From Hustle to $3 Billion: Gary Ashton’s Real Estate Power Moves
Download MP3And welcome to Real Estate Distilled the podcast. I'm Liz Hack.
Scott Hack:Hey, I'm Scott Hack.
Liz Hack:We are your hosts for Real Estate Distilled the podcast. On this episode, Scott, we're gonna go back in time, right? We're gonna talk about Real Estate Distilled The Conference.
Scott Hack:Yeah. So today we're going to introduce and talk a little bit about Mr. Gary Ashton, who sat down on the stage with me and I kind of did a Q and A with him.
Liz Hack:Yeah. We really don't do that a lot. You know, we haven't done that for a long time at one of our in person events. And I think people liked it because it was refreshing and got to ask questions that you would normally wanna ask yourself.
Scott Hack:Yeah. So, I mean, we put Gary on the hot seat and walked through some of his some of his marketing ideas and some of his his business strategies that he's done over the years. So we covered everything from his sports affiliations to his billboard campaign that he's done and how he's grown the, the Ashton real estate team, to be the number one REMAX team in the world.
Liz Hack:Yeah. I was gonna say, why don't we tell people who are listening who Gary Ashton is and why especially in our region, why that was so cool to have him there?
Scott Hack:Yeah. So for those of you do that do not know who Gary is, he is basically Nashville real estate. So I I mentioned it actually in the, on the stage. Gary has produced a brand that is as close to Coke or Apple, for Nashville real estate as I think they can exist.
Liz Hack:It's amazing. Yeah.
Scott Hack:So you can't drive through the city. You can't listen to the radio. You can't, go to the predators games and not see Gary's face.
Liz Hack:Even if you're just driving through Nashville
Gary Ashton:Right.
Liz Hack:You see his billboards. That's a game we like to play when we're heading down south from where we live. We, count the billboards that we see Gary on. You can't listen to rate the radio, in your car when you're driving through Nashville without hearing one of his radio spots. So truly, exactly like you talked about.
Liz Hack:He is the coke for real estate in Nashville, Tennessee.
Scott Hack:Yeah. He's built a huge omnipresence brand. So we walked through some of that and basically how he's put together some smart people around him and what that looks like.
Liz Hack:So let's go ahead and start the presentation from this year's Real Estate Distilled.
Announcer:Welcome to the Real Estate Distilled podcast. Get ready for a smooth pour on insights on sales, marketing, lead conversion, and technology. All shaken, stirred, and perfectly balanced to help you succeed in real estate. Mixed just for you.
Scott Hack:Real quick. For those that do not know Gary, he's in the national market. I've known Gary a while. And last year, I put him into a headlock, and he came up and visited with us for a little while. And then, like, hey.
Scott Hack:We gotta get you back and and share your expertise with with the the community. But I knew, and I know Gary long enough that I wasn't gonna get him up here with a clicker and a slideshow presentation. So I convinced him to do a Q and A. So I've got some prepared questions, so we're gonna go through some of the questions that I've asked, put together. And then if we have time and things are going well, Liz will take a microphone around and we will basically, you all submit some questions.
Scott Hack:So, Gary, why don't you do your elevator introduction for people who have no idea who you are?
Gary Ashton:So my name is Gary Ashton. I own the Ashton Real Estate Group of REMAX Advantage. Based in Nashville, which is one city, and I'm with REMAX. We love the new logo and I do actually, I do love it. And we are the number one REMAX team in the world is how I like to say But I will add that I have 180 agents on the team so we're more of a team marriage rather than your traditional ten-fifteen person team.
Scott Hack:This was not one of my prepared questions, but since you mentioned it.
Gary Ashton:Oh, here we go. Off the off
Scott Hack:the I know. But now I'm curious, like, there's less than a 180 people here in the room today, so how do you keep track of a 180 people's names and who they are?
Gary Ashton:So I don't really know everybody's name. So I do know them because part of our onboarding is I have a couple of classes where I teach the agents how I want the leads to be treated. So I get to know everybody and when they start, the part of their onboarding is to send me a video text and just say, hey, my name's Scott Hack blah blah blah blah.
