Ep 447: 20 Years, Zero Regrets

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Welcome to Marketproof marketing, the podcast from the industry leaders at do you convert? Where we talk about the current and future state of marketing and online sales for builders and developers across the globe. We're not here to sell you, we're here to help you and to try and elevate the conversation. Welcome to another episode of Market proof marketing. Today we have Melissa Fort, one of the online sales coaches here at do you convert? Melissa, thanks for joining me.

Speaker A: Happy to be here.

Speaker B: Uh, Melissa's been beating down the door because she. Well, this is an age old conversation that I always have with people. I know that you've done online sales and marketing. I've been involved in online sales. I've not done online sales as a online sales specialist. I've managed online sales and I'm a marketer and fundamentally we might just argue about this the whole time instead. It could be fun too. I think you still have to start from one place or the other and you can adapt and mold. But are you a marketer at heart or a salesperson at heart?

Speaker A: I think I'm more of a marketer. I think, yeah, I'm more data driven, I'm more consumer research and all of those skills is what made me a good online sales specialist.

Speaker B: Yeah, right.

Speaker A: But even when we would do, you know, those disc profiles and they would like map out the team here, here I am completely separate from all the other, like, trul salespeople at heart.

Speaker B: I think of Malcolm Gladwell's book sometimes about that and I read that pretty early on in my career. I think it was Outliers, I think is the book I'm thinking of. But he talks about like, you are either going to be this person who's known by connecting with people or, and so people will discover you become part of your network because you are a networker. You're the one connecting people all the time. And that's just your natural gift or your natural gift will be to become an expert at, uh, something and then people kind of come towards you because you're not necessarily a great networker, but they're coming to you for answers. I remember reading that I was probably, I don't know, 24, 25. And it's like that's, uh, definitely needs to be the second one for me as an introvert, I feel like I've gotten better at, uh, connecting, but that was a learned skill, not a natural skill for me for sure.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a conscious effort, not my natural inclination.

Speaker B: Yes, exactly, exactly. Okay, so we're going to have fun today. We'll cover your background for everyone. But so I guess start, tell us your starting point in the industry and then we'll, we'll go from there.

Speaker A: Yeah. So I started in home building. My very, very first home building job. I started while I was in nursing school and just answered for a temp agency and got a job working at the front desk for, for a custom home builder. And that was my introduction to the industry. I was 19, just barely turning 20 at the time. And I realized quickly that I didn't like sick people, but I was fascinated by home building. Um, so decided to pivot and go more business and went and got my real estate, uh, license. And so I never worked in general real estate. I went door to door when I was 22 to every home builder near me to try and make connections with the on site team, like for somebody to open the door and let me get a job. So that is how I started.

Speaker B: And you started at then at, uh, Lennar.

Speaker A: At Lennar, yes. Yeah, Yeah, I saw something in LinkedIn this week too. Like one of the construction guys, he was transferring into sales at the time and he's a sales trainer with him. So a lot of that Lennar Tampa team that I worked with is still there.

Speaker C: So.

Speaker B: Yeah, so. And that was in an online sales role.

Speaker A: So I started off in an on site role there and was a junior for about six or seven months. And right about that time, this was back in 2005, is when Lennar decided that they were going to try to launch an online sales program. So my leader came to me. I was one of the younger, more tech savvy salespeople on the team and was like, hey, they want to start this role. You know, is this something that you'd be interested in doing and getting trained on? So I'm like, sure, that sounds great. This sounds really interesting.

Speaker B: So 2005, I'm sad to say because I started in 03 is now ancient times to most of the people listening to this show. Describe the market conditions. What was it like being involved in home sales or the new home industry in 2005? 2006.

Speaker A: 2005 was so good. Like, that was a great time to get into the industry. When I was working on site, I remember there are these two guys who worked in the community that I worked in, and on Fridays their pilot would come with a helicopter, like out to the empty lots and pick them up and they would go gambling in the Bahamas. So people in Florida who were in the new home industry at that Time they were like printing money. So of course, like being young and ambitious, it was like a really exciting time to be part of it and learning.

