TV and Radio Advertising & Why It Can Work for You

Steve Trang: Everybody. Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Real Estate Disruptors. Today, we have Darren Gammy with Bullseye Branding. The secret sauce behind all those guys having success on TV you've been seeing on the show the last few months. If this is your first time tuning in, I am Steve Trang, sales trainer for some of the top wholesalers in the country, and I'm on a mission to create 100 millionaires.

One question I get all the time is how do I become one of the 100 millionaires? The information on this podcast alone is enough for you to become a millionaire in the next five to seven years. All you gotta do is take consistent action, and you will become one. When you hear a nugget, please type into the comment section. After the show, identify your single biggest takeaway and focus on just that for the next seven days.

If you get value out of the show, please tag your friend below. Share this up with us right now. That way, we can all grow together. And this is a live show. So please ask your questions for Darren to answer.

You ready?

Darin Damme: I'm ready, man. Thanks for having me. This is cool.

Steve: Thanks for coming, man. I

Darin: really appreciate it. Setup, bro. Good job.

Steve: Thank you. Thank you.

Darin: Well, someone

Steve: with an eye for media can appreciate it.

Darin: No. I definitely appreciate it. Yeah. And I don't have anything like this, and I've been in the media for twenty years. So great job on it.

Looks great.

Steve: Thank you. Thank you very much. So this is gonna be a slightly different angle, but some of the questions a lot of questions are gonna be the same.

Darin: K.

Steve: So for you, what got you into real estate?

Darin: Well, I'm really not a real estate guy. I don't have a real estate license.

Steve: Kinda do some of the most important things for that real estate company.

Darin: Yeah. So that's probably why I'm able to do some of those things because I look at it from outside of the box. Mhmm. I'm the COO for Doug Hopkins here in Phoenix. We did north of 400 deals last year.

And then through that, I also created Bullseye Branding, which is our our media arm.

Speaker 2: And it really just started by me buying television commercials for Doug, here in Phoenix in Los Angeles.

Darin: What was the question again?

Steve: What got you into real estate?

Darin: Doug and I went to high school together, at Mountain View High School.

Steve: Yeah.

Darin: I probably shouldn't say the year because I know everybody's thinking, yeah, he's probably 30.

Steve: Yeah. '95, 96 around

Darin: there. Yeah. How about 89? Yeah. So, but, yeah, we went to high school together.

We were, great friends in high school. We remained, really good friends throughout our adulthood. And I went into radio, and he went into real estate. And the cool thing was is that we never really worked together. So I didn't need, you know, like a a lot of times friendships in real estate are built on, you know, buying a house from somebody or, you know, getting their contacts so that you can flip a house and their their contractors and everything else like that.

We just had a friendship, which was cool. So it wasn't based on money or need or anything else like that. It was we were truly friends. And, then afterwards, I went into gold and had a really successful gold store in Palm Springs. And Doug was still doing real estate.

So I started you know, it was flipping. I was buying it at a price and selling it at a price. But that's when I really got into business and being organized. You know, it wasn't like being a DJ. After that, my Doug and I talked.

He's a visionary. I'm I'm a captain in a predictive index.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Darin: And he's got great vision, but he thinks of A and Z. And he doesn't realize that there's 24 other letters in the alphabet to get you to z. And and that's my thing is is just saying, okay. What do you wanna do? And and let's create the road map to do it.

Steve: You said that you're a captain?

Darin: Yes.

Steve: Interesting. Is that normal for a captain to be an operator?

Darin: Well, I don't know. I just, you see, I like to say things like I'm really smart, like, throwing out my predictive index. Yeah. Really, all I know is maverick and captain because that's what Doug is, is a maverick. I'm a captain.

Speaker: Yeah.

Darin: And I'm probably not the most organized person. But, boy, when I love something and I get into it and creating systems and processes and, you know, be in the real estate world. And then in the media world, creating our lead attribution system and building a business, that just excites me. And so in that case, then I'm I'm OCD when it comes to details. So probably not my standard personality, but something that I really like doing when it when you get to see the growth in a business.

Steve: And I think that one thing is interesting. Right? Because Doug's been doing real estate here forever.

Darin: Oh, yeah. Since '94, I wanna say.

Steve: And, I mean, I he was already doing TV before we connected.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Steve: And I thought that he kinda had the stranglehold, right, on TV, and he does. But you really helped him tighten that stranglehold. When did you guys partner out?

Darin: Well, here's the funny thing. I actually in 2012, I moved two doors down from him in Las Indus so that our kids could be with his kids. My wife could hang out with his wife, you know, and all that. And he got a divorce about a month later and moved. But he was down there, cutting his commercial, and this is long before I partnered up with him.

And, I wasn't even a part of it. And he called me and he goes, hey. You know what? We're filming my commercial, and it was the one where he was up on his deck looking over. You know, it's from, like, seven, eight years ago or or however long.

And he goes, what do you think? I go, I think it sucks. And he goes, what do you mean? And I go, give me a piece of paper. Give me a paper plate, something.

And I said, what do you do? He goes, I buy houses. I said, I want you to start it off by saying, I'm Doug Hopkins, and I wanna buy your house. Mhmm. And if you really think about it, a commercial is it it's like a newspaper article.

It's got a headline, it's got the meet, and it's got the summary. But you have to make it memorable within thirty seconds. Whatever your message is, even on on YouTube or a or a print ad or a radio ad or anything like that. And so I said, what do you do? I buy houses.

I'm Doug Hopkins. I wanna buy your house.

Speaker: Yeah.

Darin: And I said, okay. So what kind of houses do you buy? Because it could be totally trashy. You do great. I go, okay.

It could be a total fixer upper or in perfect condition. I go, why should people sell it to you? Well, because there's no fees, no commissions, no banks, and no repairs. I go, perfect. When you sell your house to doughopkins.com, there's no fees, commissions, banks, or repairs.

And that's how that commercial came to be. And we ran the same commercial for eight, nine years. The we would only reshoot it when his appearance would change. Of course, he'd get much better looking as time aged.

Steve: Naturally.

Darin: He's probably watching right now. But that's where that commercial came from, and it's the same commercial now that people all over the country, the same script that people all over the country are using.

Steve: Doug's face in the other part.

Darin: And Doug's also sometimes if they don't wanna be on the on the commercial, Doug will do it. Yeah. So we partnered up in 2016, after, I rode the gold wave, and I had a great gold store in Palm Springs, but then gold kinda fizzled out. And, he's like, man, I I could really use you to come in and organize, my business. And that's what I did.

I came in and organized it.

Steve: And so, like, it's it's interesting because I've been in other rooms. Right? And they're like, god. This Doug Hopkins guy, like, how do we beat him? You know?

And, like, what marketing we gotta do? I was like, man, you know, like, just go on TV. And then we meet. It's like, oh, can't just go on TV.

Darin: Yeah. We'll crush you. No. I'm teasing. But you know what?

You can't just go on TV and that's part of the problem. Is that, especially now, there is so much competition out there. Mhmm. You really have to have, a, a message that stands out, but, b, you gotta know how to buy TV. You gotta know where the eyes are.

You gotta know where your audience is, and you got to know like, we've had data from three, four years now. I I started buying his TV in 2017. I know exactly what day and what what shows and what TV stations work, and that same show on a different day on the same station never pulls.

Steve: Really?

Darin: Exactly. Well, think about here. I'll give you in general. The 05:00 news, let's say. K.

Well, people are doing a lot of different things at 05:00 depending on the day. On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, they might be either coming home or at home. Let's call it the 06:00 news. So they're at home having dinner. K?

Speaker: Mhmm.

Darin: Where are they at on Friday?

Steve: Not at home.

Darin: They're not at home. They're not watching a five or 06:00 news.

Steve: Right.

Darin: So but what happens is people wind up ordering from TV. It's called a run of schedule, and that's what TV stations love to do because it they're hey. Just give us $5,000. We'll play the commercials wherever.

Steve: That's a great idea to use the money.

Darin: And that's what the deal is. Well, what you wind up doing is your commercials wind up falling in the places that I don't buy.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Darin: Because I buy all the prime spots that I know are gonna work, and you wind up in all the empty spots that nobody else wanted to buy. Mhmm. And that's how that's how we built this out.

Steve: So let's say I was in a market,

Speaker: I e,

Steve: Phoenix, and I wanted to get on TV. What advice would you give someone that they were trying to penetrate the fee, the the TV market?

Darin: Well, it's really hard because you can see that there's several people who have tried,

Speaker: you

Darin: know, and I and I'm talking, you know, you have the the big corporations, the Open Door Offer Pads, and all those guys that are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a month.

Steve: I wish I had had their budget.

Darin: I wish I wish I could take their losses as well because they're the only types of companies that can lose $600,000,000 in a quarter, and their stock goes through the roof because they lost 900,000,000 the month before. Yeah.

Steve: It was an improvement.

Darin: You know, but you have these people that'll go out and they'll they'll buy for a month or two, and they'll throw $2,050,000 dollars at it, and they'll get their butts kicked.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Darin: And we've seen them come and go and come and go. So honestly and and I'm not just saying this for Phoenix. I'm saying this for most markets. You probably don't wanna do it unless you really know what you're doing. It's you're playing with I shouldn't just go out and buy houses.

I'm not a real estate agent. I don't you know, I and I have quite a bit of an education now being in in real estate. But could you imagine somebody who isn't in real estate just going out in this market and blindly buying houses? They have all the time.

Steve: It's a disaster.

Darin: You're gonna get crushed. You're not gonna see the foundation issues or the roof issues or that it was flooded at some point. Well, the same thing happens with TV and radio Yeah. Is you you go out there and you buy blind, and you're gonna get crushed.

