The Marketing Hire That Helps Real Estate Teams Grow with Rachael Little

Q: How did Rachel go from photography studio to CMO of a brokerage?

A: Rachel ran her own portrait studio for over a decade, mostly serving new moms, and did branding photography for realtors on the side. One magazine job sent her to photograph Jennifer Gale for a cover back in 2014 — they met, in their words, in a back alley behind Jen’s office and stayed friends ever since. When Rachel started thinking about retiring from photography, Jen invited her to come work for her. The role started with feature sheets and evolved into building the brokerage’s entire marketing department, because the two turned out to be a great pair: Jen generates ideas, Rachel implements them.

Q: What actually drove the growth from 20 to 60 agents?

A: There was no system at all in the beginning — Rachel describes the early approach as throwing spaghetti at the wall with random posts. Reside came in through a workshop connection and helped with messaging and training, and Rachel says it felt like pouring gas on the whole thing. She credits Jen’s follow-through as the difference-maker: plenty of people sign up for coaching, attend the meetings, and never implement, but Jen gets excited and leaps into action. The systems evolved out of that momentum.

Q: What systems did the marketing department build?

A: The core move was telling Jen’s story and turning her into the face of the Gale Group brand — the answer to local realtors’ problems, since many were looking for a change. Rachel’s team also committed to being fast and high quality, because the previous social media support was an outside organization that took days. Requests now flow through a WhatsApp “hotline” — a shared marketing number monitored during designated hours with a quick response expected — and they built templates for agents not yet on the team. The goal was a recognizable brand where, once the hard decisions are made, everything is plug and play.

Q: How does onboarding stay consistent at 60 agents?

A: Every new agent gets the same repeatable process from start to finish: an in-person orientation, headshots, a walkthrough of their core tools like Follow Up Boss, and access to an online portal on the Circle platform. It started as a pile of Google Docs that became confusing and hard to navigate, so they consolidated everything into one spot agents can reach at their fingertips. Rachel’s philosophy is that agents are clients too — switching brokerages is scary, so the goal is to be a soft place to land with accountability built in and goals that align. She learned the trust piece from photographing new moms: nobody hands their baby to someone they don’t trust.

Q: What’s the difference between a content creator and a marketer?

A: Rachel started as a content creator — documenting her day and sharing — and says that works fine for a one-person personal brand. But building something bigger than yourself requires strategy: knowing your clients’ pain points, what’s keeping them up at night, and designing everything from that perspective, from marketing all the way to how you interview agents. The empathy piece matters too. Her biggest pet peeve is listing marketing that showcases the agent’s wins instead of the buyers’ and sellers’ wins — and the same rule applies to recruiting: showcase your agents, not how many people your brokerage has.

Q: Why does Rachel insist agents’ faces belong on their marketing?

A: Her hot take is that teams shouldn’t hire someone to just take pretty photos — they need a strategic marketer sitting close to ops. She gets frustrated seeing buckets of money spent on listing videos where the agent isn’t present and there’s no strategy, because throwing money at something doesn’t make it good. Coming from production herself, she knows the temptation to tell the videographer to just shoot the house, but personal brand requires a face, and an in-house marketer who’s invested in the process will strategize with agents and get them on camera. Showing people what’s possible is one of their secrets to pushing both brokerage and agent content.

Q: What does Rachel’s marketing team actually look like day to day?

A: It’s a small team: Rachel handles the big picture — brokerage marketing, platform work, coaching agents, and shooting video at listings — while her sister, a graphic designer with a photography background, is the full-time listing marketer handling carousels, feature sheets, and everything that flows through the hotline. Photography and videography for listings mostly go through the agents’ preferred vendors, including one photographer they have a great relationship with. Jen often shows up on listing videos herself because some agents don’t love being on camera. Requests range from just-listed posts to billboards — agents in their small town love putting themselves on the city’s three billboards.

Q: How did she build the marketing team, and what would she tell others hiring one?

A: The team grew out of necessity: they were fulfilling tons of requests and didn’t want to slow down their big goals, so Rachel floated hiring her sister — a creative workhorse — and Jen said of course. She started part-time, moved to full-time, and took over listings exclusively in January. For anyone hiring a marketer, Rachel says look at what they’ve already put out and whether you’d like it, find someone who understands the client’s journey, and consider starting part-time until volume justifies full-time — it keeps them loyal to your goals. Photography skills are a bonus, not a requirement; understanding messaging and high empathy are what matter, and you can spot both in their socials.

