A Podcast | Jerome Lewis

Pete Neubig: Welcome back everybody. And as promised, I have Jerome. Mr. Implementation Lewis, who's a multi book author. He's authored many books, not just 1 or 2, which my apologies, Jerome. When we were talking in the green room, I thought you only did two books. I didn't realize you have more than that. So. So welcome, and thank you for being here.

Jerome Lewis: Absolutely. Thank you for having me, Pete. I highly appreciate you having me here. Thank you so much.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. So I was able to meet Jerome. I was on his podcast, and I thought very highly of him. And I thought you'd be a great resource for our podcast and our listeners. So, Jerome, you call yourself Mr. Implementation, I gotta ask you, who gave you that nickname? How'd you get it? What's the what's the kind of the the thesis behind that nickname?

Jerome Lewis: Absolutely. So I'll tell you the story. Um, I'm a huge advocate for coaching. I pay for coaching and paying for mentorship. And I had signed up for a coach. A lot of people should know, especially within the marketing realm. Dan Kennedy, I signed up for his coaching. And one time I was going through a newsletter, and I remember him mentioning, like, establish yourself, like, get a nickname, but also one of his premises. And his thesis that he taught was like, listen to what your customers and your prospects are saying. The people that are coming to you, what are they asking for and what are they looking for? And I was teaching a class at the time. I was teaching real estate agents how to implement marketing into their business, and for me, I was like, you just do this, you click here, you do this. And I would make it seem so simple. And it was like, Jerome, listen, I understand all of this stuff. I see what you're doing. I just can't do it myself. I need help with the implementation. And I thought about when my mentor, Dan Kennedy, I was talking about. I thought about what he said, and he was like, give yourself a nickname, just go with it. And for some reason, something popped up into my head and I was like, you know what? I'm going to start calling myself implementation. And this was a little bit during Covid, and I remember I, I put it inside of what you can change your name on zoom. I put it there and everybody starts saying Mr.. Implementation. Mr.. Implementation. And it just stuck in the wrong. And I also identified with it because that's what I was focused on. A lot of people understand concepts, theories a lot of people have ideas. But when it comes to the execution and implementation of the ideas, there was a struggle there. So that's where that name came from. Does that is that clear?

Pete Neubig: I love it, yeah. You know, look a lot of coaches, consultants, they kind of give you the very beginning, but they don't walk you through on the how, on the execution. So I think that's a great nickname to have. And, and the fact that you walk your folks through that whole thing and I'm guessing your books do the same thing and you kind of walk through the implementation.

Jerome Lewis: Absolutely. And the first book that I published, it's called Real Estate Marketing Implementation. That was the very first book that I published at the time. I was teaching people how to follow up with their marketing and follow up with those leads. So the initial title of that book was called remarketing, and it was a play on words like real estate marketing and follow up marketing. And I started to pay attention to what people were saying. And I said, you know what? My coach instructed me? She's like, look, I had another coach. Her name is Darcy. She's like, look, you are allowed to tell people your entire process and what it is that you do. So I started to communicate my process within that book, and we changed the name to Real Estate Marketing Implementation. And I go through and I teach people step by step, everything that I do. If I were to hold the book up, I know the audience can't see it, but if I were to hold the book up, it's 480 pages. It's an overwhelming it's a thick, thick book because I'm very transparent and I go through the implementation and exactly on what to do in your business.

Pete Neubig: So it's not just a book of ideas, it's a book of taking the ideas and adapting them, and then the step by step on how to implement them.

Jerome Lewis: 100% A book on implementation.

Pete Neubig: Love it! So have you worked with lots of clients? Real estate? Non-real estate? What is a common mistake that you see people make? Like, you know, in their marketing?

Jerome Lewis: So I want to go over. So you said one common mistake. The first I want to talk about a few, but one of the first mistakes is just understanding that they have to do marketing in general and period. Right. A lot of people, they get good at the thing, whatever it is that they do, whether it's being a real estate agent, whether it's a property manager, a capital raiser, they get good at that. And they become so good at that that they get bogged down in it. And you can find some people that are really highly skilled, but no one knows about them. So that's a huge mistake that people make. They get really good at the thing, but no one knows about what it is that they do. That's one of the most common mistakes that they make. And then the other mistake that I see people make is they're afraid to niche down. So when you were asking me just now, you said you help clients in real estate as well as clients outside of real estate. I've always had a strong focus on niching down for people in real estate, but sometimes people come to me outside of real estate. Most people believe that if you niche down, you won't be able to serve other clients. But I have the luxury of saying yes or no to those other clients because I'm niched down. So just because I'm niched doesn't mean I push other people away. It's your decision. But that's one of the second biggest mistakes that people make is they don't niche down and focus on one particular niche industry or avatar.

