Why We Stayed With The Same Marketing Program For 7 Years In A Row

Brett Beckfeld:  If you've thought about, like if you're currently in Platform and you're like, "You know, I think I can do this on my own," I will tell you don't, because I've talked to people that have done it and they've came back and, you know. Fortunately, if they don't have a waitlist for their-- that account's still available when they come back. If you think you can be an account manager on yourself just from knowing what-- It's more than just posting videos. Just seeing the backend with my wife who's an account manager, Lauren, stick to it 'cause it's gonna make your life a lot easier. Again, everything's scalable in real estate. You just gotta be smart.

Tim Chermak: This is The Platform Marketing Show where we interview the most creative and ambitious real estate agents in the country, dissect their local marketing strategy, and get the behind-the-scenes scoop on how they're generating listing leads and warm referrals. We'll dive into the specifics of what marketing campaigns are working for them, how much they're spending on those campaigns, and figure out how they have perfected what we call the Platform Marketing strategy. This is your host, Tim Chermak. I'm the founder and CEO of Platform. I love marketing and I talk too much, so let's dive in.

Tim Chermak: Hey guys, it's Tim Chermak and welcome back to another episode of The Platform Marketing Show. I'm joined this morning by Luke Garner and Brett Beckfeld in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Guys, welcome to the show.

Luke Garner: Hey, thanks for having us this morning, Tim.

Brett Beckfeld: Thanks, Tim.

Tim Chermak: You guys are having a killer year. Let me lay out some of the statistics before we dive into the conversation just to kind of set the table, set the stage of where your business is at and why I think this is gonna be a really interesting podcast episode. So, you guys are in a small town actually in northern Minnesota where the median price point is what, $300,000? 

Luke Garner: Yeah, right around $300,000.

Tim Chermak: So, not a super expensive market by any stretch of the imagination. It's a small town too. I mean, Grand Rapids has what, 10,000, 20,000 people?

Brett Beckfeld: It's about 10,000 in the city, 15,000, 16,000 in the summer with the surrounding area.

Tim Chermak: Yeah, so it's one of those areas where– I know you guys have the lake. How do you pronounce the main lake there? Poka–? 

Luke Garner: Oh, Pokegama Lake. Pokegama. 

Tim Chermak: I'm not even gonna try to say that.

Luke Garner: Yeah, don't try. Po-ke-ga-ma, a lot of people say.

Tim Chermak: Yeah, I was gonna say  Po-ke-ga-ma, and I don't wanna sound dumb so I'm just gonna say “the lake” from now on. Obviously, you have a bunch of lakes there. I'm from Minnesota as well, so I understand that it's not just one lake. It's many when you're in areas like that. I mean, even where I grew up in Minnesota, there was probably a dozen lakes that were nice lakes that were within 10 minutes from my house.

Brett Beckfeld: For sure.

Tim Chermak: Lakes where they're really deep and spring fed and just, like people go boating, wakeboarding, etc. So, you guys are in a small town. Northern Minnesota, not super expensive. Most of the properties selling are $300,000, and yet you're actually tracking, you're on pace to potentially hit $40 million in sales this year as a team, dynamic duo, Luke and Brett. 

Tim Chermak: $40 million when most of these transactions are $300,000. That's crazy because a lot of the agents that I interview, even on this podcast, you hear numbers like, wow, really impressive production, $15 million or $20 million or $25 million, and that is really impressive production, but sometimes that's aided, let's be honest. That's aided a little bit by the fact that an agent is in a market where a lot of the homes they're selling are $600,000 or $800,000, right? 

Tim Chermak: Not that it's not hard to be an agent in those markets, 'cause obviously in a more expensive market, there's stiffer competition. People have higher expectations and whatnot, but it's an entirely different beast to hit the level of volume that you guys are hitting when so many of the homes are $300,000. So, that is really impressive when I give you a shout out because that's hard to do. You're building your volume the old fashioned way, just by selling a shit ton of homes, so congratulations to both of you. That's impressive.

