Speaker 1 (00:00):
CRM, lead gen website, IDX and good old fashioned snail mail. These are the five pillars of Chase Whitney's success with his tech stack and he breaks each one of those down, including preferred vendors in this Tech Timber episode of Real Estate Team. Os Chase has been a real estate agent for more than a dozen years now, but he's doing today some things that he started decades ago on behalf of his parents' real estate business. In the zone of geographic farming, door knocking, handing out flyers and other direct human to human things that are fundamental to building a relationship based business. Chase shares with us some of the fits and starts of going beyond a three person family based business to an eight person real estate team. He shares how he fought through shiny object syndrome, including going through seven CRMs to build an integrated, thoughtful tech stack that compliments again the very human to human way they prefer to do business. I know you'll enjoy this tech temp episode with Chase Whitney right now on real estate team os

Speaker 2 (01:02):
No matter where your business is today or where you want to take it, you'll get there faster and more profitably with an operating system. Welcome to Team Os, your guide to starting, growing and optimizing real estate team. Here's your host, Ethan Butte.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Chase, I am so excited to have you on the show in general, but I'm also especially excited to have you on the show for this tech te episode. Welcome.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
Hey, thank you so much. This is an honor to be here and happy to chat.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
I assume you've seen at least one or two of the episodes.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
Oh yeah. Oh yeah, of

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Course. Okay, cool.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
So you know those words coming, your line of questioning is so good and no such good information you guys share all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Cool. I appreciate it. We're going to get into your team. I think what you all are doing is really unique and your approach to it is really powerful, but I'm going to start where we always do, which is a must have characteristic of a high performing team,

Speaker 3 (01:55):
Communication and culture. I think without the two of those, you're up without a paddle. I mean the one thing going beyond even my team, but into my office and the brokerage that I've been with for boy 13 years now in my parents for 24 years now, it's just the culture you have to where you work, you have to coming in, you have to the people that you associate yourselves with locally or nationally of course, but I think those two things

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Give another go at culture. I think it's one of those words, it comes up on the show a lot more than I maybe even expected. I have always known that culture is really key to any successful organization, but I think a lot of people don't understand it. It's a little bit difficult to get your hands on, it's hard to measure, it's hard to put, I mean you can do some internal surveys and things and get feedback, but how do you think about culture and what are some of its components?

Speaker 3 (02:47):
Well, I mean it goes back to, I forget what book it's from or who said it, but you are who you associate yourselves with or who you spend your time with and that's true obviously with your personal relationships but also with work. So again, if you're coming into the office and you have your meetings and such, whether it's team or brokerage and you just don't jive with the people, you don't value what everyone else is saying. If I like being around where I'm not at the number one in the office, I like having someone to strive to and someone to imitate or emulate would be the word. Again, it is hard to quantify, but I just think you have to be with your people Again, I don't really know how else to phrase that when, but giving back, spending time outside the office together I think is very important.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
This is one of the things I actually read from, and I'm going to butcher the name of the book, it'll come back to me, but one of the things was to take a relationship from acquaintance or surface level, whether it's friendships or clients building trust with you have to spend seven hours of time across 11 interactions in four locations. As soon as you cross that threshold, that's when they become friends or become trustworthy and such. I forget the book, it's from dog Donna. Anyways, but that rings true whether again with clients or with associates and I think it's a very, very crucial metric to follow.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
That book is one that I discussed with Preston Guyton on this show. I also can't remember the name of it, but it's based on some really,

Speaker 3 (04:25):
It's on my bookcase. I've got, oh my gosh. It'll come to me. It'll come to me.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah. Okay. Talk a little bit about, I mean you already mentioned your parents and your operating inside a brokerage that you all feel really good about. Talk about your own journey into real estate over the past dozen plus years.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
Sure. I mean, so I grew up around it. So my folks had both gotten licensed in 96 and 97. Dad came from Boeing, mom came from a traveling garment salesman and they both joined together. They were with a large franchise at the time and then migrated over to our current brokerage, which is first team real estate here in Orange County. I grew up, so I was 10 at the time and I grew up around it and jokingly told them I would never get into real estate because you work too hard, you work nights, work weekends, you're never off. I would farm and pass out flyers on my roller blades when I was 11 and 12 years old for Pokemon and Magic Cards. I grew up around it. I got out of high school, I went to City College. I was in bands. I'm a drummer musician.

