Kurt Uhlir  0:00  

They literally just started building these local community pages. And every, you know, have like four of them, kind of just do a couple more pages every week. And they’ve been doing that for like two years. Well, so he, he may have eight, the first week and 16 the next week, and now he has three to 5000 of them, because they do Brentwood, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville, or condos in Brentwood, Tennessee, and it expands out so Google loves him. But it also is really good from a referral basis. Because if you have those local pages, and I meet you, Darrin at an event, and I go, Oh, yeah, I mean, I flip properties in Roswell, Georgia, but I have that local page. And I have some write up about kind of what that is that that gives me something to follow up with you who very specific in Roswell, Georgia, which not only makes it more likely we’ll work together, even if we don’t, it’s much more likely I’m going to get a referral from you. When I say more likely, I see three to eight, three to 8x increase in referrals by having those local like monitors on there.

Announcer  0:17  

Welcome to CRE PN Radio for influential commercial real estate professionals who work with investors, buyers and sellers of commercial real estate coast to coast whether you’re an investor, broker, lender, property manager, attorney or accountant we are here to learn from the experts.

J Darrin Gross  0:17  

Welcome to Commercial Real Estate Pro Networks, CRE PN Radio. Thanks for joining us. My name is J. Darrin Gross. This is a podcast focused on commercial real estate investment and risk management strategies. Weekly, we have conversations with commercial real estate investors and professionals who provide their experience and insight to help you grow your real estate portfolio. 

Today, my guest is Kurt Uhlir. Kurt is a globally recognized marketer, operator and speaker. He’s built and run businesses from startup to over 500 million in annual revenue, assembled teams across six continents and been a part of the small team leading an IPO of $880 million. And in just a minute, we’re going to speak with Kurt about the effective digital marketing strategy for real estate professionals in 2022. But first a quick reminder, if you like our show, CR e PN radio, there are a couple of things you can do to help us out. You can like, share and subscribe. And as always, we encourage you to leave a comment, we’d love to hear from our listeners. Also, if you want to see how handsome Our guests are, be sure to check out our YouTube channel. You can find us on YouTube at commercial real estate pro network. And while you’re there, please subscribe. With that I want to welcome my guest, Kurt, welcome to CRE PN Radio. 

Kurt Uhlir  0:17  

Thanks for having me. 

J Darrin Gross  0:17  

I’m looking forward to our conversation today. But before we get started, if you could take just a minute, and share with the listeners a little bit about your background.

Kurt Uhlir  3:00  

Yeah, so I’m a business person at heart, I started life as actually a programmer, but kind of quickly realized that the training that I had there, worked very well in within business and specifically within marketing, because of how much it takes to actually scale things and a lot of success in marketing. For the last even 15 years. Branding and messaging is is important. But it’s less about coming up with that cool Coca Cola commercial. And it’s much more about running, running processes, that when you find something that works, that you can think much more like a programmer or an applied mathematician and crank the knobs a little bit so that we can we can scale where we need to and, and grow the business based on that. So you worked kind of been blessed to work in more than a dozen industries. And last four years, five years have been in real estate, some of the biggest real estate companies in the world, but also helping 10s of 1000s of individual agents and real estate investors grow their individual businesses, sometimes it’s solo entrepreneurs, and sometimes a small teams.

J Darrin Gross  4:11  

Got it? Got it. I’m curious, you know, I’ve been man I’ve been out of school now for at least 3030 plus years. And it seems to me back when when I first got out of college and was hired, there was a department in a the company I worked for and it was called sales and marketing. Do you can you see the separation or define the separation between sales and marketing? I mean, it seems like that was always kind of like a combo thing but but do you see it differently or can you distinguish between the sales and the marketing?