Scott Hack:You're a really handsome person
Gary Ashton:all Just cute, so really it's more about so I know who they are. So when they come into the class and then four months later they text me, I can go back and go, Who is that? So really don't know. So what we did though was when I started the team, I started with two, four, six, ten, twelve, fifteen. So around that number I knew everybody individually and I would always say that I could go out for dinner or lunch with anybody on the team.
Gary Ashton:Some I would like more than others but I knew everybody enough to be able to feel comfortable doing that. But when you get to 75, 100, you start to lose contact with people. So I created this thing called, I call them pods actually. So it was an agent that we would select that wanted to, don't know,
Scott Hack:Like a mini team leader.
Gary Ashton:a mini team leader? It's kind of like a mini team, yeah, but it was more on the social side. That was the idea is to stop. Deborah Beagle's my business partner and she's the one that is the managing broker. She answers all the really tough questions from the agents.
Gary Ashton:But she was getting all of the, hey, you got a minute? Have you got a minute? Have you got a minute? So it was really a way to filter out her dealing with all those. I mean, they're not stupid questions, but there's not something that Deborah should be spending the time on.
Gary Ashton:So in effect what we did, called them squads and we had squad leaders and then each of the squad leaders had about 15, though they do have about 15 agents. And we give them a budget so they can go out, they can take the agents to lunch, to go do training. And it's more of a social network. It's a feedback loop for us to figure out if things are going well and also if things are going badly and there's an undercurrent of people complaining about things. Or if somebody's doing something well that's nothing to do with real estate, then we have a feedback loop so we can recognize that person.
Gary Ashton:Conversely, if something is going bad, somebody's getting divorced, all the negative stuff, because when you get to 180 people, you've got, we've had people die, people get married, people have kids, people get married within the team, me being one of them. Yeah. Congratulations.
Scott Hack:Congratulations, by the way, because that's fairly recent, six months ago. Right?
Gary Ashton:Yep. I did go to Italy. Yeah. It was the best excuse to go to Italy ever.
Scott Hack:It was awesome. All right, so next question I have on my list. So you and I actually met because we both have a passion in online lead generation. And so for context really quickly, how many domain
Gary Ashton:names you own? So that is an unknown question because I've got about three or four hundred with GoDaddy and then I've got other ones that I forget about until they say your credit card has been declined and then you've got to renew it. And I go, oh shit, I forgot, that's a good one. I didn't know about that. So the ones I actively use are Nashville's MLS, worst URL ever, nashvillerealestate.com, garyashton.com, and TN real estate.
Gary Ashton:So I've got one with Sierra, two real estate webmasters, and one with Ylopo.
Scott Hack:Okay. So you've got at least a handful, four or five major domains you're using, and then another four to 500 that you own
Gary Ashton:I mean, I've got other ones that I've the parts, like Celebrity Agent, we use that, don't if you know that. Okay. And then with that, there's I think it's Ashton Real Estate GRP is another lead source.
Scott Hack:So of the ones that you mentioned, there were the handful where you have a platform on them. I'm guessing those are the ones you consider your most valuable. Which one do you think is the most valuable?
Gary Ashton:In terms of lead generation, the most valuable one is realtor.com because I own all of the Nashville market. So any leads that come through realtor.com in the greater conurbation, so that's Nashville, Brentwood, Franklin, Hennessville, all of the area, Clarksville, all of those leads come to me. So that is in essence my website. The one that I actually own though is Nashville's MLS is the one that although it's the worst URL, it's the one that ranks organically better than anything else.
Scott Hack:Did you start with that one? Is that why you think it's ranking better?
Gary Ashton:No, I started with Nashville buyers. Okay. And then I think back in the day we all wanted to have 10 sites in the top 10 with different variations. So I had Nashville sales, Nashville buyers and I wanted nashvillerealestate.com that had gone. I wanted Nashville MLS that had gone.
