Why Flashy Marketing Is Failing Real Estate Agents | Bob McTague

Bob McTague (00:00)
Agents aren’t gonna like me saying this, but there’s a lot of hype in real estate. There’s tons of hype. There’s tons of flash, right? There’s tons of hype in real estate. We have to get back to the basics, and the basics is price. Price is a form of marketing. A lot of agents want to do all this flash marketing, these walkthrough video tours you see today, these HGTV-style tours.

And they want to look great, use AI to enhance them, make them look ten years younger and all this other stuff, right? But it comes back down to core principles.

Scott Bursey (02:03)
Welcome back to Real Estate Pros, powered by Investor Fuel. I’m your host, Scott Bursey. And today, pros, we’re diving deep with a true heavy hitter. Bob McTague from Howard Hanna Real Estate Services. Bob is a real estate strategist, investor, and marketing coach who has mastered the art of simplifying complex market dynamics with over 1,500 homes sold and a razor-sharp focus on transparency and AI-driven marketing. He’s helping agents scale remote businesses while crushing it in residential investing. Pros, you can expect an absolute masterclass today on how to work smarter, not harder. Bob, welcome to the show.

Bob McTague (02:45)
Thank you. Thank you, Scott. I appreciate it. Yeah, I’m excited to get into this and any question you want to ask me, I’m gonna do my best to answer.

Scott Bursey (02:53)
Bob, to help our listeners get up to speed, please give us the ninety-second highlight reel of how your career ignited and where you’re pouring your fuel now.

Bob McTague (03:02)
Well, it all started I was an investor. This is going back, you know, over twenty years ago, two thousand and three, two thousand and four, I was an investor looking to get started in real estate. I transitioned out of a car rental business. I owned a car rental business, exotic cars, I was leasing cars, it was my business, and I ended up selling that and I wanted to get into real estate. That was the biggest thing. So when I was buying these properties back then across the country, I was basically buying all these properties and I met a lot of real estate agents. And to be quite honest with you, I didn’t like the service I was getting. I mean it was a very busy marketplace back then. I mean anyone could have sold real estate. So there was tons of real estate agents. There was tons of deals, tons of homes on the market. It was kind of a crazy market back in 2006. So I said to myself, I can do this. I can actually be a real estate agent. So that’s really how it started. I got my license in New York, Syracuse, New York, and I became a real estate agent and I started right away implementing lead generation strategies because I didn’t know anyone. I was from Boston and I moved to Syracuse and so I didn’t really know anyone. And so I employed all these real estate lead generation tactics, bought leads when it wasn’t really known, and I built my business. By year two, I had a team of agents. I needed help because I had so many leads. But we all know what happened in year two was the crash, the big crash of real estate. But luckily I was a real estate agent at that time, crushing it, doing really good. And even though the market imploded, my investment business was risky. But on the residential side I really capitalized because so many buyers came back into real estate once the real estate crash happened. There was all this government lending, free money, and I was just gobbling up all these home buyers. And so that really enabled me to have a team, build the team. You know, all good stuff happened out of that. And I just kept going and kept grinding, really.

Scott Bursey (05:14)
Thanks for painting that picture, Bob. That’s an incredible journey. You know, what really caught my attention about you was the way you’ve been able to simplify complex market data into strategies that actually help agents scale remote businesses without losing that human connection. Building on that, when looking at your first—you know, let’s look at some of your core strengths in AI-driven marketing. What is the biggest win you’ve seen for an agent using these tools for the first time?

Bob McTague (06:37)
I think in AI, I was an early adopter of AI. When ChatGPT came out, I was on there, I was basically trying to figure out what is this AI, what’s going on, how can I use it in my business? And I did use it with data, simplifying complex data because I was the type of person that always ran the market data. I wanted to be knowledgeable in my marketplace, you know, what are the absorption rates, what’s the inventory levels, what’s really going on, you know, list-to-price ratios, all these different things. So I was running my own reports where I was paying someone to do these reports through assistants and all that, but AI has really—what to me I believe that agents can really utilize AI is compressing data. Is compressing data, but you still have to—one thing I want to say to everyone is you still have to like we always talk about the prompting. You have to know what to say to AI to get the result. But realistically, you have to also be knowledgeable. You can’t lend everything to AI. You have to know what you’re talking about, and then it will enhance your own creativity and your ability. So I use AI today. I built a lot of these ChatGPT models where I can easily do a market evaluation in like, you know, 10, 15 minutes on the investment side or even on the residential side where I already have it pre-programmed, all I have to do is load in certain data, it spits out the template, then I can kind of utilize it from there. So within twenty minutes, I can have a really creative, sounding like me, not AI, a nice report that’s duplicatable. It’s a template to use all the time. It’s so simplified. And clients, when they read it, the average consumer, they’re not confused or they don’t say, AI wrote this, you know, because it still has me in there. I’ve been training my AI and I don’t care if it’s Claude or ChatGPT or wherever you’re using, you have to train it, you have to know its limitations, you have to understand the threats of AI, and you have to just utilize it to your business. So I use it for home evaluations, assessing properties, things like that. Now of course everyone uses it for image generation or to write better. But I’ve always been a writer, so AI only gives me ideas, and then I can take those ideas a little further, right? Don’t let AI replace you, especially in real estate. Be the expert, be the authority, because more and more people are relying on this information AI spits out, but you still have to be the driver of that source, that source of information. And so always be learning and then use AI to enhance your creativity. Okay?