Speaker 3 (05:31):
I went that route, tried to go the rockstar route and got close but not quite, and finally was in music retail, kind of living that life and then finally just wasn't paying the bills. And I'm like, why? I don't want to go back to school. Nothing really excites me about that. What can I do? Oh my goodness, what the heck? Six months and I could be a licensed realtor and my parents have a heart attack. So I did, and here I am 14, 13 years later, but I will say it, you didn't flip a switch and became successful. It took me several years. I was part-time for a year to kind of pay the bills and then dove in head first, but to really get my feet wet and feel confident and comfortable, it was a solid five or six years. It was not a quick journey to success, if you want to put it that way. But I mean ever since we started the team structure beyond my parents and I, we all kind of operated as one cohesive unit versus you do this, I'll do that. We were all appointments together, we would farm together, we would go to the meetings. It was all the same thing. So the team structure started more in 20 19, 20 20, and it's morphed back and forth to present day. It's still my parents and I, we have three agents that work with us and then we have two support staff.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
Now talk about some of those ebbs and flows. What was the motivation in 2019 and what were some of the iterations and what drove that? Because where you are is where a lot of people were talking with are and they're wondering what's next? Where do I go? Is what I'm doing right now enough? Should I be bigger? What are the challenges? So I feel like over the past five years from the dawn of it at 2019, and let's do it this way, whatever those iterations were you mentioned, I'd love for you to share as much of that as you can

Speaker 3 (07:33):
And it's going to be contrary to what a lot of the larger teams you've talked to with and that might be a good thing. We're super small and so we were always a family team like I had mentioned, and really the impetus to kind of get that first buyer's agent was just too many leads in our database that weren't getting touched, weren't getting called and followed up with time constraint, lack of desire for any of us and whatever it might've been, I forget it was really just the size of the database. It was getting too big to handle, but I went about it, not really in the best way, just kind of grabbed the first person that would listen to me and this was in 2019 and fizzled after a few months and then we grabbed someone else and fizzled after a few months and grab someone else.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
And I just didn't quite grasp the, and I'm not a recruiter, it's not what I want to be. So it was a different mentality. And so I really thought this all through again and kind of figured it had to match the culture. It wasn't just a warm body. It had to be someone that had the work ethic, had the communication style, had the culture fit. And so we did got someone really, really good back in 2022 and she left after about a year. And that hurt because we had one agent and that was it. But ever since we have slowly brought on a few more, we stopped the recruiting process and then went into let's get a really good ISA that can kind of be that machine in the back end, just making sure one's getting hit. We brought on, had some struggles on the VA side of things, very happy now, but that was another process that was a big learning experience and I'm so thankful for a lot of the community in FBA and some of my dear friends now, Elena Key and Shay Heron and Jeff McGonigal. I mean some of those people have been really instrumental in helping me get the structure around the team versus just again, warm bodies

Speaker 1 (09:39):
In general. What is your balance, would you say of deal generation? Is it past clients referral sphere of influence or is it a 50 50 with online lead gen? How do you characterize that piece of it?

Speaker 3 (09:54):
Yeah, so great question. Again, probably contrary to a lot because not a Zillow flex and we generate a ton of online leads, that is not a primary source of our business as much as I'd like to increase it, that's always a struggle. But no, I mean, so I do kind of separate out the, I call it the core team, my parents and I and then our team, team, I got to find a better name for that, but core team, so the three of us, honestly past clients, geographic farm and sphere, and then referrals therein bought far and away those three together is like 85% of our business. On the team side of things, it would be a mix of open house, their own sphere and online. We're on the core side of it. I mean we're still super old school. We're the knocking doors ourselves, we're dropping flyers ourselves, mailing ourselves. I mean that's what we do. And so I grew up farming once a week for when I'm 37, so now 27 years of farming, same neighborhoods over and over and over.

Speaker 1 (10:58):
You said contrary a couple of times. I think there are going to be a lot of people that are find this very refreshing like, oh, well that's what I do and I can really relate to that. Why do you all, and then we'll get into some tech stuff. I promise. For folks that are expecting a tech temper episode, this layers right in though sincerely it does. As someone who understands tech, we're going to talk about all the different CRMs you've been through and kind of what some of that motivation is and what you learned through that process, what some of the core pillars of a healthy tech stack is for a small but productive real estate team.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
Before we get there, I want to know in light of your passion and interest in developing or developed expertise in real estate tech and making it work together for your business, why do you still do old school stuff that's manual and direct and difficult to, I mean, we hire VAs to organize things or to maybe serve as ISAs, make some phone calls, lineup appointments. We don't hire VAs, I don't think, to go door knocking for us. So you're doing stuff that can't be leveraged out or hired out or it is just the good old fashioned, sincere, direct, connecting, communicating, building, relationships work, but it's a commitment. So I just, I feel like I know what the answer is kind of, but I want to hear you talk about it so that other folks can relate.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
Number one, it was how I was trained, how I was brought up. That's the first answer. The second answer is it works. And I guess the longer version of that is all of the technology that I've brought on or we've brought on and the industry in general has brought on my perspective is that all of these tools should help increase efficiency, it should help be more productive, but it shouldn't replace us. That's why I am pretty opposed. Again, contrary here, pretty opposed to the AI phone calling. You can't outsource yourself. You can outsource auto texting. I got no problem with that, but you can't outsource yourself. So at the end of the day, all of this technology and all of the things that we're doing, it's still a relationship business. It's the first person on a cold lead to build a connection and you can't do that without you involved.

