EP 65: Scaling Your Business With A Podcast Featuring Lizzy Phillips
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Welcome to The B Word, the podcast for women in real estate who want to unlock the clarity needed to put your big girl panties on and rock your career like the true boss you are. I'm Joanne Bolt, your host, and together we'll dive into the things your broker doesn't teach you in order to own your own path, disown the things getting in the way to finding your place, and stop apologizing for the obstacles you had to overcome along the way.

If you're ready to stop playing small and take action in your professional life, this is the place for you. Welcome back to the B word. I have got a super special episode in store for you today. About a year ago, my really good friend, Lizzie Phillips and her husband, Johnny took a little

a look into their business and thought, how do we scale this thing out? Now they are a husband, wife, real estate team. They sell homes in Flowery Branch, Georgia, but they ultimately knew that in order to scale out to have more income and a bigger financial freedom, they needed to grow their audience. They needed to expand who knew about them, who trusted them, valued them and respected them.

in order to earn more referrals for referral business. They needed more agents on their team, and they needed the possibility of bringing agents into their revenue share network at eXp in order to have the passive income that that provides. So when they took a look at scaling their audience,

they decided to use creating a podcast as their vehicle of choice. Today, they run a hugely, wildly successful podcast called The Modern Real Estate Agents with Johnny and Lizzie Phillips. They cater to newer agents. They really have honed in on their ideal client avatar. And Lizzie and I are going to dive in

all about the why she and Johnny started a podcast, the how they started it. And she's got some tips for you on how you can follow in their footsteps. Stay tuned because this one's a good one. Welcome, Lizzie. Thank you. Thank you for having me. You are so welcome. Let me give you, I know you had some screens, right?

I do. Yeah. I'm going to talk a little bit and then I'll show some screens and then I'll get rid of them. You have all the permissions in the world. So introduce yourself for those of you that have been under a rock and not listened to a podcast lately and tell, tell them a little bit about your business.

Yeah, so my name is Lizzie Phillips. I am currently in Flowery Branch, Georgia. If you guys know about that, it's a very small little place near Gainesville. I have a husband, his name's Johnny, and we have a two-year-old. His name is Liam. He's so cute. And I think I've managed to cover it up with enough makeup, but I have a bruise on my forehead from a Lego hitting my face yesterday. So we have a really fun toddler right now.

Um, but yeah, so a little bit about myself. Um, I was actually raised overseas for a while in Sweden. That's where my family still lives and kind of lived all over the world. Ended up here in the area cause my grandparents live here and my husband, um,

I was working for a nonprofit at the time doing marketing and social media for them. And just honestly, I hated my job. Like it was awful. I would cry all the time. And so Johnny and I were getting married and he's like, look,

I'm not going to marry you if you're working this job because you're miserable and you're going to make me miserable. So there's going to be a whole lot of misery. So let's do something else. So anyway, so I decided to quit my job right before getting married. Crazy. I know our real estate agent contacted me and was like, Hey, I think you should get into real estate. And I was like, that sounds great. Cause I'm quitting my job. Let's do it. So I got licensed, joined a team, was on the team for a couple of years. My husband got licensed. He was a teacher. And so he, uh,

jumped into real estate part-time and then he made the full-time jump a year ago. And we haven't looked back. It's been great. So that's kind of our real estate background. You guys are killing it too. How many are on your team now? We have five people on our real estate team. Yeah. So funny story. I was with another brokerage. And then when Joanne moved over to eXp, there was just some things that aligned with us. And we're like, let's go to eXp. Let's

So now we've been here a year and a half and haven't looked back, but we moved over and we're like, we're not going to start a team. We don't like teams. We don't like the way they do things. And Joanne was like, okay. And here we are a year and a half later, we've got five team members and on our actual sales team here in Georgia. And we love it. It's been great. I mean, I think you guys have really clicked into a really, a really cool gear too. Yeah.

Yeah, we are. We're really finding our groove right now. Johnny's really ramping up in production and I'm taking on a lot of the behind the scenes marketing role where I started. Why did I deviate from what I was really good at? Not that I was bad at production, but something that Jenna, I loved what Jenna, all she had to say, but something she talked about was like,

being able to be present for your kids. And with both of us in a sales job, we realized really quickly that one of us really needed to be a little more present and available for Liam. And so taking me a little bit out of production, I'll still do my referrals and sphere deals, people that want to actually really work with me, but I'm not out prospecting daily for business like that. So yeah, it's just been interesting how we've evolved as we have a child now and

Had to learn some boundaries. That's awesome. Okay. So.