Gary Ashton:Nashville Homes had gone. So the next best thing to me was, oh, I'll just get nashvillesmls.com. And for whatever reason, that one really stuck with the SEO. And yeah, today, because if I tell you Nashville's MLS, most people go, oh, Nashville MLS. No, Nashville's MLS.
Scott Hack:So if those ones that you were just naming that weren't available, I'm guessing that at some point there was one that you've bought that was aftermarket or or premium that you were Yeah.
Gary Ashton:So I I bought nashvillerealestate.com. I can't remember now, maybe six or seven years ago.
Scott Hack:So we were talking at dinner last night. How do you place a determination on what a domain might be worth into your business?
Gary Ashton:So I paid 50,000 for it, but I think it was Justin Havre said to me, we were talking about domains and he said, well why don't you have nationalrealestate.com? I said, well it's already gone. He said, no it's not, it's for sale. It literally was maybe two days before anybody else really knew about it. I went to the site and it said, nationalrealestate.com is for sale.
Gary Ashton:So I knew that if I applied for it they would know who I was basically from my email address. So I got Chris Lindell to, if everybody knows Chris, he's up in Minneapolis. So I got Chris Lindell to negotiate for me. And if you know Chris, Chris is probably the best negotiator I've ever met. And so I gave Chris my $50,000 and he said, I'll take care of it.
Gary Ashton:Because if I'd have been negotiating, they would have said, we're going to go to 100 and I would have said, okay, because I really thought it was worth 150 at the time. I don't know if it is now, but anyway Chris just said, yeah, I need to know today. Get back to me before 05:00 or otherwise the offer's off the table. And I would never have said that. And I got it for $50.
Scott Hack:So you you also had affiliation with at least two different sports pro sports organizations in the Nashville market. Can you share a little bit about what you learned from leveraging those affiliations?
Gary Ashton:So I was the official realtor for ten years with the Tennessee Titans until they decided they wanted to five x me on my sponsorship fee. So I did that for ten years, but that was really a way of elevating my presence within the community. So every Titans game, I had a tailgate. So when did the initial deal with the Titans, they wanted to give me a suite with like 12 tickets, which is awesome if I wanted to invite 12 people to a game. But I said, I'd rather have a spot to do a tailgate.
Gary Ashton:I had an RV, like a typical 40 foot RV. So I wrapped that. So it said Gary Ashton down the sides, pretty prominent, all the branding on it. And then for every game I wanted to do a tailgate, so they said yes. So we swapped out the suite, then I got just four club level tickets and then got the spot to do the tailgate, which for me, I thought they were going to stick me right in the corner of the parking lot, you know, way back and it would just be my own little event.
Gary Ashton:They ended up putting me right on the pathway where everybody would walk down the road into the stadium. So for me it just created a huge amount of visibility. So it started as the RV, but then it really expanded into this little became a pain in the ass to be honest because you had to put all these tents up and we would do hamburgers and hotdogs and we'd invite everybody in. It was like an open, then it became people would just come in and steal hamburgers and hotdogs. So then we made it a little bit more exclusive.
Gary Ashton:You had to get a wristband. So it evolved over ten years, but it really did elevate my position within the community of I'm aligned with the NFL. And then after about five or six years, then we also got the Nashville Predators, which is the hockey team. And so we still do that one. I have a really good relationship with hockey team.
Scott Hack:So you're you're talking about the the RV. So, mean, essentially, that was a 40 foot billboard that you parked in the Texas Titans parking lot every every game.
Gary Ashton:That was my billboard.
Scott Hack:Yeah. So so translating into now you have billboards across the city, or at least I'm assuming you do, because last time Liz and I drove through there was We
Gary Ashton:have about 100 altogether, it varies. 80 to 100, and I think we've got 10 of them are digital. So the digital ones are the ones that I can just send in a new message and change those on a daily basis. The other billboards really now just say don't sell without the Intel. That's kind of been our phrase for I think six years or so or eight years.
