Jess Lenouvel

Curious about the results some of The Listings Lab members are getting in the program?

While we’ve got a whole page dedicated to client love, today I wanted to spotlight one member in particular. 

That member is Justin Loncaric.

Justin Loncaric is a Burlington-based real estate agent and the founder of JL Realty Group. He’s a husband, a father, and an entrepreneur who helps Burlington-based families move up to their next home using his signature Home Run Method.

Since implementing the strategies taught in The Listings Lab, Justin’s had some fantastic results.

Results like:

• Going from $150,000 GCI to $1.3 million in less than two years 
• Creating the space and bandwidth in his schedule to start a second business
• Building a powerhouse team that he can truly lean on 
• Got out of debt and has completely secured his children’s education fund

And so, so much more.

We sat down to talk with Justin and talk about his biggest lessons, aha’s, and takeaways since joining the program.

What was the moment Justin decided to join The Listings Lab? 

Before Justin joined The Listings Lab, he was doing about $150,00 GCI in 2019.

Now, you might think that’s not a terrible income for an individual.

But Justin had a team of three, and he was struggling to make ends meet. 

When Justin met Jess at The Listings Lab office back in 2019, he had an epiphany.

Despite having been in the real estate game for a long time, he realized…

“Oh crap, I’m doing things wrong”

It was at that moment that he needed to make a tough decision and admit he needed support. 

Putting his ego aside and trusting someone else wasn’t easy, but he decided to jump in head-first to the program.

These were just a few of the biggest things he was able to accomplish. 

He developed systems

Justin said his biggest takeaway from the program was the systems he developed that had previously been missing from his business.

As he described it, he and his team were “flying by the seat of their pants”.

Justin’s experience coming into the program is NOT abnormal.

When many agents come to us, they’re disorganized. They haven’t learned how to treat their real estate business like a real business. 

If you feel like you’re constantly flitting from one thing to the next, constantly hopping on phone calls, and putting out fires, you’re likely operating from a reactive mode.

You’re constantly in busy mode. But by staying in this mode for too long, you’ll eventually be headed on a one-way track for realtor burnout. 

By implementing systems, Justin was able to ditch the hustle and free up his days.

He cemented his vision

Justin came from a real estate family.

He’s been in it for 41 years, his parents do it.

And while he deeply admired his parents, he knew he didn’t want to recreate their real estate business.

He saw his mom work crazy long hours, working in the field till she was in her seventies.

While he lives and breathes all things real estate, his dream was different.

He envisioned retirement. Spending more time with his family. Being able to get off early and make his kids’ hockey practice.

He didn’t want to spend the final years of his career working to the bone, but rather working to develop more passive income streams.

In his words, he wanted “to make my money work for me rather than have to work for my money”.

Justin decided to choose to do real estate differently, and embrace a new model.

He embraced team growth

One of the biggest shifts Justin had to make to start creating his new real estate vision was this…

He had to realize that he wasn’t the person that had to be doing everything.

Through implementing The Listings Lab curriculum, Justin was able to realize that skillfully delegating to his team resulted in:

• Happier clients
• Better response times
• A higher level of support and service

He no longer felt like he was flying by the seat of his pants. He began working with his clients in a very systematized way.

Now, Justin has a team that he trusts 150%. 

But to get there, he didn’t just quickly post and ad and hire haphazardly.

Hiring takes time and effort. 

Hire slow if you want a team who’s around for the long run. 

He gained the bandwidth to start a new business

You want to know what happens when you get clear on your vision, and then develop the systems and team structure to make it happen?

You create more space in your day. 

You transform your life in ways you never could have imagined. 

There’s no doubt about it – Justin’s a different person now.

He’s been on an incredible weight loss journey, he’s shown up for every single one of his kids’ hockey commitments, and he’s nearly 10xed the growth of his business…

But that’s not all.

He’s even increased his bandwidth to the point where he’s been able to start a second business.

This business idea was something that had been on Justin’s mind for 3-4 years, but he’d NEVER been able to execute it before.

Even though he had team support, he’d never learned how to properly leverage his team. So after going through our program, he was able to operate his business in a way where his team actually gave him his time back.

Justin was able to create a second business, Listing Loans, a pre-listing renovation financing company.

