What To Do RIGHT NOW For A Great 2023 • Close-ing Time • Chris Linsell

Welcome to our monthly feature, Close-ing Time – in partnership with TheClose.com . Chris Linsell from TheClose.com offers an overview of the real estate market over the last years. Chris discusses where agents should shift their attention now that the market has slowed down. Chris gives tips on how should agents talks to their clients about the equity of their home. Last, Chris emphasizes the importance of transforming the transactional relationship with your clients into a recurring value relationship. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Chris Linsell can be reached at chris@theclose.com . This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks and FollowUpBoss . Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00 Where should you be focused in 2023 to keep your business thriving? Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and now on to our show Welcome to keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris I am your guide and host through the show and today is our monthly series called closing time with Chris Lin sell from the closed.com No, this is a partnership between keeping it real in the clothes and let me tell you more about the clothes. Now the clothes.com is the kind of real estate website designed to give agents teams and brokerages actionable strategic insight from industry professionals they cover real estate marketing, lead generation technology and team building strategies from the perspective of working agents and brokers who want to take their business to the next level. Please visit the closed.com That’s th e c l o s e just like it sounds.com And subscribe to their newsletters get notified every time they publish an article with us as always is Chris Lynn sell senior staff writer and real estate coach for the close. And Chris is the closest resident expert on real estate topics ranging from marketing lead gen transactional best practices and everything in between. He’s also a licensed agent in the state of Michigan. And he’s been part of hundreds of transactions from modest rural starter homes to massive waterside compounds. And when he isn’t writing, you’ll find Chris fly fishing or performing on the stage of his community theaters production. Chris Welcome once again to keeping it real, we’re excited to have you Chris Linsell 2:48 here. Thanks for having me back. Always a pleasure looking forward to digging into it today. D.J. Paris 2:53 Always a pleasure to so I wanted to start with with something that I get a zillo report every, every every month as a consumer, just because I’m always interested in what Zillow sends to the public. That is my address. And they tell me you know what they believe my home to be worth. And you know, it’s a pretty depressing number. I saw it today, it’s actually gone down in the last 30 days, quite substantially. However, I am not in the market of selling. But I was thinking about sellers, because I also have a very low interest rate. So I’m at around a 3% rate. And so if I were to sell right now, which again, I’m not looking to do, I would be, you know, I would feel it, at least at first glance that I’m getting a pretty bad deal because my home is, you know, worth less than what I paid for it. And I’m still net equity positive, but not by a whole lot. And then also I would be giving up that 3% rate to you know, most likely a six plus percent rate in the new home that I were to purchase. So I was just thinking, this has got to be on the minds of a lot of homeowners right now who probably would like to buy, but maybe are seeing those rates and maybe seeing their value of their home, you know, go down in the last couple years as those rates have gone up. So just kind of curious to get your thoughts on the psychology of, of the consumer or the homeowner, and what realtors can do in 2023 to sort of adjust for that. Chris Linsell 4:23 Yeah, it’s a great question. Because we are reaching an interesting kind of Crossroads as far as the overall consumer mindset and set of experiences that are driving their behavior. Right. I think it’s fair to say there have been I would say three, three recent relatively recent, honestly relatively recent sets of kind of eras for buyers and sellers of real estate in the United States, right we had the pre COVID era when we have Add a relatively short inventory, relative to demand, but they weren’t writing stories in the Washington Post about inventory. Then COVID came, and everybody kind of freaked out. And we needed to kind of get our heads around what that meant. In the real estate effects that happened were, you know, a lot of folks decided they were going to move from cities out into more suburban or rural areas, we saw a very high demand for housing turnover, especially for single family homes. And we also had an economy that warranted the need of kind of some kickstart programs, to give us a chance to make sure that we we could continue to function economically as a country, whether or not those were necessary or viable solutions, I’m gonna leave that up to somebody else to debate. But one of the kind of downstream results of that were extraordinarily low interest rates, as you mentioned before, for purchasers of real estate in the COVID, or the very, you know, like the current COVID, or the very post COVID. Time. So then that leads us to where we are now, interest rates, high inventory, still a bit of a challenge, and a lot of places still competitive markets in a lot of places, and real estate professionals looking to be planning