Monetize and Maximize Your Marketing Leads with Chris Craddock
“I do believe your net worth will be equal to your network, and so I built strategic relationships that made me think bigger, and frankly, make me a lot of money because I can add to them, and they can add to me, and it's just great strategic relationships, vision casting.”
A nationally certified Life Coach with a Doctorate in Leadership, Chris Craddock is the driving force behind REI Revive, the host of the Uncommon Real Estate Podcast, a Realtor, and an entrepreneur who runs multiple successful businesses in the Washington DC Metro area (and Richmond, VA). Chris is a consistent NVAR multi-million dollar producer who produces over $4 Million in commission each year. In 2020, his team, The Redux Group, was #20 in all of Keller Williams and sold just under $160 million in volume. Chris has been married for 20 years and is the proud father to six beautiful children.
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Brett:
I'm excited about our next guest. He has spent his entire life serving others and leading large teams and volunteers. He found his role as a pastor to be deeply fulfilling, but unrealistic in supporting his family, including six children. What did he choose? What did he choose as a side hustle, it was real estate, and he started flipping houses to make ends meet, and all of a sudden he found himself as a rockstar real estate professional at a place called Keller Williams, which happened to be the place I started to when I first before went to Marcus Miller, by the way, and then he has grown that team to over 21 agents and 15 back-office staff support in the Washington DC area. He's now with eXp Realty, which we'll talk about here as well. Please welcome show with me. Chris Craddock. Chris, how are you doing?
Chris:
Great. Thanks so much for having me today, and looking forward to spending some time with you.
Brett:
We're gonna be talking about all things, monetizing and maximizing your marketing lead. This will be really focused on the business professional, in particular, probably real estate agent as well, or commercial real estate agent, and but before we go there, Chris, would you give our listeners a little bit more about your story and your current focus?
Chris:
Sure. My story started I graduated college in 2001, a staff in the organization called Young Life loved it, it changed my life was amazing. But I made 20 to $25,000 a year and with young life, and when it's just crazy. Because when you have kids and try to live in the DC area, it doesn't work to live with that kind of money, and so what ended up happening was, I just went to the library, check that every book on real estate investing. I could find, started flipping houses, I made 12 times what I made in a year, and about four months, use that money, continued doing ministry, and then as I had more and more kids, the mice are running out. I started flipping houses again, and after the crash, around 2011, and I'd go back to school, I got a doctorate in leadership, and I always lead large groups of people in ministry, and I came across Gary Keller's book, The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, and it just made sense. It was a good blueprint to say, this is how you can make a million dollars. Then this is how you can keep a million dollars, and you're talking about taxes and all the other stuff, and I'll tell you, that's one of the best things that I've learned over the last few years is, you can get to a point where you can make a million dollars in net income, but then the government takes half of it.
If you don't learn how to protect that, that was one of the hardest things for me to learn the hard way, and so essentially, what happened was we started building a real estate business. We're now up to 27 real estate agents. I built a number of vertical integrations around its title, insurance, construction, legal shield, flipping, wholesaling portfolios, just a number of different pieces there, and yeah, and then we realized that with the rental, I guess, with the investor world and the agent world, that they live so far apart, that they really should collaborate together, and that's how we built kind of our coaching program, teaching people how to really monetize those, those leads that you could get into a flip or wholesale or whatever, and yet, that's kind of my story. What brings us here today this last year, we closed on 167 million in volume 501 transactions this year, we're gonna do, right around 200 million, but 600 transactions, and yeah, we got I guess 11 Different businesses a number of the seven-figure businesses.
Brett:
Amazing Chris, so much there. I really absolutely love it before we dive into monetizing, maximizing your marketing leads, and all the secrets behind that. I want to say one other step back, I want to even go baby before the Young Life days, maybe in the high school days, when you're younger, younger Chris, I believe we've all been given certain gifts. Some people call them strengths, some people call them superpowers. I believe that their God-given gifts that are given to us to be a blessing to others. I'm curious, what are those one or two gifts that you believe you were given? How does that help you help and bless people today?
Chris:
Well, it's interesting. It's a great question. I have a sign that I put in my office is are you in your genius zone? I've narrowed it down to four things that I think anytime I'm doing stuff that isn't one of these four things I tried to get off my plate. One is strategic relationships, I'm a connector, I'm friends with a lot of people, and frankly, I do believe your net worth will be equal to your network, and so I built strategic relationships that made me think bigger, and frankly, make me a lot of money because I can add to them, and they can add to me, and it's just great strategic relationships, vision casting. That's one of the things that I think I do very well for my company, I'm able to see a bigger picture and then impart that picture on the people around us, and part of that is the Zig Ziglar you can have everything you want in life can help enough other people get what they want in life, and so the vision casting piece is how do you help even the people on your team see a bigger life for themselves, and as they live a bigger life, we both win. Problem Solving.
It's so funny, my brother my dad used to put together puzzles in the basement when we were growing up and the idea of putting together a puzzle was about as fun as getting hit in the head with an attack hammer to me, but the reality is I love putting together puzzles in my mind, the visit, there's a problem and you just solve that that problem and business. Then the last thing is, I do believe that I was born with and just an incredible amount of energy. But not only that, I nurture that, and Brendon Burchard, in his book, high-performance habits says that high performers tend to have a lot of energy and impart energy into the world that they're in. Those are the four pieces of my genius zone that I tried to live my life in.
Brett:
Absolutely love the clarity on that and the reminder you have on your wall, and that is fantastic. That gives us the context to jump right into monetize and maximize your marketing leads. What is the first secret to doing just that? How does a real estate professional or business professional, maybe it applies to all kinds of people who are serving high net, worth clients? How do you monetize and maximize your marketing leads?
Chris:
Here's what I would say first, if we're it depends on who we're talking to right now. if we're talking to a wholesaler or a fixin flipper, you're spending a lot of money to get marketing dollars out to find people that have raised their hand and say, I want to sell my house at 65 to 75 cents on the dollar, and if that's the case, you are going to want to find, you're going to want to find a real estate professional an agent that can list the properties when somebody says I want to sell at 90 cents on the dollar 95 cents on the dollar 100 cents on the dollar, so that those leads don't die because usually if you are marketing for those, you'll get 20 people that raise their hand and say I want to sell in the next six months, which is the pre qualification question, you need to find out six months or less, and those of those 20 people 16 will want more retail value or very close to retail value, and then four of them will be willing to sell under market and of those four, you'll probably get one of them under contract.19 others are going to sell with somebody or sell somehow and somebody is going to get paid, it's just not going to be used.
You need to figure out how to monetize those. Now, if you are a real estate professional, one of the things that I learned in scaling my business when I hit a glass ceiling, somebody told me as the Rainmaker, and as the leader of the business, I've got to figure out how to make again goes back to strategic relationships, how I can make one relationship not equal one deal. Because that's usually what happens. For most real estate professionals, one relationship equals one deal, and so when they said, you need to figure out how do you grow that? That one relationship equals 10 deals, 50 deals. I thought about it, I'm like, where are 50 deals, 100 deals, and I realized, okay, builders, or investors. Since I came from the investor world, I realized that the opposite of that is true. If you're an investor paying for those leads, then I can go to those investors and say, let me monetize them for you, and that's how we really grew that that side of the business right there is by creating a way to monetize those deals.
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