Revolutionize Your Real Estate Business with ClientKeeper Insights

Dylan Silver (00:00.755)
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast by Investor Fuel, the nation’s premier real estate mastermind. I’m your host Dylan Silver and today on the show we have Phillip Shepard. Phillip is a multi-generational real estate operator, really born into the business and has made a name for himself in Arkansas but originally from the Chicago area. Phillip, welcome to the show.

Phillip Shepard (00:27.064)
Thank you for having me, I appreciate it.

Dylan Silver (00:28.721)
Absolutely, before we hopped on the show here, you were talking about your background and talking about how you got started originally with a landscaping company when you were fresh out of high school.

Phillip Shepard (00:41.368)
Yep, no, that’s correct. So then it’s actually interesting because my parents have always been in real estate. So grew up in the industry, looking postcards, driving around, getting addresses, classic stuff. But in the meantime, obviously, I can’t get my license when I’m 10 years old. And my parents are like, hey, we’re not going to give you money to do things. Therefore, you to make it yourself. So I was like, OK. So they what they essentially they did was there’s a couple of foreclosures around our neighborhood and they’re like, hey, do you want to go mow the grasses for them? I’m like, sure. So they chopped me off with a push mower and I started pushing my grass.

Eventually, I was able to save up when I was like 12 or 13 for my first writer mower. And then eventually I got my eventually, you know, had 20, 30 accounts. And then she grew up to a to a bigger John Deere mower. Big day in the shepard household. And then we eventually got a I bought my first truck and trailer when I was 16. Then I got a first writer more. So it’s kind of slowly built up over the years. And eventually when I was, I think, 18 or 19, I eventually sold the company when I got when I got when I got out of high school. I think I had about like 85 moan accounts.

I had like kind of two friends working for me and then I mostly focused on hardscapes, which is more profitable, which is more like, you know, I could charge, you know, 60 to $70 per hour doing hardscapes versus mowing, which was, which was kind of a loss leader at the time just due to the salary nature. But like it was, it was a lot of fun. So it eventually sold that to an older gentleman. And then I got my license for real estate in 2009, 2008, some around there. Great time to get into real estate. I’ll say it that way.

Dylan Silver (02:03.967)
Let’s back up a bit, I’m putting a smile on my face, I’m laughing, because you had your first exit, your first sale of a business when you were 18, 19 years old, 80 accounts, you bought a John Deere commercial level or high level mower, you bought a truck, you know, by all accounts, you were ripping the cover off the ball, you were killing it. So where did that come from? How did you have the business acumen?

Phillip Shepard (02:11.926)
Yeah, yeah. I had no idea what I was hearing. Yeah.

Yep. Yep. Yep.

Phillip Shepard (02:25.656)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (02:31.249)
I can only imagine that there wasn’t too many people who were doing what you were doing at a young age.

Phillip Shepard (02:37.602)
I think a lot of it was just the, so the acumen came from just seeing my parents operate. So that’s one thing, seeing, you know, run a business, you know, what is the most sense? I mean, even from a kid’s standpoint, hearing your parents’ conversation, saying like, hey, you know, what’s the best use of money? Should we do postcards? Should we do this? And being, hearing those conversations, not necessarily taking part of it, but having those words in your mind, like what’s the best allocation of funds to do the job? And then you start thinking like, okay, well,

I have a yard machines for $500 more from Walmart. If I spent, and that is 600 hours on it and it’s about to die. What if I spent $5,000 on a John Deere, they’re known to last forever. You know, what could that do? It can drive faster. I didn’t have a truck at the time. So I can move at three miles per hour faster than usual. I can mow faster. The deck was wider. So you start putting things together and the goal was really, it wasn’t like I had like this big goal to like, you know, make

$100 million. I was like, I was just a kid, you know eating Chinese food and and and buying Pokemon cards essentially and video games So I guess it was like, okay I have enough money to buy whatever I wanted at the time, you know video games or whatever And so I guess that was the big pursuit was like, okay Well, it is what it is and there’s also that edge of like your parents where they’re like, hey go do something And so was like, well if I’m gonna do anything I’m also make money doing it. So that’s kind of where that came from

Dylan Silver (03:59.785)
So were your parents in amused and also blown away by your success?