What made Justin so successful? 

There are a myriad of reasons why Justin’s been so incredibly successful in real estate. But let’s get into a few of the biggest reasons why Justin got such phenomenal results implementing The Listings Lab curriculum. 

1. Coachability

Across the board, all of our star Listings Lab students are highly coachable. 

Coachable individuals can open their minds to a new way of doing things.

They go all-in when they invest in a program, determined to do whatever it takes to make things work. 

They don’t do some of the assignments, they do all of them.

They don’t haphazardly listen during coaching calls, they take notes.

They don’t ignore advice from their coach because they think they know better.

Being coachable isn’t always easy. Especially when you have an extensive real estate background like Justin.

But when he signed the contract on the dotted line, he made a commitment.

He said to his wife, “If we do this, we’re going to do everything they tell us to do. There’s no second-guessing, no middle ground.”

They went all-in on the process and got incredible results because of it.

2. Left his comfort zone

Whenever you commit to a mentorship program, the process WILL test you.

You’ll have your moments where you think, “What the hell am I doing?”

It’s in these moments that you have to trust the process.

While Justin had his moments of fear and doubt, the end result was worth all of those scary moments.

Asking for help is never easy. It requires you to exit your comfort zone. 

3. Leave your ego at the door

If you want to truly see results from any coach or mentorship program, you have to be willing to leave your ego at the door.

I started working with my coach when he was just 27. 

But did I tell myself I knew better than him because I was older? Or that I shouldn’t listen to him because on paper, I had more business experience?

No.

I had to be willing to admit that I didn’t have all of the answers, and he did.

Even though Justin had decades of real estate experience and grew up within a real estate family, he too checked his ego at the door.

He was willing to admit that he wasn’t where he wanted to be. And that he needed support.

There was a time when Justin told himself he’d be happy making $100k a year.

But he dug deep and got honest with himself…

Why WOULDN’T he build the big, automated business that would help him find freedom and build a legacy for his kids?

Now, Justin’s a 7-figure real estate agent with a burgeoning second business.

Do you want to learn more about how you can get results like Justin?

➡️ Apply HERE to join us in The Listings Lab 

Do you have dreams of becoming a millionaire real estate agent? Do you want to create a real estate brand that gives you unlimited income and impact?

If so, you’re in the right place. 

There are certain things that all 7 figure real estate businesses have in common.

In this post, we’ll be covering our top do’s and dont’s for agents looking to scale to the seven-figure mark, what you should (and should not) be focusing on, and the types of shiny object syndrome that can come up and distract you from the path to seven figures. 

Let’s go! 

Remember It’s Not About You

Probably one of the most important lessons for aspiring millionaire real estate agents is this:

Your brand is not about you. 

A lot of the time when agents start working on their brand, they ask themselves questions like:

• What do I want to talk about?
• What do I want the brand to look like? 
• How do I want it to feel? 
• What feels good to me? 

Newsflash: that is the OPPOSITE way to build a really powerful brand.

Remember: your brand is not about you, it’s about the people you’re looking to attract. 

It’s far too easy to get caught up in your own stuff. Your own fears, your own limiting beliefs, their own ideas, your own desires and preferences.

And often what happens is rather than attracting your ideal clients, your branding ends up attracting other agents. 

Get clear on who you’re speaking to, and make sure you’re building your brand with that ideal client avatar in mind. 

Understand How Your Clients Want To Feel

Once you’ve started to get clear on your avatar and you understand the importance of building your brand around THEM…it’s time to ask yourself the deeper questions.

One of the biggest ones is this:

How do your ideal clients want to FEEL? 

To answer this question, you need to get clear on a few things.

What’s happening in their lives at the moment? What kind of transition are they making, and why? 

Because THAT is what you’re helping with them.

When you know where your clients are now, and the problem they’re experiencing…

And you know where they want to be, and the results they want to experience…

You can position your services as the bridge between where they are now and where they want to be. 

If you’re not clear on the above, you’ll find that you’re spinning your wheels on marketing without getting any real results. 

You can be doing ALL the things – posting on social media, posting your listings, sending out emails. But it will only feel like you’re shouting into a void unless you get clear on how your clients want to feel. 

