Full Written Transcript of The Episode

Matt Tompkins: Hello and welcome to the Omaha podcast, where Omaha’s most successful entrepreneurs help you grow your business. I’m your host, Matt Tompkins of Two Brothers Creative. So how do you get new business leads and will those leads actually go anywhere?

Having strong relationships with clients is essential to the success of generating leads. And on today’s episode of the podcast, we are joined by Andy Allaway. He’s the president and CEO of Nebraska Realty, and he’s going to share how to develop those client relationships and how to plan and build marketing assets that actually get results. Join us today as we learn the secret to generating new business leads. That actually work. When you start a business, when you get into the world of being an entrepreneur or the entrepreneurship category, as they call it, there are so many terms thrown out that you have to start paying attention to their ROI.

And there’s you’ve got to have these SOPs and all these different terms. Business leads, new business leads, how to generate new business leads. And a lot of those terms you get, you figure out what they are pretty quick. It’s not like it’s complicated, but some of them I wish people would just tell you what they are. Sometimes we just assume people know these are people. We just go with it and we never really ask the questions because maybe we’re embarrassed to ask. So today we have Andy Alloway.

Here he is, the president and owner of Nebraska Realty. And we’re going to talk about generating leads for your business, how to generate leads for your business now. And let’s start with that basic question. Yeah, what is lead generation? What is that?

Andy Alloway: Well, that’s a great question. It’s pretty broad, you know, I mean, I, I categorized lead generation in two different ways. I think it’s short term lead gen, meaning I have business. I need to get business right now who’s in the market for my product and service and how do I reach that person right now? And then it’s long term business development, which is really relationship building, right? And that should be the long term strategy.

I believe for most businesses, it should always be about how you develop that relationship through through customer service and, you know, just caring about them and their needs and they’re going to come back to you and then you don’t have to go out and worry about, gee, where is my next leg going to come from this week so that I can make a sale or whatever. But, you know, when you’re starting as an entrepreneur, you said, okay, I got this great thing and I can I can I have a great product or service and I want to let the world know, but I need revenue now. I’m spending all this money getting things set up. Like you said, you got all these terms like ROI.

Where do I spend my marketing money? I’ve got to be a marketer, I’ve got to have office space, maybe I’ve got to be a manager of people. We’ve got to create this product. We got all these all these things and maybe it’s business loans and so where do I get money? And, and, and that comes back into driving business. So lead generation to me if, if to get going. Yeah. You need to be able to put yourself in front of that consumer who’s ready to.

Matt Tompkins: Buy here’s generating you know the term prospect is a new customer that’s what you want. So that’s what you’re trying to generate is these long term relationships. And then the short term And the short term is probably the biggest challenge, I think, because the long term relationships, you can’t really force those. You know, we’ve we’ve talked about investing in relationships, in networking and a couple of episodes, you know, participating, not promoting. It’s got to be genuine. It can’t be. I want something out of this.

Know, you can’t expect something out of that relationship. So that takes time. That’s that’s the long play For the short term, though, that’s the bigger challenge because I think a lot of business owners make the mistake of just doing what they see other people doing without having a plan, without really thinking it through. I’ll just post a bunch of stuff on social media, Right? Okay. Well, is that effective? Is that going to engage people? No, it’s not. So let’s let’s use your story as an example. In 2000 and 2008 or 2009, when you bought nine 2009. So hand It was a while ago. Yeah.

Andy Alloway: Your date. I’m not that old, but I guess.

Matt Tompkins: I think we’re pretty close to the same age. So I’m not going to I’m not going to poke fun there. But yeah. So you bought what was a a Demon Associates Realty. And then in 2015, you changed the name to Nebraska Realty, which it is now. You’ve built just a behemoth of a company here. A lot of great employees, fantastic realtors, fantastic reputation. So in 2015, we’re leading up to that change. Walk us through your plan. Like, what was your plan? Because you were at the point, I think, where a lot of business owners are right now.

Andy Alloway: Right in 29, 2000, nine or 15.

Matt Tompkins: Oh, well, either one, I don’t know which one was like the bigger shift for you because.