Scott Bursey (09:24)
Interested to hear your perspective on the weaknesses many agents face right now regarding market volatility. How do you help them stay calm and profitable?

Bob McTague (09:35)
Well, the thing with me is, you know, like you mentioned, I’m a remote agent, so I do everything remote. So my business is in Syracuse, but I’m in South Carolina. So but I still stay in the direct—the agents that I train about how to be a remote agent, I’m telling them you just can’t walk away from your business. That is a level and a step, but you have to be there. You have to be the face on a Zoom call like right now, constant communication, and have those systems put into place where the consumer feels like they are your only client, right? And they’re gonna get more care when you do that. When you’re a remote agent like me, people say or other agents, my competition says, well, Bob can’t help you, he’s playing golf in the Carolinas or whatever. No, I’m not. I’m always communicating with my client. They can always get me, you know, via text, email, phone or whatever. And I’m readily available. And because I’m not in the field, because I’m not going on listing appointments, because I’m not showing tons of properties, I have more customer service and care and knowledge to give them. So that’s what I really train other agents is listen, your business is only going to be enhanced. Obviously, you have to, we’ll say, leverage another partner agent and you have to split some commissions and do those things. But the quality of life you get out of that and time freedom back is invaluable, right? Because you can then focus on other businesses like investing. You can focus on other things that are going to be profit centers for you. So that’s kind of what I train agents. I don’t look at it as a negative, I look at it as a positive, but it’s not the conventional wisdom of, hey, I’m gonna step out of my marketplace. Right. And I teach agents, even in your marketplace, you can employ my principles, even if you live there, even if you don’t move. And you can get on the road to investing. Because that’s really the vehicle, right? The investments, having those assets set up as fix and flips or long term buy and hold, or Airbnb, whatever you want to do. But if you have more freedom and more time, you can focus on those things.

Scott Bursey (12:25)
Bob, appreciate that insight. And wondering, regarding opportunities in residential investing, where are you currently seeing the most untapped potential for the average investor?

Bob McTague (12:37)
Well, the average investor, like I said, there’s all these different methods out there, but the average investor, if they’re local in their own market, I always say, you know, start with something. Start getting some money and meaning some funds and some capital behind you. And I like the fix and flip method and the way you find those deals, that’s the biggest challenge. Where do you get these deals? And who do you get these deals from? And a lot of times you have to do some guerrilla marketing, some, you know, maybe put we buy houses signs up. You have to do that stuff, right? Starting out. You have to do these things. You have to get into the network groups, see if anyone has some deals if you can wholesale. Get some quick capital. That’s the real thing. Get some capital under you. Get some confidence under you and then figure out your journey. What do you want to do? Do you wanna have a portfolio of rentals? Do you wanna do apartments? Do you want to get into commercial? Like what do you want to do? And that’s really what at that point you can diversify. I mean, I got some apartments over here and rentals over here, fix and flips over here, and still hold a real estate license to retain some commission profits and things like that. So I think and I also think most investors should get their real estate license, right? Investors should have their real estate license. They’ll have access to data, they’ll have access to the MLS. They’ll have access to things what normally you have to go through traditional real estate agents for. Not every real estate agent is equipped to handle the complexities of an investor, especially a newbie investor. A newbie investor wants a real estate agent to scour all these deals and these agents don’t want to help them because sometimes there’s peanuts involved for commissions, right? And there’s all this time wasted. So instead of spending thirty thousand dollars on a program—you don’t need to do today a real estate program. Go get your real estate license. Get your real estate license, learn about your marketplace, talk to people, network with the agents, and start doing some guerrilla marketing and then start doing some lead generation. You’re gonna have to pay to play. I hate to say it, you have to pay to play. And you have to get those leads and you have to build your pipelines. And that’s really how it all folds and materializes.