Speaker 3 (13:27):
And we've committed so much time and so many resources to geographic farming to where now we utilize technology and we'll get to this on remarketing, on call 'em smart mailers where we can kind of track who's doing what with the mailers. But when you get that phone call and it's the come list me because you've talked to them for 17 years, they've gotten a pumpkin pie every year for 17 years, and they do your garage sales and they enter your contests and you see them every single week mowing the lawn and you're walking by and they're in the garage and you're walking by, that builds trust. And real estate's always been a long game. I mean, online leads are a long game, so it's just a different version of it. But again, you have to be in the communities that you want to service and you can't do that without being there. Is my opinion on that.

Speaker 1 (14:17):
Really good. I'm so glad I asked you. I unwittingly asked for the answer that I was going to ask in a different way very shortly. So you really brought that forward and essentially again, just going back to the top of that for everyone in summary, play to your strengths and do what works. And for you all, it involves a lot of being out there in person. Talk about your, I mean you're actively consulting other folks around their technology. Talk about your passion. How did it emerge? Some people have a knack for it. Some people, some people are like, just tell me what I should use. Tell me how I should use it. Tell me why I should use it. I'll decide whether it makes sense and then I'll start paying for it and I'm going to learn what I need to learn and be off and running. I feel like you're one of those people who really has a passion for it and wants to understand it at a deeper level. You want to know about the new features before the new features are released. When did you become aware that this was a strength and a passion of yours, or did the strength develop because of your passion?

Speaker 3 (15:22):
Oh, that's an interesting way to put that. Organically, I guess I would say on both of those things, the passion and the real kind of figuring out this knack, it was honestly probably two and a half years ago, it wasn't that long ago, I was the shiny object guy forever. You go to a trade show and then boom, you sign up for four new things, you go, you get an email from some cold outreach on think boom, we'll demo. And I put a pretty hard stop to that when I kind of took over the reins on the marketing and the finances of the team, and it was just organic. And the epiphany that I had really was utilizing follow-up Boss as the nucleus of everything that we do and figuring that as well as it integrates with anything you want, whether it's organic, natively, Zapier, custom, whatever you want, you can integrate with anyone.

Speaker 3 (16:20):
And so that was the start of it. And then it was, look, all of these other tools and some of the integration partners and even other CRMs that are out there, they're trying to fit everything into their little box, and it just wasn't cutting it for me. I really wanted to, the only way to make sure that I had the best of the main pieces that I wanted to focus on was to find partners that specialized in the one niche versus this one platform that does CRM, website, lead gen, remarketing, direct mail and transaction management, all these things. It can't be the best because it's not possible because you're spreading r and d across too many different avenues and it just wasn't working. I kept running into, oh, this is just not what I want. Oh, this is not, that's really what happened. And I had a epiphany or light bulb awakening, whatever you want to call it about, yeah, about summer of two years ago, to be honest. And that's when I really started to think about this a little bit differently. Okay, well, what if I got rid of X, Y and Z or X for that matter? What could I replace it with and how would that look? What would it do for the team and for me? How hard would it be to adopt different tools versus one solution? It's been great. It's been really great.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
That's good. What you made me think about there is where am I going to get the better pizza at Wood-fired Pizza Shop or at Chase's, pizzas, burritos, burgers, and more?

Speaker 3 (17:56):
Sure, a hundred percent. It's the same concept. I mean, if you're in a box, you're stuck with what that box does and where that box leads you to. So yeah, I mean, that's the short version for sure.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
Yeah,

Speaker 3 (18:09):
Same exact thing.

Speaker 1 (18:11):
So you've written an ebook. Part of the subtitle is Five Pillars and the book is about real estate technology. I'd love for you to walk through those five pillars, and when I think about a tech stack, I think, okay, life cycle of the customer from initial touchpoint to repeat referral, that whole relationship period. Hopefully that's over decades of time. How are we doing all the core stages of those things? What part of it should we still be doing? What part should we hire to another human being to do, and what part can we make efficient or better or faster? So in walking through these five pillars for us, I'd love for you to share, are there any gaps? Do these pillars cover that? It's a really big range, but essentially that's where we're looking to figure out how to do our operation more effectively and technology can be a solution along those stages. So really, really big question, but I just wanted to give you something big to step into and we'll kind of get into the detail after that