Luke Garner: Thanks, Tim.

Brett Beckfeld: Thanks, Tim. The thing everyone can kind of probably agree with this, I think, that having the listings are key. We get a lot of calls from people out of town. Just, again, we're a resort market, so this stuff on the lake is substantially more, but when you have the listing and they're not from town, they're calling the sign a lot of times so we're getting both sides on a lot of 'em, which helps that a lot transactionally. 

Luke Garner: Yeah, 'cause I think last year it was roughly over 50 sides total, so that's selling quite a few properties in this small town.

Tim Chermak: Last year you did about 50 sides, and what was the sales volume last year? 

Luke Garner: Roughly, almost $24 million last year. Really close.

Tim Chermak: Okay. So again, to get to $24 million took 50 sides. So this is not one of those markets where you sold $24 million and you did it in 20 sides. You're having to do more volume probably than the average agent out there. So Brett, you and I first got connected. You joined Platform. Was Luke on your team when you joined or was it--

Brett Beckfeld: No, we actually-- I think it was just after 2018?

Tim Chermak: Yeah, that sounds about right.

Brett Beckfeld: Around that time, and I was on my own for probably a year and a half before Luke and I joined together. Yeah, and it was a crazy deal. I'm a hard sell on a lot of things. It was that real estate lifestyle video that got me and I watched the whole thing and I'm like, "Man, I gotta try this," and here we are.

Tim Chermak: So what Brett is referencing there is we produced a documentary. I mean, this is almost 10 years ago now, [if that's what you guys are thinking] about that. Actually, it was 10 years ago. Platform produced a documentary based on the first book that I wrote, High Hanging Fruit. So you can still find that book on Amazon, High Hanging Fruit by Tim Chermak. Please go buy it. I think I'll make $1.50 for every person who buys that book. And we also produced a documentary based off of the ideas and some of the stories that were in that book of our successful clients. I think that's what you're referencing. That documentary is actually still on YouTube if you just search High Hanging Fruit, Platform Marketing documentary. 

Tim Chermak: It's like an actual 70-minute documentary. We hired a documentary film crew to follow around some of the most top producing agents that were working with us and the results that they were getting and what they did in a day-to-day life of a top producing agent. So you apparently stumbled on that video somehow on YouTube. Probably, you saw one of our Facebook ads, I'm assuming. I'm pretty sure even though we're both from Minnesota, we didn't have any mutual friends. It wasn't a warm introduction or something. 

Brett Beckfeld: Right. It wasn't at all. And then after that, I think I got connected with Mitchell at the time. And then from there, I got connected and then I think it was Debbie Caylor is who I talked to. So for me, Debbie Caylor was in Spicer, where kind of the area you guys are from and she was a small town, so it made sense for me to talk to her just because we had a very similar size town, similar lake market, and the rest was history.

Tim Chermak: It's crazy 'cause again, we're recording this in 2025. It's seven years ago. It's just a long time ago. I remember you guys both were at the ill-fated 2020 Platform Mastermind during all the COVID stuff and that was just crazy. 'Cause I remember there's still this picture we have, I think, on the Platform Facebook page of you guys climbing all over the giant boot at the L.L.Bean store at the Mall of America, if you remember that.

Brett Beckfeld: Oh yeah. It might have been after bar close maybe, but yeah. Mall of America, I remember it was there.

Luke Garner: We made some really good choices, Tim.

Tim Chermak: Yeah, great life choices. But there wasn't much to do during COVID 'cause everything was shut down. It was hilarious. We were all excited to host. All these realtors from across the country are flying in to the Mastermind and we're hosting at the Mall of America 'cause thinking, "Hey, this is gonna be really fun. This is this massive entertainment complex with all these restaurants and entertainment venues," and then just everything was closed. I think there was maybe two restaurants in the whole block that were still open. So rather than going to some fun, exotic, interesting place to eat, every night we go to Chevys Mexican Grill.

Brett Beckfeld: And Cowboy Jack's.

