Hey everybody, Katie Lance here, founder and CEO of Katie, Lance consulting to get social smart Academy and author of the book, get social smart. And I am so excited because in this episode, we have a special treat for you today. I am so thrilled to welcome one of our long time, get social smart Academy members. Uh, he is someone who is doing some amazing things in the real estate space. And let me actually give Brian a proper introduction. Uh, Brian Tessier is currently the number one re max individual agent for 2018, 2019. Brian attributes, most if not all of his growth to adoption of social media in his business. And it’s worked so well, he’s expanded his Brian sells brand to sell Florida with luxury ultra luxury brand England bulkers. So you can find them on Instagram. We’re going to drop his links below, but we’re so excited to chat with Brian today about his business, social media, and especially how Instagram has impacted that. So welcome, Brian, thanks for having me. Absolutely. So for, for people who may not know, you let’s start off and give people a little bit of a background, you know, how long have you been in business? Tell me what your team looks like. What does your business look right now? Just give people a little sense of what your business looks like.
Sure, absolutely. So I am an individual agent I’ve been in re uh, real estate for about 15 years. I think this is my 15th year. I’m starting. Um, I am doing about 20 to 25 million, um, ins volume by myself. And a lot of that is going to be attributed to the expansion and the takeoff of social media, which we’re going to get into a little bit later, as far as questions. So no team, no admin, no nothing. If you contact me, DME, smoke, signal me, whatever you’re going to get me.
That is, what’s so impressive. You know, sometimes I talk to agents and they’re like, it’s just me, you know, but, but you really proved, you know, you’ve got some great systems in place and you’ve been able to grow your business in a, in a big, big way. So I would love to talk a little bit about Instagram because I follow you on Instagram. I love everything you’re doing. Um, you know, can you, can you talk a little bit about that and how Instagram has impacted your business?
So Instagram was one where we were big on Facebook for the longest time. And then Instagram came in and it was all pictures and some video. I still think pictures, rules. So, you know, when you’re searching for luxury properties and in all of us, it’s not really a search and something you’re going to, in my opinion, to see beautiful real estate. So I adapted that early, did everything I could to get as many followers as possible. And the way it works for me is, you know, everybody’s going to be different, Katie, what are you using it for? So you may have started out posting photos of food and, you know, riding a bike, which was fine in the early days. And this is just my opinion. And the early days of Instagram, when there wasn’t a lot of followers and not a lot of realtors doing it, that was great.
But as Instagram goes on, you’ve got to become more savvy. You’ve got to become more interesting. You’ve got to start taking some classes and get coached and understand what’s going on. So my purpose for Instagram was to get sellers. I was working with a lot of buyers when Instagram first came out. I don’t even know the age of Instagram, but I was buyer heavy seller light, and I wanted to be seller heavy because you can get more done, enjoy more life if you’re seller heavy versus buyer heavy. So, um, the listings I got, I, I had professional videos, non professional photos, put them on Instagram, not to sell the listing. Of course that would be fine if we could make that happen. But I feel that Instagram and it’s been said by others is your resume. Just like Zillow is your resume. So I’ve adopted that early. I put that out there so I can attract sellers and it takes time. It’s just like anything else. It’s a grind. If you send out mailers to a neighborhood, you’re going to a farm. You’re not going to get 50 people contacting you the first time you have to grind it out and keep going. So, um, that’s why I decided to push forward with Instagram really hard and educate myself as I wanted more sellers.
I know before we started recording here, you were telling me about a pretty amazing success story, um, with, with, you know, in regards to Instagram, wondering if you’d like to share that here also,
I would love to it. So, um, it’s been a couple of years since I’ve been doing Instagram and lands and Instagram’s grown. Uh, I don’t have a lot of followers. So if you’re going to add Brian sales, Pittsburgh, you’re not going to see 40,000 followers. And I don’t think it’s about the quality, not the quantity. So, um, there was a luxury seller in the Pittsburgh area that had a two and a half million dollar house brand new construction that she wanted to sell. Somehow she stumbled upon app. Brian sells Pittsburgh tag in the builder that built her houses. Instagram posts clicked on it, checked out Instagram page. And this goes directly back to me saying, it’s your resume looked at all of my posts on me doing slashy videos, posting, closing photos that I’m actually getting stuff done reached out to me, interviewed me. I don’t even think she interviewed anybody else.
I got the listing. And let me set this up in Pittsburgh. Our average price is $180,000. So I don’t know where everybody’s listening from. But if you were in Miami for this would be equal to a 10, $15 million listing. This is like the grand jolt. So I got the listing only because of Instagram. Um, ended up selling it for 2.375, and that’s the largest. So my 15 year career spent $0 to do that time and effort. I get that there are costs, then that’s worth something, but $0 for the largest sale in my life. Only because of Instagram. If I wasn’t on Instagram, just say I was Pinterest and Tik talker, I would, I would have never have gotten there.
Uh, what are your thoughts about stories versus the feed versus I know you I’ve seen some of your videos on IgE TV. Are there certain areas you’re more focused on or that you’ve seen more success with?
So I don’t know why Instagram stories is created. I think it’s because people were posting a lot of stuff that should be deleted after 24 hours in their feed. So I’ve taken, I’ve taken advantage of that. So I post, um, I think that realtors are realtors day is pretty darn interesting and not a lot of people get to go behind the scenes. If you watch TV, everything’s, you know, uh, behind the scenes and all that, we’re letting that stuff roll. So I want new agents. I like to attract new agents, newly licensed agents from around the country to watch me to learn from me. I can teach them for free. Um, one thing I wanted to do was I was finally attracting sellers because of Instagram and I wanted to get agents to look at my listings so I can do coming soon. So what I do now is I do a bunch of stuff in my stories of I’m coming soon of the bathroom of this listing coming soon of the rooftop deck of this listing.
