In the luxury real estate market, there´s a massive gap between “listing a property” and actually engineered performance. To bridge that gap, Alex Augustin (CEO and co-founder of TREMGroup), sits down with David Siddons from The David Siddons Group to analyze why traditional methods are failing and how a precision-driven digital engine fueled $1B in sales.

The reality for 2026 is blunt: if your agent is just “handshaking” at charity events and waiting for the phone to ring, they are bringing a knife to a gunfight. In this episode, David and Alex deconstruct why the MLS is no longer enough to move high-value assets and what a true digital ecosystem looks like when results are the only metric that matters.

Beyond the “Digital Business Card”

Most agents treat their website like a static brochure. Alex and David break down why success today requires a performance-driven infrastructure:

• Infrastructure over Aesthetics: A pretty website is worthless without the conversion technology to capture and qualify leads. 
• Database as Net Worth: David reveals how his retargeting database of 1 million users and 4,500 monthly leads creates daily inbound demand that traditional methods simply can’t match.
• The “Popcorn” Strategy: Learn how database segmentation and behavioral tracking allow you to ignore the noise and find the 1% of buyers ready to act right now. 
• Authority vs. Vanity: Why 1,100+ educational videos and 2,500+ deep-dive articles build more trust with ultra-high-net-worth buyers than any viral trend ever could.

The Syndicate of Experts

Selling a $5M+ home isn’t a one-man job anymore. It requires a syndicate of experts combining media, data analytics, and disciplined execution. This conversation isn’t just for agents looking to scale, it’s a wake-up call for property owners and investors who refuse to leave their results to chance. In a market defined by noise, discipline eats motivation for breakfast. If you aren’t deploying a proven digital engine to reach thousands of qualified prospects daily, you’re not just falling behind, you’re choosing to stay invisible.

Video full transcription

Joining us today is Alex Augustin, Miami-based entrepreneur, digital strategist, and co-founder of TREMGroup, a real estate business accelerator, redefining how agents grow through technology, marketing, and data-driven systems. With over a decade of experience, TREMGroup helps real estate professionals move beyond traditional methods and build scalable, performance-focused business. Today, we break down what property sellers should actually look for when hiring an agent in 2026, from global reach and database strategy to accountability, follow-up, and the discipline required to turn opportunities into closed deals.
This is Better Decisions.

David: So I hope you like that little intro. This is the Better Decisions podcast. We’re doing it not in our studio. This is actually the second time we’ve done a podcast at the studio. I am here today with Alexander, who is the CEO, the head of TREM, which is a digital marketing company here in Miami. 

But this video is not for the realtors, although if you’re a realtor and you’re watching this, pay attention because you’re going to need to learn a thing or two here. This podcast is our chance to talk to sellers. Why? Because if you’re a seller, you need to realize in 2026 your rights as a seller of what you should be looking for to help sell your property. 

Whoever you hire better come armed with these five key skills, tools, in their artillery, or you should not be hiring them. And that’s why we actually titled this podcast Dumb Ways to Buy. We would have used Dumb Ways to Sell, but it doesn’t rhyme. So Dumb Ways to Buy, and obviously that’s why the intro music is fun.

Alexander: And it’s Five Dumb Ways to Buy and Sell.

David: Pretty much. 

So, Alex, let’s go into it. Let’s give a bit of a backstory because we’re sitting here today, and we’ve known each other and had a relationship for more than a decade.

Alexander: Yes. Up and downs.

David: Up and downs. And that’s like all relationships. 

It’s never static. It’s not like that. And I think anybody watching, people have come up to me hundreds of times, and they’ve come up to you hundreds of times over the years, and they’ve said to you about working with me, what have they said to you?

Alexander: Yeah. People are always like, I want to do exactly what David Siddons does. I want the same success that David Siddons has. And the first thing I tell them, are you willing to do the same things that David Siddons is doing? Right? 

David: Exactly. So, we’ve done this for a very long time. Your expertise is digital marketing. 

What I’d love to do is just give a very quick introduction about what TREM is, sum it up, and then we’ll go into like these key things that these sellers need to know.

Alexander:  Yeah. So, it’s very hard to tag a name to TREMGroup, the real estate marketing group, because we have evolved through time, right? We started as a website company. 

Then all you guys came up to us and be like, hey, I have a beautiful website. Where are my leads? So, we decided over a decade ago to build our own marketing department. And even then, when we were doing the marketing, the lead generation, people didn’t really understand how to deal with online leads and how to turn an online lead into a purchase. 

So, then we started our coaching programs and all this stuff. So, I think we’re a mix between a technology and a marketing company, but results focus, right? We hate vanity statistics. We’re not the type of company that is going to provide you a beautiful SEO report at the end of the month that has no value. 

We’re not going to tie you to contracts like other companies do. If it’s not working, it’s not working for both of us. For us, it’s important that the people that trust their business and their money with us actually make it back and grow their business, their brands. 

So, what I like to say, if we can tag it, we’re a real estate business accelerator.

David: Okay. So, when listings die because dumb things happen, as it’s dumb ways to die in your listing, what are the fundamentals that you absolutely have to have running to make sure that your listing doesn’t die as in it doesn’t sell and you’re not successful? Let’s go through it one by one, and we were discussing this off camera. 

One by one, we’re going to deconstruct the key things that you have to do or you have to ask for as an owner of your agent when running your business. And these are the things that you have provided to me and worked with me on over the last decade.

Alexander: Yeah. So, first of all, you’re going to list with an agent, right? Most of the time.

David: Yeah. If you…

Alexander: So, your first decision is what agent do I list for?

David: Yes.

Alexander: And I think there are several things that you should be looking at when you try to choose the right professional to list your home that are going to be elemental for the success of selling your listing. 

So, first of all, pick the right professional, right? So, how do we pick the right professional?

David: Yeah. How do we do it? What’s the first thing you should ask your agent as they walk through the door and they sit down and they go, I’m going to sell your house? And you’re going to say, how? And then they’re going to give you a whole bunch of reasons. What’s the first thing that you want to be aware of?

Alexander: So, I know we have a different order, but now that I think about it, the first thing is like, are you doing anything beyond just listing on the MLS and waiting for it to be sold?

David: Okay. Which is almost like the go-to answer, which then unwraps all of these things, because we know that just sticking on the MLS and waiting for the phone to ring, in this day and age, you don’t need any agent for that.

Alexander: Right. You can just pay a fee and list it on the MLS.

David: So, what does that then really mean? If it’s not just going on the MLS and you’re not just taking pictures, what’s the first thing that you’ve got to be aware of in order to sell it?

Alexander: So, does this agent can reach people beyond the MLS? The MLS is a tool local, for example, to our country, but especially here in South Florida, we have buyers that are coming from Latin America, Europe, other countries. So, by just limiting yourself to listing the property on the MLS, you’re pretty much getting out of the way over 50% of the traffic that could purchase this.

David: So, websites like Zillow, and Trulia, and Realtor.com, and all those sites, they’re fed from the MLS.

Alexander: Right. And they’re popular here.

David: And most typical websites also have an IDX feed coming in from the MLS into their sites. But that’s not enough.

Alexander: Well, that’s a pet peeve for us, because us being a real estate website company, a lot of the times we get compared by other website providers. Right?

David: Yeah.

Alexander: And something that drives me crazy is like, oh, I like the design on this site. And yeah, of course, your website has to be pretty and elegant, but would you buy a Ferrari with a Nissan engine? Right? How fast can that car go? So, it’s important to understand that, okay, first, when you’re looking at your website, which is just a piece of your digital infrastructure, right? Your website is not the whole enchilada per se, right?

David: Yeah, absolutely.

Alexander: There’s a lot of other pieces that are important to have a solid digital infrastructure for your business. And just having a website that is pretty, that doesn’t have the right conversion technology, that doesn’t have all the tools that you need to collect people’s information, then it’s worthless, right? It’s just a digital business card.

David: So, let’s break down that website, because as we look at a website, almost every realtor in Miami has a website. 

And most of them, if I’m going to generalize here, is that they are a very weak version of a real estate portal website, like realtor.com or Zillow. I say very weak because they don’t have half the tools that they have. It’s just the name of the person, their profile, and then access to some properties in the different neighborhoods, which is what you get from realtor.com.

Alexander: Right. So, if you want to get a user to use your personal website instead of going to Zillow or any of these other platforms, then you have to be better. And I say, how can I be better of a billion-dollar company that built this billion-dollar website? Well, you’ve got to do what they can’t, which is you focus on your market, you provide extremely valuable information per se on the areas of your expertise, you create content. But besides all of that, you have to make sure that everything you’re creating, and they’re coming into the site, the site has the technology to collect their emails and phone numbers. 

As a sales person, you’re going to agree. What good is a lead if it doesn’t have a phone number? Or what good is a share of a life?

David: Yeah. You’ve got to produce a product, a website, a product that’s niche, that does something that other websites don’t do, which gives them a reason to register, and then a system that then takes those leads and puts them into a database. 

Sounds very simple in principle, but the question I always have is, how big is your database? How can you prove it? Because this goes hand-in-hand. Your network is your net worth, okay? A very well-known saying and never been more true. My database…

Alexander: Big database

David: Is massive. My retargeting database…

Alexander: It’s even bigger.

David: …is actually near a million people. A million people are being retargeted to on a daily, weekly basis that’s then leading them back into my website.

Alexander: And by the way, that wasn’t made overnight. That’s not followers that you purchased just for the vanity metrics. This is work that is being earned through hard work, through years of building unique content, reports. 

David: This is it. Yeah. I would say to anybody who’s looking to hire someone, if someone’s going to use your website, why are they going to use your website? Because if your website isn’t better than Realtor or Zillow, why would you use that website? Why don’t you just go to Realtor.com or Zillow? Right. 

Realtor. Zillow. Makes more sense. 

So in order for you to become better, Zillow is a national company. So is Realtor.com. So is all the other websites out there. Yours has to become more niche. 

It has to give information and value to the specific areas that you’re selling. And the only way to create that is obviously you’ve got to make it easy to navigate. It’s got to have the same efficiencies as Zillow or Realtor.com or better. 

And you’ve got to add value. Now, you said content. My website, over the years, now in content, we have 2,500 articles on our website, growing. 

I mean, we’re pumping them out on a weekly basis.

Alexander: Well, that’s a good point. Just creating a page for the neighborhood with a description of the schools, that’s not real value, right? That’s the minimum necessary. 

You want to create real value, you’ve got to continuously be relevant to the time that it’s happening. So people, I’m going to create a page for this neighborhood. I’m going to put a description, some pictures, and all the schools and the restaurants. 

Well, that’s not real value, right?

David: Because that’s not up-to-date and current. Very quickly, that information becomes out of date. I mean, we move in a very fast-moving world, and people are looking for current information.

If the Wall Street Journal did not change its pages for a week or two, guess what would happen? It would become irrelevant. The same goes, that’s why you have to produce articles. And that sounds easy, but the reality is, you need massive frameworks and structure to do that. 

You need people writing articles, because if you can’t check GPT, it doesn’t work.

Alexander: And now it’s even easier. With all the AI tools that we have, you don’t even need to write it.

You sit in front of a camera, provide your value, and get it transcribed, and publish the article.

David: It’s much easier to produce the content, absolutely. You’ve also got to have the tools and technologies to use that. 

But then, on top of that, you’ve also got to think about how people are absorbing and digesting information. Our channel, our communication, our ability came up, actually, from YouTube. You know, our following on YouTube…

Alexander: Your YouTube has grown tremendously recently.

David: We went up to 75… It might be more, actually, now. 75,000 subscribers.

Alexander: We’re gonna give a shout-out to Stephen for that.

David: Yeah. Stephen, thank you very much, man. It’s one of the TREM teams, so you know who Stephen is.

Alexander: Our CMO.

David: Some mystical guy. This is someone who’s actually helped us work on this.

Alexander: A little bit of a mystical guy.

David: It’s been instrumental. And, of course, we’ve worked this, and we’ve produced the content.

We’ve come up with the ideas of what is it that people want to actually listen to, especially now. We’re in 2026. Miami… And, obviously, this is really targeted for the Miami audience. 

The main Miami buyers right now are relocating from New York, California, Washington, and they’re looking for information. They’re looking for long-form educational content as they ask questions. What’s the best neighborhood? Where should I live? 

Alexander: Where’s the best neighborhood for families, for single persons?

David: Exactly.

Alexander: It just goes so many verticals.

David: Spreads out. And, absolutely. And so, we produce over 1,100 videos. 1,100 videos, that includes the podcast, Better Decisions, which we’re on right now. It includes all the neighborhood reviews. 

It includes all the condo reviews. It includes all the questions that we asked. It includes some of what I call our minefield questions. 

What’s the best and the worst of anything? This is information that people who are moving really need to know. And what happens is they go with the people that can give them what they can’t get themselves, which is knowledge and information. And they trust those who do it systematically.

Alexander: And it’s important to say that ultra-luxury people, buyers, they can smell an experience a mile away. So, if you’re not working towards yourself to become better, to become a tool of more value, it’s never going to work regardless. So, it’s something that you have to put into your journey, into your path, to actually become an expert so you can then provide value.

David: Would you call that authenticity?

Alexander: Oh, definitely. Definitely, authenticity is a must.

David: You’ve encountered, if it doesn’t get too personal, some issues with people who want results but they’re not being authentic about their journey.

Alexander: Yeah. So, we go through this on a daily basis. Again, I’m going to give another shout out to Carlos, right? We all know Carlos.

David: He’s behind the camera, by the way.

Alexander: He’s doing the editing today. To hold the client’s hands to the training and the coaching, because it’s very different to get a referral from a friend, right? It’s like, you know, call my cousin, he wants to buy a house. That guy is going to answer the phone, and that guy is going to give you a good attitude, because you can refer from the cousin, you’re getting that business. But when you’re dealing with internet people, this is a stranger online. This is a stranger, doesn’t know you, especially if you don’t have a big digital brand like you do. 

That’s why it’s so important to grow on that brand. So, when you talk to these people, they know exactly who you’re talking with. And I remember when we went through that with your brand, when you had to quit your gym. 

Remember when we had to quit the gym? Because people were like, oh, you’re the guy that follows me online.

David: Well, I just moved to another gym. All right.

That was a good thing. A more private gym. There’s always another gym. 

So, yeah, I mean, look, it’s had a weird kind of experience for me to go through this process. What has been really, I guess, as I’ve matured into the role, what has been really amazing is that there’s a level of authenticity that I’ve put out there and authenticity that I’ve got back from the consumers who every week I will get… And please keep these coming. I love these. 

Really lovely emails that come from clients saying, I’m moving in from New York. I’ve got my wife, my two kids. We want to move to a family-friendly neighborhood. 

We need to be good close to schools. This is our budget. This is when we’re coming into town. 

I’ve watched a dozen of your videos. Will you please help me? To me, I’m like, how can I say no to that? To me, this is the relationships that I love the most.

Alexander: And something super important, because some of the people that come to us, a lot of the times they’re starting their digital brands, right? And they don’t have that following.

And we kind of push them to do videos and stuff like that. And even our technology, we develop a lot of placeholder spaces on the sites so you can actually integrate video and get that brand recognition.

David: You’ve built a space for that content to sit. 

Now, you’re not going to make that content. They have to make that. And that’s why as a seller, you want to make sure that they say, show me your content. 

Show me what you’re doing to add value to the relationship out there.

Alexander: But I think the most important point I wanted to make on that is you work hard towards that, you don’t have to burn the phones anymore. You just have to answer them. 

And that’s a big difference when you start your career digitally, where you have to call every lead a hundred times. Well, I could. I could do that. 

But I still, and this comes off to the next point, which is I still make calls. Because you have indoctrinated me into a way of thinking and realizing that you can have a very strong digital website. First point. 

You can have good content creating inbound traffic. True. All true. 

And that you’ve got to make sure you take that. But once you get the lead through, it’s what you do with it that matters. And this is where the rubber meets the road. 

And you’ve had this friction to deal with for many years with agents who, you know, discipline needs motivation for breakfast.

Alexander: Totally agree.

David: And you’ve got to be really disciplined in this process. 

Alexander: And you know that because you’re a black belt in karate.

David: And you are too. In Jiu Jitsu. 

So we’ll be fighting after this. There’s disciplines that you have to absolutely have in life. And I think in professionalism, in the professional job that we have, one of the things that people struggle with is actually doing the work. 

And I think once you do it, and you can’t fake it. There’s no faking this. There’s no faking two and a half thousand articles or 1100 videos. 

Alexander: Or 200 calls.

David: Or 200 calls. Which is the next side. 

Which is, okay,so what you’ve done is you build the site. But the technology that goes on the back end. Take me to point number two. 

Because I’m doing a lot of talking right now. And I want you to kind of lead this. Take us through the second most important point that you as a seller need to ask your agent if they can do that and they have to be able to show you. 

