[00:00:00] Zach Hammer: Welcome back to The Real Estate Growth Hacker show on today’s episode. We’re going to be talking about the orphan opportunity and how you could be leveraging orphans at your real estate business to grow your business, start closing deals and gain a lot of success. So, I have with me Charlie Madison from a Realtor waiting list, referrals while you sleep, a founder, developer, realtor just all around great Hawaiian shirt wearing gentlemen here in, the digital flesh, so to speak.

[00:00:32] Zach Hammer: Welcome, Charlie.

[00:00:33] Charlie Madison: Hey, I’m excited about this two step process which is isn’t it one adopt orphans to profit? Is that right?

[00:00:40] Zach Hammer: That’s right. That’s the plan. There you go. Cut episode and cut, indeed. So yeah let’s go ahead and dive into it. The topic and title of this episode is intentionally provocative, but there is some real beat to this. So first off, still lay some groundwork here. No, we aren’t talking about orphans in the sense of you know, [00:01:00] children who have lost their parents, that this has nothing to do with that.

[00:01:03] Zach Hammer: What we are talking about here is we’re talking about the concept of, we are in a shifting market. And in a shifting market what you start to see is as there starts being less and less deals available, that means that real estate agents stop renewing and stop being in the business. And what’s the effect that has?

[00:01:22] Zach Hammer: Well, the effect is that there are lots of people in your market in markets across the country across the world that previously had a real estate agent that they worked with that. They no longer have that real estate agent as a real estate agent anymore. Right? And so there’s an opportunity if you can get in front of those people.

[00:01:41] Zach Hammer: They’re going to start to be doing deals. They’re going to have the needs that show up regardless of what’s going on in the market. They’re going to have kids. They’re going to have kids go off to college. They’re going to get married. They’re going to get divorced. They’re going to you know, have parents needs change and maybe need to bring a parent into the house with them, maybe need to sell the parents house, maybe like, there’s all sorts of [00:02:00] things that happen.

[00:02:00] Zach Hammer: Those things are going to continue to happen regardless of what’s going on in the market. And so people’s needs for housing will continually shift and there will be deals being done, but those people no longer have agents now, not all of them. There are obviously some agents still in the market, but our goal here is to talk through some strategies, some concepts for how you can leverage this opportunity to get in front of people that are great clients.

[00:02:24] Zach Hammer: They just. They’ve been orphaned by a changing market. Right. So, you want to dive into that a little bit? What are I know for you, you have mentioned very specifically actually on an episode that we just recorded that you have had like some opportunities for deals that just go away because of kind of the opposite of this.

[00:02:40] Zach Hammer: Right. Can you dive into that a little bit?

[00:02:42] Charlie Madison: Yeah. I mean, one of my you know, good clients, good friends help them buy some land, help them get a house built. And when it was time to sell his sister had gotten her real estate license. About 18 months before that. [00:03:00] And he was like, I want to use you. But Thanksgiving is coming up and like I, have, my mom said I have to work with her and in order to have any kind of somewhat holidays, like I just have to work with her.

[00:03:16] Charlie Madison: You know, sometimes that just happens, you know, I’ve got another really good friend. His mom was in the business. Guess what? He’s always going to work with his mom.

[00:03:25] Zach Hammer: Right there are definitely some relationships that it doesn’t matter how good your offer is, how successful you are, how many deals you’ve closed. It doesn’t matter if somebody’s got a good relationship with their mom and their mom’s in the business, like you’re not getting that deal.

[00:03:40] Zach Hammer: Right? That’s not going to happen. So, now the reality is though that a lot of those kinds of things where the reason why they were working with somebody maybe was almost the guaranteed or the given, or maybe it even wasn’t that maybe you know, maybe. They just, they had worked with a realtor in the past.

[00:03:57] Zach Hammer: They really liked working with them. But for [00:04:00] whatever reason, that realtor is now exiting the business. Maybe it’s the current market conditions. Maybe it was just that time regardless. And they’re using this time in the market as a time to step out and pursue other things. But there are lots of realtors that are going to be leaving the market.

[00:04:15] Zach Hammer: Leaving behind lots of people ready and needing to do deals without a realtor that, that’s sort of their go to. And so our goal here is to talk through how do we capitalize on this opportunity? What what do we do to leverage this reality, to be in front of it to have what is potentially perceived as a kind of a downside of the current market for many as actually an advantage for us.

