Thriving in the Digital Age: Insights from Carrot CEO Trevor Mauch

"Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Collective Clicks podcast. This is your host Brandon Bateman, and today I'm going to be joined by Trevor Mock, who is the expert in online marketing in the real estate investment space. Trevor is the CEO of Carrot, a company that, honestly, I think probably 90 percent of real estate investment websites are created with. He has tons of insights about running a business, online marketing, where this market's going, and how you can make sure you end up on top. How are you doing today, Trevor?"

"Brandon, I'm doing great, man. Good to see you. Shoot, a few weeks ago, a month ago in Tampa, dude, it was fun."

"Absolutely. It's good to see you getting out of your Oregon shell. I don't think you traveled that much. You haven't traveled that much recently, right?"

"I've been working in the business a lot. Not for work, I travel a lot personally. You know, family-wise, we travel quite a bit. We've gone on a number of vacations the past year all over the place. But business-wise, that's kind of part of when I started Carrot. That was part of my thing. I said I want to be able to build the business that doesn't require me to travel for business, but I travel when I want to for business. So that's kind of the mix I have. I'll go out once or twice a year to a business event."

"Okay, that's awesome. And that's kind of how I thought about it because we actually originally met, probably two years ago if I had to guess, at an Investor Fuel event. And then not until a month ago in Tampa. I kind of think of you like the... because there's... you start going to enough of these events, you start to see the same people over and over again in this real estate investment space. You're like the event unicorn that just like pops up here and there, just once in a while. If you can catch them, you've got a line of like 50 people that want to talk to you because people know this is a rare sighting, right? You want to suck all the knowledge that you can."

"It was funny on that topic. So we were in Arizona in January for our company retreat at Carrot. We flew, you know, 60-some odd people in there, and I knew Pace, so Pace Morby. I knew he was having his Mastermind, and on the way to the airport, I texted Pace. I'm like, 'Pace, I know you got your Mastermind. Mind if I stop by for a few minutes, say hi, and I gotta hit the airport?' So I come in there with my videographer, and we're packing our suitcases into his Mastermind in there. And I go in there, I was just going to literally say hi to him, say hi to Jameel, say hi to Cody, and bounce. And Pace is like, 'Dude,' he goes, 'Now that you're in here, like, do you want to go up and speak?' I go, 'Sure, like, what would be most valuable?' And he goes, 'Well, you pick the topic. You've got half an hour, and how about 10 minutes from now? Does that work?' I'm like, 'Okay, let's put something together.'"

"So that kind of stuff, man, like I've had dozens and dozens of people who've hit me up from that event talking about, you know, the concept that I taught there was life-changing or whatever it is. But yeah, these random occurrences, man, like I think it's destiny sometimes when you're able to get with certain people to go either... either they need to hear a message, it's going to help change their trajectory, or maybe there's a connection that's going to be amazingly beneficial for both. So guys, go to live events. I went to a lot of live events in the early days for sure."

"Yeah, there's definitely a time and place for that value. And honestly, I see, like, personally, I see that our clients that do that progress faster than those that don't. I don't have any information here, I don't have like any special data showing this, but it's kind of like my personal experience, kind of having seen it. There's a lot of benefit from that for sure."

"So Trevor, you are a wealth of knowledge, and I want to get into as much as we possibly can. So let's get into some of the meat of this. And I personally, I kind of view you like, in my mind, as an expert in a few different things. And this is probably just based on different presentations that I've seen of yours and things that I've seen that you're passionate about. The first one being basically entrepreneurship and growing a business. And I think that you have a really unique perspective into that, which actually, by the way, I see reflected really well. I was talking with someone on your team the other day when we went through Carrot's core values, and I was like, 'Yeah, that's Trevor. Like, that's exactly what Trevor is.' So that's the first aspect, and then also, for those that don't know, Carrot is... I mean, you should probably introduce what Carrot is, and that what kind of leads to your secondary expertise, dude."