Create A Signature Package That Solves Their Problem

Once you’ve gotten clear on what your clients want to feel…

It’s time to create a service package that helps them feel that way.

For example, maybe you know that your client is a high-end client who wants to feel prioritized. High-touch service is important to them. They want to feel like they’re being taken care of.

In that case, you might want to include multiple touch points with your team so that you’re constantly checking in with your clients. Things like small gifts, regular check-in calls, and responsiveness with emails/messages could be a core part of your service.

Many people mistakenly assume that the more things they include in their package, the better. 

It’s time their package is a basket and they’re just trying to cram as much stuff into that basket as possible. Sometimes they might be throwing things into the basket that their clients don’t even want…all in the name of “value”.

This is not how you should go about creating your real estate service packages. All this does is create a race to the bottom about who can offer “more” for less money. If you ever want to become a real estate millionaire, you’ve got to ditch this mindset. 

In reality, your package should only include what’s absolutely necessary to solve your client’s problem and get them the results they desire.

What is the most efficient way to get them to where they want to go?

That is a far better question to ask than, how much can I include in this package? 

Develop Your Signature Brand Story 

Number three is to create a brand story that’s easy to spread. This is not your grandmother’s realtor “About Me” section. This isn’t the vanilla, “I went to such and such a school. And then I got married and I had kids. And then I decided to get into real estate!”

That may be your story. But you need to be you need to do better than that. 

At the end of the day, there are three things a brand story needs to be: 

• It needs to be marketable
• It needs to be compelling
• And it needs to be memorable

Part of the reason your brand story is so important is because the human brain LOVES stories. 

Stories are 22 times more memorable than facts. So if you’re just spitting facts and market stats…you’re not going to seem noteworthy to your ideal clients.

But a powerful brand story on the other hand, it sticks with people. Especially if you’re willing to get a little bit polarizing or vulnerable in your content.

Once you’ve crafted the perfect brand story, be sure to repeat it over and over again. It becomes who you are. It lives in your listing presentations, your buyer presentations. It’s the story that you tell when people ask, how did you get into this business? It’s the story that everything else is created on top of. 

Show Up Authentically Online

If you want to be a millionaire real estate agent, you’re not going to get there by copying somebody else. You’re not going to get there by showing up like every other agent or hiding your true self in order to be “professional”.

A lot of the time, all of the branding techniques agents use – the fancy transitions, the videos cut to music, the clips with scrolling branding – all you’re doing is cheapening your brand.

Because at the end of the day, people are only looking to see a couple of basic things.

1. They want to know you’re really freaking good at what you do.
2. And they want to know that you’re a good human being.

That’s it!

Marketing is NOT about playing a part.

Your potential clients will be able to sniff out inauthenticity from a mile away. 

So commit to being your true self online.

If you’re the funny friend in real life, be humorous! 

If you’re the dog mom who’s obsessed with your pup, gush about them in your content.

If you’re a family man, show the behind-the-scenes of balancing work and family.

Don’t edit out the parts that make you real, that makes you human. 

It can be easy to focus ALL of your content on business, clients and showing how hard you’re working, when that’s not actually what your clients want to see. 

Prioritize Emotional Connection 

Millionaire real estate agents understand that 97% of marketing is emotional.

It’s not about facts, it’s about feelings.

People make decisions emotionally first. And only then do they back the decision up with logic.

This doesn’t mean the logical side of your business isn’t important. Of course, no one’s going to want to work with you if you’ve never done a deal or don’t have the experience to back up your claims.

But at the end of the day, people are only going to reach out to work with you if they feel a strong emotional connection with you.

Building that like, know and trust factor isn’t about posting about all the business you’ve acquired through “just listed, just sold” posts.

It could look like sharing your most embarrassing story with your audience, and having a laugh together.

Telling stories and being real creates transparency. And that’s what builds a brand.

I want you to think about your favorite influencers. 

I’m willing to bet there’s a few people online you follow who you’ve never met in real life – but you feel like you’re friends.

THAT is the vibe we want to be going for. We’re not looking for people to put us on a pedestal.

Do Not Discount Your Services

Millionaire real estate agents never discount their services.

If you’re building a seven-figure real estate brand, and you want people coming to you asking you how they can work with you…

I can guarantee you – they won’t be coming to you because you charge a lower price.