Q: What does the listing marketing workflow look like for an agent?

A: It’s deliberately simple: the agent forwards photos to the photo email and sends a message saying just-listed post, please. The team pulls the details off the listing itself and gets it posted, then recommends featured posts or video if the situation calls for it. Rachel’s goal is that agents can literally just say the word and the marketing gets handled. Behind the scenes, ClickUp keeps bigger projects organized, and the shared WhatsApp number keeps requests from landing in anyone’s personal messages.

Q: What do teams get wrong with marketing, and where should they start?

A: The ops-side mistake is overcomplicating it — Rachel says marketing needs to be easy to implement, and she’s learned that most homes sell through phone calls, sales experience, and pricing it right. Marketing matters most for the brand as a whole, so the key is keeping everything repeatable, streamlined, and recognizable rather than chasing a one-off listing ad. Her starting advice for a team with no systems: get the right person in the right seat, stay open-minded, and start crafting a look and brand for yourself. Then embody it — know who you are, who you serve, and how you want people to see you.

Rachel: [00:00:00] I get so frustrated when I see buckets of money spent on listing videos where the agent’s not present, where there’s no strategy. I think people have a misconception that you can just throw money at a situation and it, it means it’s good. 

Lauren: All righty. Hi everybody, and welcome back to the Reside Platform Podcast. I am very excited for this one. My name is Lauren Rathgeb Holland, and today I am sitting down with somebody that I’ve been wanting to get on the mic for a while now, Rachel Little. Rachel is the chief marketing officer over at, Gale Group Realty Brokerage.

Lauren: and Rachel, we’re just so, so excited to learn from you and have you on today. 

Rachel: Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure. 

Lauren: So Rachel, I’m gonna… I wanna give a little background on you because it’s really cool. so before real estate, from my understanding, you ran your own portrait photography [00:01:00] studio for over a decade?

Rachel: Yeah. It seems like a totally different world, but it’s actually very similar marketing to real estate. And so for years I was trying to recruit and find new clients. It’s a personal brand, so I was marketing my little tiny baby photography studio. and yeah, I was working with a lot of like, you know, new moms, parents, working with kids a lot, but my clients mostly was building relationships with moms and, yeah, it was a lot of fun.

Rachel: And along the way, you end up meeting a lot of real estate agents in the process, 

Lauren: Interesting. Cool. Well, you can really feel that in the background in everything that you’re building right now. Rachel’s been a part, or a huge part of taking, the Gale Group from what? 20 agents to now 60 in over a year and a half.

Lauren: That’s incredible. That’s a lot of work, as like most of us know who are on the call for any team leaders ever trying to recruit, you need a strong backbone, and Rachel is that person [00:02:00] for her team leaders. So well done. Yeah, so that growth, again, just it doesn’t happen because somebody’s pretty good at pictures.

Lauren: it- it’s gonna happen because someone’s building the systems, right? And the culture and the machine behind the brand. So that’s, Rachel, what we’re really gonna dig into today. you’re the operational backbone as you know that I like to say to the team, the marketing engine, and I want our ops-minded listeners today, team leaders, integrators, whoever, solo practicing agents looking to make their first hire and need a marketer, to hear exactly what this looks like day to day.

Lauren: How does that sound? 

Rachel: Sounds great to me. 

Lauren: So everybody, we’re gonna get into the difference between being a content creator and being a marketer. you know, how, Rachel really built an entire in-house marketing department from scratch, and why, it’s such a foundational part of real estate, and why it might be one of the most underrated recruiting tools that your team has right now.

Lauren: So, if you are a team leader [00:03:00] trying to figure out exactly how to scale for your marketing without losing quality or scalability and your sanity, this one is for you. Rachel, again, thank you so much for being here, and we are just, we’re gonna get started. I have a couple of questions for you that I wanna get into.

Lauren: but first, tell us about you. You shared a little bit about working with a lot of moms, clientele. How did you go from running a photography studio to becoming the chief marketing officer for a very high-producing real estate brokerage? 

Rachel: it’s a pretty funny story actually. So my business, a lot of it was, working with families.

