The Finance Show With Joe

S2E12: Harnessing Social Media for Entrepreneurial Success

• It's Simple Finance

Share episode

Ever wondered what it takes to be a successful real estate agent in 2024? We are thrilled to have Karem back with us to shatter the stereotypes and unveil the true essence of a modern-day agent. Forget the outdated image of fancy suits and luxury cars; today’s agents are multifaceted professionals mastering roles in negotiation, marketing, content creation, and even psychology. Karem shares how balancing vendor and buyer expectations leads to fair outcomes and immense job satisfaction, providing a realistic look at the dedication and hard work behind each successful deal.

Harnessing the power of social media is no longer optional but essential in the real estate industry. Karem and the boys break down how authenticity and strategic content creation can significantly impact your business. We cover everything from conceptualization to the execution of diverse forms of content, including behind-the-scenes footage. These efforts not only increase engagement but also help in building a robust personal brand that keeps you prominently in the minds of potential clients.

Trust is the cornerstone of any successful real estate business. Karim underscores this by discussing how authentic marketing and referrals have driven his success, illustrated by a recent listing that broke viewership records in New South Wales.  Karem also shares insights on the dynamics of running a real estate business, emphasizing the value of a robust rent roll and the collaboration between rental and sales departments for sustained success. 

Follow us for more property news and mortgage advice!

▸Website - https://itssimple.com.au
▸Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/itssimplefinance/
▸Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/itssimplefinance/
▸LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/itssimple/

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Finance Show with Joe. He's Joe, I'm Jess Lomshmo and we've got our very special guest Karim back again and we're all in t-shirts because it's a midwinter heat wave, it's hot.

Speaker 2:

Sun's out guns out baby. Not for me, though.

Speaker 3:

I'm just trying to hold my gut in everyone so we gotta keep it nice and tight.

Speaker 2:

So, if anyone doesn't know, karim's been on a worldwide tour Dubai, lebanon, china.

Speaker 3:

Yugoslavia oh, here we go.

Speaker 2:

People are going to think I don't work. Trust me, all I do is work. He's back in Australia. He's back on the podcast for a second time. We're so excited to have you. So thank you so much, Kar. Really do appreciate you taking the time, because we know how busy you are and genuinely you provide such good insight on the property market, the real estate market, the effects interest rates are even having. You're not a mortgage broker, but you know the ins and outs of it as well. And that kind of leads me to my question. Today's topics are around the evolving role of the real estate agent and how that has changed so much in the last five years. So would you be able to give us some insight on what the modern real estate agent needs to be doing in 2024?

Speaker 3:

Jeez, where do I start? Honestly? So I'm just going to like nip it in the butt. Right now there's this misconception that agents just wear fancy suits, drive nice cars, put a property on realestatecom, kick back, wait for the sale. When they're done, collect their commission and go home.

Speaker 2:

Clearly not. You're in a T-shirt today.

Speaker 3:

Well, yeah, I very rarely wear suits. That's number one about me, but that's just my personal style. It is what it is. But, yeah, has it changed? I mean, like I've only been in the we discussed, but for those that haven't seen it since, realistically 2016, start of 2016, so what's that? You know we're eight years in and in that eight years, I can tell you from where I started to where we are right now. It is day and night, yeah, literally day and night.

Speaker 3:

A good real estate agent these days is wears about 30 different hats. Real estate agency is number one. You've got to be real estate. You've got to be a master negotiator. You've got to be a marketing genius. You've got to be a content creator. You've got to be a social media influencer. You've got to be a stylist. You've got to be uh, an architect. You've got to be a conveyancer. You've got to be a solicitor. You've got to be a psychologist. You've got to be a mediator. There are so many things that go into selling a property these days. I wouldn't know where to start or begin, but we wear so many hats and I'm not trying to like, beat our chest, trying to make it. We've got the hardest job in the world. Every job is hard. Everything you do in life that is rewarding is hard.

