a lot of stories. Right. And now you take it one step further and you realize that Ticktock created a whole platform based on stories. Right? I mean, you can go up to 60 seconds now, but in essence, it's that 15 second spot that most people use. Yeah. And you have to think, well, what do I have to I don't have to know that. Well, if you're paying attention, this is where social media is going, right. This is a trend you need to pay attention to, especially because they were on the news just, what, a month ago, how they were going to get canceled and then they weren't. And then they made a partnership with Oracle. And now Oracle is handling their privacy in the United States. So with one hundred million American users, United States, Tic-Tac is something you have to pay attention to. And the other social media outlets are paying attention now because now you have YouTube, who just announced September 19, their 14th, one of those days, they said, hey, we're going to do YouTube shorts. What is YouTube shorts? Well, the Google it, but YouTube shorts, in essence, are 60 second video clips. Right. And so they want to get into this as well.

[00:09:49] And so now you're like, OK, well, let me take a look at my phone. Open it up. You it's some of you may already have that feature on on YouTube. So click to create a video and it says short click it. It'll give you 60 second clip if you don't use the hashtag in in the description shorts. And usually YouTube will throw it into the shorts playlists section. So that's how we've been doing it. We have a few shorts there. We want to take a look at ours. It's just my interest in our mother on YouTube, but that's something you need to pay attention to. This is where social media is heading. It's already there with ticktock. And you think, well, how many users are in in YouTube? What you have about two hundred and fifty million American users and 17 million Facebook monthly users and one hundred million Tic-Tac users in the United States. That's a lot. And they're catching steam. Just at the beginning of the year, they had twenty three million US users. That's a massive jump, which then says, well, I guess I guess. Tick tock, is it for teens anymore? Is it now? The demographic just got into the twenties now and it's getting into the late 20s, early 30s. And that's our sweet spot for purchasing is according to NPR, most people purchase in their early thirties or first time home. And that's that's what's pushing that needle. So if you haven't looked at tick tock recently or if you haven't thought about doing short video clips, now is the time to start doing it. Go ahead.

[00:11:24] It's how social I mean, even Instagram started with young people and it moved up into higher demographics.

[00:11:31] And so when Facebook was the same. But it's interesting point.

[00:11:35] Yeah, that's it's a it's you just have to pay attention. This is why if I see something new, I try it out. I'm like, how does this work? Yeah. When I first got into Tic-Tac, I was like, well, this is not for me. This was two years ago. I was like, everybody's a everybody's younger age. They're dancing and they're making funny videos. And I go, I second both. I'm not funny and I can't dance, so I'm out. And then I came back later. I kept it in the background. All right. Next, any questions on that?

[00:12:05] I know. Unless you got unless you got a text right up there stream, it's something we're going to get by the uncheck.

[00:12:11] So no questions on that. Let's go to the next one. And I don't know if you've heard have you heard of position zero? I have not. Oh, yeah. Cool. I thought you had I was hoping you had. And I can tell you when it is so for so many years we've been shooting for. Positioning our website or our content to the very first page of Google, right, let's go first, let's try to be at least on the first page, hopefully on the top with all of our search engine optimization, with all of our keywords and everything. Well, if you've noticed and you can try it right now or later, whoever's listening in, try try typing in a specific search or a specific definition for for any word. And what you have is a separate section at the very top of Google, and that's called position zero. And that's specifically for any company or any blog or anything that Google says. You know, it might give you an example if somebody types in a Sisu or and they say type in, they type in this. They type in. Tech for keeping track of all real estate deals that have done all of a sudden, she seems at the very top because those are the keywords they chose and it goes above that regular search. It looks completely different. It's an actual excerpt like like a real excerpt from the news, and that's position zero. So what Google is doing is Google is rewarding all of those companies that have the correct information in there. And because it's so new, not a lot of people, it's kind of new. It's like maybe two months old. Not a lot of people are looking into this and saying, well, maybe I should actually be putting more effort into the actual real definitions of what we do or who we want to attract. So now the thing you want to shoot for is position zero.