They’ll be coming to you because you actually solve problems.

There will always be someone willing to do it for less than you. 

You get to decide – do you want to be the Chanel of real estate, or do you want to be Dollarama?

If you want to be a million-dollar real estate agent, you have to act like it from the beginning.

Be A Pleasure To Work With 

I truly believe that one thing all successful agents have in common is that they’re truly a pleasure to work with. 

And I don’t just mean with their clients.

I mean with everyone. 

They’re kind and generous to other agents, to contractors, to stagers.

They don’t see other agents as a threat or competition.

If you’re one of those agents that makes everything more difficult than it needs to be, nobody’s going to want to work with you.

A lot of agents overcomplicate things feeling like they need to “earn” their commission. So if they get an offer on the first day, they’re not going to accept it. They’re going to be difficult and aggressive because subconsciously, they feel like they haven’t worked hard enough. 

But even if a deal is easy or effortless, you’ve done your job!

When you’re easy to work with, people from all over the place are going to refer you and want to continuously do business with you.

Millionaire Real Estate Agents Don’t Create In A Vacuum

One of the biggest mistakes that will prevent you from building a 7-figure real estate is not listening to your people. 

A lot of people will try to go out and build a brand without really understanding what their ideal clients want. They’ll go out and hire a branding company, or a marketing agency, to create logos, visual imagery, and content.

But it’s not based on a solid foundation. 

If that branding is not based on intensive market research, it’s never going to land.

Don’t create in a vacuum.

Marketing isn’t about sitting behind your computer and keeping yourself busy fiddling with your website and making pretty quotes in Canva.

It’s about having REAL life conversations with your ideal clients. Conversations about their hopes, dreams, fears, desires. 

Put in Long-term Processes & Systems

Millionaire real estate agents are not successful simply because they have a good list. 

They’re successful because they’ve built a COMPANY.

If you’ve ever considered that one day you might like to sell your business, or even pass it on to your children, this is incredibly important.

You need to be developing systems and processes so your company is not just dependent on you and your contacts.

A sellable business means you have a consistent, predictable lead flow. You’re not just relying on referrals from friends and family!

When you follow all of these ten steps, you’ll have a legitimate business that is predictable, profitable and unlimitedly, scalable.

You’ll have all of the foundations to make your first million dollars from real estate.

And if you’re looking for deeper support, this is exactly what we help agents with in The Listings Lab.

Check out what our past clients are saying HERE, and apply if you’re looking for mentorship to go from 6 👉🏼7 figures as an agent. 

Apply For The Listings Lab Program Here

Are you being strategic with your real estate calls to action?

A call-to-action is what helps your potential clients take the next step…and I’ve been seeing a lot of mistakes surrounding them these days.

I want to shine a light on these call-to-action mistakes I’ve been seeing on social media because I think so many agents don’t even realize what they’re doing wrong. 

Intentional real estate call-to-actions are one of the most important pieces of your marketing. You’re asking people to engage with your content, to get on your email list, or book a call to work with you.

So if your call-to-action falls flat, you’re never going to get your audience to take the key actions needed to grow your business! 

In this post, you’ll learn:

1. What Is A Call-To-Action 
2. Soft Call-To-Actions
3. Hard Call-To-Actions 
4. When To Use Each Call-To-Action
5. The Biggest Mistakes Agents Are Making With Their Real Estate Call-To-Actions

Let’s go. 

What Is A Call-To-Action?

Put simply, a call-to-action is when you’re asking your audience to take an action in your real estate marketing.

You’re asking your follower not only to consume the content but to take the next step. That next step might be something small, like sharing the post with a friend, or something bigger, like booking a sales call with you. 

There are different real estate call-to-actions we can use, depending on your overall goal. 

Soft Call-To-Action

Soft calls to action are going to be those lighter, easier actions for your audience to take. 

A soft call-to-action might sound like: 

• “Comment below if this has happened to you!”
• “Double-tap if you agree!
• “Save this post so you can reference it for later”

Essentially, soft calls to action are usually focused on getting engagement from your followers.

Not only is engagement key for making sure your content resonates and gains traction in the algorithm…

But soft calls to action also get your followers in the habit of taking action on your posts.

