00:00Live from Colorado Springs, I'm Diego Sanchez, president of HousingWire, and my guest today is
00:13Preston Guyton, founder of Easy Home Search. Preston, thanks so much for joining me today.
00:18Yeah. Preston, can you share your career journey and what led you to start Easy Home Search?
00:25Yeah, for sure. So, go way back. I got into real estate in 2004. I actually grew up in Myrtle Beach,
00:32and I originally grew up, I worked in restaurants and went to college, ended up moving back and
00:38took computer science in college and was really looking for something, didn't really know what
00:44I wanted to do. So, I got into real estate, really focused on online lead generation as a way to
00:50generate leads. So many people were moving to Myrtle Beach. So, really started there, and the
00:55first company I launched was 2010, was a real estate company. We did home design and custom home
01:01construction. So, managed and owned that company for 10 years, sold out of that in 2020. Always dealt
01:09with lead generation, you know, building businesses. Actually, at one point, I had my real estate license
01:16in two states, my mortgage license in seven states, and I was a NASCLA general contractor
01:22in 22 states. Wearing a lot of hats. Yeah. And had a lot of licenses. But, throughout the process,
01:30a lot of companies struggled with lead generation conversion. And Easy Home Search, originally what
01:35started building it, was a way to generate mortgage leads for a mortgage company I was starting.
01:39And then, helped launch a real estate company in 2021, which I sold out of last year. We grew from
01:47zero agents to 120 in 24 months. Same thing there, use lead generation conversion. And really just see
01:54there's a big need for, a lot of companies struggle with that. You know, so for me, it's, I'm at a point
01:59in my career now, really love this side of the business. And I want to help so many other companies
02:04that struggle with that area, you know, help them in the lead generation side. So,
02:10long answer to a short question. Yeah, no, really good answer. And it's
02:14a really important part of the ecosystem. Yeah, for sure. So, you've had some pretty impressive
02:18growth over the past year. Congratulations. Thank you. What do you think that momentum is
02:26coming from? I think one, you know, I've always been to attract
02:31good people. So, our team is just everybody around us. You know, we have a, our CTO is amazing. He's
02:39actually does code and he's, he's really good. He's like the army of one, but five. Yeah.
02:46But I think also understanding like the areas that people struggle in, especially in, you know, being,
02:51understanding the mortgage side, understanding the real estate side, understanding the team side,
02:56understanding how people struggle with agents, you know, team leaders. So, I think that's a big part
03:02of it is identifying what the problems are and building the solution. So, you know, anything that
03:07we build is based on understanding that the problem is there and we build something to fix that problem. So,
03:14I would say just really being focused and understanding on the issues that people have and teams have.
03:19Where do you think housing professionals are going wrong or where do you think they have misperceptions
03:26about both generating and converting leads? Well, right now it's, I think a lot of agents and a lot of
03:36agents came on in the 2020-21 range. And I think there's this thinking that like TikTok videos and everything
03:45else, there's instant success and that doesn't work right now. You know, it still does. Obviously,
03:49social media helps, but it takes work. You know, I tell people like, especially on the lead generation
03:55side, like good times, you get good phone numbers, bad times, you get bad phone numbers. You know,
04:00so lead generation is, and not all ads that you run generate the same type of leads. Right. You know,
04:07so a lot of what we do, we look at the consumer information that's searching online, but we also,
04:13anytime somebody like on our site comes to register, we verify the email and the phone
04:18number before they could register. So, you know, we try to push as much good leads into the system
04:23as we can, but really the biggest thing is agents don't realize or they don't understand how much
04:28work it takes. Like they think they could call two or three times and that's it. That's not the case.
04:33Like we have, have another company I'm a part of and we hire ISAs and place them in companies
04:39throughout the country. And the average contact is like 27 times before you actually have a
04:44meaningful conversation. That's a big gap between the perception and the reality. Yeah. The perception
04:49is like, Hey, this comes into my lap. I sign up for leads. Yeah. Leads are the easy part. Like to
04:54generate leads is easy. The hard part is once they come in, you take them from that point to actually
05:00closing or, or building a relationship. I mean, that's, that's the biggest misconception is the amount
05:05of work it actually takes. You have this philosophy that really resonated with me when I heard it.