Andy Alloway: Well, I think both for. Yeah. So surely it will take bull. So 2000 January of 09i was fortunate. Van DB was the founder of our company back in 1993. I started there in 2001. We had about 20 agents and 24 years old, got my real estate license And yeah, I came from a I was a strength and conditioning coach for the Milwaukee Brewers organization. So I came from a totally different field, got into real estate, didn’t know anything, and Van was a great mentor to to us. He had been his company had been around for about eight years and and then, you know, it was just it was good timing. Technology started to take hold.

We had great philosophies on how to treat people. So we had a unique thing. And that’s that’s really, I think, why we’ve grown. We started to grow over that period of time. I was fortunate that he hired me as a general manager and I served in that role for about six years. And then the time was right for for Mr. DB to move on and do his other things that he was passionate about, his speaking in his business, coaching and and helping people in their careers. He had an incredibly successful real estate career for, I think 27 years still is. Yeah.

But so when I as I would think I was 31 when I bought the. Company and I knew the workings and it was great to be able to say, okay, now we own this. Now that’s we’ve done all these things. We had about 300 agents at that time and but we only had about six or seven employees operating 300 agents. And we’re like, okay, we get all these plans. What do we do? I guess I was just a little naive, too. We had a fairly big operation. I’m like, Oh, this will work. And that was four months after the stock market crash. We were at the lowest point in.

Matt Tompkins: And I want you to keep going with the story, but I just want to point out, so that moment there that you’re describing, I think I know I can identify it with that. A lot of people can. Does it matter the size of your company where it feels it’s almost like jumping out of an airplane? It’s the most freeing experience you’ll ever have, but it’s also the most terrifying experience you’ll ever have, right?

Andy Alloway: Yeah. I mean, how we got now you’re responsible for people’s lives and the payroll and, gee, we’ve got these loans and we’ve got how do we how do we what happens if people the business just goes away tomorrow? We can’t generate leads. And, you know, if we have up and down cycles and all of this. But sometimes sometimes what.

Matt Tompkins: You don’t know.

Andy Alloway: Is, you know, what is it? What is the term that ignorance is bliss, right? Sometimes that’s all right. I mean, I felt like I knew a lot, but looking back and I’m like, boy, there could have been you know, we were at the lowest point in the it was 2009. I mean, like I said, four months prior to that, the stock market crash, I think, you know, real estate was obviously not a great time in the recession.

And but it created opportunities and we were hungry. I think that’s the biggest thing. If you get up and you talk about lead generation and passion, lead generation has to be about, first of all, having a passion for what you do, because if you don’t, you’re not going to do it right. If you find something else, if you don’t like making phone calls for short term lead, then find something you do like because that will be consistent. But it’s it’s really about having routine. Sometimes people go, how do you stay motivated? I love like Navy SEAL type things and listening to to military people because you always think, oh, these are the most motivating people. And then when you read their stories, they go, We’re just people like you and me. We’re not different, you know, It’s times.

Andy Alloway: Yeah, it’s hard to get up and do this. But you know what? It’s the routine that carries us through. And to me, what I’ve found is that success is about getting up, you know, fairly decent time in the morning, you know, putting your clothes on and walking out the front door and doing it. And the easy days are easy. Hey, we got a new client, we got a win. You know, we opened up a new office, we hired a great employee, we got a great contract. Those are easy. The success is making it through the hard days. Yeah, Something bad didn’t happen. We didn’t get the contract that we wanted. Bills are due. It seems like things are coming down. Just take one more step. Make it through this state of tomorrow. And I think that’s what what we did and we as in 2009, when we bought the company, we had a bunch of passionate people that said, let’s go forward. We have all these things, let’s take one step at a time. But it’s a that’s great in the great days, but it’s the hard days that you just say, Hey, let’s just make it through. Yeah. And then we’ll get to tomorrow.

Matt Tompkins: You hit on an important thing there that I want to highlight because it also factors into generating new leads and that is routine, like having discipline, having routine, you know, having boundaries and routines in your life in general is it really is crucial. I remember the first time around we were doing the TV show Omaha Live, and I was self employed. I didn’t even know the term entrepreneur.