Rachel: That was kind of my specialty, but I called it my, like, side business where I worked, with realtors doing branding photography. Yeah. And, I had one position with a local real estate magazine out of Toronto, and they didn’t have anyone out this way, so they would send me out on photography jobs. And one of those people, who was gonna be on the cover was Jennifer Gale.

Rachel: So it was amazing. they told me about her. I was super [00:04:00] nervous. I was like, “Oh my gosh, she seems like celebrity status.” And yeah, it was back in 2014, so, I connected with her. Yeah, it’s a little while ago. And, we went behind, her office in this back alley, did a bunch of cover photos. We always jokingly say we met in a back alley and the rest is history.

Rachel: But, and yeah, we did photos, and then we just kind of hit it off, and we stayed friends ever since. So she would come to me for photos for, like, her family, for any marketing that she was doing. we planned, we worked on websites and things like that together. yeah, I’ve just loved Jen. She inspires me.

Rachel: So, so when, I was thinking about, retiring from photography, she was like, “You should come work for me.” So I took… I wasn’t sure. I was like, “Hmm, I wonder if I can do that,” ’cause it seemed so different. And the role was originally, she wanted me to do feature sheets and things like that, and, it ended up becoming really clear that together we were, like, excitable people, we’re ideas [00:05:00] people, and, I love trying out the i- she’s so full of ideas.

Rachel: I got really excited about implementing them, so we figured out that we actually work really well together, 

Lauren: Oh, cool. Yeah, just being in person with the two of you back in April when we were in Florida, you can tell you guys have really good synergy, energy, collaboration,and you’ve probably heard me use the term f- force multiplier before because that’s just who you are, and, you know, you, you typically will have in this dynamic when, you’re building a real estate team in the operations or, you know, you’re building a brokerage like the both of you have been doing, you have the visionary, the person that’s bringing all these amazing ideas, and then somebody like you who can actually, bring those into fruition, right?

Lauren: So- 

Rachel: I love it. It’s like, it feeds my creativity having her around, so it’s really fun. 

Lauren: Good. We love that. I really wanna pivot now into… Thank you for sharing that, the growth and systems. So [00:06:00] you guys went from 20 to 60 agents in about a year and a half. That’s wild. Walk me through, the, the actual infrastructure behind that.

Lauren: What had to be built or systematized to support that kind of growth? 

Rachel: there, there was no system initially at all. It was Reside. Okay. Reside came in and helped us, yeah. I mean, Jen had invested in Tony Hanson’s workshop, so we kind of, got into the Reside, ecosystem through that, meet, John Cheplak, and we were just kind of trying things on our own, just throwing spaghetti on the wall, putting posts out randomly, and Reside helped us so much with just the kind of messaging to put out there, the training.

Rachel: So those systems are because of you. it’s- 

Lauren: We didn’t make her say that, by the way. 

Rachel: No, it, but it’s just proof. Like, it felt like we were, like, pouring gas on the whole thing, and it was… And Jen is a person, too, she will [00:07:00] implement. there’s a lot of people who sign up for coaching, and they will attend the meetings, but not do it.

Rachel: But she gets excited, and we love leaping into action on everything. It was very exciting time, and it felt like we were building something bigger than ourselves. So the systems kind of evolved out of that. yeah. 

Lauren: That’s really great. Yeah, Jen is somebody, I think she did a podcast with us a l- a few weeks ago or a few months ago.

Lauren: so anybody listening, go check that out, too. she just… It’s that kind of energy that is so, and same with Rachel, just so contagious, magnetic. You wanna automatically just be friends with them because they’re such good people, Tell me more, though, what kind of systems did you have to put in place?

Rachel: so it started with, I wasn’t even handling the social media, but social media became, like, our big, approach with it, and we got into– It’s not m- so much of a system, but, a technique. We got into telling Jen’s story. so we made… We wanted to turn, at least what I wanted to do was, convert her [00:08:00] into, like, the brand for GG.

Rachel: and just not so much the brand, but just the be the answer to people’s problems, ’cause I think there’s was a lot of realtors in our area that were looking for a change. so, we got those systems going, and then we, supported the existing agents with better marketing so that they felt like the, the previous person who was handling, like, socials and things like that, it was an outside organization.