Speaker 2:

That's why I think it's easy work that is that I'm going to like take that snippet and I'm just going to replay it every day in my head and I'm going to replay it to my kids, because I hear this work-life balance and all this kind of stuff and I want to be able to do this and socialize and stuff People like I'm telling you now, the most rewarding thing in life is when you work hard, okay, and you are rewarded for those efforts. It is just the most amazing thing. I want to touch on one thing that you really stuck out to me, because we haven't spoken at all about it on the show the role of the negotiator. So explain the role of the negotiator as a real estate agent.

Speaker 3:

Look, it's hard to like kind of quantify into a conversation, but I feel like the art of negotiation. I mean, I've read a ton of books in my lifetime self-help books, negotiation books because I like this kind of stuff anyway but honestly it just comes down to understanding the person you're speaking with, understanding who they are, what they want. I'm not trying to squeeze every single drop of blood from a person. There's got to be a common ground, there's got to be a fair deal for a vendor and for a buyer, but usually that common ground results in a really good result for everyone. So my Right, so like my job, I feel like is to find out my vendor's wants and needs, my buyer's wants and needs, correlate them together and then find a happy place for both parties.

Speaker 2:

Because you have to negotiate first of all with the vendor. The vendor might think that their house is worth $5 million when it's really worth $3 million. I don't take the listing on. You won't take it.

Speaker 3:

I've made a decision to myself. If I don't believe I can achieve that result for him, I'm not going to pull. As I said to you, I wear 30 hats during the campaign. You know like I put my blood, sweat and tears into every seller, whether I'm selling a two-bedroom unit in Wiley Park or a $5 million luxury home in Kingsgrove or whatever the case may be. It's the same energy that goes into every transaction and you can't believe I can deliver that to him. Why am I going to pour all my energy, all my effort into it, just to end up in saying you couldn't do the job and I knew it wasn't there. I'd much rather be the second agent. He calls and he gets me shit. Karim, you're right. Can you come and help me? I want to get the resort with the current agent, whatever the case may be, and that's happened numerous times.

Speaker 2:

I'm always assisting the buyer in achieving finance. But dealing with a vendor, that's the hard job. It's a very hard job, yeah, especially because they just sometimes they have the unrealistic expectations.

Speaker 3:

Well, everyone believes their house is worth a certain amount of dollars. Yeah, you know I'll go into many listing appraisers. It's funny. I'll. Any list in appraisals is funny. I walk around, I look at it and then I say, out of curiosity, do you have any expectations? Oh, I've got no idea. I don't know. You're the professional. I give them a number. Oh, no way, it's worth more than that. I'm like brother. You told me five minutes ago you have no idea. So clearly you have an idea, you just want to know what I'm thinking first right.

Speaker 2:

Your area is. Everyone is property savvy.

Speaker 3:

Now Let me take that back a bit. It's not my area, joe. It is. Everyone is property savvy period. There is this misconception that back in the day, you could like go knock on an older person's home and try to convince them to sell their home or whatever this, that, and they wouldn't know. We're in the digital age. Everyone knows what their property is worth and they want 10% to 20% more than that, understandably so, like it's your biggest asset that you're ever going to move. We're not selling flat screen tvs yeah. We're selling million dollar homes here, yeah. So I understand why the expectations are that way, but everyone knows what the property is worth these days, because all you got to do is punch it into google and there are like 10 different ways and sites that can tell you where your property is priced another thing that you just mentioned.

Speaker 2:

You said million dollar homes. To be able to sell these million-dollar properties, you can't just market them and put up four pictures, or even do you remember the old real estate windows with the just the like? It was like a little 16-centimetre square for sale and it used to be, like you know, $500,000. You can't do that anymore. It needs to be visible. People need to be able to imagine what it's like living there 100%.