If your followers are in the habit of responding to your soft calls to action, it’s far more likely they’ll respond when you post a “harder” CTA. 

Hard Call-To-Action

Your hard call-to-actions are going to be those actions that are more direct and promotional in nature. 

These might sound like:

• “Book a call using the link in my bio!”
• “Send me a DM to hear more about this offer”
• Or even, “Sign up for my masterclass using this link”

Hard calls to action are usually focused on conversions – whether that’s converting a lead into a prospect, or getting someone to opt-in using their email address for a free offer. 

When To Use Each Call-To-Action

The kind of real estate call-to-action you use is going to be highly dependent on the type of content you’re posting.

Check out this blog for a refresher on the best types of real estate content for social media. 

For example, it always feels SO icky when a personal, vulnerable story is followed by a hard, promotional CTA.

There’s something very strange about reading a heartfelt post about someone’s family, only to have it end with, “be sure to contact me for all your real estate needs!”.

Pairing a hard call to action with storytelling, personal, or connection-driven content will always feel disingenuous to your followers. 

Instead, you’d want to opt for a soft call to action. Something that drives connection and engagement – rather than promotes your services. 

Whatever you do….just please don’t end your post by telling your followers, “a referral is the biggest compliment that I can get”.

When you see so many other agents posting similar things, it’s easy to get caught up thinking all of your calls to action should be promoting your services. 

But just because there are a lot of people doing it doesn’t mean it’s right! 

Now you’re probably wondering — when IS the right time to be posting harder calls to action? 

Of course, if you’re running ads, you’ll be running them with a direct call-to-action for your followers. 

But in organic content, you really want to limit your calls to action to authority content. 

Authority content often looks like PR features, case studies/testimonials, or posts that outline your process/solution. 

In this case, it’s totally appropriate to slap a direct CTA at the end of your post, after you’ve given some value. 

The Biggest Mistakes Agents Make With Their Real Estate Calls To Action

We already mentioned how pairing a personal and vulnerable post with a hard call-to-action is a huge no. But here are a few other call-to-action mistakes I’m seeing agents make on social media.

Thinking A Call-To-Action Is A Post In Itself 

Spoiler alert: it’s not!

If all you are doing is posting a picture of yourself, or of a house, with a one-sentence caption like, “Give me a call for all of your real estate needs!”…

…that’s not really a post. 

That’s *just* a call to action.

There’s no value. No substance. 

Posting Too Many Hard Call-To-Actions

The biggest mistake you can make is to bombard your audience with too much promo content and hard calls to action. 

Remember the three most important buckets of real estate content for social media you need to be posting are: 

• Personal content
• Authority-building content
• Social proof content

If you’re constantly filling those three content buckets, and every once in a while throwing in a hard call-to-action, you’ll be way more successful with actually getting your followers to respond to what you’re putting out. 

Being Irrelevant To Your Audience 

The other thing that’s important to remember when it comes to calls to action is that people only move once every three to seven years. 

So if you’re constantly only throwing out hard calls to action, and you’re not giving a tremendous amount of value – well, you’re not giving people enough of a reason to stick around.

This is a big reason why personal content is so important to drive connection with your audience. 

People will follow you for years if you’re telling good stories, if you’re showing up giving valuable mini trainings, and if you’re giving them a behind-the-scenes look at your lifestyle. 

But if you’re only pumping out content that is relevant to them when they’re selling or buying a house, that’s where you lose people. 

If you take anything away from this post, I want you to realize that when it comes to real estate calls to action, less is more. 

If you give tremendous amounts of value in your content – even without ANY direct calls to action, you will get inbound business. 

Real estate calls to action directly impact the relationship we have with our potential clients, so make sure you’re being strategic about them! 

Got questions about CTAs? Leave them in the comments!

Do you want to learn more about building powerful marketing strategies that help you effortlessly attract leads and fill your calendar with appointments?

Download The Listings Lab Guide for Exponential Growth 🚀

Are you feeling overwhelmed when it comes to your real estate content marketing strategy?

Scratching your head, staring at a blinking cursor, wondering what to post on social?

You know you need to start creating and adding more videos to your marketing, but you don’t even know where you’d start? 

If this is sounding familiar, there’s a very good chance you’re overcomplicating your real estate content marketing strategy.