Gary Ashton:Did that through radio to start with, then we do TV and then had a competitor come into the market that I knew was going to do billboards. I just, he essentially forced me to start billboards, which was a good thing actually because I never really wanted to spend the money on billboards. But as soon as I did that, it kind of became the final piece in the puzzle. If you know Gary Vee's Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, the billboards all of a sudden elevated us again because it reinforced everything I've been doing with radio, everything I've been doing with TV, everything that I was doing with sports marketing and all of a sudden they had this big old billboard that you would drive around and see. And it just helped, I think I call it brand equity, helped develop my brand equity in Nashville.
Scott Hack:I've always talked about and referred to billboards as brand multipliers, so we're kind of on the same page about what those are. I call them a social backlink. Okay. Yeah.
Gary Ashton:It's not really a backlink, but it's out there and you've seen there.
Scott Hack:It has that same power though.
Gary Ashton:It's the perception of you're on a billboard then you've got more credibility I think.
Scott Hack:Most of your billboards are brand building, They're not necessarily direct response although when you see your face 100
Gary Ashton:times a Yeah, they just say don't sell without the intel. It's the same, it's a different picture actually. It's this jacket, so this is now more of my branding. This white shirt me, different picture because that one is, I always think I look really good looking in that picture but then I forget that when they took that then they did all the digital enhancements and took out, so yeah that's like the best version of me ever.
Scott Hack:So on the billboards specifically because
Gary Ashton:Oh but on the digital ones that's the ones where we started an auction division so now I can flip those 10 billboards to talking about auctions or for recruiting, I have a big recruiting billboard. And we just rotate those in, the digital ones where they rotate. So we mix in the real estate, the recruiting and if we have an auction through, throw some of those in.
Scott Hack:At the end of the day though, you've got a P and L that you've got to check out. How are you tracking or are you even tracking the return on investment for the billboards?
Gary Ashton:So you can't track it unless you actually have something that's trackable, unless there's a code on there or even a phone number that you could track, but I think it's very hard to do that. You could put a QR code on I guess, but really all I know is that when I got forced to do billboards, when I knew this other guy was coming into the market, Mark Spain essentially, he's the guaranteed cash offer guy, so he's in a lot of the South. When I knew that he was coming in, I knew he was going to do billboards. I was telling Scott last night, soon as I knew he was coming in, the only reason I knew is because I was flicking through Instagram and I saw an ad for Mark and it said Mark Spain now hiring. So was like, good grief.
Gary Ashton:So I knew he was coming in. So within a week we'd got the order in, the campaign for 50, start off with 50 billboards and to me that was really more of a let me get ahead of him. I know he's coming and he's got more money than me, he's going to have a bigger campaign but it elevated me within the Nashville market and I think it just added to my credibility. And I know what I was going to say is that added sort of a lift in business from it. So Chris Lindell, they've been doing it for a long time before me and he'd been handing me to do it for years.
Gary Ashton:Justin Havers, my other buddy up in Calgary, same thing because Chris did it then Justin did it and then they were both kind of going, come on, you got to do it, you got to do it. And I saw no reason to do it because I was already ahead of them in terms of SEO. So Mark was the one that pushed me to do it. So with every cloud, there's a silver lining. I wouldn't have done it if he hadn't forced me to do it.
Scott Hack:Just for the audience that's not aware, if you Google Chris, it's spelled with a k, he's in the Minnesota market. He's the guy who does the hands outreach, yeah, on billboards. There's some really interesting tie ins he's done in some of the video game recently. Right?
Gary Ashton:Oh, yeah. Is is it Call of Duty?
Scott Hack:Yeah. I I can't remember
Gary Ashton:what have a billboard of Chris Yeah. Within the game, but it's not Chris. It's the the character, I think. Okay. But it's the Arms outstretched.
Gary Ashton:Yeah. Yeah.
Scott Hack:So, you know, on that note, like, surrounded yourself with some really smart people. And, you know, Deborah Beagle is Yep. You you mentioned her earlier. So how did she come into your world and how did that relationship come together?