Speaker 3 (19:12):
A hundred percent. Yeah, so I mean the five that I kind of put together was just a way because I was having these conversations so many different times and I wanted to way to condense it into, Hey, let's talk. But this kind of crystallizes it in a sense, but essentially it's the core pillars that I've felt that you have to have. There are ancillary tech tools that we have all over the place, but the main ones are what I found to be crucial. So obviously as your CRM and the answer is obviously Follow Up Boss. So that's the core and everything else that we do has to integrate with follow up Boss, number one. And number two, the clever, not clever, but unique aspect when we bring on technology is it has to have a benefit to the consumer that we can leverage either in conversations at the listing table, at the buyer consult table, what can we say about what we're investing in that helps them, the end user that's working with us. So the other pillars essentially become idx, a website, lead generation slash remarketing. And then the bonus one really was direct mail and a tool around direct mail that allows us to again, leverage technology with what we're sending out. And then we'll get into this obviously, but the tools that we use specifically IDX and Nurture would be RealScout, lead Gen Remarketing is all done with Street Text. Our website is done through Agent Fire, and then we use Mailbox Power for all of most of our direct mail and trackable items that we send.

Speaker 1 (20:51):
One thing I don't want anyone to miss is your filter for selecting technology, including this little detail that when you think about it upfront, is going to pay many more dividends down the road, which is how does this benefit the consumer and how do we communicate that to the consumer? So at some level, we can all say, well, yeah, obviously at the same time for you to articulate it explicitly is a thing. When did you become aware that that was not just an opportunity, but kind of a core criteria for deciding what to implement or even what to choose?

Speaker 3 (21:32):
Yeah. Well, I'm going to, boy, I don't know. I think it just goes back to how I was brought up either in the business or with my parents, obviously personally and in their business, but just the client first. Everything is client first. Not to say this is contrarian not, but I mean the client comes first in all of this. If all of the tools that we bring on don't either generate us more business or allow us to provide a higher level of service to said client, what are we doing? So there has to be the benefit, and it's not even just a sales pitch. There has to be a tactical task that whatever the word is, benefit that we can talk about as to why we are the solution that they should be hiring and not our competitors. We're still in California. The smallest advantage is going to make us stand out amongst the tens of thousands of agents that we're competing against every single day.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
Yeah, very fair. Just because you've brought some folks into the team, what does the process look like for you to lay this landscape out for them and welcome into the tech stack that you have, and I'm asking on behalf of anyone who's especially a small or an early stage, if they want to get really big team leader who is actively recruiting and or onboarding people into the organization, any tips you'd share on welcoming people into a tech stack where they may not be familiar with the tools and which of these components would a new agent to a team never even look at or touch?

Speaker 3 (23:08):
Oh, for sure. Okay. So the only tools that I mentioned that agents would really need to get a deep understanding of would be follow a boss and a real scout. I mean, street Techs, all the lead gen remarketing that we do, I do, or we have our VA assisting with Mailbox power is a hundred percent. Me and our VA and oh agent fire agents. Agents know how to get in there for their open house form, their lead generation forms when they're again at an open house, but everything else is not done by them at all. So follow Boss, super simple because that's how the program was built. And again, this is not what you're going to hear with the bigger teams, and this is a fault of mine, but it's very hands-on, right? I don't have systems built out for a 90 day bring on onboarding program because we're just too small for that and I don't really have aspirations to bring on 20 agents. So it is pretty hands-on, and again, maybe it's a fault. I like it. I just am very involved in everything. But follow up bosses support's great real scout is very simple. Both tools are very simple to use, which is helpful. It's just a slight difference from what they're used to, if anything.

Speaker 1 (24:22):
Very good. Okay. And is, I am not asking you to talk about why you love Follow-up boss, but one of the things that I think is really important about your experience in real estate tech as a user and as someone who's trying to improve the client experience and generate more opportunities through this technology that you're investing in, is that you have been inside and actively used over half a dozen CRMs in the too many dozen years you've been in the business, and I would just love to know what you learned through that journey. How did you select them? At a certain point, you're migrating an increasingly larger database from one to the next. I think that's super intimidating for people. So I mean, there's a lot here I know, but talk a little bit about the motivation from one to another and what the process is migrating your database and any of the custom stuff that you did in one. As you're moving to the other, you've been on a unique journey and I would love for people to learn from your experience.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
So again, this goes back to the shiny object syndrome. That was really the impetus to all these changes and it is so freaking painful. It is so painful because every time the systems don't want you to leave. We just changed from T-Mobile to Verizon yesterday. I mean, they don't want you to move. They make it hard. So I mean, boy, since 2012, I'll run through the list. We went top producer, a tool called MRT or my Real Estate Tools, back to top producer to contractually, to revol to KV core, briefly into Bty, briefly, and then into follow. But that's eight, eight in, and this is through 2019, so that's eight and seven or eight years, seven years. Brutal. Just brutal. And the problem is every time you change, you do lose data or it doesn't import properly because the export is not, they don't want you leaving, so they make it difficult.