[00:14:17] Is this Google or is it, I guess is part of their algorithm that decides it based on your updated info or.

[00:14:22] Yeah, that's all it does. You know what? If you're typing right now, just typing, I'm going to type it in with you. Typing Position zero, let's say position zero. And you see at the very top, it's got like a little section on it, so that's position zero, bro. That's like the whole page. Isn't that cool? Yeah, that's cool. So that's that's what they're doing. And I think we need to pay a lot more attention to that, specifically as real estate agents who want to own cities or towns or tracks. Right. We have to be looking more into keywords. So that's that's the next one. Any questions on that one? I think we're good, good, good. All right. Let me just check on my in here if I got any questions. Good, Mary.

[00:15:10] I do have one question. Is this like a CEO?

[00:15:14] It's exactly like a CEO. But the more information you have about a specific area, the more Google is going to say this person is an authority or this company is an authority over everybody else. So I suggest if you're going to do this, Mary Jane, focus in on going super niche. So like in my area where I live, I'm going to go down to the track right down to those those tracks or maybe even down to a community and outlining every single track with every single street, every little shop. All of a sudden I become that authority over everybody else, and that's what they're looking for. So it's deeper. Essere. Good question.

[00:15:56] Good question.

[00:15:57] All right, let's move on to the next one, dude, this one's easy, but I saw it surged so much in this year and that's communities groups, right? I think covid hit and all of a sudden everybody was creating a group. Everybody was creating a community, and most of them were being created in Facebook because it's the easiest place to create a community. Now, the thing that I also noticed you fast forward three months after covid and people started dropping off like their community started dying out, they didn't start paying attention to them. So there's an opportunity here. There's a massive opportunity in creating an actual business through communities. And that's that's really where you have to take a look and say, well, do I do I want to make a business out of this? What what's the purpose of creating a community? And I don't think you ever asked that. You just kind of just create a community and like, let's let's do this because I really want to do this for my specific area. Right. And I don't think that's good enough. So I've outlined really four four types of communities overall that that exist as communities. No. One, special interests. And that's I mean, this is pretty easy, but it's like a cat group. Everybody knows cat groups. Right? There are very special interest groups or kayaking something along those lines.

[00:17:30] That's type one. Special interest type two is community type groups. And this is where I see real estate agents do better. And that's picking either a track, a city or a township or maybe even a bigger area like a demographic. So that would be a community type group. Number three. Type three is business group. You're looking then at, you know what if you wanted to create one. Like Sisu group like that now, or if you want to type in a great a great community out there, you want to take a look at, it would be something along the lines of Pellington Palatucci, get a great community. And then the fourth one that I always say is one like like Lapkin agents, one that is a group that has the same beliefs or standards. And we're giving advice and solutions to certain things. Yeah. So that's, that's really how I see you dissecting what group to create. But go with your passion like Zach, if you're a real estate agent and you're like, man, I don't know what type of community I'd like to create. I ask you questions. I'd be like, Zakhele, what do you love doing on your spare time? What do you love doing? Let's go through this.

[00:18:46] I love wakeboarding.

[00:18:49] Wakeboarding is awesome. So I would totally create a wakeboarding community. And from that people get to know who you are, right. And eventually, very quickly, people will know that you're a real estate agent because all the content, if it's video, you're going to be like, Hey, hey, this is Zach again, real estate agent out here in Malibu. And let's talk about choosing the right wakeboard because I've been wakeboarding for a long time. That's how you start. Right, and then people get to know that you're running the community, you're a real estate agent and you're fun and you know what you're doing with Wakeboard. This is why I tell people maybe instead of creating a community one, why don't you focus on your passion? And let that shine through, because then you're going to attract people that already love what you love and how are they not going to love you if they already love what you love? Right. So that's why. And if you don't want to create it on Facebook, there are so many different other places you can create. One of them that comes to mind, I think, is a mighty community. Let me check right now. My computer mighty know. It's called Mighty Networks, I think. Let me check really quick.

