Business Support for Real Estate Pros with Jen Dillard

Jen Dillard's joining the podcast. Jen, welcome. Thank you so much for having me, Jeff. Jen, before we dive into your work, the market that you serve, and also this other brand and organization that you've launched as well, share for listeners a little bit about your background. Where are you from originally, and what led you to a career in real estate? Yeah, so I'm originally from, I was born in LA and then moved to the Seattle area when I was about 11, and lived there for most of my life until I moved to Hood River, Oregon, the small town at the base of Mount Hood about eight years ago. My husband and I decided to pick up our lives and give our life a plot twist and move out here. So, yeah, and I got started in real estate actually kind of like by accident. My boyfriend at the time, about, gosh, it's been, it was in 2007, which is crazy to think about. It's been so long. But I had my boyfriend at the time was working for somebody who had an investment company, real estate investment company, and they were looking for property managers. And so I said, I'll get my license and I'll manage some properties. And so that's what I got into in the beginning was property management, and then kind of fell in love with the real estate industry. And from there I started selling condo conversions in Seattle and kind of moved my way up into selling real estate, residential and commercial, yeah. That fear of rejection can be so overwhelming, right? Absolutely, yeah, I mean, it can be paralyzing, right? Like a lot of people don't do things like call expires or call for sale by owners. And some of the things that are really great ways to build business, but they don't do them because they're afraid that someone's gonna hang up on them or say no. So Seattle to Mount Hood, what is the Mount Hood market like? What is that area like? Yeah, so we're in Hood River, which is, it's a resort town at the base of Mount Hood. And it's on the Columbia River. So it's the Columbia River Gorge separates Oregon and Washington. And so we serve both Oregon and Washington, our team, and everything from Portland up East. So it's a pretty, it's a gorgeous area. A lot of, it used to be a lot of second homes, but not as much anymore since, you know, there've been a lot of changes in the zoning and the laws, but it's an incredible place to live. I love that. And I also love that you, that this was inspired by you searching for a solution to a real problem that not only you were having. It was inspired by necessity, yeah. That's right, yeah. I love that. And it turns out I'm not alone. It turns out so many other people need it too. Yeah. Yeah, I believe it. I believe it. So share a little bit more, can you share a little bit more in detail about like the types of, those lines of services that you offer your clients? Absolutely. So I, you know, we have found that agents find the most benefit from using us in areas like marketing. And what that, you know, what, where we really come in strong is social media support and ad strategy and social media strategy, building a brand voice, building a personal brand. I mean, in this time, in this, you know, climate that we're in, in the real estate industry, it is extremely important to have a personal brand. So, you know, why would somebody want to work with you as opposed to anybody else? How is somebody going to see your content and know that's you and going to want to click on it? And, you know, how can we help you to be able to do storytelling and hyperlocal content and things that are really working right now? And so the social media and the marketing piece has been really helpful for a lot of agents. The other areas that I have found agents finding the most success is that executive assistant, fractional executive assistant support. So not having to pay an assistant full time, but being able to get support in things like sending out newsletters and helping with email and making sure that you're responding to your email and that your email is, you know, is categorized correctly so that you can find everything easily. And for me, I hate email. I hate email. And so my executive assistant through Brick by Brick, I check in with her in the mornings at 8 a.m. We go through every email that came through between 4 p.m. and 8 a.m. She responds to it. I tell her what I want her to say. She responds. She does the attachments. And I'm telling you, I've never been more productive. It's amazing. And so, you know, my whole philosophy is if you, if it doesn't require you and it doesn't bring you immense joy, delegate it. Especially if it's, you can delegate it for a lower hourly rate than what you would make if you were doing something that, you know, that is your core genius. Your time would be better suited staying in your lane, right? So speaking of your assistant, awesome work, by the way. She has been so excellent at coordinating this meeting and communication has been on point. And yeah, I can see, like totally see the value in a fractional assistant who can help manage schedules, calendars, email, especially, my goodness, email. Yeah, I mean, Jeff, honestly, and this is just being completely honest. If you had emailed me last year, I probably wouldn't have gotten back to you. And it's not because I didn't wanna be on your podcast. It's because I didn't have time. I could not manage my calendar, my email, my life, and all the business, you know, business. And it was just too much for one person. All right, well, this now brings me to a topic that is super fun for me. I think hopefully