Podcast #65: The Upstream Referral Model Featuring Pro Insight CEO Justin Stoddart

hey guys Jim Remy here with e real estate coach I have got my good friend Justin Stoddard with us today Justin is an absolute rock star in the real estate industry I've known him for years and years and years I've been on his podcast he's been on nine I think this is the second time maybe his third time on this podcast but he's got such a great message uh for agents that really want to take their business to the next level so Justin welcome back hey thanks Jim I I love every time I get a chance to spend time with you I'm like man why do I do not why do I not do that more often love that guy awes so the feelings very mutual thank you we both are in the same kind of uh part of the universe we're both up here in uh uh the western states up in Oregon here so um justtin just so the audience that has hasn't heard you yet and I know everybody will but just um kind of fill us in on your background a little bit yeah you bet so early 2000s I was a high-end home builder I'd actually um right kind of in the midst of college I had the opportunity to flip a couple of homes and I thought boy this real estate game is pretty interesting my dad had been a real estate agent my mom my stepmom had been a real estate or was a real estate agent and I thought boy there's power in this real estate game and uh I went off to to finish college actually changed my degree at that point to construction management went to work for a high-end home builder and I began to really uh see the power of of of real estate and and really for me I didn't necessarily love building homes but I love the client interaction I love seeing people kind of light up and uh my the gentleman who I was working for he actually uh began to merge his company with a bigger development company and and they went from building luxury Custom Homes um to building you know we we slated to build almost 800 homes a year so became very much a production Builder they had given me the assignment to take over the signature Division and um I was running that I realized like this is a good opportunity for me to to to go out on my own so I did I left started my own company and was building Custom Homes into that process um I won't go too too far into in fact I'll I'll come back to that story let me just give you kind of a high level but while I was a high-end home builder I learned a really important lesson about about um generating referrals that I'm sure we'll spend some time on um but uh I then after the building industry did what it did I realized my passion wasn't Building Homes it was really U building businesses it wasn't developing land it was it was developing people and that really became my my passion is developing people helping them build their business um was in the real estate industry as an adviser through the title industry for about seven years that process I started to think big a real estate podcast and I began to teach the same principles that I had learned as a homebuilder and it started to work and I had a lot of agents that were really interested in creating great traction from what I was teaching so I decided at that point to leave uh that industry and and start my own coaching company um and actually authored a book in the process the Upstream model um and then uh was invited to partner with with a incredible man who was creating a platform called Pro Insight um he invited me to lead that company and and kind of co-found it with him and so um that's where most my focus is at now is on building Pro Insight which which kind of helps people take the principles of my book and put them into action um more easily should say so it really interesting I I love the Upstream model I think it's a really interesting concept and I think a lot of Agents haven't grasped it we're always trained in this industry it's all about you know u b Toc like business to Consumer it's all about your sphere of influence but this takes it to another level so kind of walk us through for the agent that's never heard of the Upstream model what does it mean exactly yeah I love it um I'll I'll put it in terms of how I learned it again as a high-end home builder my sphere which I wanted to work by referral very much a relational guy but my sphere was 25 like I was and they were not building million dollar homes nor were any of their friends right so I realized I need to find another way to generate new business keep in mind I just left this other company thinking like oh this is easy I know how to build a great home which I did what I didn't know how to do was fill the pipeline I assumed that part was easy this way well yeah I had to get creative and I started you know joining every networking group I could find how do I Network into these opportunities to build custom homes and and fill my Pipeline and the average kind of BNI chapter wasn't doing it right Chamber of Commerce wasn't really doing it and I'm like okay and then I I had this aha Jim I realized that there was a professional who was just Upstream from a construction project and that was an architectural designer um and I realized I didn't have to have a massive sphere personal spere order to even have to have a massive Professional Network I just needed to have a few of the right professional Partners who were positioned just before when a client would need me and by adding value to that professional it could open up the door to all the clients that I needed and U so that was the AHA that really became a pivot point for me in my career and uh that's what I then began to teach in the real estate industry and and what you know we help help agents do today so what's