their strategies for 2023. And a lot of questions are being asked about how do we reach sellers? We’ve got sellers who are unlikely to want to sell their home, because where are they going to go? They don’t have got a lot of great inventory options. They don’t have a lot of great interest rate options. What’s the benefit to sell? And I want to put forward a couple of different ideas here. The first is you talked about what’s the psychology and the mindset of sellers, I want to start by setting the tone in that we have to remember, the psychology and mindset of sellers is not a single point of light, it is a significant gradation of various perspectives and viewpoints. We have to remember that, yes, a lot of real estate was purchased in the COVID. And immediately post COVID, if you can call it that era at low interest rates. But that does not make up the majority of homeownership right now, by any stretch of the imagination. We have a good chunk of folks who owned their home long before COVID was even a thing have an incredible amount of equity in their home right now. That is likely unrealized, we have a good chunk of folks who didn’t refinance, who are sitting on even a post refinance are still sitting on a good chunk of equity. And where we find ourselves as real estate professionals is a place we haven’t found ourselves in a long time, which is the number one priority for a lot of real estate professionals when it comes to listings and sellers and their psychology and mindset is one of education, not of immediate opportunity. We are not answering calls from people saying, Hey, I heard it’s great time to sell my house, what options do I have? Real estate professionals should consider those calls to be on hold for quite a while, maybe a year, maybe two years, frankly, we are needing to now shift our strategies to education and awareness. Because a lot of owners right now, either don’t know their options, or think they know their options when they don’t really which is frankly worse. So to answer your, your mindset question, my initial response is most mindsets right now are either unaware or ignorant. And these are places where yes, it makes things challenging. But for real estate professionals who can shift their strategies, that’s a huge opportunity to D.J. Paris 9:16 it’s such it’s such an interesting play this equity question, I think this is something that isn’t typically although I’m just thinking of myself, and I might not be representative of the John Q Public, because I’m in the real estate business. So I probably look, I’m probably not the right sort of viewpoint here. But this idea of thinking about equity, I just don’t think most homeowners are think about their equity unless they’re in the process of selling right? I think it’s they look at the appreciation. They look at the the amount they cut to the mortgage bank, the lender every month, they probably know their interest rate or there abouts. So I think those are kind of the Three key metrics is what’s my home worth? What am I paying every month? What’s my, what’s my actual rates? I don’t know, and what my home’s even worth, I think is oftentimes not really thought about all that much. But I think this idea of equity would be a real. So I think that’s a really interesting ideas like maybe being maybe thinking about from an agent perspective, what would what do you think about an agent doing an evaluation? Not just what’s your home worth? Because of course, we can do automate those through CMAs. And there’s a million tools to do that. But what if an agent in 2023 said, Hey, I know you might not be thinking of selling right now. But you did buy like seven years ago, and you’ve probably refinanced. I’m sure you have a really low right now. But let’s take a look at the equity and see if that would actually influence your decision in being able to move maybe that even trumps the interest rate that’s currently out there, because we can look at equity, we can look at, you know, pricing now has come down. So I’m just curious what you think of having that conversation with a homeowner? I don’t think anyone really has those conversations. Outside of real estate, like I don’t even think a financial adviser necessarily would say let’s talk about the equity in your home. Because I think typically, financial advisors don’t look at that as asset until you actually cash it out. Well, yeah. Unknown Speaker 11:25 Oh, go ahead. I’m sorry. No, no, D.J. Paris 11:27 that was my point was I think this is kind of an interesting opportunity for agents who really want to separate themselves is almost doing like a financial review of the home as opposed to just do you sell? Do you want a bigger place? Do Chris Linsell 11:40 you? I don’t know. Yeah. 100%. In fact, I this is actually it’s funny, you mentioned this, because this was one of the topics I talked about. Last couple of weeks ago, a couple of weeks via when we’re recording this. I was a presenter at the triple play conference in Atlantic City for New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania realtors. And one of the things I chatted about in one of my sessions there was I challenged folks a challenge real estate professionals who attended there to answer the following question. When you are representing a buyer in the purchase of real estate, when you finish at the closing table, and the last signature is at the bottom of the final page, your clients, do they automatically magically, somehow supernaturally get endowed with the expertise and knowledge necessary to understand not just what they’ve purchased, but