Gary Ashton:So Deborah, so this goes back to 02/2011. So I was I was working with the general manager of the Titans. He was selling his house, so I knew that I was going to get the Titans account to be the official real estate agent. So he lived in a gated neighborhood, So I knew I was going to be listing this house and then there was a broker progressive open house. So I thought I should go to that because then I can meet some of the other realtors that are listing in there.
Gary Ashton:So there's about five or six houses that you go through and these are all big old houses. So the one was literally 16,000 square foot. So it was a big house. I didn't have a car that day because my car was in the shop, so I got somebody to drop me off. Gated subdivision, there's probably about 28 realtors and so they're all, each house you would drive out, there would be a valet.
Gary Ashton:So then would then go in the house, look around, then come out and then get your car. So I got one of my guys to drop me off and I said, I'll text you when I'm done. I'll just hitch a ride with somebody with, you know, you would do that, right? 100%. So the house was 16,000 square foot.
Gary Ashton:So I go in, I'm walking around, bump into this lady and that's when you go, oh beautiful house, lovely, I love it, amazing. Walk around and then I bump into her again, she was with an old lady and I was just like, oh this is fantastic, amazing architectural features. Well that happened like four or five times because it was such a big house, I kept bumping into her. So it just became, and I was like, are you stalking me, what's going on there? So just having a bit of a laugh.
Gary Ashton:And then when I was leaving, so everybody's, the cars are all pulling up, so this big black Cadillac pulls up. And then Debra gets in, said to end it with one of her friends and I said to Debra, and she didn't know me, but I said, Can I get a ride to the next spot? And that's when she's probably in her head went, as a realtor. I'm only going 50 yards to the next house. Yeah, it seems safe enough and I've got somebody else.
Gary Ashton:So she let me in and then I rode in and then we started chatting and I said I'm here because I'm gonna be listing. Oh, I said I'm getting the Titans account and then she thought I was full of crap. And then I said, I gave her my card and then that's when she was aware of me. She said, Oh you're Gary Ashton.
Scott Hack:The Gary Ashton.
Gary Ashton:Well kind of because I was known for generating leads and things like that. I already had the team. The team was about maybe 30 people or something like that, 30 or 40 people. So she knew, anyway, then we just got on like a house on fire. Went around and she's ridiculously smart.
Gary Ashton:Then I thought I was being really, really good because the brokerage I was at, they were getting the Titans. This is before I had them. So they were getting the Titans. Turned out that Deborah is a hockey nut. She really knows a hockey.
Gary Ashton:So after the event I said to her, you should come and join REMAX. She was a Coldwell banker. I said, you should come and join REMAX because we're getting the predators. And so I thought that I was being really smart by trying to bring her in just because of the hockey. Well, turned out she already knew the owner of that brokerage and they were kind of friends.
Gary Ashton:So that deal had already been done. I just didn't know that they were coming in. So Debra joined REMAX. Her job was going to be kind of working with the predators, all of the sponsors and things like that. It turns out that was the year that they had the lockout, the hockey strike.
Gary Ashton:So I would go into Deborah. I didn't have an office, an individual office, but Deborah had one. Then if you all know Deborah, if you ever met her, she's like immaculate with everything. The office is full of awards and it's just very clean and just completely opposite to the way that my I don't have an office because it was so bad. Anyway, I kept going in and saying, should just come and join my team because she was representing three or four builders.
Gary Ashton:So it was really like the perfect storm because she was spending a lot of money with Zillow and marketing and I was generating all these buyer leads organically. So she had the vision to say, okay, if I join then I'll get all the buyers and I can cut my advertising spend with Zillow. So that's how she joined. And then I found out that she was really, really smart and then she just naturally gravitated to being a leader within because I don't like getting up in front of the team meetings going blah blah blah blah let's go team. But Deborah's much more, that's just more natural for And so she became the leader.
