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In today's mini episode of Not Nice Clever, we're talking about markets and habits. And this is inspired by an event that Kat recently attended. She got to see some incredible speakers and you know we always bring you the best of the best and what we hear in the industry of branding, marketing, money manifesting too, I guess. So we are talking to you about all the things today and Kat wanted to share this with you. Yeah.
So I had the opportunity to hear Jimmy Mackin, who's the founder of Curator, speak on stage. And it was my first time meeting him in person, seeing that his hair was just as perfectly coiffed in person as it is on Zoom, but also getting to hear his kind of, you know, stay busy team. How would he structure a team as a marketer? Because he's not an agent, like Candice and I are not agents, but we are strategists and marketers and branding experts. But he shared a really interesting quote. I could feel the audience kind of pause when he was talking about it because it was kind of a twist on this hot take of how everybody is complaining about how it is, maybe not complaining, observing or noting that it's a bad market right now. And he's like, I want to call your attention to when it was a good market quote. And he's like using air quotes as he's talking about this. Good markets, I'm sure everyone in this room can agree, create quote unquote bad agents, AKA bad habits, because the business falls into your lap, you can sneeze and sell a home and you don't necessarily need to work for it or put in the work, right? Or like go back to those basics. Bad markets, by comparison, give you the opportunity to create good habits and weed out the quote unquote bad agents, AKA those with bad habits that don't allow them to be sustainable and successful and it gives you opportunity to create good habits.
So I thought that was a really interesting reframe.
We know the importance of habits in work and results, right? When you feel like the market, the economy, things are slowing down and you have time to take a breath between clients that you might not have had a couple years ago, taking that time and using it as an opportunity to propel forward is absolutely the thing that's going keep you busy and bring longevity to your business in the future. Right now, if you need that reframe in your mind because you might be less busy than you are in the past, and this is not for everyone, some people are super busy right now. Some people have an incredible book of business right now that they're working with, and if that's you, great.
We hope you're still building good habits along the way. And if you're that person who feels like it is a little bit slower for you, then...taking this time and thinking about it as an opportunity to build. What's really going to happen is people who build those great habits, they're going to build a long successful business. And the people who don't are just going to leave the industry because it's not going to be sustainable for the person who's not willing to increase their skills and really commit to the things that we know lead to more business. Some of the habits that Kat and I love to talk about include daily being in your CRM, or at least a couple times a week, actually calling people and taking notes. That is so key. is. it's so... And y 'all, this is coming from us who we leverage digital, we leverage brand, we leverage social, all of that, but nothing will replace a good old -fashioned follow -up. And because we know how powerful language is and...
You know what you call things to inspire you to motivate you to want to do it if if the idea of being in your CRM does not excite you Call it something different make it fun figure out a way to rebrand it however you need to to get you excited to want to reach out to people to pick up the phone to connect with them because I Was actually sharing this just before we hopped on I don't call my follow -up time like follow -up time in my calendar because I'm just like well like that does that make me excited? I call it my Gemini time, where I am Gemini as a sign of the communication, the messenger, right? So what messages do I want to get out? Who do I want to connect with? Who do I want to communicate? That's what makes me excited. And I have the little like twin emoji in the calendar block. Like I love using emojis in my time blocks to get me excited. But I think that's a huge habit. And Candace, are you still using relatable? Because I know that was a CRM that you were using or are You're using something different now.
Yeah, I'm using relatable.
I still like it. It's easy, but I don't care what CRM you use. I just care that you have one. And someone might be feeling overwhelmed right now thinking about, don't even have a CRM, Candice. That's okay. You can get one. You can get one today if you want to. It's really simple. You can Google CRM. can chat GPT. Which CRM do you recommend? And you can actually find one that works for you. You don't need a ton of bells and whistles. I am not of the mindset that your CRM should cost you seven or $800 a month.
Oh my God, there are CRMS that cost that?
Oh yeah.
What?
I know.
Bro, no, Clay, $20 a month for me.
They build in all the bells and whistles and there's all these opportunities. I don't think that, especially if you don't have a CRM today, you don't need that. I just need you to have a place where you can easily keep notes on your contacts, on the people that you meet, because I can't tell you how many times my CRM has saved an opportunity to work with someone because I do get busy and I get caught up with my clients, but my CRM will say, hey, so -and -so said that they were closing on a house this day and they were going to be ready to work with you after that closing. I'm like, oops, today's the day. Hey, congrats on that closing. Remember how we talked about working together? Because my CRM told me to, because that conversation was six weeks ago. And if I didn't write that down, I would not happen to remember it on that day. Bro, that's like six months ago. Yeah. Another great feature that is
This is not a segment, but I do really enjoy using relatable. Another great thing about it is that when you mark the area, so we're going to Las Vegas, Kat, I can just literally click on Las Vegas and it'll tell me every one of my contacts that lives in Las Vegas. And so I can just send all of them, hey guys, I'm gonna be in Vegas next week. If you'd like to grab coffee, Kat and I are in town. We'd love to see
and I can send an email to every single one of them and see who responds. And it's just such an easy way to organize my friendships, my relationships. It's like literally my friends are in there. Their birthdays. My mother is in there. It reminds me to call her. I like that Clay is markets itself as a personal relationship manager, which I liked that more than like CRM because
I don't know. I think it was good, but yes, I use it for everything. I don't know if it has that filter feature by location. I'll have to look into it. It has a lot of other features that I like, but that's super smart. Also, yes, let's go get chips and guac in there. Please. Hang on. There's another feature that's really cool where it's connect people. So if I meet someone at a conference that I know needs to meet one of our friends, like, my gosh, this person is such a good vibe. They would vibe with our friend Arjun.
connect them really easily through Relatable, and then I'll have a record of making that connection. And it's just like really a simple tool to use to actually, I know we overuse this, like add value. How can I add value to someone else's life? Sometimes it's simple as introducing them to someone who's gonna help them further there. Yeah, you're saving the time of having to find that person yourself. Find that person. Yeah. Save time, value.
And value. then people see me as, you know, the super connector, like, Candice probably knows someone and I'm sure I do. Professional middleman. A professional middleman. Yeah, that's what Dom calls me. Middle human being. So follow -ups a great habit. Like honestly, probably the habit that makes the biggest game changer.
I mean, overall, the theme of like when you're busy, you don't want to forget the things or forget to do the things made you busy in the first place. That was another point that Jimmy made in his talk. He was like, I see you guys get so busy and then you forget to do the things that made you busy in the first place and then you freak out. And he showed this like roller coaster effect of just like up here and then down here, up here and then down here. And he's like, we don't want to do that. We want to stay busy, not just get busy. And I was like, so good. Love it.
We'll drop Jimmy's handle in the show notes so you guys can give him a follow and check him out - because he had such an impact on Kat's experience at the conference.
And another thing that it made me think about, people often say like Kat, I'm too busy with clients to work on my own brand or I'm too busy to work on my own marketing. I don't have time. And if you're feeling that way, that's an opportunity for you to be thinking about scaling. You might actually be too busy. right now, but you won't be too busy for long if you're not continuously marketing yourself. doing that stuff. Right.
And then you'll call us and be like, we need business tomorrow. We're like, honey, that's not... Yeah, business tomorrow is not what we're going to help you do. I mean, we can give you a few tips. We can. Might shake some stuff loose, but... But really, you probably need an assistant. You probably need, I don't know, someone on your sales team.
Like there's opportunities for you to outsource things that don't only require your brain, mind, time. So if you are feeling like you're in a quote unquote bad market, it's the time to build good habits. Follow up is one of them. Systems, scale, delegation. You're welcome.