Phillip Shepard (04:09.006)
I would say, I would say blown away. think it was not blown away because they were successful. So I think it was just more of like, it wasn’t an expectation, but it was just like, okay, that makes sense. Now, if I went a different direction, they’d have been like, whatever, that’s fine. But they’re like, okay, this is my child. Therefore, he’s gonna do the things that he does. So it was more of like, it wasn’t like, good job. Now, internally, I’m sure they were like, when you start seeing other kids versus me, they might’ve been different, but like, were not like high praise. People will say it that way.

Especially my mom. My mom was definitely the driver in a sense of like business. She was the more main real estate agent and she was the one that drove a lot of business. And so she was just like, okay, yeah, that’s it’s work. It’s what you do. So go to work. Okay. Sounds good. You know, so yeah, yeah, exactly. Sometimes I’m like, uh, it comes with it. Like having this comes with the curse because you don’t really stop. Um, and that is the curse of it, but it does come with some big rewards as well. And so, you know, it’s like, you kind of miss that on childhood a little bit, but you know, it, it, every, every child is a little different, suppose.

Dylan Silver (04:47.945)
This is really incredible.

Dylan Silver (05:06.621)
Reflecting on that period in your life, were there major lessons that you recall that you still carry with you?

Phillip Shepard (05:16.492)
Yeah, I think probably one of the biggest things is how to communicate and work with people. That’s one thing. And just I would say being on time and just managing your schedule. But probably the biggest thing is just communicating properly. And that carries whether you’re in sales, in real estate, sales, in landscaping or anything, medical sales, it doesn’t make a difference. Even if you’re in a marriage relationship, learning how to communicate, learning how to speak less, listen more.

listen what the customer wants and not saying that your wife’s the customer or husband’s the customer, but it’s more or less like, okay, what are they really saying here? And then you get into situations where, you some people just, you learn that some people just want to complain and then there is really no answer. So you learn those things along the way when you’re 13, 14, 15, 16, where you’re like, oh, I’m here to solve a solution and the answer is, oh, there’s no solution. I just want to complain. And that’s a different conversation. You learn that and those are the kinds of skills you learn.

that you can’t learn in college, can’t go to as many master level classes as you want. It’s just one of those things you have to pick up on and learn in the field itself.

Dylan Silver (06:21.951)
So you exit from the landscape business and you immediately get your real estate license. And so when you’re going about this, you’re 18, 19 years old. What year was it?

Phillip Shepard (06:33.4)
Mm-hmm. 2009. 2008, 2009. Yep.

Dylan Silver (06:37.873)
Okay, so this is 2008-2009, you’re in Chicago. By the way, for our listeners who are not familiar with Chicago, Chicago is freezing cold so much of the year. Very, very cold. There was actually a side note, there was a time period, I was living in Boston, where it was freezing in Boston. Negative 30 degrees plus the wind chill, like that’s not an exaggeration, it was really bad. And in Chicago,

Phillip Shepard (06:47.394)
Yeah. Not enjoyable.

Phillip Shepard (06:57.452)
Very comparable.

Phillip Shepard (07:03.896)
Well, once you experience native 40, it’s a problem.

Dylan Silver (07:06.749)
was like negative 60 on the same days. And there was this side by side, is this the day after tomorrow movie? Or is this just Chicago? So to put some background there, know, this is what Phillip’s upbringing was, know, so a lot of coal, but you’re in Chicago, you’re a younger guy, and you’re going into the real estate space. And so I imagine you’re thinking I’m gonna follow in my parents’

Phillip Shepard (07:14.69)
Yeah,

Phillip Shepard (07:35.278)
Yeah, it was it was I wouldn’t say it was easy, but I just knew enough that it was quote-unquote easy And so, you know at least the marketing side I never really dealt with the people when it’s different when you deal with like a $15 mowing service versus You know a $500,000 house. So there’s a level of difference there for sure So that was a skill set. I certainly had to learn there’s a lot of things I had to learn along the way but that it was I guess we’ll say the it was I was not expected but it was like an easy step into like okay like

I’ve learned a lot of skills to negotiate, to work with people, to do these things. You might as well start doing real estate and get, you know, and work in a different field that you’ve heard us, as my parents would say, heard us talk about and do for, you know, almost 15 years now.

Dylan Silver (08:17.407)
So there’s a lot of support from your parents and saying, this is a natural connection. That’s always great to have. for folks who are on the outside looking in and you have the, the, do I get in? Where do I start? I always tell people you start by networking and in networking, one of the things that you pick up along the way is you’re simply better at talking.