Rachel: It wasn’t within the brokerage. And, you know, it took a few days to get things done, so we made it our priority to be fast and high quality, and we sat down with agents and talked about what their needs were. so the system side, we streamlined the request process so they knew they could… We ended, we end, we’re just using WhatsApp, but we are monitoring the line.

Rachel: It’s kind of converted. We call it the hotline, where we manage all our requests and, we basically monitor that, during designated hours and, people can expect a quick response in that [00:09:00] line. just clear communication and getting things implemented and done. And then we get on the front end of that by creating templates and things for people who aren’t on the team, and then our team, we focused on creating a really recognizable brand that’s, once you kind of have that stuff, the hard stuff done, the decisions made, it’s kind of plug and play.

Lauren: Yeah. So, okay, I wanna highlight a few things that are really important. when we’re talking about Someone that’s been established in the area already, they’re taking their business to, 10 to 20, 20 to 40 plus agents, you really need to get systematized and scalable because that gets crazy ri- like, you’re gonna have fires if you don’t put something in place, right?

Rachel: So true. It has to be repeatable because then you’re gonna have agents that got treated one way and another person gets another way. So we made a, like a, a process from start to finish when they are onboarded and, orientated. We have, like, an in-person orientation we do now. They get headshots, they [00:10:00] get walked through FUB, they get walked through Assistant.

Lauren: We have an online portal, similar to… We use the Circle platform for that to get people, which is really cool. And, it just gives everyone consistent treatment, so, and it eliminates some of the back and forth on questions that… It kind of started with a bunch of Google Docs that we were throwing together, and then we realized, like, it was confusing, hard to navigate, and then we put all that information in one spot so the agents can have it all at their fingertips, So good. So more highlights. basically creating the ultimate client experience for your agents, because your agents are your clients as well, not just the, the buyers and sellers that we’re servicing. but f- if we’re talking about retaining people to be on your team, it’s creating that culture of,accountability and just like, when I say accountability, staying true to what you said you’re gonna do.

Rachel: Yes. Trust. I think that’s where I learned that, was just working with new [00:11:00] moms. They are not necessarily gonna trust anyone with their baby And, and them in that tender time after, you know, it, you’ve, you know this, you’ve been through this recently, it’s a vulnerable time, and I feel like we brought that in.

Rachel: Like, we really … It’s a, it’s, switching brokerages is actually really scary for agents, or switching teams, switching careers. So, we wanna be a soft place to land with accountability and all those things built in, but we wanted them to feel taken care of, and heard, and seen, and like our goals and their goals align, and we’re here to bring their goals into life with them, like ride along with them, so.

Lauren: I love that. That just makes my mom heart so happy, too. And you guys do such a great job, so it’s like, it’s creating that five-star customer experience for your agents, following through, building the trust and retention, knowing that you guys have … they like your branding, too. That’s how you recruit to it.

Lauren: So, it’s like they already know what it looks like, and it’s now just, [00:12:00] hey, the process for when you’re recruiting, that’s a, that’s a really great tool to use of like, “Hey, this is what your marketing’s gonna look like. This is how you’re gonna perform in front of buyers and sellers. Hey, we have this training program for new agents, for experienced agents.”

Lauren: Like, you guys are the true local brokerage experts, and they get a lot of support with you. 

Rachel: Yeah, it’s pretty cool, and obviously a lot of support with Reside, too. 

Lauren: Yes. They do. They do. It, it can be a fire hose and overwhelming, but the, every area is covered for them to grow. Okay, so thank you for that, ’cause I really, you guys have built something really cool, and I wanted to get into the infrastructure a little bit, because a lot of people, when they’re in that next build phase or like feel like they’re hitting that ceiling, it’s, “Okay, what’s next?

Lauren: How, what was working before might not be working now,” especially as you keep bringing on more and more. okay. So next, I wanna talk about, you know, how everybody is really just throwing out marketer and content [00:13:00] creator like they’re the same thing. What’s your take on that? Do you think that they are?

Lauren: What’s the real difference, especially from an operator’s, standpoint? 

Rachel: I think you need content creation for marketing. I think it’s smart to do it. but I think there’s a lot more strategy with marketing. I’m learning this too, because, I actually think throughout this journey, there’s even things with my past business that I would’ve done differently.

