Best Ever Tweet:
Rachel Adams Real Estate Background:
– Realtor, Public Speaker, Coach, Author, and Entrepreneur
– CEO of 4 different companies
– 3 years in the real estate industry, had hit the top 1000 agents in the country for the Wall Street Journal
– 58 homes sold last year were from Facebook alone
– Based in Roseville, California
– Say hi to her at rachel adams group
– Best Ever Book: Compound Effect
Click here for a summary of Rachel’s Best Ever advice: bit.ly/2sjrTco
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Joe Fairless: Best Ever listeners, welcome to the best real estate investing advice ever show. I’m Joe Fairless, and this is the world’s longest-running daily real estate investing podcast. We only talk about the best advice ever, we don’t get into any fluff.
How are you doing, Rachel Adams?
Rachel Adams: I am awesome, thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to get to it.
Joe Fairless: Yeah, my pleasure. Nice to have you on the show. A little bit about Rachel – she is a real estate agent, a public speaker, coach, author and entrepreneur. She is the CEO of four different companies, she has 58 homes sold last year from Facebook alone – we’ve gotta dig in there – and three years in the real estate industry she had hit the top 1000 agents in the country, according to the Wall-Street Journal. Based in Roseville, California… With that being said, Rachel, do you wanna give the Best Ever listeners a little bit more about your background and your focus?
Rachel Adams: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve been in the industry now just about five years, and people always say “How do you experience [unintelligible [00:03:01].12]” and yet we all know that’s kind of BS. It was hard work and consistency. I actually started my business door-knocking 200 doors a week and doing three open houses a week for the first eight months. Brutal. [laughs] And yet, I was able to close 39 transactions my first year, then I launched a team and we sold 109 the next year. [unintelligible [00:03:26].00] sales from Facebook, then last year was 58 deals from Facebook. I’ve really just been fortunate in the industry to not try and reinvent the wheel; I’m a big believer in hopping on and having mentors, so it’s been a pretty wild ride.
Joe Fairless: Okay, so knocking on 200 doors a week when you came out of the gate, and last year you sold 58 homes from Facebook… I wanna focus on Facebook for at least this moment – tell us how do you do that?
Rachel Adams: This is the deal – I think too many times when people want to use social media as a business platform, they lead with their business. The reality is that people work with people they like, but they need to know who you are, they need to know what makes you tick. Now, people always ask me “Rachel, do you have a business page or do you have a personal page?” We absolutely have both, and yet, all of those referrals — I received 113 referrals last year through Facebook and closed 58 of them. The reason for that is not everybody is serious, not everyone is available right now, and that’s okay, and yet there is magic in the follow-up.
What I’ve done is I created kind of a business model around social media. I post 3-5 times a week, I make sure that when I post, I’m asking questions, and asking a question so that someone wants to interact with me. And I’m really intentional about what I put out there. What I suggest to people is to pick five things they are passionate about. For me, if you know me at all, you know that I’m all about fitness and health, motivational posts… I’m getting married this year, so I’m very intentional about my relationship and sharing some of the things that work for me; I love cooking, so I talk about healthy eating, and I also talk about business – however, it’s not always “Do you wanna buy or sell a house?”
For example, I received 19 referrals in the month of May last year through Facebook, and it was because I chose to share a very vulnerable personal experience where I got called out by my business coach for being behind on goals, and asked what I was gonna do about it. Like any smart agent, I was like “I don’t know…” He’s like, “Well, that’s not good enough. What are you gonna do?” Because I watched my profit & loss, I could not add more advertising. Well, I remembered I had started my business doing door-knocking and open houses, and I haven’t worked a weekend in two years, so I didn’t wanna do open houses, and yet I was willing to door knock.
So I took this flier, I door-knocked; we took 500 fliers, door-knocked for two hours, I created this script and we ended up getting four CMA requests in two hours. Three of those listings have now sold and one of them I turned into a refi. Because I believe in full transparency and I think way too often we judge our insides, who we actually are, based off someone’s outside, meaning what we see on Facebook – we all know it’s real, what you see, right?
Joe Fairless: Of course.
Rachel Adams: I decided to just be honest and I was like, “Listen, you guys, I got called out.” [unintelligible [00:06:33].10] agent persona, you need to know that if I stop lead-generating today, I stop being a mega-agent. And guess what? I’m behind goals.” So I shared my story and I also said, “By the way, if any of you want a copy of my script or a copy of my flier, leave your e-mail below.” Honestly, I got 580 replies; that’s 580 people I could add in my database, and because I’m the type of agent who does what I say I’ll do, I wrote them an e-mail, I gave them a copy of the script, I gave them a copy of the flier. I also have it on my YouTube channel; if you wanna leave that link, anybody can get the script and everything. I got 19 referrals that month because at the very bottom of my e-mail I said, “By the way, if you got any value from this, I hope you remember that I’m your gal in [unintelligible [00:07:16].11] California, if you have any referrals to send my way.”