Phillip Shepard (08:20.472)
Correct. Yep. Yep.

Dylan Silver (08:43.099)
And when you do this, you’d be surprised folks in the real estate space are willing to help. You had your parents, so that’s a blessing in many ways. there’s many, many people who have folks who are in the business and they’re just not passionate. The kids aren’t passionate about it and they go a different direction. But you decided to carry the torch. So talk to us about your first couple deals. What was that like and what was the process like in those first couple deals?

Phillip Shepard (08:48.206)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Phillip Shepard (09:09.742)
Well, the first time I ever showed The first property ever showed just got my license. My mom was like hey a good a good friend of ours Like family friend. She’s like hey, wants to buy an investment property Can you go show her a house in our area? Not a problem. Great. Not easy easy first one. Not a problem So what happened was that in our local town? There are two roads that are named exactly the same and they’re called the Cal street and everyone in the area knows

And there’s two houses exactly the same address, but they know based on last name that, like this is this person, that’s that person. Obviously it’s just one of those old towns that you’re like, whatever. Everyone knows you P a USPS knows what we don’t need to change it. Why rock the boat is that situation anyways, pulled up to the house. There’s no sign out there. I’m like, this is weird. And so I walk around the house looking, peeking inside. Okay. You know, the client shows up. I knock on the door. No one answers. They’ll go, obviously like, you know, maybe the obvious, it’s a showing. they’re, we’re going to, we’re going to leave or they’ve left.

I go to the back, the front door’s locked, there’s no lock box. I’m like, well, this is kind of strange. So I go over to the side, the side doors are open. was like, well, maybe this, you know, it’s a smaller town sometimes. They leave the doors open, not a big deal. Walk inside with my client, we’re walking around. This place is a disaster. And I’m like, this does not look like the photos, because it was pristine on the photos. Walking around, walk around, like, I don’t think this is ready for sale. Like, are we, what is going on here? Like, there’s stuff everywhere. Like, they just like, people, there’s food on the table. I’m like, what is going on?

I hear someone walking down the stairs from the living room. He has a shotgun in his hands. I’m like, we’re like, what are we doing? What is going on? And like, what are you doing in my house? I’m like, I’m here to sell it. He’s like, it’s not for sale. I’m like, God. So we walk out and then it’s the house behind his house that’s for sale. Same address, same street, everything. So that was my first showing. Start off on a good, on a bang, pun intended. But.

Dylan Silver (11:03.072)
my gosh.

Phillip Shepard (11:04.974)
The first sale I ever did was actually kind of a weird twist of things. One of the first sales I ever did was a lakefront property. It was a foreclosure, classic of the times. It’s a foreclosure, it is a lakefront house, and all the pipe burst inside the house. So it was like a literal FHA nightmare of bank foreclosure. And this is back in the day where it took forever for things to get done because there’s so many foreclosures. And so we had to get the house re-piped.

all the drywall be taken down. Like it was a three month long closing, honestly, about just trying to get everything fixed, ready for sale, that loan would actually approve it for sale itself. So that was my first real like actual like true sale itself. But I’ll represent the buyer. Yes, it was a one of the higher ups at McDonald’s. And then he was a single guy came out to Lake Holiday, which were the lake I sold houses at.

Dylan Silver (11:49.375)
Are you representing the buyer or the seller in that?

Phillip Shepard (12:01.602)
bought it, but it took about three months to get done. But the weird twist of everything is he eventually got poached from McDonald’s and said, hey, I’m going to work for Tyson Foods. I’m like, good luck to you. I’ll sell your house. Not a problem. I’m moving down to Northless Arkansas. I’m like, whatever. This is like 2014. And then like years later, I’m like, I call up my friend Justin, the client. I’m like, do you live in Northwest Arkansas? like, yeah, I’m I’m down. So that was by sheer luck. I didn’t sell this house down here, but it was just funny how my first client ever, I’m back where he is with that right now.

Dylan Silver (12:31.263)
So getting into the details on that deal, I just got my license actually, well I’m getting it, I just had my exam and passed, thank God, on Monday. I now have increased respect for all realtors everywhere because the test is not easy. The test is not easy.

Phillip Shepard (12:36.29)
Yep. Yep, times. yeah.