Alexander: Okay. So the first point was, do you have a following and a digital infrastructure to, you know, support you beyond the MLS? What are you doing with your database? Do you have a database? Is your database just dormant? Can you track? You’d be surprised of how many people I have where we help them sell properties over the $5 million mark to leads that were in the database for over four years. Yeah. 

And the only reason why is because those databases are nurtured. They continue to engage and nurture your users. And if you don’t do that, they’ll go with somebody else. 

I always tell my people, especially who’ve been doing this for over a year or two, your best lead is not the new lead. Your best leads are sitting on your CRM.

David: Yeah. Which is why your database is so valuable. Because if you have a big database and you can show you have a… And I’d say to anyone, you want to hire me to list your home or your condo, I will come to your home or condo. I will sit down with you. 

I will open my laptop, and I will show you the technology that sits behind my website that you and your team created. And I will show you exactly how those leads come in. And usually, I can sit through a meeting.

And within an hour’s meeting, I’ve had at least half a dozen leads that have come in fresh over that hour. We’re getting right now about 4,500 leads a month through our website.

Alexander: 4,500 leads per month. Imagine that.

David: Yeah.

Alexander: So you can’t call all of those. 

David: No. But what you can do is filter them and recognize the behaviors.

Alexander: Yeah. Which we also have technology for. You notice that some of the leads that arrive on your database, they bring LinkedIn accounts, profile information. We know who they are. 

We know i they’re a CEO, a CFO of a company. So it’s important. We have systems where we can differentiate a simple lead that you don’t have more information to a lead that actually definitely needs higher attention. 

If you get, I don’t know, Elon Musk looking for a house, are you going to treat him the same as johnsmith@gmail.com? Probably not. Right?

David: No. But you are going to, again, as those leads come through, this is part of the process. 

And this part of the machinery. I’m very fortunate because I have structure around me. And again, maybe part of that point of database is great. 

It’s like having a room full of people. It’s like having an auditorium full of a stadium. It’s a stadium. 

Because right now, my website is generating about 40,000 visitors a month.

Alexander: And it’s unique to you. It’s not the same as creating an audience on Meta or Google. 

David: Exactly. This is exactly people who are in my website going through. So I just filled a stadium of 50,000 people. 

This is a good analogy to use, in fact. So I’ve got 50,000 people in my stadium. But not everybody is going to be engaged with me. 

Right? I want to get the people up onto the stage that are going to want to react. They’re going to want to engage. And they’re going to want to take action. 

Alexander: It’s funny because I actually have an analogy that I use all the time. Let’s say you’re selling popcorn in a stadium that has 50,000 people. And you have an hour.

There’s no way you’re going to go through the 50,000 people and offer your popcorn, per se. But what if you could go through the microphone and just scream popcorn? And you can count whoever turned their heads and just go directly to them and offer your popcorn. Right? So it’s something similar with a database. 

Right? Not every 50,000 people are going to buy this product. 

David: And if you do it right, using that analogy, you don’t have to be having them turn their heads. They will come to you.

And this is one of the most important things, that when you get into the process of having this database, how you then communicate with that database, which is how many emails get sent out, how much engagement gets sent out. This works into the next level, which may be point number three.

Alexander: And it has to be segmented. 

David: Exactly. So you have to create segmented campaigns.

Alexander: So let’s say I was generating leads for an ultra-luxury condominium.

David: Let’s use an example for a product. So let’s say John Smith happens to be a real seller. He was on your website. 

He comes in and says, I’ve got a $5 million house that I need to sell. Now, you might have a great website. You may get a lot of people coming through the website. 

But do you have people for my house? And how and what are you going to do within your marketing itself to turn all those heads or get them to come to the booth to buy the popcorn? My popcorn.

Alexander: So when it comes to the 4,500 leads that you’re getting per month, I’m sure some of them are looking for $4,000 or $5,000 rentals.

David: There’s probably a few just surfing around, yeah.

Alexander: Right. Would you waste your time offering a $5 million house to those?

David: No.

Alexander: Right? And vice versa.

So that’s why it’s so important that your database is really segmented. Some things that drive me crazy when I see some agencies, they start generating leads from here and there, and they’ll generate some leads interested on a luxury product. And the newsletter, the listing of the week is a $500,000 condo. 

You’re actually going against yourself by that.

David: Yeah. You’re actually sending conflicting messages. 

So you have to systematically send the correct message to the correct group. Because I don’t sell one property a month. 

Alexander: Right. Tell them how much you sell them.

David: This year, our target’s $1 billion, to give you an idea of scale. And then we just came in, actually, our results just came in. 

We came in as the number two company at Douglas Elliman, large team in the country.

Alexander: Amazing.

David: And this year, we’re going to obliterate the numbers that we did last year.

A lot of this comes down to the fact that we’re very good at segmenting the groups that we have and messaging them correctly.

Alexander: Again, relevancy is a key element of this industry.

David: That comes back to the content creation as well, making sure you do a video that resonates with them.

Alexander: Let’s talk about that, which is another subject. 

David: But when you get into that message that you’re going to do, one of the things that you taught me, that I thought was very, very powerful, was recognizing the key ways, the key phrases and words to draw people in. 

So of course, people will look up things like, let’s say you have a house in Coconut Grove. Let’s use that as an example. People will often Google Coconut Grove homes for sale.

Right? Very common term. Right?

Alexander: You can waste a lot of money.

David: You can waste a lot of money doing that. 

People will also Google Coconut Grove real estate report. Less people do that. I do a lot of…

Alexander: More educated buyer, by the way.

David: More educated buyer. Maybe they will search for luxury, new construction homes in Coconut Grove. That’s even more segmented. 

And then now you’re getting into a realm where you may get some real, real activity going on. But what you’ve designed within your sites, which we’ve done over years, is when you have a particular listing, you create calls to action within the search page, and you create, let’s call them pop-up boxes, because I don’t want to use the business terminology. 

Alexander: Yeah, we call them trip wires, boost boxes.

David: It’s a technical term, but essentially it’s a featuring of that specific property so that anyone looking within that market is going to really see your property. This is something that we’ve done to great success. But we’ve done this systematically through many, many ways.

And then once we’ve got someone who wants to sell a home, we’ve got that listing, we’re building campaigns around the audience that we’ve got. And again, this is when I want to get into that audience segmentation. You’ve got cold traffic and you’ve got warm traffic.

Alexander: And hot traffic.

David: And hot traffic. And this is the understanding of who your audience is. 

Who’s hungry for the popcorn or who just filled up on hot dogs and doesn’t need to eat?

Alexander: Right. You don’t need to spend any marketing on those.

David: You don’t have to spend anything. 

So what we do is we create that sense of interest, intrigue. We understand where the audience is going to go and we build those campaigns around those. And you have, again, working very closely with Stephen, we build and spend a lot of money on these campaigns. 

And I always say, if you’re going to hire an agent, ask them to show you their marketing budget for the year. How much money did they spend? I can tell you we spend somewhere around $2.5 to $3 million a year on marketing. Right? How do we do that?

Alexander: I’m glad you mentioned that on this podcast, because people got to understand that to make money, you need to spend money. 

There’s no magic wands. There’s computers, strategy people. And what we do is very difficult. 

That’s why I don’t think you can see the case studies that we have generated from any of our other competitors. I actually put that challenge out there. If there’s any competitor from TREMGroup, they can get a client to come and say, you know, I receive 4,500 leads per month and sell a billion dollars of real estate a year because of my marketing has grown over the past 10 years.

David: Yeah

Let’s get it on. Let’s get on the ring.

David: It is important to understand that there are many agents who work in many different ways.

And there’s some agents who work from the classic handshaking and the networks that they go and they go to the charity events and they have, you know, socially within a certain group of friends, a certain group of people. But that only goes so far, right? That to me is like bringing a knife to a gunfight, right? You can go out there and you can have all the people at the charity dinners that you go to and all the bars that you meet individuals, but you will never reach the numbers of people that I will reach. In one single day, I’m reaching hundreds of thousands of people every single day. How many people are you meeting?

Alexander: Think about that. It’s almost like posting your listing on CNN, Fox News, right? What is the following of any of these publications?

David: So I think, and this is why, look, the expanse of the digital marketing that you do and the campaign building you do, which I guess maybe leads to the next point, which is maybe, what are we on, a point number three now?

Alexander: Yeah, what was that?

David: Yeah, I think we’re number three. 

The point number three is the campaign building. This is what we’re doing. We’re building these campaigns, and you can blow through money. 

That’s why I think sometimes agents get nervous about spending the kind of money that I spend on my marketing, because they don’t know if it’s going to work, which is going to lead to point number two, which is quantifiability and measurability.

Alexander: A lot of the times, that doesn’t work, because there’s a lot of companies out there that are willing to take your money and show you these vanity statistics, and they don’t care if you sell or not. All they care is getting their retainer. So a lot of times, when an agent comes here, and we’re like, okay, so what do you wanna do? Well, I sell from Fort Lauderdale to Pinecrest.

And maybe I have a $2,000, $3,000 budget. Well, that’s not gonna work, right?

David: Yeah

Alexander: You need to niche down. You need to segment correctly.

So at the time that you’re building your campaigns or you’re investing your money, you have to be smart about it, because if you’re dispersing your budget this way, it’s basically dispersing very thin, right? You have no power.

David: You’ve diluted your exposure or expertise in the market.

Alexander: When we started, we started with one neighborhood.

David: Well, this is the thing. Look, my team now is a big team. It’s a huge team.

By Miami standards, it’s one of the biggest, right? So we’ve got territory managers. We’ve got a media team. We’ve got a marketing team.

We’ve got an operations team. We’ve got assistants, right? And the territory managers have assistants. And people will come in and be like, well, David or other big agents are selling from Palm Beach all the way down to Palmetto Bay.

So I should be doing that. Well, guess what? It took me 20 years to do that, right?

Alexander: Right. And you have teams that you’re doing.

It’s not like David is driving at 9 a.m. to show up properly in Pinecrest, and then he’s at 3 p.m. on West Palm Beach.

David: It is a syndicate of absolute experts who come together, who are absolute masters. Now I’m actually doing collaborations with other really big agents to take down big deals.

It’s big game hunting, because now you’ve got the artillery of other multiple levels of skilled individuals to deliver the result, which is selling an ultra luxury product.

Alexander: Not only that. When you collaborate and partner like that, you’re multiplying the reach, the database, the engagement.

David: Yeah. We have that with actually several big DE agents that we partner with, and we all have our own respective databases.

We’re not merging them. But when we are marketing out for that product, that unit, that condo, that home…

Alexander: Yeah. You better not merge those databases.

David: We are all hitting with the same message, with the same branding, with the same product that we’re selling. And this comes together.

But it’s that collaboration of hard work that goes with the segmentation and the realization of what we’re doing, rather than just kind of like, well, just throw money at the problem and hope to God that it works.

Alexander: Right, it doesn’t work like that. We put a campaign to the website and we hope we collect the lead.

David: So this is why I think on the point number three, to summarize this, if you’re gonna hire an agent and they’re gonna sell your home or your condo, have them show you the kind of campaigns that they’re gonna run. Ask for a 90-day campaign rundown. What’s that gonna look like? How many digital ads am I gonna have? How many YouTube ads am I gonna have? How many Instagram shorts and reels are you gonna show? How much retargeting are you gonna do? What’s the reach? What’s the strategy of reach? And then, coming to point number four, which is really important, measure the hell out of it.

Alexander: Oh, yeah.

David: Quantify this, because just throwing out there… And you have become really masterful at quantifying the performance of campaigns. And we’ve sat there, part art, part science, where we’ve said, did this work? I just dropped 20 grand over here.

Suppose it doesn’t work.

Alexander: I just dropped 20 grand like this.

David: Oh, I could do it in a day if I really wanted to.

I was really crazy.

Alexander: And not get a lead.

David: Yeah, not get anything.

So, and it also compounds as well. That’s the other thing. Like spending money, if you come into the business and you build a website and you say, right, that’s it.

I built this great website. I’m gonna spend $20,000 from month number one. Guess what’s gonna happen? You’re not gonna get the same result as you will when you’ve done this for year five.

Alexander: Throwing more money is not always the answer. Actually, we’ve seen plenty of times where you’ve got a campaign that is performing amazing and you’re like double down and you actually ruin the campaign. So there’s a lot of moving pieces, but through the experience and the team, we’ve been able to, I don’t know, man, like for example, create and optimize campaigns that generate a lead for $200 per lead because it’s an ultra-luxury product and take them down to under $15.

The same lead, the same campaign, just by optimizing correctly.

David: And that’s because over time as you run more and you’re a Google partner, so as you work through with the campaigns that you’re developing, whether it’s Meta or Google or anybody else and you’re spending budget, you’re starting to get better at it. And that’s part of the database thing as well because it’s much cheaper to spend money on retargeting than it is on cold traffic.

Alexander: Oh yeah, for example, a click online could cost you from $3 to $5 and then a remarketing click will cost you cents.

David: Which is why fortunately for me, my $20,000 goes a lot further than his $20,000 because my retargeting database is a million people and theirs is zero. So this is why every lead he spends is $3, every lead I spend is a cent.

Alexander: No, and you mentioned we’re Google partners, we’re proud of it. If you think about Google, Google is in the business of relevancy. If people go to Google and they don’t find what they want, they’re going to go to Bing, they’re going to go to chat GPT now and there’s no more Google.

So Google will reward you and penalize you. And that’s going to be directly shown out on your ad spend, depends on how relevant the content that you’re showing based on the query of the user. So I see a lot of people, they’re just like other companies or other marketing companies are just trying to get a broad keyword and take them to the homepage, things like that.

Google is going to let you give them the money, but every time that user bounces back, it’s a penalty for you. Well, every time a user stays on your site, stays for longer, continuously browsing, continuously using the site, Google is going to say, oh, this is more relevant. My clients, which is the people searching, like this content.

So now what I’m going to do is…

David: And not just Google, YouTube is massive. This is massive.

Alexander: YouTube is part of Google.

David: I’m sorry, that’s true.

That’s exactly true.

Alexander: So basically, what they’re going to do is they’re going to maybe put you in position number one for cents. So you may be paying a dollar per click on position one, and this guy is paying $5 on position three.

David: Which is why now, after 20 years and 1,100 videos, when I post a video, immediately I’m getting traction.

Alexander: Right. Because you’re relevant, Google, YouTube appreciates that, so they want to show your content prior to other content that might not be as relevant.

David: Which is why it still boggles my mind when I see someone go for a listing, I see an owner says to me, I hired this agent and the property didn’t sell, and I’m like, let me look at their digital footprint to see what they’re doing. No YouTube followers, very little Instagram followers. Again, Instagram can trick you, so it’s not exactly the most accurate way of telling, and no presence on Google.

Alexander: A lot of people buy their Instagram followers, which drives me crazy.

David: That is another thing.

Alexander: They destroy their brand.

Please don’t buy Instagram followers.

David: I would actually… I’m like, the fifth point that I want to raise, we’ve gone through the legitimate stuff of like what you’ve got to do. What I want to do on the fifth point is flip the narrative a little bit and bring about the awareness, the warnings, the land…this is the landmine statement.

Where are the landmines when people get misdirected through clever marketing conversation where someone’s very slick and very convincing, but there’s…I’m sorry, I’m going to say it directly, bullshit in their conversation. Where’s the bullshit?

Alexander: Man, I’ve seen many times people, oh yeah, I have a million Instagram followers, but they have 10 likes on their postings. So that means that they’re mostly bought, purchases.

And the problem is that they think they’re doing a favor to their brand because, oh, you know, my buyer or my seller might come and see my Instagram account, and they’re going to see I have a million followers. But in the technical side, which you’re very familiar with, you cannot undo that. So now, you know, there are systems like lookalikes, audiences built.

Now you’re building lookalikes on bots. So you’re basically destroying the way that you’re going to create your real buyers.

David: And eventually, the whole thing will collapse.

Alexander: It’s not going to work. It’s bullshit.

David: That’s one of the bullshits.

I’m going to give you one of the bullshits that I see, which is when I see people come in, and they are posting content even through YouTube. And I actually did a podcast a few weeks ago with a good buddy of mine, Drew, who runs a studio called The Move. And The Move has some really big names come through the doors.

It’s probably the most successful podcast studio in Miami today. He’s had Theo Vaughn on, he’s had Shaquille O’Neal, he’s had Jonas Brothers, he’s had like David Beckham.

Alexander: He’s a David Siddons.

David: He’s had like some legitimately big people. I’m not in that list.

Alexander: I mean, in your industry, you’re on it.

David: In my industry, I have some notoriety. Thank you.

What he told me was that he said there was a period of time where people would come in and they would shoot podcast videos to no one.

There was no you sitting in the seat.

Alexander: That’s very popular.

David: It was them talking to the camera, and they would just be giving straplines.

Alexander: And they look like they’re talking to somebody else.

David: And there would be a lot of what I call just clickbait comments that were designed just hooks, hooks that really meant nothing, hooks that sounded great, but didn’t actually do anything. And then when you actually look behind it, you look behind the learning process or the knowledge of that individual, you realize there isn’t any.