So it was all about giving; it was not “What can I get?” but “I’m just gonna give” and then “By the way, I happen to be in the business of buying and selling houses.” I’m the same way on social media – I interview business owners, I share what’s going on in my community, and then “By the way, I happen to be in the business of buying and selling houses.”
Joe Fairless: How much of your content is interview-based, versus questions that you ask the community and things you post about fitness, relationships etc.?
Rachel Adams: 10% interview.
Joe Fairless: And when you first launched your business Facebook page, was this your approach?
Rachel Adams: Well, my business Facebook page is different than my personal; I don’t have that policy with my business page. My business page is much more community-focused – open houses, new listings…
Joe Fairless: Okay, so this is your personal page.
Rachel Adams: This is all personal, because if we’re talking about “Where do you get your business?” it’s gonna be your personal page. The business page is strictly there for reviews, testimonials and to flood it with all your listings. It’s for credibility.
Joe Fairless: Okay. So you’ve been doing this for five years; before you started doing real estate, how frequently were you posting a week on Facebook?
Rachel Adams: I’d probably post around the same 3-5 times, I just wasn’t so intentional about my posts. I’d post something like “This is what’s happening in my day”, but I didn’t ask a question. I wasn’t doing it to get interaction. When I started to shift to have it be a business model, I realized that I wanted to connect with people and I wanted people to want to know what I was doing and ask me questions, so then I could ask them questions.
I made a few kind of rules around it, and one of them, honestly, is “Don’t post [unintelligible [00:09:00].02] If you take the time to make a post and you ask a question, and people take their time to respond to you, then it is your job to respond back to them, to engage with them. It’s not like, “Poof! I made a post. You just need to make 3-5 posts. I did it!” That’s not quite it. Follow up with what they say, because people work with people they like, and they like you, and they want to know you.
A lot of people sometimes have a hard time figuring out what are those five things they’ll post about… Because I always say, “Take your five passions.” Five things you’re passionate about. One of those – easy-peasy – is your business, real estate investing, right? And the other four, that’s up to you. It could be your family, it could be sports… It’s really up to you.
Joe Fairless: Should everyone do this?
Rachel Adams: If they’re using social media for business, absolutely.
Joe Fairless: And how do you get the e-mail addresses to put in your e-mail list when you’re doing a Facebook post?
Rachel Adams: Mine’s a little bit different, and that’s because I do regular content in my community and free webinars, so people are following me. With all my different social media platforms I have about 25,000 followers. The only time that I’m uploading targeted Facebook groups is when it has to do with real estate agents when I’m doing like recruiting, or a new listing for locals. I am not actually uploading targeted e-mails for my Facebook. I have enough people that follow me that I’m very intentional about — because I actually [unintelligible [00:10:33].08] into real estate offices and have them interview me, and then by the way, I always get to mention where I work and what market I’m in, and then I get some referrals.
Joe Fairless: One more question on Facebook and I’d like to transition to some door-knocking questions that I have for you… What’s your approach for adding people on Facebook? You get people who reach out to you, they wanna add you as a friend on Facebook, knowing that this is your platform – do you just accept, or do you have a different approach?
Rachel Adams: My answer is probably gonna be a little bit unpopular, and I’ll be honest. When I got into the business I added anyone who wanted to be my friend; anyone that was in real estate, I added them. Anybody in the community, I’d add them, and that’s on friends. I have several followers now, so on people’s birthday, if I don’t know who they are anymore, I delete them, so that I have new room for more friends to add in. I don’t have any more space to add people on Facebook, unless I delete someone else.
As you’re building your brand and your platform, I would say add pretty much everybody. If you’re a real estate professional and you are in a transaction with someone, I would not accept their friend request or add them until after the transaction has closed. Now, you should not be ever that agent who’s complaining about a deal on social media, because you never know who’s gonna screenshot it, share it; that is used in court cases now, Facebook is. You have to be really intentional about what you put out there and be aware of your audience.
I think that the biggest thing that people don’t do is follow-up with their database. They close the transaction and they say “I’m gonna keep in touch”, and then they never do. Then when their client needs to sell their house, they don’t even remember who their realtor is because we didn’t keep in touch with them. [unintelligible [00:12:23].06]
My number one thing is to be in touch with my database, and I actually created a [unintelligible [00:12:30].23] that I have a link I can share with you also, like a custom campaign webinar series about it, but I use Facebook as a way to look people up before I call them. When I need to reach out to someone, I can literally look them up and say “Hey, I just saw little Johnny just graduated and I wanted to call and congratulate you. How’s everything going on in your world?” and I lead with that, always.
Joe Fairless: I like that a lot. It’s simple, it makes sense and it’s applicable to a lot of the Best Ever listeners who are listening who have connections on Facebook that they speak to.