Pete Neubig: I'll say that, um, we call it focus, right? Like you're not focused on one thing. You focus on many things, and when you focus on many things, you do all of them, okay, not one that's really great. And, uh, when you when you have somebody that niches down, do you find that they are able to identify their target client much better?

Jerome Lewis: Absolutely. And when I was explaining that the mistake of niching down, I've made that mistake myself too. And one of the things I started to realize is the more I'm niched down, the more I can cuss I can, the quicker I am on the back end, for example. So if I'm working with real estate within the real estate niche, my template or my starting point is much easier for me to shift that and adjust that versus somebody that's not in real estate. I know that niche and I know the industry so well. So I've worked with some clients that are outside of real estate, for example. One of the things we do is we help people put books together. I'll work with people that needed to put books together, and I've given them a template. And because it's such a different niche or such a different avatar, it's complicated on putting that stuff together for the people. Whereas if I'm niched down and I'm focused, I want to use your word. When I'm focused on that one particular avatar or niche, it's much easier on our part to get that person the intended results that they want. In this case, I was talking about a book. It's much easier when I'm working with people that are within the real estate industry. We talk the same jargon, we understand the same language, and it's just a much smoother process because I'm niched down.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. I'll give you an example. When I first started my property management firm, we were doing basically anything for anyone, meaning single family home would take you multi-family home. We would take you, you know, it was if it was inside the city limits, we would take you outside in the country, we would take you and eviction only services. We would take you, lease only services, we would take you. And basically we ran into we could not service all those clients because we didn't have the systems behind it. And we didn't, you know, we didn't know how to do some of those things. And then when we kind of focused niche down to just single family property management, all of a sudden we were able to systematize, automate and and give, give our clients a much better product. And we were able to target better. And so do you find that when you can figure out your target, that your marketing investment goes further?

Jerome Lewis: It does. Absolutely. 100% goes further. And It's more efficient. It goes further and you have more impact and more influence on those particular people that you're serving. Because one of the things that we become insecure about as business owners, real estate agents, investors, property owners, like we become insecure about serving. We want to get as many people as we can. And we think just because we niched down, we can't serve people. But a lot of people can be okay with just 100 clients, 200 clients or something like that. We're so worried. There's what, 7 billion people on the planet? We don't need the entire 7 billion people. We just need to niche down to a particular person, maybe 1000, 2000 or something like that. We start there and we expand accordingly. Most people, they try to start broad and wide and they try to serve everyone. And it's not effective. You waste a lot of money. You're messaging a core. A core importance in marketing. Is your messaging. Like what I would say to a real estate agent is different than what I would say to a stay at home mom. And when you're investing time in that messaging, that marketing and stuff like that, you have to make shifts and adjustments and it costs time. It costs resources. So when you niche down, it makes things much easier and much smoother.

Pete Neubig: Got it. So we'll recap. First mistake is you don't do marketing. You do what you do really well, but you don't market at all. Number two is you take anything from anyone not focused, not niched down. And number three is by niching down, you can really identify your target market. And then you can set up your messaging better for that target market, which means that your investment dollars goes a lot further. And you actually get investment from spend versus spend. Okay. Any anything any other mistakes that you could think of that people do before we move on?

Jerome Lewis: Um, yeah. It's it's a lot of mistakes. Uh, one of my least favorite is not investing in, like, paid advertising, like having a, like, a paid advertising system. Um, some people will try to just do, like, all free marketing, and it's okay to have some free marketing, but you also want to have some paid marketing. That's why I'm a huge fan of books. People are used to receiving books, paying for books, and it's like a client acquisition tool. So it allows you to reinvest back into your customers, back into your prospects. I really love paid marketing because the money that you bring in, you can reinvest back out into your customers and clients. And the more money you make, the more you can serve, the better you can serve them.

Pete Neubig: All right. So let's dive into that just a little bit. Right. So paid marketing like a lot of people don't know how to do it. Like it's like okay great. It's paid marketing. Now what do I do. So what would you recommend? Um, somebody who's never done marketing before has never done paid marketing. What. Give me like high level steps. We don't have to go into the full implementation. Mr. Implementation. Let's go. Just kind of like high level steps. What? Like where do they go? What is paid marketing? Who are they?