Speaker 3:

We don't have anything on our windows. We don't have any TVs on our windows. We have nothing. The only way you know where a real estate office is the big LED that says Mayfair Real Estate. Other than that, there's not one picture of a property in my office, because where are all my buyers coming from this device right here? They're all being driven from that device right there.

Speaker 3:

Instagram TikTok YouTube Instagram, tiktok, youtube Obviously the big players real estate or common domain that's where you generate majority of your leads. But in saying that my first ever sale in Mayfair was from social media, on Instagram, really, I literally put a picture up of a house that I had off market. One of my followers asked me about it. A week and a half later they bought the house.

Speaker 2:

It's documented. Did that make you realise the power of social media?

Speaker 3:

I knew then what it could potentially do, but that solidified it for me. I've really focused in on using social media to the greatest advantage that I possibly can for real estate. And it's funny, I walk into listing pitches and I talk about social media and the vendor will say to me, oh, and I talk about social media. And the vendor will say to me, oh yeah, the other agent said they do social media as well. I go, do they really they go? What do you mean I go, what do you understand about social media? Oh, I don't know, I don't really use it. I go. Are they doing targeted ads? Are they boosting their posts? Are they zeroing in on certain people? Yeah, yeah, I go. Like social media is not just putting up a picture and saying I do social media marketing.

Speaker 3:

That's not social media marketing. You have to understand the algorithm, you have to know what engages with who you're reaching, who your buyers are, and I like to think I'm not trying to beat my chest, but I think that's where we differentiate ourselves in the marketplace and the results speak for themselves the record-breaking results we've generated and the viewership you can just look on my socials and see numbers don't lie.

Speaker 2:

It's just a better way to tap into the market and to really engage your audience. Everybody needs a house. Everyone needs somewhere to live. No one wants to live with their parents for the rest of their life, and if they do, we've got to have a conversation with them okay.

Speaker 3:

Good luck to them.

Speaker 2:

You know my thing. I put up a video the other day why it's more like how difficult it's going to be to live in rent for the rest of your life. So people need to be able to buy property and they need to be able to do that. And the best way to really engage a customer especially anyone that's under the age of 25, is social media 100%. They're scrolling TikTok all the time. They're scrolling Instagram Reels.

Speaker 3:

I swear by it Honestly. I can't speak highly enough of it. It's like the bread and butter of our business these days, and if you're not doing it, you're so far behind.

Speaker 2:

I have to ask you something, because I saw it on your Instagram story the other day and you have to share us this picture.

Speaker 3:

We saw a picture of you, Chantel, and the.

Speaker 2:

KRooz brothers yes, oh that's. I can't really talk about that at the moment. This episode's releasing at the end of August, I mean end of September.

Speaker 3:

It doesn't also directly correlate to real estate. So there's a couple of other things we're doing, but they're great guys and what they're doing is a testament to the power of social media. Look what they've generated, how they've built for themselves Great guys and they've used social media to a T. They've started this whole business around themselves and who they are just by being who they are. And that's the other thing. It's being genuine on social media. Some people can do it and maybe they're not comfortable in front of the camera or they try to be someone they're not. You'll get fanned out.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, everyone knows straight away. Yeah, you can pick it from a mile away.

Speaker 3:

You've just got to be who you are and give that to the public.

Speaker 2:

Did you ever get anxiety around posting a video or anything like that?

Speaker 3:

Look, I did drama in school, so I was always comfortable.

Speaker 1:

I was comfortable in front of the camera.