Speaker B: So yeah, it was a wild time. 2005 was the era where, uh, I think it was end of a 4. The market started getting a little bit softer from what I remember. And then because people were having a hard time getting approved for loans on entry level product. And um, that's when they started coming out with the no doc, no asset loan, where you just told the loan officer how much money you made and they would approve you basically with no verifications on anything. So it was, it was like the

Speaker A: balloon loans where they would like they could qualify you on your lower interest rate and then later they would jack them up and surprise you. I have a lot of friends fall victim to that.

Speaker B: Yes. And so it was a wild time. There was excess in a lot of places. Looking back to that era in particular, what do you think your first couple lessons you learned were at that time? Like you didn't know what you didn't know and the market's on fire. But was there anything that kind of sticks out to you as like I either tucked that away for later without realizing it, or I was learning something there that was, that was still relevant to the rest of my career.

Speaker A: I definitely think it felt easy, you know, so even as like, you know, we're working with a big national builder, we're launching an online sales program. There were about 10 of us initially, which we would fly to Houston to the National Internet center, which is where they manned all the incoming leads. And we were training and developing the program like as that launched. And so all the.

Speaker B: Wait, wait, time out, time out, time out. I'm distracted now. There was like a NASA Space center central command for the Internet.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: In Houston.

Speaker A: And there was a team there who got all the incoming web leads and would farm them out to the divisions appropriately if they had an online sales program. So. Appropriately to start with.

Speaker B: Appropriately and slowly, I'm guessing. But it didn't matter back then because the demand was so high.

Speaker A: Correct. It didn't matter. The demand was high also too. I actually still have my big fat binder from when I started with them. But there was like such a limited demographic of people who were actually shopping for a new home online. And like this is before the days of instant gratification. There's no Amazon, there's no anything. So if somebody reaches back out to them, they're super surprised because no other builder did when they submitted. They didn't have the process. So it was easy. It was definitely at the very beginning an easy. Like it was challenging to start a new program and a new process, but it was really easy to convert people because nobody else was doing it.

Speaker B: Yeah. I also feel like the thing that a lot of people take for granted now is. Is understanding that the original type of customer that was reaching out online was the odd one. Not odd as in bad. Odd as in different.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: There was a different level of uniqueness and intent and interest and desire because they were doing something that unless they were just younger and more technical, it was like, I want to know more. So I'm hearing those dots and beeping sounds and going online at 56 kilobytes a second and I'm loading something. You know, it was just, uh, there was friction to get there and there was obviously friction in newspapers and driving around. But it was the natural course of how you did it. So it was. They were the strange ones. And what you saw was like. And if you just kind of give it a good college try, the expectation set is so low that the customers were like, yeah, this is great. Sign me up.

Speaker A: Yeah. And you're trying to like, set expectations internally and externally. Because internally nobody believed that people were going to buy a home online. There was a period of time when I first started that like the on site people wouldn't value, like wouldn't take my appointments. I would have to drive around across three counties. I would take my own appointments if somebody wouldn't take them and would go out there myself because like on site never believed people were going to buy homes online.

Speaker B: I kid you not. There was 2000. It was probably 2008 in Pittsburgh. Uh, probably Lori Africa or Aaron Stepotich. I don't know that either one of them listened, but if you do, I still remember you. And one of them, early on, they didn't. They quickly were. I remember their names because they were two of our best. But one of them was like, I can't take that online lead from Sarah Williams on Wednesday afternoon because I have a yoga class. Like, that was kind of where everyone was, was if they were really interested, they would show up. So there was a sense of like, I don't, I don't know. This is worth my time. Okay.

Speaker A: Which to their credit too, like, digital marketing wasn't really a thing. So how were we getting our leads back then? I remember I would help the marketing team. I like went and sat at a tent at a. This. They had spot a spot. It was a truck Driver job expo in Tampa where I'm sitting there like, so these people have. They're transient and they have no jobs. We're marketing to them. I would drive the hometown heroes van around the Buccaneers games on Sunday that was wrapped in like, hometown heroes come buy a home. So. So I mean, to their credit, like I said, I don't know that our marketing tactics were great back then for how we were getting qualified leads.