Gary Ashton:Also, she's a managing broker. And that's too hard a test to take. So
Scott Hack:obviously, the size of the size of your team and your production that you probably don't have to spend a lot of time going out and looking for things. People probably are coming to you to see if you'll test it or check into it. So what what tech are you most excited right now that you're either experimenting with or that you've been exposed
Gary Ashton:So yes, we have a ton of stuff and I am a bit of a shiny object guy and which is good and bad, know, because sometimes we'll take stuff I think is amazing but then when the agents actually start working it they don't like it or they don't use it. But the one that we're really using now is House Whisper. I don't if anybody has heard of that one but really that's like
Scott Hack:Greg is going to do, I think, a little demo on it later today. We'll get a little piece of So
Gary Ashton:we've been beta testing that for a few months. I think they're going to release it in the next I think they're going to go to market in the next few weeks. But essentially it's an assistant. It's an AI assistant because everything's AI right now that makes it cool and trendy. But it really is something that with adoption for technology, it's usually about if you do 20% to 30%, you're doing okay.
Gary Ashton:So with our team, we've been beta testing it for a while now, but it's created such a buzz within the team that people are asking when can I get on, when can I be on boarded? So it really does help with maintaining that relationship with the clients, the follow-up, the accountability. I mean, it's just an assistant that you don't worry about the AI, just use it as an assistant that you never see. You can call it, you can text it and it will do all sorts of things for you, create reminders and follow ups and things. It's house whisper.
Scott Hack:So looking back on your journey, what were the biggest mistakes or learning experiences that shaped how you run your business today?
Gary Ashton:Mistakes, I don't think there's any massive mistakes. There's always little things like I spent some money on some new program, which was more of a small investment. Nothing big.
Scott Hack:Okay. That's good. And we really only have time for a couple other questions, so I'm gonna ask this one and then we might be able to take an audience question. But yesterday, Christine talked about branding and personal branding specifically, and there's some, you know, phenomenal teams and and brokers out there. And some of this could be just me being, you know, in your your world and in your story for a long time, but you've created a brand that is as close to Coke or Apple for Nashville real estate in my eyes, and it's a competitive market.
Scott Hack:So if you track it, what's bringing you the highest ROI for your brand building and lead generation?
Gary Ashton:Right now I'd say realtor.com because we do Zillow, we do Zillow Flex. There hasn't been much business for a while so Flex is turning more back to market based pricing. Realtor.com, so there's different programs at realtor.com. So we're doing market VIP. So that's where I just pay a flat fee, then all of the leads come to me.
Gary Ashton:So there's no tying it to a lender. You don't have to use the lender. You don't have to use the title company, which what Zillow is essentially doing with their enhanced markets and they want you to use Zillow Home Loans or don't even know what the title company is, Spruce I think it is. So with realtor.com, I don't have any of those pressures. I can choose my own partners to work with.
Gary Ashton:So that's been the biggest one. The SEO has been is tougher and tougher and harder and harder. So that's why I kind of went all in on the realtor.com, which we started at like 30% in the market, then went to 70% and then went to 100%. So it was a gradual, we stair stepped it up. It wasn't just like go all in.
Scott Hack:Alright. Liz is gonna come grab the microphone. Like I said, I think we have time for maybe one, maybe two. One question. One question.
Scott Hack:Okay. One question.
Gary Ashton:No. I'm kidding. Long as it's not a
Liz Hack:hard Who's the lucky winner of the one question?
Gary Ashton:Nobody wants to ask a question. Hello. No, he's going to be too smart.
Audience:Mic. Two one two. So you have a 180 people in the team as of now. What did that as you started as you started to build that team, could you give us just maybe a broad overview on how that developed? Right?
Audience:So year one, you had two people. Year three, you had seven people, so on and so And then the other piece that I have on top of that is with your structure, do you have all the support on the backside as well? So do you have your own TCs or is that more through the brokerage?
Gary Ashton:Well I'm going to answer the last question because I can remember that one. Yes, so we have marketing, we have transaction, we have ISAs. Essentially all we do for the agent is give them opportunities. So they're not having to do the nurturing, they're not having to do the initial calls. When the lead comes in, the way I describe it is if you imagine like a relay race and the lead comes in and that is the baton, That comes to the ISA.