Speaker 3:

I was comfortable on stage. Somewhere inside of me there's a budding probably actor slash director. I love theatre. I love movies. At the start you do get a bit self-conscious about the content you're putting out and how it's going to, but then what I learned was a long time ago is you've just got to really not give a shit. Put it out there and excuse the language. Give zero fucks about how it's taken. As long as I'm not hurting anyone or saying anything wrong, I'm going for gold, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And it going for gold? Yeah, and it's worked wonders for me. Yeah, I have to agree with you. Yeah, um, my business is built on social media. Yeah, uh, you know, we get a lot of referral partnerships and we get like, like yourself, for example, and we get a lot of accountants that you know. Call us up, hey, can you assist someone. But the way we stay top of mind and this is what I always try to explain people it's not about one post generating a lead that that post keeps you top of mind, whether it's real estate, hairdressing, being a broker, any sort of thing, whatever industry.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, whatever industry, it's such a massively powerful tool and especially with this new TikTok 15 seconds, you have to be able to grab people's attention very quickly.

Speaker 3:

Very quickly and like there's lots of things, and you would know this because you're a pro of watching your videos. I quickly and like there's lots of things, and you would know this because you're a pro watching your videos. I've always admired them, like it's the captions, it's uh, what image are you using as your lead image for your reel? You know, like you gotta, there's there's such a science to it and I think people don't realize the science that's involved in it and it's all strategy and it's all knowing how to do it and do it correctly.

Speaker 2:

So like it's really, really important so how do you use social media now? Don't reveal all your secrets. So how do you use social media Now? Don't reveal all your secrets, but how do you? Good enough imitators out there, often imitated, never duplicated.

Speaker 1:

Greatest form of flattery.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's it 100%.

Speaker 2:

How do you really capture someone's imagination when, let's say, you're filming a video for a new listing that you've got?

Speaker 3:

So look, first and foremost, what I do is I like to shoot multiple videos for a listing, so we'll have the traditional video that we upload on YouTube, which then goes to realestatecom. Now I'm still very hands-on with that project. I'll be there with the video editor. I'll actually tell him how I want the video shot, in terms of what theme I want. Do I want it fast-paced? Do I want it slow? Do I want it more editorial? Do I want to focus on certain parts of the house? I'm very hands-on. I'll pick the music. If I don't like the edit, I'll send it back. I'll be like no, I need you to chop this, I need you to add this. I need you to do that.

Speaker 3:

It can be a pain in the ass for the editors and I know they sometimes don't. Number one and I've got a responsibility to my vendor to showcase their property in its best light. Then we'll do different videos. I'll do behind the scenes videos. So those behind the scenes videos that I've been doing are going absolutely bonkers. On my socials. The viewership is to the roof Because people don't just want to see a normal video of the same thing bedroom, kitchen, living, pool, whatever.

Speaker 3:

They want to see a little bit of interaction. I kind of walk them through unofficially. I'll interact with people as we're filming. Photographers might be there, stylists might be there, my team might be there, whatever the case may be. It's a lot. It's condensed. I always keep it to a minute 30 because that way we can sponsor the videos.

Speaker 3:

You know there's a little trade secret. I might reveal that too much. I just try to engage in different ways to different audiences, because you don't want to see the same thing all the time. You want to keep it fresh, you want to keep it engaging and you want to keep people always guessing and reaching out to me, and I can't tell you how many times people drop into my DMs. I get phone calls. I had a phone call from a builder. I sold a property for him about three months ago now and he called me up. He saw a BTS that I did. He's like man, yes, that's what I want, like that's, you know. Like you know, I'm not here for the pats on the back, but that positive feedback you get from people, it's just nice man, it's great, like honestly, it feels good.

Speaker 2:

I've noticed a little bit of a change in certain culture where people actually go out of their way to give you a compliment now if you're really good at what you do. There have been so many haters in this world and there's so many people in the comments that, whoever that builder is, give me his number. I'm going to call him and tell him. I'm going to leave him a testimonial on his page as well, just because when you go out of your way and you do that, you make someone's day. You probably make their year when something like that happens.

Speaker 3:

It doesn't take much to be kind. Yeah, that's the end of the and that small act of kindness. You don't know how that can change someone's world.

Speaker 2:

It also triggers something in your brain. You've probably because you're in a better mood or you hear that or something, you've probably become more creative.