Rachel: And, and I’m not trying to drive the point home for, but I’ve learned so much from Reside on this piece. it’s… If you have a willingness to learn, there’s so many differences, and I think I did start out more as a content creator, documenting my day, sharing. and I think that works okay with one person personal brand, but with Gail Group, we’re trying to build something bigger than ourselves.

Rachel: We’re trying to, have a, a brand and, create a market that is, fits many different people, that they can all, feel [00:14:00] like they’re part of this so I think there’s a little more strategy. pain points are a big one. you really have to know, again, like John Tupac’s Million Dollar Marketer, like, the, what’s keeping your clients up at night.

Rachel: Designing everything you do from that perspective is huge. and just having that understanding from the, the beginning of the marketing process down to, like, when you’re interviewing an agent or meeting with an agent, always keeping those things in mind. yeah, a- and I think there’s just kind of, like, an empathy piece in there that’s a lot…

Rachel: Yeah, you really have to feel for the people you’re, you’re wanting to attract. I see this actually a mistake with specifically listings marketing. There’s a lot of, realtors who say, like, they’re showcasing more, their wins, and I feel that it should be about the client, the buyers, and the sellers’ wins.

Rachel: And it’s same thing with, with recruiting for a team, is you, you really wanna showcase your agents, get in their head space, not talking about, like, “My brokerage [00:15:00] has this many people,” or this or that. so I think it comes down to empathy and strategy that way. 

Lauren: Yeah, and the success stories of the clients and the agents themselves, and not making it about you.

Rachel: Yeah, which is hard sometimes, ’cause we wanna share, and I think it’s okay to, but I think there just has to be such a volume that is catered to who you’re trying to attract, that has to be more present than our own personal wins. 

Lauren: Yeah, and I think you said something about, embodying that, and I love it because it’s really, once you’re in alignment with who you are and wh- where you wanna grow, it’s kind of…

Lauren: And if you don’t know that, that’s okay, but it’s what do you want your life to feel like? And it’s kind of fake it till you make it. What are the habits, you have to, learn and embody and start really doing, and able to become that person? Otherwise, we know, what’s that saying? the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Rachel: 100%, yeah. 

Lauren: And, we’ve all been there, so I, I just think that’s a really [00:16:00] great highlight for what you all do because it’s just, you know who you are, you know who your brand is, you know who you wanna work with, you know what the client’s pain points are and how to solve that, and that’s a true service model.

Rachel: Yeah. I think that’s, like, I think that’s true. Like, Jen has a heart of service at the end of the day. She’s here to… She loves to help people. I think everybody here has a heart of service, so it’s not hard to recruit from that perspective. And a, a big thing we do is just showcase our office. Like, we have such a great group of people, and I feel like everyone here is living into their values.

Rachel: and you know, we’re all in different parts on the, on the journey there, but, it- that makes it easier too, ’cause it’s coming from, from the heart, It’s corny, but it’s true. 

Lauren: it’s what John says all the time, season, reason, lifetime, right? We’re all meet people where they’re at So yeah, we could get into like what your ideal definition of success is, where, but it’s,one thing that that reminded me of is motivating agents.

Lauren: You know, that [00:17:00] is one thing that everybody struggles with because we want things sometimes more than other people want for themselves, and that’s what you were saying, like meeting people where they’re at in their, the stage of life, because somebody might just wanna do a couple deal- deals five years or somebody else wants to do 40, 75, and that’s okay.

Lauren: And- It is 

Rachel: okay. Yeah. 

Lauren: Awesome. Okay. this is one of your hot takes that I love. Teams shouldn’t just hire someone to take pretty photos. They need an actual strategic marketer sitting closer to ops. Talk me through that philosophy. 

Rachel: I can get myself into trouble for this one. I’ll just say it like it, like I feel.

Rachel: I get so frustrated when I see buckets of money spent on listing videos where the agent’s not present, where there’s no strategy. I think people have a misconception that you can just throw money at a situation and it, it means it’s good. You really [00:18:00] have to, and I, and you know, I’m, I come from the world of production, like I made pretty photos.

Rachel: That was where I come from. But, you have to– We wanna make things easy for the realtors, but realtors, need to get their face on their marketing, or there has to be some face out there. and I think having someone in the office with you that’s, invested in the process, they’re going to better be able to strategy with you.