Gary Ashton:So the ISAs are all licensed, they all live in Nashville, they're all licensed realtors. So they can ask all the questions that you would as a realtor. And then they, so they grab that baton and they run around the lap until that person says, yeah, I want to go see a home. So that might be instantaneous really, like if it's a realtor.com lead and they want to go see a house today or tomorrow, there'd be an instant handoff to the appropriate agent for that market, for that price range. Otherwise they just keep on running around the track and that's the nurturing.
Gary Ashton:And then it's either three months, six months, a year, two years. And at that point when that person wants to go see a house or wants to talk more in-depth to a realtor, that's when that lead's handed off. So then when that lead goes under contract, that's when it goes to the contract to close. So we have a lot of support on the back end. And then the question was like how did the team grow, is that what you're asking?
Gary Ashton:So it was just organic. I never started out to have a big old team. Just I ended up when I started I was doing PPC which is one or two leads a day. So I was doing that which is enough to keep me busy. And then, this is a long story but I'll make it short.
Gary Ashton:I got approached by the owners of nashville.com, which is the geo domain, just nashville.com. And they were getting 20 to 30 leads a day, but they could never get in touch with the broker owners. They could never get in touch with the people that own Coldwell Banker, Keller Williams, REMAX, because if they made those calls, they never get through to the owners, even though they would have probably loved to have got that call. So they were trying to find somebody to sell to lease the site to. So they went to Google, typed in Nashville real estate.
Gary Ashton:I was number one in the PPC. So they called me and said, would you like it? And it was $2,000 a month at the time, which was way above my budget as it were. But they said to we'll give you a sampling, we'll give you free leads for a week. So I always describe this as like a tennis ball machine or a little tap that's dripping and it's dripping.
Gary Ashton:Well, I got the free leads for a week, was like turning the faucet on me. It was gushing out, which is really that's the catalyst for developing the team because I'm gonna go back to my tennis ball analogy. If a tennis ball machine is like firing tennis balls at you, I can catch the tennis ball every time when it's like three a day. It's like and I can work that lead. When I got nashville.com, the tennis ball machine was just going throwing that ball.
Gary Ashton:So I could catch every single ball as it were, maybe. But then I would put it here in my, you know, and then when you get to like 10 or 15, I'm still getting number 16, number 17, number 18, but as I'm putting it here, those leads fall away and roll away because you're so focused on the lead that came. So that was the genesis of the teams that I realized I had to go, hey do you want a lead? Hey do want to lead? And initially I was giving it to anybody that was in the brokerage but then I realized, because this is in 2,004 I think it was, there wasn't really a manual on how to create teams or work teams but I realized pretty quickly that if I give Scott a lead and then Scott gets his own business, his focus is gonna money his own business.
Gary Ashton:My lead, he's only getting 50%, so why would he focus on that? I had no accountability, then that's when I created the team. So I brought those two agents in and then the team grew because I think I said I like shiny objects. So I'm always looking for the next lead source and I always want to be this is another cliche, you want to dominate the market. So I would say that I'm not too risk averse.
Gary Ashton:So spending more and more money generates more and more leads. I've spent a lot of money on the SEO, lots of money on the sports marketing, marketing overall, radio, television, pretty much done it all. And then you find a responsibility because then you look out and then you see all these agents like the little, hey I need feeding, give me some. So it's continually feeding that fire, it's like a pyramid. People do well they start to focus more on their own sphere, but they still want the leads.
Gary Ashton:But you still need those new agents coming in to run out and go see leads. Does that answer it? I'm just always looking for new leads, continue trying to build, but with that you need to continue, you recruit more and more agents. Is that it? You're welcome.
Scott Hack:Alright. Give give Gary a round of applause, please. Thank you, Gary. Really appreciate it. Thank you, sir.
Scott Hack:Thanks.
Announcer:That's a wrap for this episode of the Real Estate Distilled podcast. Visit realestatedistilled.com for more tips, and jump into our Facebook group to keep the conversation going. Here's to making every transaction a smooth pour. Cheers.