Scott Bursey (14:50)
Solid point. It’s on my mind to ask about the threats of the traditional real estate model. What is one outdated practice agents need to drop so they can work more efficiently in today’s cycle?

Bob McTague (15:44)
Do you know, agents aren’t gonna like me saying this, but there’s a lot of hype in real estate. There’s tons of hype. There’s tons of flash, right? There’s tons of hype in real estate. We have to get back to the basics, and the basics is price. Price is a form of marketing. A lot of agents want to do all this flash marketing, these walkthrough video tours you see today, these HGTV-style tours.

And they want to look great, use AI to enhance them, make them look ten years younger and all this other stuff, right? But it comes back down to core principles.

And so I think what’s happening because there’s a lot of regulation and there’s a lot of things happening in real estate. What happened in 2024 with the commissions and how you have to sign buyer contracts today to work with a buyer. Things have changed. So agents have to be more strategic in how they approach things, they get back to the basics. They have to be the center of knowledge, right? You don’t want a consumer questioning everything you do and going on AI and saying, you’re wrong, I found this out, or you said this, I found this. You have to be the center of information. You have to be AI. You have to beat them at their own game. You have to be AI. You need to be almost like a robot. So the bottom line is strip down all the flash. If you’re a real estate agent going into the business, the traditional agent is going to be doomed if they continue to just be all flash. You need substance, you need knowledge, you need to empower yourself and know your marketplace inside and out. And then have relationship skills, good communication skills, confidence, that’s really key with me, confidence to actually pull it all off, right? And so agents need to get back to the basics and stop doing all these things other agents are doing. Because I can tell you right now, there’s agents in my marketplace that are killing it, and they don’t even do a lot of social media, right? They’re not everyday posting on social media. They’re talking to people. They’re on the ground. They’re making connections. They’re not doing all this fluff marketing. They’re doing the stuff that makes sense, and it’s still a relationship business. It will evolve, but it’s still a relationship-based business. End of story.

Scott Bursey (18:00)
And on that note, we’d love your take on the technical aspect of building a scalable remote business. What is the most critical infrastructure piece?

Bob McTague (18:10)
Well, the most critical piece to building an—is the people, is having the right people, the right leverage. So I went through some different people, we’ll say showing agents and listing agent partners on the ground. I’ve been with one guy for now ten years. We never argue anymore because we got connected, right? We got connected as far as like, do you believe the way I believe with pricing properties, with marketing, with my strategies. And he does. But it can be challenging because everyone has these beliefs, especially as we get older and, you know, you meet agents and you want someone to work with you that doesn’t have the same beliefs and values and strategies and they want to be, you know, the top person. Everyone needs to have their role. But so the biggest challenge is people. Finding the right people that will help you in your business which in turn helps them. Right. Real estate has a lot of turnover. Agents always moving to other brokerages all the time, you know, little things like that, or agents leaving teams or doing this or doing that. So you just have to kind of find the right person or hire someone that’s newer. But you need someone that thinks like you, that’s educated enough to talk with the consumer and edify you and understand that they are you. So when you go to an appointment, the person doesn’t say, Hey Bob, you sent this guy to see me. I just don’t like him. Or I don’t like her. I don’t like how you guys work. It has to be a streamlined process. If I say something, that person has to think the same way. So there’s no confusion, right? And so it is the challenge. But once you dial in and look for certain key things and certain personalities in a person, then you can find that right person and then grow with them and they can grow and transition and whatever they want to do, you have to be open-minded. And then you always in the back of your mind have to be looking for that next person. Okay. You always have to be saying, Where is my business going in two years? Who am I going to need at that time? So you always have to be future-pacing yourself to understand that things can change in the marketplace, in your business, and you might need to employ a different strategy. So the hybrid agent method that I use can change. I mean what I’m doing right now might change. I might have two agents helping me out or three agents or whatever. I don’t know. But it’s worked for ten years now and I’ve been a remote agent. And over five hundred transactions since I’ve been remote just on the residential side. So that’s a big plus for me and I didn’t touch any of those deals. You know what I mean? I didn’t have to physically meet those buyers or sellers, and so that’s a win for me.

Scott Bursey (21:02)
Over your career, I’m interested. I know our pros are interested. What has your professional network looked like?