Speaker B: Well, let's just remind everyone this is the last nostalgic part, but I remember in my professional career lifetime, there was a point where there was no website for the builder that I worked for. And we were selling 500 to 700 homes a year in market. And as a marketer, just slow down and think about that. What that means is there was no central point for any of my customers to connect with. There was no ability for me to impact as a marketer, control or measure anything between direct mail, newspaper, radio, billboards, et cetera, and walk in traffic in one of my 27 communities.

Speaker A: Those were my lead sources that you just named. I remember my drop down. Did they hear about us in the newspaper, the billboard, the sign and which newspaper?

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Is. You probably were advertising more than one. Okay, so 2005 wild times. And then talk to me about what you Learned during the GFC in like 08 09, 2010. So you. It's kind of. I'm not setting you up for this, but you said, I learned that it can be easy if you give it your effort. What did the next period of time teach you, would you say?

Speaker A: Yeah. So, uh, my son was born late 2007. I went out on maternity leave. My husband and I are both in industry, so that first job I talked about, that's where I met him. He works for another builder in their architectural department. Literally, the day my son was born, he found out that his builder was closing their doors. They were a regional builder. During that time, Lennar acquired US Homes and we merged. And so while I was on maternity leave, that whole thing was happening and imploding. So went back from having a baby and they were like, well, we are not going to fire you, but we're not going to be able to pay you anymore. So, like, you're commission only. Your pay structure is changing. You know, in a time where nobody is qualifying to buy a home, our sales are down.

Speaker B: I was saying this to someone else earlier today, Melissa. There was a time period where no one was even trying to.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: It was more likely that an individual that you that was thinking about moving uh, where they lived to another place, it was more likely that they were thinking about walking away from the home that they had recently purchased than buying one. It, it truly was in many of the larger markets, it was more likely that if you talk to someone about, oh, you're in the market to, uh, move from one place to another in a single family scenario, it was that they were willing to walk away from the mortgage, go through bankruptcy, then be interested in purchasing a home.

Speaker A: Yep. So I wanted to stay in the industry, but, uh, needed income. And so I had a friend who was, had worked as a design studio consultant who was part of, in Florida. It was really bad. The layoffs were massive. Builders, like communities were turning into ghost towns. There were homes being abandoned everywhere. It got hit really, really hard down there when it burst. So I m. Had someone talk me into getting my community association management license, went and worked for a big developer down there in one of their new homes. I was like, okay, how can I stay tied to the industry, continue to grow and learn? You know, I was young in my career, but also still be able to provide for my family. So then, ironically, I ended up sitting in courtrooms where the association was foreclosing on homes I had sold to people. So that was definitely a full circle, humbling moment of respect for this. What this industry can or cannot be.

Speaker B: There were several builders that actually were created or started during the financial crisis, which is probably surprising to some people. And the reason the builders were launched was often because a bank who was now the proud owner of a bunch of land that a builder had gone bankrupt on didn't know what to do with it. Had nothing to do with it. So I know many, um, builders we work with today who. It started with a banker tapping them on the shoulder, saying, if we give you $10 million, can you start a home building company so that we can sell you home sites? That's, that's the world that we were living in. Uh, it was, it was a wild, wild time. Okay. So, so the lesson was it can

Speaker A: go good and it can go bad just as fast. Like, yeah, those guys with their helicopters were foreclosing on their home. So, yeah, that. It definitely gave you a newfound respect for the industry that, um, um, I think a lot of people just always felt safe. And then it was really surprising to them when nobody who was in the, in the industry at that time had been in it long enough to have been around for the, any other previous financial crisis. So it was a good lesson learned. A lot of people gambled a lot.

Speaker B: I'm obviously the host of the show, but I feel like I'm the one on the couch here because you just unlocked something deep inside of me that I express a lot. And I, I'm sure everyone has heard me say this, but I think it was that time period where I realized that as a marketer, uh, we are incapable of creating demand for what it is we offer. Because I watched not my company, but many companies say we will give you a pool if you buy a house, we will give you a two or three year lease on a car if you buy our house. And, and none of it worked. And, and that again, 50% of home building companies went out of business during those uh, three and a half years across the country. And so that's why today I still, it's almost like what happened with World War I and World War II to me I'm a history nerd too. If people didn't know World War I is terrible, lasts for a long time, ends and then the next generation of young people come through and they're kind of like war is kind of exciting again and like it's, it's okay. And they kind of fall back into this, this world conflict. And I feel like today there's still a lot of marketers, especially on the brand side, but not only on the brand side, who talk a lot about the ability to create demand for their homes. And it's, it's obviously nuanced but I, I think that's where my deep seated belief that while it can be somewhat true, it's not as true as people like to make it seem. So thank you for that. I think that's why.