really interesting about what you're saying is that you know if you think about the real estate industry in general is that there are so many other industries that use this exact model with us as their Upstream position Point yeah so if you think about a title company if you think about a mortgage lender if you think about an insurance company Home Warranty company all those look at us as the Upstream model so they're consistently working uh to build relationships with us exactly and we don't there's for most agents there's no aha like you had they don't actually go oh I guess I should look what's the next Upstream from me right that's just a great Point you're making I think it's really interesting yeah it it's it really when agents kind of get their head around that it's like oh my goodness it doesn't have to be so hard and this really came for me personally you know what I didn't share when I was was opening is that you know first and foremost I'm I'm a I'm a dad you know husband and a father um that I've got six kids and now at the time when I was building homes I didn't but my wife and I both had aspired to have a bigger family and I realized that I could not as a high-end home builder spend all day managing subcontractors and in the evening hours be out trying to generate new business and be the kind of dad I wanted to be and I think many real estate agents run into that same thing it's like I can build a big business or I can be a good parent it's like one or the other yeah and uh we just had to find I had to find a more effective and efficient way to generate the kind of referrals that I wanted to work with and so it was kind of out of necessity of like how do I have both a successful business and a significant life you know the models that I you know that I was watching around that others were doing weren't was giving me one or the other and I I didn't I didn't want to settle for that so that's how that came to be and I think what's those who are attracted to this model are those who are very relational they don't want to just pay kind of a lead engine and chase people right um and I say that respectfully because I understand that All Leads are people right but I I I I think everybody does recognize there's a difference between a warm introduction and a cold submitt on a internet lead form it's a very different experience yeah yeah and that there's a lot more time to try and get people to trust you and to be loyal to you in the cold versus it comes from whether it be a friend let alone a professional that is already in business with them like that is so much easier to just take so much less time acquiring the new customer that number one your client experience can actually Elevate 100% yeah and you can also pick and choose more so right you still have to work hard this is not a Magic Bullet all of a sudden you have one partner you don't have to work anymore like but you can be a little more selective because what I've seen I've even been at I I used to put on top agent master minds and there'd be agents who were in a room where the combined sales volume in that room was close to a billion dollars a year sitting around the table and and one particular agent would get up in the middle of that to run out out of the room to take a Zillow call and it's like like literally stepping over dollars to pick up times and it's thought to myself if that's happening in this professional setting it's for sure happening at home right and I think there's many agents that are like that it's like I got to do what I got to do yeah unless maybe there's a better model right maybe there's a way that I can actually not have to play the chase game and also not have to rely upon my friends family and neighbors for business solely right we all we love the business from friends family neighbors those those those family outings get less fun when you know you've got to generate business from those people right if it's like hey they come to me and they want to do business with me I love it but when I feel like every social environment has to be me like out kind of hustling and listen for for business again we do what we got to do but if there's a way to where we can create some professional alliances that feed us and those be and and those those friendships and and and family relationships become icing on the cake as opposed to I need to pay my mortgage so some like someone in my you know someone in my network is gonna like refer me today right it's it's a different experience I think everybody everybody gets a better experience the client your family um you right um so I just think it's it's a model for people that are looking for for a little more balance and and that have um a desire to be a little more strategic right people that are coming from a financial adviser expect a certain level of professionalism and and so it kind of lends itself to people that that enjoy having kind of business level conversations as opposed to just being a friendly agent right well it's interesting what you're saying a couple things is uh you reminded me of one of my friends James curn amazing agent and in coach himself he said to me that he had a coach and he the coach had told him when's the last time a great measurement of performance as for him as a top eight level agent the coach asked him when's the last time you played Legos with your kids and I always stuck with me that our measure of success is all wrong A lot of times and our measure of success should be the relationships we have with our own family is the ultimate true test of success right and I just thought that was a really good U kind of way to think about but you also made me think of something