Alexander: Yeah.

David: That’s another form of bullshit.

Alexander: So if we dissect this subject a little bit, we’re talking about content creation, right? It’s a very broad term, right? Everything is.

David: Yes, it is.

Alexander: The moment you turn on your camera, that’s considered content, right? And something that drives me crazy is, for example, people thinking that creating content means we’re going to do this viral dance on TikTok, right? And things of that nature. Yeah, it’s fine.

Maybe you can do that once in a while, but the real content and what’s going to move the needle is content that is valuable to your audience. If you’re not providing value, you’re providing entertainment. 

David: You said it really well.

Alexander: So are you a business person? Are you a salesperson who wants to sell or are you an entertainer?

David: You said, are you entertaining or are you educating? And that’s what you said to me earlier. And someone has said to me before, you know, would you do this particular type of show? And I said, well, I’m more Bloomberg than Bravo, so no. And I think that when you really study the market, you really know it.

And this is why I put a lot of energy into my reports and my data and the analytics that you helped me build, by the way. Several of my analytical models, you’ve actually been and I’ve sat with…

Alexander: That wasn’t easy. It wasn’t, actually.

David: One of his team, who’s great, by the way, Tino, love you, man.

Alexander: Yeah. Let’s do a shout out to Tino, my partner.

David: I’ve made Tino great beyond this years.

Alexander: Daytime married to Tino for, I think, I don’t know how long, 17 years. Yeah.

David: And this is someone who we wanted to build the neighborhood analytics page where you can actually go in and see the data from the last quarter. You can see the dollar per square foot. You can see the days on the market.

Alexander: Yeah. You can see he makes my life easy, right? 

David: Yeah. I’m an easy client. What are you talking about? 

And this is the kind of thing, the kind of tool that keeps people legitimately coming back to your website because it does add value. And you can’t fake it.

You can’t fake this kind of work. This is like down in the trenches, long hours, editing, going after videos, changing them, improving them in the same way that, you know, you can’t fake a podcast. If you’ve done a podcast now, this is like we’re into like the 80th episode, right? You can’t…you can fake it two or three times.

You’re not going to fake it 80 times. And I think this is when you can recognize if someone is going to…

Alexander: Authenticity, back to authenticity.

David: Authenticity, disciplined, and is going to do the work. Because if they have the tools, that’s one thing.

Actually using the tools is a whole other bag.

Alexander: Oh, my God.

And that’s probably one of the most painful subjects for us, right? We’re talking about that earlier, how sometimes we perform similar technology, similar strategy, and we got people like you selling a billion dollars, and then we have people going through six months selling nothing. And every time we go and dissect the problem, they’re not doing their job. And at those times, we offer, we’re either going to help you, coach you, or please, don’t do this anymore.

I actually let go a client of us two weeks ago, I told you the story, he wasn’t following up on the people he was meeting. So if you meet somebody, you show them a house, and you never call them back, it’s your job to perform the sale, you know? It’s not their job to chase you around.

David: And it’s not uncommon for a house, if you’re a selling agent, to show a house to someone, do a really good job showing, and they will circle back.

Because sometimes they just lack the education. And they need someone who’s educated to show them. So you go off, you show them a house, then you show them three or four other homes, you stay in touch with them.

And then they realize that was the best thing.

Alexander: Please stay in touch.

David: Yeah. And that requires a lot of hard work and effort. And discipline. And discipline.

And you can’t fake it. No. And I think that this is one of the challenges that you have, because for all these great tools that we’ve been through today, and as a seller, I hope you realize that you need all of these incredible tools.

You need the website. Let’s go through it again. To finish off, you need the website, right? You need the tracking.

You need the database. You need the campaigns.

Alexander: You need the follow-up. Authentic follow-up.

David: But all of this doesn’t work unless you’re gonna get off your ass and do the job you

Alexander: If they don’t have you, there’s nothing.

There’s only so much technology, strategy our team is gonna be doing. But we’re not selling the homes for you. You gotta sell them.

And if you’re not willing to put in the hard work, call your leads. Follow up with your leads. We had the example of joining a gym and never showing up.

You’re not gonna get fit, you know?

David: Or doing the same thing over and over again, thinking everything is gonna be the same. Because change is a certainty. And even within a market, even during a period when you list a property, one of the things that happens, which I think is why most people end up losing a listing, is because they don’t stay in good communication with the seller.

They don’t tell them what’s going on. And when the market pivots or changes, because circumstances change in all systems, they don’t have the confidence to tell them, hey, something’s changed. We need to pivot.

And we need to change our strategy here, either by price or by how you’re marketing or whatever you’re doing.

Alexander: Well, I think we are blessed because of our generation. And I always say that, you know, maybe Carlos is a little younger than us, but we are the adaptation generation.

I started listening to music on cassette players or even discs. Then we went to MP3s. Then we went to digital.

The same with everything. So I think it’s something that may be easier for our generation.

David: We’re adaptive. We’re also incredibly resilient. Because if you’re a kid and you’re born in the 70s and you survive through the 80s, you’re pretty stoic. You’re pretty hard to kill.

Alexander: Yeah

David: I think this has been great. I really hope that you watching this, whether you’re an agent or you’re actually a seller, that this brings a lot of value, that this gives you the checklist that you need. I’m gonna do a shameless call to action here.

Alexander: And if you’re an agent.

David: If you’re an agent. You know what you need to do now.

You also need to know who you need to be responsible for in the process. But call to action. If you like this video.

If you’re a seller, pick up the phone. Give me a call. I will sit down with you and I will show you my entire marketing deck.

Everything that I do. All my strategies. My platform that was help constructed with this gentleman and this incredible company.

Nothing comes for free. It takes a lot of hard work. Do not let.

Do not be dumb and let your listing die. Dumb ways to die. We’re not gonna.

That’s not gonna be the case here. Thank you for watching.

Alex, thank you so much.

Alexander: Thank you, Senor. Thank you.

David: Hope you enjoyed this and stay tuned soon for another Better Decisions podcast.

The post David Siddons: What not to do when selling your home appeared first on TREMGroup.

In this episode of The Pipeline, Carlos Concepcion sits down with Adrian Sanchez, founder of Wire Miami and one of Miami’s top-performing pre-construction and luxury condominium sales leaders, for a powerful deep dive into how real estate agents, teams, and developers can use the right marketing strategy, IDX-powered websites, and lead generation systems. to scale multimillion-dollar sales.

With more than 20 years in Miami real estate, Adrian shares how he survived the 2007 market collapse, pivoted into foreclosures, development, and investment properties, and ultimately built one of Miami’s most productive pre-construction lead pipelines—now responsible for tens of millions in luxury condo sales across projects like E11even Hotel & Residences, St. Regis, Mandarin Oriental Residences, Waldorf Astoria, and upcoming ultra-luxury developments.

This episode shows why digital infrastructure, IDX-powered project websites, and relationship-driven follow-up systems—the foundation of TREMGroup’s real estate marketing ecosystem—are now mission-critical for any agent or brokerage operating in the pre-construction and luxury real estate space.

As Miami continues to attract global investors, high-net-worth buyers, and developers, Adrian highlights why owning digital real estate through project websites, IDX platforms, and lead capture systems has become just as important as owning physical property. This reinforces the role that TREMGroup’s real estate websites, IDX technology, and full-stack marketing programs play in helping agents, teams, and developers control demand, generate qualified buyers, and scale their presence across multiple new development projects.

Turning Pre-Construction Leads Into a Long-Term Sales Pipeline

• How real estate agents convert pre-construction leads into multimillion-dollar buyers
• Why every major condo project needs its own IDX-powered website
• How to dominate resales by controlling your original buyer pipeline
• The difference between average agents and luxury real estate professionals
• How relationship management outperforms cold prospecting
• Why ultra-luxury buyers require expertise—not automation
• How TREMGroup’s digital marketing platform fuels project-level domination
• Why St. Regis, Mandarin Oriental, Waldorf Astoria, and FAENA-style developments require dedicated digital ecosystems
• How Miami’s new-construction market rewards agents who own their audience

Video full transcription

Adrian Sanchez:
How you doing, man?

We’ve been in the business for a long time now—Wire Miami, 20 years. I can’t believe it. We’ve had to change and evolve so many times with the market. We actually started in pre-construction real estate back in 2005 and 2006. I remember I didn’t even know where my business was going to come from. I just worked really hard, which is what a lot of people don’t understand—this is not an easy business. You work hard and you get what you put into it.

Back in 2006, I remember my first deal. I got a phone call from someone I did not know. That was really my first lead. I took it upon myself to nurture that relationship. They were interested in buying a condo at Bentley Beach. I ended up selling him a unit, and then he bought eleven more. So we did twelve units there. That’s really how my business started.

But the market took a big hit in 2007, and honestly it was a wake-up call. I lost everything. My family and I lost everything. And I needed that. Sometimes you need a good slap in the face to realize there’s more to making money and living the Miami lifestyle than meets the eye.

We evolved. We started buying at foreclosure auctions. We started flipping houses and units. That’s how we got back on the saddle. From there, we started doing shopping centers. We started buying and selling properties. We started working more with developers, finding land to develop new projects. Slowly, I started getting back into pre-construction real estate.

In 2020, during COVID, we were already in the process of working with you guys. You helped us tremendously. Our first website was Wire Miami, and our second was a project-specific site for 11 Hotel & Residences. That was the first of many websites we would do with TREMGroup. Today, I think we have about ten or eleven websites, and we generate leads through all of them—from St. Regis to 1428 Brickell, Mandarin Oriental, and 11 Hotel & Residences.

We’ve been able to sell almost 100 units at 11. Here at Mandarin, Fortune announced that they sold $87 million in the summer, and I realized I sold about half of that. That was directly connected to the leads we built and nurtured through the platform.

At first, when I started with TREMGroup, I wasn’t sure it was going to work. I had built my business on relationships. But then I realized that the platform is just an extension of that. The leads need to be called. You have to nurture them. You have to maintain the relationship.

At 11, we sold over 50 units back then, and now we’re close to 100. And we’re likely going to control those resales because we maintained the website and the marketing platform. Now all of those buyers are going to become sellers. That’s how you build long-term dominance in a project.

It is so important for agents to call these leads. They’re not going to sell themselves. You have to take everyone seriously—whether they’re asking about a $500,000 studio or a $20 million penthouse. You never know who’s on the other end of the phone.

We’re now focused more on ultra-luxury projects like St. Regis and Mandarin Oriental. We’ll be doing resales at Waldorf Astoria. We have new projects coming up like Faena and some major things happening on Watson Island. And we have built an incredible pipeline of leads. Old leads become new leads when a new project is announced—you just have to maintain the relationship.

At the end of the day, you get what you put into it. You have to do everything at 110%. You can’t expect one call to close a $5 million buyer. These people are trusting you with millions of dollars. You have to add value every time you speak to them. You have to know the market. You have to know the projects. You can’t fake expertise.

Wealthy buyers can smell inexperience from a mile away. You can’t just send them to a sales gallery and hope for the best. You have to be the advisor they rely on. They’ll do business with you not because you say you’re the best, but because they realize it after speaking with you.

Can you sell a $5 million condo to a lead? Yes—but only if you put in the effort. If all you do is send template emails and text messages, you won’t. But if you use the tools, if you call, if you nurture, if you understand the projects, then yes—you absolutely can.

I sold half the Mandarin inventory this summer, and those were $5 million and up. But that didn’t come from minimal effort. That came from knowledge, repetition, and relationships. That’s what wins in this business.

You have to make an impression. And then you have to back it up with expertise so people trust you. When they trust you, they do business with you.

The post Adrian Sanchez: Scaling a Pre-Construction Real Estate Business With the Right Marketing Strategy appeared first on TREMGroup.

In this episode, Carlos Concepcion sits down with Vanessa Gomez, Licensed Partner and Broker Associate at Engel & Völkers Miami, to uncover how real estate agents can strategically grow their pre-construction network in one of the fastest-expanding luxury markets in the United States.

Miami continues to evolve into a global destination for luxury living, attracting buyers from New York, Los Angeles, and Latin America seeking modern construction, lifestyle appeal, and long-term appreciation. Vanessa breaks down how agents can identify high-value developments through factors like developer reputation, location growth, and product quality—insights critical to agents, brokers, teams, and developers nationwide.

As Vanessa highlights throughout the conversation, digital positioning is now essential for growth, visibility, and lead generation—reinforcing the role that TREMGroup’s real estate websites, IDX technology, and full-stack marketing programs play in helping real estate professionals stand out in competitive markets. From boutique brokerages to large teams and new development projects, TREMGroup provides the tools and systems agents need to scale relationships, attract qualified buyers, and expand their footprint in pre-construction.

Featured topics in the episode include:

• Why pre-construction demand is rising in Miami and across major U.S. markets
• How agents can evaluate new developments through data-driven criteria
• Where emerging investment opportunities are growing (Downtown, Edgewater, Brickell Key, North Miami)
• How Engel & Völkers Miami is expanding through its boutique, luxury-focused model
• Advice for new agents on relationship building, follow-up, and long-term client retention
• The power of digital marketing and brand presence—a core advantage supported by TREMGroup and IDXBoost. 

Vanessa emphasizes that Engel & Völkers Miami is expanding its presence by curating a select group of top-tier advisors aligned with the brand’s luxury standards, supported by digital marketing and lead-generation strategies.

Video full transcription

Carlos: Well, welcome uh for those of you who are watching, welcome to another episode of the pipeline where we want to connect and talk and have great deep conversations with industry leaders. Today I’m very proud of being talking to one of my long-term partners, client and friend, Vanessa Gomez, uh, licensed partner and broker associate at Engel and Völkers Miami. Welcome, Vane.

Vanessa: Thank you for having me.

Carlos: It’s a pleasure to have you here today, and I’m very much looking forward to having this conversation on record. Um, tell everybody a little bit about you and your story in real estate.

Vanessa: Well, um, my name is Vanessa Gomez and I’m a licensed partner and broker associate alongside Daniel Nault uh, for Engel and Völkers Miami and I was working at what nowadays is called Amaran Bank and I was doing the residential lending over there and in 2011 I got tired of corporate and decided to jump on the other side of real estate and actually do sales and about 8 nine years ago met Daniel through a mutual friend and I started working with him at Edgewater Real Estate and one thing led to another and the opportunity came along and we acquired Engel and Völkers Miami about two years now and we’re now developing the global brand at a local level.

Carlos: That’s amazing. I mean from 2006 to now a lot has happened in the industry in the markets. Um I like to think that we are in the biggest emerging market in the whole USA right now. Um so I want your take on how do you see you know after owning several brokerages growing your team and the brand and in this journey how do you see them in the Miami real estate market today?

Vanessa: Miami’s growth is the word that can define Miami right now and it’s not done yet. I mean this is just going to keep going. We still have a lot of room for growth as a city because people come here not only for the real estate but for the lifestyle and I think that’s really what sets a difference when it comes to our market and other markets in the US. I mean, New York will always be New York and we know that, but a lot of people are more and more wanting to have the best of both worlds and have that ability to come back and forth. And the city is, I mean, Mayor Suarez is definitely doing a great job. He’s done a great job since the pandemic to really push our city to the level it deserves.

Carlos: The lifestyle has changed. Um, I mean, what else do you want that, you know, amazing restaurants, beautiful beaches, uh

Vanessa: best weather

Carlos: Best weather, let’s not forget about that. Uh, but in the real estate industry, we were just talking a little while ago, even the landscape of the city has changed. And I do think that Miami is being seen and and portrayed as the

future financial capital of the USA. I’ve seen there is a lot of traffic and a lot of people relocating or investing in primary residence or secondary homes from New York, from Los Angeles. And even though we’re maybe a little far away from comparing price points with those markets, I think we’re on the way to take over those markets.

Vanessa: Well, still affordable as we were talking earlier. I mean, compared to

some other markets in the state, even though we have the most expensive zip

code in the country with Fisher Island, um, definitely there’s still an opportunity for people who want the lifestyle and are still able to afford, you know, you can easily still find a condo on the water in Miami, um, in an area like Edgewater for, you know, two to $800,000. That’s still a bargain for a lot of other markets in the country.

Carlos: So, different emerging markets in Miami. Um, now that we’re talking about the opportunities for people thinking to move here, uh, where do you see most of, you know, the people coming from? Where do you think they’re looking for? Are they more towards the condos, the single family homes, the waterfront? How do you see the market behaving?

Vanessa: I mean, we’ve all seen in the last year or so definitely the ultra luxury single family home waterfront is still, you know, a hot ticket item, but in average,

you still get a lot of people wanting to get that pre-construction because they want a newer product that’s compliant with the new rules after Surfside. And you have the South Americans, there’s still a big influx of South American money coming to Miami. um and wanting that ability to be able to pay in installments as they go instead of just one lump sum and that makes a difference. So definitely I see the pre-construction of the newer condos because the condos are older than 30 years right now. Are you experiencing special assessments because of the new rules and the new regulations and those are the ones that are hurting? But anything that’s newer than, you know, 30 years, it’s definitely something that’s still affordable. And mind you, there’s still an opportunity with the older condos. You just need to, as an investor, as a buyer, need to have the right person to walk you through that strategy.