Kurt Uhlir  4:53  

Yeah, they I mean they they’re different but but they are highly related to me. I actually take much more of the state Steve Job ABS approach to kind of marketing where anything that any part of the experience that a consumer or client interacts with should be considered marketing and should be viewed into that. Anything from that includes the product experience. But it’s it’s perceptions from, you’ve never heard of my brand, or the company I work with, to the point that you’ve been a repeat customer for a happy customer for years in marketing sets up a poor expectations up front, God forbid, you’re the salesperson trying to close the deal on that. On the other side, though, say, from a sales perspective, too often, we have seen sales where people are just trying to close the deal to get their commission check at the end of the, at the end of the month, or the end of the quarter. And so they’re related. But for me, sales really comes down to the person who’s closing the deal getting an agreement signed. So that could mean, you know, actually inking the check for a commercial property, it could mean bringing on somebody for my real estate marketing company, but it’s the person actually getting that signature. Everything else me really falls under marketing. I know not everybody splits it up that way. But I really kind of view marketing much more as the marketing is the custodian of the perceptions. And so both the good and the bad of that.

J Darrin Gross  6:12  

I like that, I always thought it was kind of funny, you know, I think the internet has given us the opportunity to much more clearly distinguish between the two, I think, in companies before the, the the marketing department was not as clearly defined. Or at least it didn’t feel as clearly defined. People aren’t clicking or, or, you know, you couldn’t tell what, at what point people were interacting with the marketing. Whereas I think now that the internet has given us the ability to track everybody with every little click or view or for whatever length, so it’s, it’s definitely, you know, much more measurable now than it was pre internet kind of thing.

Kurt Uhlir  7:00  

Agreed well, and also, it was much more muddied in the past, because a lot of times CEOs and boards, they would hire a single person to lead sales and marketing. And now it especially in high growth companies, you will usually see a chief marketing officer and a chief revenue officer, there are still times that you will see one person kind of leading both of those organizations. But, but if when that happens, or when I’ve come in and kind of you know, coached companies and private equity groups that are choosing a single person chose to still run the two, they need to be very clear on on on who the persona is that person that that is going to lead the to because like I find, you can have a you can have a really good revenue focus marketer lead a sales, sales sales organization with a sales lead underneath them. But usually, if you have that, that sales leader who has you know, 1020 30 years of sales experience, and marketing is tucked underneath them, they’re they’re focused on closing deals much less about marketing, and that can still be a good model. But that’s much less successful nowadays for a lot of the reasons that you mentioned.

J Darrin Gross  8:07  

So let me ask you, so that the, we’ve progressed from, you know, pre internet to internet. Now, I mean, kind of the, the web kind of drives, I don’t say drives, but it’s clearly the the entry point, the portal where, where if you have a product, if you have, I mean, you need to be identified. And that’s where people are going to look for you or your, your competitors, or whatever the product is that you’re you’re selling or that they’re buying. Is there any data that you have? Or is there any data available that talks about the use of websites for real estate professionals?

Kurt Uhlir  8:52  

Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of data and it depends on whether or not you’re, you’re a residential or commercial agent, or whether or not you’re an investor. So the I mean, still, largely all of it does fall underneath. For me, there was a shift about 10 years ago to what I’d say is really the influence economy. To your point, people are going and checking checking out you as an individual, you as a company, you as a team, no matter which of those groups you kind of fall into. But it really does matter. I mean, on the residential side, like if you don’t have you know, what the data is very clear, and I say, like data, like looking at like, you know, 150 to 200,000 websites with, you know, half a million, you know, homebuyers going to them, the only thing I can guarantee is if you don’t have a website, or you have a poor performing, like residential site, that the only thing I can guarantee for sure, is that if you have a site that doesn’t have a home search, your clients are gonna want to use they’re gonna go to Zillow. So what’s the guarantee? A competitive agent will be calling your client if either you don’t have a website or you don’t have a good residential home site, by commercials You know, different on that. Because much more often the agent is having to is doing custom searches and they’re brokering a relationship. And there, there’s a lot more that goes into that, whether it’s for investment purposes, or you know, it’s bigger commercial properties. But in that case, sell. I’m choosing as as a potential client. I mean, I’d be doing the search by myself, but I’m betting whether or not I want to work with you or somebody else, like, I have a lot of friends that work for Cresa and work for some of these other firms. Well, I’m very, I’d verifying those people online before I choose to do a deal with them. And investors are very much the same way. Like, are you sourcing deals? Or are you just wanting to like Syndicate, or relationships, it all comes around a website, from a data perspective of expanding, especially even more on the investor side is if you don’t have a data, digital hub for website, good luck keeping digital marketing working for you, because what happens on Facebook or YouTube or your emails, open rates change. Like, you’ve kind of lost your major channel for connecting with people, if you don’t have a hub that you’ve been pointing, pointing people back to you for years and building a brand around.

