I’ve got stuff to say about the incredible opportunity we enjoy as investor-friendly real estate agents.
Over the coming years you’ll hear me shouting it from the rooftops, but the gist of it is this:
Investor-friendly agents are sitting on top of a commission goldmine as real estate investors have steadily increased their share of the residential real estate market to 13% of annual sales, worth around $13 billion in annual real estate commission.
That’s a really big commission pie shared by a stunningly small number of investor-friendly agents.
It’s also the mission driving the Investor Broker platform – to help investor-friendly agents close more deals with private, institutional and prop tech investors.
I Believe in Transparency
I made the decision from day one to be 100% transparent and to share how we’re building and growing the Investor Broker platform.
In that spirit, here’s the thinking and planning that went into the launch of the Investor Broker platform.
What’s In a Name?
I thought about adding my two cents under my personal brand at RossHair.com. In many ways it makes sense as I own my name domain and most social media usernames.
I also have an unusual name, that’s easy to spell and memorable. It ticks most of the boxes on the branding 101 checklist, particularly as, in an ironic twist, my last name is “hair” but I’m completely bald.
My bald head actually makes my name more memorable.
More iconic than ironic. Break out the lemonade.
But I also like the simplicity and non-personal brand of the name Investor Broker.
I like descriptive names that describe exactly who you are and what you do.
An investor broker is exactly who and what the name describes – a broker who works with investors.
That’s why we made the call to name our platform Investor Broker.
It’s 2023, so it’s not easy to navigate through the minefield of unavailable domain names, social media usernames and trademarks. The good stuff is mostly taken by competitors or parked and available for resale by domain speculators.
Our digging unearthed Investor Broker. It’s a nice and simple name that our niche audience of investor-friendly agents can easily find and easily describe to other agents.
The word investor is broader than real estate investor, so we’ll have some work to differentiate our business from other brokers, like financial brokers.
We also have an opportunity to transform the name into an industry class that describes agents who work with investors. It will be difficult, but who knows, maybe in a few years from now all investor-friendly agents will be known as Investor Brokers.
We’re a Creative Platform
We’re not just a single thing, like a website. We’re actually a number of different things that collectively form a creative platform.
We’re a newsletter.
The first strategic decision we made was to start Investor Broker as a newsletter.
A newsletter? Are they back in fashion?
We think so.
A newsletter is the simplest and most direct way to connect with our audience of investor-friendly agents.
It’s the easiest way to deliver content to our audience and the easiest way for our audience to consume content. People like email and will take the time to open and read their emails.
It’s also the easiest way for us to execute and deliver on a promise to our audience.
Our promise is that once-a-week, we’ll deliver to your inbox, high quality content that will help investor-friendly agents close more deals with private, institutional and prop tech investors.
That’s a very clear and targeted mission statement.
It’s simple – all content is contained within an email:
- No teaser – no “read more” link to a website.
- It’s easily consumed – just read your email
- It’s easily delivered – right into your inbox.
Our primary business goal is to rapidly grow the newsletter subscriber base.
We’re a website.
The Investor Broker platform is anchored by the InvestorBroker.com website.
We made a conscious decision not to invest heavily into the website. As a result, it is not a tech driven site but rather an information clearing house that stores limited content and quickly redirects you to the newsletter or community.
We’re a community.
The biggest decision we made was to build a community for investor-friendly agents.
The second biggest decision was to launch the platform by first focusing on the newsletter as our primary point of contact with our audience and subordinating the community behind the newsletter.
Newsletters and communities are very different business models.
They’re both time consuming and require high quality content, but a newsletter has a much simpler format and mission statement.
A community requires constant attention, moderation and motivation.
It has a much more complicated technology platform.
We made the decision to launch Investor Broker with a focus on the newsletter in the short-term as a standalone product and, in the long-term, as a top-of-funnel lead system for the community.
The newsletter is a catch-all product to engage with all investor-friendly agents. It’s free and focuses on delivering quality content to subscribers. Give us your email address and every week we’ll deliver quality content to your inbox.
The community is a private network or group that sits behind a membership wall.
While the newsletter is a content platform that focuses on delivering quality content, the community is a transactional platform that focuses on closing quality deals.
The community has a transactional mission that is built around building quality connections and closing deals with real estate investors.
That’s a huge difference and represents a giant leap up the value ladder. Investor-friendly agents like quality content but what they really love is getting commission checks from closed deals.
It’s also a very difficult promise to deliver.
We’re Social Media Influencers
The final piece of our platform is that we have an inherited social media presence and audience.
Back in 2007, we started building our social media presence. Back then, social media was free and fun, and we built up a large social media network on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
I use the term ”influencer” quite loosely. We’re no Kardashian, Jake Paul or Mr. Beast. We have a limited following in a niche industry made up of real estate agents and real estate investors.
Our audience knows and trust us.
We use our social media properties to engage with our audience on social media and also as a top-of-funnel lead source for the newsletter and indirectly for the community.
We used to build groups inside of Facebook but moved away from promoting our pages and groups when Facebook started limiting reach and moved to all paid advertising.
As a company, we made the decision that we want control of our own platform and have built our community outside of Facebook. We don’t want to operate at the whim of an algorithm change or the threat of suspension or escalation of fees.
We’ll always use social platforms as a medium to deliver our message and connect with our audience.
There’s one small twist to our social media strategy.
Over time I discovered that I gained most traction with my audience through my personal profiles (notice I switched from we to I).
My personal profiles on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin enjoy around 45,000 followers with another 60,000 followers attached to our various company groups and pages.
The twist is that social media is the one place where I’m more focused on a personal brand than on the Investor Broker brand.
What About Podcast and Video?
There are so many benefits to producing and delivering quality content through podcasts and video.
It’s just not for me.
There are so many great podcast and video producers out there, and I’m not one of them. It’s too technical, too time consuming and I’m just too old.
I’m going to stick to what I know and enjoy and a space where I can play to win – writing.
Welcome to Investor Broker
With all that, let me extend a warm welcome to the Investor Broker platform.
You can subscribe to the newsletter here.
You can connect on social media here.
You can apply to join the community here.
Ross Hair
Founder
InvestorBroker.com
bald. I’m a licensed real estate broker and real estate investor. I’m also the founder of the Investor Broker newsletter and community where we help investor-friendly agents close more deals with real estate investors.