else just in the last week I had this opportunity because my wife and I are redoing our Estate Planning and I said I don't know an estate planner who should I go to I went to my financial planner I said who do you recommend for the estate plan exactly what you're saying and I got that warm recommendation she came to our house met with us there's no interviewing we're not talking about her fee structure because it doesn't matter we're going to use her no matter what because we trust her right so there's no argument about commissions or what it's going to cost or anything else and the same thing happen with electrician I need an electrician high level commercial electrician had an engineer I knew he recommended me there's no more conversation we're using this together right exactly what you're saying when we need something really high level and I would re I would argue that a realtor is a really high level thing you're using once a few times in your life it's like a classic example when we need that high LEL referral right yeah yeah you know what what ends up happening is that you end up getting clients who will wait for you and and that term people don't like because it's like I'm never going to make anybody wait for me but what I mean by that is you can wait and to call them back till after the Mastermind is over or until after family dinner is over or even until tomorrow morning business hours right as opposed to if I don't answer they will go to another agent because there's zero relationship and zero loyalty right and that's just it's just two different worlds so they're willing to wait for you and they're willing to to pay for you like you said that when it comes from a recommended Source there's Trust there that whoever is recommending you is not going to you know refer somebody that's a total ripoff right that's going to gouge you so you can trust that you know it's it's kind of fair market like that you know as far as what they're charging and so it really puts to bed much of what I think we struggle with especially in a very you know drastically changing real estate market where people have to really uh more better justify what they're charging or at least be able to articulate it is that much of that will go away or be way less important because of The Source from which you come from right and the the ultimate you know challenge for agents is you don't want to become a commodity because if you're commodity you know it doesn't matter who you are they're just getting you're just interchangeable so this takes that away and it just allows you to become a category of one which is what you we're all aspiring to be so let's walk through nuts and bolts like what what would be the first step for an agent to say okay I love what you're saying like Okay give me give me a coaching nugget here what should I do to kind of start the ball rolling here yeah so I think on your very next transaction is ask your client do you have a financial advisor who you're working with right and sometimes that's a loose term so one way to even position that would be to say um uh do you have a financial adviser who you love working with who you would even like rate as a nine or a 10 okay um and if they say um no be like would you be open to meeting one right there's an opportunity for you to make an introduction now you might not have one yet so it's it's okay if you don't at least asking the question be like you could even respond to say I'm always looking for professionals who are nines or tens as soon as I find one who I think would be a good fit for you would you be open to an introduction right so so now you've given no commitment of timeline you've got a hustle and buy somebody you you've just said like it sounds like that's a gap in your team would you be open to meeting one once you know once I feel like I've got somebody who'd be a good fit for you now if they say yeah we love our financial advice yeah total of nine or 10 awesome would you do me a favor and make an introduction as you know U real estate is is bought and sold with with with money um and I'd love to get to know who your financial adviser is um just so that there's collaboration right now for some that makes some agents nervous because they're like what if the like financial advisor blows up the deal right there's got to be an abundant mentality here that like you're actually doing what's right for the client and that they're working with a financial adviser who who is similar right so but that that question right there when you get an introduction to a financial adviser and you reach out to that financial advisor it says hey it looks like we have some clients and I'm working with the Smiths and they said really good things about you in fact they said you were like a a 10 out of 10 um as a professional I love having a network of other people who who who strive to have that level of service um quick question for you are you open to grow in your business and if they say yeah we are great can I take you to lunch I'd like to learn how I can best bring you up you know assuming we a good fit I'd like to see how I could bring you up to to to Future clients and what an ideal client would look like okay so now you've kind of set the stage to have lunch and you're coming from contribution you're not coming to say here's a stack of my cards please refer me to your clients don't do that that won't work right but you're establishing this relationship with with somebody who's looking to grow and by the way if they say no I'm not looking to grow hey no problem um it looks like we might have some interaction at some point with the Smiths I at least wanted to introduce myself I