[00:04:38] Zach Hammer: Right. And typically that’s almost always the case when most people. See something as hard or difficult or scary. Typically there’s lots of opportunity in those times. I’ve just learned that as a general rule. And so, yeah, let’s dive into that, Charlie what ideas would you have for like, how do we reach these kinds of people? These orphaned clients and how do we create opportunity from this [00:05:00] situation?

[00:05:00] Charlie Madison: I feel like there’s a softball toasted directly towards me. And you know, I mean, you know, the best way is how do you get in front of your sphere of influence, like your extended sphere of influence, your Facebook friends, maybe, you know, Instagram followers other people in your town, you know, like there’s, you know, if you’ve lived in your town, any length of time, you know, a lot of people, you know, everybody that’s in your phone book that, you know, maybe you just haven’t thought of before, maybe the guys, you know, in your fantasy football league, fancy football championships coming up soon.

[00:05:35] Charlie Madison: You know, like who are the extended people, maybe people that you go to church with, you know, how do you get in front of them? And you know, one of my favorite ways is of course like I think it to do market update videos right now You know if you can own a tiny sliver like where I live, it’s right outside of Nashville called Mount Juliet We’ve got about 24, 000 homes [00:06:00] one of my favorite like my favorite tactic is any home that is zoned for Mount Juliet High School, Green Hill High School, or Wilson Central, like, I know about it, like, it’s a big, but very tiny and you know, there’s a lot of people there, and if, you know, they see me as the guy, you know, like, they’re like, oh, I was looking for a guy, you’re the guy.

[00:06:24] Zach Hammer: There you go. Yeah. So what I love about this is like the thing to note is that theoretically, if you are actively talking to people, actively reaching out to them, actively being in front of them, Theoretically, your overall chances of finding these orphan clients goes up just because of what’s going on.

[00:06:42] Zach Hammer: Like if you could ride this wave long enough, you will find that there are these orphan clients that exist no matter where you’re looking. But all things being equal, I would always much rather start from the foundation of where do I have the most likely success? Where do I have the most likely [00:07:00] places where people already know me already like me already trust me.

[00:07:04] Zach Hammer: And typically our best place to start for that is our sphere or extended sphere. Right. So these are people that they may not have worked with you in the past, but maybe they recognize you. Maybe a mutual connection as part of what lends you authority or lends you likeability those sorts of things, maybe like, sometimes these things are just somewhat related.

[00:07:23] Zach Hammer: Maybe you go to like a really massive church, but just the fact that you go to the same church that could be enough for somebody to feel more connected to you than, you know, some other agent in the market. Right. And so then. It starts to become, well, who does somebody think of when it’s time to do a transaction?

[00:07:41] Zach Hammer: Right? And if you have this list, and if you’ve been growing and developing this list, what you want to do is you just want to be that person, right? You want to be that person that somebody thinks of when it’s time to do a transaction. Cause again, they’re going to have their needs regardless that are going to make them make people be in the market for a transaction, regardless of what’s going on with [00:08:00] interest rates, regardless of what’s going on with other sales, people will need to do a real estate transactions just for sake of life happens.

[00:08:08] Zach Hammer: Right. And so, yeah, let’s talk through the real basic quick idea. How do we get in front of these people? What’s the easy way to do that? What does that look like? What’s the opportunity in our current world that maybe hasn’t always been present, right?

[00:08:21] Zach Hammer: Like in the past, maybe it was like like direct mail still potentially works, but as, you know, downside of your cost per piece can be anywhere from at the really low end, like 75 cents per person to the high end of you know, shoot, depending on what kinds of pieces you’re sending could be three, four or five bucks per person. Right. And you know, if you’ve got a list of a thousand people, it’s not.

[00:08:41] Charlie Madison: It adds up.

[00:08:42] Zach Hammer: Yeah, it adds up. It’s not undoable, but it’s it’s a lot to outlay just to stay in front of somebody. But there’s opportunities right now that aren’t that expensive. Right?

[00:08:51] Charlie Madison: Yeah, you know, I think you know, one of my favorites is export everyone in your phone into an email list[00:09:00] record a market update video, you know, run them through a email bouncer, you know, you remove all those and then you send an email to them, you know, I mean, that’s a great, simple way to do it.