Rachel: you’re gonna have your face out there more. I don’t know, it just feels more lively. There’s more life to it, and I think that’s one of our secrets to pushing the brokerage and the agent content, is just showing people what’s possible. ’cause I think with a lot of, a lot of production companies who are super valuable, it’s too easy to say to the company that’s filming your home, “I’ll just sit this video out, just get pictures of the house.”

Rachel: And obviously we are here to sell the home, but personal brand and having your face is so, so important, and having somebody in-house to help you with that, along with the marketing [00:19:00] for– ‘Cause we can do many things. We can market the team, the brokerage, the listings. Like, we can do many things to help that, and I think it’s, I think it’s a cool role to, to include.

Rachel: Yeah 

Lauren: well you’re the expert on it too, and I see it as you’re coaching and consulting them as well, because, you know, everybody has their strong suits. Agents, typically it’s, getting people on the phone, building and nurturing those relationships, serving them, get- with the biggest investment that they’re likely gonna make in their life.

Lauren: and so you are that person that they come to, and I think that this is really important for anybody listening right now, if, especially if you’re in that spot of, okay, it is, like I’m doing my own marketing right now. How much money is that costing you? Like, what’s your hourly rate kind of a conversation, and are you the best person to be doing that job?

Lauren: Are you– I wanna ask you, Rachel, are you doing the physical, like, what does your day-to-day look like? what are you 

Rachel: Oh, that’s a good question. so the, so [00:20:00] we do have a team, so the listings, So photography and videography, for the most part, the agents, have their preferred vendors for that. and they’re pretty strategic about it.

Rachel: We have a really great relationship with one particular photographer, and it fits well into our pricing. And then, my day-to-day, is more the big picture stuff, marketing for the brokerage, platform, things like that, coaching the agents. And then I do a lot of video, oftentimes at the listings, particularly for the team.

Rachel: Jen will– Jen oftentimes will show up for the listings because some agents don’t love to be on camera, so she’ll take on that role, even though the, another agent has it. but as part of our marketing department, my sister actually, she’s our full-time listing,listing marketer, so basically she gets all the listings going.

Rachel: when a listing comes in, she gets all the carousels. We have a lot of luck with carousels, feature sheets, all of that day-to-day stuff. So yeah, we kind of have it split a little bit that way. And that all [00:21:00] comes in through our marketing hotline that, you know, we accept requests on. And it’s a pretty mixed bag of the sort of requests we get.

Rachel: billboards, we’re lucky that our agents like to put themselves on billboards. It’s amazing. ‘

Lauren: Cause that’s not, like, normal in a lot of places in the US or I’m not sure about Canada, but it just depends on the state and the regulations. 

Rachel: Yeah. Is that a, not a normal thing, huh? 

Lauren: No, it’s cool. I think that, yeah, in like bigger cities, metropolitan areas, yes.

Rachel: Yeah. And we’re in a very small town, so there’s three billboards in our city. So yeah, so that’s kind of what that looks like. But, you know, we help each other out and we have a lot of crossover within that, but, yeah, it keeps us busy, that’s for sure. 

Lauren: Cool. Okay. Thank you for going into that because, when people– my point was basically when people are looking to hire, it’s like, I, I wanna ask you this.

Lauren: If, so if someone’s looking, a smaller team maybe, they’re thinking about starting to recruit and bring on agents to build their pre- presence in the [00:22:00] area, if they’re looking for a marketer, what would you suggest? 

Rachel: I would look at what they’re putting out. If you find someone, see what other projects they’ve worked on and if you’ve liked it.

Rachel: Like, I think I might be biased, but I think just ’cause I ran a business, just knowing like how important this stuff is, and the rep- you know, you kind of know, like, if that was my money, how I would spend it. so just looking for someone that really understands the client’s journey, the perspectives of your potential client.

Rachel: even if you started off with someone part-time till you got busy enough to hire them full-time, I think it’s a smart investment and it keeps them kind of loyal to your goals as well. yeah, someone with a background in photography is a bonus, but I don’t think it’s necessary, ’cause we’re, I really, the only time I use my photography skills is for headshots, so yeah.

Rachel: But s- that sort of a skill set I think is valuable, just understanding messaging and someone with high empathy. Those are hard things to really recruit for, but I think if you, look [00:23:00] for evidence of that in their socials, I think that’s a clear answer. 