I didn’t see myself as a business owner, didn’t have anything official. It was just, you know, just, you know, running blind and naked through the night. It was just not everything you could do wrong. I did wrong. And, you know, it wasn’t successful because of that. So, you know, I look back at that probably the biggest mistake I made was not having a routine, not having discipline. I might now edit 40 some hours straight and then I would film and then it was weekends and there was no personal time and there was no separation between my personal life and that.

And I was working from home in my studio, which made compounding that. So I think with with routines it helps you overall, but a routine for generating new leads. If you’re trying to generate new leads for your business right now, having a system, right, systematizing it is a big asset. So when you were in, you took over. You’re kind of in this this stage where, all right, we need to generate new leads. How did you create a system or how did you create a plan game plan to do that?

Andy Alloway: Yeah, I mean, as a as the company owner in real estate, we you know, our our real lead generation becomes recruiting of our agents. Our job is to accrue to recruit the best talent and then to provide all the systems and tools that they need to be successful. Right. So our lead generation came back to more recruiting. How do we get out in front of these people? And to me, first of all, you have a plan. You say, all right, what? Everything comes down to budget. Everything comes down to a business plan.

So I would encourage everybody to start there. And that sounds weird when you’re talking about lead generation, but it really does. You’ve got to go out and say, how many? Of what’s my revenue model like and how many of these things do I need to sell annually, monthly, weekly, every day? And then what we do is we put KPIs to it. I am a huge fan of using KPIs, right? Key performance indicators. These aren’t these aren’t indicators that are what were our sales last month. That’s a lagging indicator. Key performance indicators are what’s predictive for the future.

Matt Tompkins: I want to give an example with the cold calls. For example, this is our mutual friends, the Aspens, Gwyn and Jeremy. He actually has his an episode here on the podcast where we talked about some of these things and Quinn as well with the iOS implementing some of the systems like traction. So a measurable for like sales, you think, how do I measure this other than the dollar? So let’s say your, your goal is in order to get a sale, an actual money, it takes 100 cold calls. So for every 100 cold calls, we get one actual paying customer.

So that means if I wouldn’t need two customers a week or one customer a week, that means I got to make 100 cold calls per week and then you break it into the day. And so the way you can measure it is, okay, how many cold calls have you made? And one suggestion Gwynedd is like with your with your sales associates is they have to schedule it out for the next 2 to 3, four weeks. All right. I’m doing these ten calls and this is these are the people I’m calling. These are the people I’m visiting in person. And I think that’s the type of measurable you’re talking about, right?

Andy Alloway: It is. Those are the thing. Because if you do these activities, it’s really about activities. So you have you have a budget, then you have goals, then you have activities and activities need to include these KPIs. So if it’s cold calls, if it’s sending out mail pieces, if it’s going out and having lunches with people or attending chamber events or whatever.

Matt Tompkins: Sending a card.

Andy Alloway: Or sending a hand card, just putting these are activity. If you do X number of these a day, then you should be able to predict that a month, two months, three months from now, you should have X number of business. But it goes back to the discipline, it goes back to the routine. Most entrepreneurs aren’t used to that jump into a job. They they’re used to working for a company. I come in, it’s 8:00. Here’s my task for the day. I’ve got a boss that tells me what to do. I get a check in two weeks, I have health benefits and I go home. Right? That’s not what you do when you own a business. You have to be very intrinsically motivated.

And so it goes back to scheduling as you’re as you’re your point. So some of your day, obviously, a lot of your day has to include your business, what you do. But operations, operations, managing people, all the things that come in with that. Right. But some of it in a good share of it and maybe you hire it out, I don’t know, but a good share of it. It has to be scheduling for marketing opportunities, marketing yourself to generate leads. And I think that you have to have in your calendar, you have to have time blocks. I think that’s the most important thing because if you don’t as an entrepreneur, again, as a business owner, you could wake up today and say, okay, I’m going to I’m going to do this. And Bob but I had this little butterfly over here and now I’m going to go do this and now I’m going to get it. First of all, get a dedicated space to work.