[00:19:59] Mighty Networks.

[00:20:00] Mighty Networks. That's the one. So you can also create a community outside of Facebook with this. They create amazing apps and websites so they can hold the community together, very similar to what you see in Facebook. But the cool thing about this is it takes it outside of Facebook so you don't have to rely on Facebook. And what I've seen as some agents do this, we haven't done this yet, but we're thinking of doing a VIP list. And so our VIP community or all of our past clients, all of our core sphere, those people and inviting them to our VIP community, we don't have a name for it yet. But because I keep on talking to some agents that are doing really well with this, we're thinking of doing this. And the people that would qualify for this are people that have referred us over the last 12 months or over the last twenty four months, depending on what you want to do. And in the VIP community, you give out giveaways and you have get togethers. Obviously with covid, that changes a little bit. You can change that up, but. That's one thing that you can do that stands out, which leads me into the next one, because I don't want to focus too much on communities and groups here.

[00:21:14] But that's this that's that's really connecting deeper with with your past clients and. In your course, fear, and I've noticed that as a trend over the last seven months, ever since covered however long that's been, that's a massive trend. All of a sudden, people are picking up the phone, those that are succeeding and calling up and saying, hey, Zach, it's Treston, dude. I'm just calling up everybody. I know my phone, just making sure you're good. That was the conversation that was happening at the beginning of it. Right. And that transitioned over to, hey, I'm giving you a call to let you know how the market is doing, because a lot of people seem to be confused. They thought I had one conversation where my client thought the market was tanking and I was like, no, no, it's the actual opposite. Right. And they could not believe me no matter what I told them. So I had to text them three different articles. And they're like, no way. This is impossible. I guess. Who knew? Right. We're the ones leaving this out, leading us out of this whole terrible possible economy. But now it's it's looking good. So I'm noticing a trend there. But I'm also noticing the leading indicator of that is the agents making the calls to their past clients and course fear.

[00:22:33] And I'm noticing that the tech companies, some of them are catching on and saying, well, this makes a lot of sense, why wasn't anybody focusing on on this part? Of the business, because it matters so much all of a sudden if you focus on your past clients and your core sphere. You eliminate companies like Zillow, because by the time they reach Zillow, they already have that relationship with you and if they're going to Zillow, it's just a search and they'll come right back to you to tell you what they found. Right. So now you're starting to see some tech companies coming in and saying, whoa, whoa, we can automate this process for you with text, email, voicemail drops, handwritten letters all to your cause, fear into your past clients. Now, all of a sudden, that looks more attractive to me as a real estate agent, right. Who loves technology but wants to stay in contact with past clients and fear they're solving a problem. So I think that that was a big, big one for me that I'm noticing a trend on. So we're going to see that trend continue along with groups and communities. Question that now.

[00:23:43] I think we're get this is so cool, dude.

[00:23:47] Here's here's close to my last one. Here is a deeper connection. I don't know if you're familiar with Facebook. Did a study that they released June, I think it was June twenty two thousand twenty, just like three months ago. It's there if you want to Google it, everybody. It's a real estate professionals guide to success. Real estate professionals guide to success. It's free. And they did these amazing studies that show how people are using social media and how real estate fits in specifically with Facebook and with Instagram. Right. And one thing that that was an amazing stat for me that just opened up my eyes. Besides these two stats, by the way. One hundred and sixty eight million Americans are using Facebook every day. That was crazy. Every day. And. US, just us here, us people are using Facebook, Instagram, both because the same company, an hour and 15 minutes a day. That's that's a ton, but besides that, there was another stat that that really blew my mind and that goes into the type of connections that we really want to have, and that's through other people. And check this out. Sixty five percent of home buyers. The 65 percent to 65 percent of homebuyers say they're influenced by their online friends home buying posts on social media. Get out of here, dude. Sixty five percent of those people are looking at your social media and saying, oh, like, I'm looking at your Zaken, I'm like, damn, just bought a nice pad in Montana or like, oh, right on the river.