Lauren: That’s so great. Thank you. switching gears a little bit, w- what did building your marketing team look like in the early days of it?

Lauren: You know, who did you hire first? What roles did you build around? How’s that structured? 

Rachel: We’re a very small team. It’s just me and my sister, and, it’s… How it went down, we just hit a point where we’re like, “Whoa, we need some help.” we have, we’re fulfilling a lot of requests, like, and we had a lot of big goals we wanted to achieve, and we didn’t wanna slow down on those big goals.

Rachel: I was hoping, I knew my sister might, like, she would have all the skills to do it. She’s a graphic designer. she has, a photography background as well. She’s a creative person, and she’s a, kind of a workhorse, so I knew she’d fit in. And, I wasn’t sure about asking Jen, and I floated the idea and she’s like, “Of course.

Rachel: I love your sister.” So, we hired her in part-time, and she helped us through some big projects, and [00:24:00] then as the year went on, we got her in here full-time, and she, in January, took over exclusively doing the listings, so, And it’s been amazing. so she’s got it very well organized. It’s like a well-oiled machine.

Rachel: yeah, 

Lauren: It’s so important to leverage. I think a lot of us, and I’ve had a lot of these conversations in the last few weeks, it can be scary giving a part, especially if someone’s hands-on in their marketing, like- It can be scary to leverage that piece out or to a transaction coordinator listing, you know.

Lauren: it’s not easy, but it is necessary. 

Rachel: It’s necessary, and I have to credit Jen, because a lot of people would’ve put the brakes on for their big projects, and they s- and they, or the, they would’ve made compromises. And I think the cool thing about Jen is she pushes ahead, through busy times and keeps building bigger rather than scaling back when things get…

Rachel: ‘Cause a lot of people say, “Well, we’ll do that later, we’ll do that later,” but she pushed ahead and, and made sure we didn’t compromise the level of service [00:25:00] for our agents, so they were still receiving, a super high level of service, and we could push ahead with some of the bigger projects that we were working on, too, so.

Lauren: Oh, good. So good. okay. So is there a certain system or SOP that we haven’t covered behind your marketing team that you’re especially proud of? something that makes it, the whole thing run without you having to be in every detail. 

Rachel: I love having our project management software. That’s amazing.

Rachel: we use ClickUp. I always hear Suneet talk about Monday, and I’m like, “Oh, I should check that out, too,” but 

Lauren: We love Monday. He’ll always say, “But don’t go out and get it.” There you go. It 

Rachel: seems pretty awesome. so we use that a lot for our bigger projects. It just keeps us organized, and it allows us to communicate without having to yell across the desk all day.

Rachel: You can just do a quick check of everything. honestly, this is so silly, but WhatsApp, having a common marketing number. So we just got a marketing phone, ’cause it used to be that people would, like, send me requests on my phone, and I would just take those, get [00:26:00] them into our project management software.

Rachel: and so that’s kind of kept everything streamlined so there’s no back-and-forth communication. But, the big thing we’re, gonna try and implement is a little more automation between the requests coming in and getting those into, into our project management software, which I’ll update you on if it goes well.

Lauren: I’m sure we can help you out with that, help you out with that, too. okay. So walk me through it. If I’m an agent that is on your team, and I need a marketing for a listing, what does that workflow look like? What’s happening behind the scenes? 

Rachel: It’s so simple. they forward their photos to our photo email.

Rachel: They send us a message that says, “Just listed post, please,” and they send us that information, and we put it up. We just, we scour all that information off of the listing itself, and we get it posted for them. And then, from there, we, recommend getting featured posts, videos if necessary, all that stuff.

Rachel: But it’s, it, like, literally we want them to be able to just say the word, and we take care of it. [00:27:00] So it’s very, very simple process. 

Lauren: So good. what you, you mentioned earlier, you guys make these cinematic high-energy videos that show off your culture. Where did that come from, and how did you decide what actually gets filmed?

Rachel: Oh, so I got this idea from… So when I used to sell photography, I would put my camera, my phone on my camera, and I’d take all these beautiful videos of the family, like, playing in slow-mo and, like, you know, all romantic and beautiful. And, ’cause the common problem I would get was people would want a sneak peek photo, and, it’s hard to do that because you’re, it kind of interrupts your workflow.