Bob McTague (21:08)
My network has always been other real estate agents, number one, because I got in the residential business. So and I do have a, we’ll say, sphere of influence or whatever you want to call it. I think that you have to have those connections because 70 to 80 percent of real estate agents’ business is repeats and referrals, right? Repeats and referral business. 70 to 80 percent. So we all know that. And so you have to establish those connections with people through different sources. And so my professional network has been with the people that I work with. I don’t care what profession they’re in. I don’t go after just doctors or attorneys or whatever. I go after people that I resonate with, that I’ve done business with, and I take care of them. Every single person that I transact with, they get on a quarterly gift-giving service and it doesn’t end. So they get these nice gifts every single quarter. They also get maybe branded magazines from me, you know, nice magazines, just little things, but they get these gifts and they love them. So they remember me, I’m top of mind, and they tell other people about me, or they’ll list their house with me again, or whatever it may be. And that’s the same thing in the investment business. You know, I know a company that sends out cookies after they talk with a client, they’re trying to get their deal, and there’s other investors they’re competing with, they’ll send out a gift. And that little gift might go a long way. So I know I went off tangent there a little, but I wanted to throw that in because it’s important—the law of reciprocity. You know, what you give is what you get. And sometimes you have to do these little things to get things back from people in an ethical way, you know?

Scott Bursey (22:51)
That’s powerful. The human touch. I love it, Bob. Yeah, thinking about the bigger picture. If you had to start over in this market with only, let’s say, 10 grand and your current knowledge, what is the exact play you would make to generate your first hundred K?

Bob McTague (23:08)
Yeah, well that’s a really good question because I’m only licensed in New York, right? But I live in South Carolina and everyone says, Well, why aren’t you getting your real estate license outside of investments? Why aren’t you getting your real estate license in South Carolina? And so this is a perfect question because how would I do it? The same way. I would basically go—which I might get my real estate license—I would go online, I would build a brand, okay, I would start adopting answer-based branding which AI is lending itself to. So I would really put a lot of information out there on certain channels. YouTube 100%, right in my marketplace, talk about the marketplace, answer questions so AI picks all that up and try to build branding like I did back in the old days when I used to do SEO, search engine optimization, but now it’s changed into AEO, which is answer engine optimization, we’ll say. And I would try to feed as much information about my marketplace and build that way. And I would also buy leads. I’m a big believer in buying my business too, right? So I’d buy leads in my marketplace, start communicating with people, and then by year three, four, five, I would start getting those repeats and referrals. That’s the basic model. There’s no other way to do it. Yeah, you can do open houses and you can do all these other things and you can go to all these network groups and all that stuff. But you have to pay to play at some point. You have to do organic marketing. You have to do those different things. And that’s the only way it’s gonna really move the needle. Unless you come from a business or profession where you have a huge network where you can leverage that, it’s really tough when you go into a new marketplace or you’re a new agent, you’re one agent and there’s three thousand other agents. What are you gonna do that’s so different, right? It’s not what people believe. It’s the school of hard knocks. You have to start building your business and I believe it starts with, like I said, not so much social media, but YouTube, other branding, you know, maybe get into Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, but you still have to spread yourself out there and understand how AI is changing things. I mean, luckily recently I got a deal because of AI, right? Someone found me through AI, who’s the top agent in Syracuse? I came up, right? And they called me and we did the deal. We were actually gonna acquire the property and buy it and flip it, but we ended up putting it on the market. It made more sense to the client, and that’s what we do. If we feel it’s a better investment for the client, we do that. So my point is you gotta embrace everything, but go back to the basics and that’s the only way to run your real estate business. Forget about what other agents are doing. Just forget about all this stuff you see on social media sometimes. It’s the basics. It’s the basics.

Scott Bursey (26:05)
You just moved the needle for a lot of people. Thank you for that. Solid advice, Bob. And for those of our listeners that want to keep this conversation moving, stay in your lane or collaborate with you on future deals, perhaps. What’s the best way for them to reach you?

Bob McTague (26:20)
Best way to reach me is by phone. I’m old school, right? 315-882-6610. Right. And if someone’s interested, if an agent listens to us and says, hey Bob, what’s this hybrid method? Yeah, I can help you with that too, right? I can definitely help you with that and guide you, mentor you. I do coaching, I do all kinds of things, or you can just do it yourself through a membership site that I built and all that stuff. So that’s all good. But the best thing to do is call me. Send me a text message and then we can get real, right? And I can find out what you need and how we can both benefit from the relationship.

Scott Bursey (26:57)
Bob, thank you for joining us today on the Real Estate Pros podcast.

Bob McTague (27:00)
Thank you. I appreciate everything.

Scott Bursey (27:02)
This has been just a fantastic conversation. And to our listeners, we appreciate you. If you received value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We’ll be fueling your tanks with a lineup of elite guests, just like Bob, who are accelerating and setting the pace for the rest of the industry. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everyone.