Jerome Lewis: So you could it could go like multiple ways, and like you said, I'd go a little bit deeper inside of the book, the real estate marketing implementation book. But paid marketing is you pay some list or resource. Most people do social media. They'll go to Google and they'll pay Google to display their ads on the search results or different websites. Another most another, more common paid advertising resource is when you go on Facebook and Instagram and you'll see sponsored ads. Like that's a form of paid advertising. Now to effectively do paid advertising, what I see that works the best is if you offer someone something for a nominal price. And my favorite thing to offer people, especially because it acquires educated buyers. My favorite thing to offer people is a is a book, right? So, um, a book is considered a lead magnet. This is a way where you get people interested. It's like, hey, we got this thing that I'll send to you, uh, for a small price. And it's if somebody is willing to take out their credit card and pay for that thing, they're showing some true interest. So that's one of the things that. That's what I would do. I like Google, I like Facebook, um, and there's other like more niche ways to do it. You can send out direct mail, you can send out postcards, and you can offer something. You offer something of value to the person. We're talking to property managers, they can write a book on how to, um, you know, best manage your building. They can write a book on how to build the best vendor network in order to serve the multifamily. There's different ways that they can offer value to people, and they can charge for that value. That's one of the reasons why I love a book. People don't mind taking out $1,020 to pay for a book and get the value that it is that they're looking for.

Pete Neubig: Where do you come out on like a call to action for like a free e-book? Like, is that okay, or do you really want them to to actually pay something like so for example, if I'm a property management firm, I'm looking for people that own real estate that they don't want to manage themselves. Right. So I know my avatar is whatever, you know, it's somebody makes X amount of dollars. They have a property they don't live in it in. You know, Houston, I'm in Houston, right? Uh, and so then we we have that advertising on Facebook or Google and then we write an e-book that says, you know, how to self-manage your property or why, you know, why use a property management firm, something like that. Is that kind of what you're thinking as far as, like, kind of content?

Jerome Lewis: That is a strategy that I like to incorporate what it is that I'm talking about. I like to take it a step further and like to make the assets like, crystallize and touchable, like things you can touch, feel, pass around, give away. One of the reasons why I love the book is because, um, people don't throw books away and they donate them. So that asset lives on and it brings you new clients, new customers, etc. you can go out to an event and you can give that away. Whereas if you go to an event and you got a digital asset, people download it, they leave it on their flash drive and they don't. They really don't get back around to it. So I like things that people can physically touch, handle. People are becoming exhausted of eBooks. I'm not saying that they don't work, but they're tired of courses and this and that. And when you send them like a real asset that they can touch, feel, it makes it a little more real. The other thing is, like the other reason why I like paid is because that just shows that they're invested, even if it's a nominal fee. So you mentioned like free e-book. One of my one of the best strategies that I see is a book for free plus shipping. Right. So you give them the book for free, but they pay for the shipping and it could be a nominal fee, $5. But you want to get that person to take out their credit card and show that they're, listen, I'm willing to invest financially in the value that you're offering. Further, like once we take that and they take out their credit card, this goes a little bit deeper. You can make them other offers because they've taken it out. They're like, look, I'm willing to pay $5 for this checklist on how.

Pete Neubig: To say yes.

Jerome Lewis: Property manager. Right. You got to say yes. So now you can say, guess what, Jerome? You like the book? How about I offer you this little mini course for $47 as well? So they took out their credit card and now they spent a total of maybe $50 or so. And that's $50 that I can invest back into them. As an example, I can pay for the shipping. I can pay for a package, I can send them a nice gift in the mail as well. And that sticks a little bit better than just an e-book that you download on your computer, or of course that you downloaded and you forget to go access? Is that making sense?

Pete Neubig: It makes sense. Can I use somebody else's book? Like people listening to this right now, I can tell you they're overwhelmed, overworked, underpaid. And so they're like, well, hell, Jerome, I don't have time to write a book. How can I use like somebody else? Can I use somebody else's book? Like, hey, like rich dad, poor dad. Right? Hey, this is a great book. You know, we send you the rich dad, poor dad book. Something like that.

Jerome Lewis: I actually, yeah, I do. I am a fan of other books. One of the things I'll do is like, I'll have them access my book, for example, and I'll put other books in there. For example, I might say, look, Robert Kiyosaki, he's got me interested in real estate investing, so I'm sending you a book on my behalf as well as a book to Robert, I think the most effective is when you deliver, like your own information. And I do understand that people are overwhelmed and in my book Real Estate Marketing Implementation, I teach people a process on how to put a book together fast. Right. You can put a book together and we've got testimonials included in the book. If you're willing to dedicate four hours, you can get a book done right. So I teach you how to, like, actually implement that book. And a lot of times people think like, oh my God, I gotta write this huge book. With all this processing and all of this stuff. And a book can be as simple as answering the top questions that someone had, answering the five mistakes that...