"Yeah, for sure. So Carrot right now, if I were to kind of fast forward to today, Carrot helps our clients basically launch highly optimized websites and all the marketing tools behind those. We power, you know, many if not most of the biggest investors around the country. More online leads come through the Carrot platform than any other platform out there. I don't want to make certain claims I can't prove. I'm always like a proof guy, but in some of the data that we have, there's more top five rankings across the top 225 markets from Carrot sites than all other website systems combined. And the next two behind us are WordPress as a platform, like WordPress custom sites, and then you have a whole host of everything else. So Carrot clients just dominate online with Google, and you work with a lot of our clients, right?"

"And that's something that is such a joy to be able to work with great people like you guys because you guys leverage our platform with our clients, drive traffic using the skill set we don't drive traffic. So that's where Bateman Collective and amazing companies like yours come in to go, now you guys work with the clients who aren't able or willing to, don't want to do the work themselves, and really amplify it. So we provide the platform, and amazing people like Brandon plug in to help people amplify it."

"Yeah, that's fantastic. Someone asked me the other day, 'What's the difference between you guys and Carrot?' And I was like, 'Well, I don't know, like, everything pretty much, right?' I think of Carrot like the technology behind everything. Let's just say you're cold calling, Carrot's the phone system. Or the way to get the list, or you know, something like that. But then we're the company that kind of builds all the pieces around that so that it functions, right? But there needs to be some base foundation there. You need a website if you're going to do online lead gen."

"And on that note, really cost-effective product. And it's something we've been recommending for a long time. So anyways, I think that's part of why you have so much market share, but that's actually a really impressive stat that you shared. Because I would guess if you did that in any other industry, it would be WordPress by like 90% and then everything else like 10%. So it's definitely backwards in the real estate industry."

"It is. In that study, we run it quarterly. So that's one of the things that we do here internally because performance is such a big deal. And in this podcast, guys, this isn't a Carrot commercial. We're going to dive into data, we're going to look at what's happening in the market right now. Brandon and I are going to kind of riff on what the heck is going on with the lead gen, what are the opportunities. But we looked at the primary couple keywords, so that's like your 'selling my house fast' type of keyword, and then across the top 225 MSAs. So if you look at other keywords like cash buyer keywords, yeah, there's going to be a lot of other sites and Carrot's not dominant. It just happens to be on the highly motivated seller, house seller keywords across America, which is pretty cool."

"Yeah, which is, I think there's a really understandable reason for why that would be the case, just considering who it is that tends to buy your product. So let's talk about that if you don't mind. I'd love to dive into some of your marketing knowledge, you know, specifically for online for motivated sellers. So if we kind of chop that down, one place I'm really curious to start is your perspective on where things are going. I think a lot of people would say that the market has been... I don't know if challenging is the word. It's been really, really different from quarter to quarter over the last little while, right? So it's required a lot of adaptation, and a lot of people are changing kind of where they're shifting their marketing channels. And what I've seen kind of anecdotally is it seems like in this space, the amount of investment as a percentage of the total marketing investment that's going into online channels seems to be growing really significantly. So I'm curious about your take on that, why that's happening, and with all this increased competition online, the companies that really do exceptionally well, what is it that they're going to be doing differently?"

"Dude, such good question. So the way that I tend to think, just like in general, is I think vision, strategy, tactics. Right? So vision is let's say three, five years out or more. Strategy is what the heck's happening this next year to year and a half. And tactics are what are the things we're doing now to be able to execute that strategy. So I'm gonna take people up vision, we're going to go into strategy, and then some tactics everyone can do right now in this market based on that. Because if I just give you guys tactics and you start going and applying tactics, you don't know why you're applying them, right?"

"So looking vision-wise, it's probably five, six years ago, Brandon, I was seeing in the market that the adjustments that were happening with retail and wholesale... Right? So I've told this story a million times. I think it's so relevant though because so people can see where the industry is going. I, according to where I feel it's going... So just like with any commodity market, there's a wholesale side of the market and a retail side of the market. You look at cars, cars are maybe not deemed a commodity, maybe they are, but there's the retail side where you go down to the car lot and pay retail for the car. There's the wholesale side which is when they say, 'Hey, do you want to trade this in?' and they offer you a discount on that car, or you can go to the auction and buy the discounted cars. So there's a wholesale side, there's wholesale to groceries and retail to groceries, there's wholesale to real estate, retail real estate."