[00:09:11] Charlie Madison: You know, you probably have a thousand to, you know, 5,000 contacts in your phone and, you know, like. That would be, you know, 5, 000 to send a direct mail and that’s not a personal video. So, you know, that’s one of my favorites. Of course, you know, a second favorite, you take that list and you upload it into social media and you can advertise.

[00:09:34] Charlie Madison: Again, you take that market update video and you advertise it to everyone there. You know, you record one a month two a month if you’re using referrals wisely. And, I mean, those are two of the best ones. You know, the third is, yeah, this is one that, that I love. One of my friends, Rob does whenever he meets people.

[00:09:52] Charlie Madison: He says, Hey, I’m looking to grow my business this next, this upcoming year. Who’s three people that, you know, I should meet, you know, they [00:10:00] can either be people looking to buy or sell, or maybe they’re influencers. You know, maybe there’s someone, they’re realtor just retired and, you know, those are three, you know, three great opportunities to, and the goal is you really want to take the next 12 months to become number one in these people’s brains.

[00:10:21] Zach Hammer: Right. And it does take time, right? Like it’s not something that happens overnight. And this really is, it’s one of those things for people who already know, like, and trust you showing up as the most recent person. Is often enough but maybe these people have less familiarity with you.

[00:10:35] Zach Hammer: So they, they need to see you maybe for a few months, up to a year before they really start thinking of you as this person in their mind. So this is definitely one of those things that for some people you can have payoffs that happen immediately for others. It might take a bit of time doing this before you fully experience the benefit but you know, it definitely comes along for sure.

[00:10:54] Zach Hammer: You know, you mentioned uploading, uploading the list to to social media and advertising that way. [00:11:00] If you’re not familiar with that process. Getting that list together, making that happen, that can be difficult for a number of people, but once you have it done, once you have that list ready to go it’s actually really cost effective to get get your videos your content in front of that list of people for a lot cheaper than you’d expect.

[00:11:18] Zach Hammer: What kind of cost are you typically seeing if you’ve got, you know, you mentioned like you’ve probably got anywhere three to 5,000 people on the list. What does it cost to reach those people every month?

[00:11:27] Charlie Madison: One to three dollars a day. We’ve seen lists of up to $18,000 for 3 a day. You could probably do it cheaper. And you know, we run a number of different versions, but one to three dollars a day and you’re going to hit them all a lot.

[00:11:40] Zach Hammer: Perfect. Perfect. Yeah. And so, that’s the key. So, ultimately to me the name of the game is knowing these opportunities exist. There are people who are now orphaned as a result of their realtor leaving the business and your game plan in order to be able to get in front of them and when the competition for where they’re going to do [00:12:00] business next is by being the realtor that they think of when it comes time to do a transaction again.

[00:12:06] Zach Hammer: And so getting in front of them, leveraging the relationship that you already have, either through you know, extended connection through your extended sphere or direct connection, even where some of those opportunities where maybe they already know, I can trust you and would work with you.

[00:12:20] Zach Hammer: But they had a sister who was in the business or they had a mom who’s in the business. Maybe they’re no longer in the business. So you just got to remind them that you’re in the business that they think of you. Cause when they, you know, they’re probably going to know that their mom or their sister left the business, that sort of thing.

[00:12:33] Zach Hammer: Or when they’re like, Oh, I need to do a transaction. They reach out to their mom or their sister that they’re going to be like, Oh yeah, we. We we left the business, right? We’re like, we’re we aren’t a realtor anymore. Well, at that point, you’re already going to exist in their brain as a backup option, right?

[00:12:47] Zach Hammer: As the option that they’re like, oh, I’ve been hearing from this person. Let me reach out to them. So that, that’s the key there. Now that can be really difficult to do to set this up, to make this happen to actually put this process in place. But it doesn’t have to be difficult. Now, [00:13:00] does it, Charlie? It doesn’t have to be difficult. If only,

[00:13:02] Charlie Madison: There was an easy button.

[00:13:05] Zach Hammer: And to not bury the lead any, any further. So Charlie has put together software and a program that actually helps you run this process and do this regardless of whether you use it. This strategy makes sense. The question is just, do you want to go through the hard work of making it work yourself, or do you want.