Pete Neubig: People like a 20 page book. It doesn't have to be 20 page, 100 page book.

Jerome Lewis: Exactly. It can be a small, simple book that you deliver it.

Pete Neubig: Basically take an e-book concept, but instead of an e-book, you're actually printing it out and you actually have a book.

Jerome Lewis: Exactly.

Pete Neubig: And which makes you more of the authority figure? Yeah.

Jerome Lewis: Exactly. And a lot of us have already done that work as professionals and entrepreneurs. Like you said, eBook. Like, I know you've got some eBooks or some content around somewhere. You've got videos, you've got podcasts. You can take that stuff, you can transcribe it. There's so much you can do with it really quickly because of technology, AI and ChatGPT you take a, you take a couple more extra steps to separate yourself. Yes, there's a little more work involved, but it also pays off because you're willing to do what other people aren't willing to do. So I do understand that it can be overwhelming. People don't want to do more work, but the extra step that you take is separates you from everyone else. And it's not as difficult as we think. Uh, you mentioned earlier, like I talk about implementation, I walk people through stuff. I have a YouTube channel and I just show people everything. I'm very transparent. It's not as difficult as we think it is because of technology, especially ChatGPT and YouTube and videos. All these resources we have access to it makes it that much easier.

Pete Neubig: Do you think... So some, some somebody listening to this like. Well, if I teach everybody how to do self-management, they're just not going to use me. They're going to do self-management. Do you find that it's actually the opposite? Like, I give you all the information you get old, like you as a potential client gets overwhelmed by that information, and then you just call me to manage your property.

Jerome Lewis: I do. That is my experience. And when my coach. Her name is Darcy. Darcy would say, Jerome, just share your process. Some people are going to say, Jerome, that's too overwhelming. I want to come to you for exactly what it is that you do. I know it's all in that book, Jerome, but I can't do it. Look, it's 480 pages. No thank you. Can you help me do it, please? And they come to me. The other thing is, like, sometimes we feel like we have to share our process. Maybe you don't have to share your process. When I coach people, one of the things that I do is I just say, hey, listen. And what are they asking you? What are the top questions that they have? What are the top mistakes that they make? What are the top things they need to know? This all becomes content and you share that content. You put it in a nice format and you share it with them. So there's different ways you can go about it. You can share your process. You can answer questions, you can answer myths, lies, mistakes. Like when when I first popped on the podcast, you asked me, Jerome, what are the top mistakes that people make? I can make a book on the top mistakes that people make, as in marketing, and I can share that as an asset and a resource.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. And if you're listening to this, you can make the top mistakes that people make self-managing. You can make the top. You can do a book on how to how the eviction process works. Right. You. How does insurance work? You could do a whole bunch of stuff based on that.

Jerome Lewis: Exactly 100%.

Pete Neubig: So I have my target. I create a paid ad, um, let's say Facebook or Google. So, do you know typically how much an ad cost? I know I'm putting you on the spot. I don't expect you to know it, but just just an idea. How how does it get how does it get charged? Is it like like do you is it by click, is it by like how many I'm going to put out there. Like how does that work. Yeah.

Jerome Lewis: So I mentioned three uh resources. And I'm going to try to go from easiest to most difficult. So a list if you just want to target a list that varies, it can mean, you know, you meet somebody that has a property management list and they say, Jerome, we'll charge you $1 per address on this list. That list can be a thousand. It can be 2000. That's your advertising you got.

Pete Neubig: It's kind of like a paperless that I get. Or they email me an Excel spreadsheet. Okay

Jerome Lewis: 100% paperless. You got that? Number two. You got Facebook, which is Facebook is called when it comes to their advertising. You get on Facebook, you're not looking for anything particular Facebook and Instagram. You just get on there. You're browsing. Facebook's advertising platform is called disruptive advertising. So Facebook intent is for you to get on and enjoy. And people want to show you ads that are relevant to you even though you're not necessarily looking for something. Right.

Pete Neubig: If I'm somebody's avatar, and that's why the Facebook ad would pop up through my feed.

Jerome Lewis: Exactly. They're looking and they're hoping that you click it. They're disrupting your experience to potentially show you an ad. Okay.

Pete Neubig: Right. And so I'm guessing that, um, if I'm the company that wants to create the ad, there's some back end to Facebook. And I put in like my ad and I put in the avatar or the target that I'm looking to to reach out to.