Speaker A: No, I think too like if you've been through, having been through that before as other challenges came, you know, fast forward into the last 10 years like in the market shifts you can tell like it was like glaringly like a scarlet letter almost. If you've been through the recession or you hadn't and like how you able to pivot and adapt to like new market conditions that came down and the people who are panicking and freaking, it's like oh, you haven't been through a recession. And it shows, you know, like having survived that everything else feels solvable.

Speaker B: Mhm. Yeah, there was, there was a time where both web activity, like web activity for humbolders is still at an all time high, all time highs and web activity during the GFC was lower than web activity prior. And that's even with people getting like high speed Internet and websites actually becoming more Prevalent activity levels were often lower and walking traffic and lead volume. It was not uncommon for our salespeople to say I had three people all month, 30 days, I have three opportunities to sell a home. But it was all about okay, how do we get one or two of those three people percent. And that's, that's still where the other deep seated belief is. If percentages are not increasing when opportunity, individual number of opportunities is decreasing, something's wrong because everyone has the opportunity to sell one home from one opportunity. Okay, so we all survive the financial crisis. What's next for Melissa?

Speaker A: So yeah, uh, my husband got a relocation and so I, we moved to Texas from Florida and um, had the opportunity to get back into home building from my HOA days. When you live like in that world too, I think I just was still doomsday prepping because HOA world is such a dismal place. I didn't even know the market was rebounding because that wasn't the world that I lived in. I was in this like people are walking away from their houses. You know, this is never going to end. So we moved to Texas. It's a little bit more stable market than what Florida was at that time. And had an opportunity to get back into home building. So started off there with Ashton woods doing online sales. Had a great VP who was working with do you convert? And um, that was when I met Mike and interviewed with him and he was my trainer for a while.

Speaker B: Okay, so back to online sales. You also did marketing there with them. And so the lessons of this is the first time switching markets too. So we've got two potential areas where lessons can come from. One is the time frame shifting in the market kind of improving, but also that's kind of interwoven maybe with the change in geography was there. Do you remember at all kind of what hits you about how Texas is different again? Uh, not better or worse, is different than, than Florida.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think, you know, even still now working with my Texas builders in comparison to other builders that I work through, like it just has its own unique market dynamics. Uh, there's a lot of land in Texas, so there's a lot of builders who have like pretty aggressive land growth strategies to expand, expand. It seems like it's seamless. Like it could just go on forever. Like they'll just keep building and keep growing. And so a lot of the big builders are there. It's a very competitive market. Realtors are more important there, I feel like than any other market that we've seen or worked with like their co broke rates seem to be really, really high and that. And people in Texas like to do business with people in Texas. And so that was an interesting revelation too. Being an outsider coming in, you have to like figure out a way to buy the trust. And then, but then as Covid hit it became like the reload hotspot. And so everybody was coming from everywhere else and nobody was from Texas anymore. And it shifted again.

Speaker B: Um, and then Starlight. So brand management of. I think that's when Starlight was launched nationally too, right?

Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So I had a great opportunity there. I really wanted to get into marketing. And so the CMO was in town for our studio launch and for some awards and I was like, hey, like I. My background is and online sales, but I really want to get into marketing. Like how can I pave that path for myself? Like what does that look like? So I was really, really blessed that she took a chance on me. And so I got to. I relocated my whole family to Atlanta to work there on their home office team and got to be a part of the Starlight brand launch. So when I started there, I think we. They'd sold about five homes. And then over the two and a half years that I was there, it just got north of 27 homes, uh, 2,700 homes across nine markets. And it was all a home office marketing team. There was no division. And it was a very like sales process based marketing. So it wasn't your typical like marketing the area, the location, that type of stuff. It was very targeted at, uh, we're going to target renters who may or may not know that home ownership is affordable. We're going to have this process. We're going to rinse, lather, repeat. All of our sales galleries were the same across the nation. And so that is though where I became um, exposed to and more knowledgeable about consumer data. And this is before some of the privacy laws adjusted. So we worked with a company and like we're able to really, really target down like people who were registering for baby registries or you know, wedding registries and things like that to really target people who were giving indicators that they could be in the market for a new home or it would be a good prospect and doing really targeted direct mail. And so anyways, that's where I learned like how to look at data, how to like it was such a unique marketing position in the sense that it was sales process driven. So it fed into my online sales experience and gave me an opportunity to learn marketing around Some really brilliant people. Interestingly enough too, at that time I was the only one on our team that had home building experience. Like most people had come from other industries. So it was interesting to learn from them as well.

Speaker B: That's a whole. I'm going to avoid that. But it. The door opened up, if we could go down there about like I'm. We're not going to answer it. But I'm just going to tell you the questions that I often wonder, which is why people from other industries have. Overall I don't, I don't obviously have an exact number. It just seems like. And I wish it wasn't true either. That's why I keep asking the question like what is it that's so hard for people from other industries to transition to ours? Because it seems like the, like there was a time period, uh, before my time with NVR where there, whoever was running the organization at the top was bringing in a lot of people in the division manager role from other industries. And it was a big like bringing people from GE and like all these other large Fortune 500 corporations who understand business and P and L and let them run home building like a, um, like these other. And it just didn't, didn't work well from the stories that everyone said. So I know it's not just my own experience. I've heard it from lots of other places. But things to wonder about. Maybe we'll talk about on another episode of the program. Back to you. So then. And I also think this is interesting. So we've got Tampa, Florida, Dallas, Fort Worth, uh, Atlanta. Back to Dallas Fort Worth.

Speaker A: Yeah. Atlanta was a short stunt that was not a good fit for myself or my family. Like I was young and naive and wanted to chase not even title like, uh, it was an opportunity to open a door for me to go into essentially a work environment that was like equivalent to taking marketing at Harvard. You know, I got. I was surrounded by brilliant people who are willing to invest in me and allow me to learn and grow a new skill set that I didn't have the expense of that was I traveled all the time. I never saw my family. They hated living in Atlanta. You know, I love my job and that was it. And so the reason to go back to DFW was really a prioritization of like I have to find balance and what I'm doing isn't successful.

Speaker B: But also the openness to being in a different geographic area I still think is really important for people in this industry to be open to. I mean I grew up In Columbus, Ohio. I went to college in Indiana. I started working for homebuilders in Columbus. Then I went to Pittsburgh and I came back to Columbus. But what almost no one knows about is I did get offered positions in Arizona, in Utah, in Seattle, in Texas. And none of those answers came back as I'm not doing that. Each one of those things had to be thought through and really were truly considered because that's just part of the business. And I do think there's yes, you can work remote but also uh, there are trade offs to that too. And so I think it's, I think

Speaker A: I was more open to it. It was my husband that always took convincing. I grew up as a military child so I'm nomadic at heart and I love move and I love new and I love going to new places and conquering new things. So that is who I am by nature. But yeah.

Speaker B: So back to Dallas with Tri Point and online sales and marketing then marketing manager, director of marketing and then to. Do you convert? And I, I'm just going to pick up on something you said in terms of not necessarily chasing the title but the grind. So talk to me about a little bit more about that idea of, of the grind versus um, growth in other ways now in your career path.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So at Tripoint during the um, almost six years that I was there, you know, we went from being a private builder to a publicly traded builder.

Speaker B: Yeah, I was going to ask. That's a big change by the way. It's. You just said it in a sentence. But that is huge in terms of how the, how any public company thinks reports behaves is wildly different than a private organization.