J Darrin Gross  11:11  

I’m kind of curious, can you talk about website and emails and all that? Is there a a particular asset that it’s most important for real estate professionals?

Kurt Uhlir  11:25  

For me, there’s the two main things are Well, assetwise is a it is it’s your personal brand, no matter whether you’re in any of the categories of investor or commercial, residential, and your database. Now, those may these those may surface themselves in the form of your CRM, and a cultivated contact list that you’re keeping, not just the contact information up to date to but you’re staying in touch with those people. On the other side, it’s really hard to have a strong personal brand over multiple years, without having a website as a hub of that. For the reasons I mentioned, like, Hey, you can be really big on Tik Tok because it’s been growing so much for YouTube. And what happens when the algorithm changes? Well, your personal brand kind of withers away, unless you’ve been driving people to a site that’s built that lets you tell your story. Because, hey, any of the algorithms on any social networks, like they’re, they’re the ones ultimately in control of your personal brand, because they’re deciding who gets to see, and who gets to engage with you with any content you put out. But on your website, you control all of the content on there. And so the two big assets for me are your personal brand, and your database, it’s just how they surface tends to be in a website or a CRM.

J Darrin Gross  12:46  

Gotcha. That’s the kind of a problem or it has been a problem. I’m trying to think recently, if it’s been as much, but I know that whenever Google or Facebook changes that algorithm, you know, the people that were like, Man, I’m killing it on, you know, whatever the platform was, and all sudden, I’m gonna get anybody kind of thing without the leads here. So

Kurt Uhlir  13:12  

that’s why that website for me is like I, you know, I encourage people, no matter where they’re grown, that kind of growing leads and cultivating their existing relationships. Like, if you’re, if you spend a lot of time in Instagram, I do. That’s where you know, it’s fine for me to start trying to grow my network there and build influence on that. Rather than you know, I’m never on Tiktok. So my wife is, so it’d be a change of base for me to go try that. Either way, though. As long as I’ve been funneling people back to my website, I’m, I’ve largely de risked a lot of my marketing and a lot of my long term growth by helping train my people. If you ever don’t see me on Facebook, or Instagram or YouTube, go visit me at Kurt eular.com. But also like that allows you to have things like show notes or other information downloadable. You get to point people to where to go and get that information, gather emails, and you can reach out to them in many different ways when the algorithms change.

J Darrin Gross  14:07  

No. So we are recording this June 1 2022. Before we started recording, we talked a little bit about kind of the change in the market. Are we there yet? Is it changing? Is it is it going to change dramatically? Interest rates are definitely creeping up and it seems like the Fed is committed to pushing them substantially higher to try and curb this inflation that we’re experiencing. So with that, I am curious if you can identify what an effective strategy for real estate professionals would would look like going forward in 2022? Yeah,

Kurt Uhlir  14:58  

I mean As I don’t personally know what’s going to happen next, when things slow down, it sure feels like that. And it feels like that’s what a lot of people are talking about and concerned about. What I like to look at is data from the past. And I’m, I’m really big on control risk within my business and helping others grow theirs. And so they’re, you know, when when the market is growing fast, you know, there’s a lot of money within, you know, ad networks and pay per click to be able to pay, put down some extra dollars to generate some new leads, or remarket to pass people, when things slow down. Well, one, there’s not as many dollars most people don’t have to throw around. But also, that’s when people realize they should have been cultivating kind of their organic marketing over years and years in the past. And so, you know, some markets feel like they’re cooling a good bit right now. But this is when I think it’s really important for people to look at their individual businesses and say, how much of how much of my business growth is fueled by ads versus organic growth and are by organic, I mean, people coming to me, because of the influence that I have that could be influenced, that shows up in terms of Google search rankings, YouTube channels, podcast, or referral businesses, because if things slow down, your business is only going to kind of impress, you know, keep growing, but especially, you know, maybe even stay afloat if you have those organic channels coming in. But the good thing is, this is also like, we’re not there yet, things haven’t just slowed down by like 30 40%, like we saw, like in, you know, 2009 2010. And so this is the time where we still have a little bit more margin in both our businesses. And so I think it’s wise for people to start to shift, shift to say, How am I supporting the influence economy, my sphere of influence is starting to invest more in some of those organic channels. Because it’s kind of a it’s it is compound interest that it’s like, hey, it takes a while for you to build up content, and then for Google to pay attention to it. And that might mean six, even 12 months, well, wouldn’t you rather have started that today on June 1, than wait until August or October, when a market actually slows down. And if it doesn’t slow down, that’s still going to help your business later on. But it protects your business and D risks it right now, if you start allocating a little bit more resources towards it today.