[00:13:21] Zach Hammer: An easy button solution that makes it makes it easy to achieve it. And so with with referrals, while you sleep you can actually get a lot of this stuff done for you easily, Charlie’s put together software that you have one link that you set up that actually. Gathers this list, creates this list for you, makes that easy to do.

[00:13:39] Zach Hammer: They work with you to set up these style of campaigns to make it easy for you to create this content, get you know, this sort of content out in front of your market on demand automatically every month for you two times a month, like you mentioned. So that people are seeing you consistently, so that you’re starting to capitalize on these orphaned client.

[00:13:58] Zach Hammer: So if you want to check out what [00:14:00] Charlie is up to we actually have a dedicated link at RealEstateGrowthHackers.com/, I think it’s set up at referrals while you sleep RealEstateGrowthHackers.com/ReferralsWhileYouSleep. I’ll double check to make sure it’s possible. It’s R W Y S instead.

[00:14:16] Zach Hammer: But if not, I’ll set up both. I’ll make sure that both go to the same place. But yeah, if you check that out, that Then you can connect up with with Charlie, learn more about what he’s up to. If they do that, Charlie they will be taken to a page where they can get on your calendar, learn more about what you guys are up to, and just see if it happens to be a good fit for them.

[00:14:31] Zach Hammer: Is that correct?

[00:14:32] Charlie Madison: Yep, they get sent to the super secret Zach Hammer special calendar. So, it actually says friend of Zach Hammer. Hop on, you get a free consultation with me. If it’s a great fit, great. If not, whatever I can do to help ya. Happy to do it.

[00:14:49] Zach Hammer: Awesome. So I definitely recommend you guys check out what Charlie is up to at referrals while you sleep. If you are a lender and not a real estate agent, there is a similar [00:15:00] but different program as well called realtor waiting list. They are related. They use a lot of the same principles, but referrals while you sleep is geared more toward the real estate professionals.

[00:15:10] Zach Hammer: Realtor waiting list is geared more toward lenders. Both are worth checking out regardless, either way, depending on who you are and and what you’re looking for. But again, the idea here is that we want to capitalize on these orphans that are now in our market. Make sure that you’re taking advantage of that opportunity.

[00:15:25] Zach Hammer: And yeah, so somebody is definitely going to be able to clip that I say that people should take advantage of orphans, but yeah but that’s the concept here. Any final words or thoughts?

[00:15:34] Charlie Madison: I’m just imagining a bumper sticker that says orphans need realtors too.

[00:15:39] Zach Hammer: Indeed. Indeed. Well, there you go. So go ahead, get out there and take action. If you need help implementing this system, I recommend reaching out to Charlie again, RealStateGrowthHackers.com/ReferralsWhileYouSleep. You can also find them on our resources page referrals. While you sleep is on our resources page on RealEstateGrowthHackers.com.

[00:15:59] Zach Hammer: But yeah, [00:16:00] take advantage of this opportunity. It doesn’t come along. Always, and it’s only for like a window where you have more deals happening than realtors in the business. Inevitably the market switches back in the other direction. And it’s just, it’s not that there aren’t opportunities, it’s just very different styles of opportunities.

[00:16:18] Zach Hammer: I recommend taking advantage of this one right now and using it as a way to ride the market back up. As it comes back up and and do it quickly. Cause who knows what it’s going to start happening. And when it inevitably switches back toward having more agents of the market that deals to be done as that ends up happening as well.

[00:16:34] Charlie Madison: You know, I’ve got a friend he was, he’d been in the business a long time and when the market crashed of 07-08 hit, when it started coming back around 2011-12-13, he was in the right spot and he did so much business in those couple years. He retired forever. Like he was just, you know, he survived that downturn.

[00:16:59] Charlie Madison: He’d put [00:17:00] in his time and he just he licked it, you know? And so we’ve got that ability now survive now so we can thrive in 2024, 2025, you know?

[00:17:12] Zach Hammer: Yeah, absolutely. So there you go. Take advantage of it. Hope this was a good episode for you. I hope you got some valuable information out of it. Again, I’m Zach Hammer with Real Estate Growth Hackers. This has been Charlie Madison with referrals while you sleep and realtor waiting lists until next time we’ll catch you on the next one.

[00:17:27] Charlie Madison: Bye.