SPEAKER_00 0:00

Why go pursue partnerships?

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Every business move I've ever made is because of a relationship or a partnership.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

You're associating yourself with other brands and you're kind of putting yourselves in their halos.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Why is it that the agent is the only one forking up the cash to generate the leads? I mean, they're having to motivate themselves every single day to pick up the darn phone. And certain days it weighs 2,000 pounds. You can't pick it up.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Business that I see is thriving in today's day and age in 2026 because of partnerships. Hey, what's up, everybody? Grant Wise here. Welcome back to the Partner in Profit podcast. I'm really excited about my guest today because his track record is a mile long, and I know he has an enormous amount of value that he can add to the conversation, talking about partnerships and business growth. So me and my friend, Mr. Sean Kokoska. Sean, man, thanks for being here. Grant, it's my pleasure, but thanks for having me. Of course, of course, of course. I know that um there may be some people on here because this is real estate, home services, you know, it's a little bit all over the map. But uh, for those that may not know who you are, man, just give us a little bit of the background.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

You bet. Um, about starting real estate when I was 20 years old, found pretty quick traction, started closing over 100 buyer shed transactions per year with one unlicensed assistant. My wife helped me out. I had one unlicensed assistant in addition to that, and yet took over the team, built it to about 450 transactions per year, started speaking, training agents how to sell more real estate. And man, that was my happy place gramping up on that stage. I loved it. But it was it came from a position of ego, quite honestly. It's like, man, I loved when people wanted to hear what Sean had to say. And I'm here to tell you that when your ego gets out of control, man, the world figures out how to humble you. I promise you that. So I've been humbled, and uh that 20-something-year-old kid is way gone. And I I hope to think that uh a lot of that energy has been replaced with wisdom that I can share with agents that that will help you get massive traction within the next couple of weeks. Seriously, I'll take an agent from 10 million in sales volume to over 100 million in sales volume inside of 12 months. So uh I know I can help y'all, and we're gonna talk about partnerships today. And grant, I was thinking about our topic today, and I was thinking about everything that I've ever gained in life, quite frankly. Every business move I've ever made is because of a relationship or a partnership. I mean, this is it's so critically important. And and yet I hear these agents, Grant, and it kind of breaks my heart a little bit where they're like, I have to go, you know, take this listing on Saturday. You have you have to, right? Yeah, well, you you get to, right? Uh or they'll complain about their their clients, right? Or their their partnerships. Understand, if you have a child that you can afford to put in private school or put braces on their teeth, it's because of that partnership. It's because of that client, right? And they deserve your respect. They deserve that. I have to do this. No, you get to do this, gang. It's just a different attitude, it's a different energy, and like energy attracts like energy. There's no doubt about that. So uh Grant, they did an interesting case study. I don't know if you've seen this or not. It's outlined in uh Chris Waters' book, The Millionaire Real Estate Team, where he talks a little bit about brand ambassador program. That's what he calls it, his brand ambassador program, where he's forming partnerships with not realtors, but people that are aligned somewhat with real estate, people who benefit because it's a transaction, and they're more than happy to give him funds for his marketing campaigns. And you can't even turn on the radio station in our in uh Austin, Texas without hearing a Chris Waters commercial. I can't even drive down the highway without seeing five or six billboards. He's raising over$350,000 a year through his brand ambassador program. And these are people that are just giving him money to run his marketing system. It's really quite fascinating. Now, in in the book, though, there's that case study that's outlined. Do you guys realize that on every real estate closed transaction in the United States today, there's an average of$83,000 in change pumped into the U.S. economy because that deal closed. And I don't care if it's a$10,000 lot or a$10 million single-family home, an average of$83,000 goes into the U.S. economy. And think about it, it's not just the real estate commission or the loan origination fee or the title insurance premium. It's the roofer who had to do the roof repair. It's the carpet layer who came in and put in new carpet. It's the painter who freshened the place up before you listed it.$83,000. So here's the question: why is it that the agent is the only one forking up the cash to generate the leads? I mean, and what Grant's system does is it identifies the people who benefit when you close a transaction, people who are willing to pay you for that exposure to your database. And Grant does all the work on the back end for you, right? Grant, I mean, you help set it all up. You even handle merchant services, you handle the accounting of it. And this agent just gets a monthly deposit into their account that they can spend it on whatever they want to spend it on, right? So let me play black hat just for a second. Talk to me about some of the RESPA guidelines, because I'm sure that's on some agents' minds, right? Like, how are you getting by RESPA on this?