Matt Tompkins: It’s the shiny object syndrome. Oh, no. And that happens to me. I, I looked this up because I was I get so distracted by email. Email is the worst because it just it’ll all be working on something. And I check my email and then next thing you know, I’m down this rabbit hole of all these different things, right? And I look at the clock and I’m like, How did 4 hours go by? And I haven’t finished this project that would have taken me, you know, 20 minutes. Right? And I get very frustrated. It makes me stress, gives me anxiety, because then I’m like, Oh, I’ll shoot. I can’t get any of the stuff done. I got to work late and I got to miss dinner, and then my wife’s going to be upset. And it’s just it can compound on you really, really quick. So having boundaries and routines.

The book I read was the Micro Resilience is the name of the book. Fantastic, because they talked about this thing. Multitasking is a myth. It actually is less productive by about 40%. And if you set boundaries. So for example, I started doing this again where close your email completely. Yeah, work on one thing at a time. Like you said, block out the time and you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish with lead generation, with trying to get new new customers, new new prospects, Schedule it.

So if you don’t schedule it, it won’t get done. And then when you do it, just, just do it. I mean, yeah, cold calls can be a pain in the butt, but, you know, it’s like you got to do it. So is that when you were putting that into place for Nebraska Realty? Give us an example of kind of how you some of the ideas, some of the creative ways you prospected for for new business leads.

Andy Alloway: Mm hmm. Well, so again, ours is a little different because from a company standpoint, we’re trying to attract the best talent because they’re working with those buyers and sellers. Our job is to provide them the tools and resources and platforms and all the things they need to conduct business on a daily basis and help assist their clients. But but in general, I mean, they’re working with that client.

So we we work in two platforms. We worked in talent attraction, which was is lead generation for talent attraction, and then our agents work more in how to how to generate leads for that buyer and seller who’s looking to buy or sell a house or build a house or investment property. Your land or whatever. So our strategies for that were to to help systematize it for them to have automation. So. And the great thing about technology today, there’s so many competitors and we’re looking for white label systems, things that are transaction management type of stuff. We went out and we went into a system called Buffini. So Buffini is probably the number one real estate trainer, sales trainer in the country. And so we actually facilitate Buffini sessions there, eight, eight week long sessions, just great content specific to real estate, but it doesn’t have to be. There’s insurance agents that use it, there’s financial people that use it.

But he has a CRM with it that they built. They spent several million dollars developing it. And it’s it’s simple, but it’s powerful. They click, you click it on every day and here it pops up. Here’s the contacts that you need to contact today. It’s been, you know, X amount of days or months since you called this person. Here’s a particular date that was I mean, I think that’s game changing for a lot of people. It’s not sometimes people think you’ve got to have some fancy, complicated system. You don’t you just have to do it over and over again.

Matt Tompkins: There was a great and I can’t take credit for this. It was a different guest he on a different podcast actually, but he was talking about that it doesn’t matter what your CRM is if you have, it could be an Excel sheet. Or as he said, he’s got a he’s got an employee, this woman, she’s got this sparkly notebook that’s all designed and has notes. If that works, if you’re the one, the best one is the one you’re going to actually use. It doesn’t have to be some fancy system. And you’re right, there are so many so many software platforms.

That’s one I haven’t heard of that we’ll put in the show notes because I think that would be very useful. A lot of systems for marketing and if you’re looking at social media and you don’t know what to do, I mean there are AI platforms that will just help you optimize, you know, and hiring somebody to do marketing, hire somebody to do some of these things that you just don’t have time to do or don’t know how to do is going to pay off for you in the long run. Ten fold at least.

Andy Alloway: I don’t look at those things as expenses. I look at those things as investments. And and you you know, I’ve always tried to maintain the mentality of don’t trip over a penny when you’re reaching for a dollar. And sometimes you have to invest, because if you invest in all the equipment and all the things you need to do it, and we tell our realtors all the time, you can be the greatest realtor out there doing the most knowledgeable that anybody would would really benefit from working with you. But if you if nobody knows you do it, you’re going to starve to death. You know, you’ve got to be able to go and put yourself out there.

So you have to have confidence in what you’re delivering, first of all. But you do have to have certain systems and you have to invest. You know, you get well, I can do social media, I post on Facebook now you’ve got to have a plan to do it that just because you can you post on social media every day doesn’t make you a marketing expert.