Steve: So we got I don't know how well connected you are with the realtors in town. Right? So we got Russell Shaw. Right? You guys lost to

Darin: be a radio guy too.

Steve: He was

Darin: a radio.

Steve: Yeah. That's actually how he got free radio time was that he would work to get free radio time. Yes. And so in in talking to him, it's like, well, his target market is just conservative radio. Right?

He's like, I want old angry white guys.

Darin: Gotcha.

Steve: So it's like, that's where I advertise my TV, my radio. Like, it's just conservative radio or, you know, conservative TV.

Darin: Right.

Steve: Like, do you have, like, a a demographic or an avatar or someone that you go after when you're when, you know, someone's trying to advertise on TV?

Darin: No. We buy well, yes and no. So, obviously, we have an avatar of of who our typical, client is. Mhmm. And that's typically, you know, obviously a homeowner mainly over the age of 50 years old.

Mhmm. But at the same time, I don't look at ratings for television stations. I look at leads. Like, because that's something different about our advertising agency, Bullseye Branding, is it we're buying leads. We're not buying commercials.

And that's how I explain it to the television stations.

Speaker: Got

Darin: it. So you could have a very poorly rated station. But if I buy a $50 commercial and I get a lead out of it, that's a $50 cost per lead.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Darin: Whereas I could buy Wheel of Fortune for $1,400 and get three leads out of it, that's $500 per lead. So I'd rather buy the the $50 commercial that produces one lead than the $1,400 commercial that produces three leads.

Steve: So cost per lead is the metric that you guys are Cost

Darin: per lead is 100%. And that and that's actually what we do is we have a relationship with our clients to where they send us their leads every single week, and we do lead attribution. And so then we're able to credit specific TV stations and and and programs, and commercials with a lead, two leads, five leads, however many leads. And then what we do is we get their rates every week from the TV stations.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Darin: If you go to buy TV, if you were to call right now, they give you the rates for the quarter. It would they'd say that they never changed. They're just 250 for the next three months for this show. Well, it's kinda like Google. It's it's like bidding.

Mhmm. They have a certain number of spots that they have to fill up. And so if they've got a blank spot, whoever bids the most is gonna get it. Whether they they could sell it to everybody else at $1,400 a pop, and if there's one open one and I bid 50, I'm gonna get it. And that's that's what people don't understand.

And so what we do is we say, okay. We do a historical analysis and we say, we purchased 10 of these commercials over the past quarter. You know, this this hour and this day. And we got five leads from it. And it's a $100 this week for the commercial.

Therefore, we know we gotta play two commercials to get a lead, $200 per lead. And we do that with every hour of every day on every station, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. And then we're able to go in through our through our AI and say, tell us what here, we've got $5, $10, $20 to spend. Tell us where that $20 is spent best, and it'll say you're gonna buy this show on this day, this show on that day, this show on this day, this show on that day. And it changes every week because the rates change every week.

So maybe that $100 commercial is $400 next week. Well, then it doesn't fall in the buy box. But maybe there's another one that does come up into the buy box.

Steve: Fascinating. So that's something you have to monitor all the time.

Darin: Oh, you gotta be on top of it. Yeah. And so that really is that's the hard part is y'all need to be paying attention buying houses. Mhmm. And you don't need to hire all these extra people to do all that extra work.

You can hire you can hire an ad agency that that you'll have a meeting with once a month. They'll say, hey. How was last month? And you go, yeah. It was alright.

And they go, alright. We'll change it a little bit. Or you can hire an ad agency that's basically like an extra employee for you that's gonna go through and and find out and make those adjustments, and and you just have to sit back and answer the phone.

Steve: What would it cost someone if they didn't have someone that was looking at it like a hawk? Meaning what? If they just use this agency and I was like, I set it and forget it kind of situation.

Darin: Oh, it cost us hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars because we did have an agency like that before. Oh, you did? Yeah. And and it what and they weren't a bad agency. It was it was just the way that TV does it.

And we'd have a meeting once a month, once every couple, you know, months, and they'd we go, hey. Let's let's try cable. Let's try Discovery Channel. I like Gold Rush. I like this or I like that.

You know? Well, who cares what I like? Who cares what you like? Yeah. What is a 50 year old lady like that's getting ready to sell her house or or a guy?

And so they'd they'd buy, you know, whatever those channels were, and then they come back a month later. Well, we're doing it on a weekly basis. Yeah. So and I'm not even asking you. I'm pulling your leads.

I'm going, oh, man. We had 50 leads last week. We had 25 this week. But I know where those 25 leads came from, but I also know which commercials played that didn't pull any leads. Leads.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Darin: And so we're just we're it's time and money and opportunity. And and then it also gives you the confidence to go all in. Like, we're going all in now with this market, and it gives us the it gives us the confidence. Heck, in in LA, we're spending a quarter million dollars a month. Can you imagine, like, if you were doing that blindly, like, that can sink a company in just a couple of months.

Yeah. Here in Phoenix, we're doing about half that right now. Mhmm. And and we're going more and more and more every single month because we know what's working. And and also right now, it's the market's tight.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Darin: There's a lot of people that can sell their houses. Why would they sell it wholesale? You know, here in Phoenix, especially, if you need 10 or $20,000 on your house and you were hoping to get 254 at six months ago, you can sell it for $2.50 now and not even do the repairs.

Steve: Right.

Darin: So why would I wanna sell it wholesale? You know, so there there's less available people right now to, you know, for that audience. So Yeah. You really gotta zone in on them. But, yeah, it could cost you a lot.

Steve: So let's talk about first, if Doug's watching, like, I you guys need to retire. Right? Just take it easy.

Darin: We're not that old.

Steve: But, you know, one and a quarter or a hundred, hundred and a quarter a month in Phoenix, like, what are is your expected ROI on that?

Darin: Worried about here's the interesting thing about it. We only do TV and radio and very small PPC.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Darin: Overall, we're eight, nine ROI right now.

Steve: Eight or nine nine x?

Darin: Yeah. Now you tie that just to TV because here's the here's the problem. We also have great word-of-mouth because we bought a lot of houses throughout the years. So those people came from TV commercials at one time or radio commercial or whatever. And now it's three, four, or five years later, they're telling their friend or or something like that.

We have great relationship with real estate agents, all across the city. So they're sending us, houses that they can't sell. So if you look at just the actual TV leads that came in last week, it's typically four to six ROI. But you pile in everything else that we're not spending money on that really is a byproduct of of our marketing throughout the years and our current marketing, it it's eight to eight to nine, ten ROI.

Steve: What about LA? What does quarter 1,000,000 a month buy you in LA?

Darin: Well, let me put you this way. They did $1,300,000 in wholesale fees, last month.

Steve: Okay. So a little bit more than five x. Yeah. It's okay ROI.

Darin: It's alright.

Steve: Yeah. It'll work.

Darin: You know?

Steve: And then

Darin: you gotta have the guts when but even we've had this conversation too. You know, like, right now, cost per lead is going up for everybody. I mean, I'm sure you're seeing it too on throughout all channels. Is it better to spend twice as much and make 5050% more if you see it not a 100% more? So is it better to spend, let's say, a $100,000 and make $200,000 in income, so a profit of a 100,000?

Or is it better to spend $200,000 and make $350,000? In other words, a $150,000 income. Now your cost per lead went way up, you know, and your profit margin went way down, but you still made a $150,000 more.

Steve: It's, it's diminishing returns.

Darin: And that's the that's where you need somebody to push you, but you gotta have the confidence in it too. Right. Doug and I have this relationship as his COO, and and we're best friends to where, I asked him to raise the budget several months ago. And he said, I don't know. You know, I I don't know.

I'm not sure about this. Cost per lead is going up. We had our best month ever in February and we had our second best month ever in March. And he came in in February. He's like, oh my gosh, we're, you know, dollars 300,000 in wholesale is more than our best month ever.

And I'm like, yeah, that's cool. And and he's like, holy smokes, man. This is awesome. I see. I doubled the budget, dude.

Speaker: Because I

Darin: know you didn't. I go, yeah. I actually doubled the budget when you said no.

Speaker: Yeah. You

Steve: made an executive decision.

Darin: And it's really important to be able to you know, you don't really wanna have that with somebody you don't know.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Darin: And really, as a COO, you probably shouldn't do that. I would never do that unless I was a 100% certain that we were gonna get the results because of the data that Bullseye branding puts together, that's why I was able to make that decision.

Steve: Got it. So having the data is really important.

Darin: It's it's everything, man. Yeah. The KPI and then going into KPIs and and your CRM. And, man, if you don't have the data, you're fishing blind.

Steve: So there was an interesting debate, I think, yesterday, and I saw you commented on it. It was basically the question about lead managers. Yeah. So it's something along the lines of, you know, how much to spend or what what was the exact conversation? And because I want you

Darin: to know how to

Steve: dive into this.

Darin: The question was whether or not to use VAs as your lead managers.

Speaker: Mhmm. That

Darin: at least that's how I read it.

Steve: Right. And then you wanted a diatribe. You wanna elaborate on it?

Darin: What you call it?

Steve: A diatribe. I can see you screaming.

Darin: I'm slightly animated. I I think the whole, sense at the end that said, people who use VAs are small time probably struck some nerves. But but here is how I genuinely feel about it. That look. I I I use VAs, but I don't use VAs as the front line to deal with customers.

Steve: Mhmm.

Darin: Every time I call someplace, I'll give you an example. XM satellite radio. I got a call every six months because they have this special. And if you don't if you let the six months go, they put you at the regular rate, which is like five times what you're paying. So every six months, I got a call and get the $60 six months plan.