Speaker 3 (26:28):
So boy, really tough, but every time we moved it was that, oh man, this one does one thing. It does this one X thing that we can bring on, and then, oh my gosh, well this one can do X, Y, Z and six more things, and now we're into a box and then stuck in that box I talked about. So the reason we got to follow a boss was really, I got all lured into the open ecosystem, but that's also, I mean, again, the community is great, the tool is great. It's always new features and always innovating, but the reason that we haven't left, I guess in simple terms is there can't be a shiny object because whatever that shiny object would be, I can bring into Follow Boss, and I hadn't thought about that that way before, but it makes sense, right? Because if X, Y, ZCRM all of a sudden, boom, they can do this one thing.

Speaker 3 (27:23):
Well, guess what? I can find someone that can do it too and bring it in. As far as custom stuff, I've not really gone down the outside agency building tools, which I know you can do with guys like Bar Agency and those, which they do fantastic work. Thankfully I've not needed to because it gets very expensive. So we've done some Zapier integrations, but then kind of more customized follow-up boss itself to work for us with custom fields, stages, lead flow, all the things that hopefully a lot of folks know about or are open to learning about. But yeah, not a ton of fully custom things.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
Cool. You've mentioned you have in this conversation mentioned remarketing a couple of times. I'd love for you to share with people that may not be familiar. What are we talking about? Why does it matter and what are a few keys to doing it well,

Speaker 3 (28:22):
So retargeting in my understanding, and the way I understand it would be again, and how I pitch it to sellers too, is you're on Amazon, you go look on nordstrom.com, you look at a pair of shoes, you go to Facebook and the first thing you see is that pair of shoes from Nordstrom. That's essentially what it is in a very simple to understand nutshell, and we're doing that with property and with marketing. So whether it's a listing that we're going to remarket to our existing database, it's the only way to really demographically target because you're telling Facebook or Google if you're using Google Ads, telling them who to put the content in front of versus Facebook. Now with Fair Housing, it's a 15 mile radius and that's pretty much it, and you hope for the best. So that's essentially what it is. The reason why I really, really like what Streett text is doing with the remarketing stuff is a couple reasons.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
Number one, the integration of all ABOs is phenomenal to where if your database is big enough, you can subset audiences by tag and stage customize who sees what based on objections, based on zip codes and prices and all these things you can do. That's fantastic. They have a ton of templates that they've proven over the years and years of doing this. You can customize everything with video content all day long. But the one really, really cool thing that I like, and this is part of how we're taking our farming areas that we've serviced for 27 years now into the tech realm, is now we're again following our existing database into Facebook and apps and games and stuff, but with street text, it's called ad bundles. So what they're doing is rather than spending 10 ads and you're at two bucks a day, that's 20 bucks a day on 10 different ads, and it gets very expensive pretty quick, what they're doing is allowing you to put those said 10 ads into what's called an ad bundle, and then rotate the ads daily, weekly, monthly to alleviate what's called ad fatigue.

Speaker 3 (30:29):
It's the same reason, the same concept when you're watching a football game. Progressive Insurance is the example I always give, and I tell consumers this at the listing table, is you have flow, you have becoming your parents, you have the bigger Mayfield commercials, and you have, there's one more campaign they have, but every commercial break, it's a different campaign. It's the same product, but that's what we're doing. So again, today you're going to see the ad that says 10 tips for first time home buyers. Tomorrow it's going to be seven ways to get the best rate on your pre-approval, and then the next day is going to be whatever, and then every week they see the same ads over and over, but it's a different ad every single day. It saves your budget, but then also provides fresh content for the consumer on a repeating basis.

Speaker 1 (31:13):
Direct mail. When do you use it? When don't you, I mean, obviously I would just assume that most people watching or listening would understand that direct mail integrates with your CRM, it has for years where this is true, this is true, this is false, and this number is between this range. Send them this thing maybe even as soon as that thing fits or those criteria fit. But for you, with what type of stage of relationship, do you like direct mail? Do you have a little bit of it throughout the whole thing to compliment the digital? When did you get started with direct mail and what do you love about it? When do you use it?

Speaker 3 (31:54):
We use it all the time for different things. So we have a few different avenues. So we have EDDM, which is the cheapest blast carrier routes essentially. So we have a neighborhood, and again, the problem with it though is you're reliant on literally the postal service walking routes. So the problem is only one of our farm areas really fits into one of those molds, otherwise you're paying for these things. So we do that once a month to about a thousand houses every single month. We have for probably 10 years now. Then we have a bulk mail list, which is again, past clients sphere that gets something every two months, and we have a custom magazine created that we kind of utilize for this mailing list, but that's every two months, and that's again, relevant content for a broad strokes of people. When we talk about spearfishing and targeted marketing, we're using a lot more to do with the radius mailers around listing.