Matt Tompkins: How many times I’ve heard that like, Oh, no, my nephew, he’s he’s young, he’s on social media, I’ll have him do it. Yeah. Totally different from participating in social media to using it as a business school. Because it is a business, you have to treat it that way.

Andy Alloway: We track, we don’t track necessarily likes and all. I mean, you can get all that kind of stuff overnight by paying for it. It doesn’t mean anything. What it means we track engagement and so we outsource our social media companies in a lot and we have some insourcing too.

But it’s about engagement and people connecting. And that’s just one piece, right? But you have to have a plan. And I will tell you, you know, to your example, you go, Oh, I got all these these pretty butterflies. And I started this project and 4 hours later I’m still not done with it. I think that’s the majority of people. I think that’s their problem because we like to check things off of a checklist. But it goes back to the marketing, too. If I spend 4 hours working on one post for marketing and then I put that out in social media, was that really a good use of my time? I mean, you’ve got to think as the business owner, if you’re trying to generate leads, that’s your number one job is to bring business in.

And really the more you go on in your business, the more and more that the less and less you’re involved in operations and what’s actually happening. And the more and more you’re involved in lead generation and creating relationships to bring in business. Yeah, And that’s how our company has evolved over the years too. But, you know, if it’s not a good use of your time, you know, you need to bring in lead generation. But if marketing is not your strong suit, I can’t create this piece in 20 minutes or it doesn’t fall on my calendar to post, then outsource it. Yeah, You know, and again, to your point, that’ll pay off 1020 fold.

Matt Tompkins: And with with email. The stat I looked this up because it was kind of shocking but the average time individuals all of us spend checking email in a year, 41 days, we spend a total of 41 days checking email. Yeah. So imagine what you could do with 41 days on your business or social media. I mean, we all get that alert on like Sundays. I think I get mine the the time, you know, a screen time that’s like two or 3 hours on average for everybody. So two or 3 hours a day is pretty common. Put that time towards your business, putting together the plan. And I think all everything you’re hitting on today, it all kind of boils down. You having a plan? Thinking it through and then having a routine to stay disciplined on.

Andy Alloway: Yeah. And it’s. It is routine is is crucial. I don’t care what you say. I’m going to have a social media plan. I’m going to have a mail out plan. I’m going to I’m going to do these events to the chamber. I’m going to connect with people. I’m going to cold call whatever it is. But if you don’t put it in your calendar and stick to that, you know, hey, from 8 to 10 on Tuesday morning, I’m going to be doing this. If you go, oh, I can fudge that because I want to go and I have an appointment with somebody. No, you need to treat this time as your appointment time. Right. And I wouldn’t discount them. You know, we talk a lot about social media and and even cold calls.

And, you know, again, I feel like the most important thing is putting yourself in position to create relationships. If you have an opportunity to go to an event, whether it’s a cocktail party, a chamber event, a birthday party or whatever, there’s been many times I’m sitting on my couch, I’m like, Oh, I don’t want to go to this tonight. And a force yourself, too. I’ve never been to anything that I didn’t walk away going, I’m glad I went to that. Yeah, but.

But don’t discount things from short term legion, you know, things like, like print mail, man. I mean, we’re really back into this a lot because there were some stats I was getting the other day, and I don’t remember the exact numbers, but the number of emails that people got in a particular day or a month that you kind of articulated is just significant.

Andy Alloway: And a lot of it go to and I think email marketing is good. I think that’s part of this short term strategy. It should be email marketing, it should be phone calls, it should be print marketing, it should be social. All of these things go into this, right? But the the amount of print or postcard marketing, if it’s a retail business or something, then, you know, I got one the other day for a new business and it was, you know, it was about pool tables and stuff. It was a new one opening out west. And I’m like, Oh man, that’s awesome. It’s still sitting on my, my counter, you know? Or there are certain things that I look at that are postcards that are sitting on my counter because as I go through my mail, I go to my mailbox, you know, throw away, throw away, but boy, I’m going to look Oh, that’s interesting. So when you deliver the print mail, though, from a lead generation, make sure it’s something of value. It’s not a I love me piece. It’s how do I give something of value?