Tim Chermak: Yes, and everyone is having to wear masks the whole time. It was good, fun times. I'm saying that very sarcastically for those who can't see the video. So  you guys apparently joined forces, became this team in 2019, 2020, something like that, and then Brett actually left the business for several years and it was just Luke, right?

Luke Garner: Correct.

Brett Beckfeld: So that was last year. I came back in August. We joined back up again and I think it was about three years. So, that was probably 2021, I think. I took a little hiatus. We talked about it. This is the family business. I've done it since 2012 and got a little burned out, and a good job opened up with John Deere and I did that, but freedom and everything. Being 1099 is way better than being W-2. I always thought it was the other way. So here I am back again, and it was a perfect timing for me to take a break. Little kids, slow down, and now I'm just way more like-- Coming off of COVID and just that crazy phase and people and temperament, so it was actually a really good thing, and fortunately Luke was able to take me back, and yeah. So here we are.

Tim Chermak: Yeah, well, I mean, you're basically like Michael Jordan where everyone loves you more when you come back after taking a break to go play minor league baseball for a couple years.

Brett Beckfeld: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, go play minor league baseball and then come back and win a championship.

Tim Chermak: So this is your space champ story. So Brett and Luke partnered up again, and this is a small town market where I think this is interesting to dive into because being in that small of an area, you don't need to be a team. You don't need to partner up, right? It's not like it's such this massive area and there's so much business going on. So a lot of people might look at your partnership and be like, "Why do they need to have a team in such a small town?" How would you answer that question of why it makes sense for you guys to be a team and to partner on this? 

Brett Beckfeld: So I think what happened was I was doing Platform. Luke and I were kind of, we were both somewhere between one and five and there was 150 realtors in the area. So I looked at it as like, right away I was like, man, Luke's got all the billboards, I got Platform, we both spent a lot of money in just other areas. And I kind of was like, man, if we just like, 'cause we're both stressed out, and I'm like, "Let's just team up. Use those marketing dollars together and then hire an assistant to mitigate some of that daily stuff that puts us all through the ringer and makes us all go crazy and scale this thing to the economy, to scale where those marketing dollars are way more robust and do more for us," and combined with all the Platform stuff was the idea. It just really took off from there.

Luke Garner: I think teaming up really benefited our clients. That's the most important part, is the clients. I mean, that's how we built this system or this funnel to just continue to grow our volume and scale our business with our assistant. She handles all the paperwork, which if Brett and I were doing that in the past, which we were, it took away from really what our job was and that was to help our clients and find them that home or list their property and grow, have that property be maximum exposure. And Brett was saying marketing and that's what we did. 

Luke Garner: We had the billboards, we have Platform. I mean, the exposure on our Facebook and Platform is unbelievable. We're averaging I think over 30,000 views. That's a lot of views for a small town. We only have, like we said earlier in this podcast, we only have 10,000, 11,000 people in Grand Rapids. We're getting 3x the amount of views on Facebook because of Platform. Huge exposure for our clients. I think that success just continues now due to that, or our success will continue.

Brett Beckfeld: For sure.

Tim Chermak: When you have a "team" too, and again, I'm saying team with air quotes 'cause it's really just two of you. It's not like you have a team of 10 people or 15 people or something. But even having one other person means that, let's say Brett is super busy on a given week on showings or listing appointments or whatever, or let's say Luke has decided to take a week and go on vacation or something, that the other guy can step up and serve clients so that both of you don't feel like you always have to work 80 hours a week. Like, hey, if Luke's not available, Brett can fill in and vice versa. I'd imagine that probably gives you some peace of mind too, because normally in a real estate business, everything goes through you.

Brett Beckfeld: So Luke for example, letters are a little slower here. I mean, we still get plenty of business, but Luke goes to Mexico. He's got a place in Mexico. He goes to Mexico for a month and I just cover. It's really not that unreasonable. Our assistant, Morgan, she also is licensed. So if we need to get her go open doors for us, she can do that. 