Speaker 3:

100% inspires you to do better. Yeah, and it's the most natural form of dopamine you can get. Yeah, like you know, getting that in and like hearing positive affirmations coming from someone that's got no reason to give it to you and doesn't want anything from you, like fuck man, that's a good.

Speaker 1:

The fact that he even called you and didn't just leave a comment. Honestly, honestly, like yeah, that's it.

Speaker 3:

It was great, you know. So, again, it just inspires me to keep doing what I'm doing, keep elevating the game. I always want to be changing. I never want to be stale. Yeah, as I said, I'll do something and then I'll notice. I've got lots of agents that follow me and I'll notice. I'll see a video and I'm like, hmm, like I literally like I did a video very recently. I'm not going to talk which one, but I saw another agent post the same video four days later, like 100% exactly the same.

Speaker 3:

Oh, like shot for shot, shot for shot, and I was like wow. And I was like, okay, well it, it is what it is like. You know, these things are going to happen. I don't get all my ideas organically. I sometimes see things and then I'll change them around and try to make them my own yeah, that's the difference, though.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's trying to make you see an idea. You're inspired and you're like I'll do it a little bit like that, but you've got to, you've got to make it your own me and my business partner stories and it'd be like epic, but we'll do that when we're retired one day.

Speaker 2:

So call people out. I always wanted to do. This was like a marketing idea I had, but I had. But what I wanted to do was create seasons of it's simple finance and every three months we would reshoot a classic intro of a sitcom. So like one day we would be doing the office and like you know, like the theme song, and then like it would have you know jose song, and then like it would have you know Joseph, and then this person, then this person, and then I thought, oh, why don't we go to a fountain and then jump around in a fountain and do the Friends one you know, and then that way, like it's just engaging the audience and getting them to laugh and be like, oh, what do you guys do?

Speaker 2:

here, but yeah, that was way too left of field and I'm pretty sure it would cost like $50,000 a video. It costs so much. We'll scrap that idea. All of a sudden, Jennifer Aniston is at the fountain. Joey, who paid for this?

Speaker 3:

Let me know if she shows up. Yeah, I will.

Speaker 2:

I just said.

Speaker 3:

But look just to kind of cap it off in terms of the role of a real estate agent Taking the wedding ring off for that one. No, we're doing guys. Yeah, like it's very, it's all encompassing, that's all I can say. It's not what it is and it's full on and we work very hard for what we do. Yeah, like, believe me, we work very hard for what we do.

Speaker 1:

Do you get like different kinds of? What kind of clients do you usually get through social media, like values of the houses, like are these big clients with like big bank accounts and stuff, or just sort of everyday people or lower end?

Speaker 3:

Man, it's a mixture of everything. Everything, honestly, it is. I've got young people in their early 20s that reach out to me looking to either maybe buy their first investment property or just want some advice. Yeah, I get the middle-aged newlyweds. I get vendors looking to sell or asking me you've sold that property. It's very similar to mine. Can you come out and see my property? I've had people reach out to me from Wollongong recently, two of them from Wollongong because I sold one.

Speaker 3:

We listed a house two weeks ago. It's now the number one most viewed house in New South Wales and the number two in the entire country. Wow, according to realestatecom. Wow, yeah. And I had an influx of people reaching out saying your marketing is insane, what you do, how you market. And again, like that really made me feel really good about myself because it showed like my vendor loved hearing that, like he loves the fact that his house is the number two property in the entire country. Like that's a pretty big start, man, you've got over 160,000 listings on realestatecom and we're two, yeah, you know. And we've got over 60,000 listings on realestatecom and we're two, yeah, you know. And we've got over 60,000 listings in Sydney, in New South Wales, and we're one Like that's pretty kick-ass and that's going to attract a lot more vendors. 100%, because they'll now see the way we market and they'll see that effort that I put into my marketing. And it's not cheap. Marketing is not cheap. No, it works 100%.