"What tends to happen in markets is as soon as technology catches up with the markets to make it more efficient, you start to see wholesale and retail squeeze together. This is what happened in travel, this is what's happened in stocks and stock brokers, right? You started to see the retail... 'Hey, I pick up the phone, I have to call a broker to place an order,' and here's the price, it's 10 bucks an order for a stock. Then you start to go, the wholesale was way discounted price. That's where your E-Trade came in, Charles Schwab came in. They took the two and said, 'Well, why can't we make it simpler and easier for someone to buy a stock and make it way cheaper, get it closer to wholesale?'"

"Right, and so same thing happened on travel. So you had... you used to go to get a hold of a travel agent and then book it and they'd take their cut of it. Well, when technology caught up with that, it made it to where they could go out there and technology could scour the internet and create an advantage for the searcher and make it so they were in control, not the travel agency. They cut the travel agency out and got prices down for the searcher, and now they're mashing the two together, right? But it always makes opportunities still."

"So real estate, it took a little while longer because real estate's a more complicated transaction. It's not just buying a stock or taking a vacation. It's the last three to five years is when we've really seen technology start to really disrupt real estate and especially disrupt the retail side, right? And so the retail side has historically had a lockhold on the industry. It's like if you want to sell your house, you pretty much had to go over to a real estate agent. You didn't like... everyone knew 10 real estate agents. We saw the person on the bus, you know, the bus stop sign. We are... we have three buddies, we have an aunt Betsy who's a real estate agent. Everyone knows 7, 8, 9 agents, but how many people in mainstream America five years ago could name one person that was a direct cash home buyer? Hardly anybody could."

"The wholesale side was oftentimes seen as what people called the underbelly. It was the hidden part of real estate. It was the part of real estate who's going to come in like under ball you, right? Or low... low volume and make a low offer. And so as technology caught up though, and websites made it easier for people to get in front of the right prospects on Google and someone who could go directly search for someone to buy their house directly instead of having to ask their friend for a realtor reference... or you start to see Open Door and Offer Pad pop up and they come in the middle of the industry. They're not wholesale, they're not retail, they're trying to be in the middle. They're trying to grab both sides of it and yank it in towards the center and let the seller or the buyer control the process rather than the agent or the investor. They accelerated the drive towards the middle."

"And so I'm going to wrap the vision part and it's probably three to four years ago we were starting to tell people, 'Hey, investors, you're going to start to see state by state, the real estate agent lobby gets scared and they're going to start to go to Congress and all this stuff and they're going to get laws over and over and over again making it harder to wholesale properties.' They're... you're going to do it because they're going to be fearful that you're taking their business. We're seeing that happen all the time."

"I was looking in the data six months ago and you would think that the pharmaceutical industry spends more money lobbying in Washington DC than the real estate industry, right? No. The real estate industry and the realtor industry by far spent more money in, I guess 2021, might have been 2022, lobbying in DC than the pharmaceutical industry did, which is insane because they see the industry changing."

"Okay, so a couple more things. We'll go into strategy. So if you're an agent and you see the threat of the investor and Open Door and Offer Pad taking that, and if you're an investor and you see the threat of Open Door and Offer Pad, and they also... you see the opportunity in capturing more of the traditional retail market, you have to move towards the center. Agents should be investors, investors should be agents. We call it hybrid. Right? That's not the future, that's the today now."

"So now let's bring it towards strategy in the next year to two. If you're a hybrid provider, meaning I have a license or I'm partnering with someone who has a license, I'm marketing for motivated house sellers now. Now I take those leads and I don't just take the lead and say, 'Cool, if it fits within my pretty little box, I'll list the property for you because I'm an agent, but if it doesn't, I've got to go the other way because you're not serious, you're not a serious seller.' Or if it doesn't fit my pretty little box as a wholesaler at 65, 70, 75, 85, whatever your percentage is of ARV, then you're not serious and I'm going to go over here and that person just isn't realistic about their price."