J Darrin Gross  17:23  

I’m always reminded of that when’s the best time to plant a tree and 20 years ago was probably the best time but the next best time is today. Get started there. That’s good. How do you recommend that real estate professionals go about identifying their, their their target audience? And how can you segment that? Or is there a way that you recommend that they try and zero in on on your ideal prospect? Or somebody that would be fine, you know, looking for them?

Kurt Uhlir  18:02  

Yeah, great question. I find, I find a lot of times real estate professionals, we almost have to go through an exercise, we have to have a reason that we’re gonna kind of niche down or think about who our target is. Because if you if I just tell most people when I’ve been coaching them to do that, I’ll come back to him two weeks later, three weeks later, and they haven’t really done the effort. And I don’t know if that’s because it’s a little ethereal and or if it’s the nature of a lot of us that are in real estate, what I find helpful is either hey, you need to go through and really write out your bio as a real estate professional, or take the effort to do that and build it out as a website. Because then it’s I have a I have an ID that I’m creating. I’m not just making up some some some kind of ethereal concept, hey, when I say create a bio, I mean you need to have two different bios that you tell people about who do you how do you how are you know, and there needs to be a short kind of Twitter link version. And then there probably needs either needs to be a three to five minute version. Now that can very much kind of go along with your website, but it’s like that short version is What does show on social media but who do I help but that three to five minute version. Like it doesn’t need to just be Hey, I help you you know, I you know, I buy I buy homes for you know, rental homes and or I’m a flipper, or it needs to be very, very specific about who you work with why you do what you do. The best example I can actually kind of give his on the residential side. So the gentleman that helped me buy my my wife and I buy our house named Bodhi, he lives in Roswell Georgia. If you ask Bobby what he does, Bobby doesn’t have a website. You ask Bobby what he does, or almost anybody that knows Bobby, they’re going to tell you Bobby help Bobby helps married couples in their late 20s to early 40s with young kids buy single family homes in Roswell, Georgia or East Scott, like dot stuff that That’s who he helps. Now, sometimes he will help somebody that is divorced, because he helped them buy or buy their home when they were in that kind of tight niche. And now they’re, they’re exiting out of that home. So he’s going to sell it somebody like them in the past. But if I went to Bobby and said, Hey, I’m looking to buy a condo in Roswell, he’s gonna be like, I can refer you to somebody, because there’s different, there’s different questions, he would ask and guide you through buying a condo in Roswell, Georgia, or some of the suburbs. But my wife and I, we do not have kids yet. So he because he’s so tight in his niche. Like he was able to ask us questions that it’s pulled out of us what we wanted in a home that we didn’t even know we had the question. And so that’s it. I mean, him and two other agents and Keller Williams, that’s who they focus on. And one, one of them that has too much business, they affirm to the other people within that niche, they don’t help anybody outside of those niches, that’s good bread and butter, they do 80 To 120 180 to 120 transactions a year for each one of those three. That’s a great niche, very similar residence, a residential, and I think it was Chicago, I met somebody when I lived there, who did he helped, he helps primarily singles by high rise condos in downtown Chicago, or somebody who’s now you’ve married out of that you’re moving out to the suburbs, because I kind of the opposite of the guy. But Bobby, I mentioned here, if you’re, if you’re working on that bio, and you meet mentioned Bobby out at a barbecue, at church at Temple, you say, Bobby, what do you do? He’s gonna give you that two sentence version? And you’re gonna know, do you help me yes or no, and you’re gonna refer him to somebody else. That’s great. And that’s the same type of thing for, hey, I buy distressed properties that I invest in and help flip to revitalize neighborhoods and make a profit myself, in Roswell, Georgia, like, that’s, again, very tight niche. And when you practice actually writing out that bio, when I mean writing it out, you need to practice it to the point that you can repeat that three to five minute version verbatim every single time, in order for your website, when you can nail it to that, I think you’re gonna grow your business.

