Ways to build your mortgage referral network for lead gen

Justin Ulrich
You bet. I was looking into your background a little bit and you obviously are very well-steeped in mortgage and the award-winning nature of how successful you’ve been for years. Markets change over time and you’ve experienced lots of different market situations, more so I think than the majority of folks.

So that’ll be really good to get you on. Maybe tease out a little bit around what do you think is most impactful from a local marketing perspective. But before we get started, why don’t you give us a little bit about your background and we’ll go from there.

Adam Smith
Well, a little bit about my background, I guess, is that pretty much my entire adult life has been spent in the mortgage space. It’s really the only real adult job that I’ve had. There were obviously gigs that were circumnavigating the school.

I worked in a pizza joint at the Auraria campus in downtown Denver, which you’d be familiar with those kinds of things. But as far as being a grown-up is concerned, not that I’m claiming to actually be a legitimate grown-up yet, it has really circumnavigated around the mortgage space. 

I answered what was probably at the time a newspaper ad, literally, to go learn to be a loan originator for a company that’s no longer in business. They had branches scattered around the country. 

After a number of years of doing that and them having some corporate changes, I decided to open my own brokerage. That was in 2005. We just celebrated 20 years this past spring. 

Justin Ulrich
Wow. Congrats.

Adam Smith
I’ve been doing this for a minute. As you described, I’ve seen a really interesting rollercoaster ride of what goes on in the mortgage space. A lot of people ask, particularly in our coaching program for LOs (and we do work for a lot of real estate agents, that kind of thing), but when it comes to LOs, is it better to be wholesale retail?

I don’t know. I’ve always been a broker or a broker owner. I’ve never been on the retail side. Of course, starting your own business is going to have some growing pains. A couple of years worth, you would assume.

Then, of course, once we had gotten through those couple of years, we immediately fell into the Great Recession, 2007, 2008, and what the Wall Street greed and the mortgage-backed securities market had done to the mortgage space, the real estate space, the American economy, and frankly, the global economy, all impacted by what went on there. It’s been an interesting ride, but we seem to always land on our feet, as it were.

Justin Ulrich
Why do you think that is? A lot of folks didn’t survive, especially during the Great Recession there. What was it within you that helped you to continue to move forward and chug along through that time?

Adam Smith
Well, okay. No question that there were a lot of loan originators, real estate agents, that didn’t survive that 2007, 2008 period. I think that might be comparable or even less impactful than what we saw from the height of the pandemic to now.

The general rumor is that at the height of the pandemic, we had nearly a million active federal mortgage licenses and less than 100,000 renewed in 2025.

Justin Ulrich
Holy cow. I’d always heard like 50%. Still, that’s a ton.

Adam Smith
Okay, but is it? When we look at, say, NAR stats, and I do think that the real estate agent gig and the loan originator gig are very similar that way, as far as what you guys should actually be doing in your job. Obviously, the secondary job of knowing mortgages or knowing real estate is very different.

But the fact that you need to be doing lead gen at your job is very, very similar. And if we look at the NAR stats, historically, 80% of real estate agents fail in the first two years, 85% in the first five years. I’ll bet that number is higher now, post-pandemic.

So is it really all that much of a surprise that loan originators are in a similar boat? I don’t know. I don’t think so.

But let’s not forget that the people that have survived what went on subsequent to the pandemic 2022, 2023, 2024, and certainly this year has been challenging. It’s had its own oddities and every year in the mortgage space does. 

But I think it’s important to understand that the things that are making loan originators, real estate agents really successful now, versus the 80%, 90% that have fallen off, come down to a few simple things.

Good lead gen, good contact management, good calendar management, good social media work, good video work, good local marketing work, and we’ll get into that obviously because that’s why we’re here. And then actually doing the work. You have to work.

And there are so many people that are either sucked into the HGTV mentality where, oh, this is going to be fun, and my schedule is going to be flexible, and I’m going to hang out with my kids, and I’m going to see cool houses, and I’m going to make a lot of money. No, it doesn’t work that way. 

And the analogy I’d like to use is I’ve got a coaching client, young guy, real estate agent, who tells me he wants to do doorknocking.

Okay, I will never judge you for how you do your lead gen. I will only judge you if you don’t do the work. So he says he’s going to do four hours every Saturday, and this is great local marketing type stuff if you do the work.