Carlos: How do you find out which new development projects will have more

appreciation than others when you are advising your clients? I mean definitely

you know buying something new that can you can pay in installments and you can see that your money growth and your investment in real estate is is an

important factor for buyers but what are some data points that you use to advise your clients?

Vanessa: For me the most important thing to start with is the developer because

developers I mean everyone wants to come and develop but at the end of the day is the final product and is a reputation. What really matters when I’m advising a client what kind of project you want to go with. Um, additionally my business

partner and Daniel is the boss his background it’s in development it’s actually in development and the Heafey Group that’s what they’ve always you know been about in Canada. So having a reliable developer it’s step number one. Now from there it depends obviously you know what the budget of the client is and based on the budget the different projects there are um the locations I mean there are some areas that are still growing you know Edgewater is still a growing neighborhood now you have a little pocket in um you know certain areas like North Miami that are also growing and on the beach as well. So it’s a combination of I guess developer budget and then type property.

Carlos: That’s good to know. For those of you that are thinking of investing in Miami, you heard it from Vanessa. Vanessa, um, since you also have a lot of experience on the development side, I know that Engel and Völkers, which you know, both you and Daniel now in Miami are, you know, breaking into this emerging market and, you know, providing this amazing solution. What are your thoughts on the broker side? What services do you help developers with when they’re looking for partners like Engel and Völkers and the Heafey Group?

Vanessa: So there’s two parts of it. There’s one part that we are able to help with

distress properties. A lot of times developers, you know, you have a plan and you have a budget and then things happen and you can run into some financial hardships even as a developer who has a strong background. So there’s that part that’s more of Daniel’s branch when it comes to dealing with developments and then there’s the other part where we’re able to help a developer 360 meaning from finding land coming up with a plan strategy all the way to sales and pushing it through our global network. So there’s both sides, but overall we’re able to help from the ground up all the way to the final product and closings.

Carlos: And I think that both of you are reshaping the brand of Engel and Völkers Miami individually. So we’re going to talk about how you’re expanding and how you’re growing uh very soon. But it is a global brand. So I’m assuming that you also provide. I mean let’s talk a little bit about the brand Engel and Völkers right? Um tell us a little bit about the story because I know it’s very well known in Europe and it’s a global um brand but maybe for those who are just tuning in maybe we can touch on that.

Vanessa: So Engel and Völkers started in 1977 out of Hamburg Germany and they expanded quickly in the luxury real estate market in Germany. Then they had their first office in Mallorca and from there right now till this day we’re talking about a thousand offices in 35 countries. So they keep expanding. They’re number one in Europe and Canada. Um and right now in Americas when it comes to North America, you know, the USA, Mexico has just opened up an office in Mexico City and um other areas of Mexico, Tulum, and we keep growing on this side of the world, but in Europe, it’s been an established brand for decades. So now our job here in Miami is to bring in this global network to a very local clientele and that clientele is not only the end consumer but the real estate agent that now has the opportunity to join Engel and Völkers and have that global reach through our network.

Carlos: So talking about the agents, I mean with that brand in mind and with your um growth uh in mind, what are the type of agents that Engel and Völkers and you guys are looking to bring in?

Vanessa: So we’re not going crazy and recruiting everyone and their mother. Um, we’re actually keeping it very boutique. Engel and Völkers has always had a boutique approach globally when it comes to their offices and when we want to keep that touch here in Miami. Um, we are not taking any new agents. We basically invite a select group of real estate agents to become what we call global advisors. And right now we’re 42 agents. We have an office in Edgewater. We just opened an office in South of Fifth. I am very proud of that. Um, and the idea is that we want to have quality over quantity. We’re not looking to build a brokerage of a thousand agents in Miami like most of the companies now are. We’re looking to have a select group of real estate agents that align with the brand which is a luxury white globe treatment service focus.

Carlos: Always always I mean service has to be number one uh before expansion. So I definitely align with that. Um Vane in this uh in this process of expansion what are as a managing partner as a licensed partner for Engel and Völkers and handling a team of uh again top real estate professionals in your market. What are some of the challenges that you face when you know how to manage a team and grow a boutique brokerage?

Vanessa: I think the biggest challenge is finding people that care, that have the same vision and align with where you want to go. You know, it’s I think right now that’s the toughest challenge cuz we know where we’re going is just finding the right pieces of the puzzle to put that together and and make it happen. So that and work life balance.

Carlos: Does that exist? life balance.

Vanessa: I think so.

Carlos: Well, it’s I mean as you’re building something that matters, you always have to, you know, as a leader and a partner, you always put, you know, a little bit of the business first. So, I definitely understand that. Um, Vane, for yourself, where do you see the brand and how do you see the market in the next couple of years?

Vanessa: For us, Engel and Völkers, I see us um bringing it to the level that it’s known globally, but at a local scale, meaning luxury, boutique, probably the best approach for marketing strategies, you know, with the global reach of the network. Um, when it comes to the market, I think right now we’re going through obviously an adjustment. I mean, prices have cooled up a little bit, which is actually good in a way because right now it’s an opportunity for buyers out there and sellers can still move their inventory with the right marketing strategy and with the right, you know, like I mentioned earlier, working with the right advisor or real estate agent. But in general, I do see the Miami market, you know, as something that keeps growing and has potential to even appreciate over the course of the next few years because this is not just a pandemic now. It’s a city that’s growing and it’s growing from the inside out infrastructure and everything. So, I think Miami, you know, could be the next New York.

Carlos: Um I’ve heard that uh right now one of the things that are keeping the mic the market stable or the price stable is high price point uh high interest rates. Um but I also heard that there’s a lot of investors moving into Miami and investing in Miami.

Vanessa: Yeah.

Carlos: Um, is there a particular location where you see those market opportunities coming from to Miami?

Vanessa: I think downtown and Edgewater are still of interest for some investors. Now, the interest rates because those are two separate parts of the question. The interest rates, yes, is holding back some people to actually go in and, you know, get a mortgage or to actually put their property for sale because they’re locked in with a mortgage at a low rate. But at the same time, the educated consumer knows that you can purchase now and refinance later when rates are low and still going to probably get a better deal now than when the rates go down and everyone that has been holding off goes out to purchase something. So that’s one part. And then the other part, I mean it I think Downtown, Edgewater and certain parts of I will say North Miami um west of 95 still, you know, we will call it a little sketchy, but there’s still opportunities because it’s still a good location to central Miami.

Carlos: So you touched on the buyer side on how you know educated buyers now they understand they can refinance later but on the seller side what are some opportunities for again a seller that maybe bought very low interest rate in the past and you know they don’t want to um lose out or at current price points and interest rates where would they buy right so how

Vanessa: Well it’s one thing for another because if they have the opportunity to cash out on good equity yes okay You may not be able to lock in the same rate you currently have on your home, but you have the ability to take that cash out and maybe create a strategy where you can multiply your investment portfolio.

Maybe you’re going from owning one property to all of a sudden being able to afford two properties because you have enough cash. So you I mean that’s something you have to sit down with your agent and discuss to see what will be the right approach. But there’s a motivation if there’s enough equity.

Carlos: Amazing. I mean, as a global network, you have a lot of benefits. But as a business, uh, as running a business, how do you attract new clients? How do you make sure that you’re always having um, you know, you’re always in front of new people that you can help and represent, either buyer or selling?

Vanessa: I do a lot of networking myself. I also have guys like you in my life and like Stephen who’s back there. Um TREM I mean can I talk about it? Yeah. TREMGroup and IDX Boost have been also a great help uh along the way and we go back to the edgewater days where way before we got buyers. So that but I think the main thing is always be open to meet new people, connect and a happy client is going to send you another client. That’s been my biggest source of, you know, referrals in this industry. It’s not just thinking about one transaction. It’s about the relationship you’re building with that client because that happy client will send you more business your way.

Carlos: Definitely. Stephen has a saying and we keep talking about this. It’s not just lead generation, marketing is relationship generation. It’s making sure that you’re, you know, providing a good service. You’re being uh authentic and you’re helping people. So, you know, once that trust is set, then they will refer more people to your business. So, we definitely agreed on that. But I also know that you represent and help a couple of very unique developers that you believe in. Now, what are some of those that Vanessa Gomez and and the team are uh seeing in the biggest opportunity for your clients?

Vanessa: Some of you want me to talk about the projects specifically?

Carlos: Yes

Vanessa: Okay. So, personally, there’s one particular project um GEM Miami World Center. Um the developer Napali Group is based out of New York and they’re known for their high-end product and finishes. I think it’s a building that is going to be a beautiful building, but most importantly, it’s the quality of the finished product that it’s going to be different to what we’re used to down here. I think Napali Group brings in their expertise from New York and really having this to be their first tower in Miami, they really want to make it a statement. They’re also building the advisory for Lauderdale, but personally in Miami, I think that’s one project that I will keep my eyes on.
Carlos: Tell me a little bit more. I mean, uh, amenities, lifestyle, finishes. What are your personal favorites?

Vanessa: Personal favorites? I mean, I still love them. Yesterday, I was at the Mandarin Oriental. Um, that’s definitely going to be nothing like it in Miami. um Brickell Key. It’s a beautiful private island or enclave for those who know Miami. And yes, the price point is, you know, a little bit on the higher end, but the location and you cannot replicate that piece of land. So, that’s also something, you know, for the higher end buyer that is looking to get something. It’s definitely a project that I think it’s absolutely gorgeous.

Carlos: Location, privacy

Vanessa: And the developer Swire, I mean, they built Brickell Key, so that’s definitely a jewel in the island.

Carlos: Amazing. Um, Vane, a lot of people that are watching today are also real estate professionals. Some of them are starting their careers now. So I always want to dedicate a little bit of space for those agents who are starting in the industry now or recently started in the past year or two. Um and I would like them to hear some advice from you on what would you recommend a new real estate professional to be doing to to again to build a career to build a business to grow in today’s market. What are your thoughts on that?

Vanessa: Followup, so important to follow up. Um, build relationships with your clients. Don’t think about just the commission. Think about what’s best for your client. Whether you’re representing the seller or buyer or both, think about making your client happy and enjoy what you do. If you don’t like selling real estate, if you don’t like showing houses, if you don’t like just go find another job because you have to love what you do. And when you love what you do, the money will follow.

Carlos: So, if you’re a new real estate agent, you heard it from Vanessa Gomez here in the pipeline. So, thank you so much. I mean, is there anything else that you would like to talk about today in regards to your team, in regards to the broker, in regards to yourself? Anything that you want to mention to the viewers? Well, I think um right now we’re using this space to deliver a message and that message is Engel and Völkers is now in Miami. We are inviting those who understand luxury, who understand service and who like the boutique approach that we have to, you know, come talk to us. If you’re a real estate agent wanting to elevate your career, that’s exactly what we’re doing. We’re here to raise the standard in the industry in Miami and come talk to us.

Vanessa: So Engel and Völkers in the emerging Miami market starting with new developments. So you heard it here first. Now Vanessa, how can agents, buyers, sellers find you guys digital today? So you can go to our website. Um, we have our developments evmiami.com and we have our official miami.evrealestate.com website. You can visit us there. We also have a location in Edgewater. We have our location in South of Fifth right on Ocean and First and hopefully before the end of the year we will have our new uh Coconut Grove location.

Carlos: Well, Vanessa, thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate your time.

Vanessa: I appreciate you.

Carlos: Um, so this is going to be the first one of many and we’ll keep you guys updated in the next episodes. So, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it.

Vanessa: Thank you.

The post Engel & Völkers Vanessa Gomez: How Can Real Estate Agents Grow Their Preconstruction Network appeared first on TREMGroup.

Real estate isn’t just about transactions; it’s about marketing strategies, systems, and relationships. For most people, buying or selling a home is the largest financial decision they’ll make.

In this episode, we sit down with Jose Osorio (Osorio Suarez Team) to break down how he has been building his team and brand digitally and creating a pipeline that fuels his business growth. Alongside Carlos, he shares Miami market insights, team-building lessons, and the exact systems top agents need to scale. Osorio, who transitioned from a marketing consultant to a full-time real estate agent, emphasizes the importance of strategy, systems, and relationships in the business.

Key takeaways from the discussion include:

• Miami Market Insights: Osorio highlights Miami as a prime location for real estate, attracting international and domestic relocations from major cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. He notes the abundance of new developments in South Florida (over 135) catering to diverse needs, from luxury condos to single-family homes and short-term rentals. Brickell is particularly emphasized as a growing financial center with significant investment opportunities.
• Team Building and Digital Presence: Osorio discusses his journey in building the Osorio Suarez Team and establishing a strong digital brand. He stresses that real estate is a game of lead generation and marketing, advocating for digital marketing and lead generation tools as the future of the industry. He credits platforms like IDX websites and CRM tools for streamlining his business operations, enabling efficient client communication, and providing valuable data for tracking client interests.
• Client-Centric Approach: The Osorio Suarez Team focuses on providing a “concierge service” to clients, understanding their unique lifestyles and needs beyond just buying or selling a home. This includes assisting with school placements, car rentals, and navigating the relocation process. Osorio shares a personal anecdote about a challenging transaction in Brickell, highlighting the strict requirements and the need for clients to prepare well in advance when moving to luxurious areas.
• Valuable Advice for Realtors: Osorio’s most valuable piece of advice is the consistent pursuit of lead generation and prospecting. He believes that daily contact with potential clients, building trust, and fostering relationships are crucial for long-term success and creating generational wealth in real estate. Learn more about how top-performing agents optimize their systems and client relationships through real estate website design and marketing programs.

For more insights like this, explore our TREMendous Insights blog or connect with us on LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube for the latest real estate marketing trends.

Video full transcription

Carlos: Well, welcome for those of you who are watching. Welcome to the pipeline uh podcast dedicated to real estate professionals who wanted to grow their business, learn more about the market technology, uh the right technology, the right strategies to grow their business. and where we love to highlight our partners and professionals that are hands-on, you know, creating their business and dominating the market. And it pleases me today to talk to one of my friends and partners, Jose Osorio, leader and creator of the Osorio Suarez team in Miami. And Jose, welcome.

Jose: Thank you for joining us today. Thank you so much, Carlos. It’s a pleasure. Thank you for having me. I’m super excited to be able to speak with you today.

Carlos: I’m looking forward to having a deep conversation and for those who are watching to learn more about you because I think your story, your background and your future is very exciting.

Jose: Thank you.

Carlos: So, I would love for you to introduce yourself, tell our viewers, you know, who you are, why you do, and what brought you into real estate.

Jose: Yeah, of course. So, I’ll introduce a little bit more about myself, but thank you again for the introduction. And I know it’s um think real estate is a matter of timing the cycles and I think that’s what I love about it the most. There’s just so many things that you can learn. But again my name is Jose Osorio. I’m the leader of the Osorio Suarez group here in South Florida. And really what we focus on is a lot of relocations, people coming in internationally, a lot of people coming in from New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. Um and what I love the most about real estate is just the versatility of it. We’re working with different people, people that are coming from different backgrounds with different needs and that’s where we really focus on and kind of giving them that concierge service with everything that they need. Like we spoke about before, if their kid needs a college to go to or their daughter needs the the ballet school to go to or the car rental service, apart from actually buying or renting a home, that’s where we really focus on and that’s where we want to make the differentiation factor versus many other people that are in the business. But um you know, business has been going great. I’m super happy to be working with you guys. And really all started a couple years ago. I first started being a marketing consultant for other real estate brokers. Um I helped them out with everything on LinkedIn, Facebook ads, and Instagram as well. Did their content, planned everything. And that was at a time where I was in school. I went to FIU and I graduated here some time ago. And I was just finding ways to make extra money. And when I first started going into the business, I just saw it as a way to, you know, expand my network, you know, connect with realtors, refer some people. And at the beginning, I didn’t think much of it. But when I started doing their campaigns and I started seeing the potential that Miami has, the development, the transformation it had, I realized I was like, “Hey, this is a country I’ve been, you know, for 16 years since I originally moved from Colombia. and I’ve watched it grow in front of my eyes. Why don’t I get myself into it? So, that was about a year and a half ago. Um, I was still finishing school. I also had an internship and I worked for a company called UKG where I specialize in HR and tech technology selling software and I was super one dimensional like I told you before. I would just say I wouldn’t do much of the work that I’m doing now and kind of took the leap of faith. I got my license in August of last year and really my world completely changed and I think it’s the best decision that I’ve done not only to get my license start working going all in being full-time in real estate but working with such a great team like yours that number one gets you so much exposure gets you awareness gets you in front of a lot of eyes but it helps you build build a brand and I think attention is the number one asset um in any business out here in the US and any parts of the world. Gary Vee always talked about that. That’s one of my idols really. Um, when you have attention, when you have eyeballs on you, more people are going to trust you. It’s easier to have these conversations. And when I get a client calling me for, you know, a $5,000, $6, you know, rental and brick for their two buddies working in e-commerce, I tell them, “Hey, listen. We’ve spoken. You saw my post. You’ve seen the videos. You’ve seen the building reviews. You’ve seen the website. What are you looking for? Let’s get it together.” And it’s such an easy sale. If I didn’t have all these metrics, if I didn’t have all this content together, it’s harder. But I think that’s, you know, why we’re working with you guys and it’s made our life easier.