J Darrin Gross  22:10  

I’m curious, I’m assuming the more specific you can be, the more likely you are to succeed. You mentioned the location in the examples you provided specifically in Roswell, Georgia. Holly, is there any way to gauge the the the success or the different? Different? I guess, what are you the how the success would drop off, if you’re not as specific, if you have, you know, say I help people in Georgia. As opposed to that specific geographic location,

Kurt Uhlir  22:55  

I find you can broaden and more as you have, as your business grows, even then the your mark, your your response is usually going to be tailored to this to that more or that closer location, unless you are working with another partner. If I’m, if I was helping somebody do title clearing, I’m a lawyer helping doing title clearing properties, investors, while I might be working in Georgia, but unless I’m working with a with a real estate group that’s really focused, I’m probably working with somebody in Roswell in South Georgia, in North Georgia. And so I’m going to tailor my pitch a little bit like that. And if I have a website, I’m going to have specific kind of location pages that talk about those those local areas. A must in that case, you know, I was at law firm, and I have five lawyers or 10, lawyers working kind of across Georgia, at which point, each person is probably going to focus on a little bit of a distinct area as well. Right. But but people look for people are looking for, especially nowadays where I can Well, Google is definitely looking for the more specific. And so you can be general on your website. But you need to have this local community pages that that’s telling Google, you’re an expert in this area, and you can broaden those as you want. And you might start with five of those if you’re looking at more local areas, and then broaden it. On the residential side. I know a real estate agent named Patrick Kagan’s in Nashville, and Nashville, he’s national home doctor is his website. He probably has, I don’t know, three to 5000 local community pages. So he started with about four agents on their team. Now they’ve got I think, 12. And so they literally just started building these local community pages. And every, you know, have like four of them. Kind of just do a couple more pages every week. And they’ve been doing that for like two years. Well, so he, he maybe had eight the first week and 16 the next week, and now he has three to 5000 of them because they do Brentwood, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville or condos in Brentwood, Tennessee, and it expands out so Google loves him but it also is really good from a referral basis. Because if you have those local pages, and I meet you Darren at an event, and I go, Oh, yeah, I mean, I default properties in Roswell, Georgia, but I have that local page. And I have some write up about kind of what that is that that gives me something to follow up with you who are very specific in Roswell, Georgia, which not only makes it more likely we’ll work together, even if we don’t, it’s much more likely I’m gonna get a referral from you. When I say more likely, I see three to eight, three to 8x increase in referrals by having those local like monikers on there,

J Darrin Gross  25:35  

kind of when you’re saying this, so if the individual has their page, or their their website, I guess. And then you’re saying on on the site, then create a specific page for that. That locale. Yes, I went there. Yeah.

Kurt Uhlir  25:50  

Okay. And you need to talk about that locale so that it doesn’t need to be much. But you know, it would be rare for me to find a real estate professional and residential and commercial or as an investor, that I live in Bristol, oaks, a neighborhood in Roswell, Georgia, it would be rare for me to find anybody in one of those three categories, that that’s their full time job that couldn’t give me three to five minutes about why people live in Bristol looks like that. That’s the type of information that would go on that page, just enough to kind of say, like, I do actually know this area. I’m not living in California or Oregon or Colorado, writing about Bristol oaks, Roswell, Georgia. No, I’m I know about the area right there. Gotcha. And what’s different on that, because you know, any of those things from an investing residential, commercial, it is there is there are differences depending on the state. So

J Darrin Gross  26:44  

right, right. Now, and I’m certain anybody that’s looking for an expert or somebody that knows the area, they’d much rather another, you do actually know the area, which would just again, bolster the fact. And the reason I have that page is to, to identify yourself as an expert. So I find