Phillip Shepard (12:46.638)
No, no, it really is not. I actually failed my first two times off the gate, which I was like, listen, we have a piece of cake. I grew up in the industry. Little did I know is like, it’s all law. It’s the fact that it’s like, learn all the law, but use none of it. Never use it, but learn it. Okay, that’s good. I guess. You should never know this. You should never use it. You should never know it, but you need to learn it for the test. Sounds great.

Dylan Silver (12:59.315)
Hahaha!

That’s exactly right.

Dylan Silver (13:10.623)
I’ve never heard anyone say it like that. That’s exactly right. Here’s all the law which you need to know but never use it. So yeah, in Texas, we got, in Arkansas probably similar. There’s mineral rights. have our own. I forget if it’s called deed theory or title theory, but it’s one of the ones where it’s rare. We have our own rules. So it’s like out of 54, 50.

Phillip Shepard (13:16.966)
Never talk about it. did never talk about it. Okay, so

Phillip Shepard (13:30.274)
Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Dylan Silver (13:36.287)
pass rate which means like a little bit less than one in every two people are passing and so I was so worried I studied so hard and the exam was so hard I really left thinking well I did as good as I can I guess I’ll take it again and sure enough I passed and so now I’m telling everybody you know I have increased respect for realtors but on that specific deal you mentioned that there were repairs that needed to be made

Phillip Shepard (13:44.824)
Yeah. It was easy.

Phillip Shepard (13:58.85)
Yep. Yep.

Dylan Silver (14:03.689)
Did your client end up paying for them or did the bank end up paying for them?

Phillip Shepard (14:07.874)
So no loan, no loan would take on that kind of risk without it being fixed. And so they had to come in and essentially fix everything multiple times over. Because the problem with like, and I don’t want to get into details of that kind of repair, but basically it’s like you fix some pipes and then the next pipe breaks, they fix some pipes. So it was just this constant fixing the next pipe down the pipe pipeline. But because everything, because the house was vacated.

that got cold in Chicago, all the pipes froze, burst. Yes, classic foreclosure. Anyway, so yeah, the bank was not about to have anything about a fully functional operating house. The bank, so he got a smoking deal. We negotiated hard. And then on top of that, they did the repairs because it was just the times. They’re not going to sell a house that is, they couldn’t sell the loan to Freddie or Fannie that would have that kind of sort of repairs to be.

Dylan Silver (14:36.883)
Yeah, it’s a mess. It’s freezing cold. Yeah.

Phillip Shepard (15:04.174)
to done beforehand. Now in today’s, I bet you could do like a there wasn’t there was they really weren’t doing that kind of like that loan structure where you can actually like loan against it and then do the repairs yourself. They just I don’t know if it was his his income structure because he worked at McDonald’s. Maybe he couldn’t do that per se or maybe we didn’t I didn’t have the the the knowledge base to do that. But regardless, the bank he got it for free. So who cares? Yep, yep. It’s a long deal. Yeah, yeah.

Dylan Silver (15:27.679)
That was your first deal. That’s an aggressive first deal. That was an aggressive first deal.

Phillip Shepard (15:32.942)
Yeah, it was, was, and then they got easier after that. I mean, they’re so easy. It’s the ones that you, the ones that are the hardest, I feel bad because like the clients I remember the most are the most, they’re the worst. And then the ones I forget about, like they’re the greatest because no issues happened. No issues. I forgot about you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep.

Dylan Silver (15:35.647)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (15:49.855)
Yeah, was smooth sailing. It was my brain and my brain just, you know, passed right through. And then the ones that were traumatic, my brain has… Yeah, I have stress now from these…

Phillip Shepard (15:56.812)
Yeah, so I’ll never forget. exactly. He was a great client though. The house was something else.

Dylan Silver (16:05.107)
So from there and pivoting a bit here, Phillip, you mentioned you moved to Arkansas, which for people who may not know exactly where that is, it’s close to Texas, northeast, northeast, right? And so moving from Chicago, which is like, for all intents and purposes, about as north as you could get unless you’re in Canada, you decide to go down to Arkansas. But before we hopped on here, you mentioned I could have gone anywhere.

Phillip Shepard (16:19.118)
Yep, you got it.

Phillip Shepard (16:27.638)
Yeah, yeah, seriously. Yeah.