SPEAKER_00 4:56

Uh, we we do get a lot of those questions, is like is the first question everybody asks is like, is what you do legal? Is can I do that? Um, we actually opted to make the decision to stay out of RESPA regulated industry. So we typically don't partner real estate agents and loan officers, title reps, and those types of things together.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

Okay, are you recommending that they're doing their separate MSA though? Outside of the working.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

That's that's really the main reason, is actually because a lot of people already have their own relationships. They they don't want us to get in the middle of those, and I don't really want to get in the middle of those. So we definitely see a future where it's something that we do focus on, but you know, for the most part, we typically encourage people to have their own relationships with mortgage, title insurance, and home warranty. And then we we have the connections outside of those now. Again, there's like 30 different industries that we connect in the with after uh outside of those industries, so it's definitely still quite lucrative for what we do. But I want to go something that I know about you, and you just gave me a uh a wonderful, wonderful sales you know, pitch for comarketing.com your in your intro there. Like you're you're a wonderful partner, right? But I want to go back to something I know about you is when you were when you became you know one of the top 1% in the country, you know, from a performance standpoint, selling 450 houses a year, you this was kind of like a natural thing for you in what I remember about your history is like you kind of naturally started figuring out how to tie more income streams to a real estate transaction. Can you kind of walk us back through some of the stuff that you did uh when you when you were so successful there on the production side?