consider myself to be more of an adviser almost a wealth adviser over their real estate portfolio than I do just just a common agent so if you have any questions at all happy to answer and would love to work to be sure the Smiths get exactly what they want that's in alignment with the plan that you know that you've created for them right there you've just elevated yourself above every other agent that that professional knows right yeah yeah and at that lunch now you're at that lunch and again you're you're asking questions about their process and you're really interviewing them to see if they're in alignment with your level of client experience right right and and then and then ask like likely if they're the right kind of professional they'll ask some questions in return and you could could even at that point say um I see some alignment between us um would you tell me at what point in my client's experience would be the most opportune time to bring you up like what what type of client are you ideally wanting to serve and and how might I be able to best introduce you to my clients because I feel like there's some good synergies here right now you've set the stage to create a referral partner in one conversation plus one lunch you've got a financial advisor that you've just stepped in front of every other relationship in real estate that they've known because of your expertise you've shown up now as an adviser like them and I'll tell you when I was authoring the book The Upstream model I interviewed dozens of financial advisors and I asked him the question I said how many um opportunities during an average year are you with clients and you learn that they're going to buy or sell a property and the answer was almost the same amongst all about 18 right a little more than one every month and and then I asked followup question how many of those do you refer to an agent and the answer was alarming alarmingly the same which was I don't I don't refer that business to an agent interesting that's amazing 18 deals that could change somebody's life from one advisory relationship and U if I could summarize the answer that came back from them um it was essentially that we work very differently agents are transactional they have past clients we don't have past clients we just have clients we in other words we serve them for their entire life you serve them for three months put them on a drip campaign and hope to see them again in 10 years right maybe yeah so um what this conversation does is it allows you to establish yourself as I'm very different than my peers and um I'd like to collaborate with you so that would be one tip very tactical tip that I think somebody can take on transaction so good I mean that alone I mean could add 18 deals to some yeah portfolio there what a that's brilliant and I love the fact that you're leading with the client need and when we say client I'm talking about the financial advisor so it's the go-giver approach you're you're saying hey how can I how can I refer you business and you the law of reciprocity kicks in when you send enough referrals eventually hey some referrals will start flowing back to you it's brilliant totally when you think about a financial advisor I mean what what are their areas kind of if you're looking at like a wheel financial adviser being one spok in the wheel what are a couple other spokes I'm just out of curiosity you know I I think the key people who I would recommend and again this goes back to the way in which you look at your clients if you're just there to get a commission you probably won't have time for this but if you're there to build a relationship that generates referrals and opens doors to other professional relationships I think you look at this differently which is every client you're looking at you're identifying if they have a good wealth team around them do they have a good ler you're probably already asking that because you know that that's contingent upon you being able to get paid or is like them being able to actually Finance it but also they should have a good tax professional yeah they should good have a good financial advisor like we said they should also have a good State Attorney depending upon what they're kind of where they're at life and then insurance I think is another one yeah and I think that that's kind of the core beyond that you know Property Management um potentially you know private banker and then beyond that of course we're pretty familiar with referring kind of the trades right a good handyman Etc but from a financial advisory or or kind of um you know a financial professional standpoint if if people have those advisors around them in best case you all know each other and you're collaborating on behalf of the client that that family is Invincible like that family really has something special that typically is only reserved for the uber wealthy which is what called a family office right if you have $50 million or more of net worth you have professionals that work on staff for you that work together to help you preserve and grow your wealth the average household doesn't have that and so part of our mission at Pro Insight is to help bring that experience to the average household we do that by H by you know training a real estate agent to be very collaborative like this and build a network around them um and what happens is not only do you create a superior client experience that nobody will argue your fees ever ever right but secondly you also get you essentially get to adopt in some regard and I say this very lightly um these databases of trust that this these other professionals have had you start to get access to them right it's almost like