Carlos: We’ll dive deeper into, you know, all the different parts that we have assembled together for the Osorio Suarez team. And I think that for those who are thinking about joining real estate, right, people that are considering maybe changing careers or not, you know, not looking at real estate as a possible viable option to, you know, change their lives and create a business. I don’t think everybody knows you know the details on how you know uh how much time can you freed up or how much financial freedom can provide to you know a young agent like yourself or to a large team. Um, you know, let’s talk a little bit about how real estate, you know, is a scramble in a sense because, you know, once you can represent the buyer, you can represent the seller, there’s a standard commission between 2 to 3% on the resale market. Um, you know, the standard commissions on the rentals.

Jose: Correct

Carlos: But you also have the possibility to get higher commissions when you sell pre-construction and new development properties that I think people don’t, you know, yet know unless you’ve been in the market. How can that, you know, turn your job into a business, right? So, can we dive in and deeper into that because, you know, I think it will be valuable to hear from you. You’ve been, you know, building your business in real estate for the past year. So, how have you considered those into your business?

Jose: Yeah, of course. I think real estate is super versatile. Like I mentioned before, there’s many avenues and there’s many ways to be successful. Not only on the new development side, on the resale side. Some people like selling condos, some people like rentals, some people um just like single family, right? Everyone’s super different. But then there’s a buying side, there’s a selling side. You can even represent both sides. But I think Miami is in a great position because as of probably a couple weeks ago that last time I checked, there’s more than 135 new developments in all of South Florida, stretching from West Palm Beach down into the coast of Coconut Grove. Um, and all of the projects are different. Some of them are residential, some of them are for short-term rentals. So, there’s many different aspects and there’s many different products for many different people. I mean, most of them start in the $400,000 range, but then you have the Mandarin Oriental  where the studios, the onebedrooms, the starting prices are $45 million. And then, you know, you have the Surfside um new developments that are coming up. Then you have in West Palm Beach that Steve Ross is doing an amazing job in and those are in the 10 $15 million range. So, there’s many different products for different people. And I think not only for realtors and then for the buyers or on our side, there’s just so many different options to pick from that sometimes it becomes a problem because there’s so many great things to choose from. But Miami, we’re in the right place. We’re in the hottest market in all of the country despite some of the economic struggles we’ve seen in the country this past year and a half or so. But, um, new development is definitely the wave to go. is where I want to continue focusing on and where not only can you make the most money on, but it’s the most impact because you get a brand new product in a great field in Miami.

Carlos: That’s amazing. Now that we’re talking about Miami and you just uh highlight this, I think the landscape at least a state side have switched in the past three, four, five years, right? We’ve seen, you know, um with everything going on in New York, a lot of migration from upper, you know, east states, we see, you know, with all of the changes in Los Angeles and um California, a lot of people coming into Miami. And for us that live here, you know, I love Miami. I know that, you know, huge potentials for growth, but we enjoy different lifestyles, top of the, you know, top-of-the-line restaurants and um, you know, different types of lifestyles when it comes to real estate. How do you see, you know, the potential for growth in Miami? Where do you see the biggest opportunities for, you know, buyers that are moving in? And in your personal experience, you know, can you share with them what where you are seeing most of that um relocation from?

Jose: Yeah, it depends. It really is because like I mentioned before, since there’s many different types of inventory and products for many different types of people, it really depends on what fits your lifestyle. I think when I’m having the initial conversations with our buyers, it’s mostly asking them, hey, what is your lifestyle like? Um, do you see yourself in front of the beach? Do you like city views? Do you have kids? Do you need them close to, you know, the top rated schools? Are they going to college now? Or are you just by yourself with your husband? You know, talk to me a little bit more about that. That’s the conversations that we have with our clients because in the beginning, it’s understanding what’s going to better fit them because you can live in West Palm Beach where it’s a super walkable area. You know, you got Mora Lago for example, or you like Brickell that’s on that younger side. You have the nicest restaurants, you got Moxy’s, you got Casatua, you got Cipriani. So, it’s really about the customer. Um, but it’s all about them. That’s usually how I take it. And based on those answers that I get, I kind of connect them to the new projects or if they’re looking for resales, something that’s ready in the next month or so, that’s where we go about it.

Carlos: That’s amazing. That’s amazing content. Now, let’s talk about how you set up your team and your business once you decided to go into real estate, right? How hard was it to, you know, create an online presence? Uh how hard was it to build the right tools? What were the things that were available to you and that you focus on in order to make these, you know, work for you and for your team?

Jose: Yeah, it’s a good question. Especially for agents that are starting brand new from scratch like I did. I probably didn’t touch a sale or rental in the first couple months cuz I had no clue what I was doing. The first step is picking the right brokerage. Finding out who you are going to work under? Maybe picking a team, who are those top sellers, who are the top listing um people in your area. I think that’s the most important part. But second is understanding that um real estate’s a game of two things. Lead generation and marketing. Then how you convert those leads. So then when this was September of last year, I had a lot of passion for real estate. I wanted to meet people. I wanted to go to the show rooms. But then how would people trust me? how would I get a hold of these people and how would I convert them? So that’s when you know I started researching my options and understanding how are the most successful teams which is the goal that we have what programs are they using how are they going about the business and what is their resources their approach because some people do a lot of networking some people do a lot of mailers some people do door knocking but I’m a huge believer like I mentioned before that digital marketing and everything that’s going on the internet is the wave of the future like AI was 2 years ago and the internet was in the ‘9s is the same thing with social media. So, um, my recommendation is when you’re first starting out is finding a good team, finding a good marketing partner like it is with you guys with TREM, but understanding that once you do find those resources is up to you go to go out there, make the content, make the calls and execute because that’s what a lot of people lack.

Carlos: Definitely when you know and I we have this conversation we’re director of marketing all the time and there is a a variable that is very important where she’s considering your time and your money and where are you going to allocate them because you know there is within the resources that are available in the real estate space you know if you have a lot of time and you want to do yourself you know you want to grow your business yourself you might you know find yourself trying to build all of it at your you know at your own pace and it may drain a lot of your time if you don’t find the right tools or the right team or the right brokerage. Correct. To help you succeed, right? Uh the other resources that we’ve seen people um having at the disposal are larger companies or marketing companies that are not having a tailor, you know, approach to their brand, are not customizing, you know, based on again the partner and the client. Where do you want to be successful? What market do you want to generate? What type of property do you want to represent either on the buyer or the selling side? Which platforms might be better for you, right? To either generate leads or generate trust, which is again important when you’re talking about these things. And you know, at TREMGroup, we have a formula which you’ve you’ve you’ve been through. So you you know on on how we you know conduct a research on on where do you want to be and what are you know what’s the right traffic that we want to attract for your business how we’re going to build that infrastructure for your business so it resonates not just with you but with the end consumer and the client that is actually searching in those markets and these platforms and how do we interconnect that with your CRM your you know the proper IDX on your website and the right tools so we and freed up mo most of you know your time and also you know earn more money and more time in the process. So when you started working, how hard was it for you to, you know, go through that research, build that website? How long did it take to be up and running and start attracting new business?

Jose: Mhm. With TREM working. I mean, I remember we had a trip planned for before the graduation that I had. Um we went to Colombia and as soon as we hit January 15th or 20th of this year, we had leads up and coming. You know, it was I was telling my mom we’re in the middle of Cartagena and I was like, “Hey, we’re already starting to get leads. We got to get back to the US to start working because we started working with you guys back in December of um last year of 2024.” So, I would say it took us about a month, month and a half to get up and running to understand the keywords, the research as well designing our website with the templates that were provided. Um kind of figure out the marketing budget that we had. Um, so about a month and a half, but then as soon as those leads started to come in, we had business and we had a lot of work because um, especially when you’re starting and you’re kind of getting used to this new model, you have to kind of structure your day in a way where one you start prospecting, but then you have to follow up, but then you have to do your appointments in the afternoon and execute on your buyers or listing presentations. So, I think it teaches you, especially with the TREM model, um, a lot of discipline and just focusing on executing the task day to day cuz not only do you have the CRM attached to it, you have the website, you have the marketing material, but you put that all together and you have a a system that’s going to generate business. And it’s just a matter of getting that return on investment and making the right move because I mean there’s a lot of ways we’re getting hit every single day with advertising from different agents especially in the traditional routes like mailers and on postcards etc. But if you look at it we’re four or five hours on our phones every day. And I think that’s where people are going to be more successful in and the more you post, the more content you do, the more marketing, the more um awareness you build eventually like Brian Certain and like Frederick Uckland and Steve Gold, like these people that were million-doll list in New York that are like kind of the most famous realtor, it’s going to be the same concept, but with trend marking. That’s the way we see it and that’s how we believe we’re going to be successful.

Carlos: I mean, we’ve seen through the latest numbers that over 98 96% of real estate transactions start by browsing on a mobile or desktop device. We know that yes, adapting to detail is no longer the past. It’s the present and the future. So, if you’re definitely not having the right strategy, you know, to build your business and to attract the right client on the platforms that they’re searching on, you’re leaving a lot of opportunity in the table, right? not not taking advantage of correct what what you should at the moment but you know that’s that’s a very interesting topic and you know you were mentioning earlier how easy it is for you that you’ve compare you know different CRM and you compare different tools how easy it is for you to you know manage your business now where with the right tools in place

Jose: uh I mean I wake up every single day I already have my task on the followup boss which is the CRM that we view. Um, I have my emails for the day. I kind of have my calendars. I mean, everything’s synced and I’m super organ or organized and I like to have everything, you know, written and structured and kind of visually. And I think with Followup Boss cuz it’s tied against IDX Boost and then our website as well, it’s just super easy to understand. And I mean I wake up typically in a day I prospect for a couple hours and then based on everything that I did in the morning already shows up because everything’s tied in together. So I think that’s super useful. And then I have a corporate background. I did software sales. I use more complicated CRM like Salesforce and HubSpot that they’re super huge in. I think the one that you guys use to follow a boss is perfect because visually it’s super super easy and I would tell you a baby and you know someone on the older end can use it. That’s how I think it’s simple.

Carlos: So I appreciate that. Now we were also talking about how easy it is for you to communicate with your clients using your website. Right now you don’t rely just on the MLS or different tools to communicate with them. Can you elaborate a little bit more on, you know, how the proper website tool, the proper platform like idxboost.com has helped or helps your business dayto-day on on nurturing your clients?

Jose: Yeah, 100%. I think for all real estate agents, we face a struggle that a client sends you an apartment.com listing or a Zillow listing and then you go and check on the website cuz it looks fine on paper and then it’s pending from 3 weeks ago and you’re like, “This is completely wrong.” um or it’s a sale by owner or just the listing doesn’t exist in general. I’ve seen it. They’re fake or they’re from rental communities. They’re nowhere near Brickell, but they’re in the middle of Halia, for example. So, there’s a lot of faults in it. Of course, I think Zillow and Apartments.com do a great job in themselves to give everyone access to everything, but I think that with what we’re doing here with IDX and implementing kind of the holistic aspect of it, um it’s super easy because with a touch of a button with a link, I can share everything um from my website, from what they’ve seen and liked and favorite already directly to their phone, to the laptop, to their website. So, I can even go on my phone, search a couple properties for my clients, and in a span of 5 to 10 minutes, they have three great listings that they just spoke to me about, and then I have access to everything that they’re seeing. So, another thing I do every single morning is that I wake up, I have my task links, but I also see what they’re clicking on or if a price was reduced, so I can kind of switch everything back and forth. So, I mean, it’s a little bit of stalking, I would say, of the client cuz once you’re registered, that’s it. I can see everything. But I think it’s super useful for our end in terms of data and tracking to kind of get a hold of them and kind of put the deal through.

Carlos: I think it’s also useful for them because it gives them a more personalized experience on the site. It allows you, you know, it gives you the ability to make it a more unique experience for them and it’s very simple with a couple clicks that you can select favorites for them. They can log into the website, review them there, and they don’t have to leave your website to, you know, look at real estate in your market and what they’re interested in in the first place. So, I think it does help both. Now, also, a lot of real estate agents that watch this episode, you know, they might be looking from different markets. They might be looking from different areas. Um, what are the markets that you focus on right now? And if they were to maybe send a referral, you know, or connect with you or work with you, what are you focusing on um today, right? What markets are you working in and where do you see the value of the Miami real estate market?

Jose: Yeah, I mean, number one is Bickell. I’m a huge believer in the market. I think it’s the second financial center after Wall Street in the US. I think everyone that’s moving from the northeast, from any major city, it’s the place to go because you get Maya Beach 10 minutes away, you got the airport 10 minutes away, you got Edgewater 5 to 10 minutes away, you have the heat plane 10 minutes away, super central and it’s walkable, so you’re used to that aspect in your different city. You have great jobs, great companies moving to Brickell like Citadel, the Santiner Tower is getting built and then tons of new developments like the Cipriani, 1428, the Mandarin, etc. Right? But that’s the market I like to focus on that I brand myself with and I believe the most cuz it’s already built valuations there. So, you can buy and you’re going to have a solid product. But then there’s also markets like the Miami single family market that I strongly believe in because not only not everyone wants to live in a condo. Not everyone wants to have a view. Maybe they want um something that’s better for their family, for their kids. They want a backyard. I think that market’s great because it’s the most traditional market. Um here in South Florida, everyone knows Miami Beach. Everyone knows it’s the epicenter of what started in the 40s and the 50s. And you have waterfront living. You can put your boat out there. And that’s what a lot of successful agents focus on. And I mean, it’s my dream to sell a 20 $30 million waterfront home and we’re going to make it happen with you guys. I’ve also done a lot of Sunny Al’s Beach um or keywords there as well. It’s a great Airbnb short-term rental market. Um there’s many people um from different countries cuz I lived in Sunny Isles from Argentina, from Brazil, from Russia concentrated in that little strip. Super family oriented. The school is amazing as well. And then in Sunny Isles you have the beach. Um it’s super um located next to Aventura as well, Bal Harbor Shop. So it’s in a very luxurious area. And then the other one that I would like to expand in the future is for Lauderdale at the end of the day. I mean just in Flagler Village, there’s more than 20 projects coming up from short-term rental to residential projects. Um and I think that market is super underrated. Um and it’s not saturated yet. So the value that you’re going to get there compared to many different sections of the city is going to be very very different. It’s going to be very good for the investor. But I see a lot of potential in that area. I see laas growing a lot, getting more luxurious restaurants and then the buildings are going to be great. Some of my favorites include viceroy um natiivo short-term rental. They got guaranteed lease back programs and I can talk and on about it but those are the markets that I believe in the most.

Carlos: Amazing. Amazing. Let me ask you this. What has been the most valuable piece of advice that you’ve received since, you know, since you joined the industry that you’ve stayed stuck to?

Jose: Man, that’s a good question. I have to give it a second. Um, I think the number one thing is that it’s lead generation, I would say. even even though it it sounds kind of basic, but um it’s going to come down to how many people are you speaking to a day, how many people are you calling every day, and that little number is going to give you a conversion rate, and that’s going to be the number of homes that you sold. If you’re not doing that on a daily basis, then in a couple months, you’re going to look at your banking account. You’re going to be like, why didn’t I sell or rent anything? But lead generation, prospecting, being on the phone with a client is the number one thing because one, you can hear their feedback. What are they looking for? You start um kind of learning about the different aspects of other markets in the country, why they’re moving here to South Florida, but you start building that relationship with them because there’s one thing, daily leads coming into the website, but you’re not doing anything about them. You’re not executing on them. You’re not building the trust in the relationship because once that’s set, those are going to become lifetime partners and lifetime um I would say even family members because they’re going to refer to you and then eventually who knows what could happen there. It’s building your book of business and that’s what’s going to help you be successful in the next 20-25 years in the business. So lead generation, conversion, getting on the phone, but just being in constant contact with people. If you’re not doing that, then this is not for a lot of people.

Carlos: I like that you said that because any business needs new business walking through the door, right? Attracting the right business so you know they can grow. And I I love everything that you said, but we were talking earlier about, you know, all the value that you bring to your clients because like you just mentioned, you know, focusing on your clients, providing value into their unique needs when they’re searching is extremely important because again, like you said, it creates loan type relationships, referrals from there on. So, I want you to speak a little bit more about all of the capabilities that the Osorio Suarez team has because I know you know you work alongside an amazing team and you can help them by finding the right place but advising on the right location. You did um counseling and guidance if you need to get into the right schools. So dive a little deeper into you know everything that you guys do as a team and share with us a couple of those experiences.