"You need to present them with the options to solve their problem. Whether they want full price, take them retail. If they don't want full price and they're willing to get speed and convenience, take them wholesale. If they want full price but can't sell because they have no equity, which is going to happen a lot now, Brand... This goes into like current times now. You're going to see people who bought their house three, four years ago, great interest rates, maybe lost their job, prices went down, they have little to no equity, they need to sell now and they can't because they'd have to pay their real estate agent forty thousand dollars on the house they overpaid for with really good interest rate to be able to get rid of the property. Who's gonna solve that? Not agents. Investors are, through creative finance, through subject to, through things like that."

"So let's go into the strategy part now. Is you have to step into hybrid in order to make, I feel, in order to make the best ROI of all of your paid marketing. So when you're working with Brandon and Bateman Collective and you are a pure wholesaler working against a hybrid like one of my clients I just got off the call with named Troy in Minnesota, Troy's going to crush you all day long because he can take far more of those leads and turn them into revenue than you can as just a wholesaler."

"Or if you're an agent and you're just an agent, you're gonna have a way hard time doing direct to seller or motivated seller marketing because your time to deal on a traditional listing is too long. You're not going to be willing to sit and stick in the marketing for long enough, you're not gonna be willing to spend as much, and your biggest profit deals are the investment deals you're leaving and saying that they're not serious. So you have to be hybrid."

"Okay, so now let's get into like really right where the market is right now, where and what I call a shoulder market. And this is crazy critical for the way that you guys do your marketing right now. I was on a call with our epic plan members, it's our highest plan, and a guy named Marco, Marco Padilla in Florida, Carrot camper, amazing dude, multiple seven-figure business. He owns properties, he's like 26 years old, seven-figure a year wholesaling flip operation as well, and he has a great team and he only works like 20 hours a week now. When he first started working with us, he was working like 80 hours a week. We got it down to 20, helped him optimize his team."

"And Marco came on the call last week, and he said, 'Trevor, dude, the advice you gave me last month on our epic call was awesome because I was getting ready to pull my Google pay-per-click marketing spend back because of the shoulder market.' And I'll explain it here in a second. I told him to not pull his spend back, to step into it harder because others are pulling their spend back. And I said, 'Marco, because this market dynamic I'm going to explain here in a second, I think you're going to get more deals, but you might need to be more patient. As long as you're breaking even on it right now, keep it going because I think you're going to see a massive ROI in three to six months.'"

"It was way quicker for him in that market. He locked down 10 contracts just from Google pay-per-click and his market in Florida in the past 30 days after making a change to increase his ad spend when everyone else is decreasing it."

"So here's why the shoulder market is this: We had high prices, people got used to high prices, low interest rates, and we're in between the phase where the market's still trying to adjust where sellers are now okay with and they've come to terms that they can't sell the property for what their neighbor sold theirs for eight months ago. Okay? We're not there yet though."

"So you might be getting a lot of leads through Google pay-per-click or through SEO. Your lead to deal conversion ratio is lower, right? You're looking at it going, 'Man, I used to get one in five or one in ten or one in 50,' or whatever your numbers are, 'leads turn into a deal. Now I'm getting one in 25. Does this mean I need to stop my marketing? This means it's not working as well?' Heck no, it just means your lead to deal conversion ratio is low."

"But in general, we're finding, and we did a survey, we're gonna be putting out some content with this hopefully in the next two weeks now with you and a handful of others who are running a lot of traffic. Cost per lead, in general, has gone down pretty markedly in many markets. Lead per deal ratio has gotten a little bit worse in many of the markets. So it doesn't mean demand is down, it means there's still people looking to search to sell. Actually, it's even potentially getting better. Your leads are lower cost now, right? But fewer of them are ready to sell now because they haven't come to terms with the new price that they can sell at, or the pain point of the adjustment in the economy. Maybe they haven't lost their job or whatever else, the business they're working for hasn't been affected yet. There's a million different things that are likely going to happen as the economy gets worse."

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