And then he came back to me after a month and said, well, that didn’t work. And I was like, well, wait, wait, wait. You did four hours every Saturday? Yeah. And you did that for four Saturdays? Yeah.

Okay, that’s 16 hours. That’s like one workday in the life of a new agent. Tell me it sucked. Tell me you hated doing it, but don’t tell me it didn’t work. If you did that for a year, it would work. So that’s really the kind of mentality that we have to have that is what makes the people that are still in the mortgage space for this long, still in the real estate space for this long, is they do the damn work.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah. No matter what, you can’t stop. It’s going to be a grind. It is tough, especially as times change, technology changes, outreach methods change, social media has been introduced, and it can be very overwhelming for folks. 

Think of how difficult it is for people just to… You’re your own worst critic, right? Taking a video yourself is… People don’t like to do it, especially to push it publicly, professionally. And so getting started is just overwhelming. And so it’s just paralysis by analysis and you’ll never get to it.

Adam Smith
Take imperfect action. I’ll make a plug here for a colleague of mine, Chad Prio, who wrote a book called The Art of Getting Shit Done. Taking imperfect action is absolutely crucial.

So yeah, the analysis paralysis is obviously a big deal. The other piece of that that’s so important right now is having a little bit of foresight, seeing what’s coming down the road. And I think the best example that I can give to this particular audience is, if you were in the mortgage space during the pandemic, rates were low, things were easy, the phone rang.

It was basically like working a McDonald’s drive-through and all you really had to worry about was whether or not they wanted fries with that. Everybody wanted a rate and term refinance and it was easy, easy, easy. In fact, the only thing that wasn’t easy was the volume, which is why we may have had close to a million loan originators at the time and less than a hundred thousand now.

It was easy and people seek that out in this kind of space. The foresight that’s required, however, how many people, and I’m guilty, I think I was behind the ball a little bit, although apparently further ahead than a lot of people, roughly 90% it looks like, that we knew that this wasn’t going to be permanent. Interest rates were not going to be in the twos and threes forever.

However, what was going to come as an economic impact, and that’s funny because now we’re talking econ, and here’s my copy of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 

But from an economic standpoint, we had to have known, common sense, even without being an econ student, we had to know that one of the big results was going to be a significant increase in everything when it comes to consumer cost, cost of goods, cost of labor. Obviously, we heard a lot of bullshit on the news, and pardon my language, we heard a lot of things on the news about the cost of eggs or lumber prices.

Do you remember a lot of chatter about what lumber costs, home prices, new home prices then going up, the labor costs then going up, so on and so forth? Well, that kind of an economic squeeze was going to really have an impact on a big part of the population, in fact, at the time, the biggest chunk of the population, the boomers. 

They’ve now been eclipsed a little by the millennials, but only because they’re starting to die off, the boomers, that is.

But how many people had the foresight to realize that the rate and term refinances for that audience was eventually going to shift to a significant need for reverse mortgages in the baby boomer audience? And it really wasn’t that complex an economic environment to see that that was going to be the case. But how many LOs really made a pivot?

Well, apparently about 10%. So yes, I think hard work, doing the work, understanding that this is a business you have to run, and you’ve got to have your time blocking, and you’ve got to have your contact management, your social media, and your video, you’ve got to do all the things. And you’ve got to do them constantly and consistently.

You’ve got to do them with transparency and authenticity. That’s obviously very heavy local marketing stuff. And you’ve got to have just a little bit of foresight.

You mentioned it with the technology. If we can’t really embrace some of these things, like today, it’s AI. What kind of systemization and automation are you able to put into your lead gen, into your social media, into your video marketing, into your text campaigns, your voicemail campaigns, your email campaign?

What is you’re doing in your lead gen space? Then yeah, you’re probably one of the ones that has gone back to wearing a blue vest and greeting people as they stroll into Walmart.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, that is that I was actually going to ask what you think the next big thing coming is to have foresight into and try to guide the conversation into AI. But because that is like, for me, AI, it seems like tools can become, they’re a little, maybe a little daunting for those who aren’t used to them, or it’s intimidating. But the other day I had my mom, she’s like almost 70.