the value of their home as an investment? The answer, of course, is no signing, closing paperwork does not give you the insight to understand the value of your investment. And I keep saying investment, even if you’re just buying a single family home, to live in and to raise your kids in. You and I were talking earlier, before we started recording this real estate is one of those unique purchases, that as an investment, it doesn’t matter whether you’re buying this as income producing or not. When you purchase real estate, you’re making an investment and it can turn out good or it could turn out bad, you get to be in control of that. And your control is significantly more fine tuned when you’re aware of the ins and outs of your investment. So when I challenged folks, what I challenged folks to do at triple play was to remember, when somebody buys a home, they do not automatically become a real estate expert, and an expert in terms of their home’s value in the market, their home’s value in terms of the equity that they’ve collected, and their home’s value in terms of how competitive it could be for other home options. And so I challenged Realtors there to set a schedule to become their buyers, pro bono, real estate financial advisor, every year, set a meeting where you offer to say, Hey, I’d love to do an analysis of your investment. Let’s find out how much it’s worth. Let’s find out how much equity you have in it. Let’s find out how competitive your rates are. I don’t need to charge you for this. I don’t want to charge you for this. I only want to arm you with the information you need to make good decisions about your home. Those folks are going to not just become your client. They’re going to become your client for life by offering those services and for all those real estate professionals who are listening to this and say, Well, I don’t have this big buyer client pool to draw from. You have an unlimited set of people to draw from because there are millions 10s of millions of homeowners in this country. Whose selling agent, they are no longer in contract with, who need and deserve this information and who you could start offering it to, and by de facto become their agent. So start reaching out to folks who offer this financial analysis offer completely free. So I just want to arm you with the information that you need to make a good decision about your home, these folks are going to become your clients by virtue of offering the service and when it is time to sell and when you can demonstrate that they have a strategic advantage they’re gonna sell with you because you are the one that clearly is demonstrating that you know, the market. D.J. Paris 15:42 Yeah, this is a consultant perspective. And I like the idea of not mentioning when you when you’re reaching out to to owners, and again, they don’t have to be past clients, they can be really anyone who owns a property. And this idea of not saying hey, I want to run a CMA, I want to run comps for you, which again, there are lots of homeowners that understand that term, or I’ve heard that term before. But the term they probably haven’t heard is I want to evaluate your investment. And this idea of it being now they hear that from their financial advisors, if they have one once a year, usually, they’ll say hey, we need to read your look at the investments, see how they did it stacked up against the the indexes or your overall you know, financial goals, and let’s make sure we’re on track to retire or whatever the you know, send the kids to college or whatever it might be. This is a very interesting alternative way to really do a CMA, but not just the CMA. So you’re saying, you know, yeah, they can get a CMA from anybody. comps are pretty easy. You can even just get them online without talking to a realtor. But this is more of a what a financial adviser would do. They’d sit down and say, let’s let’s go over all the numbers, not about all their other investments, like a financial advisor would do, but about just their home and thinking of it like an investment. Because while you were doing that, while you were talking, I was thinking what I did when I was ready to buy the property that I have now, I was very nervous, because it’s obviously it was sizable purchase. Anyone who buys a home understands the nervousness there. And everyone listening knows what it’s like for their clients. And I called a bunch of top Realtors in my area, about five of them just to go, am I making a mistake here? Because I was nervous, and I wanted to get their advice. And I reached out to people that I knew and said, Is this a good idea? Because it was new construction, I was a little nervous. Is this overpriced? And I got really good advice that way. And so I did a version of that by talking to other realtors. Most people aren’t going to do that. But I guess the point was, I wanted somebody to tell me, it’s a good time to buy. Yes, I give it my stamp of approval. And I don’t know that I would always. Yeah, I think that that’s something that a lot of people want to know, is totally agree. And I don’t know that they always trust the realtor to give them that information. I think realtors are often seen as salespeople, and salespeople are trying to sell. And so whether or not the real estate agent has the best interest of the client in mind, I think there there does have to be a little bit of change work around the language that’s used when you call like, I want to talk about your home as an investment. And I want to talk about where that investment sits right now. So that you can think about the future and