Speaker 3 (32:56):
So when we can take a new listing, we'll do probably 300 to 500 radius and then about 200 or so into our top 200 clients, if you will, and those, that's a mix of seller leads, past clients fee referral partners, et cetera, as kind of proof of production. But when we do those, I've chosen to go that route versus EDDM because I would rather send out fewer pieces, but then get insight into who's doing what. So again, now talking about passthrough benefit to the client, Mr. Seller, when we send out these postcards, you have agents that are going to send out 2000 of 'em, and that's a decent idea. What we're going to do is we're going to send about 750, but when they scan the QR codes to look at your home, I know exactly who it is and when they scanned it and how many times.

Speaker 3 (33:50):
Then I can go call 'em, knock on the door, email 'em, text them, whatever it is to be proactive into getting your house in front of them and find out who they might know is looking to buy or sell a house. So that's the different version of it, and I really, really love it because it just works every single time, both on the promise to the seller, but also following through and doing it. And yeah, it is worked out really well. And then of course, we will do mail merges for, I have a buyer letters as we need to. We can send brownies and cookies and engraved wine glasses to past clients as a thank you or whatever it might be. So it's just one of those things that we have in our back pocket that we use for listing marketing a lot of times.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
Love it. The QR code piece that you offered there, I mean, this is the critical component of integrating into your CRM. Are you at the point where you're cross-referencing that with their digital activity as well? I should. Is that kind of overkill? Are you sometimes calling and visiting based on their digital activity and sometimes calling and visiting based on interaction with the postcard?

Speaker 3 (34:56):
Yeah, so actually I did have Justin Benson help with this one integration. It was a Zapier thing, but it was beyond my pay grades, so I did pull in some help on this one, but essentially what I'm doing is sending two mailbox power, the contact list that I want to send to, if it's Radius, I'll do it a different way, but through Follow-Up Boss for the past clients and targeted lists, when they scan it, it's going to put it back in their record and follow-up boss, and then I'll get a text saying, Susie Smith scan the one 50 Main Street postcard. When I click into it, then I'll see all the activity and oh, geez, they've looked at their home value 14 times in the last six months. They're looking at three or four houses a week and they're scanning what's my home worth or just listed postcard. These are all indicators of intent. And so then of course, then it's the phone call, the, oh, it happened to be in the neighborhood, knock on the door, or next time I'm farming, right? Maybe I'm not going to drop anyone knock at this time. Maybe I'll yell in the house if the front door's open and just be in front and be present where they're at.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
So love how all of these tools allow us to prioritize people based on their own real behavior. Their hand raises where you can't see their hand, but you can see all of their activity, and that's the goal of all of this technology. I mean, just going back to the top and the way you came into the business and your philosophy and approach, this just makes it more efficient to talk to the right people at the right time.

Speaker 3 (36:21):
Well, right, and this is not a scripting podcast, but I mean you're not calling him to say, Hey, Susie, to scan my postcard. Do you want to buy the house? No. Hey, Susie, it's Chase. Hope you've been Well, hey, we sent out some information about a listing of ours. You want to know if you had anyone that might be interested in buying it? Oh yeah, I saw that one. They scanned it, but they don't know that, so don't freak 'em out because they're never going to scan it again.

Speaker 1 (36:45):
It's so funny. I spent years teaching and of course using video email and video messaging, and that was something that I would hear back and also teach all of the time is like when you get that alert that says they just watched 92% of your video, that's when you follow up and reach 'em and you don't say, Hey, I saw you watch 92% of my video. How did you enjoy that? Why didn't you watch the last

Speaker 3 (37:10):
Date?

Speaker 1 (37:11):
Yeah, I sent you that video, wanted to make sure you had a chance to take a look at it. I thought it'd be really useful for you. I was just thinking about you. Okay. One of the pillars that we have not talked about yet specifically is website. When someone is looking at their website provider or considering a new one, in your experience, what are some must have things to look for and what are some nice to have, but it's not critical.

Speaker 3 (37:40):
Front facing IDX is not critical. I'll be honest with you on that. You know what? I think

Speaker 1 (37:47):
Just to be clear, why would you,

Speaker 3 (37:50):
No one's coming to your site to look at property, period. It is just not going to happen. And unless you're spending tens and I mean tens of thousands of dollars on SEO and this and that, which some are the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of agents are not. So again, maybe one or two people, but that's not a deal breaker. You need somewhere because everyone's going to Google where you are and who you are and what you do, so you have to have somewhere for them to land on that provides credibility and value to them before they call you. And we've had several listing appointments called off a phone call that found us online or a form on our site that comes in, and they saw us through the community page on Facebook for our city, and then they Googled us, they found our website and they were impressed, but you have to have somewhere for them to go.