And every time the very first call, I get somebody in a call center, a foreign call center, and I can never get what I need done. Usually, they're not given the the leniency to be able to do You don't

Steve: have the authority.

Darin: And and I've been a customer as a radio guy. I've been a customer of XM since, like, day one, you know. And so I always start by calling and saying, hey. This is my six month call. If you look at my if you look at my thing, you're gonna see that every six months I call, every six months I've gotta cancel.

Every six months you transfer me to the customer, retention department. And then every six months you give me the same deal I've always had. Can we just skip all of that and just go, I can't communicate that to somebody in a call center. Mhmm. They don't they don't get it.

They just and so but I'll hang up, and I'll call back. And every once in a while, you catch somebody in America. And boom. It's a five minute conversation to get it taken care of and it's done. And you feel like so when I call, instantly, if I hear that they're in a call center, I'm like, Now if you're selling your house and it's the biggest thing it's the biggest financial decision you're ever gonna make and you call and you get somebody in a call center who really doesn't understand American culture, these people aren't calling because they're having the greatest day in their lives.

They're calling because they have a hardship.

Steve: Mhmm.

Darin: Something's going on here and they want to I mean, our our best customers are people that we've, you know, we've hugged. They've cried in front of us. We've we've said, I can get this done for you. I can do this now. That's to me, that's impossible with the VA.

It just doesn't happen. Maybe there's a unicorn here and there, but we've got and you've met our our lead managers.

Speaker: We have

Darin: three local lead managers. They know everything that there is to know. And, actually, I think two of them now have real estate licenses too, and we're working on the third one. The telephone call comes in. We got a call last Saturday.

It came in at 10:30 in the morning. Mike instantly knew this is a house that is is a hot lead. I think we can get this. Doug was at that house at 12:00 that afternoon and had a signed contract at 12:30. Within two hours of the person calling us, we had a signed contract on the house.

Mhmm. And we in an in person appointment. So I'm also completely against and and I know you guys are are very good at what you do, but, you know, doing things virtually. Like, maybe I'm old school. I'm 49 years old.

I think face to face talking to somebody is so much more effective Yeah. Especially than a VA and and even from a virtual standpoint. I think if people are in that city and they can go out, I think two to one, you'll wind up signing more contracts.

Steve: The line I love there was, I pray that

Darin: Oh, I do.

Steve: I know. You wanna finish that statement?

Darin: I said I pray that anybody any of our competitors in Phoenix use VAs for their lead managers. There's a use for for VAs, and and there's some really good ones out there, just not frontline calling.

Steve: Yeah. And so yeah. Yeah. I met Mike, Josh, and then was it Lisa?

Darin: Lynn.

Steve: Lynn.

Darin: And Joel.

Steve: And Joel. Yeah. You're rock stars. Rock stars.

Darin: Yeah. And we've held on like, they've all been working with us for well over a year, almost two years now.

Steve: Yeah.

Darin: So very like, no turnover at all.

Steve: Yeah. No. You got you got an amazing group. So there was something that we were saying. I called you a couple weeks ago, and you were like, what's the word I'm looking for?

Dazed? Shocked? What's the word I'm looking for? Because I called you. Yeah.

I was like, Darren, I wanna expand. Oh, yeah. Alright. And it's like, you know, here's what I'm thinking about. And you're like, okay.

Cool. So, like, you got boots in the ground there? Like, what do you need boots in the ground for?

Darin: Yeah. You

Steve: wanna explain your expression?

Darin: It's really just the way that I think, man. And and, you know, I gotta tell you, you know, Dan Bro, up in Rochester. Mhmm. He hired a COO that lives in California. Mhmm.

And and I love his COO, Carlos. Great guy, man. I mean, he's freaking awesome. But before, when he was just talking about hiring somebody, I'm like, well, they're gonna move to Rochester. Right?

And he's like, no. They can be my COO from California or Texas or wherever. I'm like, really? Like, how's that gonna happen? Like, you need, like and I just look at it and and maybe I'm looking at it through, you know, through my vision of just, you know, goggles or whatever.

But, man, I wanna walk into Doug and be like, hey. Let's change something, or let's do this, or let's do that, and have a face to face. And I and I can't even imagine having a COO or somebody running your company that you've never even met face to face before.

Speaker: Well, I

Steve: think the other thing too that really shocked you was like, hey. I wanna open this market. He's like, who do you have there? Like, nobody. Nobody?

Darin: Yeah.

Steve: And for you, you're like, this doesn't make any sense. Yeah. So I brought Well,

Darin: I will tell you, though, when COVID hit, people who were very good at doing things virtually

Speaker: Mhmm.

Darin: I mean, it it really is a talent that is needed in this world because we don't know what curve ball's coming for us at any one time. So those who were very good at at at doing things virtually and closing virtually excelled during COVID.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Darin: I do think when it's one on one and and there are no restrictions, I I have to think that being in somebody's living room is stronger than being

Speaker: in somebody's

Darin: living room.

Steve: Wholeheartedly agree. Wholeheartedly agree. Yeah. I think the thing that I kinda laughed at was, like, you were kinda shocked at, like, the speed I like to move. Yeah.

Right? And, like, I was like, okay. Here's what we're gonna do, and I expect it, like, done, like, in two or three days.

Darin: Yeah.

Steve: Right? And you're like, what is wrong with you?

Darin: That's what well, but but no. That's what that's what winners and losers do. Yeah. Because the winners do it and they do it well. The losers make that quick choice and they fall flat on their face.

You're definitely in in the winner category.

Speaker: Yeah.

Darin: And there's no doubt that you're you're gonna put it together and you're gonna make it succeed.

Steve: Yeah.

Darin: I I would think for most other people though, I'd be like, woah. Slow your roll a second there. Why don't you have, like, why don't you go visit the city first and maybe put a person or two on the ground? Or

Speaker: Yeah.

Darin: You know?

Steve: So I took that message. I was like, hey. You know, I was talking to Darren, and he's got a lot of clients that are really successful. And the fact that he was kinda disturbed to how fast I wanna move, like, bam, sorry. I was talking to my wife.

I was like, I'm sorry that you have to put up with me because this is the guy you gotta deal with Yeah. Every day.

Darin: My wife's the same way, though, because, I did radio for twenty, twenty five years. Mhmm. And I got laid off in 2006, right, you know, with the economic crisis and all that. And my wife's like, what are you gonna do? And I'm like, I don't wanna do radio anymore.

I'm 34 years old. I don't like Britney Spears or all that stuff anymore.

Steve: Like Britney Spears.

Darin: She is pretty she's she's she's alright. I gotta be careful what I say here because everything lives in infamy now on the Internet. I was It does. I was famous before the days of the Internet. So luckily, all of my, misgivings and crazy statements are up and

Steve: Pre Twitter.

Darin: Gone. She's like, what do you wanna do? And I'm like, well, I got this buddy who's buying gold, and he's making a lot of money. I think I'm gonna do that. She's like, you need to get a job.

I'm like, where am I gonna get a job? Like, what am I gonna do? Like, what do you think I'm gonna do? I'm a high school graduate. I've done radio for the last twenty years.

I think I'm gonna walk into an attorney's office and get a job and be like, yeah, I'd like to make $200,000 a year. Yeah. Like, I I wanna make some money here. And I took all of my severance, and I paid off our debt. And then I went and started the gold store, something I knew nothing about.

Mhmm. And we made millions. It was incredible. Yeah. Because because I'm not I wasn't a gold guy.

I was a marketer.

Steve: Right.

Speaker: I'm not a

Darin: real estate guy. I'm a marketer. That's why everybody once people figure that out, like, you're not a real estate agent. You are a real estate marketer. You're marketing yourself.

Steve: Right.

Darin: And once people figure that out, those are the people who really excel. And you've obvious I mean, look at this. This is insane when what you built over the past. Heck, I mean, I've only been familiar with you for the last year or so, but you know, what you build just in the last year is incredible. And with your sales trainings and, and gone from, you know, doing some sales training to creating this incredible YouTube channel to being the hottest thing in c g and also outside of c g and you built your own network of people, it's freaking awesome, man.

But it's not because you're a YouTuber, It's because you're a marketer.

Steve: Alright. Well, it's it's what people fail to understand when they first get in. It takes a while. It takes a few years to figure this out. Those watching this show actually have a huge advantage because they get to learn this topic before they get, you know, punched in the past.

Darin: Make the same mistakes we've made.

Steve: But we're all in the sales and marketing business. All of us Yes.

Speaker: Are

Steve: in a sales and marketing business. We just happen to be in real estate.

Darin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Heck, you could use the same formula for dog food. Mhmm.

You really could. It's the same formula for gold, for even for me telling people to run up and down the streets in their underwear on the radio. It's the same formula. You're it's it's a call to action. It's convincing people to do something that you want them to do.

Steve: How many people can we get to raise their hand? And I always go to raise their hand. How many of them can we close?

Darin: Yeah. And isn't it amazing that the same percentages happen over and over and over again? Like, how can they do a poll of a of a thousand people across the country on any on any issue? And they say, hey, it's 47 for 53% against. And then you go to the election and the election is forty six percent and fifty two.

You're like, how does this, like, wind up to where it's just within one percentage point out of millions of people when you only asked a thousand? Now if you take that theory and you apply it to the rest of your life going, hey, if I like with the TV commercials. Okay. So, hey, if I buy 10 commercials and I get three leads out of it, if I buy the same 10 commercials next week, I'm gonna get three leads out of it. And and I don't know why it happens, but it happens.