think about if there’s any plans that will change as a result of you really understanding where things are. I just think that’s a powerful reframe. And a really, really like unique approach. Chris Linsell 18:36 Well, you know, the interesting thing too, is that the reef or the the other kind of extension of this reframing the conversation gets into the way that our clients define their relationship with us. So if I asked you, you know, if I asked you, if I’d say I was new to Chicago, and I said, DJ, I’d really need some suggestions. I need a good doctor. I need a dentist, I need an accountant. I need a chiropractor. The people that you would refer to me or refer me to, you would say oh, yeah, you should definitely check out my chiropractor is down on the down on the street. Oh, you need an accountant. My accountant. I’ve been working with him for years. Great guy you you’d love this guy. Oh, you need a doctor. The doctor I’ve been going to she’s great. You know, a bunch of my family we all see her. You just those those referrals totally natural language. Every single one of them was a you got to see my doctor, my chiropractor, my dentist or a car accountant or whatever. But when it comes to real estate professionals, when you say Oh, I’m looking to move to Chicago, I need a good real estate professional. You would probably that I mean I think the default for most folks is I know a realtor. Yeah. Or I know a bunch of Realtors Yeah, I’ve, you know, I’ve worked with three different realtors in town, I can give you all of their names if you want. But I know our realtor in town, or I know a ton of Realtors, or there are a ton of Realtors, we don’t have this, my professional relationships in the real estate space. But that comes from the fact that you see your chiropractor on a regular basis, you see your accountant on a regular basis, you see your doctor, we see our real estate professional once in a blue moon. Because our relationship is completely transaction oriented with those people it’s not Care and Keeping oriented. What you can adjust in 2023, not to make our chiropractor pun here. But what you can adjust in 2023 is the way that you pursue that relationship with folks to say, Listen, I want to be your realtor, or your your broker your agent. So here’s how we can do this. And, you know, you can start by fostering these relationships with people you already are connected to. But that doesn’t have to be the case. This is, you know, you start further back, you know, closer to zero if you’re going, you know it trying to prospect with people who you don’t have a current relationship with. But imagine just for a second, this value, let’s say you say hey, you know, I’d love to help you understand the value of your home help you understand when it’s a great time to buy and sell. Somebody says yeah, sure, that’d be great. You can pull somebody, anybody you can, you can request from your bank, a mortgage statement, these are on demand, if you have an online portal, you can get it instantly, it will tell you all the details, how much your loan was for, what your current balance is, what your equity is, and what your rate is. Now, as a savvy real estate professional, I can also tell you, banks don’t typically do home equity loans, if you have less than 20% equity. But if you have more than 20% equity, a bank will often lend you money against your equity. So if you sit down with me and you say, okay, through our analysis, I can see that you, you have $200,000 left on your mortgage, you have about $150,000 in equity on this property. So you could qualify for a refinance, you could pull some of this equity out and do a project in the house, you want a brand new kitchen, this would pay for it, you could sell right now, if you sold right now, even after fees, you’d still be walking away with somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 $115,000 in your pocket. What could we do with that people aren’t gonna look at you providing this value and options as all the evidence that they need, that you have their best interest at heart and not yours, it is no longer a transactional relationship. It is a nurturing, recurring value relationship, just like those other professionals that I named earlier, this is really a chance to set the tone for how you want to operate your business and 2023. I know a lot of realtors are nervous about this, frankly, this is an opportunity. This is the time to put your foot on the gas, not get back on your heels, it’s time to get on your toes. D.J. Paris 23:23 Yeah, and I think I think your boy, you just said so many things that I couldn’t agree more with, I think this is the opportunity to develop that annual, you know, touch that’s not just a Hey, it’s your birthday, it’s the holidays. Thanks for you know, this is your home anniversary card for when you bought or sold. All those things good, too. But this idea of actually providing real value once a year. And the real value that I think the average homeowner is thinking about is or the the average the question that they’re thinking about is should I buy or sell right now? Should I move? Right? Should I move right now, I think is usually the main question. And, you know, there’s obviously pressures that, you know, job changes, and there’s reasons that people move that have nothing to do with an annual review from a from a realtor, but boy, I would love a service like that. I would pay for a service like that. I pay up 100 or 200 bucks a year for somebody to come in and say okay, I looked at every I mean, I pay a financial advisor, I pay an accountant, I