Jose: Mhm. Yeah. And I think um our basis and the value that we really bring to the Osorio Suarez team is that we went through the exact same process a lot of people are just going through. We went through a lot of the same struggles, a lot of the same problems. And since we’ve been there, done that. I mean, my family and I, we moved here from Colombia um when I was 5 years old in 2009 in the middle of the financial crisis to kind of figure out things. My dad, he worked, you know, very very bottom level jobs. He, you know, sold pizzas. He did everything, delivery. And my mom, you know, worked as a handler as well. She washed, you know, floors and everything. So, it’s just that they understand the tough situations people are in, even in very luxurious places as well with very different needs and that the system here in the United States is super different than from many other countries like Colombia, Argentina, and Mexico. So, that’s the number one thing that a lot of the issues that they’re facing. Maybe it’s putting their taxes here. Maybe it’s, you know, transferring their funds from Colombia cuz my father’s a CPA. He’s an accountant. Um, or kind of helping your trust being built here, having your kid put in a good college with a scholarship. We went through all that. I went through school here as well. Um, I went to FIU. I won a full ride scholarship. So, I have a background helping the student, the educational part. Same thing with the sports background. I played baseball. I was going to play baseball in New York. So, it’s just you kind of put together and the goal with the Osorio Suarez team and and the group is to kind of give any person that’s relocating to South Florida the service that they need that they can count on us for anything from getting a car, from getting your kid to go to school, from getting the the the home of your dreams, from finding a job cuz I did the resume building. I have connections in the corporate world. So, I think it just comes with time. It comes with with the effort, the experience that we’re putting, but we just want to make the relocation process as simple as possible and make it something that, you know, they can refer other people to us and something that can feel good and family friendly cuz that’s how we operate and that’s how we’re going to continue doing it.

Carlos: Well, this is going to be the first one of many because we know we’re going to continue to work together. We’re going to have amazing, you know, case studies to share. Um, is there any story that you want to share with one of your transactions that left a mark that you want to maybe share with everybody viewing?

Jose: Yeah, of course. Uh, I’ll share one that closed a couple couple weeks ago that was probably the most stressful one and one that’s educational. So, when you’re planning to move to Brickell, just understand that you need to move with enough time. You need to move with enough um security deposits as well. in Brickell, they require four security deposits for a lot of the buildings. Maybe the association takes two to three weeks to accept you. They’re stricter on your credit. Um they’re requiring more bank statements. They’re requiring more background checks. So, it’s just when you’re going to come in to live in an environment that’s becoming more luxurious every single day, you have to have that expectation that you have to prepare months prior. So, I had a uh transaction that closed um like the first couple weeks of June where we started the process two weeks prior. And I told them I was like, “Hey, listen. We are very close and tight on the deadline. Just know you now might be able to get accepted on time and you might have to stay in a hotel if your lease is up where they were, right?” So, I told them about it. They said, “Hey, it’s fine. We’ll find something out and everything.” Um it was a high rental. So when the day comes of the closing, they’re not accepted yet. And I was freaking out because they had all their stuff coming in. Suitcases, all their clothes, all their belongings, their movers were on the way as well. They weren’t accepted yet. And at the end of the day, we did everything as fast as we could, but then there’s a lot of things in the business that you can’t control yourself as an agent. Um, because there’s the associations, there’s the owners, there’s the paperwork that the other parties have to sign and that wasn’t done yet on their part. So, I mean, we went on and off. I screamed a couple of times. We all got mad at each other. Um, but it all resolved. They stayed in the hotel a couple nights. I helped out a little bit on that end because at the end of the day, you want to kind of help your clients out and give them the best experience possible. Um, and you want to continue that relationship. But just for all the renters, for all the buyers coming into Brickell especially, do things with time. Prepare on time because they’re strict. They want good tenants. And I believe that’s a great thing because you want solid security in your building. But just don’t try to rush the process in two to three weeks because it’s very, very hard. And then us as the realtors, we get blamed. So that’s my experience. It happens, but that’s the learning experience that comes with being in the business.

Carlos: Yeah. I mean, it’s always nice to hear it, you know, firsthand from somebody that’s leaving it. And the fact that we can provide this value to, you know, anybody that’s watching, it just makes it even more impactful, right, at the end of the day. So, I mean, for anybody that’s watching that might want to get in contact with you, can you share where they can find you? How can they get in contact with you? Yeah, of course. So, my Instagram and all my social handles are Jose Osorio Suarez. Um, and same thing with our websites, it’s osoriosuarezrealestate.com Um, I always answer. I’m super fast to reply cuz that’s the number one thing when you’re dealing with people and clients, you kind of want that service. So, feel free to shoot me a text, send me a DM, call me because I want to be there for your transaction. I want to grow and I want to see the city grow. At the end of the day, I want Miami to be positioned as the number one city in America. I want to be part of it. And just know that you’re coming from someone that has been through a lot of experience here in South Florida. Not only just in transactions, but through all the little details from the associations, the schools, the universities, everything that comes in within living in Miami. And I feel like that’s the service that we can definitely offer. um not only just just being a realtor, but an actual friend that can help you and can guide you through the whole process. And again, I can also give you the list of the top rated restaurants, the museums to go to, the beaches, because Miami is not only just a partying scene. I think it’s more of a, you know, I like to use that word like a holistic health and wellness field. You know, there’s so many new things coming up. There’s paddle, there’s pickle ball courts, um go wrong along the Miami River, the Bickell River, um the South Point Park um place as well. So, it’s not just partying. There’s many different things that you can do and that’s the Miami that I like to go to and the one that I like to follow.

Carlos: Well, thank you so much for that. I mean, at The Real Estate Marketing Group, we, you know, we build with purpose. We have a you know tailor approach to every single one of our partners because your success is our success and you know we’ve seen so many things of you know we fail so many times fast forward that you know we learn from it and we like to grow and and learn from our mistakes. So collaborating with our partners collaborating with you know driven individuals like yourself is extremely important to us. Supporting each other on this journey is extremely important. So, I want to thank you once more for joining the pipeline today. I really appreciate you for being here today. And again, like I said, I know this is just the first one of many. So, thank you so much for everybody watching. Thank you, Jose, for being here today. And I really hope we can repeat this soon enough.

Jose: No, no, my pleasure, Carlos. And thank you so much for having me. I kind of want to leave the the audience with um the last note is that if you’re considering help for your marketing needs for your website and kind of want to have everything figured out, then this is the best program, the best source, 100% I recommend it because not only if you look up the the top producing teams in Florida, I think half of them are using you guys. So, it’s working. The best teams are doing it. And why not work with the best? I think that’s the idea. If you’re going to do something right, do it in the best way possible. Give it your all. Um, but give yourself a chance as a real estate agent because I think the profession seems kind of like a lucky career or something based on economic cycles or on who you know. I think you can make a business out of this. You can create generational wealth on real estate because what can you do with those commissions? You can go out and buy real estate yourself, become an investor. You can then build buildings, do commercials. That’s the way I see it. So, I think using TREM is the best way to go. Um, save up, use the resources, but the return on investment that you see is going to be 100% worth it and I recommend it and just go do the research yourself and the answers will be right there for you.

Carlos: Thank you, Jose. Thank you for that, I really appreciate it.

Jose: Of course. Thank you.

The post Jose Osorio: How to Grow Your Real Estate Business with Digital Marketing appeared first on TREMGroup.

What if your real estate marketing actually worked like a machine and generating qualified leads, closing deals, and scaling your brand? In this video, TREMGroup’s Chief Marketing Officer reveals the 5 marketing pillars that helped agents generate millions in GCI.

Whether you’re a solo agent, a luxury broker, or a developer, this is your roadmap to real estate success in 2025 and beyond. Whether you’re launching, scaling, or tired of marketing that doesn’t convert; this is how you turn your website, ads and CRM into a real estate growth engine. With the right system, you can build a money-making machine that runs on ROI.

Video full transcription

Carlos: This is a collaboration between the pipeline and the lab where you learn about business, but it’s also Steven’s favorite or Steven channel. Um, for those of you who don’t know, who you should already, but Steven Masumoto, he’s the director of marketing, but he’s also considered the chief financial officer for the real estate marketing group and for every single one of our partners in the real estate industry. single agents, brokers, and developers who have come to us after either trying everything else that’s out there without any successful results or when they wanted it to start the right way and they’re looking for the right partners to grow their business when it, you know, when results really really matter, they come to us and they love talking to Stephen.
So today I had the chance to bring you to know his strategy and you know years and years of research and research into what has worked really really worked for our partners nationwide and I think he’s very very interested in sharing it with every single one of you. So Stephen tells us a little bit more about you know the ultimate guide for real estate professionals who really want to grow their business into what they matter and what they should be focused on.

Stephen: Well, Carlos, thank you for that intro. Um, just to confirm, my technical position as chief marketing officer, but my goal and the reason I do marketing or we build tech or do any of these things is because we want to build financial wealth for our clients. So, I pride myself in doing marketing, technology, all these things just as a correlation to build financial wealth for yourselves, for us, for everyone. Because at the end of the day, why did you become a real estate agent? Why do you start a business? Why do you even get a job? Because you want financial freedom. So going back to the topic of today is basically for the past 10 years we have specialized in real estate in the luxury real estate market specifically and pre-construction and we spent over $50 million in ads between Google and Meta. Um and we’ve tested over and over and over and to simplify it I am a huge data nerd. So basically over this past 10 years um at the end of the day everything we’re going to say is going to sound like common sense but it took like you said testing and testing and trying and client feedback. Everything we’ve built even the technology the the map search filters, the landing pages was clients feedback. I remember in 2017 we had a huge client. Um back then we mainly focused on SEO. but we didn’t have it built out to the point we do now. We ranked him number one for Miami Beach waterfront homes for sale. We ranked him number one for Venetian Islands homes for sale. And he walks in the office. He goes, “Stephen, I love this. This is awesome. I use it in my listing presentations, but where are my leads?” And I look at him, I was very technical back then. Thanks to you, I’m a little bit more sociable. When I looked at him, I’m like, SEO isn’t leads. SEO is search engine optimization. That’s ranking number one organically in Google. He looked at me like, Stephen, I have no idea what you just said. So, we went back to the drawing board. We went, “Okay, not only do the clients want leads, actually.” So, we focus on leads. We went to the next stage. We were doing Facebook ads back in 2017. We got our client 300 leads. Maybe one out of every hundred was good. He was targeting Brazil. Um, most of the clients couldn’t tell if it was a hotel, or what it was. They don’t remember filling out. And then we realize, hey, we can generate a whole bunch of leads. Are they good leads? So, the purpose today is not only to educate you on the five most important things that we’ve learned. Uh you can call them the five pillars or whatever you like, but basically what you should be asking is whether you hire us, whether you do it yourself, whether you’re doing your own marketing, but what you should ask your marketing agency, these five things. Because if you understand these five things, you’re already 99% ahead of your competition and definitely probably even your own marketing agency.

Carlos: Before we get there and before you, you release a strategy and you share with everybody watching today, let’s talk about first what’s available today for real estate professionals nationwide.

Stephen: That is a fantastic question. So before we get into the five pillars, there’s three options available in the real estate industry and we can say six total because there’s also three other options available to anyone in any industry. We’ll call it a service- based industry. So whether you’re a roofer, a dentist, whatever the case may be. So the first three options that are available just for real estate agents, the very first option are luxury websites. They’re basically um build you a beautiful homepage, maybe some okay internal landing pages, but we call that a digital business card. You need a website regardless. And separate from your broker’s website, separate from your YouTube or Instagram profile, you need a domain that you own. That is basic 101 marketing. When somebody searches your name, searches your brand, you need a website. And especially for most of our clients that are in the luxury industry, which I’m going to get into the second option, they want to keep an affluent status, a very luxurious look. The problem with those, at least with the track record from every client that comes to us, there’s two options available out there. They’re in LA. I won’t name drop anything right now. Um, but if you know website companies in LA for real estate, you’ll probably figure out the two companies. Basically all the feedback that I’ve received from clients that have come to us is they’ve never received one lead. They were with them for two years, three years, four years, had a beautiful website, loved their website, and never generated one lead. And if they did generate a lead, it was most likely from someone searching their name from their own network. The second option, and I can’t name these products because most of them have been sold to private equity companies. Um, you can see that it’s public information or what we call the cookie cutter softwares. So, the cookie cutter softwares, the Boomtowns, the KV Cores, the Ylopos, the real geeks, um these softwares, the feedback I get, they do generate leads. They’re not the highest quality leads, and it’s not proven to a process that will basically generate your return on investment. Investing X amount in Y amount of time, this is how much you’ll receive. I’ve never seen that or heard that. maybe heard one or two case studies where they did get sales but nowhere near to the possibility of what they could have gotten. And the major issue there especially for luxury is you lose all luxury. So with a cookie cutter website and you could have the best backend CRM if there’s no leads in there or good leads it doesn’t matter how many powerful tools you have um there’s no one there to use them on. So the second option is cookie cutter websites or softwares like that. And then the third option is the only option that will actually generate your return on investment. We call them the multi-billion dollar platforms. So you can run ads on Zillow, you can run ads with Realtor or Redfin or or Trullia, whatever the case may be, Homes.com. The problem there is it’s hit or miss, of course, and at the end of the day, you could invest 10,000, make 20,000 per month in sales, but like Tom Ferry, like all these top coaches, you’re never building a business or a brand at the end of the day. That’s the most important thing that you should be doing, especially for longevity. If you’re just paying for transactions, you’re just making Zillow rich and you don’t really want to give them 40% of your commission for every sale. So, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if you love your broker to death. It doesn’t matter. Whatever the case may be, the number one rule for any agent, for any business, for any person, and why we’re creating content right now, is branding. Branding is the key. You are the business. You are the brand. Whether it’s your name or your brand name, whatever the case may be, you need to be building that day by day.

So, those are the three major options available for real estate agents to do marketing today. I don’t know, do you want to hear the other three just in case real quick?

Carlos: Yeah.

Stephen: So, the three that you could use in any industry is basically you can um hire freelancers which at the end of the day you’re going to lose all your time. They’re not working together. um you think you’re saving money, but you’re losing a lot of time and a lot of headache. You can use things like Fiverr, things like that, and then the quality is substantially low. The second thing you can do is hire a general marketing agency. Uh we’re in Miami right now, so you could just go to marketing agencies in Miami. The major issue there, they know nothing about real estate. E-commerce is nothing like service-based industries. So if they don’t understand real estate, if they haven’t done it, possibly it’s going to be a huge learning curve for them. Um, and a lot of marketing agencies specialize in launching Google ads or building websites, things like that. They don’t think of it from the end user perspective. So the fourth pillar is going to dive deep into this. And then the last option is you can hire an in-house marketing team. Um, which becomes very expensive. Imagine each salary is like let’s say $2,000 or plus. You need to when you work with us, you have at least five departments. That’s $10,000 in salaries. If you’re paying them 2,000 just for those five specialists and at the end of the day, you’re going to spend at least six years going through trial and error until you figure it out. So, we’re able to do in 6 months what will take you six years and a lot of headache, hair pulling, and money.

Carlos: Well, I want to talk because I do talk to a lot of our partners day in and day out. And you know, going back to some of those options, you know, when you go to any of these website development companies that are in the real estate industry space that have set themselves a name for it, I’ve realized and my clients have told me that this they design and program a website that is hard for you to even control. You always will need, you know, their help and, you know, their support to make any changes on your website. So you don’t really have control or ownership of that. Second, they didn’t build their own idx solution. When you’re in the real estate industry, you need to showcase the available inventory. You need to showcase the properties available in your market to your clients, to your end consumers. And it’s not just showcasing the properties because there’s multiple IDX companies out there that can integrate into your site. But those IDX companies are not thinking about the user experience. They’re not thinking about providing value to you or to your clients. So, what ends up happening is it’s a clunky 9090 uh deal experience where your, you know, your buyers and sellers go into your website, look at one or two properties, and since it’s so bad the experience, they end up leaving. So, you’re not going to get any actual results there. And I’ve heard this time and time again.
My second comment on the big platforms is like you said, you mentioned this is they’re not tailoring that branding aspect to you or your market. They’re not thinking about elevating you as the professional in your market and they’re not even having a tailor approach to your campaigns, to your marketing, to your solution. They don’t, they’re not actually doing even a research. They’re asking you what zip code you want? You know, they’re thinking about launching an ad with the minimum budget without considering other aspects that you’re going to talk about fairly soon and that it doesn’t end up being either consistent, reliable, or a long-term strategy whatsoever. And you know when you talk about companies like zillow.com, realtor.com, apartments.com you know while it’s very well known nationwide for the nationwide consumer you also know those leads or those clients are being called by 20 different agents. You’re spending you know an arm and a leg trying to dominate a zip code and then the lead that you’re getting is being called by 20 other real estate professionals in the same market. some of them with the same product knowledge or some of them with more than you are. So, you’re competing against other agents for the same lead on a lead that you pay a high uh premium price for. And in some cases, like you said, you have to share a 40% of your commission to them. And again, you’re not building something for yourself. You’re not elevating your brand. um you know so I think it’s important that we touch on those as well which makes what we build what TREMGroup has built so much relevant for the audience and everybody that’s watching. So if you’re considering investing in ads, if you’re considering staying in the real estate industry, not on the seasonal side for the long run, you know yourself as an authority dominating your market and you know really making something happen on a transactional basis and elevating your business. Let’s talk about those five pillars and what you should be focusing on.