Kurt Uhlir  27:02  

often, I want to give real estate professionals that guidance, they tend to feel locked in, they don’t actually go forward, even if they have a website already. They go. Okay, so I need like, you know, 30 pages for Roswell, Georgia, or maybe 300. If I want to care for all these neighborhoods, and then they feel frozen, they don’t know what to do. And so it, I think, because people want to be perfect. Versus realize momentum is the name of the game and digital marketing today influenced today, you have one subscriber, no subscribers on YouTube, you start producing content. If you have no community pages, like we’re just talking about, well, you should start with one or two. Are you and then you know, are you capable of writing that out yourself? Well, if so, just remember, it doesn’t have to be perfect. But it’s also really easy to, to find a virtual assistant online, go to Upwork, go to a website like word agents. And just do take out your phone and do a three to five minute, you know, Voice Memo talking about we’ll say with Bristol Lux as the example. I can talk about Bristol oaks and why you should move here, or why you should buy properties to flip here, or why you should work with me, syndicating deals here, I can leave that in a three to five minute Voice Note, email that over to my writer and pay him 20 To $40 to write out the content for that page. Now I’m not locked anymore, I don’t have to be perfect. I just get it up there. And I can come back and iterate it in a year if I need to.

J Darrin Gross  28:27  

Beyond the specific moniker for the the city or the the the area that you’re trying to identify with, are there any other like key pieces of information that should be included? In the search, I guess it’d be for the search, because obviously I’m trying

Kurt Uhlir  28:45  

to search but also I’m thinking about in terms of, you know, I’m always writing not just for Google, I’m thinking about the visitor. And so when I say visitor, if somebody lands on this website, is this going to help them kind of convert or want to work with me? Or is this going to help somebody that I already have a relationship is going to make it easier for them to go, Gosh, I should refer Kirk. And so especially on the you know, from an investor perspective, if I’m if I’m syndicating deals with people, or if I’m helping coach people through that process, or I’m managing properties for them? Well, it’s possible, I’m just that there’s something very general, it’s also possible that I might, you know, be working with some fee based financial planners in my area, my wife and I use a gentleman with Ron blue trust. And so, hey, if I was partnered with the person we work with, and then then I might, instead of just being about Roswell, Georgia, I might be saying, Hey, I work with fee based financial planners that are helping people describe their situation a little bit more. So it may be less even about the locale and more about the type of person being very specific about what that looks like. And so there’s a lot of differences too, that kind of comes into play there for the same reason that people you know, they want to know that you work with people in that area. They also want to know you work with people Then I mentioned Ron blue trust, they’re a Christian financial fee based financial planning company. Well, that’s, that’s a very specific niche that they have. There’s also my brother 10, our works with somebody that they’re with. He’s with a financial firm, that they’re much more focused on social and environmental issues. So that part of their investment philosophy, and that’s, that’s near and dear to the people that are investing with that company. Well, those are very two different pages that I would write about, about, hey, I work with people looking to invest that work with either these areas.

J Darrin Gross  30:34  

Got it, you mentioned a couple different ways to to go about this, whether you write to yourself or, or have a VA or somebody, you know, convert your words spoken to writing, is there any kind of a time budget you recommend people commit to, to continue, like I said, to continue the momentum of growing your your reach on your website, or

Kurt Uhlir  31:01  

if you’re writing content or doing video content, because one can lead to the other? It’s, for me, it’s two to three hours a week, it doesn’t not i It really shouldn’t be more than that, I feel like until you have consistency down. And if you can only if you look at your calendar, and you can go I can only do an hour a week, that’s okay, as well. It’s consistency is much more important than, than the number of hours you work. And then you just figure out your model with that, and what works best for you. Because like, for me, I write very well in the morning, but not in the evenings after everything’s been hitting me throughout the day. So I could wake up in the morning, grab my coffee, and spend 30 minutes and write out a couple of community pages we talked about. But I tried doing that same thing at six o’clock at night, when kids are running around, I want to spend time with my wife where we’re gonna have for dinner, I’ll never do that. But I could edit at that time. So if I wrote up, if I wrote a first draft first thing in the morning, 30 minutes on that. And then sometime later in the week, I have 2030 minutes after the kids have gone to bed, I could edit that in the morning. And that’s knowing myself in finding how can I be consistent versus the amount of hours.