pay, you know, I would actually pay. So this is something that you can do that’s very valuable, that I think people would pay for I don’t know that you should charge people for it. And maybe in some states, you probably could charge but regardless, I think it’s it’s your right, this is the value add that is going to ensure that two things, one that they’re going to work with you in the future, but to and this goes back to your Hey, you got to talk to my hairstylist or my accountant, this this is going to get people talking, I think and I think you could even tell them that when you’re when you’re doing these reviews to say hey You know, this is something I do, and it’s just my way of providing service. But if you have other friends that are thinking, Should I buy? Should I? So is it a good time rates are up low inventories. Now, I would love to do the same analysis for them. And you could, you know, I think this could be a huge marketing strategy for people, Chris Linsell 25:17 Big time, big time. And you know, let’s like call a spade a spade here, too. This is advantageous to real estate professionals, not just in the fact that you have the opportunity to create a more stable repeat business, which is certainly a huge upside. But let’s also not discount the fact that if you can get the sort of relationship locked in, you then have a platform to give the sort of advice that includes things like, hey, you know how, like, there are 12, there’s 12 months in the year. But if you decided that you’re going to make one extra payment a month, you can cut down on your interest costs over the course of you know, X number of years, and increase your equity by X percentage over X number of years. This is really great for you. This sounds like good advice. It is good advice to homeowners. But the other thing it does is you are setting yourself up to have distant and near future clients who are more qualified, who have higher budgets, who are more educated about real estate and the process. I mean, imagine the difference between a listing where your seller, not only did they know the real market value of their home before the listing appointment, because you’ve already educated them on this. But they also are realistic about what the next steps entail, your workload goes from 100 to five in that instant. Now, granted, you’re doing that work on the front end, but you’re establishing it’s kind of it has a slow drip of education and awareness in a way that other professionals have to kind of mainline all at once on the front end, sellers feel overwhelmed, they’re often miss the details that are necessary to take those shortcuts. I mean, this is a selfish strategy to you’re going to develop regular, a book of business from this strategy, but you’re also going to develop more qualified better informed and frankly, clients with bigger budgets as a result, which is going to affect positively our bottom lines as well. D.J. Paris 27:37 I want to pause for a moment to talk about our episodes sponsor are one of my favorite companies out there follow up boss. Now after interviewing hundreds of top Realtors in the country for this podcast. Do you know which CRM is used by more than any other by our guests. Of course, it is a follow up boss. And let’s face it, following up is the key to taking your business to the next level follow up boss will help you drive more leads in less time and with less effort. Do not take my word for it. Robert slack, who runs the number one team in the US uses follow up boss and he has built a one and a half billion dollar business in just six years. Follow up boss integrates with over 250 systems, so you can keep your current tools and lead sources. Also, the best part they have seven day a week support. So you’ll get the help that you need when you need it and get this follow up boss is so sure that you’re going to love their CRM that for a limited time, they’re offering keeping it real listeners a 30 day free trial, which is twice as much time as they give everyone else. And oh yeah, no credit card required. So you can try it risk free. But only if you use this special link visit follow up boss.com forward slash real that’s follow up boss.com forward slash real for your free 30 day trial. Follow up like a boss with follow up boss. And now back to our episode. Yeah, it’s really it’s really interesting. It’s funny, I’ve done 430 Whatever episodes of this podcast where I’ve interviewed a lot of the very top producers in the country. And I don’t know that anyone’s ever shared with me this idea of doing an annual people have talked about doing an annual review, but they haven’t really gotten as granular about it as what you’ve mentioned. And so if we were just to recap the steps. So the idea is you would call people that are either past clients, or you could say hey, I’m trying I’m you could even tell people that weren’t your past client. And maybe you could even test it with people who might never use you. But people who you could sort of try this approach with and say, Hey, I’m, I really want to bring more value to my clients the next in this upcoming year. And I have found that my clients are constantly wondering what’s going on in the market. Is it a good time for me to move should I sell should I buy and you know, oftentimes, they are not totally sure how to make sense of that answer. And so I want to come in and just kind of evaluate what What, you know, your current position, your current home, your investment, how it’s doing, how it’s doing relative to other homes in the area. And if you were thinking about moving, you