05:11One lead, one agent. What does that mean to you? Yeah. I don't mean like using lead. Like for me,
05:16I just, it puts, I don't know. I just, I like opportunity, right? So I always tell people,
05:21you know, we'll generate as many opportunities as you want, but in the world of privacy and everything
05:27else, like so many companies will take the same lead and sell it over and over again. You know,
05:31I think they talked about on stage today. Um, you sign up for something also and you get 27 phone
05:35calls. Yeah. So, yeah. So we look at it from the standpoint. So I've seen it from both sides,
05:40the consumer side, which, you know, I'm kind of disappointed when they didn't pass the TCPA
05:45guidelines and the changes, because I think it would have helped the consumer a lot, you know,
05:49with the amount of phone calls, the amount of people sharing data and selling data over and over
05:54again. So I look at it from the consumer side, but also the agent side, team side, you know, when you
05:59have to fight, you get one lead to 20 companies and you're trying to call it, it's going to exhaust the
06:05agent. No agents want to make phone calls anymore. You know, so I looked at it from the consumer
06:09privacy side, but also from let that team that's paying, you know, get that lead and let them have
06:16an opportunity to close it without 20 different companies doing it. So, uh, we've heard a lot about,
06:22you know, at this event about the platforms, uh, you know, mortgage lenders buying, uh, portals and, uh,
06:29building these end to end platforms, uh, for home ownership. How does easy home search
06:35differentiate itself in this environment of end to end platforms?
06:40Yeah. I mean, right now. So the one thing we're focused on, um, you know, we have the agent tools
06:45and then I understand the lender side. A lot of times loan officers are paying real estate teams
06:48or companies or agents to, for lead generation. Um, you know, so one of the things we're focused on
06:54is like making it creating the ability for a loan officer to advertise an easy home search
06:59independent of real estate agent. You know, that's really what we want to focus on is, is allowing
07:06multiple companies instead of just one company. They all say like, yeah, we're going to keep it.
07:10You know, we have this real estate side, we have this mortgage side, but we're still going to give
07:14it to everybody. But still like the most profitability is if your team sells it and this part of it,
07:20right? So for us, we're just going to continue to focus on building simple solutions for agents and
07:26lenders to use. Um, and that's really, I think something that's going to set us apart because
07:31so many of them are focused on creating it all in one house and, you know, in one app and everything
07:36else. Does that mean you're pushing in a mortgage? I think that's what I heard. We are. Yeah. So one,
07:42so one of the things we want to do is generate, um, ways for loan officers to, uh,
07:49to generate leads independent of a real estate agent. Yeah. Right. So what we're doing now is
07:54we're launching in the next couple of weeks, we're doing a, we're launching a national lender
07:59directory. So easy home search generates about 50,000 visits a day. Um, we generate about 20,000
08:04registrations a month. Our database is about 500,000 people and it's grows, you know, 20,000 a month.
08:10Obviously it grows pretty quickly, but it's hard to find options out there for loan officers that are
08:16independent of a real estate agent or team. So we're creating it now where they could simply
08:21sign up. We help them if they need help with a Google business profile, we set it up for them.
08:25Um, they could, we generate loan officer landing pages and there's going to be a cool feature where
08:29they could actually search the lender directory. If they select a lender, it automatically adds that
08:34lender to all their agent pages on the website. So whenever consumers searching, they could see the
08:40lender and that happens between the lender and agent. So it doesn't have to, so say you're
08:44an agent advertising and a lender has the ability to reach out to you and you build that relationship.
08:50It's just a button they turn on and you're the loan officer's information shared all throughout the site.
08:56Amazing. Uh, so looking ahead as you grow the easy home search business,
09:04what role do you see the business playing in the overall housing ecosystem?
09:10You know, we're always going to focus on the consumer privacy side. Um, but we're also
09:18looking at launching more tools. Like the big thing with the loan officer tool, you know,
09:22they're talking about on stage now, like the consumer wants to gather as much information
09:26without going to so many different places. Right. So once we launch the loan officer tool,
09:30then we're actually going to move into home services where, you know, the way I look at it and
09:35the best way I could explain it is, you know, I have a friend of mine that just sold a roofing company
09:39and he was very successful for 10, 15 years, sold it. And I was talking to him about roofing lead
09:45generation. The majority of that happens on like social media. Somebody is selling and they don't
09:49want to have anything built. They're just like, yeah, I'm going to run these leads. I'm going to,
09:52you know, run these ads, generate leads for you. A lot of times the leads are crap.
09:56Um, so I was like, it got me thinking about where, when we start in the home services side,
10:04we already have the fish in the boat. Like we don't have to cast a wide net because we already
10:08have so many people searching. Um, so we really are focused on a way to continue to develop in a
10:14way where the consumer could get as much information, like the roofing side works. Then we're looking at
10:19it from, you know, home services, not to get into like painting and things like that, but, you know,
10:24moving companies, HVAC, electricians, landscaping. Um, so it'll always evolve. Like I'm, I don't like
10:31sitting still, you know, so I always want to develop things and, and, you know, being here,
10:36I got more ideas of things I want to do. Um, so it will continue to evolve. We, we're launching a
10:42consumer app and an agent app in Q3 this year. So once that launches, you know, anybody goes easy
10:48home search now, so many people want to use an app. And so we're pushing to launch that in
10:53Q3 and then it'll connect to, by then we'll probably be in 220 MLSs. Um, so that's about a
11:01thousand major cities and counties across country. Amazing. Well, Preston, really good to catch up
11:07with you today and really interesting hearing about your business. Yeah. Thanks so much. Thank you.
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