Steve: It's the numbers.

Darin: So then you scale it.

Steve: Yeah.

Darin: You know, same thing with any other lead source. Same thing with how we answer, you know, your sales calls. When we do this, it tends to work fifty, sixty, 70% of the time. Right. And you master that and make it a little bit better, and then you become a game of inches.

Speaker: Yeah. And

Darin: that's that's where it's exciting.

Steve: Yeah. Well, that's where it separates the the the how to say this politically correct now?

Darin: Men from the boys. All set.

Steve: Champions from,

Darin: Oh, there you go.

Steve: So yeah. In case you guys didn't, got that, Oklahoma City, we're coming. Alright?

Darin: So OKC, ready to do it.

Steve: OKC, we're gonna be we got max cash offers coming to OKC. So we're talking about radio. You're a crazy kid. And it's funny. Right?

We're in the same market.

Speaker: Yep.

Steve: We never really talk. You're in Collective Genius. You're crushing in there. I sign up, meet you, right, in freaking Tampa, I hear. Right?

And I find out when they introduce you on stage, no. You were talking about it while you were on stage. Yeah. I was Crazy Kid.

Darin: Was it is it Is that when the light bulb went off?

Steve: I was like, what the heck Crazy Kid is on stage right now?

Darin: That's funny.

Steve: So for those of you guys that live in Phoenix, you know, you got was it Ruben s?

Speaker: Yeah. What was the show?

Darin: Kid and Reuben in the morning.

Steve: Kid and Reuben in the morning. That's what I will listen to on the way, I think, to high school. Yeah. Right? Thanks.

So it's crazy.

Darin: Appreciate that, man. We shouldn't say elementary school or or that's what my parents used to listen to.

Steve: Yeah. My parents used to listen to Kid and Reuben. So that's awesome. Any crazy stories, I mean, from those days?

Darin: Oh, man. We had so much fun. There was and I there's so many different things that we were able to do. We were able to get away with a lot back

Steve: then. Mhmm. Those jokes would not

Darin: be No. No. No. Oh, man. I and and I I couldn't imagine.

There's no way I'd wanna be on the air, in any capacity today because and it's really kinda sad because things that aren't even meant to be hurtful to anybody, like, you how how could you be a comedian nowadays?

Steve: Someone's gonna get triggered.

Darin: Like, it's like think of comedians, like, that that would make the jokes, and they'd make race jokes about everybody. Like, they can't do that anymore. Imagine Dave Chappelle. Like, a Dave Chappelle.

Speaker: The only

Steve: one that's figured it

Speaker: out.

Darin: Because he doesn't care. Probably, he's he's the only one. And and, honestly, the pendulum's gonna swing the other way. It really has gone too far. Listen, there's you can be respectful to people, but then you have these people that are so oversensitive and they're looking for I mean, they're eating their own is what they're winding up doing too because they're going after people on their side.

Right. And and and attacking them for something. Imagine these poor kids and and and I've made a joke about it earlier about, you know, my misgivings were in the past and the internet didn't save them. Imagine being a kid growing up nowadays.

Steve: Yeah.

Darin: We all did stupid things I did. When we were kids.

Steve: I was I was I was a perfect y'all.

Darin: I don't believe that.

Steve: And I

Darin: think I could probably find there's probably two degrees of separation of Steve Trang here in Phoenix, And I'm sure somebody could give me some some info.

Steve: There's no dirt. There's no dirt.

Darin: I'm I I did lots of stuff that I would be ashamed to admit that I did when I was a teenager or Yeah. Imagine these kids, they're just as dumb as we were, but now there's cell phones that keep it. I heard of a girl that was, you know, kicked out of college because of something that she said on on a video in high school. Yeah. The the yeah.

It's just that's sad. That's sad. That's sad. Bad form.

Steve: It's where I'm gonna be.

Darin: I'm halfway to dead, so I don't have to worry about that.

Steve: So let me ask you another question. This goes back to what we're talking about earlier as far as TV. Right? So, I mentioned Russell Shaw. Right?

So I talked to him, looked up to him. He he mentored me. And I said, alright, Russell. It's you and it's Curtis Johnson. Right?

You're the two guys. Mhmm. And, I wanna get into radio. I wanna start advertising on radio. What do you think?

He's like, honestly, it's really tough right now. Yeah. So I said, alright. I'm not gonna do radio. Carol Royce comes in, and she basically takes number two.

Right? So I don't know if there's any lessons there, but just wanna kinda wanna share my experience. So, like

Darin: She basically what?

Steve: She basically took over Curtis' spot.

Darin: Oh, gotcha. Okay.

Steve: Yeah. She came in, and I think she basically, just I I don't know what she did, but she basically took all the spots.

Darin: Okay.

Steve: So I think that, you know, it's tough. It's challenging. It's intimidating, right, to compete. Obviously, I've given it up competing against you guys locally. But other markets, right, like, if you guys wanna get in TV, like, don't do it.

Yeah. Right? Like, even if Darren is helping the number one guy, guy, like, don't not do it. It's because I guess, it's the message I'm trying to share here.

Darin: You just need to be able to it's kinda like gambling. Mhmm. Don't go into a casino with money that you're not prepared to lose.

Steve: Right. And that's that's actually my experience today. Right? I'm on BitCloud. We were talking about it earlier.

Right? You're talking about Dogecoin. Yeah. I'm on BitCloud. And I was like, yeah.

I'm investing. And, I might lose money, but it's money I'm comfortable losing. Yeah. Right? It could do it could totally be a scam.

What are you gonna do?

Darin: That's what I tell every new client that signs on, is number one, you can't pay by credit card. Mhmm. Like and and it's not I don't wanna sync you. That's my whole thing, and I can't even though worked for, that we we do our formula with. I don't want you to be the one that it doesn't work for and all of a sudden you're filing for bankruptcy and it, you know, that's just not a good thing.

And and have three months worth of those TV commercials ready to go and ready to lose the amount of money that it would cost. So to have three months budget ready to go and ready to lose. I'm not gonna be in, you know, we're not an ad agency that come after you for the next nine months of of stuff because I want you to win. And I think that's how we've built our reputation. But if you can't afford to lose that three months budget, build the pipeline.

And so if you're if you're into it for $10 the first month and you haven't signed a deal yet, but you, you know, we all know it takes sometimes four, six, heck, sometimes six a year to get somebody to sign a contract. Months. And and if you can do that, you're gonna be okay. Yeah. But if it's gonna sink you, go close a couple deals first, save some money, and then let's do it.

Steve: Don't let this be the magic pill.

Darin: Do not. No. Yeah. No.

Steve: Got it. And then I think if it weren't for Ryan Pineda, you would've won the belt last time. Right?

Darin: Oh, he he dominates though, man. He's so good.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. So you wanna talk about the essence of what you talked about at our last CG, the one that got you to show the metal?

Darin: And we kinda went over some of it. One you know, one part of my presentation really, the presentation was getting being as efficient as possible with leads in in in your lead flow, in every sense of of of thinking. Number one, like with your telephone calls. You want it to be a one way street. You want to them to dial the phone number, you want to pick it up.

Every little roadblock you put in front of it will stop people from going through. If it says press 1 for this, press 2 for that, press 3 for this, okay, there you're gonna lose people. And then if it says please hold while I find somebody and it's, you know, not a ring, you're gonna lose more people. And if it goes to voicemail, you're gonna lose even more people. But you will get 100% of the people if they call and you answer.

Mhmm. So it's same concept with your website. All these people go out and they're like, oh, we gotta have meet the team and frequently asked question. Honestly, people don't care. They saw your commercial, they saw your ad, whatever it was, and they want to put in their address offer.

They want it to be one, two, three. They don't want to go there and get your ebook and go do this. And I'm and I apologize if you got an ebook, but you know what I'm saying? Like, somebody who's coming at you, do you have an ebook?

Steve: I don't have any.

Darin: It. So somebody but somebody who wants you to give them an offer, they wanna type in their address. They really wanna hit submit and they want the offer to happen immediately. Yeah.

Speaker: But we

Darin: know that that can't happen for the most part. So but then you need to call them back immediately because they're sitting there, they're expecting an offer. You call them back in an hour, you call them back in two hours, you call them back the next day, you've lost it. Like your odds of getting in touch with somebody after an hour versus five minutes chances if you call them back within the first five minutes. So then it goes down to, you know, the VA third party call center question about the lead managers.

To me, what works best is somebody the the perfect scenario is somebody picks up the phone, they call, they get somebody who works for your company, the person's educated and knows, hey, this is a good house, let's get an appointment. That person sets the appointment on the first phone call and the, acquisition person shows up as soon as possible. And they set the appointment for as soon as possible. We we lost a deal yesterday because we had an appointment scheduled for today listing agent went by the house last night and got the listing. Had we set that appointment sooner, we would have got that deal.

And so that's really what that presentation was all about. And really, it went back to the lead managers, because lead managers are your MVPs of your team. They are the first line of defense. They they they are the quarterback. They touch every single snap.

Every single person who calls in every deal that you make manager talked to them. Yeah. And so why we put those people on the bottom rung is beyond me. We don't. And and we pay our lead managers very well.

We pay them a very good commission. They make it would drop people's jaws if they knew what they make. But if you saw how many deals these guys I mean, we brought in over 400 deals between three lead managers.

Steve: Yeah.

Darin: So you don't have to have 20 people doing it. Motivated people who are well paid and and well motivated doing it. That's that's worked for us.

Steve: So Jason Lewis and I, who I'm still waiting, Jason, for you to come on the show. So we were talking about creating a program to help listen to lead manager calls so that we can have an effective training program. Yeah. Right? Because the challenge is, how do we get a lead manager know this is a deal, this is not a deal?