Phillip Shepard (16:35.086)
Yeah, I could have moved anywhere I wanted to if you want to go down that path. I researched and went to and visited places for about six months. I I just traveled around. I went to Huntsville. I went to Chattanooga. I went to Maryville. I went to Golden and Boulder, Phoenix, Boise, a lot of those places. Now, some of I didn’t go to, I’d never went to Salt Lake City, but that was on my radar. But there was something really interesting.

about the only the north of Arkansas area. I would never ever recommend anyone ever moving to other parts of Arkansas. I mean, if you want to be in the world in the middle of nowhere, sure, that’s Arkansas is great for that. But if you want that sweet combination of like high level businesses, amazing trail systems, great weather, lower taxes, what else, know, big business, outdoor recreation galore is just a weird and also affordable housing. That’s that’s it’s a very weird spot for that.

Dylan Silver (17:28.553)
What’s the big city in Arkansas that I’m forgetting?

Phillip Shepard (17:30.99)
Probably Fayetteville or Bentonville. Probably Fayetteville with the Razorbacks. It’s the biggest fan base in the whole entire world for a team that’s interesting. We’ll say it that way. It is Northwest. To separate themselves, they call themselves Northwest Arkansas. So it’s technically called NWA, which is not to be confused with the rap group.

Dylan Silver (17:39.679)
And is that Northwest?

Dylan Silver (17:46.111)
Okay, okay, so we-

Dylan Silver (17:51.263)
I can only imagine there’s a lot of merchandise being built between there. So you move out there, you’ve had experience in the business now, you’re seasoned, you decide I’m gonna move to Arkansas for a number of reasons, you did your homework, and then you got settled in there. But over time, you became one of the top performing realtors in the whole area, in Northwest Arkansas. How did that happen?

Phillip Shepard (17:55.23)
yeah. Yes. yeah.

Phillip Shepard (18:02.51)
Yep.

Phillip Shepard (18:07.583)
Yep.

Phillip Shepard (18:17.966)
Yep. So when I moved down here, took me, it took a it during COVID. So I moved down here fully, fully, fully, in mid 2020. And I finally bought a house in like late 2020 and I started moving my license mid 2021. Just to get adjusted, I, you know, I sold my houses up in Chicago so I had some cash. I could kind of like cruise if I wanted to for a little bit. And then started moving my license. It took a long time to move my license just because of COVID.

in Illinois, knowns in the office. like moving paperwork was, it would have been better if I just retook the whole test again, honestly. It was like, was, could have, I could have done that in like, I could have done that in like two months and then, and then, and then be in service really. Anyways, I got fully licensed back Arkansas, the whole thing in start of 2022. And for my marketing purposes, what started a lot of it was it was really, really hard for me to find out information.

Dylan Silver (18:52.926)
Phillip Shepard (19:16.064)
around North of Arkansas. Like I had to go to weird forums, like forums online, like forums, like people typing stuff. And there was like, it’s just hard to find like a consistent source. I did read all of the 2040 plans, like Fayetteville, Bentonville, and the main towns mapped out the whole area for 2040. I knew so much about the area. I was like, okay, I need to really start thinking about how I can help people move here. Cause I think it’s an amazing area. So my first initial business, not business, but my first marketing was like, obviously your standard postcards.

That’s what I did a lot in Chicago and the cost was just too much. I’d spent, you know, a couple thousand dollars doing that. But in the same breath, in that 2021 phase, it’s like who I’m a nobody in the area. No one knows me. Why? And homes will go the day. It’s like, it’s that timeframe where like you just put your, you breathe as though you’re going to sell your house and people are giving you offers. So it was just that timeframe. So why would anyone want to listen to me? Because who cares? It’s like, who am I?

And so what I started doing was I started like, you know what? I want to start making some YouTube videos because my math was if 35 people are moving here per day, that means we’re, you know, that’s, that’s so 35 people are moving here per day. Let’s say half of those are leasing and let’s say a couple of those are actually buying homes right away when they move here. So if I can then put out a, a source of information and convince them over and over again, why they need to move here and that they need to use me.

then those one or two or three people that move here per day that are watching YouTube videos potentially, they’re gonna call me right away. So the logic was, okay, if there’s eight questions that people ask before moving to the area, it’s just some random number, there’s no math behind it, but whenever they, you schools, is it worth it? People are moving, people are moving their whole families across America to this brand new area. So you have to speak to them, their concerns, their fears.

reassure them that they’re making the right move, et cetera. But when they get to the eighth question, who’s a great real estate agent? If I’ve answered the first seven, wow, they don’t need to ask number eight. So that was the logic there is like, okay, if I make long form YouTube content, transform it to short form, and then transform it to blogs, then I have a full suite of information that I can deploy across the inter webs.