you've expanded your database instead of one at a time by meeting people at you know whatever keep doing that that's why keep doing that you can also begin to to essentially kind of adopt these large 500 person databases um because that trust gets transfer erred from from that professional to you when an introduction is made I think it's brilliant because when you look at that if you just had that Core group that four or five core group and you're receiving four or five referrals each a year you're not getting all 18 but you're getting a few of them I mean that's that's a game changer for most agents you know 50% of all the agents in America closed two transactions last year so you it could be an absolute GameChanger uh for a lot of agents and I would assume that you know if you are somebody that's using a tax Pro or financial advisor or an estate attorney for instance any of those those top three categories probably the sales price of their house is a little bit higher than most so you're you're getting into a different cide tell so that also gets easier right it's not like it gets harder it gets easier so there's so many value points to this now you've created or you're the CEO of a company called Pro insights and I really want to dive into that for a second because you're you're creating a technology to make this easier which I think is fascinating so kind of walk us through what does your company do because just if they just really want to go all in on this you know using technology can help right obviously yeah so um the website Freddy that that is it's proinsight singular So Pro insight.com um and and on there you can you can learn a little bit more but let me just kind of share our vision um which is there are professionals uh that are have been generating their own business by themselves for for a long time right and it's created some of the same burnout some of the same issues that I described initially that I was experiencing as a home builder um and and our our vision has been to um help these professionals to work by professional referral and other words everybody who's relational likes working by referral but we want to take it to another level which is working by professional referral and so what we've built is a a platform um in which we have mapped out every County of the country and we've already to date put in three High producing real estate agents in every County of the country as an initial kind of directory for people to lean on as a referral source right because in most counties of the country if you're a small Regional company or even a national company you might be able to find someone in a county but you don't know if they're good you don't know if they actually do enough business or if they're just camping out in these referral groups on Facebook responding I'm available I'm available who knows if they're doing any deals especially come by a broker agreement time you don't know if they're gonna be able to get paid right yeah so what we devop with the past couple years is is this directory of Agents minimum of 18 transactions a year um and we've adjusted that down it was between two to four a month was a sweet spot we're not looking for the guy that's selling 15 a month because there's no relationship there they don't have influence right someone on their team does right we're looking for people have two to four they're very much a a not a solo practitioner but but somebody who at least has relationships with their clients has some leverage to where they can offer a great client experience so in every part of the country we have that in place and what we're doing now is we're reaching out to those agents and by referral to others that we that that we can connect with to have one of those a agents in every County of the country secure that particular Territory go and then we're helping them to identify the Professionals in their community that they would want to network with and and helping them to do what I kind of just described some of that will come through their efforts others will come through our other efforts of bringing professionals to the table but we've identified about 20 professions all of whom have a relationship with a property owner each of those professions we are training them how to be consultative even all the way down to the painter now you might think like can a painter be consultative well one out of six homes that that are so that are being painted are being painted because they're getting ready to be sold so if you teach the painter a very simple line when they're out doing a bit of what prompted you to do this work today oh you're moving do you have a real estate agent who's a nine or a 10 that's helping you with that well I got my cousin I don't know if I'd give her rating of a nine she might be seven six would you be open to meeting someone who's a nine or 10 great I've got an inro right all of a sudden you start to train every person who has a relationship with a homeowner how to be collect collaborative like that and it just creates this incredible web of of Ideal client introductions and so um we we have this platform agents can subscribe in as a member um and they get the ability to to claim a territory right in most counties around the country you you get the county in more populated counties you'll get your community kind of like where you a more about 100,000 population base in those cases so we're building out right now um adding in the professionals around them that really can can be um a key referral source and a collaborative partner right it's not about just getting the client but it's about professionals who you trust to bring to the table when they need