Uh, it’s something I wouldn’t want in my feed. I think my feed should be beautiful. I think whenever somebody lands on your landing page, your resume, so to speak, it’s got to speak to them every day. You teach us all the time. Every square has got to be attractive and make them want to click in. Whereas my stories, it’s not going to be that interesting, but I will have other real tours that, and then DM me or call me and say, you know, once we three, anywhere streets come around the market, what’s the price I’ve even had. Buyer’s agents, buyers not buy, not my clients contact me DME about a listing. I had bought recently by the house and then DME and said, Hey, we were the buyers of that house. It’s really cool. I like tagging builders. And I don’t know if you want to get into this later or whatever, but the purpose for my Instagram is I want to attract new construction, flippers builders, et cetera. So I’ll make sure they’re watching myself and I’ll even tag them in it. So if I pre-sell, um, another buildings and other builders build, whenever I have that closing, I’ll tag a different builder that I’m hunting, that I’m going after and say, Hey, I have a hard time getting your property. Pre-sold look what I did.
Um, so there’s a lot of people who I would imagine watch this who are struggling with social media. You know, social media is not new by any means obviously, but it has changed. There’s so much noise or so many different options. And a lot of agents and brokers that we work with are really overwhelmed. And then just, honestly, they’re a little stressed out with, you know, all the different options. Do you have any advice for someone like that? Who might be listening, going, okay, well, sounds great for you, Brian, but I’m really busy. And I have a lot on my plate. Like what are some things that you want to be able to share?
Right. So what I would say, and, and I’ve actually said this to newer agents in all my offices is write down your daily activities for a week, either before you do them or after you’re due to them. And let’s see, let’s analyze. If you had a coach, a coach would probably make you do this. Let’s analyze your day and see where we could be the most time efficient. It’s no different than a numbers. If you wanted to look at your income and your expenses, if you’re a business owner of a coffee shop, let’s say you want to see where your advertising makes money, where it doesn’t guess what realtors, you are, a business owner. You need to understand where your money is going and what it’s getting a return on. So if you were doing a bunch of stuff like walking around neighborhoods, knocking on doors, and you’re not getting anywhere you might want to reevaluate.
The thing I like about social media is I can do it for me. Where at any point in time of life, you just kind of go on and, you know, depends what your goal was. If it’s a builder, you go after a builder, but it’s a, it was a bolt on for me for the longest time. And it took me years to find these things up and say, this is a part of my business. Uh, you know, if I went into the office and hand wrote, thank you cards for an hour. This takes place of that. Now I have removed that and put this in there. This is a lead gen, one of the most powerful lead gen products out there. And, you know, once you adapt, it’s almost like, um, once you get it off your chest, you feel free. And then now you can really plow forward. I was kind of, um, it was like that.
Okay. Um, I also wanted to ask you, you know, you are a long time and get social smart Academy member. Do you have any advice for someone who might be, you know, considering joining the Academy, maybe they’re on the fence, any advice that you could share for someone like that?
Absolutely. So I’ve, if you find any of my old interviews, I’m not just saying this because I’m on this interview, she’s right in front of me. I’ve been saying this for years. You always want to go from, um, you know, point a of where you’re at to point Z, where you want to be. You want to go through the whole alphabet on your own to figure it out, to get to point Z, which the success of Z is success. You want somebody to just take you there. Um, the Academy and coaching in general is going to help you stop wasting time. It’s going to take you. They’ve already done the research. Katie has done the research. She does. The research daily stays on top of it. So a big gripe about social media is I can’t keep up with it. Let this go. This lady right here, let her keep up with it. And then you just tune in to her YouTube or, uh, the closed Facebook group or whatever. I mean, you can make a lot of mistakes and waste a lot of time. And I think, uh, I think that is the, one of the main reasons why people don’t jump on to social media and the Academy is they just waste so much time to try something that doesn’t work and they’re just on their own floundering.
You, I sure appreciate that. And for anyone who’s, who’s listening, if you’re watching over on YouTube or maybe we were watching on our podcast, you can just go to Katie, lance.com forward slash Academy to get the scoop on what the Academy is all about. And I appreciate you saying that because we really do pride ourselves in, you know, not necessarily teaching everything, you know, I don’t think as an agent or broker, you have to do everything. I don’t think you have to be everywhere. So we try to be that buffer, that filter of, you know, let us figure it out. And then we’ll, we’ll share the best, the most important thing, uh, we, that with our Academy. So Brian, this has been awesome. I know we can continue to go on and on. And, uh, I am going to keep you on for just a minute after we wrap up here, because one of the things that we’ve always loved to do with these episodes is do some bonus questions that are going to be featured over on the podcast. So if you’re watching this on YouTube, uh, make sure you also follow the podcast and we’re going to ask him a little bit about what he’s doing in the Miami market, uh, and some other really cool things. So, uh, but in the meantime, Brian, thank you so much for being here today. I sure appreciate it. Um, and I know we’ve got your Instagram handles here at Bryan, sells Pittsburgh on Instagram and at Brian sells Miami over on Instagram. Anywhere else that people can, uh, can tune in or connect with you.
Uh, I am on YouTube living in Pittsburgh. Um, I am a luxury living on YouTube. Facebook. Brian sells Pittsburgh real estate. Brian sells Miami real estate.
Awesome. We will put all those links in the show notes below. So check those out. Uh, and again, for those of you curious about the Academy, feel free to go to Katie, lance.com forward slash Academy. Check out the podcast also where you’re going to see some extra bonus interview questions from Brian. Thank you so much, Brian. Thank you.