Part of what you've evolved in your business, you guys decided to take on podcasting. We did. Talk to me a little bit about that, the why, the how, give me the juicy stuff. Yeah. So why didn't we just start to do a podcast? I was kind of thinking about this this morning. I'm like, most people have a product or something that they're trying to sell. So they start a podcast to be able to do that product. And we really did it backwards. So

a podcaster that we love listening to Tim and Julie Harris. They're actually also with EXP here. They have a real estate coaching radio and they did a series on, you should start a podcast. And Johnny really loved their podcast. I was listening to him. So we're on our way to a listing appointment. He and I, and he goes, we're going to start a podcast about luxury listings and investment properties. And I was like,

Oh, are we? Okay. Well, let's talk a little more about that because we don't do luxury listings. So how are we going to tell people about luxury listings? Exactly. And he's like, okay, you make a valid point, but I'm like, let's, let's run with this. And this is how our marriage usually is. It's like, Johnny comes up with a crazy idea. I tweak it and I make it good. And so he and I just, yeah, I'm like, okay, let's ground you. Let's figure out, this is a good idea. Let's figure out what we can do with it. So

you and I were talking and we're like, let's do something for like brand new agents. Like there's a lot of good podcasts out there for experienced agents or like people who are already making lots of money, but like, let's tone it down and do something. So anyways, so we made something more specific. We figured out who exactly is our audience. Who are we talking to?

So we started our podcast back in November of last year. November 8th was our first episode and now we have 27 episodes and I checked just before this morning and we are like 50 listens away from 50,000 listens on our podcast. That's awesome. Okay. So she needs 50 more listens to hit a big goal of hers. So we're going to make sure that we've linked the podcast.

If all of y'all go and listen to one episode, then she's more than met her goal. Yes, most definitely. You don't even have to listen to the whole thing. So yeah, we, you know, we really realized that the podcast happened and we're like, we just want to help agents. We made a lot of mistakes in the beginning of our career. Let's see if we can just help some people not make the same mistakes.

help them figure out what is this real estate thing as a new brand new agent or, you know, an agent that's only been in a few years that isn't being successful. And so, um,

eventually we were like, you know what? There really needs a space for agents to be able to hang their license. Beautiful. We're at eXp Realty. We have, we can be in association with people all over the country, all over the world within our revenue share, like you had talked about earlier. So we're like, let's create a space for them to be able to hang their license and have more access to us as mentors and coaching and whatever. And so

We have actually expanded our network. We now have an agent. We have Chicago, we have Phoenix, we have North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia.

potentially one in California and Pennsylvania coming. So we're just expanding our real estate network, not only for referral partners, but also building our income in a different way. It wasn't something we necessarily went into this having this idea, but we're like, how can we help people more? And that's, I think the key thing for us in our podcast is we've always come from a place of contribution. What can we genuinely do to help people? We're not here to like

fake help people and say, we're helping you. And, but like I text with different people who listen to our podcasts, like we are very approachable and we want to make sure that what we're putting out there is actually valuable to people. Otherwise it's just noise. Right.

So that's kind of where the podcast started and where it's evolved. And, you know, the beauty of it is, you know, we've, we've evolved it into some other things of like, okay, well, let's create a Facebook group community for people who maybe aren't actually in our eXp network, but want to have some help.

one-on-one referral network. That's a big part of it is like agents will come in there and say, Hey, who had, who's in this area? Because when you come in this group, you know, people are listening to the same podcast. They're getting the same education and training. You know, they're going to do a good job with your potential referral client. So it's a great place for people to find referrals. So if nothing else, join our Facebook group.

And you can get in there and hopefully get some, some, yeah. So here's one of the things that I love that, that you mentioned was when you first came up with the concept of let's do a podcast, you know, Johnny was like, well, hell, let's do it on luxury and investment. And you had the foresight to say, um, no, that is not our niche. That is not what we are. That's not our, our jam. It's not our bread and butter.

Let's build a podcast for people we can genuinely assist, which who you really reach a lot are the newer agents that just need some guidance and some help and another voice in their ear besides just the broker that they're at telling them what to do and cheering them on along the way.