know, here’s, here’s kind of what you might be looking at. So we can we’re gonna take a look at the full financial picture of that, and give you a give you a recommendation. I think I gosh, I think that’s I mean, you know, look, if I’ve ever been to an attorney, the end of the day, I’m like, What’s the recommend? Should I do this or not, you know, or an accountant should I declare this or not, like, I just want people’s advice. And I think the, the realtors really should move away as far as they can from being labeled a salesperson, as to a service professional, or consultants. I know consultants, you have to check with your state licensing to make sure that you can call yourself other things, you definitely don’t want to call yourself something that you’re not supposed to. But this idea of acting as if you are a consultant, whether or not you use that word, acting as if you would hire somebody to come in and say, How do I fix my business? And they go, Well, I just looked at everything, here’s what you need to do? Chris Linsell 31:07 Well, you know, I’m gonna give you the one, this is the kind of a dollop of Chris secret sauce to get this conversation started with people who you don’t know you’re like cold approaching on this. Here’s the line. And I guarantee it works, because I’ve used it many times. So if you’re listening to this, and I’ve used this on you, sorry. But here it is. When you are cold approaching somebody and you say, I was just doing a CMA for a neighbor of yours, and I used your property as a marker for value for the neighborhood. I wanted to reach out to let you to let you know that I was just looking at values there, I have a very good understanding of what your home is worth. And would love to know if you’re interested in this overall financial picture. No obligation, no cost. I’ve already got the work done. These are all the key phrases. That’s a great one. I’ve already got the work done allows people to say yes without feeling like they’re inconveniencing you or putting themselves in your debt. That’s a reason a lot of people say no to free things, because they’re like, oh, then I’m going to owe this person something, say I’ve already got the work done, then they have are free to say yes, without the feeling of true or implied obligation. Say I was doing a CMA for a neighbor of yours. This shows that you are active that you have experience that other people trust you. These are true. key phrases that are going to activate those parts in our brain were like, okay, there is real value that I’m recognizing here. I’m not being sold a gimmick. I’ve got somebody who’s providing real value in places that I trust in ways that I don’t feel obligated, I can say yes to this, you’re gonna get in the doors, if you use these lines, I promise. D.J. Paris 32:57 Yeah, you can you can even say something like, I know, this seems like a sales tactic. But the reality of it is actually did this for your for your neighbor. And I just already have the data done. So I’m happy to share it with you. Yeah, what’s in it for me is maybe down the road, maybe you would think about me if you ever needed to find a professional but But what I wanted to share with you is actually just something I did for your neighbor anyway, you probably wouldn’t even have to say it that way. But the point is, is you could you could explain it and and be totally forthright about it and still likely get very little resistance. So this is a great, great place to wrap up. So I really want want everyone to think about 2023. And I know there’s a lot of nervous energy in the agent world. I know our agents are scared. I know, broker owners are have some fear about 2023. And what we’re trying to find is opportunities that can keep you focused, and active, and this idea of doing annual reviews, and not just what’s your home worth and what’s you know, what are the home’s near your worth, but actually looking at equity, looking at rates, looking at reef refi, looking at all of all of the things that people don’t usually look at, in one overarching sort of view, right? They look at little things like the rates that and my home is worth this over here. And it’s not really a cohesive picture. And you could provide that picture to them. And you could even if you really wanted to get granular just want to hear their ideas, you could talk to their financial advisor to you could say hey, if you have and by the way, that’s another great person to network with because of course those opportunities are pretty obvious. But you could even say hey, I want to run this by your financial advisor and just make sure I get their sign off on it which then if they liked their financial advisor and maybe you’re not their current realtor, provide some social proof where they might consider using you in the future. So you can even go that further step of saying, hey, I want to talk to your your financial advisor about this if you’re not, you know, so anyway, but Chris, um let’s talk about the clothes in the last minute and then we’ll we’ll let you go. So tell us for anyone that isn’t a current clothes reader. What is the clothes? Chris Linsell 34:58 The clothes it is The internet’s leading publication for advice, strategy, resources, everything that real estate professionals need to level up their business and create the life through work that they want the clothes.com super easy to find us, th e c l o s e.com. Everything on the close is aimed at creating shortcuts towards the success that real estate professionals deserve. We have everything from lead generation marketing, tech