Jerome Lewis: Exactly. You go by interest, Avatar. You can go by groups. You can do like similar things. And to answer your question like a little more directly in terms of cost, that can vary. So the thing that I love about Facebook is that you can start really, really cheap. You can do a dollar a day. I have a, um, a colleague that does a dollar a day strategy called DAD. His name is Dennis Yu. You can advertise for as little as a dollar a day.

Pete Neubig: Got it.

Jerome Lewis: That doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get clients and ads, but you're showing your advertising, for example. And sometimes you do get leads and sometimes you do. It depends on your targeting. So it could be as little as a dollar a day. Um, what I like to it's hard to tell people exactly what to do, um, like what kind of budget they should have. But generally when people say, Jerome, how should how much should I spend on advertising? I like to say the $50 number, like $50 per day, right, to get your customer or client now. And that varies depending on who you're targeting, what your objective is. But I like to start at the $50 mark for you.

Pete Neubig: Do it based on like, uh, like your marketing, um, your marketing spend should be a percentage of your overall revenue. Do you? I had a business coach that taught that taught me that I think it's supposed to be like 15 to 20% of your of your revenue should be marketing spend. Do you have any percentages that that you like or you just like the per day one, the $50?

Jerome Lewis: I like the per day for most people because it's simple and people can kind of start there. Yeah. Um, it's easier for people to digest when you become bigger, then you start looking into it. We should be spending this much on advertising, this much on marketing, and getting this amount of return. So I like to start at the dollar per day. And then when you become more advanced, I like to go up to I haven't I'm not at the revenue necessarily yet, but I like to do it like say I have an advertising budget of $3,000 per month. Um, I'm willing to as long as I'm making it depends. Right. So if it's 3000. Let's let's dial it down. Let's not do $3,000 per month. Let's do $100 per day. If I spend $100 per day. But I'm getting clients. That's going to pay me on the back end or I'm getting customers. That's worth it to me. Correct, right. Some people might just be spending advertising to spend advertising, and they're losing money because they don't have an intent to get a customer or a customer to you. Might be worth $5,000 for the year. So if you spend $100 to get that customer, it's worth it. You're making like almost infinite return on that. Okay.

Pete Neubig: So that's why the CTA is so important to get them to act.

Jerome Lewis: Exactly. That's why the CTA is important. And that's why I am a fan of getting people to pay instead of just offering free, free free free free. There are places where you want to add free and offer free resources, but the more you can get them to invest and pay, the less you take a hit on your marketing budget. Is that making sense?

Pete Neubig: Makes a lot of sense. So okay, so the target then I have the, uh, the setting up the ad. Let's just go down Facebook for right now. I have the Facebook ad, I have this I have this offer. So now what happens next? Do you? Are there certain numbers that you're looking at to determine if that ad is working or not?

Jerome Lewis: Yeah, there are certain numbers and I am of the camp that. So I'm a Dan Kennedy student and I like to be aggressive. I know some people won't won't necessarily appreciate that. However, he has a really a good quote that I like to say, "Whoever can invest the most amount of money to acquire a customer wins." Most people are afraid to spend the amount of money to get the customer, so I like to be spending as much as possible. And that's part of the reason why I like the paid strategy, because that customer is paying. But I can take that money and reinvest, right?

Pete Neubig: Only if the ad is working. Right. So you don't want to just spend money to write just to spend money, because I always said I want to invest money in marketing. I don't want to spend money.

Jerome Lewis: Right. And and that's where where he used to say, whoever can spend the most money to acquire, spend, spend the most money to acquire a customer, and then eventually it changed to invest the most amount of money to acquire a customer wins. So I'll look at it as an investment too. I don't think of marketing as an expense. I think of it as an investment and it's very strategic. It depends on your avatar and customization, but you got to be strategic and your customer has to be more worth more than you're spending on the marketing. If they're spending $50 a day and a customer is worth. If a customer is worth $51, I get a customer. I'm a dollar in the green. That's an extreme example, but that's how I like to look at it.

Pete Neubig: So okay, so can I, um, and I don't know this. So that's why I'm asking, you know, the expert here, uh, in Facebook and Google and all that stuff, I'm assuming I can look at my ads and see how many people have seen it, impressions, how many people have actually clicked on it, and then eventually will I be able to see how much people bought or how many leads I generated from that ad?

Jerome Lewis: Yes, 100%. And that's like tracking is so important. So the first resource that I mentioned, like the list, is hard to track it. Right. You go offline and you send out some stuff. You don't know who's responding, what's getting delivered. It's hard to track that.

Pete Neubig: Okay.