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Well, absolutely. Um, you know, having MSAs in in place was I it just seemed so natural to me. It's like, okay, my favorite lender, I want him to be successful or her to be successful. I want them to make all kinds of money, yet they're in a realtor reliant model. So I kind of felt like I was in the catbird seat. I could kind of dictate who which lender I was going to push my buyers toward, right? Now, I'm not saying steer your clients, but you can sell your lender and you're supposed to sell your lender, but give them three recommendations. I'm just covering my own assets right now. That's all. But um, recognizing when you help other people get what they want, well, then you can monetize that, you can compensate yourself. I I heard uh Howard Brinton up on stage in 1991, and he used these two words that really just lodged in my brain zero base. And he said it just zero base your marketing. And I said, What the heck does that mean? And he was talking about MSAs, marketing services agreements where uh a mortgage company, a title company, a moving company, a painter can pay you money to earn your business. And again, you just have to look at the REST guidelines. You just need to make sure that you're above board and that you're dealing with reputable people. There's no doubt about that. How Chris Waters gets around it, by the way, Grant, is uh everybody who signs up for his brand ambassador program also signs up for his monthly uh mastermind. So it's a business mastermind that Chris leads, and he has chiropractors sign up to be part of his brand master program. He has plastic surgeons that are not aligned with real estate, but they're they say that the mastermind is actually worth the investment. And some of them are paying up to$5,000,$7,000,$10,000 a month to be part of this brand ambassador program. Yet to zero base everything that you guys are doing. By the way, if you can tie it to something like a holiday event, that makes it easier to maybe get some of those sponsor dollars so you could look at it that way. Yet having a long-term relationship like that just gives you the money to invest in your business to grow your business. The average cost per lead, by the way, and Grant knows this probably better than I do, yet some of the larger uh lead generators in the in the digital space are claiming averages of about$4.50 per lead. So if you're getting even$1,000 a month through what co-marketing can provide to you, and that's a drop of the bike, but that's easy to get, right, Grant? Easy to get to$1,000 a month. How many leads did you generate there?$200? 200 leads, 210 leads with the money that Grant can make you guys. And that's what I would do. Yet I always approached it, Grant, and to try and answer your question, because this is kind of the softer side of everything in business, right? I think it's more of a mindset, it's more of an attitude, it's more of a come from contribution kind of a model where listen, I want to give you this, yet I want this in return, right? It's a law versus uh like with my lender, I got my lender to not only pay money, I get him to do work for me. Okay, and I want you guys to hear me on this. Like uh, some of you have heard me talk about the 4D approach. This is something that allows you to narrow your focus and really focus on the priority task of the moment and also to triage and identify which is the priority task of the moment, right? Yet uh I get to the second D. I'll give them to you. Don't worry, I'll give you the four D's, but I get to the second D, which is can I delegate it? And I I I looked at my schedule, I looked at for my time at bandits, and I realized that I, as a real estate professional, I was investing three to sometimes four hours a day in lead follow-up with C-type buyers grant that weren't going anywhere. Now I would I would invest that time though, you guys, day after day. And it was painful. And I did it because I couldn't stand that gut-wrenching feeling of following up with the prospect a week too late to find out they just went under contract or just listed with another agent. It just drove me insane. So I'd I'd throw bad time after bad time after bad time. I thought, who else benefits? When I got to that delicate point, who else benefits when I close a deal? So my mind went immediately to my favorite lender. This is before I started my own mortgage company, by the way, but I went to my favorite lender. His name was Steve. I said, Hey Steve, I want to give you the opportunity to earn the business of every buyer that we generate here. And as you know, we got a lead generation machine. Yet, Steve, you you've got to earn that right, bud. He said, Okay, Sean, tell me, what do I have to do? I said, three things. Number one, I want you to follow up with every buyer lead that I give to you until they buy or die. Can you do that for me? Do you have the systems? Do you have the staff? Do you have the technology? Do you have the bandwidth? He said, Absolutely, Sean, that's my job. So the second thing, you've got to use my script when you call them. He said, Okay, well, what do I need to say? Here's the script, guys. Uh hi, this is Steve. Uh calling on behalf of Sean Kokoska. Sean asked me to give you a call in with the XYZ Mortgage Company. And before I begin, I just want to take a moment and commend you on your selection of a real estate agent. Sean is by far the best realtor I've ever come across. I've been doing this for 32 years. How did you get in touch with Sean? See, he made it all about me. It's a third-party endorsement. Now, if I said those words, it's ego-based. And nobody likes anybody with a big ego, right? So when they say it, it's just simply a third-party endorsement. And that's what you get to be for these vendors, and they're happy to reward you for being that third-party endorsement with these little certificates that have pris pictures of presidents on the front of them, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:25

And which is what I'm seeing right now, which is wild to me, is that the conversion rate on a lot of the leads that real estate agents are passing along to these ancillary service providers is between 78 and 82%. I had one moving company today that's converting 83% of the leads they get from real estate agents, which is just insane. Insane. If you don't think people want to pay a premium for that, they're happy to pay for it.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

There's no doubt.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

Somebody zeroes out their marketing cost. What's their day-to-day life like compared to somebody that's waking up to two, five, ten, fifteen, twenty thousand dollars a month in expenses?