Obviously, you guys have figured that out. Yeah. What is something that you would want to tell someone that's training a lead manager to kinda sniff out whether this is a deal or not? What are the things that you're hearing that you know it's a deal?

Darin: Yeah. And and it's

Steve: It's an art a little bit.

Darin: And it's kind of secret code that the that the customer says. I've got grant I just put in granite countertops. It's the best house on the block. I'm right up against the golf, golf course, and my neighbor just sold theirs for 20,000 over what Zillow did. Send a send a real estate agent

Steve: out there

Darin: because you're not wholesaling that house.

Steve: Right.

Darin: Then again, on the other side, if somebody says, Hey, my parents have lived in this house since I was a kid. Man, it's a beautiful house, but, you know, we haven't changed carpets or anything since I was in high school. And, you know, it's got formica countertops and, you know, it's gonna need some TLC, it's gonna need some love. And there's a lot of people who are very honest about it. Yeah?

It's gonna need some fix up. That's that's a wholesale.

Steve: Got it.

Darin: Any day. And then, but there's also some that'll trick you, you know, because there's some that will play the tough, tough, negotiator on the phone. And once you get out there, it's really about their want. You know, what is their want? You know, maybe they've got a house that they'd really like to put an offer on this weekend, but they don't even have this house listed yet to sell, and they know they're never in this market gonna get a, an offer accepted on the contingency of a sale.

Yeah. Boy, we could go out there on Saturday. We can have that thing under contract, and you can go make that offer on that house and you pick your closing date. We're good. We can solve that problem for them.

And in this market right now, we could take that house even if it's in really good condition, and we could probably put five, ten grand into it, you know, paint it and clean it up a little bit and slap a sign on the front of it, and we both win.

Steve: Right. So let's see. We got some questions here. Let's see what we got here. Brian, it's

Darin: You're skipping through a whole bunch because they're like, who's that crazy dude?

Steve: No. We got

Darin: Why'd you have this guy on?

Steve: Oh, we got Gino Paloma saying that's one good looking man. We got

Darin: up, Gino? You see, he's in Atlanta. Let me do you know about Gino? Yeah. The kid is a prodigy.

Steve: Oh, yeah.

Darin: These guys are going to college, and they're freaking dominating Atlanta, and they're running TV commercials in Atlanta. And they're, you know, lower twenties, and and they're more organized than a bunch of 40 year olds that I've ever seen.

Steve: We I he's, like, one of my he's my star student right now, and we're going through. And we have our our calls like, man, this guy's got it dialed in.

Darin: He can teach us stuff.

Steve: And he's And she's +1, 22. Life's not fair, Darren. Life's not fair. Billy Ross says right?

Darin: Billy.

Steve: My guy right there, Max says, Darren, the man the man, the myth, the legend. So that's why I'm skipping through. I'm trying to get to the questions.

Darin: Gotcha. Well, I like those ones better.

Steve: Yeah. So Brian Malley is like, I spent four hours working with one of the lead managers on just this today. Listening for cues, you have to pour into them. They are your quarterbacks. So

Darin: Yeah. And you lose you lose the client if you ask the obvious question. How much would you like for your house? That's not what you you know, I mean, I know sometimes we're able to do it and get away with it. Mhmm.

But, like, could you imagine going out and buying a car and the car salesman says, how much would you like to pay for a car? Happens immediately is your wall goes up and you're like, this guy's trying to screw me. You know, so so when we ask, how much would you like to get for your house? Like, to me, that's that's a that's a turnoff. Mhmm.

What we also teach our people to do is they look up the tax records while they're on the phone with the person Mhmm. So that we can find out what their equity is. That's another horrible question to ask somebody. How much do you owe on the house? Mhmm.

Oh, okay. So you can figure out what my low number is? Like, and people do that, and it's horrible when they do that. Why not just look up the tax records and you can go, oh, okay. They took out a loan for x number of dollars five years ago, and so we knock off, you know, $20 off of it.

Here's what their equity most likely is. And then you know and that's actually smart to do also because then you know also if somebody's upside down or doesn't have equity

Steve: Right.

Darin: That also helps you put it into a bucket.

Steve: Yeah. Definitely gives you something to work with. Yeah. So then we talked about cost per lead. Is that the number one KPI that you track?

Darin: No. The the profit is the number one KPI.

Steve: Number one profit is number one KPI. Yeah. And then cost per lead?

Darin: ROI.

Steve: ROI. Got it.

Darin: I don't think cost per lead really matters, to be honest with you, because cost per lead is going to affect everything else down the road. But as I said earlier, I'll pay double the cost per lead. Mhmm. What if what if your cost per lead is thousand dollars but you're making double the profit on on that particular channel? So who cares if it's double or triple or quadruple if you're

Steve: making So then what are what are the main KPIs that Darren's tracking on a regular basis?

Darin: So from a real estate standpoint, our real estate dashboard, I have the number of contracts, that each lead manager has is responsible for having signed. We have a competition too. So somebody is is the champion each month and we talk smack if somebody's in a rut and people do go through ruts. Some people take off and then sometimes, you know, they'll they'll just get in a in a slump. The other thing that we track is the wholesale deals, the total amount of wholesale that we've put under contract this month.

We tracked that for last month. And the other thing is how many leads each lead manager took, what their appointment rate is, how many and and we're in the forties and thirties percent appointment rates.

Steve: Wow.

Darin: And and and I'll tell you what, the number and and this is what's really cool, and this happens nationwide because now I see everybody's numbers. Mhmm. Your your contract rate is one fourth of your appointment rate.

Speaker: Mhmm. So if

Darin: you do 20% appointments, you will get 5% contracts. Yeah. If you do 40% appointments, you will get 10% contracts. And and literally, you can double the amount of money that you're making by doubling your appointment rate.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Darin: That's all you have to do. You don't have to spend another penny. Appointment rate and a two and a half percent contract rate. And they'll say, well, do we need to spend more money? I go, no, you need to go on more appointments.

Mhmm. Double your appointments, you will double your your contracts.

Steve: Or improve your lead manager.

Darin: Eric Brewer said this. He said, I've never bought a house I didn't make an offer on. Makes sense.

Steve: He knows a thing or two. Alright. So then what is you guys' average fee for all those deals that you're doing?

Darin: I can't tell you that. You're gonna go buy TV in Phoenix and try to beat us. No.

Steve: I already resigned that. That's why I'm going to Oklahoma City. I have to leave here.

Darin: We average anywhere from 10 to $40,000, per deal. So it's it's probably 15 right now, maybe 20.

Steve: Got it. And then what is so we we talked about marketing. What is your total overhead?

Darin: Our total overhead per month? Mhmm. I'd have to look. It's it's under 150,000. Probably under no.

Under 200,000 now.

Steve: Well, I mean, you got a quarter mill in LA.

Darin: No. I'm just talking about Phoenix.

Steve: Okay. Just in Phoenix. Yeah. 200,000. Got it.

And one of the things that convinced me sold me on TV was you jumped onto a call in my coaching group. Right? So we got our mastermind. It's like, hey, Darren. Can you jump on?

Just share, you know, a little bit on TV. And you went through this entire Salesforce dashboard, and it was just nuts. So you wanna talk about what you do with Salesforce, how much you've invested, and all that other great stuff?

Darin: Sure. When I started working with Doug back in 2016, they had Salesforce, but it it was kind of funny. The lead would come in, and then they just had the name, address, telephone number, and it would forward an email to Doug. And then Doug would forward that email to whoever he wanted to go look at it, And that was really all they were using.

Steve: That's a great use

Speaker: of force.

Steve: It was

Darin: just a it was just an email forwarding tool. And so when I came in, they, you know, they had this company that's like a third party company that you can pay to do your Salesforce. It was a 180 an hour. Guy and say, Hey, I'd like you to build this field. And it was a simple field, like maybe the wholesale fee field.

And it takes three days to get done and it costs 180, you know, bucks. And so at that point, I was like, I'm gonna figure this out. So I just started looking on YouTube, and I just self taught myself Salesforce. And over the course of 2016, 2017, and 2018, I just completely learned how to build out our Salesforce. And I built it from the raw bones to all the dashboards that you see today.

And there was there was a whole lot of hours in it, whole lot of weekends, a whole lot of frustration because, you know, sometimes something very simple, like get this field to, like, like I take the date time field that the lead was created and I try to break out the time and it would be three hours off. And I'm like, why is it why does it say eight and it says five here? Well, I didn't realize that the time was GMT time.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Darin: And he had to adjust that time field, you know, by eight hours or three hours or whatever. It took me a weekend to figure that out. Scratching, but, you know, and and going crazy, I didn't have anybody to call. Yeah. But now that we've built it out, the cool thing is and and Billy had asked it actually asked me this question.

How can you be the COO for a company that does 400 deals, you know, per year here in Phoenix? And how can you be the CEO of a company that's gonna do $20,000,000 in revenue for TV and has 50 plus clients? The cool thing is is when you build out Salesforce correctly and and shout out to Stephanie Bettors who's gonna be here next week from Left Main and and Salesforce. When you build it out correctly, everything's automated. Mhmm.

And so all of the upkeep on the lead managers, like, I have a rule. If you have an an an active lead, it must have a task. Well, I can create a report that says show me all the active leads that don't have tasks, and then I can automate that report to send every morning at 8AM to all of my lead managers. Any rule that I've created, I can then create a report to make sure that it's being enforced, and it automatically goes out. So they know that I'm watching it.