Speaker A: My first week in the marketing role there we rebranded the company. So we went through a full rebrand which is a great learning opportunity. We went through a pandemic. I had the opportunity to grow a ah, marketing team there. So we went, almost tripled our closings um, during the time that I was there. So grew quite a bit through AlphaBarket with some other changes in leadership. The online sales teams became orphans at one point. So I hopped in and I, it was mostly like selfishly like we were driving all these leads and they weren't getting converted and I needed to exercise some of my previous experience so that was a good opportunity. But then it was like balancing, you know, we're rapidly opening new communities. I had like 40 new models open in one year like doing the physical side of marketing, growing the marketing team, growing the online sales team, moving into a leadership role which is a Different set of responsibilities. Learning and growing and knowing and getting to do so many great things. I get to be part of land development meetings and design charrettes and. But then you get to a point where you're like, is this sustainable? I had a lot of family stuff happen right before my son graduated from high school. And I found myself torn in so many directions so many times and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna snap. This isn't gonna be good for anybody. So I talked to Mike a couple of times over the years and you know, going to the summits Tripoint also was a do you convert client as well. So having that partnership, keeping in touch with everybody, and it's like if I'm going to make a strategic move, it was a huge leap of faith to walk away from the director position and doing. I did. I loved what I did.

Speaker B: Well, to be clear, do you convert Is not a public company. We don't give stock options. It was very. I mean I still as large as we are and the number of people we have on the team now, which is at well over 30, there are still sometimes people talk to us and they're like, well, I mean we know you, you and Mike and Jen and Beth and Julie and um, the whole team, but are, ah, you guys really a company? So I get it, I get it.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I had some other peers who had worked for some other big trainers in the industry and you know, found out sometimes it wasn't always on the backside what they thought it was going to be. So I was cautiously optimistic, but wholeheartedly trusted Jen and Mike. And so it has been an interest. It's been a little over a year now, but it has been growth in ways I had not expected. So.

Speaker B: All right, well, let's talk about that. And also apparently we should have a commercial break for. We're always looking for great people and we need more great people now than almost we ever have because the growth just keeps coming on our end. And we can't say yes to builders who want help if we don't have the team to, uh, help. And so if you're listening, this is wild. This is not in any show notes, I promise you. Go send I guess me a dm, go to our website, click out careers. And we are always looking for great people. If you're listening to this show, you're probably a pretty great person. Okay, so lessons learned from DYC or kind of typically when we've done shows with other folks, uh, on the team, it's like what was the most surprising part from being on the other side?

Speaker A: A lot of it. Like, I thought I was really knowledgeable and proficient. And then you don't. You realize, like, when you work for a big builder, they keep you with their big builder blinders and like, you only knew what they wanted you to know. And so I've learned a lot in being able to have, like, unfiltered access to knowledge and learning things in different ways and how we handle it, and working with builders of all different sizes and different struggles and strengths and weaknesses across the country. It is a whole different. It's. It's fun for someone who loves to dig into the data and look for patterns and. Because it's like you have this whole, you know, wide world of knowledge that you didn't have before because you only did things the way they did things, and that's what you knew.

Speaker B: Let me see if I can make that more easy to translate for someone. And I hate algebra, and I've took honors pre Cal twice in high school. So this isn't where I want to go as an analogy, but I think it makes sense in. In an algebraic equation, and I don't even sure this is right. You have like, X equals A plus B. When you work for a single company, almost always you're only allowed to ask about one of the variables in the equation. They might say you can tinker around with X like 10%, but A and B are off the table. Or to your point, we don't even want you to talk or think about A and B because that's not your job. And so when you expand from that to at least having visibility of all of the different parts of the equation, if you're wired the right way, it's awesome. It can be overwhelming for people, for sure, because if you don't have a good set of filters or a good homing beacon into where the problems really are, you can get distracted or overwhelmed. But it is like you were saying before, and I've said this about my time at nvr, it was like getting an MBA in the financial side of the business. There's no other. You cannot go to Harvard. You can't go to any of the. Of the best institutions in the world and learn what I learned in my time with nvr. And it's kind of the same way when you have the ability to interact with over a hundred different builders of every different kind of product type. You, uh, and I are working with a resort partner as well. And again, I've historically been very Bad humble at this. But it's important for people to really get a sense of in a given month. I'm probably surprised some between 0 and 1 times by anything that comes my way. It's almost not ever brand new. It's just that one of those variables is a little bit different now. I've been doing it a long time, but it's just so expansive, the visibility that we have. And again. And then I'll shut up. But the equation example is so important because one of those equations is personality types of the individual you're working with and the company they work for. And so, uh, you might be able to solve the equation, but if you can't figure out how to work with the person and within the company culture, you still can't get to the final answer, you know, because you have this lived experience of knowing that is the answer. You can't get there unless you can figure out those other variables.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think too, it's like when you have worked with one builder for a really long time, then street credit is your superpower. And so then you, as you're working with all the different builders, you have to like, kind of fast track that street cred. But then, you know, that's what I was like. I feel like here, like I'm growing horizontally. It's like the type of knowledge that I am obtaining. And, uh, even being able to use my past experiences like it has allowed me to help builders in different ways. And now it's like I'm not seeking that. Like, oh, hey, next I'm going to be director of marketing. And then I'm going to, you know, and it's. It is more of like, okay, these are really cool experiences. I've gotten to work on some builder audit projects this year, which I love diving into and doing, helping a lot on with the CRM side and on the AI champions, which has been a new learning.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's, uh. I don't know if we're allowed to talk about that. But yeah, I mean, as far as the rest of the world probably is, their perception is that we don't use much AI, but that's okay. They can think what they want.