And I had her use ChatGPT and she hadn’t even ever used it. What is this thing? And now she’s in there doing all sorts of stuff just for fun.

And it’s like, the tools actually are really easy to use. That’s the whole point. And they make marketing in particular, super simple.

If you just get started, try some things out, you’d be surprised at what you can actually create now than you’d ever have been able to do in the past.

Adam Smith
And I’ll admit that I’m a guilty party. I think that considering how early an adopter I was of things like good video work, when we’ve been doing a weekly video blog for what’s probably close to 15 years. So that was really early adoption.

Credit to Brian Stevens and Frank Gray for pushing me into that and really pushing. They were calling my friends and relatives, trying to get them to pressure me into doing video work. And we’re in our eighth season of the weekly podcast, How I Met Your Mortgage.

And again, I think really early adoption in that environment as well. We’ve done hundreds of episodes. So I think when it came to AI, I was in comparison, a late adopter.

And for a little bit, and I met with a lot of people who had a really good grip on what it was and what it was going to be able to do and what was coming. Credit to Scott Chang for a few meetings with him. He’s always been kind of a mortgage space tech guru.

He’s not the out front sales guy. He’s not the boots on the ground, loan originator by any means, but for what is going on behind the curtains, Scott’s stuff is amazing. And one of the things that I really learned early on is that most people in this space are using AI, if they’re using AI, they’re using it improperly.

They’re actually creating problems for AI to solve. They’re creating problems that they didn’t have and don’t need for AI to solve. Rather than using AI to solve the problems they do already have.

And every now and then somebody in my peripheral, somebody in my circle to say, hey, why don’t you just plug that into AI and see what comes out? Like, why didn’t I think to just throw that into AI and see what comes out? The other piece of this is that I think people don’t understand that it’s not really artificial intelligence.

Computers are still dumb. They only know what we tell them. The difference now is that your computer, your phone, your smart device, whether it’s Siri or Google or whatever, knows everything that we’ve ever taught a computer in the history of mankind.

That’s really the big difference now. So the thing to understand is that when a computer is doing this work, including AI, and then it’s still dumb, it’s going to be garbage in, garbage out. So if you’re not spending the time to craft the questions, to craft the scenarios, to craft the help you need from AI, then it’s not going to give you back good content.

So the more time you spend with it, the more time you teach it about you, the better you are. And as a real easy exercise for all of you in mortgages, real estate, or anything where you’re selling large ticket items direct to the consumer, insurance agents, financial planners, even car salespeople, divorce attorneys, on and on, how to create your perfect client avatar. Just start there.

Teach your Gemini, teach your ChatGPT about who you are, your business, what you do, how long you’ve been doing it, what you think your ideal client is, and let it help you create the perfect client avatar. Then let it help you craft the marketing to those clients. And yes, it will propel you light years from where you are now if you’re not already using AI. One simple exercise.

Justin Ulrich
And that exercise typically, as a marketer, you’re meeting with teams, you’re checking in, it’s back and forth, multiple meetings to try to nail this thing down. You could get it done in a matter of minutes and have it be 90 some percent to where it needs to be so you can move forward with it. 

The other cool thing I really like about that is you’re teaching it now that you’ve come up with what your avatar is that you’re going after, and now you have something to say, okay, take this avatar and let’s come up with some messaging around X, Y, Z.

And it will just crank, crank, crank. And it really helps you to get past blank slate issues. So if you’re trying to think of how do I create a marketing program, whether it be email or a program across organic social or paid, whatever it might be, you can then say, hey, develop a program that gets this point across to this group and give me five content pieces, 10 content pieces, 15 social posts. And it just goes.

Adam Smith
And video scripts and text campaign content and yeah, on and on. Absolutely.

Justin Ulrich
Ideas. I like to use it for idea generation. Like if I’m doing this, like give me 10 ideas that’ll help me do X, Y, Z.

And it will crank them out and you’re like, okay, these three sound interesting. Like let’s build these out a little bit more. And it’s unfortunately like it develops a reliance on it.

And I know that studies are now kind of coming out to show that like those who really rely on AI are like less likely to be able to produce, like it inhibits your own thought process. And, you know, you’re not as, I mean, you can look at me right now, I’m stuttering and stammering trying to get one sentence out. Cause I use ChatGPT all the time.