If you're out there listening to this today and you're thinking, oh, I want to start a podcast, really defining who your client is, is where you start with this. Would you not agree? Like if you really want the podcast because you want to be the agent of Nashville, Tennessee, then you would not gear your podcast toward how to be a new agent. You'd gear it toward things in Nashville, Tennessee that a buyer or seller would want to be listening to. If you want to gear your podcast toward...

grow in your team, grow in a profit share and a revenue share, grow in your referral basis, having other agents from across the world send you referrals, then you need to gear your podcast toward agents. Exactly. And that's one of my top tips is what we sat down...

We, we got Uber specific. We were like, okay, let's literally imagine this person that we're going to be talking to every episode. What do they look like? What are they like? You created your ideal client avatar. We created a Bob. That's what we call it. This is our Bob. I call mine. Yeah. Right. So we created this person of like, who's going to be listening to this episode and how are we going to provide value into their life that they're going to keep coming back?

So that was really crucial. Walk us through some of that. Show us, show us the sauce, show us the good stuff. This is, this is just, it blows my mind every time we log into podcasts. So if you search real estate and Apple podcasts, we're at number five right there as of last night, like it changes. It goes back and forth. Yeah. But like guys, Tim and Julie Harris, you told us to start this dang podcast without knowing it.

we've surpassed them in that. I mean, just mind blowing. I mean, you've got Grant Cardone right there. You've got the keeping it real podcast. I've been on there as a couple of times. Um, these are all really, really top rated podcast. Yeah. So I just like, that's, that's my humble brag of like, can you F and believe it? So I'll get to the cussing in a second. So yeah, that's that. And I wanted to just show you guys some of the like

key metrics. Oh, did I skip it? So yeah, you can see right there. That was last night, 49,500. This morning was like 49,950. And so going through some of this, we've got 1,400 followers, people who are subscribed to our podcast that automatically gets downloaded to their phone every time that a new episode drops.

Listeners, this is people who are not following us, but are consistently listening to us. Engaged listeners, this is people who in one session have listened to 20 minutes or more in one single setting of a podcast episode. That doesn't account for people who go back and finish it later, but that and then the plays. And then this was, I thought this was really cool. This was our most recent episode, which plays into really a lot of what Jenna was talking about, how to prepare for a shifting market. Obviously we're shifting. It's not a secret anymore.

And so that was a really hot topic for our listeners. 72% is the average consumption of that where they're getting 72% of the way through a podcast. You got to think like,

This is an incredible resource to get people to listen to something for a long period of time. You're not going to get someone to sit down and watch a YouTube video for 35 minutes. No, you're not. But this is a really good way for you to get someone's at least partial attention. Most people are driving, cooking, cleaning when they're listening, but they're absorbing that information that you're giving them.

And then let's see, this is just kind of, Johnny wanted me to put this in. He was helping me last night. He's like, show them the graph, show them the graph where it jumps up really high. He loves the statistics of things. He's so into it. I'm like, Hey, can you get me into that statistic thing? I don't know where we're at and everything last night. So he was like, show them this. So you can see again, that, that episode about the shifting markets.

And we try to create relevant content to what's going on today. That's a really big piece of having a podcast is making sure it's relevant content to what is actually happening today. And then this is our Facebook group. We have 227 members in it right now. And I mean, every day we're getting new message requests for people to join that. And it's been a really cool community for people just to...

stupid questions that they don't want to go talk and ask somebody that they know, you know, like it's kind of scary to go ask your broker. Like I think a question that you're like, I really should know this by now. Like I know I should know this by now, but I don't know it. And so they come in and they ask us questions and everybody's super helpful. We have a no asshole policy in there. So if you suck, you're getting kicked out. And so I wanted to just share some of my top 10 tips of creating a podcast and what I believe has helped us be really successful.

So the first one is be authentic and real. Like we don't show up to our podcasts and pretend to be anything that we're not. If you cuss, cuss in your podcast. If you do not cuss, don't cuss in your podcast. Make it exactly who you are and don't try to be something that you're not. You know, if you're...

I don't know. I can give a lot of examples about this, but that is one thing that we constantly get good feedback about is people are like, you guys are just real real estate agents. You're not some...

million dollar producer where it's like, okay, well, that's not even helpful. What the problems that million dollar producers are having are not the problems that brand new agents are having. And it's completely unapproachable. It's, it's a totally different playing field. And so, you know, we are in the weeds of owning our own team right now. And

still in production. We are right there with all these people making the calls, calling the for sale by owners, calling the expires, working our sphere in our database. And so we're really real and authentic. And I think that that's been a really big help in growing the podcast. Something that we did at the very beginning was that we mapped out six months of content and we committed to doing this for one year. We said, you know what?