Jerome Lewis: Whereas on Facebook and the digital platforms, they have like automatic tracking, it's not always super accurate, but it's built in and it'll track it for you. The other thing you mentioned, like will I be able to see is the one thing I do love about Facebook is they have what's called the Facebook ad library. So you don't even have to be really smart or sophisticated. You can go find out what's working by checking in the Facebook ad library. Check out some of your competitors. I like to check out bigger companies like Zillow, Trulia, realtor. I like to check them out, see what ads are they're running, and I like to duplicate their ads. So Facebook has a really effective tool called the Facebook AD Library. That's one of their biggest advantages. If you just Google Facebook ad library, it'll come up and you'll see you can go in there and you can type in search, search for property management ads, real estate investment ads. You can type that stuff in and you can see all...

Pete Neubig: You can you see how well those ads are doing for those? You can actually see that how the ads are doing. Or you just see the ads and you assume they're converting.

Jerome Lewis: Yeah, you cannot see how well they're doing. You can see how well yours are doing, and you can do your own numbers, but you can't see the back end of other people's ads.

Pete Neubig: That makes sense. That'd be too good to be true, huh? Right.

Jerome Lewis: That would be too good to be true. You can make some assumptions. And there's what's called spy tools that will give you an idea. They'll give you an idea. Like, I know SimilarWeb is one of the tools. They'll give you an idea of what's happening, but nobody can predict and tell you exactly what's going on, because we also don't understand their back end either. They might be investing $1,000 and they might be negative in their advertising, but a customer might be worth $10,000 to them.

Pete Neubig: Got it. So once they have the offer here now because it's digital, does that then funnel that lead funnel into my CRM system? My like my um, yeah. What is it CRM system or CRM system? Does it jump into that my Zoho or my HubSpot?

Jerome Lewis: Yeah it could. So Zoho and HubSpot are popular platforms that I know have integrations from Facebook. It definitely could. And I know those are just a few clicks, so it depends on your business. Some people might not use those CRMs. Some people's intent might be different. They might want phone calls. Some people might want you to visit their website link. So it depends on how you set it up.

Pete Neubig: All right. Where do you come out? Like, do you believe that everybody should have some type of CRM system?

Jerome Lewis: 100%. I absolutely believe a CRM is like essential to any business because, uh, I was telling you about the book that I wrote earlier, like following up like a huge part of following up is tracking. It's tracking. And the best tools to track and follow up and manage is a CRM. It's a customer relationship management tool. Like there's no better tool for it. You can try to write it down or remember it, or put it in your phone.

Pete Neubig: Phone or some spreadsheet. Right?

Jerome Lewis: Right. But the CRM does all of that stuff automatically. It gives you tags and websites, all kinds of stuff. So 100% I'm on board on the CRM.

Pete Neubig: In your experience, how many times does somebody have to be followed up with before they convert?

Jerome Lewis: In my experience, um, I so I've seen some stats and it's hard to verify the stats, but I've seen a good follow up cadence. I see a lot of people fall between, they say between 5 and 7. That's what I see. And my experience. I don't have exact numbers because it varies across industries. It varies across verticals. I like to say until, uh, until they until they buy. There's a quote, "until they buy or until they die." There's a quote and I believe I follow up and no matter how much I need to follow up, keep following up until they say, you know what, take me off the list, or they unsubscribe or something like that. There's not a set number. However, in my experience, I've seen people say between 5 and 7 is what works.

Pete Neubig: I've read, I've read seven is kind of the number I see a lot. But so five and seven sounds, sounds. Right now, most people, if you don't have a CRM system, you're only following up like once or twice, once or twice. People you're missing, right? I think it's a very small amount of people that sign up within once or twice and is a is a higher percentage that that buy after seven times.

Jerome Lewis: Exactly. Right.

Pete Neubig: So if you're not following up at least seven times or at least 5 to 7 times, you're losing the lion's share of your potential business.

Jerome Lewis: 100%. And you mentioned like that CRM, and that CRM is essential to follow up, because the CRM can do some of that stuff automatically for you and can send out your text message automatically. It can send out emails for you automatically. And if you have the right like tags and stuff in place, it can even send out direct mail and gifts and stuff. Initiate and send that stuff out for you automatically. So nothing else can do that and build in cadences like that other than the CRM, which you mentioned a little bit earlier.

Pete Neubig: All right. So now you know a little bit about our business, right? We have we're property managers. We manage properties for investors that have single family. So then these these are mom and pop investors. Um I'm going to ask you to go to your bag of tricks. And what do you think in your mind? Just. I know it's off the cuff and I'm putting you on the spot, and I don't. I don't mean to do it, but I kind of do. I like it. Um, what would be the one strategy if if somebody came to you and said, hey, I just need one strategy. What would you say? This. This is the one strategy I would start with.