It it helps me watch it, and I don't have to take any steps. It's just

Speaker: in my email box. You have to

Darin: log in the

Steve: computer. It's just there.

Darin: And it's done. And so, so much of the extra work. I I feel so bad for so many and there's so many great operators out there that let me put you this way. If I ask you how many appointments did you do last last month and how many contracts did you get and how much, in wholesale fees did you sign? If you can't find that answer out in ten seconds, you're doing so much extra work.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Darin: Because now you gotta export it out of Podio. Then you gotta redo all this other stuff and then you gotta put it on to Plecto or whatever. And then it it's not that hard. All I gotta do is push a button and it just go bloop and then you could say, okay, now how much of that was from TV? Bloop.

Okay, what about last year? You know, and it just does it.

Steve: Yeah.

Darin: So many people are working so many extra hours and the opportunity cost on that is phenomenal because you should be buying houses. You shouldn't be exporting Excel sheets and trying to do your KPIs. They should happen naturally.

Steve: So did the guy that get laid off from radio envision himself Oh, damn. Salesforce for a major operation.

Darin: No, but you know what? Everybody says what's your why. My why is to leave a legacy for my for my family. That's 100% my why. I want my family to have more of a head start than I had.

And I mean, I wasn't, you know, held back or anything like that, but I just I had to do everything on my own. I didn't really have a mentor, from parents that, you know, they were just, they were, they just worked jobs, they were working. Mhmm. I want my kids to to have a bit of a head start, and I want them to be motivated, and I want them to, I want to be a role model for success for them. And I really want them to to look back, and my wife as well, to to look back and say, hey, you know what?

That guy, he did everything he possibly could to to provide for us, but also to even after he's gone, life is better because of him.

Steve: Yeah. That's powerful.

Darin: So when you're that, like we said about being a marketer, once you figure out that why, man, it doesn't matter if I gotta dig ditches or if I gotta do this or or or whatever. When your why is that clear, then it makes everything fun because you're getting one step closer to your why.

Steve: Makes total sense. What is your biggest struggle right now?

Darin: Man, I'm I'm in a good spot. It's really strange, and I don't mean to imply that everything is always perfect because but there's man, I'm in a I'm in a part of my life where I think I've kind of figured out a couple of things that I don't worry about what I can't control anymore. I used to sit and worry about things. Am I gonna get in trouble? You know, when I was on the radio, am I gonna get in trouble for what I said or or is this gonna happen?

Or am I gonna get fired? Or is, you know, all those things. I don't have any of those fears anymore. And and I learned a long time ago that that worrying is experiencing the worst possible scenario over and over again. And 99% of the time, the worst possible scenario never happens.

Steve: Right.

Darin: And so at this point, I don't worry about anything. Because I can't change it. I'll deal and I'm really good at it. I can deal with it. My son son was in an accident a couple weeks ago and and he's okay and everything, but man he's 16, 17 years old.

I could have been the parent that worried every day and I could have experienced that accident for the last nine months. Instead I experienced it the night that it happened thank goodness he was, smart enough. We put a, he put a dashcam in there. It wasn't his fault. He was responsible.

He didn't get hurt very bad. And so, you know, like, why worry about that? I dealt with it when it happened and man, it made life a lot easier. Yeah. So what's my biggest struggle is probably, actually, it's probably putting the computer down.

It's probably, you know, I talk about my why. And I think you made a post about this the other day, didn't you? About being with your kids more.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Darin: I think that's probably my biggest struggle is because I'm so passionate about work and I see and this business is growing insanely and things are going awesome and and work is awesome and family life's awesome. You know, I got a 10 year old right now that comes out and goes, hey, dad, check this out. And I do stop and look at it, but then I go right back to work. And I that's probably my biggest struggle is I need to close the computer and and spend more time with my kids.

Steve: It's tough. It's tough. And it's something that consciously you have to make a conscious decision to do. Yeah.

Darin: And but, boy, yeah, I got a 20 year old, and I have a 17 year old. And so they're kind of you know, my 20 year old's moved out. My 17 year old's, like, in another year. You you begin to wish back and go, man, I wish that they I remember when they were seven, eight, nine, 10 years old, and it was daddy, daddy, daddy, and and I was like, what? What?

You know? Mhmm. And now you kinda look back on it going, man, I kinda wish I could have that daddy, daddy, daddy again because it it goes away eventually.

Steve: It does go away. I'm I'm I'm starting to experience that where not they don't want us to do as many things. Right? Just let me go on my iPad and chat with my friends and whatever.

Darin: Yeah.

Steve: Guys, this is a live show. If you have questions for Darren, please ask your questions in here. So you got a powerful why. Do you ever get demotivated? Do you ever I mean, do you ever run anything like you just like a punch in the stomach?

Like, how do you like, where you need to get back up?

Darin: I think I've had those in life.

Steve: So what do you do when you get knocked down? How do you stay motivated?

Darin: Well, you know, it's a good question. I I think I have to look at it from a a longer time period point of view. You know, leaving radio, man, that's all I wanted to do when I was a kid. Heck, since I was 12 years old, I was playing and making tapes and, you know, I was a high school DJ on, you know, DJing the dances and all that stuff. You know, when you get to a point where you're like, it's kinda like, you know, I'm 34, 35, I'm on top 40 station, kinda getting old for this.

It's not really my passion. I don't want to get up at 02:00 in the morning. That's that's kind of a woah moment there. And, but you know what? When you, when you're, when your back's up against the wall is when you shine.

That's what's so cool about it. So you almost kind of get knocked out and you're like, oh boy, here we come. We're coming back tenfold here on this one. And then it's a, it's an opportunity to make a new start with the gold store. When the gold store, in gold went down and, and I sold, you know, the assets to that, man, there was probably a year or two where I just went fishing every day and it sounds fun.

But it honestly kind of became a drag to where I was I just wasn't motivated. I didn't get

Steve: life without fishing every day.

Darin: Yeah. And and I'll give Doug credit for me. I know that was a smart ass comment. But

Steve: No. I'm serious. I would hate life without a fish

Darin: Oh, you

Speaker: would hate

Darin: life fishing every day? Awful.

Steve: Really? Oh my god. Yeah. Just sitting

Darin: there. Awesome, man.

Steve: That would be awful.

Darin: Just looking at just looking, man. I love

Steve: outdoors person.

Darin: Oh, I love being

Steve: There's no Wi Fi. Why are we here?

Darin: No, dude. So but, hey, I'll give Greg Doug credit because I I was out of you know, I'm out of making a ton of money, and then I sold the stuff and wasn't making any money anymore. And, you know, by him bringing me on in 2016, it got me working again. Mhmm. And it got me into the groove, and then all of a sudden you see, oh, okay.

Here comes the growth. And, you know, and and, you know, there's good motivation and monetary motivation, and then your why becomes clear again. And so, man, you got one life to live. I don't know what happens when you close your eyes the last time, and this is your Super Bowl. And so you better make it count.

You better make it count. I never wanted to be a statistic. I I always wanted to be somebody who was remembered afterwards. And, you know, it doesn't have to be on a huge scale or nationwide or worldwide scale. I just wanna be remembered by enough people in a in a positive light and those people who mean something to me.

So that's your motivator. So right now, no, man, I really don't get knocked down too much. You know, there's rough days or something will happen and or Doug will come in and go, hey, I got this brilliant idea. It should only take you five minutes when it's really a five month plan of of twenty hours a week of extra work. Yeah.

And sometimes you go home and you're like, but at the same time, man, you're so blessed. Like, look at what we're doing. Look where we're sitting. I mean, it's life is too good.

Steve: Our life is amazing. What is your superpower?

Darin: My superpower? I got lots of kryptonites. That'd probably be a much easier question to answer, but probably wouldn't be probably wouldn't be good for the show. My superpower is unlimited motivation right now. And it really has been for my entire life.

It's, I I I don't get tired. I I just I'm I'm so pumped, and and and really my superpower is is loving what I'm doing at the time. I feel so bad for people that get up and and I kinda felt like this at the end of radio when it was 02:00 in the morning because I did a morning show, the alarm would go off to wake you up and your first words were, oh, crap. You know, I I feel sorry for people that that do that. Every single morning I get up now, I'm like, oh, cool.

Today's lead day. Everybody's got their leads coming in. Let's see how how all of the different buys that we did, work out. Oh, cool. I've got this meeting with, you know, Mark and Chris.

We had this meeting with Mark and Chris yesterday, in Kansas City at SPD. We're putting together it's it's an incredible brand called one eight hundred sell now. We actually purchased the assets. We purchased the trademarks for it and we're creating because, you know, with a lot of our clients, we've had to create new websites and and brands for them so that it's really easy to remember on TV and it's a lot of work building 46 different brands. And, and then I started thinking about, well, what about, you know, the people that are that are your students and what about people in CG select or or what about people from CG that would like to just test TV and see how it works, but they are running all their direct mail and everything through their other brand.

Mhmm. So we purchased $1,800 to sell now and the website, the telephone number, the trademarks, everything, and we're building this as a nationwide licensing, model to where you can sign up and own a market. And Mark and Chris in, in Kansas City, they, they've signed up, they're our first clients, they've signed up for 10 markets across the Midwest. And then you run your own, you can send your own mailers out. We, you know, we'll give you the logos, the assets, all the leads that come through from your area to the website go directly to you.

Somebody calls the telephone number when you hire yourself now and it's going to say, please enter the zip code or the property that you'd like to sell.

Speaker: As soon

Darin: as they hit, you know, 85249, boom, your phone rings if you've got Chandler.

Steve: Right.