We're going to do this for one year. And if we still only have five people who listen to it in one year, we're going to reevaluate it. But if we didn't commit to the full year and map out that six months of content up front, that way every week we go in, we use this managing thing called Airtable where we've mapped out every week. We do a weekly podcast, drops every Monday. And so we've mapped out every week.

week. So we know this week we go in, okay, what are we going to be talking about today? Let's create our show notes. It maybe takes us two to three hours to do this podcast episode every week. And so it's not a huge time commitment for us because we sat down and took two hours to create out six months of content. Now we're getting to the end of our six months of content right now. So we're going to create the second half of the year. And what are we going to talk about in the second half of the year? Yes. With allowing tweaks for what's relevant like this past week,

So you had to update it because this past week you did shifting market and you weren't anticipating that six months ago. Nope. So we looked at it and we were like, okay, we were going to do a big series on our top books that we would recommend. And we're like, you know what, let's push that off for now. Let's go with what's relevant right now and what agents are needing.

So yeah, we mapped out six months of content. And I think that that really helps so that you know what's going to be happening. And we had a little bit of a drop last month because we took time off. We went on a vacation and we didn't pre-plan to have another episode, but we did do an exclusive episode in our Facebook group of us on vacation. And so we do some fun content even outside of it. You know, we're humans. We take time off, but you can also batch do an episode ahead of time and get that ready. So yeah.

Um, number three, don't bite off more than you can chew. Don't commit to doing a daily podcast. If you're not going to do a daily podcast, the number one way to get consistent listeners is that you are consistent in giving out your podcast every Monday morning, pretty much every Monday morning, every once in a while, we'll have an editing issue where we get it up on Tuesday, but almost every Monday, we've got a podcast episode that drops, um,

Our listeners can be prepared for it. You know, they know it's coming. And I would say start small and then add on. You know, we just started with the podcast. Then we added on the Facebook group. Then we added on the Instagram account. Then we added on live streaming into our Facebook group so that our listeners who are really engaged listeners can get it

access ahead of time and they get video form of it if they want that. So we're slowly adding on layers of this podcast. So just don't bite off more than you can chew. I like that advice, by the way, because a lot of people will jump in and they want to do the YouTube channel and the podcast and all the things and they don't even know yet if they want to be consistent with doing a podcast.

Exactly. And that's something that we have all of our podcast video recorded from day one. And when we decided to make that monetary investment to get those edited, we're going to start a YouTube. But it's like, let's just take it slow. What can we handle at this time? And we go with that. Use proper SEO to name your podcast. I also think this was a huge reason why we show up very high ranked when someone searches real estate because real estate is in our title.

So if you are trying to create a podcast, like you said, for people moving to Nashville, like obviously you need to have Nashville in there and like create something like top secret things of Nashville, like something that's going to catch people's attention that nobody else is really doing. And if you had someone search podcast Nashville, would you come up?

So really creating that SEO. And then on top of that, creating show notes for each episode. I'm going to go and flip to the next slide because Johnny has started doing show notes where if someone's like, okay, let's see, where do I need to just tune in on this episode? Is there anything really important? Like, does someone want to watch or listen to us killing a wasp in our podcast studio? Maybe yes, they should tune in at three minutes. Yeah.

So like he really breaks it down. Okay. What are, what are we talking about? Link all of your different links that you could possibly want where you've got your Instagrams, your social media. I have people daily reaching out to me from podcast listeners that are like, Hey, I have a question for you. It gives us content too, for our shows of like, okay, this, this is a question that people are wanting to know more about. So let's go ahead and add that as a topic.

So that's a cool new thing we started doing. But I would say start doing that in the beginning. Get really good show notes ahead of time. Number six, invest in good equipment. Guys, we invested $500, which may sound like a lot of money. But if your audio quality and your content is also really good...