Speaker 3 (38:41):
It's got to be pretty, it can't break the bank. But then the interesting version of this is there are so many things that Agent Fire has brought to the table that I didn't know I didn't have or I didn't know that I needed. I mean, it's phenomenal. The one that comes to mind, and I'll be really simple on this, are customizable and URL based calls to action. And the simplest way for me to explain this is when we send out our email notification for a new listing, we're going to subset it down to a thousand people that might like this house. Well, I can put a customized video message on just the URL that's used for that email but not, or the traffic that comes from Facebook. And that video then says, Hey, Ethan, it's Chase. What the winning team, thanks so much for clicking on the email to look at this property. The one thing you're not going to know about it from the website is that X, Y, Z, right? We've had several people every time, how did you do that? Those kinds of things.

Speaker 3 (39:56):
You do need to have an ongoing nurture. I'm kind of switching now from site into IDX because they do go hand in hand or site into nurture, if you want to call it that. Real scout is just the best in the business in my opinion. You have to be able to keep property in front of them. I don't care. And this is a farming strategy too. I don't care how clever your piece is, how clever your content is, and you're just sold postcard and how engaging your prop 60 90, your 10 31 exchange flyer is the number one piece that's going to get the phone to ring every single time is property. No matter how many times we try to reinvent this wheel, property gets the phone to ring. So whether it's a farming piece or drippy mail constantly with property, or it's a just listed property on Facebook or whatever it is, you've got to keep property in front of them. And RealScout is the fastest, best integration, too many tools to mention on what it does beyond the other IDX portals and even the m ls for that matter. But those two do go hand in hand, and I've got them very well integrated together.

Speaker 1 (41:06):
Everyone's got some of this stuff in place and they're often wondering, is it the right stuff? Is it working the right way? What more could I add alongside it? These kinds of things. So I just wanted to open up that conversation because when I listen to podcasts, I'm not always listening for what is the exact right thing to do? Am I thinking about it the right way? How is this person thinking about it? Oh, it's these kinds of things. Essentially, your version of it has everything I never knew I always wanted is my fun way of seeing what you said about some of those features of agent

Speaker 3 (41:45):
Finance. But there's so many use cases to make these tools work for you. And I mean on the whole IDX thing, right? On a client facing thing, you're at an open house and you overhear them talking about how their kids in daycare at XY, Z Street, and they've got to be near target for whatever the reason is. Well, those are things that Real Scout has access to. The MLS does not, nor does Redfin and Trulia and all the other ones. So hey, just overheard you talking about how important it's to be near your daycare and you're always at Target and Starbucks. Well, let's get you on a tool that I have and I invest in. I pay for my clients on their behalf to showcase properties that are within X distance from your daycare and show you commute times, but also highlight properties that are near Starbucks and near Costco and near Whole Foods. So that way when you're looking at properties online, you're contextualizing everything that you're seeing. Would that be okay with you? Great. What's your name and number? It just leads right into it, and that's a benefit for them

Speaker 1 (42:46):
And really nicely done in demonstrating the idea that we discussed maybe 15, 20 minutes ago. That was really well done as people reach out to you and like, Hey, chase, so-and-so told me I should reach out to you got this question. What are some common themes when people are reaching out to you with just big bucket here, tech questions, what are some of the common themes that you're running into? I just want to characterize for people like common themes and problems that people have in some of the ways that you think about those things.

Speaker 3 (43:19):
Boy, that's an interesting question. I get a lot of, I keep hearing about X tool and your name keeps coming up. What's so special about it? And the nice thing is I give them real world examples of how we're using it in the business because the one thing we didn't talk about on the team structure is I'm very much in production. I am not out of production. I'm very much in the front lines. I am not outsourcing. I am working less buyers and working mostly listings, but again, I'm at every appointment, every meeting. So I do have real world experience on all this stuff. So yeah, I've heard about X, Y, Z, why is it so special? Or it's having trouble with what I have right now, what would you recommend I do to fix this problem? And if they just come cold to me and say, Hey, I want to talk about this, the first question I'll ask is, well, why do you want to leave the company you're already with?

Speaker 3 (44:14):
What is caused? Because change is hard. And as much as I'd love to see them adopt my system, I just know they work. It's still hard to change. So is it really in your best interest to make this move? And if you do, will you benefit from what it gives you? But a lot of solo agents, of course, small teams, some large teams too, I love sharing it because it works so well and I've gone through so many years of it not working. So now that it does, I love chatting about it and I am a tinkerer, don't give me the help articles, just give me a login and the password and I'll figure it out. I like doing all this stuff, all this stuff myself.

Speaker 1 (44:58):
One of the things I became sensitive to about, specifically for agents, about a dozen years ago, I actually started selling and serving into the real estate community about the same time that you entered it properly or in earnest yourself. And one of the things I became sensitive to right away is that a solo agent needs to be so good at so many different things and be responsible for it, either directly doing it or being the GC on that work, no matter how they're sourcing the solution.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
And a lot of people don't have your natural interest and passion for tinkering, experimenting, is this better? Is this not better? And so I really appreciate you sharing all this with me. And of course, everyone who watches and listens, I'm going to share with people or you are going to share with people ways that they can reach out to you and connect with you. But before we do that, I would love to ask you three pairs of closing questions. And the first is, what is your very favorite team to root for besides your own real estate team, or what is the best team you've ever been a member of?