Rachel: So I would edit this video, release it, and call that the sneak peek. I would check in with the client, say, “Is it okay if I share the sneak peek?” And it would just be a beautiful video that would serve as marketing, and it would make the client happy. So I took that same approach and just took those videos during brokerage meetings.

Rachel: Anytime we had a training and we had good attendance, I would [00:28:00] be like a heat-seeking missile looking for, like, happy, smiley moments and, just try to, any great moment I wanted to get a video of, and I would put it together, and it wasn’t hard because our- we have really good meeting attendance, and it’s, like, a good time at our, at our brokerage meetings.

Rachel: It’s very inspiring. So yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah, I would love to sit in on a meeting with you guys. I have a feeling it would just be so much fun. 

Rachel: We should do that sometime. 

Lauren: I know. You guys are in Toronto area? 

Rachel: Yeah, we’re about an hour from Toronto. Yep. Yeah. Next time, come visit. Oh, 

Lauren: I will. I will. okay, and we’re wrapping up, I promise.

Lauren: Thank you for hang- hanging with me. what’s the thing that you see real estate teams get wrong with marketing over and over, especially on the operations side? 

Rachel: Operations side I think that it needs to be easy to implement. Like, I think that we get [00:29:00] these big ideas on how things should be, and I think the more I’ve learned from Reside, like a lot of how a home gets sold is through phone calls and sales experience and pricing it right.

Rachel: I think the marketing is very important, but I do think that it’s more important for the brand as a whole. So I think keeping it repeatable and streamlined and recognizable is actually the key. It’s not so much about, we do wanna sell the listing. It is possible to sell the listing through ads and things like that, but I think it actually is a bigger picture, thing that we’re doing.

Rachel: So trying to keep in mind that this is representative of your brand and pushing your real estate business forward, not, not only the listing as well, 

Lauren: Well, that flows into my last question for you. So if somebody ha- listening right now has no systems in place, they wanna start building a real marketing, branding department, where do you suggest that they start?

Rachel: Ah, I think it’s getting, getting the right person in the [00:30:00] right seat, I think is, goes a long way. And being open-minded, to trying new things and seeing how, seeing how you can kind of craft a, a look and a brand for yourself if you haven’t done so already. But yeah, right person, right seat for sure.

Lauren: Yeah. Yes. All right, so to recap a couple of things. You mentioned a project management system. That’s for scalability, that’s where your checklists can live, that’s where all the requests can come in and automate to so that you know the status of everything. you use ClickUp. I know a lot of people that use ClickUp.

Lauren: We use monday.com. we love both. you know, if you’re a G Suite user and you’re not trying to spend money right now on products, use y- the tools at your disposal, create a new form request, have it go in, and then see how it can import, that form can import into a spreadsheet just for, 

Rachel: We use that too.

Rachel: It’s great. 

Lauren: yeah. I, I did too for the longest time. embodying your culture. Like, who are you as a brand? what’s your messaging? What are the, the, who are the type of people that you [00:31:00] wanna serve? Who are the type of people that you wanna be surrounded with you on your staff, your agents, your clients?

Lauren: really just what’s your mission, right? Especially with what you’re putting out there. Like, how do you want to represent yourself and how do you want people to see you, right? 

Rachel: 100%. Yeah, I couldn’t have said it better myself. 

Lauren: Thank you. I learned from you. This was a fun, fun, talk today. Anything else, Rachel, that I didn’t ask you that you just wanna, wanna share?

Rachel: if anyone wants to reach out, I’d be happy to walk through our systems. but they’re very simple, but I would be happy to do that if anyone wishes to learn more. 

Lauren: Awesome. thank you Rachel, for being on with us. I am going to genuinely be thinking about, the marketer versus content creator thing for a while.

Lauren: and honestly hearing about, how much operational thinking sits behind everything you build, that’s exactly what I wanted our listeners to walk away with today. Because you’ve done it, you’re the expert, you’re still growing [00:32:00] something massive, so, perfect. w- where should people go if they do wanna connect with you or check out what you’re building at the Gale Group?

Rachel: Gale Group Realty on Instagram, or they can email me, galegroupdesign@gmail.com. 

Lauren: Awesome. Awesome. All right, y’all. Well, thank you for another episode. Rachel, it was so good to have you. we’ll hang out for a minute. but, we’ll, we’ll hope to get you on here again soon.