You're going to stand out. People are going to enjoy listening to you because it's good quality audio. I've literally got my podcast set up around me right here. This is where we do our podcast from. And our mics are $20 mics, but we invested in a really good audio transformer thing. I don't even know any of the words. Johnny knows all that stuff to make sure that the audio quality is good. We also, number seven, pay for someone to edit your podcast and graphics. Get a really good

show artwork that looks clean, that looks professional and make sure that people want to see that. And then going back to what we talked about with Bob, define who your audience is going to be. Exactly. Figure out like if you've got people moving to Nashville, who is moving to Nashville? Like, is it musicians? Is it...

business people, like figure out who the top people are moving to Nashville and cater to them. A lot of musicians moved to Nashville and they like trendy things. They like the hottest places to eat, the hottest places to drink, like showcase those kinds of things. If you are going to be doing it or a specific location. And that I think is a really good idea. If you're a real estate agent and you live somewhere, which you live somewhere, you're

And there isn't at least a decent podcast out your area. And even if there is still go ahead and do one, you may be a better podcaster than the next person. Amen. Hell, if you told me a year ago that I would have a higher rank podcast than Grant Cardone, I would have laughed in your face and been like, that's a good joke. I've got his book sitting on my shelf right there. No way. Can I ever be better than Grant Cardone? But that's the beauty of podcasting is like, everybody has a voice. You don't have to be some ritzy podcast.

beautiful professional person. I don't know that Grant Cardone is beautiful, but to be able to do it.

Again, start a community on Facebook and Instagram. That's the way to really engage with your podcast listeners. We've found a lot of value in that. And then just have fun with it. Like we shoot the shit most episodes and that's what people really come back for is like, yeah, they're getting a lot of really good real estate tips in between our banter. But like, we love that we, we have said, I think that having a co-host is really, really cool because you can play off each other. You've got really good content. You've got humor involved.

And I think that, you know, if you're just having fun with it, you're enjoying showing up every week. Like if we didn't enjoy doing this, we would quit doing it tomorrow. Like I'm,

I'm not going to do something that is a waste of my time and I'm not enjoying doing it. That's why I'm in real estate. I love what I do. So just have fun with it. Sorry. I know we're getting tight on time, but you're okay. I agree by the way on having the co-host, um, you and Johnny going back and forth and your banter really, really engages the audience. It brings them in. It shows them that you're not just a talking head. Um, you know, talking to them. I've done my podcast for a while. I tend to not go live with it. I tend to not do the video because it's

Unless I've got a guest on, cause I don't have a co-host. Um, I think always having two people on screen, you know, you know, chatting back and forth really adds a different element to it. Yeah. It's been, it's been huge for us and people relate to one or of us better. You know, I get DMS from certain people and Johnny gets DMS from other people. And so there's a personality type for everybody. So awesome. We love doing it. Follow us.

Come listen to our podcast. It gets a little crazy sometimes, but we have fun with it. Okay. So we're going to wrap this up really fast. So if you had one final tip that you could give to someone who's listening out here today, what is the best thing you can offer them? What's the biggest thing you've maybe learned? Honestly, I think out of that entire list is like, have fun with it. I know that sounds crazy, but like, if you're not having fun with what you're doing, it's, it's not going to be good.

Like if you're not enjoying it, if you're not having fun with it and like,

People don't want to listen to boring people. It sounds bad, but if you're just stuffy and boring and you're just spewing off a lot of stats and you know it all, you know it all. We did an episode a month and a half ago and we're like, what the hell do you do when you got nothing in your pipeline? Because this is where we're at. We're right with you. We slacked off. We went on vacation and our pipeline dried up really fast. And so it was like, okay, here's what we're doing. Here's what you need to do. And yeah, we took a shit ton of listings because

We just got busy. Yeah. And so we're like, if we can do it, anybody can do it. I think that's, that's good is if you can be relatable, if you can, you know, show people exactly who you are and what you have to offer, I think you're going to succeed. Awesome. Okay. So just in case anyone missed it,

Do you have a particular platform that you would prefer your listeners to listen to the podcast on? Are you looking at all stats? Are you, you know, it's like, I like my people to go to Apple, iTunes. You might like Stitcher, you know, like which one's your favorite?

So obviously Apple's our favorite. That's where we pull all of our stats. And those stats are only for Apple. Our podcast is out on Spotify, Google Play, iHeartRadio, like every platform that you can syndicate to. We syndicate off Podbean and we're on everything, but it really is just, that's just our Apple stats, but we love Apple. It's a great platform.

platform how they do it. I love that they don't share. Nobody knows how their algorithm works. Nobody has any clue. Apple has kept it top secret. So we're just out here guessing and putting out good content and they reward good content. Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks for having me. Bye.

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