Stephen: Before I jump to the five pillars, I’m going to answer what you said re-emphasize on. So the first part, the luxury websites, the reason we know like you were saying, you don’t have full control. It takes probably at least a week if not months to just change an image on the website, things like that. The reason we know is because that used to be our business model eight over eight years ago. we would get our client. We were a very boutique company. We weren’t yet to the formula to the financial wellbeing of the case studies like we hadn’t reached that level. We’re still in the process of figuring out what we have today. Um and our primary owners, the two original founders come from design and development and they were more focused on the tech and website part of it in the beginning. So we would get a design. So we would hire a designer. We would have to design the homepage, design the pages and then we would have to code the pages. And the whole process took like four months. So we understand that and we built our own technology idx boost because of that because we started realizing how many things do you really need? Wouldn’t speed and optimize and control the ability to change things on your website. Super simple, super easy to where you can change a picture in a few seconds. of course knowing where to go which we can show you.

Carlos: I remember I remember when we went through this process, our partners and and you know the visionaries behind the design and the technology and the whole um company, we were going in a race to become preferred v vendors for a nationwide brokerage. And I remember in those initial interviews, they told us their biggest pain point of what their agents were complaining about was that speed to action, the ability for them to control their site and that it took anywhere between 90 to 6 months to even have a website up and running. And I remember like you said, you know, Alex went and he’s like, “Okay, we in some custom cases that’s exactly what we’re doing, so we need to switch.” So they went in, they got into producing mode. They thought about everything that an agent needed, how they needed to control it, and they had already built a large part of it on the IDX side. So they just went ahead and built this, you know, the website builder component, and then they elevated that and gave control back. So big shout out to our partners Alex, Tino, Giancarlo because you know they have put time, soul, resources, energy to provide value back to the entire industry.

Stephen: So I brought Max in there too. No, but our team has spent over $3 million and countless years time and money in order which that’s number one in the pillars um in order to to build a technology of that that but I want to also emphasize um on what you were saying we were able to keep like you were saying the second aspect of hyper targeting high-quality leads which the second like the cookie cutter websites can’t do while maintaining a high level of brand and luxury. So we didn’t take away from the luxury while still being able to provide high quality leads. So we were able to fuse one and two and number three the multi-billion dollar platforms what we were able to do is um we we realized that just think if I bought this this microphone or this camera or something these lights from Amazon I didn’t buy it from John’s light store I didn’t buy it from Mike’s mic store u mic Mike Mike’s microphones I bought it from Amazon so when you go and buy a property through Zillow not only are they sharing the lead with 20 other agents, some better, some worse than you, but they didn’t buy it with you, they bought it with Zillow. So Zillow is the Amazon of the real estate industry. What Amazon is to e-commerce, Zillow is to real estate. So all of those things we’ve seen from the luxury websites with no leads to the cookie cutter websites that generate low quality leads that you lose all your luxury to the multi-billion dollar platforms. And that’s how all of this was created essentially.

Carlos: Well just as a quick parenthesis I mean TREMGroup is you know uh the number one lead marketing agency right now again working with developers brokers and single agents nationwide especially on the top markets now globally too we’re working with a couple partners international but I want to talk about our team too because it’s over 70 real estate marketing professionals from designers programmers success managers deployment marketing tech team, you know, where with over 10 years of combined experience, we have all driven further into the future. What worked and we have, you know, created with purpose and value. So again, you know, big shout out to the entire team at the real estate marketing group. It’s all because of you guys. So

Stephen: We’re proud of you guys.

Carlos: Proud of you guys. So now I think we’re ready to dive into the ultimate guide of what you should be looking at in 2025, 2026. If you’re planning on establishing yourself, dominating your market and growing your business, what should you be doing?

Stephen: So that’s a fantastic question. What should you be doing? So the very very first part of the pillar and everything that I’m going to say here today is how we train our team. And I want you to understand if you do these five things, if you study these five things and you understand, I can teach you how to build a website. I can teach you how to do automations and integrations and CRM, whether it’s follow-up boss, high level, it doesn’t matter your broker’s CRM. I can teach you Google ads in 5 minutes. That’s not the hard part. that there’s no reason to teach you any of that if you don’t understand these five things because from a holistic perspective you the end goal is to make a transaction in a certain amount of time. So the very first pillar is understanding the two most important resources that any human being has today in 2025 and most likely still moving forward. Time and money. Ironically, people think money is the most valuable asset. It’s not. Time is. Why? Money. You could get paid hourly. You can make 10 bucks an hour. Now, I guess 15. You can make a million dollars. You can make $100. You can make $1,000. Money can be not infinite, but it can fluctuate dynamically. Time you cannot buy more of none of us. It doesn’t matter how wealthy you are or how not wealthy you are. So it doesn’t matter what background you come from, time is the most valuable asset. So when we train our teams, we train the team that they need to put an entrepreneurial mindset. When you hire a marketing agency, when you do ads yourself, whether it’s Google or whether it’s your marketing agency, nobody can tell the difference between a good lead or a bad lead. Anybody can turn an ad on. Anybody can design an ad. Anybody can build a website at the end of the day. Are you generating the right type of person and is that person actually leading to a conversation to a relationship essentially a transaction and did the transaction take 9 years or were you able to do that in less than a year? So, right away, the way we’ve built our entire program and why we say you should do this at least 12 months is because we’ve broken down all the cost that it’s going to take you for your ad spend, whether it’s Google Meta or both, the technology and services that we provide, and we’ve broken it down to in 12 months, let’s assume you invest $35,000. That’s the average amount that one of our marketing teams will minimum invest between their ad spend and us over a 12-month period. So, we know over 12 months, my initial investment has been $35,000. What we train our team is from the moment you sign up with us, you are on board to the end of your contract, we should generate you a bare bare bare minimum of 2x return. Assuming that that’s 3% like most transactions are in resale, like you spoke in your in your last podcast, 5% for pre-construction, but we use the 3% variable. So, we always want more for you. So a 3% variable, we know that we need to sell a minimum of 2.5 million. So 2.5 million is going to equate to about $75,000 in GCI. Of course, before paying taxes or brokerage, things like that. So in a year, you just over doubled your money. You invested, let’s say, $35,000, you made over 70,000. So try the stock market, try Bitcoin, try anything. Try real estate. Even at a 10% return, it’ll take you seven years to double your money. at a 40% return, it’ll take you over two years to generate double your money. So, our main objective bare minimum is to 2x your immediate return. But not only that, now we built you a full business. You have a database full of brand new leads, high quality level leads that are also in different stages, which we’re going to get into the other pillars, diving in deeper to what that means. But you’re building a brand, you’re building a business, you’re building momentum. If I invested today in Bitcoin and in six months I made 20 grand. Yeah, I invested six months and made let’s say I I invested 20 grand and made five grand. So I made $5,000 six months of my time investing 20,000. I’m at 25% return. But you’re not building a business. You’re not building a brand. You’re not building what I like to call a money-making machine. So essentially our core offer is we build you a lead generation machine in 30 days and we build your money-making machine in less than a year. So understanding those two variables and how we train our team because essentially we have clients making four, five, 10, 20x return on their investment es especially year-over-year. Just look at some of our case studies. And don’t get me wrong, we’re we’re not saying this is magic. We’re this is data. This is this is solid solid financial wealth building based off of numbers and not everybody is getting the results but we we’re able to see and correlate exactly what is wrong where to fix it. I just did a study last week on why I had these clients generating such low cost per lead with such high quality and why these other clients were generating a higher cost per lead that the quality wasn’t low but they could get more leads and higher quality and it was just something as simple as the colors on the page. I had another client just adding two buttons, not changing anything in traffic, the exact same amount ad spent. October last year, 2024, they generated 30 leads. Just adding those two buttons in the right place, they went from 30 leads to 180 leads per month. They’re averaging about 200 leads per month with the exact same budget. So, we’re we’re heavily data driven, always improving. Everything we’ve done has been tested over and over and over. And that’s the beauty about being with us that I hear from clients all the time is we see so many accounts in so many different markets. never ever cross reference any client’s information, but we’re able to see what works for here, what’s broken here, what’s making this, and we implement that across the board. So all of our clients get the best benefit from from that information, from finding that out.

Carlos: We call these the digital transformation, digital transformation of of a business.

Stephen: That’s the third pillar.

Carlos: So let’s let’s hit the second.

Stephen: So the second pillar is what we call the wheel. So the wheel and we’re recording right now. I don’t know if we’re going to add uh visuals eventually. If not, you could probably download them below. Is our wheel is our secret formula. So, our secret formula, it’s not secret. I’m giving it away. I’ll tell you what it is. The goal is that you watch our content. You can do it yourself if you like. Um we’re starting a community also where you can do it with us. We over the past 10 years, it was only we do it for you. Now, we’re trying to expand to to so that this is more available to all agents. Um and basically the wheel is broken down into nine three main segments. Attract, convert, sell. So attract is you need to generate traffic just like you have foot traffic at your office. You need people to get to your website. So no matter what you need traffic whether it’s from Google ads, meta ads, LinkedIn, Snapchat, YouTube, whatever the case may be, we have a very specific formula how we do it. But regardless whether you hire us or you do it yourself, you’re going to need traffic. That’s how we attract and we attract the right people. Then most agencies stop there. They get you a bunch of impressions, clicks, and this is where they get stuck is conversion. So that’s a that’s the second part with the other three parts of the pillar is once the traffic actually gets to your website, why is the person actually going to give you their name, email, phone number? Why are they actually going to provide you their information? So we have a very specific tactic on how we convert traffic into an actual name, email, phone number. And again a name, numeral, phone number, leads doesn’t necessarily mean dollars. So the third step is sell, attract, convert, sell. So how do we actually do the offline side? All right, we generated the traffic, we got them to the website. First, we generate the impression, then we generated the traffic, then we generated the lead. Now the offline, how do we actually turn this name, email, phone number into a conversation? Once we talk to the conversation, are they even buying? Is it even the right price point of our market? Is it even our farming area?

Carlos: The timeline

Stephen: And the the third is the timeline of purchase. We don’t they could be buying in two, three years but for us we want you generating that ROI in less than a year. So if they’re not buying in less than a year, less than 6 months, less than 3 months for us, for our team, that is not a quality lead. And then essentially now that you have a conversation with the correct lead, are you actually meeting this person face to face? I’ve I’ve heard all kinds of stories, good, bad, ugly, but essentially when you meet somebody face to face, you see their car, you see their watch, you see their demeanor, you see whatever the case may be, you’re like, “Hey, I want to work with more people like this or I don’t I’ve don’t I have a couple funny stories, too.” When they meet the person, it’s like, I don’t want a lead like that.

Carlos: I think it’s also safe to mention that it’s not e-commerce. And when people are buying real estate that either, you know, looking for an investment property, a home that they want to purchase, they’re either upgrading or downsizing. And these are not decisions that people take in 24 hours on the making to decide. So, you know, give yourself the space to know, like you said, it’s not magic. So yes, you need a proven system. You need the right strategy. You need the right team. But you also need to understand the cycle of your clients, what they’re searching for, what their needs are, and how you can measure all of these into your formula. So I’m not going to interrupt from there on.

Stephen: No, no, you’re I want to add to what you’re saying. It is not e-commerce. I over 10 years ago I did Amazon e-commerce things like that and I worked with business owners and I had business owners tell me it’s like I had a click why didn’t they buy and it these were 50 $100 $200 products where I can add a credit card and purchase. Imagine real estate is essentially the largest purchase that someone’s going to make. Doesn’t matter how wealthy they are. What other things are there that are more expensive? Not your car is not more expensive. Your boat’s not more expensive. So essentially, real estate is going to be the largest transaction of most people’s lives. So yes, not only does that apply to real estate, but even in the e-commerce world, there’s a a buyer life cycle. It’s just shorter. And you can add a credit card. We’re a couple years away from adding a credit. We’re working on that, I promise. Um but but yes, is is understanding the and that’s that’s number four. Number four, the fourth pillar is understanding that. So before we get to to that one, let’s get to number three. So the wheel is how we assess. If you speak to one of our sales team members, they can assess using the wheel um where you are right now without using us. Are you going niche? Are do you have the correct infrastructure? Where are you generating your cold traffic? Are your landing pages matching the traffic that you’re generating? Do you have a conversion strategy? What is your your your email, your nurture? Like >> as your CRM, >> um the retargeting, remarketing. So I’m going step by step. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 and then what’s your follow-up process? And then number nine is the most important part of the wheel is the feedback loop. Like I mentioned, just Google as big of a multi-billion dollar platform, they can’t tell what a good lead or bad lead is. They’re just going for whatever you’re going after to generate you the best cost per lead. So if this area is generating you 100 leads at $10 a lead, they’re going to go after that not knowing that that’s not even the lead you want to work with. And I guarantee your marketing agency knows even less. They’re going to be like, “Hey, but I I got you 50 leads at at $5 a lead.” Yeah, they’re they’re

Carlos: Looking at a different market. They’re looking

Stephen: I was going to say

Carlos: Window shopping. They might not be

Stephen: It’s the king of Nigeria or something trying to donate, whatever the case may be, but it’s not somebody that’s really serious in buying. So, it doesn’t matter how low cost the lead is. If it’s not the person you want to work with, none of that matters.

Carlos: In most cases, you know, you don’t want to go for the cheapest lead. You want to go for high intended quality keywords. They might be a little bit more competitive, but if it’s more competitive, there’s definitely more value in that lead. So, I mean, I’ll let you

Stephen: That’s for a whole another podcast. So, don’t worry, we’ll dive into all the technical. So, the third thing is what we call the digital transformation. So, the digital transformation is how we actually implement the wheel into your business. So, of course, you talk to our sales team, you sign, you get from there, you go to our onboarding. So the digital transformation starts at your onboarding all the way to the last day of your contract. And we have stage by stage where you should be at, how you should be at. And for our team, we have it broken down into weeks. And for the clients, we have it broken down into stages. Clients travel a lot, things like that. So we want to make sure you’re at the correct stage at the correct time. And we’re a huge relationship based company. We want the best success for our clients. So we always customize everything to our clients. Um, maybe you’re out of town for the summer, whatever the case may be. Just talk to us and we’re we’re always willing to work with you, especially we love working with people that love working with us. Um, but the digital transformation is actually how our teams implement. So, like I mentioned, we have five specialists, a success manager that delegates all these things, gathers your assets, grabs your logos, your head shot, your bios, helps get your vision, all the things that you want, envision for for your future, and they delegate that to the other four technical teams, the marketing managers, people that deal in Google ads and meta ads, our designers, top Photoshop specialists that know the real estate industry, know the luxury, have been trained specifically in our process. what I call our marketing tech team. They actually without them, people like me that do Google ads are lost. They’re actually the ones that connect everything outside the website. So, and this is going to probably be one of the most important podcasts in the future. If you can’t track in Google Ads where that specific John Smith, Michael Perez, whatever the case may be that lead came from, what keyword, what campaign, you’re just throwing money away. So, that’s a whole class in itself. So, our marketing tech team makes everything above the website and below the website, which is your CRM or database, speak to each other. And that’s number two in the in the wheel, the infrastructure. So, most people are like, “Yeah, I have a CRM. Oh, I have a a website. Yeah, yeah, I got a Google Ads guy.” If they’re not all talking as one unit, like in in synchronicity, you don’t have anything. So, our marketing tech team specializes that. making sure your CRM has the correct automations, making sure the tags, and you track everything from beginning to end. And then the fourth technical team is our um website specialists. They’re the ones that build your website. They’re the ones that build the landing pages, the trip wires, the boost boxes, making sure everything is quick and seamless. Just because we built idx boost and the technology, still about 90% of our clients don’t even want to touch it. They want us to do it, which is fine. We we we built the technology for speed and efficiency while still keeping luxury. So you have those four teams simultaneously working on your so they each have a different responsibility in a different software in a different stage of the digital transformation and the wheel. So this is how everybody communicates with each other and number nine in the wheel that feedback loop when something is broken we know who needs to fix it and what part is broken. So that’s where the digital transformation. So by from your onboarding to the end of your contract, you meet that 2x return and you could track everything. Your total leads out of those total leads, who have you actually spoken to out of those speaking to which ones were quality? How many generated into an actual relationship? And then under contract and close deals. So that’s a digital transformation in a nutshell.