Dylan Silver (21:36.509)
I’m actually checking it out right now. I’m curious what comes up. And so you were out here. How many other people, I’m searching Arkansas realtors. You’re the first one that comes up. You’re the first one. How many other people were out there doing it at that time? What you were doing, like helping people relocate.

Phillip Shepard (21:45.464)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Phillip Shepard (21:52.942)
There’s maybe, there’s two channels that I was direct competitors with and they were doing a lot more tour videos, which I have my qualms. I’ve never done, I’ve never talked about my listings. I’ve never talked about, I’ve never done a tour video nor will ever do a tour video. But they were doing tour videos and they weren’t really performing well, like when it comes to numbers on the, least on the MLS side. So was like, okay, I can do more than that. I just need to talk directly to what people want.

So really a lot of people believe that my, at least around here, that my YouTube is my biggest source of revenue, which is sure, you can believe that, but really what a lot of it is, is if people are looking across YouTube and nowadays there’s probably like 15 channels that are competing against me. So I do know that I definitely have a time shelf eventually to like death by a thousand cuts. But the difference is, is that what happens is that when they watch any of my videos,

I pitched three things in there. I pitched my 3D itineraries. So if you’re looking to move to the area, download my 3D itineraries. They’re completely free. If you want to know what’s going on in the area, sign up for my weekly email. And if you haven’t come down here, you want to know more about the area, actually sign up and order my starter pack. It’s free. So it’s a box, ship right to your home. Like literally it’s a box. It cost me about $16 total to ship a box to someone’s home. And then I have my instant home updates. So the funnel that I exist is, the top of the funnel is

three itineraries, and then it goes probably my email, and then it goes starter pack, and then instant home updates as I go down the funnel. Instant home updates is just a rebrand for MLS updates.

Dylan Silver (23:32.767)
Phillip, I’ve never heard of anyone who has this much of an in-depth process for relocating and I can only imagine that maybe there’s people who doing it now because they see and you mentioned people think maybe in the area that this is my full time, I’m making money off YouTube but.

How did you come up with this process?

Phillip Shepard (23:48.942)
Or what I was saying was that they think that I… There’s a lot of people competing on YouTube, once they do… Here’s my thinking is this, if they only watch me once, which is fine, I want them to sign up for something because I email them every single week. I will never lose contact with them. So my list is around 3,000 people now. And I have a huge database of potential people that are looking to move to the area that watched my newsletter, essentially. So like…

If the goal is like even if you watch me two three four times you’re gonna get an email from me every single week

Dylan Silver (24:23.903)
How did you come up with the process?

Phillip Shepard (24:26.21)
so my parents, when we were in, I created something called instant home updates back in Chicago land area. And it was me, because what I realized was that most agents say, use a lot of words that people don’t understand. And it’s also an MLS updates. Well, first of all, what is an MLS? No one knows. And, and so I just like, well, what if I just renamed it something better than just rebrand everything and make it simpler. So I just made up, so I used instant home updates in Chicago. So that was from there. And I would just

Dylan Silver (24:39.369)
Yeah. Yeah.

Phillip Shepard (24:55.01)
tell people like, hey, like my pitches, hey, Zillow, realtor.com, Redfin, they don’t, you’re not getting all the homes. If you sign up for instant home updates, you’ll get instant notifications right away so you don’t miss your dream home. And it’s an easy pitch to have, so that’s the first thing. And it’s just MLS updates. So I rebranded that. And then when we were in Chicago, this is before like the internet was really, really a big thing or even social media for the most part. We put out starter folders

out in front of our office. So when people would call us when we’re showing property, I’d be like, Hey, go pick up a starter. Oh, we didn’t call it. We didn’t call call it something else. doesn’t make a difference, but we call it something else to go to our office, pick up this folder out of our office and walk with it. And it has a map. It has all the current listings, has everything you want to know about the area. So I borrowed that from that. And then the email, I was like, okay, that just makes sense because it’s free. Literally emails, cheap, the email will by far and always will be the cheapest.

formal marketing that will ever exist in the world of internet marketing. And then the, what’s the other thing I do? The Starbucks, so I improved that. I did my instant home updates. did my, three-day itineraries. That was more for me, because I didn’t know, when I first moved down here, I was like, I don’t know what to do. And I know that people are gonna miss a lot of things. I might as well offer it really quickly. here’s all the, here’s the three-day itineraries for kids for, how do I do it? I do one for kids, one for adventure, one for sports persons, one for foodie insights here, and one for art.