super valuable for listeners and those who subscribe to this podcast and my email newsletter. And that would be tips or advice. And specifically, I usually frame this such that in a way that might benefit those who are newer to the real estate industry, those who are early in their real estate career, early in that journey, or even those who may be thinking about entering the career. But what do you see, like I can already sense that like delegating certain tasks might be one of those pieces of advice, but what are some tips that you may have for agents? Building your personal brand, I think is one of the most, if not the most important things that you can do as a real estate agent. And that doesn't just mean, I mean, yes, it includes brand fonts, colors, all of that, 100%, but even more so, why would somebody wanna work with you as opposed to anybody else? And that doesn't have to be, if you're a new agent and you don't yet have a track record of business, then you need to focus on how to make yourself relatable as a personal, as a human being first to build those connections, to get people to say, I like her or I like him and I wanna work with them. And so one of the ways that I teach some of my coaching clients to help them to get over this hurdle is I have them create what I call a done it list. And I got this from my, the done it list idea I got from a dear friend of mine, Phil Jones. And so the done it list is a list of everything that you've accomplished in your life, both personally and professionally. And I have them just go crazy with it, right? Everything that you can possibly think of. And then I take that and I put it into ChatGPT with a very specific prompt, like I am a real estate agent and I want to be able to relate to, I want people to be able to relate to me and to wanna, you know, feel like they know me, like me, trust me based off of my content. Make, take this information and make it into real estate relevant content. And it will pump out so many content ideas using that information that helps you to be relevant with your, you know, with people that are looking to buy and sell and wanna work with you. And my clients have gotten, had so much success with this because it does exactly that. It go, you, somebody will see it and they'll go, oh, you went to University of Washington? So did I, it's amazing, I didn't know that. I would like, then they start building that, know you like you, trust you, but you have to have that authenticity, right? You know, Jeff, when I moved to Hood River, I didn't know anybody. My husband had grown up here and my mother-in-law lives, you know, my fam, his family lives here, but he hadn't lived here since he was, you know, young. And so we didn't have any, we didn't know anybody. And so it was really daunting to move to a new area and start over and to find clients and start, find friends even. And so one of the ways that I did that was building a personal brand. And I didn't have business from the start. I didn't have friends from the start, but I had me and I had my journey. So I took that and I just journaled the journey of starting from scratch in a new town. And I started connecting with the community and going, you know, if you're a brand new agent, or even if you're a seasoned agent, one of the best ways that you can build your business online is hyper-local content. So going to local businesses, sharing, you know, new places that open or what's happening in the community. And you can do that through social media, through an email newsletter, through there's so many ways to do that. And to that, what that does is it doesn't just, it doesn't just give you content ideas, but it makes it, it labels you as the local expert on all things, not just real estate, but you also know what's happening in the community and you will become the new source. And it makes your content that much more valuable. Oh my gosh. It's like very useful. And for, you know, those are the things, I mean, market reports and stats are great, don't get me wrong, but the community really wants to know about the new restaurant that just opened. That's right. Or, you know, or the, you know, the best places, the best places to take your dog, you know, the best dog friendly places in the area, or, you know, the list goes on and on, right? That and storytelling. They want to know. Storytelling. Not just that a house sold, but what happened? Did it sell for more or less or why? And what was the story behind it? I love that point you made about your brand and your brand voice is more than your brand standards, right? Your colors, your fonts, your logos. It's really how you show up in your business and in your community. That was really cool. And then the other thing that you mentioned, what kind of differentiates you? I think you're absolutely right. I think agents really need to spend more time considering what differentiates them from others who also serve the community as a real estate agent and what makes them uniquely qualified to serve a certain segment of that community, right? So, yeah. Yeah. You know, you don't have a track record of business, then this is a great way to start building content and to start letting people know that you're in the community, that you're working and go and shoot content of houses for sure, but also mix in some of this stuff as well. And it will really help to build that, to build your personal brand and your content and to have people think of you as the local expert. I like Facebook and Instagram and YouTube. Those are the ones that I really stick to. I'm not really big in