Carlos: Amazing. I mean, we’re missing

Stephen: Four. So number four is my favorite one. Number four and five, I’m actually writing a book on each one. I’m starting with four and then I’ll get to five when I’m done with four. So now that you understand you, you’re the agent, your business, the most important thing is understanding your customer, their buyer journey. So number four is what I call the rabbit hole. A lot of times marketing agencies call it a funnel. You could call it whatever the case may be. I call it the rabbit hole, the customer journey. How we take a complete stranger on the internet all the way to a transaction. So there’s six layers in between. and we probably mentioned it along the way. The very very top layer is an impression. I saw your ad. I saw it on Instagram. I saw it in Google search. I saw it on CNN or Fox, whatever your news choice is. Uh we won’t get political here. Um but when you see an ad, that’s an impression. Once you actually click on the ad, you’ve broken the barrier of being somewhere on the internet, the Twitter sphere, to actually being on your website, your digital storefront. So now you’re on my website, stephenrealtor.com, whatever the case may be. Still, I’m a random IP address. That’s layer two. Until I actually know that Carlos is on my website, you’re basically IP address 1 2 3 7 8 9. And then until you actually fill out a form or ask for more information or download a guide, do you break the barrier from being traffic on my website to an actual lead in my database? And again, like we said, name, email, phone number doesn’t pay the bills, just like likes and shares don’t. So those are the first three layers, what I call the online half. Impression, click or traffic, leader conversion. This the fourth, fifth, and six are the offline side. This is number eight in the wheel. This is actually how you follow up with your lead. So the first the fourth layer is you need to call your there’s quantity and quality. The quantity is how many times are you actually calling this person to make a connection. Most of the time our clients are like, I don’t want to bother them. We actually built an entire department called an ISA, an internal sales agent where we’ll call your leads for you because I’m a data person. Nothing will make me happier than that person coming back to me and being like, “Hey, the leads are bad, but they did their due diligence in the follow-up because I can fix it.” If you’ve never called your lead, there’s not much I can do at that point. So the quantity side is the way we train our ISAs is that you call your lead at least 10 times within a two week span. Why we really it should be in a one week is that the best leads I’ve seen are usually busy just like yourself just like yourself is like we’re all busy. Um if I call you once on a random Tuesday because I’m available that doesn’t mean you’re available. Maybe you’re in a meeting. Maybe you’re on the way to your kids soccer game. Maybe you’re at lunch with a client. Maybe you’re in a board meeting. who who knows. So, what we believe is the lead came in Tuesday morning. You’re already calling them Tuesday afternoon for really you call them right away if you’re available or your ISA or VA is available. Then you call them Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday morning, Wednesday afternoon, Thursday morning, Thursday afternoon. Not to harass or bother them, just to connect. Hey, how can I help you? I see you’re looking for a condo in Bickell. I see you’re looking for a house in Coral Gables. I see how can I we just to get from layer four to five is having a conversation. Even if they say, “Hey, no, you called the wrong number.” That’s fine. That’s data for us because calling a lead and having no one answer, you don’t know if it’s the right information. You don’t know anything. But just having someone answer already broke the barrier. Wow. Whoever lead left that information, I had a an interaction. So then the from the the fifth layer is is now we have conversations. And there’s different conversations, the good, the bad, and the ugly. It’s like I have no idea who you are. is like, “Hey, never call me again.” That’s fine. That’s a part of the digital space. But as soon as you and we can again backtrack that to where they came from and stop spending money there. The goal is that you provide us that information, good, bad, ugly, and the good we spend more money. The bad we spend no money. And we can track everything along the way. Once you have the conversations and you get to the good is yes, I’m interested. Yes, I’m looking for a house in Coral Gables. We need them to say for us yes to three things. Price point, farming area, timeline of purchase. So, if our client is going for a million dollar properties minimum, is this person buying at least a million dollar property? Hey, yeah, I’m buying 1.5. Perfect. Uh, what area looking? Well, I was searching Coral Gables, but I might be interested in Coconut Grove, Key Biscayne. It’s like, hey, that’s within the vicinity. Okay, it’s our farming area. Oh, no. I’m thinking of buying in three years. Nope. Bad lead. Oh, no. I’m actually purchasing in the next 3 to 6 months timeline of purchase. So 1.5 million near Coral Gable’s area within 3 to 6 months. So right away we had a conversation. Now we can officially say that is a lead we want to work with. At that stage we want to now meet this person face to face to show properties. We deal with a lot of international. So it’s fine if you do Zoom. A lot of our pre-construction clients they will actually go to the sales gallery and give the presentation at the sales gallery. Um, and that’s fine, but you met the person, you have a connection, you now have a relationship face to face. Once you’ve broken that barrier, of course, the due diligence, you’ve been in real estate for quite some time. If you have the ability to hire us, we know you have some transactions under your belt is under contract and close deal. We can’t help much there unless you really, really want us to, but that’s a conversation for another day. But once we’ve gotten you a stranger on the internet, to a person on your website, to a lead in your database, to a conversation, to somebody saying yes to their price point, uh, farming area and timeline of purchase, to somebody you met, you saw them pull up in a Mercedes, an Aston, a Ferrari, whatever the case may be. Um, a decent car. You see them with decent family, and you’re like, “Hey, yes, I would love to work with these people.” At that point, it’s your due diligence to put them under contract and close the deal. We haven’t made it that far yet, but our clients are doing wonders. Like, like just check out our case studies. We’re we have tons more. These are just the ones we published. Um, and that’s the entire rabbit hole from beginning to end. And then the last pillar, number five, is what I call the bottleneck. Where along those six layers are you stuck and how do we unstuck you? So, I know that’s not a proper terminology, but but it just it feels right using that word because that’s what we do. Hey, um my client’s not getting any leads. Are they getting at least 20 clicks a day? It’s like they’re not. That could be a huge sign. Oh, they are getting 20 clicks. They’re actually getting 100 clicks a day. Then it’s the landing page. It’s the conversion tracking. It’s the speed. Things like that. They are getting leads, but they’re all saying, “Leave me alone.” That’s fine. Where is the traffic coming from? Things like that. So we have an exact process, formula, KPI to measure each step of those six layers. So that’s the bottleneck in a nutshell.

Carlos: Well, I really appreciate you for sharing all of that. I think it’s going to bring a lot of value to everybody watching. And for those who have the time and want to learn more, I invite you to follow our social media channels, to follow our YouTube channel, to go and look for the lab, which is where Stephen goes and, you know, show you step by step on how to do this. He just mentioned he’s going to bring a new class out there to bring all of this content available for those of you who want to do it yourself. But if you know that you need, you know, the right team, if you know that you’re already investing on marketing and it’s not working out for you or you’re again investing in any of these options that we talked about at the beginning and you’re not growing your personal brand, your team, you’re not getting to the transactions that you want, we invite you to, you know, click on the link below, talk to our team, you know, schedule a one-on-one consultation with our sales team. We would love to talk to you. They would love to assess your business using this process. And at least you’ll leave that call knowing exactly where you at in in your in your business today and what you you need to do to fix it or how we can help you get it done. Um so I mean being that the case, I appreciate you for sharing all this information and we look to see you in the next episode of the pipeline and the lab. So thank you again for watching and we’ll see you in the next one. We’ll see you on the other side.

The post The 5 Pillars of Real Estate Marketing Used by Top Agents & Developers appeared first on TREMGroup.

In this episode, Carlos Concepcion, Chief of Sales at TREM Group, sits down with Rie Nakai, a top-producing luxury real estate agent with The Audrey Ross Team at Compass. Rie shares her remarkable journey—from arriving in the U.S. with just two suitcases to closing over $40 million in sales. Discover how she leveraged digital marketing, CRM systems, and Compass’ Private Exclusives to break into Miami’s competitive luxury market. Tune in for powerful insights into lead generation, off-market opportunities, and what to expect from Miami’s real estate scene in 2025.

Video full transcription

Carlos: Hi, welcome to another episode of the pipeline, the show where we want to showcase high top producer agents. And today I’m very happy to have one of my friends, Rie Nakai, top luxury agent with the Audrey Ross team and top producer agent uh compass in the South Florida market. Welcome, Rie. How are you?

Rie: Thank you, Carlos, for giving us time to do interview today.

Carlos: Oh, I love, I love talking to you and I think we we started a you know a working relationship a couple years back and I I think it’s very valuable to highlight and for people that are watching us to know the story of ages like yourself who are growing your business or day in and day out working to be better. So, thank you for joining us today.

Rie: No, thank you Carlos. Thank you so much.

Carlos: Uh for those people that are watching us today, um what was your your starting as a real estate professional? How did that look like? How long ago did you start?

Rie: Okay. So, originally I’m from Japan. So, I’m not from here. So, I came here with a two suitcase uh 13 years ago and you know so it was little little bit difficult for me to start because I didn’t have any connections. Uh beginning I came here for cheerleader for a sports team. I don’t say which team but

Carlos: I want to know. I want to know.

Rie: So I was in a entertainment sports uh industry. That was a good uh connection I have for real estate. But I really started from nothing. Um I started from little rental properties. I did like 1,000 per month rentals, some sometimes 3,000, you know, I didn’t get any like listings uh for, you know, for sale. But uh after I joined Audrey Ross team compass uh she my mentor is Audrey Ross. She taught me the way to go up to become a luxury real estate uh advisor and that’s changed my life. So she actually really changed my life to become the better real estate agent and you know uh give me the confidence to be a great real estate agent in South Florida.

Carlos: Audrey is amazing and if she’s watching this, Audrey, we love you here. We know what you’ve done for the community, for your business, and for the entire city of Miami. So, we definitely love everything that you do. So, I want to thank Audrey.

Rie: Yes, thank you Audrey.

Carlos: But how long ago did you start? You said how how long?

Rie: So, with Audrey is already three years. So, three years ago, I joined Compass and you know, I met Audrey in Colorado Gables and I started my uh journey.

Carlos: Well, Compass is one of the biggest brokers

Rie: Yes

Carlos: And one of the highest names when you mention luxury real estate in the nation. Now, how how does that work? How do you feel working with such a team?

Rie: So, Compass is uh right now is market share is number one in nationwide especially South Florida, Miami. So, if I mention that everybody knows the name because they see the signs, they see the names, they hear the names, you know. So and people knows that compass is really uh known for technology. So that’s people love about you know technology everything is technology right now. So uh that’s why it’s great branding to be a compass agent and the top producing team, Audrey Ross team that’s my, you know, back you know like they they they give me the li leverage leverage to be the luxury real estate agent. Yes.

Carlos: Yeah. I think that uh as business owners and you know compass as a industry leader you know big companies they want to work with other people that are doing the right things that are growing that are you know intentional about their growth and compass as a broker promotes a lot of that. If you’re a Compass agent and you’re watching this video, let me tell you, we are also preferred vendors uh for Compass nationwide. And the same way we are uh working with RI, we work with other Compass agents nationwide. So, we do see that you guys are at the forefront of the industry. I see you guys using and leveraging all the technology that is available through you, the Compass CRM, the collection, the Compass exclusives.

Rie: Yes

Carlos: How have these tools uh and the vendors and the partners that you work with, how does that affect your business day to-day?

Rie: Yes. So, you mention about the private exclusive which I really use for any listings. So, because some sellers doesn’t want to list their home publicly because of the you know family situations or they don’t want to go on the public. No, you know, you don’t want a neighbor to know that you are selling, right? So it’s great to use a private exclusive because we have that tool to do that because compass website is such a huge like become like a zero or you know big uh website. So we can actually market privately not knowing not letting any everybody knows that you are selling your home and actually we have a successful story about that.

Carlos: Amazing. That’s great resource. And Ria, tell me a little bit more about how do you generate new clients? How do you get new business in the door? I mean, last year was a tough year for the real estate industry. We had a lot of um changes when it came to the nar settlement, high interest rates, and you know, fluctuations in the market on the presidential year. So how how do you leverage everything that goes on in the market and how do you stay at the forefront generating new clients?

Rie: Yes. So, me every day I have two three hours to do lead generation you know? I always try to get new clients, five clients a day that’s my goal a day. So that’s, that’s what I do every day even though I have a showings or you know I have a listing appointment for me it’s most important and focusing on is finding five new clients every day and that’s how you, how you do that by calling I don’t do really door knocking because I’m afraid but I do a lot of calling and I do a lot handy little note and also you know I spoke to if you if you sell this house I spoke to the neighbors try to say, “Oh, I sold this house. You know, if you need anything, I’m here.” So when I sell something, I try to talk to the neighbors to give our our services. So I think it’s really important to finding new clients every day is I think that’s make me successful to have a pipeline every month, every year, every 10 years, you know, from now

Carlos: And that’s a lot for the listing side on how you get listings and do these calls

Rie: Yes

Carlos: But how do you attract buyers?

Rie: So buyers, you know, thank you to Carlos. Uh the TREM is the best. Without TREM, I don’t think I have a buyers, buyers pipeline, you know. So uh buyers uh TREM makes us to generate a lot of leads every month from miamirealestate.com. We have the best domain name and uh that’s why I have a really qualified buyers every month, every day.

I’m here sitting in a beautiful Key Biscayne listing. I this is just listed. Uh it’s a 545 seal pal drive. This is actually started from private exclusive listing. So I, you know, find this listing by phone call. It’s not really cold calling but try to um offer my services and they say that oh let’s me and that’s how I met with seller and we you know? We actually really become like a friend and then they give me the listings but for buyers um I just sold the one here in Harbour Drive 701 harbor is are coming from newer website the TREM amazing TREM um they you know they give me the great leads from Romania. Uh they came to actually uh look for a condominium in Sunny Isles uh beach. But they said that you know what I want to see houses too. And I took them to Pinecrest, Key Biscayne, Coral Gables. And they just love Key Biscayne living, you know, this close to ocean, you know, close to Yatch Club, you know, close to everything and super safe here, you know. So, you know, that’s that’s fall in love with Key Biscayne and they found brand new construction 8.8 million and I did only three days showing that’s it. and I closed the highest uh no waterfront home in Key Biscayne. Uh I made a record, so

Carlos: Congratulations

Rie: Thank you so much

Carlos: Um, Rie uh what is it in for the next year? How do you see the industry moving in Miami?

Rie: Yeah. So I think January from January it it will be really busy season. Everybody’s you know after elections everybody’s ready to buy you know everybody ready to sell. So I think inventory level going to go really high up but also buyers is ready to buy. I think it’s going to be amazing year in 2025.

Carlos: What are some of the opportunities that you see on the South Florida market? Do you think single family homes, condo pre-construction? Where do you see the market going?

Rie: I think single family home is stable. You know it’s always sell but the condo some condo has a special assessment issues. So I think more people are start selling because they can afford to pay HOA special assessment. So inventory will going to really increase uh the condos meaning probably hopefully price a little bit drop but um but still it’s going to be amazing year for both homes and condos.

Carlos: Well I know you’re going to do great because I know you and I know that you work very hard every day to grow your business to increase your sales build a brand that you’ve definitely successfully built in the past couple of years. So if you were to give a an advice to somebody that’s starting on the business that is just recently joining real estate in these times right looking back to when you started what are some of the advices that would you give uh a new agent to succeed in today’s real estate market?

Rie: For that advice I think it to focus on finding new clients every day and generate lead every day is most important it’s not just doing documents or show going to showing or just attending open houses. You need to talk to new people every day and try to offer your services. That’s the best advice I can give and be confidence. You know the beginning I I did I wasn’t confident but if you are not not confidence clients feel that and that’s not good. So if you are confidence they will feel that even you if you are new. I think that’s the best advice I can give you.

Carlos: So be confident, stay strong, keep working hard. Uh you know, like she said, focus on attracting new clients, the right clients. And you know, it’s my pleasure to share this space. I know these are short format interviews so our viewers can learn about you and if they were to want to know more, right? If other agents are watching this show and they want to connect with you, send you referrals or ask questions about the South Florida market, how can they find you?

Rie: So just simply Google Rie Nakai. Uh you it shows in Google at the top, So R I E N A K A I. You will see my Instagram, Facebook, Twitter X.

Carlos: That’s beautiful.

Rie: And also I have a Japanese website. It’s called rienakai.com in Japanese. So uh yeah.

Carlos: Is there any message that you want to give to maybe Japanese speaker, you know, that that you want to let them know what what’s going on in Miami

Rie: In Japanese?

Carlos: Yes

Rie: You’re not going to understand

Carlos: I can always say thanks at the end, but for you and you can always, you know

Rie: [Speaks Japanese]

Carlos: And just like that, thank you so much

Rie: Thank you

Carlos: It’s always a pleasure to connect. I appreciate so much the opportunity to be here with you today and and have this space to to thank you so much. Thank you, Carlos. Thank you so much.

The post How The Right System Combined with Persistence Can Boost Your Sales & Scale Your Business appeared first on TREMGroup.