Darin: Or your phone rings if you've got Rhode Island or or whatever it is. So, so that's exciting. So so, man, I don't get knocked down. Actually, every morning, I'm kind of pumped because people like that who believe in us enough to where I can come to them, and I came to them with the ideas I was negotiating for the brand saying, hey, here's my vision. Here's what I'm thinking about doing with this.

Would you guys be interested? I know you're looking to expand into other markets and you don't wanna have you know, because they're best offer KC. We can't do best offer KC and some other cities. Nope. But you can do one eight hundred sell now in all of those cities.

So to build that out, now we've, you know, we've now we're on our third business of of building it out, and they all complement each other. They're all tools of each other. So, man, I I'll be honest with you. There's not too many days I get bummed out.

Steve: Yeah. Mark Dela Torre and and and Chris Johns, brilliant dudes.

Darin: Incredible.

Steve: Amazing. So Brian Manley loves your candor.

Darin: Thanks, Brian.

Steve: His question, with multiple lead sources, how are you keeping hands off how are you keeping the handoffs from lead manager to, acquisition manager clean?

Darin: With multiple leads well, every every lead source goes through the lead manager.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Darin: Here's one thing that here's something that actually that I I would like to convey to people is sometimes more isn't more. Sometimes people have too many lead sources, and they find themselves stretched too thin. I will tell you here in Phoenix for the operation that we did, and and we bought 400 plus houses last last year. We do television. We do radio.

We do very limited PPC, and the only PPC that we buy is branded terms because if somebody sees or hears our radio commercial and they go to the Google search bar instead of the, you know, URL bar and they type in Doug Hopkins, we wanna make sure Doug Hopkins is up on top. TV, radio, PPC, that's it. That's really you know, because then you have the word-of-mouth and and agent relationships. We're not doing cold calling, we're not doing texting, we're not doing direct mail, we're not doing any of that. A lot of times it's better to be a master of one than a jack of all trades.

Speaker: Yeah.

Darin: And to me, you know, that we've got +1, 234567. We have seven people that work for doughopkins.com. Seven. Yeah. So Two acquisitions people, three lead managers, myself and real estate agent, and two accountants.

So nine.

Steve: So let's just say generically, what are you doing to hand off from lead manager to acquisition manager? What's that conversation like?

Darin: Good question. And and Brian?

Steve: Brian. Yeah.

Darin: So like I was saying, we try to do that one road, and and so we try to set the appointment on the first call, the lead manager to set the appointment. And if the lead manager can do that well, the lead manager is always the person setting the appointment. Mhmm. The handoff then, we make sure that the telephone calls are being recorded into Salesforce for us. So then when we move it to appointment set and we have an appointment set date and time, an auto email goes out and it's also marked onto the acquisitions person's calendar.

And the lead manager has access so that they can see what the open times are on the acquisition person's calendar. Email goes out to the client and to the acquisitions person, and I always copy myself on all those so that I can always track and see if something's broken, if something is getting mixed up, a field, you know, those kinds of things. So there really isn't much of a handoff because it's all automatic. They're they're always notified. They're already notified.

Now there is communication sometimes because we have Doug Hopkins as as our East Valley acquisitions person. And you know Josh Barton. He does our West Valley. So we have two guys that have been twenty plus years in in buying houses here in Phoenix. If the lead manager has a question, they can call, and say, hey, Doug.

What do you think about this one? You know, this is this house. Here's the scenario, whatever. That's only if there's a question on it. And and then immediately, boom, you're right back onto it.

But the fewer phone calls that you can make, you know, you really wanna try to wrap everything up on the first or second phone call at the latest.

Steve: Yeah.

Darin: So the handoff really is in a perfect world, Doug gets an appointment. He knows he's got an appointment. He's got a task on Salesforce. He clicks on it, listens to the telephone call. There's not a whole lot more he has to do.

And there's nothing really that the lead manager has to do because their job is to answer the calls and try to get more appointments out of it.

Steve: And then are all your leads weighted equally when you're assigning them?

Darin: Oh, it's a jump ball. No. That's that yeah. If that's what you're asking, is that what you're saying?

Speaker: Yeah.

Darin: So yeah. I I mean, I believe 100 look. Our our lead managers get paid, commission, and they don't get a base. We'll give them a base for, like, the first couple of months, but it's a draw. You gotta pay it back.

But we pay them a very hefty commission as well. And then every lead is a is a jump ball. It rings on everybody's call, phone at the same time. And the minute that a lead is submitted via web, everybody gets a task assigned to them, everybody gets an email, and everybody gets a text. All three of them.

Whoever answers it first, that's their lead. And it has been awesome. Like, we we've changed from and we had a great lead manager before, who's now moved on to some awesome things and doing flips and all that. But we've we've moved on from a base, pay scale with with one person to three people just fighting like pit bulls to get it. And the and our appointment, percentage has just, you know, like quadrupled.

Our contract percentage is I mean, we're at 15% right now for twenty twenty one of contracts. So out of every 100 leads we get, we get 15 deals. And so we're just, it just, when they're fighting for it and it and it happened, we had two lead managers, Lynn and Joel. And, they're nice, they're cool people. But they they were trying to take care of each other.

They were like, oh, it's Lynn's day. You know, I I know that lead just came in five minutes ago, but Lynn's on a call. She'll she'll grab that one in a couple of minutes. And as soon as I saw that happening, I hired Mike who neither one of them knew. And I said, Mike, here's your here's your job, man.

Every lead that comes in, grab it first before everybody else. And Lynn and Joel were like, woah. What's going on, man? You're taking and you're cutting our money by a third. And I'm like, no.

Actually, I'm gonna increase your money because I'm gonna increase the amount of leads because now we have the better capacity.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Darin: But you're gonna make more money because you're gonna be on these leads a lot quicker.

Steve: Yeah.

Darin: And that's exactly what happened. They have they all made more, I believe, last year than the year before when there was only two of them.

Steve: Are all the big boys in Arizona?

Darin: Well, I mean, I think probably the obvious answer is is that almost every house here, at least 80% of them are less than 30 years old, they're all tile stucco. They I mean, really, you can walk into any house here in Arizona that's less than 30 years old and you can pretty much within $5,000, value what it's going to cost to rehab it and what the ARV is going to be in a normal world where, you know, these prices aren't crazy. I think that that's what made it easier for, you know, the big, big, corporations to come into here because they needed to scale and they needed a solid base of houses that were all the same.

Speaker: And

Darin: so I and and not only that, but it's a it's a emerging market, a hugely emerging market. We're right outside LA. Our population is exploding. We've got a lot of land, in all four directions so that, you know, you can continue building. I mean, you went to high school here, so Mhmm.

I mean, it's it's doubled in size.

Steve: Yeah. I grew up

Darin: here, like, as a kid. Then you remember there wasn't even freeways in Downtown Phoenix.

Steve: There was no Chandler

Speaker: when I

Steve: was growing up.

Darin: No. Chandler was a farm.

Steve: That was

Darin: about all it was. Gilbert was a farm. Mhmm.

Speaker: It's 250,000

Darin: people or 200,000 people now. You know? So So I think that's why they're all here is there's a great opportunity to make money and all the houses are the same.

Steve: So I'll also add to that, Luis, is that, we're since because we're newer, everything is a grid. Yes. It's not like California or or other older markets where you get lost for no damn reason.

Darin: Oh, it's it's it was I give props to the people who laid out.

Steve: Yeah. It's a grid. Every exit on the right. I get frustrated in California when the exit is on the left. Like, why is the exit on the left?

Darin: Yeah. Or the road curves, and you're like, why couldn't you just make a straight line?

Steve: Yeah. We got that. It's, we have the best, data. I don't know if you know this or not, but, like, Maricopa County is the model that every other county looks at when they're trying to figure out, like, how to make data more efficient.

Darin: Really?

Steve: So we are the leaders in data. So there's You

Darin: guys can pull this really easily.

Steve: It's really easy to pull this in Phoenix compared to every other city. So Yeah. Gigantic market. And we can go from here in Tempe to Goodyear in thirty minutes, twenty five minutes, no traffic.

Darin: Yeah.

Steve: Right? With traffic, maybe fifty minutes. Yeah. In other parts of the country, if there's traffic, forget about it.

Darin: Could you imagine, like, in LA trying to drive around there, man? It it was two hours just to get some place in Yeah.

Steve: You gotta get on the was it Sepulveda? Right? You just you gotta get on that one, street, and you just have to drive and just deal with traffic, and you're not moving anywhere. Yeah. What is the greatest lesson that you learned?

Darin: The greatest lesson that I've learned. That well, gosh, I don't know if it's greatest lesson.

Steve: We'll sell for above average.

Darin: Yeah. I've I've learned a lot of, like, pretty cool lessons that you put all into one and it winds up being a good lesson on life. You know, one of my favorite sayings is definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.

Speaker: Once you can really picture that, and I think it was Robert Kiyosaki.

Darin: You know, picture that, and I think it was Robert Kiyosaki in Rich Dad Poor Dad that made an example of, baking a cookie. And you put it in there and it's too salty, but then you go and make, you know, second batch and you use the same ingredients, well, it's gonna be salty. You know? Learning that you can change that formula. And and sometimes it's just one small ingredient that changes it from a horrible cookie to an awesome cookie.

That's that's a big thing. And another lesson that I learned from him was, the rich dad, poor dad attitude, which is so many people say, oh, we can't do that. Instead say, How can we do that?

Steve: Right.

Darin: And the cool thing about reading that book or listening to that book, does it count if you listen to it as a read?

Steve: Of course it does.