It is incredible, you know, how much, how impactful it makes you at doing your job, but you know, the reliance is kind of, it’s definitely a downfall. Something to look out for long-term.

Adam Smith
It’s a double-edged sword.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, absolutely.

Adam Smith
Yeah.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, exactly. I would rather use it than not, especially in a pinch, you know, if I’m trying to figure out, you know, I want to create some, some video content, for example, highlighting, you know, local folks in my neighborhood or my community to try to get in front of their audiences on social media, who are the 10 folks that, you know, 10 ideas of folks I could reach out to. And it can come up with like, Hey, who’s the local laundromat, the local gym, the local this, that, or the other.

And it’ll give you ideas like, Oh, I never thought about highlighting these businesses in my community to help get my name out there and gain access to their audiences. You know, who are some, give me 10 more ideas. And it just cranks them out.

And then you’re able to just have a whole list of action items of things to go and do where you otherwise would have been sitting there spinning your wheels, trying to come up with a plan maybe over the course of a few days or a week or what have you.

Adam Smith
Yeah. But you’re talking about something that’s historic and shaped society. So are there benefits and drawbacks to using AI in a robust manner?

Absolutely. But were there benefits and deficits to using an automobile, anything in that manner, right? There were people that were reluctant. I’m going to keep my horse. Nope. Finally going to break over and start driving a car.

Okay. Now I have to fuel the car and maintain the car and ensure the car. And there are going to be benefits and deficits to every evolution and revolution that we have.

So take it with a grain of salt. And certainly be cognizant. We’re very careful when we drive an automobile, we wear our seat belts. It is insured. We watch for other cars, depending on where you live. Maybe you’re still watching for horses, those kinds of things.

Same kind of thing with AI. You cannot become completely dependent on its automation. You have to pay attention when you’re driving the car. Let’s pay attention while we’re using AI.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. But if you’re not, that’s the thing. If you’re still on a horse and buggy and everybody else in the highway is in a car, they’re going to be passing you by forever. You have to adopt.

Adam Smith
That’s another really interesting piece of the AI puzzle, particularly in the roles that your audience fills. AI is not going to take your job. All the time now, people talking about AI taking their job.

And it is going to happen in certain arenas. But for your audience, AI is not going to take your job. People using AI are going to take your job. So try to keep that in mind as well, if you are reluctant or in that analysis paralysis stage of using AI, because you need to get on board.

Justin Ulrich
You have to. So question for you then. We mentioned how much experience you’ve got in the mortgage space, in different markets. Now is a really tricky market. We’ve got consolidation, these huge companies who are kind of taking over the whole lead generation funnel and making it tougher for folks that aren’t aligned with some of these big operations. 

What are some things that you would suggest somebody do today or maybe sometime this week to start to turn things around in their business if they’re struggling to get leads, struggling to get referrals, what have you?

Adam Smith
Okay. So I don’t think that there’s any major shift yet in the fact that this is still a relationship business. So I do think that relationships are more of them and then deepening them, strengthening them, furthering them, so on and so forth.

So when we’re talking about lead gen activity like contact management, client management, and obviously you’re integrating your calendar management with that as well, then obviously having relationships with people outside of what goes on with their mortgage or their house or their divorce or their car or whatever the case may be is going to be of uber importance. 

We’ve got to continue to do that and we’ve got to continue to make new relationships, we’ve got to continue to build the ones that we do have, and we’ve got to strengthen and deepen. Now of course there’s a flip side to that especially as we all get older and we have more friends and more close colleagues and so on and so forth because people get ill and people die and these kinds of things, so it hits harder as time goes on.

But this is kind of the nature of the human beast. It’s just one of the human conditions that we all have to deal with. That’s also going to be true in things like social media, video, and I don’t care if you’re posting on Facebook with good copy or if you’re creating neat graphics or if you’re doing cool short form video, whatever the case may be, same kind of goal.

More people consuming more of your content, that’s what you want. You want to build your audience, you want your audience to get to know you better, hence that transparency and authenticity thing. And let’s not forget that odds are good your audience, your client database, your contact database, these people already know what you do.

They want to know who you are. So let’s try to focus on that. Let’s try to focus on things, and this will really help us shift into talking about local marketing type stuff, but run with your tribes.