Matt Tompkins: You have to know, like what is driving your ideal customer, what drives them and what do they need? How can how can you help them? How can you serve them? I would say right now, though, in the the the political season, you know, maybe maybe the mailers just hold off because I think I think I get like 50 to 100 of these political mailers every year from our mutual friend Don Bacon. I always get his and I save his and then I text him. I’m like, Hey, thanks for the OR. When he leaves me out of the automated voicemail message, I’m like, Hey, thanks, Don. Yeah, but so okay, so you have the plan.

You have to have discipline and you put this into place, you stick with it, it will pay off. I want to point out one thing quick here and get your your your feedback on it. Systematizing things. It can sound like you’re making it robotic. It sounds cold, it sounds maybe inauthentic or disingenuous. So I’m just going to automate everything, right? No, you’re putting a system together. You still need to be you and you need to let your just be yourself in all of this. All this is a structure. When I coach podcast hosts, they they it’s easy to go all over the place.

So here’s an outline. Here’s our specific topic. I want you to hit these three points. And I don’t know, I don’t want to be stuck in this thing. It’s it’s actually freeing. It’s so freeing when, you know, just I know where we’re going with this. And if you get off track, you can get back on track. So any tips for like being authentic, staying true to yourself and not not letting that maybe that that assumption that it’s inauthentic get in the way of you actually doing it.

Andy Alloway: Yeah. From assistant, you know, being systematized to being authentic. I mean that’s where you work with professionals to, to say, you know, it’s really freeing to talk about freeing to sit down with a marketing professional and they say talk about you, tell me about you, tell me about your business.

What makes you unique, what your unique selling proposition and to to craft a brand around that. And then all the marketing and lead generation that you do is about your authenticity because that is what will help you stand out in that. So, you know, I think that staying true to yourself, staying on topic, I think that authentication or the automation is important because if you can, if you don’t automate something, then you can only you have a capacity, you have a ceiling in which you can do business, right? Because I can only do so much if I automate something as you, particularly as you grow, then your attention and all your time get shifted from doing a lot of this early on to being over here. So if you’re not automating, you’ve got to constantly be putting yourself out there.

Andy Alloway: That doesn’t mean that it is sterile. You know, if you if you hire the right people, you do the right things, then your message that you’re crafting in your brand should be on point. But it’s just even like bots, you know, people say, oh, you know, bots. Well, yeah, but if I’m delivering in our. Society right now. If I text you or I’m on a website and I want to, I want an answer right now, and if I don’t, I’m going away. So you might do a great job of lead generating. But if you can’t respond to that person in a timely manner, then that person might be gone. So you’ve spent all this time and money doing a great job to create your brand and craft it, and now I can’t communicate back with them in a timely manner. So to me, that’s part of the lead generation process, but that’s part of the automation that maybe it’s not you or maybe it’s I’ll get back with you within, but you’re delivering this kind of communication. I think that’s.

Matt Tompkins: Important. It is very important. And, you know, there are one platform in particular that we kind of stumbled upon was recommended. And I will I will leak this secret here to the Omaha podcast because it’s not something I think a lot of business owners are as they find these cool things. We keep them secret. We’re like, Oh, this is mine. I’m not going to share with anybody.

Gives me an extra edge. That’s kind of the opposite of how we roll. So it’s called Drop Cowboy. There’s a lot of different platforms like this. It is an AI driven platform and drop cowboy. It’s AI or dot com, but you can Google it, find it, and you upload an Excel sheet.

Let’s say you have nine. We had 901 contacts uploaded it, it disseminates it all, organizes it all, puts together your full just it’s a library. It’s of all your contacts you want to reach and then you decide, okay, I’m going to record a voicemail message and then boom, In an instant, all 901 people have received your voicemail. I didn’t come through as a call came through as a voicemail. It is still you. It is still your voice. You could text them and communicate and email platforms like that. And a Weber is another platform. You can use their tools and if you’re not using the tools that are at your disposal today and other businesses are, your competition is you’re going to fall behind, it’s going to hurt.