[00:25:39] Oh, that's so good. And I look over and I'm like, maybe we should look at Montana. Right. And so we're missing an opportunity here as real estate agents. As marketers, when I go to Zach and let's say we just close with Zach, right, and I say, hey, Zach, do. I know that you loved the property you purchased and I loved working with you, I love working with people like you, if you get a chance to just throw it up on social media and give me give me a shout out. Right. And then people people do that. Who is your real estate agent? Oh, Tristin. Oh, interesting. Did an amazing job over here. Check out my pad. Check out my home. Right. But to me, that's pretty powerful, man. Sixty five percent of homebuyers say that they're influenced by their online friends. Home buying on social. And we're not even tapping into that, we forget to let people know, hey, by the way, if you can post it up on social right, we can just drop the ball. And it's our job to guide our clients, to say sometimes to say or do certain things on social or even four reviews, we've got the reviews kind of down for some of us. What about them just posting naturally and saying, check out my new check on my new home? So going deeper and then pivoting slightly on the deep end with this.

[00:27:08] And that's. When you have your home search or when you have your website or the process that people get to you or to get to search for homes through you on, you really need to make that more personal and more interactive. The personal side of it is this. If I go and check out homes on Zach's website. I don't want to have to search everything. And this is where dynamic ads for real estate, which they just recently changed the name to real estate ads months ago, a crazy so dynamic ads. This is where Facebook and Instagram, you mark it on their why? Dude, I don't think I have to repeat myself, but that's two hundred and seventeen million Americans are on Facebook every month. One hundred and sixty eight million a day. All right, step away. This dynamic ads, this personalizes it for me and it goes deeper. And it's interactive because as I go in search for homes, Zach, on your Web site through Facebook, all of a sudden the next time I go on, it remembers it's dynamic. Right, and now I don't have to send these people homes, the CIA is remembering, it's learning, it's like, oh, wait, you search for a home on white in white fish, Montana. I'm bringing up Whitefish, Montana, because I just interviewed Chris Heller and we were talking about Whitefish, Montana.

[00:28:36] OK, that's why it's stuck in my head. So and then you're looking like three bedroom, two bath. Seven hundred thousand. Well, guess what's going to pop up automatically now? Because it's personalized. That's what you need to look to do. Right. And you just start looking for systems and processes that automate this for you and make it more personal for the consumer. Because if you don't, they're going to go to someone else who is. So that's what you need to look for. Man, that is going to be a wrap. I can go for another hour. I wish we could maybe have to do another webinar with you, but I think I think I covered enough if I want to stand out on one thing and this. Shortened video is the future and it's the immediate future like next year, so you need to start clipping your videos anywhere between 15 seconds to a minute and getting whatever it is you're going to get out quickly so that you you hook people really fast. I just interviewed this guy in the morning. We want to pick up his book, Brendan Kane, one million followers. He's the guy that ran Taylor Swift's Taylor Swift's Facebook and social media and a whole bunch of other amazing people. But he said, it's the hook, man. You got three seconds. Hook them.

[00:29:56] Yeah. So that's it.

[00:29:59] Any questions just and I think we're good, man. Thank you so much for hopping on some huge insights there from your which are very much appreciated for sure.

[00:30:13] And then you've got time to say hi to Tom for me.

[00:30:16] Yeah. We have our next to last last presentation here with Tom Sater. And I'll let you go and we'll see you next time. Thanks, buddy. Yeah.

[00:30:26] All right, everyone, we have one last presentation here, I'm going to drop the link for you in case you want to hop on over. But Brian, our CEO will be talking with Tom. So watch for that link here in the comments and we'll go from there. Thanks, everyone, for tuning in. It's been an awesome summit. I've really appreciated being able to interview these people and having you all tune in for that link in the comments.

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