reviews, education, continuing ed, things on certification, certifications and designations, we have things on every we have content on every imaginable sort of marketing strategy, social media content, lead generation platforms, you name it, we’ve got it, I’m in charge of making sure that the close has the best answers to the old questions that we’ve been asking for a long time. What we offer is free, just come to the website, read sign up for our email list, get regular updates for the new content we’re creating. Our goal is to provide the best strategies that real real estate professionals can use to, like I said, create the business that they want. We do offer a paid product called the close Pro, if you do want to level up your close experience. But frankly, that’s a small portion of what we offer on the close, it’s not even something that I really push. Because 99% of the value we offer here is completely free. We just want to help. Our goal here is to live this mantra of you can do it, the clothes can help, we have the tools that you need to be successful. So come on over the clothes.com Follow us on social, you can connect with me and all of the rest of the editorial team on the close. And that’s the last thing I’ll say is that those of us who are creating content at the close, this is not farmed out to generalists or to freelancers, or to people who have never set foot inside a home for sale or operated in open house. Anyone who’s creating content on the close is a bona fide real estate professional with real transactions under their belt. They’re speaking from experience, and that’s experienced that you can learn from. D.J. Paris 37:15 Yeah, and just as a quick example of an article that I got really excited about they updated the clothes updated their best real estate CRM list in the last week or so for 2023. I don’t know if it’s on the homepage yet. But it is an amazing article, because every realtor I know is like am I using the right CRM. And by the way, they have another article about the best free CRM. So if you’re new to the business and don’t want to spend money, they have that article. But they also have best paid CRMs. And they’re not in bed with these companies, right? They may earn affiliate deals if you end up signing up, but their whole thing is is legitimate journalist journalistic integrity and the reviews are amazing. And they’re about the only place I trust for reviews. So, you know, in a way, I mean, I’m sure there’s other reputable, you know, real estate tech review services, or websites, I just haven’t found them, the close is the place I go, because I know I’m gonna get a deep dive into products and services that I as an agent want to or may want to consider. So guys go in there. Really, it’s stuff. It’s amazing. These are long form articles. They’re really well written. And Chris is at the helm and making sure the content is is top notch. And it is. So go to the clothes.com definitely get on their mailing list. And you know, check out the clothes pros. Well, if you want that extra 1% of just really really amazing information that’s behind their paywall. It’s like, what $1 A day maybe total. It’s ridiculously inexpensive if you want to subscribe, but you don’t ever have to you can just read their content for free as well. All right, Chris, thank you. I know we went over time, so we will let you go get on with your busy day. But on behalf of all of our listeners, we want to thank Chris give them a shout out Chris What if they want to chat with you on Twitter now that Twitter has made a resurgence? I know you’re a Twitter guy. What’s the best way they should reach on Twitter? You can argue with Chris on Twitter, Chris Linsell 39:05 you can definitely argue with me. You would not be the first nor the last to troll me on Twitter. Uncle Elon has not shut down my account yet. So if you want to follow me on Twitter, you can find it and find me at Lynn cell Chris. Maybe we can tag that in the show notes. I’ll put it in the show notes. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Atlin cell Chris. I’m also pretty active on LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn, just add my name Chris Lynn Zell, Senior Content Strategist and real estate writer at the close. Yeah, come connect with me on social media. I love interacting with folks. I love answering questions, love providing feedback, and always open to criticism. So please feel free to come and tell me how I got things wrong because, you know, that’s only happening about a dozen times a day. And I’d love to add your voice to the chorus or to the chorus of of support. So, you know, just here to help pass along what I know about building real estate businesses where We’re all in this together. Awesome. And then for everyone else listening, please just tell one friend about this episode. D.J. Paris 40:06 Everybody scared about 2023. Chris just gave a really great strategy for how anyone can stay busy and 2023 Do something the other realtors aren’t doing these annual financial reviews, investment reviews, as Chris called it, and send them a link. This should go to everybody in your office not because I’m so great. I’m not and not even because Chris is so great, although he is. But the just because nobody else is really talking about this. So please send a link. Go to our website, keeping it real pod.com introduce other agents to us. It’s free. Please help us out. We really appreciate it. We’ll keep doing more episodes. All right, Chris. Thank you so much. We’ll see everybody on the next one. Chris Linsell 40:45 Thanks, DJ. See you soon.