Rachel Adams: A lot of times we don’t know what to say, right?
Joe Fairless: Right.
Rachel Adams: Always lead with them. Same thing with the business owner – you lead with them. Where do THEY see their business in five years? Always lead with the person, and then by the way, you happen to be in the business of buying and selling houses.
Joe Fairless: And cautionary tale for the Best Ever listeners who do this – I was e-mailing with one of my investors and he was complimenting how we were doing on the project. I said, “Oh yeah, thanks a lot… I hope your arm heals up. I saw on Facebook that you broke it or there’s some sort of injury.” He was like, “No, no injury here. I think you got me confused with someone else.” It turns out I had seen a post, but it was another one of my friends who had the same first name as him, so I got it mixed up. So just pay attention to details, unlike I did in that one example, if you do bring up something that happened on Facebook.
Alright, let’s talk about door-knocking 200 doors/week. Let’s go back in time… You are walking up to someone’s door. What materials do you have in your hand – if any – and what do you say as soon as they open up the door?
Rachel Adams: This is gonna be a gift for your listeners – if they e-mail thegood@racheladamsgroup.com, they will get what I send out. It’s a 12-touch value campaign. The way that I looked at this is I thought, “Okay, say this is flipped and I’m on the other side and someone’s knocking on my door.” I was like, “How will I feel?” Because I will be honest with you, you don’t wanna knock on my door. I’m not gonna buy what you’re selling. So I wanted to think about — in Keller Williams, which is my brokerage, we talk a lot about coming from contribution, so I thought “How can I contribute to the lives of others? How can I be that person that when I knock on someone’s door they’re excited to see me, instead of like “Oh gosh, what’s she selling now?” So some of the things that I door knock with, some of my more popular items is like, on the 4th July I door-knock with all the places to watch the fireworks locations. In October I door-knock with where the pumpkin patch locations are. So I’m always contributing and I come from it locally, because I choose to be the local real estate expert. And then “By the way, when you’re ready to buy or sell a house, you’re gonna do it with me.” Interesting, right? It works really well.
Joe Fairless: I bet. Yeah, we want that info… “Oh, thanks a lot for telling me where to watch the fireworks.” And what do you provide me at that time? Besides telling me, what do you give me, if anything?
Rachel Adams: I always have an intentional, right? Can I give you an example? This one script is my favorite script that I came up with, and this is kind of what I lead with every time I knock, and then I always also have a piece of value to give them, like Christmas tree lighting location stuff – my number one shared one on social media. But what I do is I knock on a door… Say for example that time I told you about when I got called out by my coach. I had a property I just sold and we were $19,000 over asking and we had five offers on the property. So I took this flier, and on the flier I had agent 1-2-3-4-5, the price they offered, how many days have closed, and some of the terms. And on the left side it said, “Hey there, this is the Rachel Adams Group, your top team in the county. Just sold your neighbor’s house for $19,000 over asking. Prices are going up. Find out how much your house is worth today.”
That flier has got two parts to it – the breakdown on the offers, and then the other side. I go off in the neighborhood, and when they answer the door I have that flier and then underneath that flier I have their fireworks location. They answer the door and I say, “Hey there, my name is Rachel Adams. I just wanted to actually let you know I’m your local real estate expert. I live here and I work here and I’m here for you. Just wanted to let you know that your neighbor Paul down the street (at 123 Main Street) just sold his house for $19,000 over asking, and we got five offers on that property. What that means to you – prices are going up in your neighborhood, and also, we’ve got four homeless buyers who are looking for a house in your neighborhood who [unintelligible [00:17:00].11] So because prices are going up in your neighborhood, now a bunch of your neighbors wanna know how much their house is worth. Did you want in on that list as well?”
Joe Fairless: Of course…
Rachel Adams: I will tell you, that last part, because your neighbors want it, they’re like “Oh my god, well I want what my neighbors have.” I came up with that silly little script and it has literally funded our listings inventory, because people want what they can’t have, or what they don’t have, so we use it [unintelligible [00:17:27].21] we use it when we’re door-knocking, and then we also offer some value. It changed the way we did business.
Joe Fairless: Where in that conversation is the fireworks mentioned? You didn’t mention it when you knocked on the door in that scenario.
Rachel Adams: No, I didn’t. It’s because it would be on the other side of that flier, or sometimes I just door-knock with the fireworks location. So the thing with door-knocking is you have to understand that if you’re doing it for geo-farming, meaning a geographical area you are focusing on, it is going to take you 4-6 months to see a return in the leads. So it is a consistency thing.
So sometimes I lead with real estate, sometimes I just lead with the community. So I would always, always have something to offer them. They’re going from “I don’t care, just get out of my front door!” to “Oh, are you planning on looking at the fireworks?” “What?” “Fireworks on 4th July – I have a list of where those are.” “Oh, well that’s kind of cool.” So I always have options.