Brett Beckfeld: Luke's kids are all out of the house, mine are all little. Ten, eight, and two, so I got a soccer game. I'd rather not miss every one of 'em and Luke will be like, "I got you." Even there's times where I'll go on showings and I'll drop the baby off at Luke's place for him and his wife. Just in general, it just really works, and it's free. Even better, you know?

Luke Garner: Yeah. I don't charge much.

Brett Beckfeld: So yeah, our partnership's really worked well. And then I'm a very creative, dreamer person. I'm not a spreadsheet guy. I'm not a X's and O's. Luke is super good with that kind of stuff, tracking and managing and keeping things together and organized, where I'm kind of up in blue sky a little bit. And that's why it works, you know? He's way more patient with me, which helps. It's like a marriage in its own sense.

Tim Chermak: I mean, every good partnership in one way or another has those ingredients where what you're good at fills in for what your partner isn't good at and the strengths balance out the weaknesses. But especially in real estate, it's almost always one, solo top producer that everything flows through them, so if they're unavailable or they're out, then you just miss out on the business. 

Tim Chermak: I think it's cool that you guys have that flexibility built in where you said if Luke goes to Mexico for a month, that Brett can just step in and serve the clients in that time, where it's not like Luke has to think, "Oh man, if I'm gone for a month, how much money is this gonna cost me?" And if Brett wants to go on a vacation or go team roping to rodeos, he knows that Luke can step in and help if he's out for a couple days or a week or whatever. So, I mean, that must be nice 'cause most agents don't have that.

Brett Beckfeld: For sure, and what's cool, so here's what's cool about this, circling this back to Platform, is there's times where you hear about teams and they're like, well, when they see the one team member on all the videos, sometimes people are like, "Well, I want that person. I want them to show me the house. I want them." What's worked for Luke and I is that if it's his customers that he's working with, because of Platform, the trust they have with me because I'm already on the videos, they already know I'm a producer, they see me plenty, there's zero issues with people being like, "Oh, I gotta work with Brett for two weeks. I don't know if he's the same caliber. Is he gonna write an offer, gonna implement a multiple like Luke?" Now, granted that doesn't show in a video, but they assume by just the way you talk and being the expert and all those things that you're gonna take care of them. That really helps to have that rapport without even meeting somebody.

Luke Garner: It's like an instant level of trust.

Tim Chermak: So you guys started Platform obviously many years ago at this point. If you were to look back, what are some of the most successful campaigns that you've run? Are there two or three ads? Whether they're photos or videos, what are maybe two or three of the most successful Platform ads that you've run over the years that just really did well in the community and got a lot of engagement?

Brett Beckfeld: Well, maybe I'll give my opinion and you can chime in.

Luke Garner: That small business one.

Brett Beckfeld: The small business one, God Made a Small Business Owner, I believe, right?

Tim Chermak: Oh, okay. Yep.

Luke Garner: That one was really powerful.

Brett Beckfeld: Really powerful. 'Cause in a small community, people really do pay attention to that. If you're on a boat and you've got a Yeti cooler that you could've bought at Ace Hardware versus the knockoff Arctics that you get at Walmart, people know that. It's crazy, right? So that one really hit home as far as a video. And then I would say that one and then, I mean, from a listing perspective, we listed a really cool island on a really good lake, the island video. The first island we listed was really good. 

Luke Garner: The Deer Lake one.

Brett Beckfeld: The Deer Lake one just 'cause that water's remarkable. It looks like a glacier lake in Montana and it was an island. I would say those were really good, and then just as far as a post, right out the gate you get a ton of traction 'cause no one else is, at that time in 2018, 2019, was really endorsing themselves with ads. “Get to know this person and the top 20 things about me.” I know 'cause right away, you weren't with me yet, that just got tons of traction, and people even would comment in the store like, you know? People you didn't know and they're like, "Hey, my dad used to own a bison ranch," and that's kind of what I wanna do for retirement. People I didn't even know, which is crazy that they read, and that was number 19. So that was pretty interesting.

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