So I have five different itineraries. So in case like there’s someone like, I’m not a sports person, cool, here’s the art one. I have kids, here’s this one. So I have everything for everybody. So the pitch is easy.

Dylan Silver (26:31.613)
Wow. It’s like it morphed over time organically, but it was based on your own experience. What would I have liked?

Phillip Shepard (26:39.796)
Mm-hmm. Are you, so north is Arkansas? So you would probably, are you into sports by chance?

Dylan Silver (26:47.187)
I was referring to when you were moving there and you were creating up with this process, there wasn’t someone like you for you to go to. So when you made the process, you were like, this is what I would have liked.

Phillip Shepard (26:53.154)
Yeah. No, no, there wasn’t. No, no, there wasn’t anyone like me, for sure.

Phillip Shepard (27:00.366)
Correct. That is correct. Yeah. There I was like, I need to, I know there’s other people, there’s other people out there that are doing the same thing or trying to do the same thing I’m doing when it comes to moving here. What would make my life easier or would make my choices easier if I can convince people to move here more, that’d be great for me as a real estate agent, but like what could make the decision easier? And it is shocking and it’s almost weird because I can’t really quantify this, but how many people have told me you convinced me to move here? I’m like, okay.

Which is a lot of pressure because I’m like this place better perform. like, but they were also, you know, I tell people I’m like, I was looking at all these different places and I chose here. I chose here. Like you’re all the places that I mentioned, people are looking at all the time, Florida, Alabama, know, Carolina, whatever. But it’s like, I could have moved there, but I chose here specifically. And there’s a lot of people, I can think of a couple people that are like, I didn’t know this place existed. I was looking to move to Texas or something, sorry. And then they’re like, then I discovered your channel.

Dylan Silver (27:32.061)
Yeah, yeah I know.

Phillip Shepard (27:57.804)
and we watched it for like three months. I don’t know what this place is, but we gotta go there. They came here, they bought a house and live for now. So it’s It’s wild,

Dylan Silver (28:03.955)
That’s such a testament to your hard work and your process and a lot of pressure though. I will say a lot of pressure. They better, you you’re thinking, wow, I can’t believe these people came from, you know, Maryland. You know, it’s like, this is pretty amazing. Phillip, we are coming up on time here. So before we wrap, I wanted to ask you about your CRM, which I believe is called ClientKeep.

Phillip Shepard (28:10.326)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Phillip Shepard (28:30.434)
Yep, yep, client keeper, you got it. Yep. So client keeper is kind of a brainchild of both my wife, Nicole and I. She’s a executive broker for the brokers I’m at. And she manages about 30 to 40, or 30 or about 40 agents now. what we, excuse me, what we realized is that when we got married, I asked her, said, hey, you know, what kind of CRM do you use for your business? And she’s like, I don’t. I’m like, what? I grew up using CRMs, like whether it’s in landscaping.

Dylan Silver (28:32.799)
Client Keeper.

Phillip Shepard (28:58.826)
or whether it’s in real estate, like it’s just what you do because it’s like when you have more than seven clients, it’s like, you know, I’m gonna forget those people. So to bullet down what ClientKeeper is, is a very simple CRM designed for agents who really don’t like doing paperwork, don’t like entering data and really struggle trying to keep on top of their clients. A lot of CRMs are designed desktop first, meaning that you have to go to your desktop, click away at 9 p.m. at night adding data information to your clients.

Client Keeper is none of those things. Client Keeper is designed for mobile first and one of the core functionality is the fact that you can actually go to your, like literally you can go to your phone, you can open up Client Keeper and hit a button called Myra, which stands for My Real Estate Assistant. And let’s say you get off the phone driving home and you just got to show them property and your clients told you, hey, my, you know, some information about like their kids’ ages, what they want, where they want to move, et cetera. All you got to do is go to Myra, hit the button and say,

Hey Myra, I just entered this data at this new client. I just talked to this person. This is her ages. Here’s the relationship. Here’s her email. Here’s, I’m to send a photo of her phone numbers. Can you add that for me and remind me to add actually remind me to follow up every single week until they close. within less than like less than eight hours, all of that information is being entered for you behind the scenes, all your reminders and everything about that client is going to happen for you. So you can just drive away and know that it’s being taken care of for you. So it’s a CRM that basically is for people that don’t want to use a CRM essentially.

and it’s made designed for you really never to lose a client ever again.