Joe Fairless: I got it. You’ve got a couple different ways you can take the conversation, depending on the reception that you’re getting.
Rachel Adams: Exactly.
Joe Fairless: Based on your experience, what is your best advice ever for real estate investors who want to be successful at door-knocking or just building a brand?
Rachel Adams: I think people try to focus too broad. They’re like “Oh, I’m into wholesale, and I’m gonna focus on short sales, and I’m gonna do off-market properties, and I’m gonna send postcards and I’m gonna send yellow letters.” What I want you to do — because it’s similar to like traditional real estate, where people are like “Do open houses, [unintelligible [00:18:54].23]” There’s too much, so what I would suggest is simplify.
What I tell my agents is if there are four legs to a chair, what are the four legs that your business is going to be? By that I mean what are going to be the four forces that are going to bring the leads in for you? If social media is one of the legs of your lead generation share, then that’s perfect. If direct mail is one, then that’s perfect. You can’t try and focus on 15 different things, because they’re gonna master nothing. I really would encourage you to pick four things – only four – that are going to be the lead sources that you’re going to focus your time on, and if you don’t know what that is yet, look at where your past properties have come from that you flipped or you rehabbed or you held; look at where those came from, and that’s a good indication of what you should focus on.
For me, I was spending a heck of a lot of money on lead sources that were giving me no ROI, and as we know, that’s really what is the name of the game.
Joe Fairless: Are you ready for the Best Ever Lightning Round?
Rachel Adams: Heck yeah!
Joe Fairless: Alright, let’s do it. First, a quick word from our Best Ever partners.
Break: [00:20:01].13] to [00:20:54].18]
Joe Fairless: Best ever book you’ve read?
Rachel Adams: Compound Effect.
Joe Fairless: Best ever way you like to give back?
Rachel Adams: Connecting with the community.
Joe Fairless: What’s the best ever deal/transaction you’ve done?
Rachel Adams: $86,000 short sale that ended up preferring me 2,5 million in referrals. No one else would take this deal.
Joe Fairless: What’s a mistake you’ve made on a transaction?
Rachel Adams: Not asking power of attorney. [laughs] I didn’t ask if they had power of attorney. Someone was signing for them and the whole deal fell apart.
Joe Fairless: What’s the best place the Best Ever listeners can get in touch with you?
Rachel Adams: I would say it’s probably on social media at Rachel Adams Realtor. It’s Facebook.com/racheladamsrealtor. I do check my private messages. And again, if they want a copy of the script and they wanna look me up on YouTube, they can look up “Rachel Adams Realtor” there. I’ve got a copy of that CMA, the script, everything; door-knocking, all of it.
Joe Fairless: Outstanding. Rachel, thank you for being on the show. You gave some great, practical tips for everyone, because Best Ever listeners are either gonna be looking to generate leads and door-knocking using the “come from contribution” standpoint that the Keller Williams team preaches, where you are identifying local activities that could be discussed as a lead-in for a conversation, and/or talking about what you’ve done with one of their neighbors and how the neighbors are getting this report, and “Would you like to be in on it too?” because we all want things that we either don’t have or other have but we don’t have especially… Or most of us want that.
On the other side is the Facebook approach that you take, posting 3-5 times a week about different categories, and you have 5 categories that you enjoy asking questions and making sure that you follow up with the responses once they respond. One last question I have for you, Rachel, because this has come up for me personally a couple times… When I post about something and I asked a question and someone just says “Great job, I like it”, what do you respond with, if someone says just “Great job”, or some comment that doesn’t really require your response?
Rachel Adams: I always will say “Thank you so much” and then I’ll click on their page and see something that’s happening with them and then ask them a question to engage with them.
Joe Fairless: [laughs] I love it!
Rachel Adams: It’s all about [unintelligible [00:23:17].28] It’s also called stalking… [laughter] But I believe that people want to be asked questions and they wanna know that you care. If you’re that person who’s constantly contributing to their lives, giving back and caring about them, you’re the person they go to. I do like these Q&A’s on Facebook, and then after I do them, I e-mail them out to my database, and people love it, and they’re like “Oh my gosh, thanks for that book!” I showed a radish recipe (grilled radishes), which is so bizarre, but I thought they were really good and I posted them and I was doing like low-carb, and I had 23 shares on that posts. 23 shares. Not just comments, this is like people actually sharing my post. And you know, that is the powerful thing. It’s one thing to have a like, even better to have a comment, but when someone shares it, then you have a whole other audience you’re tapping into.
Joe Fairless: Rachel, amazing stuff. I loved that last part along with what I already recapped. Thanks for being on the show. I hope you have a best ever day, and we’ll talk to you soon.
Rachel Adams: Thank you so much for having me. You’re awesome, take care!
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