Jerome Lewis: To do what? Acquire customers?

Pete Neubig: To acquire. Yeah. To acquire customers. Would you go back to the the Facebook, uh, Facebook post? I mean, the Facebook ads, would you buy...

Jerome Lewis: A single family so they invest in we're looking for a single family investors, correct?

Pete Neubig: That's right. That somebody who has a property that, um, they no longer want to manage or they bought a property and they want us to manage for them. Would you would you try to find out where those people hang out and then.

Jerome Lewis: Yes. Yeah. That's what I was going to say. I would try to boil this down to one strategy. That's why I love the like having assets. I do love like the heaven, the book asset. Essay, because what I would do is similar to what we're doing. I'm a speaker. I'm looking for to acquire people that invest in single family and they don't want to manage them. I would have the asset and I would go to different podcasts and I would speak, um, that's that's like warm, that's like warm traffic and warm introductions, like, yeah, I was on Pete's podcast. Hey, if you want to learn more, go get access to my book. I lay everything out inside of that book. Um, that's how I would do it. Traffic, like the paid advertising stuff that we were talking about. That's for cold traffic. That's like new customer acquisition, which can be a little more expensive. Um, and it can be like a lot of figuring things out because people don't know you and you're not necessarily a trusted expert just yet. And but part of the reason why you become the trusted expert is if you have that book, like experts write books. So that's why I'm a huge advocate of the book strategy versus some of the other stuff, I think. So the strategy I would, I would, I would speak, I would volunteer, like, hey, you got a real estate investor group, let me come talk to your group and give them some tips on how to best work with property managers or the top mistakes they should avoid, or things like that. I would go speak and I would talk and provide that value and have an asset I can give away, such as a book. It could be a course, it could be anything, a digital asset, something you put together in ChatGPT that you can offer them. But I found to be the most effective is the book people that even if they don't read them, people that are like interested and buy books, they become better customers. They're educated.

Pete Neubig: Well, I think you hit the nail on the head. I really you said, um, to become the industry expert and I, you know, being on podcasts, speaking, uh, and, and having a book I think basically solidifies you as an industry expert. And I would even go one further. You can even create your own seminar class and have investors come to that class, and you can teach them all about self management. And then what happened, what will happen is a fair number of those folks will just say, here's my keys, take my yes, I want you to manage it.

Jerome Lewis: Yes. Please do it. Yup.

Pete Neubig: All right. Jerome, we believe it or not, we actually have done 35 minutes already. Can you believe that?

Jerome Lewis: I cannot. I'm shocked.

Pete Neubig: I mean, you are. You're just a wealth of knowledge here. And I'm really glad we got deep into the Facebook thing, because I think people will be able to take some action items from here. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to hit a commercial break real quick, and then I'm going to come back and I'm going to put you in the the lightning round. Alright. So everybody, we'll be right back with uh with Jerome, Jerome Lewis, Mr. Implementation, Jerome, we'll be right back and put you on the hot seat.

Pete Neubig: All right. Welcome back, everybody. All right, Jerome, are you ready for the hot seat? Are you ready for the lightning round?

Jerome Lewis: I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to it.

Pete Neubig: All right. What was your first job?

Jerome Lewis: My first job. My first job was I worked at a a supermarket called Pathmark. That was my first job and it taught me so much. I'm going to expand a little bit. It taught me so much about customer service and it actually pushed me towards entrepreneurship. So it was a headache at the time, but it really pushed me like, you know what, I can't do this. I don't want to do this for the rest of my life.

Pete Neubig: What is one piece of advice you'd give someone who's just starting out in business?

Jerome Lewis: My piece of advice I would give them is invest in yourself and your own education. Like take time to educate. Find a mentor or a coach and don't worry about just what you can take from that mentor or coach. Just what you can learn. Find a way to add value. And I know that adding value can be tough. It can be difficult, but if you pay attention and you just make offers to that person, hey, Pete, you know what? Um, I would be happy to clean up your podcast episodes or Pete, I would be happy to run some social media management for you or Pete. Do you like Starbucks? Let me buy you a $50 gift card. Just make offers without, um, asking them what they want. Like you'll find something will strike. Something will hit. A lot of times people say, hey, can I pick your brain? What do you need help with? Like, find a way to just add value without asking because, um, business owners, entrepreneurs, they're busy. They don't want to think about more stuff. So find a way to just take initiative and add value without asking them.

Pete Neubig: And I would say for us in the property management field, take that, expand on it and join some mastermind groups. There's a ton of mastermind groups out there. And if you're very new, people who are who I find who are successful in any business will be more than happy to give you their give you information. So great piece of advice there. Does pineapple belong on pizza?