Because here’s something you might not know…

When you’re so in tune with your ideal clients, marketing gets to feel EASY.

Messages flow to you easily.

You no longer stress about what to post.

And you become magnetic to your ideal clients.

 If you’re ready to have your real estate marketing feel simple and intuitive, read on to learn where you might be overcomplicating things.

You’re Making It All About You 

If you want to eliminate a lot of the stress that comes with marketing, here’s the #1 guiding principle you need to embrace…

Your marketing is not about you. 

Your Instagram posts aren’t for you. Your videos aren’t for you. Your emails and blog posts aren’t for you.

And they’re not for other agents, either. 

You need to stop asking yourself the question, what do I want to post today?

And instead, start asking yourself the questions, what does my ideal client need to hear from me today?

It can really be that simple when you decide to go ALL IN on what your clients want to see.

You’re Worried About Repeating Yourself

When many agents first start working with us in The Listings Lab, they tell me things like, “I’ve already done a post on [X], I can’t talk about it again!” or “I’ve talked about that topic enough, now I need to come up with something new”. 

But here’s how you need to reframe your mindset to help you eliminate your resistance towards repetition:

Repeating yourself, i.e. delivering the same message over and over isn’t a weakness…it’s actually a strength.

Your clients don’t have 500 different problems. If you’re trying to create content for hundreds of different pain points of course content creation is going to feel difficult. 

Your clients just have a few problems that you’re qualified to help them solve. 

When you create content that addresses your ideal client avatar’s problems and pain points, then of course you will have to repeat yourself.

Embrace it. 

You’re Letting Perfectionism Hold You Back

If you want to create content that attracts your ideal clients, you have to check your ego at the door. 

When you’re committed to serving your ideal clients at the deepest level, there’s no room for perfectionism.

When you put all of your energy into addressing your ideal client’s needs, pains, problems, fears, and desires, you never have to worry about what you’re going to talk about. 

You don’t have to get caught up in worrying about your brand style and voice, or whether or not you’re the best writer in the world.

And you certainly don’t have to stress about your hair being done, your makeup being perfect, or worry about that time you stumbled over your words.  

None of that matters when you’re delivering VALUE to your ideal clients. 

As long as you’re sharing a message that resonates, your ideal clients could care less about you being “perfect”. 

In fact, showing up as the perfectly imperfect human being that you are will only help them connect with you on a deeper level. 

You’re Not Listening To Your Ideal Clients

If you take anything away from this post, let it be this…

Your ideal clients are telling you what they want to hear from you. 

They’re telling you when they get on sales calls with you.

They’re telling you in your comments and DMs.

They’re telling you in the form of frequently asked questions, objections, and hesitations.

If you’re truly listening and tuned in to your ideal clients, you should have a wealth of content ideas at your fingertips.

When you prioritize market research in your business, your real estate content marketing strategy gets to be simple. 

Remember, as an entrepreneur, your content should solve problems. 

You’re not an influencer. You don’t need to show your followers your outfit or what you made for lunch.

You just need to listen to your ideal clients, and post accordingly.

You’re Waiting To Feel Confident To Start 

You don’t need to be confident to start marketing your real estate business.

Yes, I said it.

All of these stories and beliefs you have around the need to be more “confident” is just an excuse to keep you from starting.

In reality, showing up on social media doesn’t need to be complicated.

You feel nervous, but you show up anyway…because getting results is too important to let the fear stop you.

It’s that simple. 

If you’re waiting to feel confident to start, remember this:

Confidence is not the prerequisite, it’s the reward. 

None of us are good at anything the first time we do it – you have to embrace the suck.

But just remember, the more you do it, the better you’re going to be. That’s why it’s so important to not overthink your real estate content marketing strategy when you’re first starting out. Begin by getting into the habit of creating and posting content, and over time that content will improve.

Content creation is as much of an art as it is a science. 

A lot of the time the people who are the most confident are the ones who’ve been consistent the longest.

So stick with it and don’t overcomplicate it, and watch as you reap the rewards down the line. You’ve got this. 

Pssst. Want more tips on how to magnetize ideal clients through your content so you can STOP prospecting and hustling for clients? Download the FREE  The Listings Lab Guide here to learn the marketing strategies needed to fill your calendar with appointments.