Make sure people know who you are, what you’re into, what hills you would dive. Are you a dog lover? Great. Talk about that. Go to the freaking dog park for crying out loud and meet people. Cool.

Are you a car guy? I’m both. I have dogs, love the dogs. I’m a car guy. I have way too many cars. I go to car meets.

I just volunteered to wave a flag at an endurance race. I used to do a little endurance auto racing. So I’m going to go out and work a corner at a endurance race in September, those kinds of things.

So run with your tribes. I’ve got a coaching client and she is a vegan. And cool, be a vegan. I have no problem with that. But let’s talk about that. Let’s do content on where’s a great place for a vegan grocery shop.

Let’s do content on where the vegan grocery stores are, the vegan restaurants, these kinds of things. And she’s like, I don’t want to put out there that I’m vegan. I’m like, well, you’re not going to sell houses.

She’s a real estate agent. You’re not going to sell houses to the Cattlemen’s Association up the street here. So let’s focus on running with our tribes.

That obviously makes that local and hyper local marketing really, really easy. Go to your local dog park. Do you live in a neighborhood where you would want to be handling the real estate transactions, handling the mortgages?

I’ve got clients and colleagues that in a neighborhood, their name is on half the contracts that go through there on the buy side or the sell side. One of them works an enormous development, like 1200 houses. He was one of the first new build buyers.

He was the first one to go help the builder unload the rest of the inventory as they were backing up and moving on. And he was the first one to list a resale. Most of his work is in his golf cart because it’s all in the neighborhood. I’m going to a listing appointment. I’m taking the golf cart.

Justin Ulrich
I’ve got a buddy in our neighborhood who does that. He’s got this agent in particular. His name is Kyle Skrola. He’s the swim team coach. He’s a lacrosse coach. He does all sorts of different, like every season he’s involved with folks in the community.

Everybody knows him and everybody loves him. Their kids love him. Everybody wants to work with him because of it. And it’s all outside of mortgage or real estate. 

Adam Smith
That’s a big one. And we’ve obviously done that for years and years. Kids playing football and lacrosse and swim team and on and on. There are obviously great opportunities for that kind of work, as are just the schools in general, as are all of these kinds of things where you’re going to be involved whether you like it or not.

So get involved. I don’t think there’s still any string from the past that volunteer work is huge for the local community and for your local business that way. God, I’ve done so many things in that space over the years.

I currently sit as chairman of the board for a foundation that provides respite and palliative care for children. I know that’s kind of a dark subject. I don’t like to talk about children dying, but nonetheless, that’s one that I fill.

I’ve spent years volunteering for the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office. You lived in Castle Rock, isn’t that right?

So there’s one of them. I’ve spent years volunteering for employer support of the Garden Reserve at the Department of Defense. I spent years with Service to Mankind, and these kinds of things not only are good for business, but what we’re really talking about at the root of that are the relationships.

And the relationships that I’ve built with the people that are also involved in that have again grown and developed over the years, and they have spawned into further relationships, more people, more referrals, on and on and on. So yeah, volunteer work is great for your business. 

And don’t get the wrong idea about the Sheriff’s Office. I had a neighbor moving out. This is when I’m living in my first Douglas County house in Highlands Ranch, Colorado. And one of my neighbors, and I’m new to the neighborhood, one of my neighbors is moving.

He’s the volunteer public information officer for the neighborhood at the time, kind of their own version of like Neighborhood Watch. And he says, hey, would you be interested in this? Great, here you go. I don’t even think I was at time to give him a response.

And I’m still involved to a degree, and that’s been 20 years. So yeah, that kind of thing is uber important for your business, particularly when we’re talking about that local and hyper-local marketing. So yeah, go volunteer.

Justin Ulrich
All of those associations you volunteer for, they all have social media presence. And so do whatever you can to leverage that. And they already have audiences that are built of like-minded folks who follow that organization.

So if you can connect yourself to them, then you’re able to get access and expand your sphere to a whole new group of folks that you may not already have access to.

Adam Smith
That you already have something in common with.

Justin Ulrich
Correct, yeah.

Adam Smith
There’s already a rapport. All those people that you’re volunteering with, or all those people that are gonna donate to the organization that you’re volunteering for, on and on, you guys already have a rapport. You already have something in common.