J Darrin Gross  32:13  

That’s good. I think consistency I think is a big, big plus, if you’re you know, you commit to it, and you really want to grow it, you’re going to have to keep at it, you can’t just like set it and forget it and and you gotta get I think that the whole Google machine is looking for, you know, more information, more information, more information. So the more more you can feed it, the better I think you’re going to be, the more likely you are to be found. And Google’s can recognize you sense,

Kurt Uhlir  32:39  

in the consistency matters for I find who people actually tell them to, you know, decide who they are. So, you know, we feel we think about things based on our actions. And so it’s really easy to say, Hey, I’m gonna go to the gym and say, I’m gonna go to the gym every single day, you know, for the next 30 days, well, how many new year’s resolutions actually start that way and, and by like, the fourth of January, as opposed to, my only job is to show up at the gym. And then after, like, I don’t have to work out, I just show up at the gym or workout for five minutes. And that’s all well now after a month or two months, that’s an easy task to do. Now, I’m somebody who goes to the gym every day, the same thing with these, this writing is that I only need an hour or two hours a week. And so coming from nothing. Well, after setting aside doing that, just an hour a week for a month. Now I’m somebody that writes, after two months, three months, that’s part of who I identify myself as, and I can see some some consistency, my background. And so I find like that consistency, it comes a lot for actually making me get back up the next day. Because it’s like, what, I’ve done this for the last six months, I mean, why would I skip this week, I just need one hour, I’m gonna skip one show on Netflix and make this happen.

J Darrin Gross  33:53  

Ya know, I find that a lot of times the the resistance to writing is, is you know, to sit down to start writing kind of thing and and once once I get started then there’s you know, some familiarity and kind of remember how to do it. It’s not like a term paper I’ve got to have done by tomorrow kind of thing but it’s more of just kind of becoming proficient at and then in practices is really worth it kind of makes it a lot easier as you go and like say to go to the gym on a regular basis, same same kind of concept there. It wouldn’t ask you so we talked about being found organically versus or we haven’t really talked about ad I’m kind of curious, do you recommend people engage in ads or do you find organic traffic to be more beneficial?

Kurt Uhlir  34:44  

Depends on where you’re at in your business. I’m a huge fan of advertising and paid media, both for new leads and also our remarketing to say resurface to people already have a relationship with ads are going to happen much faster. And so you know, I Don’t think it has to be an either or, as things start to slow down and your budget starts to kind of get get compressed ads tend to tend to fall by the wayside. And so at that point, I’m going to shift people more or less more towards an end game organic basis. But I’m a huge fan of ads and what they can do. And I mean, anybody that’s been in hyper growth, like I have been good at big companies and helping 1000s of small solo entrepreneurs, like you learn from that, that kind of muscle memory of hyper growth that says ads have a place, just do not rely on that being the sole way to grow your business.

J Darrin Gross  35:38  

As far as results, go, for somebody that doesn’t have a presence right now. How much? How quickly? Or how long do you think it would, or would you expect it to take for somebody to start today and to get to a point where they’re regularly seen business opportunities, present her, you know, be for them to be found on the internet, and they regularly get business opportunities from, from their efforts

Kurt Uhlir  36:10  

from, from an organic perspective, if say, you don’t have a website, and you’re just getting started, I mean, it’s probably going to be nine to 12 months before you really start to generate leads that way from, you know, it takes a while for Google to wake up to a new website, and then to start to rank it. And that may even be a little bit fast. But that doesn’t mean that has doesn’t mean that that has to be the only you’re waiting for Google, during that time period, you’re building the content for Google and people be found organically, but it shouldn’t be changing how you do things in the real world as well, we talked about, you know, by the sheer P plan of building out a website, I’m gonna refine my, my, my bio, so I should be using that in the real world when I talk to people. But also, as I have these community pages, that now gives me content to start reaching out to people in my network that I have emails for, and I have relationships too. And so there’s, there’s a lot that can be happened. So from organic perspective, you should start to see referrals, like maybe even a three to four month, three to four month timeframe, just knowing it might take people usually 30 to 60 days to get a website up and going feel comfortable about what’s there. I mean, it could just take a day to get that newsletter up, but it’s probably gonna take people 30 days to feel comfortable, hit click and send number, Hey, I’ve imported you know, 60 people into my follow up boss account. And now I want to send it out. That clicking Send is scary that first time. So I give people another month on that.