Speaker 2:

So, with the vendors, with attracting these people, how do you develop that reputation of trust, how do you develop the inclination of people wanting to go with you to either sell or buy a property from?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, great question, because I get asked that a lot about how you generate leads or whatever the case may be. I find the most authentic and genuine way is obviously referrals. Because if you're looking to sell, joe, and you're speaking to someone that you trust really well, a family member, a good friend you're like, oh, I'm thinking of selling, and they say to you, hey, man, reach out to Karim for Mayfair. I work with him, mate. What an experience Genuine, down the line, whatever, whatever there's like, you're not it's not me telling you that, it's someone else that you trust telling you that. So automatically there's a level of trust there and I get so many phone calls like that.

Speaker 3:

Obviously, results are a big thing. You break a record in the area. People are going to see it, they're going to call you up and say, wow, I've got something similar to that. And that's how we've kind of doubled up and tripled up on all these results that we're getting, because we've broken records in Kingsgrove, in Roselands, in Belmore, in Belfield, and they just compile on top of each other. So I would say referrals is probably the biggest thing in our business in terms of it's organic, it's natural, it comes to you. Obviously you've got your old school ways of prospecting. Your door knocks, your letter drops all that old school stuff, phone calls. You wouldn't shy away from it because that's always going to be true and tested.

Speaker 2:

I had a letterbox dropped the other day. Somebody was like I've got a buyer for your house right now. I just kind of saw it. I can't even remember who put it in there, I can't remember who signed off, but I know for a fact if it was one of the trusted agents in the area, I might have picked up the phone and I might have been like, hey, what's it worth? Yeah, okay, what do they want to buy? Because I'm thinking to myself, like my wife and I were thinking about selling.

Speaker 2:

We've been thinking about selling or, you know, doing something because we don't want to live in our area for the rest of our lives Property, real estate. There's a chance I would have picked up the phone, and that's just a very big thing. You need to be able to hold, maintain and grow your reputation. It's like I always say how you do anything is how you do everything. 100%.

Speaker 3:

How many times would you go into a house and see a calendar magnet on a fridge for a real estate agency? Right, and I sometimes still see them. But what are 90% of people doing at 7.30 at night on a weekday? They're on TikTok. They're doing this, they're scrolling man, yeah, that, or Tinder, one of the two they're scrolling. So the more times you can be in front of their face, the more times they're going to see me. They're going to see my name, my brand. They're going to start thinking Kareem, mayfair, kareem, mayfair, kareem.

Speaker 3:

It's just going to correlate with that might go in the mail. You get one of those things, you tear them up, it goes in the mail, Sorry bin, so you get in the records.

Speaker 2:

You've built such a trusted brand. Have you started thinking to yourself I need to look into a new market? You mentioned Wollongong two moments ago, or is that something that's still in the back burner? So?

Speaker 3:

we're very blessed. We've got a really good business. We've got a really big office in a really thriving community and it's a great business that we've built. We built from nothing, we started. So I'm not sure most people know, but real estate businesses are valued from your rent roll, not from your sales. That's just the way it's valued in terms of a financial perspective. So we started with zero properties when we started the business in our rent roll.

Speaker 3:

I'm not going to tell you how many we have now, but it's fairly significant and you know, off the back of her hard work, she runs the rental department. So I've got to give her all the kudos. She runs that side and I run the sales side. We obviously cross between each other and you know I bring in clients, she brings in clients for sales, I bring in. Whatever the case may be, but sometimes it's good to have something one really good thing, rather than than two or three okay things. Yeah, you know, and I think that's where my mind's taken me Both of us we're like really happy with having one really really good business. Yeah, and thank God we have that rather than maybe like, do you expand and you lose a little from here, you don't you know? Keep your eye on that. Yeah, got a good thing going, we've got a good thing going, you know. No-transcript.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Joseph Daoud

Co-host
Head Shot

Michael Lozina

Co-host