Dylan Silver (30:29.929)
So I’m smiling for those of you listening here because although I haven’t sold a home yet, because I don’t officially have my license, I just sat and took my test, I’m familiar with all the CRMs. And before this, I was in the automotive industry and they have their own CRMs. The automotive, the big one is VinSolutions, but there’s so many different hub spots, Salesforce, high level. And what you just described is like, I couldn’t have said it any better. Like you talked about…

Phillip Shepard (30:40.044)
Yep. Yep.

Phillip Shepard (30:46.114)
Yep.

Yep. Yep.

Dylan Silver (30:57.151)
9 p.m. on your laptop, like, and your eyes hurt and you’re like, am I putting in? And then you put people in the wrong and it gets confusing. And I’ve thought like, wow, I guess it’s just the best way to do it. How did you bring this whole thing to fruition? Are you an engineer background, anything like that?

Phillip Shepard (30:58.968)
Yeah, I don’t want to do that. Yeah.

Phillip Shepard (31:15.914)
Nope, had the idea in I had, I wanted to a, I’ve always wanted to build a CRM because I’ve always used what I thought it could be done better. And, and speaking with specific specifically from Nicole, my wife, I was like, why don’t you use a CRM? And it kind of boiled down to the fact that she said that I don’t want to come home. I don’t want an extra job. I don’t want to come home and type away and have an extra job of managing this piece of software. I’m like, okay, well, what if we build one for your phone? Cause it’s, it’s on your phone. She’s like, well, I still have to type and do stuff. I’m just not going to do it. I said, that’s fine.

What if we made a way, just brainstorming here, that you could audio message and take photos of everything and it’s done for you. She’s like, now we’re talking. So we flew out to New York City in 2023 and I went to a developer conference, not a developer, not a developer, but I knew enough that I flew out to developer conferences to find a developer, got a list of 35 developers, interviewed every single one of them to eventually find the one I want to use for. And we started development in…

late 2023, got the beta version rolling in probably like, Marrero, April of 2024. We deployed it to our brokerage of 250 agents. We demoed it like for about six to eight months. We went through all the bugs, all the issues, all the different stuff. And then we kind of soft publicly launched it in late 2024. And then we’re going to do a much, much bigger launch in like less than a month.

Dylan Silver (32:37.885)
Wow. So, so many qu- we need a whole nother podcast, Phillip.

Phillip Shepard (32:42.22)
Yeah, I’m not a developer, but I know myself. it was mostly built out of a need for, you know, it’s not really designed for me because, of course I use it, but it’s really designed for that agent who is on the go a lot, either whether it’s a soccer mom who has a lot of kids that just doesn’t have time to enter data and follow up with stuff, or that guy like you, who’s like, you busy doing stuff, you just want to talk to your phone and it’s done for you, or anyone who’s like between one to five deals per month.

That’s like the perfect solution for client keeper. We’re not ingesting Zillow leads. We’re not taking on any of that, meaning like we’re not, like we don’t, if you pay for Zillow leads, it doesn’t come in. It’s really designed for those person that wants sphere of influence, that works their sphere and wants to grow their business organically, sometimes through social media, through events, through farmer’s market, whatever.

Dylan Silver (33:30.879)
Phillip, we are coming up on time here. Where can folks go to learn more, maybe even download ClientKeeper, and where can folks go to get ahold of you?

Phillip Shepard (33:38.21)
Yep. So you can find me at all things NWA. If you type that anywhere, I’ll pop up. If you type in Phillip Shepard, I’ll pop up somewhere. And then ClientKeeper is clientkeepercrm.com.

Dylan Silver (33:50.239)
Phillip, thank you for coming on the show, for giving our listeners so much value and for educating me on Arkansas and having me thinking about it. I’m only up the road, you know what I mean, or down the road. But this has been another episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast by Investor Fuel, the nation’s premier real estate mastermind. I’m your host, Dylan Silver. And until next time, thanks for tuning in.

Phillip Shepard (34:02.506)
Yeah, you’re right there.