J Darrin Gross  37:40  

Definitely opportunity to make some mistakes and grow. But I think the you know, commit to it, and recognize the importance of it. And, you know, I see that the internet is gonna go away. And more and more people are this is this where they go to find find the information. So if you’re not on it, you’re not going to be found. So that’s good stuff. He could if we could, I’d like to shift gears here for a second. By day, I’m an insurance broker. And I work with my clients to assess risk and determine what to do with the risk. And there’s a couple of different strategies we typically consider, we first look to see if there’s a way we can avoid the risk. If that’s not an option, then we look to see if there’s a way we can minimize the risk. And when we can neither avoid nor minimize the risk. We look to see if we can transfer the risk. And that’s what an insurance policy is. It’s a risk transfer vehicle. And as such, I like to ask my guests if they can look at their own situation. Could be clients, investors, political interest rates, however you would like to frame the question, but identify what you consider to be the biggest risk. And again, for clarification, while I am an insurance broker, I’m not necessarily looking for an insurance related answer. And with that, I’d like to ask you, Kurt Uhlir, What is the biggest risk?

Kurt Uhlir  39:20  

The big key is risk in my personal business. And I think in most people’s businesses, actually, what am I wrong about today? And I like I don’t know what I’m wrong about in my business today. But I can guarantee I’m wrong about at least three fundamental things. And I say that from too many decades is already working and not enough hours sleeping, realizing. Like I know one thing and feeling right and feeling wrong feels exactly the same until you realize your wily coyote out over the ledge and you realize in that moment, I’ve been wrong about a fundamental belief in my business for the last three months, three years, and something’s come out wrong. And so I do a lot to in my personal life or my business life there to try to de risk that by putting people around me that have full transparency into what I’m doing and the decisions and my thought process in business. Some cases, those are paid mentors and coaches, other times or masterminds where people that are in similar, often non competitive businesses that are trying to accomplish the same growth trajectory, tried the same things, and fully exposed, hey, here’s why. Here’s how I’m making this approach. And be very give other people permission to speak into cordite. I think this is what you’re missing. Comana that times where it’s like, you realize, oh, God, I’ve been putting in a lot of resources, millions of dollars in some cases. And I realize I’ve been fundamentally wrong, and I just lost it all, man. And we’ve been really nice to somebody could have given me that insight beforehand. So I’ve, I’ve been in that wrong situation too many times. But I’ve also saved millions of dollars, by having close people in those relationships, point out things to me that I really thought I was right about, until they started pushing me on it. And I realized through kind of that discovery, now, there’s much more riskier than I think, and I need to change path before I write that next check.

J Darrin Gross  41:22  

That’s awesome. I love asking this question. Because the opportunity for input and different answers is so wide ranging, nobody has said, what you just said about what am I wrong about today? I am no that’s like that. If you start with that, that’s a great place to start, as opposed to the assumption you’re right on on everything because it’s clearly an opportunity to learn and, and also make a change. I appreciate that. Kurt, where can the listeners go if they’d like to learn more connect with you?

Kurt Uhlir  41:57  

So we’ve talked a lot about digital hubs. So I have a website, KurtUhlir.com. That is my digital hub people can find, kind of track anything that splinters out to YouTube and Facebook and Instagram. But I speak a lot about servant leadership and high growth companies. And so I have several guides on there. I think I put about maybe 12 to 13,000 words on high achieving servant leadership just in the last month. So that’s where people go to find out more about those topics or find out anything going on in my life for my businesses.

J Darrin Gross  42:30  

Awesome. Well, Kurt, I cannot say thanks enough for taking the time to talk today. I have thoroughly enjoyed it. Learned a lot and I look forward to talking to with you again soon. Thank you. Thanks for having me. All right. For our listeners. If you liked this episode, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe. Remember, the more you know, the more you grow. That’s all we’ve got this week. Until next time, thanks for listening to commercial real estate pro networks. CRE PN Radio.

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