Speaker A: We're learning new things all the time.

Speaker B: So, uh, one of the things that we do that I didn't prepare you for because we don't do show prep is, uh, we. We do have a charity that you're playing for. So is there a charity that. So what happens every time we have a guest episode? Thousand dollars into a collective pot that will go to a single charity at the end of the year and you get to nominate one of the organizations to be in that group. Anyone come to mind for you? That's not.

Speaker A: A lot of people know this is my moment of vulnerable. Um, you know, we moved to Florida this past year and it's because my mom has Alzheimer's, so.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: Getting a lot more involved. Yeah. Like with the Alzheimer's association and resources there and.

Speaker B: Awesome.

Speaker A: That's my. Why behind my what right now?

Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. Well, then that's. That's where we will go. Um, kind of last question is, what if you were going to talk to someone fresh out of college about what this industry is, how great it is, and kind of the essential top three lessons or advice that you'd want to give them, where would you go?

Speaker A: Um, I actually had this conversation with someone realist recently who is considering going into new home. Um, the industry, it's ever changing and you have people who are in it, they're in it forever. And if you are, and that's your mindset, like, the amount of knowledge that you're able to gain is unmeasurable. Like, there's so many things that you can do that like, what we do matters. It matters. Like even here at. Do you convert what we do? It matters to our builders, matters to our customers. It matters to the greater society and building. So.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: Yeah. You just have to get in and be eager and willing to learn.

Speaker B: I will especially highlight the people who last are the ones who, you know, pushed through that first three years. I mean, it's gonna take time. You can learn again. One of the variables pretty well. You can become aware of a few more, but your whole first year really is absorbing and reacting. Not much proactivity, even among the best of the best. And so for people who are used to like, every three to six months, something amazing happens in my career and there's this big lift. It's a little bit slower out of the gate. But then you kind of reach this opportunity zone where especially if you're open geographically and open to different opportunities, and then you really start to realize around year 5 or 6 how small the industry is and how connected so many people are. And if you, you know, do the right thing, treat people right and work really hard, um, there is unlimited opportunity. It's. It's a. It's a really. And to your point, home and home housing is likely to become, um, continue to become one of the key areas of the economy forever. So. Awesome. Well, Melissa, thank you so much Good to have you.

Speaker A: Thanks for having me Kevin.

Speaker B: I appreciate it and I think Melissa is going to become on Market Proof Marketing every now and then as well. So excited to have you join this.

Speaker A: I appreciate it. Like getting some time on the marketing playground every once in a while.

Speaker B: Yeah yeah yeah of course.

Speaker C: Thanks for joining us for another episode of Market Proof Marketing. Can't wait for the next one or looking to continue connect with other new home marketers, become a member of our private community DYC All Access which is 100% free and always will be get exclusive content not shared anywhere else, access to private events and the ability to join a marketing impact group with other marketers like you around the country. Visit our link in the show notes or members.duconvert.com to join. All opinions expressed by Kevin Oakley, Beth Russell, Julie Jarnigan, Jackie Lipinski and their castmates are solely their own. Now get to work and make sure your company is Market Proof.