Andy Alloway: So now I agree. I think those are great. I mean, you know, that’s in our business. That’s one of the biggest fears is people making. They don’t like to be on the phone. And, you know, I mean, today I don’t know anybody that’s on the phone. That’s all texting. Right. So and most people don’t answer their door. I know.

Matt Tompkins: I’ve called it. I remember I called Megan Hunt, who was on the show. I called her and she she was like mad that I called her. I’m like, hey, how’s it going? Hey, I was going we were going to do something. And I said, How is it? Why are you calling me? Like, What do you mean? He’s like, Nobody calls anymore. Like, just text me. Like, just. Yeah. So you’re right.

I mean, we have to use the, the, the communication means of today and not of 1998. Right, Right. So any, any final words as far as I mean we covered a lot here with the having a plan, being disciplined, using the tools at your disposal and systematizing how you do it so that you can stay authentic and, you know, get out of the weeds of, you know, working in the business, as they say, working on the business. Because my favorite line is that if you if you don’t have any of these things, you’re not implementing it. If you’re working in your business, you don’t own a business, you just have a job you can’t get fired from. That’s really what you have. That’s true. And so any final tips that have worked for you and the evolution of Nebraska Realty?

Andy Alloway: You know, again, I go back to the the long term lead generation. So as you’re doing this, even a long term business development, which is relationships, I think that’s the key.

All of this stuff that we’re talking about in strategy, you don’t know where your next great referral source is coming from. So as I’m making these phone calls or if I use, you know, a system like you were talking about that I can upload all my contacts and it sends emails or sends voice mails to people, or I have an email strategy or a social strategy or I’m going to events. All of these things are lead generation type of ideas, but you don’t know where your next great referral source is going to be. So I guess my thing is when you’re being is be authentic with people and it’s be here now is something that was told to me a long time ago and one of the groups that I was in, the EO here in Omaha, and it’s basically let’s be present, you know, you’ve got all these different things going on, show that person wherever you go, make somebody day, look them in the eye, make sure that you’re you’re present with that person because that will tell them that you are engaged and interested in what they have to say.

And you might think that they’ll never, ever buy a product or service from you. But I will tell you the success that Nebraska Realty has had, you know, the reason that we’re almost 1000 agents and one of the largest real estate companies in the United States at this point is because of the relationships that we built. And a lot of those I never knew 15 years ago was going to lead to today. You know, and we’ve had so many great examples of I could I could go after. But it is so important to be authentic and to care for everybody in the moment.

Matt Tompkins: Lorne Michaels, a great line about this where it doesn’t matter. All that matters is if they remember you and if they like something about you, that’s really it. That’s the recall you’re feeling, right? It is. It’s a feeling. And so he was asked, you know, like, what do you say about all these people who criticize Saturday Night Live?

This episode sucks. And he said, my job is not to make 90 minutes of amazing television that everybody loves. My job is to have one thing that people talk about on Mondays, because you can ask people like, what’s. Favorite late night television show. Oh. Stephen Colbert. I love him. When was the last time you watched him? Oh, I don’t know. It turns out it was like two or three years ago and they didn’t even watch him on television.

They just caught a clip of him on social media or wherever. So that’s the recall you want. And so the impression you leave, it’s in a second that it’s made and then it’s it sticks forever. So that’s really a crucial and important to to be doing that. You’re you’re always on you’re always present, as you said. Well, Andy, congratulations on the success of Nebraska Realty. And as you said, we were talking off the air. Things are balancing out now in the market in the market a little bit, but I know a lot of your agents, they’re fantastic and your reputation precedes you, obviously. And so I appreciate you coming on the show here, sharing some of your secrets and wisdom and experiences here on the podcast.

Andy Alloway: Now, it’s been my pleasure. I appreciate you having me.

Matt Tompkins: Thanks once again for joining us here today on the Omaha podcast. Hit that subscribe button. Follow us on Apple, Spotify. Wherever you’re listening to the podcast, we have more episodes on the way and we want to hear from you. What more do you want from the Omaha podcast? Are there topics that we haven’t covered yet that you’d like to hear right here on the show? You can reach me to Brothers Creative at gmail.com.

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