You already think like they do. They already like the way that you are. And if we’re going to start focusing on some really old Zig Ziglar type of stuff and throw back into know, like, and trust, then there’s a great toehold on know, like, and trust.

So yeah, that’s a big deal. I cannot emphasize the importance of that kind of activity.

Justin Ulrich
Have you seen anything specifically that’s worked really well? Maybe something that one of your clients has done. Maybe something’s worked really well, or something that’s failed, but you still kind of learn from it?

Adam Smith
Well, I think we all learn from failure.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, yeah.

Adam Smith
Right? Falling down isn’t a failure. It’s just a learning experience, and we get back up and keep going, and we don’t do that again.

I actually do a twice a month video blog for just our clients, our mortgage clients, mind you, not our coaching clients. And it’s a homeowner tip. Basically, here’s some things you should be doing to your collateral, for your home, those kinds of things.

And it developed as kind of a very tongue-in-cheek, “don’t do what Adam did” kind of video series. The one that really springs to mind is one of my dogs, and I said, I love dogs, chewed the drywall in one section of the house. Why she did it, I don’t know.

She didn’t actually like chew a hole through it. She just kind of shaved it down. I’m like, okay, that’s easy.

I know how to patch and paint. I’m totally capable. So I patch it, and I let the spackle dry, and the guy that sold me the house was really good about labeling with the color on the lid of the can for what paint goes in what room.

So I grabbed the can, and I go paint it after the spackle’s dry, and it wasn’t paint, it was Dextane. Here’s the little tip, people. The Dextane will actually erode the spackle.

So I had to start all over. So here’s the tip, right? And I’m doing this tongue-in-cheek because I’m not a real handy guy when it comes to swinging a hammer. You want me to help you turn a wrench on your car? Look me up. I’m happy to do that.

I don’t like the electrical. I don’t like the plumbing. I don’t like the drywall. I don’t like doors and windows. And am I calling a locksmith when I need help with that? Absolutely.

Those kinds of things. So we’ve got this video series. I think we’ve done about 70 of those videos now, and it’s literally a tongue-in-cheek. Hey, here’s where Adam failed, so you don’t have to do it.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, that’s a great content series.

Adam Smith
Couldn’t figure out the leak in the ceiling in my kitchen. It’s gotta be a pipe. No, the caulking in the shower above it was dried and cracked, and the water was just getting out of the shower into the ceiling above the kitchen, and there was a little drip coming right down onto the cooktop.

So these kinds of things, and I couldn’t figure out for the life of me. I called a plumber. It was like, yeah, the water’s getting through all these grout cracks in your fancy shower tile, and that’s where it’s landing.

I was like, okay, I never would have even thought of that. So yeah, we’ve got this. Hey, Adam had a misstep. I wouldn’t call it a failure. Definitely a learning experience. And here, you can learn from my failure so that you don’t have to have the same failure, that kind of thing.

Same kind of thing applies to what we’re doing in our marketing, in our lead gen when it comes to our mortgage space. Again, I’m never gonna judge somebody for how they wanna do their lead gen, but only if they don’t do it.

 So if you’re gonna take on a new lead gen tactic, and I don’t care what it is, short form video or door knocking, or one of the ones I really love a lot right now is unique referral partner relationships, and I’m happy to talk about that because it does focus, again, on local marketing, but don’t do it for a month and then say it didn’t work.

You’ve gotta commit, okay? The big piece, so that’s one of the big failures I see. The other piece of that is that people try to take on 16 lead gen techniques and tactics at one time.

Don’t do that either. Commit to one, focus on it, make it work, when it works, systemize it, automate it, make it malleable, make it you, and then move on to another one, okay? 

So for that example with the referral partners, and we talk about this all the time, referral partner relationships are a big thing in mortgages and real estate, and mortgage originators think referral partners should include real estate agents, and vice versa, and we think that it should include divorce attorneys, and it should, all of that is true, but it’s been done, and it’s been done to death. 

Now, what are some other types of environments where people aren’t getting that same kind of love, and when I say love, if you’re the mortgage originator that’s calling 40 real estate agents every Monday morning and asking them to go to have a cup of coffee, please stop, they hate that, and by the way, real estate agents aren’t all that busy right now either, so anything times zero is still zero.