Speaker 3 (46:04):
So I bleed red and gold, so I am a niner faithful through and through, so you're not going to get any other answer out of me than that. All the other sports and everything else is secondary. So it was a very painful early part of 2024 for me. So I'm getting back, getting ready for this year.

Speaker 1 (46:24):
Yeah, it's still a solid roster and I like

Speaker 3 (46:27):
Good roster

Speaker 1 (46:29):
And as a Lions fan, I'm just going to kind one up the pain of that because that second half of that,

Speaker 3 (46:39):
The one line, the one line I always love, I have the radio host I listen to on Sirius, Adam Schein, and every time he talks about the lions, he always says rebuilding since 1957.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
Exactly.

Speaker 3 (46:53):
Yeah,

Speaker 1 (46:53):
It's rough and exciting and fun anyway. What is one of your most frivolous purchases, or what's a cheapskate habit you've held onto Probably too long.

Speaker 3 (47:03):
I buy too many frivolous things to even mention, but the thing is, are

Speaker 1 (47:08):
There categories of these things?

Speaker 3 (47:09):
Oh boy, no, it's just crap. It's all crap.

Speaker 1 (47:12):
Okay,

Speaker 3 (47:13):
It's all crap. You don't need cheapskate. Habit is I'll just research and research and research to save $2 off of one thing. And my wife's been buying Amazon overnight stuff, so four in the morning the package drops off and I'm like, yeah, if we waited four days, we could have saved a dollar 75, but I'm not frugal because I spend all the money, which is a really bad habit, but I saved a dollar or two here and there. So I guess that's the long answer.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
Yeah, one of the fun things, I mean, the question of course was originally just meant to be a little bit playful and learn a little bit more about somebody, but I've really spent a lot of time thinking about this dynamic that you just described. Is I overwork on time and attention to save a little bit over here, but I don't think twice over here. What are those lines where those categories, how did these rules even come to me in my head anyway? When you are investing time in learning, growing and developing, what are you doing? Or when you're investing time in resting, relaxing and recharging, what are you doing?

Speaker 3 (48:21):
Latter half just time with friends and family. First half is just a mix of I am not reading as much as I should be, and I've literally am the one that buys every book that's mentioned anywhere. Then they just pile up. They don't have time to read

Speaker 1 (48:37):
My category of I'll drop 22 bucks, like someone's recommendation. I don't even know them that well.

Speaker 3 (48:45):
You know what? And I enjoy reading, but I just don't have, and I don't like audio books because I like listening to my sports talk. But secondly, I like the tactical highlighting and underlining and bookmarking pages, so I don't do audio books, but then the other version is just reading about stuff online or I learn by doing. So again, like I mentioned earlier, give me a login and the password for whatever tool it is. Let me figure it out myself and let me learn about it myself because the best way I can learn. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:19):
Yeah. I'm with you on books and audio books. I read a ton of books. I'm reading a little bit less now than I have historically, and I struggle with audio books because it's just the way that I listen. I tend to listen to podcasts instead because it's 30 minutes to an hour and a half, whereas a book is me like 18 hours. So by the time I get done with it, I have no idea what happened three or four or five weeks ago when I first started. Whereas I'll sit down and read a book cover to cover on an airplane.

Speaker 3 (49:48):
And the problem too with audio books in my opinion, is when you're listening to something you're not fully invested, how hard is it to sit there and just listen to something? You're going to always find something to do and tinker with. Then you're not focusing when you're reading, you literally can't do anything else. So I think it's much easier to lose focus on an audiobook and then you just don't retain the information.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
Yeah. I'm with you on that. Chase, if someone wants to connect with you, where do you send people?

Speaker 3 (50:13):
Sure. Well, my consulting site is consult with chase.com. That's super easy. If you want to see my real estate page and that side of the business, it's number four realestate help.com. And I mean, probably the easiest way and we can take it from there, but it's at Chase Whitney re, and yeah, love to connect and see how we can help each other out.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
Cool. No matter where you are watching or listening to this episode, there's a description down below. All those links are right there. Reach out to Chase, by the way. Great. URL for your consulting business.

Speaker 3 (50:47):
Oh, thank you.

Speaker 1 (50:49):
So straightforward. Now. I was thinking about that,

Speaker 3 (50:51):
That for a while and I was like, alright, it's too easy.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
Yeah. Cool. I appreciate you Chase. Thanks so much for doing this and have a great rest of your afternoon.

Speaker 3 (50:59):
Awesome. Thanks so much, Ethan. It was a pleasure.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
Thanks for checking out this episode of T Os. Get quick insights all the time by checking out real estate team Os on Instagram and on TikTok.