Jerome Lewis: No, but I never tasted it. But I think, no.

Pete Neubig: Um, okay. If you had to, what would you. What would be your go to fast food restaurant?

Jerome Lewis: If I had to, because I don't do fast food. If I had to, it would be, man, that's a tough one. Fast food. Something popular, huh? Like something national?

Pete Neubig: Yeah.

Jerome Lewis: Um. Burger King.

Pete Neubig: Burger King, have it your way. Alright.

Jerome Lewis: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: What is your ideal vacation?

Jerome Lewis: This is going to be weird. My ideal vacation is, um, I like quiet. A lot of people like the sun. And to be on a beach, I like quiet, I like lakes, I like mountains, and I like to kind of be by myself and away from people. I like tranquil, peace and water. So a cabin somewhere, areas like that. I have a friend, Mike. He actually offered to take me camping. This will be my first time camping. I'm looking forward to that. So stuff like that. I don't like to be around typical touristy places. I like mountains, quiet, serene places though that would be an ideal vacation for me.

Pete Neubig: Got it. What is something that most people don't know about you?

Jerome Lewis: Something most people don't know about me? Um. Man. That's a good one. You got me on that one. What is something most people don't know about me? I don't know. I don't know, so I'll go with what came up today. I have a group I run with, like some real estate agents, and, um, some people call it out. People don't know, like, I have a, like, a direct attitude. I'm, like, very straightforward. People don't know that. I'm very soft at heart, and I care. Um, I care very much, but I have on, like, armor or shield. So I think people might misinterpret my façade for who I am. Like, I'm very soft, I'm very kind, and I care very much. And I think people tend to misinterpret that. So that's what came up today. That's what I'm going with.

Pete Neubig: Alright, I like it. Uh, what is a book that you're currently reading or one that is impacted your business or life?

Jerome Lewis: Oh man, I got it right here. There's this book called Objections by Jeb Blount. Uh, I've been I went over this several times, and it's very impactful for me right now. Very, very, very impactful book it talks about. The title is the Ultimate Guide for Mastering Objections The Art and science of Getting Past Know. As entrepreneurs and sales professionals, we have to deal with people telling us no all the time, and this book does a great job on helping us get past those nos. And then I'm going to give you one more because someone asked me about it today. Uh, Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill. That was a good book. Uh, for a while, I struggled with understanding why people couldn't implement or get things done in their business. And that book really helped me understand that. It helped me see, like, it's an event. It's in an interview format, and Napoleon Hill is talking to the devil in theory. And it just helped me understand that people like to blame stuff outside of themselves, and it just really helped me understand and empathize with people more on why they couldn't do certain stuff.

Pete Neubig: All right, last one, what do you prefer, dogs or cats?

Jerome Lewis: Dogs? I like dogs. I would have to go dogs.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, right. All right. You are officially out of the lightning round. Well done, my friend. Well done.

Jerome Lewis: Thank you.

Pete Neubig: All right, Jerome, if somebody felt compelled, they wanted to reach out to you. What's the best way to to contact you? Or where can they get your book at?

Jerome Lewis: Yeah. The best way to reach out to me. I have a website, Jerome lewis.com. I also have a phone number. I'm an introvert so please text it before you give me a call. That phone number is (267) 888-1085. And to get my book, you can go to Amazon. All of them are available on Amazon. I've published over 20. Books. And I also have a website remarketingbook.com. And that's where you can get the book. You can. It's a free plus shipping offer, right? It's free. You just cover the shipping.

Pete Neubig: And it's Jerome Lewis, L-E-W-I-S.

Jerome Lewis: Yes, jeromelewis.com.

Pete Neubig: Awesome, Jerome, thank you so much. If you're listening to this and you are not a member of NARPM, please consider joining. Go to narpm.org or give them a call at 807. Oh, man. My eyes are. My eyes are dying here, man. Uh 7823452. (800) 782-3452. Yeah. This is called getting old, Jerome. I'm getting old. Yep. That's the number. And, uh, if you are in the market to hire a remote team member or virtual assistant, um, please give VPM Solutions a shot at it. vpmsolutions.com the home of the lifetime guarantee. If we place somebody, we guarantee them for life. So if they decide to leave and a year later, we will rehire. No charge on that. We also have a do it yourself that's free. And we have a do it with you. That is a free option as well. So if you're thinking about that, give us a call. Jerome, my pleasure that flew by, buddy. Thank you so much for being here.

Jerome Lewis: Thank you for having me.