Call 40 agents, call 80 agents, call 160 agents, it’s not gonna make an impact, but what if we focused on the local landscape guy? You know who he is, drives around in his truck and trailer, he’s got three lawnmowers and a couple of buddies, and they bang out every third lawn in your neighborhood. So if you’re a real estate agent, stop that guy and say, hey, Johnny, I got an idea, I’m gonna print up a flyer for you that we are going to refer to as a pre-listing landscape job.

We’re gonna clean up the front of the house, we’re gonna make it photo ready, we’re gonna power wash, we’re gonna trim, we’re gonna mow, what would you normally charge for that? Great, I’m not gonna ask you to discount that, I’m gonna put that as your special price, and you’re gonna hand those flyers out in the neighborhoods where you’re already mowing every third lawn as it is. 

But if somebody calls you and says, hey, I wanna take you up on your pre-listing special, you gotta call me because those people are getting ready to list their house.

Okay, well, you’ve been putting the flyer that it requires 90 days advance notice because some things are gonna need to grow back a little bit to really make them curb appeal ready, to really make them photo ready. So every time somebody calls you on that flyer that you handed out, just let me know. That’s it, simple as that.

And I made what? I paid, excuse me, maybe a hundred bucks for the DA to do the graphic design and run off the flyers, and I had Canva print them real nice and send them to me. Maybe I made a hundred bucks.

If I turn a few transactions out of that in each neighborhood, good for me. Here’s another one that I really love, and this is probably one of my favorite ones that nobody thinks about. High school guidance counselors.

Everybody goes, what? You wanna know which people have their finger on the pulse of who’s about to be an empty nester? Who’s about to need money for kids going to college?

Who’s about to see the last of the children matriculate through? And these people don’t get love. Who calls 10 guidance counselors every Monday and says, hey, let me buy you a cup of coffee?

Justin Ulrich
Wow, that’s actually really smart.

Adam Smith
Who calls 10 plumbers every Monday and says, let me buy you a cup of coffee? Roofers, electricians, whatever it is. There’s such a wide, wide world of potential referral partners out there that would love to have that kind of love, i.e. harassment that loan originators are giving to real estate agents, that real estate agents are giving to divorce attorneys every single day. 

But let’s expand that. Let’s get creative, which makes me think, all of you need to go read The Purple Cow. If you don’t know The Purple Cow and you haven’t read The Purple Cow, go read The Purple Cow.

But the bottom line is, do the things that other people aren’t willing to do. Do the things that make you stand out. Be different, be unique, especially in your local market.

Justin Ulrich
That’s a really good idea. You could also use ChatGPT to come up with, like, who are the other professionals in my local area that are similar to these that would have insight as to whether or not people are moving 30, 60, 90 days before they do that I could reach out to.

Adam Smith
Well, okay, let’s not get too reliant on ChatGBT, although that did cross my mind when you and I were talking about it. But I don’t think that this is that complex. Everybody just needs to think about, what are the psychological triggers that lead to the buying and selling or refinancing of homes?

Justin Ulrich
Yeah.

Adam Smith
Those are easy, right? Getting married. Cool, how many wedding planners are you calling on Monday morning to buy a cup of coffee?

Having a baby. Cool. How many baby store managers are you calling on Monday morning to buy them a cup of coffee?

But yeah, if we really just slow down and think about what are the triggers, what are the psychological triggers that lead to the buying, selling, and refinancing of homes, and what people are involved when those triggers occur? And yeah, okay, now take that thought process and plug it into your app.

And see what kind of feedback you get. But yeah.

Justin Ulrich
This has been super helpful. We’re coming up on time here, but I did wanna give you a little chance to talk a little bit about your Broncos. Why is it that you’re such a diehard fan?

Adam Smith
Oh my. So my Broncos season tickets were originally my grandfather’s. Right? He bought them in 1963.

And the Broncos, actually most NFL organizations look to the Broncos for a lot of business acumen. There’s only one cheerleading squad that’s more popular than ours. There’s only, they are the greatest team when it comes to a string of sellouts.

I think every game has been a sellout since 1970. There’s like a 20-year waiting list for season tickets, these kinds of things. I had to provide my birth certificate to get them from my father.