Darin: Okay, good. Then I'm very well read. I don't think I picked up a book in years, but I used to go back and forth between Palm Springs and listen to all the all the books. Going through and and just understanding that by saying that we can do this, how can we do this? Let's make this happen.

And and going through and and understanding that, wow, I actually thought like that before I read this book, and I didn't even realize it.

Steve: Right.

Darin: I feel actually that's been a huge blessing to me, being motivated at 12, 13 years old to to say, I wanna be somebody someday. I wanna it it like, I I see kids nowadays, and I I'm sure there's plenty of them out there that do feel that way, but it doesn't seem very prevalent. And so to be born with that and just kinda have it in you to say, man, I I wanna take it to another level. Mhmm. So from a a lesson standpoint, I guess my biggest lesson here and, actually, this is probably a a very good lesson for everybody.

Don't ever fight somebody in court based on principle. It's so easy to do that. And and I I did it when I was in California. I had the gold store, and and one of our competitors was falsely advertising against us. Mhmm.

And I took him to federal court, and I won. It cost me 2 and a half million dollars. And I won 2 and a half million dollars, and they filed for bankruptcy. And so I lost 2 and a half million dollars. Not only did I lose 2 and a half million dollars, but I lost two and a half years of my life focusing on depositions and all this time wasted when, honestly, I should've just gone crazy kid on his butt and walked over there and kicked his butt the first day.

And he probably would've changed his ad, and it would've cost me thirty days in jail, but I would've saved 2 and a half million dollars. Yeah. But and I tease when I say that. But my point is is I hear so many people and and especially in in a land of transactions, real estate, you're gonna get wronged. It's gonna happen.

Steve: Over and over again.

Darin: Fighting people, it it's like poking it's like having a voodoo doll of yourself and poking yourself thinking that you're hurting the other person. Oprah said this, hating somebody is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. That's an incredible lesson. Yeah. That's probably the only thing I ever learned from Oprah.

But think about that. How many people spend their time hating somebody or thinking and wishing the worst for somebody? That other person doesn't know that. All you're doing is hurting yourself. All you're doing is ruining your day.

That's all you're doing. You're not hurting their day, and why would you do that? Let it go. Yeah. Let it go.

So so don't ever get into fights over, the principle of things. Yeah. Sometimes it's easier to cut and run, man. It's know when to hold them, know when to fold them.

Steve: Yeah. I learned a lesson too, unfortunately,

Speaker: with

Steve: my own separate lawsuit.

Darin: Yeah? Yeah. You wanna talk about it? I see a tear in your eye.

Steve: There's no tears. No.

Darin: I don't know.

Speaker: I got

Darin: a suit for We have time.

Speaker: I got

Steve: a suit for, tortious interference. Right? And, technically, I did interfere with their contract. It was not tortious. I did interfere.

So they sued me for 14,000. I won. And in winning, I had to pay them zero. My attorney's fees were $18,000. Yeah.

So it would have been a lot easier to just give them what they wanted even though I was right.

Speaker: Yeah. It would have

Steve: been a lot easier just given what they wanted.

Darin: You got off easy. I did. At $18,000.

Steve: I did. I did. But I would rather not have the

Speaker: Yeah.

Steve: All that.

Darin: And it it it it holds true. The only people who are who made the money in that were the courts and the and the lawyers. Mhmm. They made all the money.

Steve: Yep. And It

Darin: was both of you guys lost.

Steve: And it was stupid. It's Ed Hockley?

Darin: Oh, the the referee.

Steve: Yeah. It was his freaking law firm. I was like, man, this is cool. I'm in his I'm in I'm I'm in his office.

Darin: The NFL referee, man.

Steve: And he did not give me attorney's fees. Son of a anyway

Darin: Wait. So you used him?

Steve: He was, it was his firm that was the really?

Darin: Yeah. I stayed in his, he he had a, a beachfront, condo or, you know, like, on Mission Beach. Mhmm. And it was cool. I just Airbnb'd it one time, and I walked in and I'm like, I recognize it.

Like, you saw a picture of him up on the wall. I'm like, I'm running Ed Hockley's thing. It was really cool. It was one of the it was nice. It was fun.

Steve: Yeah. I liked him, but they should have ruled him my favorite in

Speaker: Phoenix.

Darin: His son is a ref now.

Steve: Is he?

Darin: In the NFL. Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. So Brian Manley does love your advice. So he's hiring a third lead manager right now.

Darin: Good job, Brian. Way to go, dude.

Steve: Alright. So, I want you to think about what you wanna leave listeners with while I make a couple of quick announcements.

Darin: K.

Steve: Hey, guys. We're doing our sales training all day, live event, Friday next week. So that's in nine days. If you're interested, send me a DM. I had so many of you guys ask me to if we can do it virtually, and I kept saying I don't know how.

Well, my team figured it out, so we're doing it virtually as well. So if you guys are interested in doing our all day sales training next week, Friday, shoot me a DM. I'll send you the information. Also, guys, please like, subscribe, share, and comment. It's what we need to tell the algorithms that our stuff is relevant.

And the more you guys are able to share and support, the more other people we can get to receive the message so that we can all grow together. And next week, we got Stephanie Betters, and she's gonna be talking about systems and Salesforce and all the other boring stuff that you need to run.

Darin: No. This that should be exciting, man. I mean, that's like

Steve: It's CRM stuff. But it's so important.

Darin: Oh, man. It's and it's yeah. And to me, it's exciting, man. That's like, oh, we're gonna talk CRM porn? This is cool.

Steve: So tune in next week because she's doing 200 deals a year. Right? Like, it's not like

Darin: You know, that's the other cool thing. She's a COO as well for a company

Steve: Yeah.

Darin: In Charlotte. Mhmm. And so, yeah, she she knows herself.

Steve: She's running two businesses, owns a third bit oh, so she's

Darin: And a nurse.

Speaker: Yeah.

Steve: So she's got her own business, doing 200 deals a year. She has Salesforce that she's now finally, selling. Yeah. She's a COO for another company, and she's a nurse.

Darin: Yeah. And a mom.

Steve: And a mom.

Darin: The most important job of them all.

Steve: Crazy. Crazy.

Darin: And she handles it like a pro, man. She's awesome. She's it's really exciting to see her blow up like that.

Steve: Yeah. She is. So last thoughts.

Darin: Last thoughts. It doesn't have to be complicated. Whether it's real estate or whatever, life or or whatever. Like, life doesn't have to be crazy. We make it crazy.

Business doesn't have to be crazy. We make it crazy. It's better to be a master of one trade than a jack of all. Nobody cares about the storms you encounter, but did you bring the ship in? Like, just get it done.

Just make it happen. I'm thinking I really am starting to sound like my grandpa. But but the but the point is this, surround yourself with great people. You're you're watching success. I mean, if you're watching this podcast right now, Steve, you've blown this thing up.

I mean, it was it was nothing what it is today two years ago.

Speaker: Yeah.

Darin: You had a vision for a company, but you're you're keeping it simple too, man. You're you're a master of this trade, And you're you're a master at your training in in what you do. You're not trying to do it all. You you know your niche and you're gonna own that hill, and you can own that hill. I I I do think that people who aren't as successful try to do too much.

Mhmm. And that's because they just focus on one or two things and just be great at that. And then if you're great at that and you got a little bit extra time, you know, bring on the on the second thing. Don't worry about what you can't control and stay positive. Surround yourself with great people, you know, and and you'll see it.

And I'm looking at it right now with Steve and and Stephanie. You know, we're a part of Collective Genius. If if you can, they have CG Select. And then they have the regular Collective Genius. I think that that that's completely changed my life, man.

And it's funny when Doug signed up for it, I didn't know what Collective Genius was. I'm a COO of a company. I'm going great. My owner wants to go pay a whole lot of money to go golf with a bunch of dudes who are gonna lie to him about how much money they make. That's completely what my impression was.

Yeah. And then I went to one of the CG meetings and I saw it, and I was like, wow. These people are sharing a lot more a lot more information than I thought that they would. Mhmm. And it changed our business.

The the things that we've talked about today, I've picked up nuggets from different people at CG, which phone system to use, you know, our lead manager process, you know, different things like that. And then I've adapted it and made it my own. That changed our business. That changed my life, and it and Bullseye branding wouldn't be where it is today without Collective Genius. And it's introduced me to people like you and Stephanie and Billy and, you know, and, you know, Jim's asshole.

I mean, I I no. If I start naming everybody, I'm gonna, you know, go on forever and leave somebody out and get in trouble. But

Steve: You will.

Darin: Surround yourself with great people and you don't have to do it all right at the beginning. Just do something great. Just be great at something.

Steve: How can someone get a hold

Darin: of you? You can go to bullseyebranding.com, and you can book a consultation. That's probably the easiest way if you're if you're looking into utilizing our services. Just book a consultation. It goes right to my calendar.

And, anytime that's open there, I'm available. And we'll do a one on one. I'll show you a little bit more about what we do. Also, we are, taking market reservations for the launch of one eight hundred sell now. So you can just do that through Bullseye Branding.

The website should be up right now, but they may not have done it by, press time. You know how web web guy is going

Steve: This is live.

Darin: Is it up? Well, that's what I'm saying. It may not have got it by the deadline if you wanna look it up really quick. But you can just go through Bullseye Branding, and we're taking market reservations for that as well. And, you know, just go to Bullseye Branding and book a consultation.

That's probably the easiest way.

Steve: Awesome. Cool. Thank you.

Speaker: You're the

Darin: man, brother.

Steve: Very much.

Darin: It's been awesome. Thanks for inviting me. I appreciate it.

Steve: Absolutely. It's my pleasure. Thank you guys for watching.