TikTok. That's just, I don't know. I never really got into it. I do post on LinkedIn, but not as often. I think YouTube and Meta, Instagram and Facebook have been the most successful for building my brand. I agree. I think YouTube and Facebook are where most of the attention is anyway. And also I've never really focused much on LinkedIn, but I will say that YouTube, it's huge. I think that's an opportunity that a lot of agents are missing out on right now. I think that, you know, the barrier to entry to creating content for YouTube is not as high, I think, as a lot of agents or a lot of business owners may think it is. I can tell you if I can produce, if I can film and edit and publish a video that gets a fair amount of views, then trust me, anybody can do it. You know? Oh yeah. I mean, people overthink it so much. I was on a call with an agent today and I'm like, you just have to start. You just have to start and shoot content. It's gonna be, you're gonna hate it at first. You're gonna hate the way it sounds. You're gonna hate the way that it looks, but it will probably, the ones that you hate the most will probably perform the best. That's just how it works. And then you will get better with time, but it just, you have to be consistent and persistent in order for it to work. If you do it once and then you expect to get 10 clients, not gonna work that way. But if you're consistent with it and you consistently put out content and people know what to expect from you, that you're gonna be putting out valuable content, they will show up and they will look to you. The long form video, horizontal content can be easily converted to vertical reels and repurposed and chopped up into reels. So yeah, I could go off on a tangent on that, but I think that that's definitely channeled it. I just think just to break it down for people that are watching that are thinking like, oh my gosh, well, I don't even know what to post. You can take a video of doing hyperlocal content. You could do a video of a coffee shop. If it's five minutes, six minutes, that's awesome for long form content. Take that and put that on YouTube. And then you can use a tool to slice that up and then use it for, that could be three to four videos on Instagram and Facebook. So you can make it really easy. Listing videos, I tend to use the, I used to tend to do listing videos and quick shorts. I tend to put those listing videos and shorts vertical as YouTube shorts. And then I use hyperlocal content and then like talking head style, long form content as long form on YouTube. So it's just a matter of like mixing it up, doing what works for you, but it's don't overthink it. That's where most people stop. They feel paralyzed by it because they're overthinking it. Analysis paralysis. Yes. For sure, yeah. And we're always waiting for the perfect time, everything to line up just perfectly and before we launch something, right? It will never be perfect. Nope. And you know what? Perfection isn't relatable. So people want to see you mess up. They want to see you, like you're not perfect and neither are they. So it's okay for you to show up and just be your authentic, awesome, goofy self. If you're worried about like, oh my gosh, I don't know what to say, use a tool like ChatGPT or something like that to help you form a script, but then make it your own and make it sound like you talk. It doesn't, you don't want it to sound like ChatGPT because again, that's not authentic. So you need it to sound like you, but you know, I'm gonna rat us all out here, but like most agents that are on social media and they're doing videos, including myself, we use a teleprompter, we use scripts. It's not, there are several different cuts. It's edited. It's not perfect. And you know, there's a lot that you can do with editing and prompters and all of this, but I'm telling you, like it's when, if you were to watch us record and watch me record, I'll throw myself under the bus. Like I mess up a ton and it's not perfect. Jen, before I let you go, any future plans or what future plans? I know you have future plans. Yes, yeah, just continuing to build my team and support my team and build brick by brick and just, you know, find more ways to help other agents to be able to buy back their time and to have a better work-life balance. You know, when you hire people and you delegate for, if you figure out what your hourly rate is, you know, you take what you make in a year and then you do a calculation to figure out what your hourly rate is. And then you find somebody that you can pay less than that hourly rate. You're not just saving money, you're making money. So if you can go out and spend that time doing what's gonna make you more money and delegate the rest, you'd be crazy not to do that. So. That's right, exactly, exactly. Work smarter. Absolutely. Work smarter. Jen, this has been awesome. I'm so glad that we got to connect. I truly appreciate your time and for joining the podcast and sharing some of this gold. I can't wait to share brick by brick collective with our listeners and tag you, of course, on social media. Speaking of which, for listeners who wanna learn more and connect with you, what are the best ways? To learn more about brick by brick collective, you can follow brick by brick collective on Instagram or you can follow me at Jen Dillard and you can send me a DM and I will get back to you and we'll schedule a call and see how we can support you best. Jen Dillard's an epic agent and a principal broker also in the Pacific Northwest and the founder of brick by brick collective. Jen, thanks again. Thanks, Jeff.