an estate plan right or when they need a better professional so again our our vision is to have agents who are higher producers already who are relational and just want to get better business right better quality business um and to have them not just in their local community connected but also to a national network of professionals who are sending referrals back and forth right that's what Pro ins side brilliant so the idea is you're connecting these 20 uh professionals together there's awesome some kind of interaction and you're training them how to send referral Suite on which is brilliant uh and they're all you know the highest level people in the county which I think is is also brilliant I love that that that's a million dollar script your nine or 10 as you describe it or nine of 10 because you get so many people that'll say a six or seven when you actually I got an agent oh would you describe there as a nine or 10 most of the time it's not going to be that so I love that question that's a that's a great one um so Justin I'd like to just kind of wrap up by letting everybody kind of you can fill them in on where they can find you on social you know where they can find more information about your product you know how how can they connect with you and your company yeah appreciate it Jim um so Justin stodart um is how you find me on on social media and my last name ends with a T it's stod but most stod said the D I think at some point my family didn't spell right or something anyway so some something happened where it's so it's Justin Stoddard s o d t um and that's how you can find me on social just reach out if you want to learn more our website Pro insight.com um you know I I will say that um we are adding new members every day in most of the professions you know that that we're offering and so um once a county and I don't say this for any weird scarcity pressure it's just the reality is that once a county an area is is taken it it is taken right um now we do have some standards by which should somebody um like be next in line we do have kind like a farm team that should somebody opt out or not reach our standards we'll slot somebody in you know to where it does make sense for us to be in relationship even if we have someone in your county so please do uh reach out if this if this style of business is like that's my jam like that's me right for others that are listening like oh that's cool but that's not really my jam I I don't really want to be in conversation with other professionals ETA if if that's where you're at Great like no worries but for those that are like man maybe I had a a background where I was kind of B2B or enjoy the professional conversations I I really enjoy being more of a consultative professional um and this is your jam please reach out let's have a conversation to see if if this is a fit we need professionals like that in every County of the country and you know the our currently our average agent is selling 37.2 homes per year in this market just to kind of give you an idea of kind of where we're so agents again minimum of of 18 as long as they're 18 and and have an upward trajectory like they want to be higher than you know then you know than can work with him but but at least let's um enter um you into a conversation you know I authored the book the Upstream model and it wasn't until I met Don Yokum who's who's my business partner where I thought this is the best way for me to take these principles that I've been talking about today and help people actually live them because before I actually had a coaching business in which I was coaching people these principles and what I realized after I met Don was that I was coaching one player on the basketball team I was coaching the the point guard all the plays and then he steps out on the court he's got four guys who have no idea that they're even playing together right right and so once now with Pro inside I'm able to put like train like everybody shows up to basketball practice we all learn the same plays and now they're able to really function as a as a high quality team and provide a level of experience and and customer service that others can provide so again if this interest to you please reach out I'd love to be in conversation with you um and we'll see if it's if you know it's fit or not if not you know I'd love to share ideas so I love it it's a win-win everybody's a winner everybody in the team's a winner uh and it just elevates everybody else's profession so so amazing uh Justin as always a pleasure talking with you guys go check out his website go check out his product and also read the book because it's a fantastic book highly recommend it and one more plug for you Justin what is the name of your podcast just so everybody can subscribe and listen to that yeah think bigger real estate bigger real estate okay guys subscribe to that give us some five stars if you like the content give us five stars refer us to us if you like the content here at e real estate coach thank you so much Justin and we'll talk to you guys all soon

Channel: eRealEstateCoach

Views: 4

Keywords: The path, erealestatecoach, real estate, real estate help, real estate coach, free real estate tips, real estate tips, erealestatecoach.com, Jim remley, the path, for sale by owners, real estate leads, real estate training, expired listings, real estate farming, real estate presentation, listing presentation, realtor, realtors, real estate agent, real estate prospecting, real estate lead generation, listing leads, buyer leads, real estate license, real estate education

Id: x5DCvxo8zcA

Length: 28min 33sec (1713 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 20 2024