Justin Ulrich
Holy cow.

Adam Smith
If you’re not handing them down generationally, they have to go back to the organization, okay? But of equal importance, I’m 10 years old and have started going to the games on the regular when John Elway comes to town.

Justin Ulrich
Oh yeah.

Adam Smith
So that’s a major turning point for this organization. That’s the beginning of a dynasty.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah.

Adam Smith
That’s the beginning of legacy. So yeah, to do that. And then it’s just been a history of really great memories.

I was on the field for pregame activities with my then nine, we had to lie about my son’s age. He would have, he had to be 10. He would have been close.

He was almost 10, but we’re on the field, on the sideline, on the Patriots sideline at Mile High Stadium for an AFC championship. And on my GoPro, you can clearly hear him say, as Tom Brady walks past us, hey Brady, you suck.

Justin Ulrich
It’s your son?

Adam Smith
It is still my most watched YouTube video. And it was so popular that the Broncos reached out to me to get the footage.

Justin Ulrich
Oh my goodness.

Adam Smith
But we’ve had experiences like that with that organization for years and years. Other events outside of football with a lot of these people. I saw Peyton and Archie Manning speak at an event.

I’ve been to all kinds of different things because we live among these people. So it’s just always been woven into the fabric of who I am when it comes to that. So yeah. Go Broncos.

Justin Ulrich
That’s awesome. I had, when I was about nine or 10, I think, I grew up in Buffalo. So it was Jim Kelly’s run. It didn’t quite set in with me.

You know, I don’t even follow football anymore. So many of my friends were depressed and sad after four years of losing. I’m like, I can’t do this. This isn’t interesting.

Adam Smith
That’s a tough one. I will grant you. One of the things that really struck me as significant in my career path that intertwined with it was when I published my first book, also titled, Just the Tips, a colleague of mine hired, did a cameo with Justin Simmons, who was one of the defensive stars of the Broncos then.

He has since moved on to another team to record a video for me about congratulations. I cannot imagine what a workload it is to publish a book. Good for you. And yeah. So there’s just always been this intermingling of my life and what goes on with the Denver Broncos. And it’s just always had a placeholder.

Justin Ulrich
That’s awesome. Well, I thought it might be fun to drop you into AI and give you some more visibility into what an intermingling of your life could be with the Broncos.

Adam Smith
Oh, dear Lord. I think if I’m gonna be that old as an NFL player, I’m gonna have to be okay.

Justin Ulrich
I was like, there’s no way around this. There’s no way around this.

Adam Smith
That is fantastic. That’s, oh my God. All right. Well, I would be the oldest NFL player in that case. Hassle back, keep your heart out.

Justin Ulrich
Oh, there you go. There you go. Well, hey, this has been a lot of fun. Before we let you go, why don’t you tell folks how to follow you, your podcast, your blog, anything like that?

Adam Smith
Well, you can probably find everything at justthetipscoaching.com. If you’re looking for some mortgage content, it’s the corefinancegroup.com. But yeah, we do a weekly podcast, How I Met Your Mortgage.

We’ve got a weekly video blog, the weekly little tip. You can find copies of my books there, all kinds of good content. But yeah, justthetipscoaching.com is probably the easiest resource.

Justin Ulrich
Perfect. Yeah, we’ll put the links in the descriptions for those who are listening as well. But the content is incredible. It’s endless, endless tips. Like I was scrolling through, I’m like, how is this possible? There are so many tips.

So if you’re listening, you’re obviously interested in how to do better at marketing. There’s a lot more other topics that are covered on his social channels. So check it out, justthetips. There’s lots of them. 

Awesome. Well, Adam, this has been a lot of fun having you in the lab. Thanks again for joining and thank you to everybody for listening.

Adam Smith
Thanks for having me.

Justin Ulrich
You bet.

As always, thanks for joining us in the Local Marketing Lab. This podcast was sponsored by Evocalize. To learn more about how Evocalize can help you grow your business, visit evocalize.com. 

If you learned something from today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook @Evocalize. That’s Evocalize and on X at Evocalize. 

And remember, keep innovating and testing new things. You’ll never know what connects with your customers best unless you try. Until next time. Thanks for listening.