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Oh, good lord. Uh well, first off, I I want to step even a little bit further back to get to that question. See, guys, we have to make a decision what type of business we want to really build. Now, most of us, we're gonna start with a prospecting-based business that's enhanced by marketing because we just don't have the bank account for it. We don't have enough money to engage in an online lead generation platform. We just we can't afford the risk. So once we get some traction though, we find some momentum. If you're smart, you start yielding toward that kind of marketing-based business that's enhanced by prospecting. Now, even an agent who is zero active listings right now, don't have any buyers that you're working with at the moment, you could get a co-marketing relationship with somebody through Grant and you could generate some of those marketing dollars. See, I think what you do, Grant, enables people to make that shift from a prospecting-based business enhanced by marketing to a marketing-based business enhanced by prospecting 10 times faster than if they were to do it on their own.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

100%. It does. Because when you look at when you look at the average real estate agent, right, you've got to go net negative for the average time to close a deal right now across most lead sources is just around 11 to 12 months. When you take a lot of online lead lead sources, and oh yeah, by the way, referral lead sources aren't that much different. Uh, I've got a team that I work with, they close over a thousand transactions a year. We look at all of their lead sources. Referrals sometimes take just as long as new leads do, so it's not always just quick, quick, quick. But when you think about that, when you're spending money, you gotta go net negative$500 a month. So month one, it's negative five, month two, it's negative a thousand, month three, it's negative fifteen hundred, two thousand, twenty five hundred, and then you close the deal by month nine or ten, and then you get your money back. And hopefully it's a break even, right? Yeah, so when you when you can zero base your costs, you go to where you're net negative zero every month. And it just, man, it feels different.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Yeah, so to maybe answer the question about the day in the life of somebody who has like a co-marketing or have that revenue coming in, uh, I I think the typical agent who doesn't have that, I I think their anxiety is through the roof. I think their their stress is at an all-time high. Uh, I think their personal relationships are suffering a little bit, and they're having to motivate themselves every single day to pick up the darn phone. And certain days it weighs 2,000 pounds. You can't pick it up.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

I got a bunch of bills, my phone's a lot heavier too.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

And yet the person who has this marketing dollars coming in, well, their day's a little bit different because it's not motivating yourself to pick up the phone and proactively make that outbound call. No, you've got people who have now said, Hey, I've raised my hand, I'm thinking about buying, I'm thinking about investing, I'm thinking about selling. And that's what co-marketing can do for you guys is it's gonna through partnerships. It by the way, the easiest way to get referrals from a small business owner in your community is to send them referrals. We get that. So by getting them to engage in co-marketing with you, you're gonna give them all your buyer and seller leads. And one of their employees wants to buy a house, who are they gonna call?

SPEAKER_00 15:01

Talk to me a little bit about something that I call the brand halo effect. And I'm asking this question, and you may get mad at me for asking it, but I obviously I know your history. So you you know, you you a pretty big deal at EXP, but you were previously at another company where you were you're a pretty big deal too. Right. Um when a real estate agent, you know, maybe partners with a lender in their market or a movering company or a plumbing company, and maybe those people are already well established and been in business for a long time, you get that transference of trust with the brand Halo Effect. Because if I create content with you and you're a mover, what are you gonna do? You're gonna share that content with your audience because you're a moving company, not a content company, so I'm kind of doing you a favor of creating some content. But I let everybody know you're my new preferred partner. I'm now gaining access to your audience. That transference of trust. That's why I call it the brand halo effect. You're associating yourself with other brands and you're kind of putting yourselves in their halos. You've been at some pretty impressive companies, you've worked with some major brands. How do those partnerships really drive the public perception of you as an individual when people know that you're associated or affiliated with these larger companies?

SPEAKER_01 16:05

Well, you know, I'll just answer the question from a personal perspective. Like when I'm doing live events and I'm I'm searching for sponsors, I'm very selective as to which sponsors I'm gonna go after because again, it's it's a brand Halo effect, right? You know, if I could have, you know, just uh some mom and pop mortgage operation be my sponsor in an event, or I could have Rocket Mortgage or Boss Fargo, it just creates a different perception of what icon coaching is. So I think I've kind of addressed what you were talking about from a personal perspective that I'm sure that the realtors can connect the dots to as well. So obviously, when you're looking for uh you know co-marketing partnerships, I would encourage you to do a little vetting up front. You know, you want to investigate the brand, maybe even reach out to some friends and family members, maybe do a Facebook post. Hey, what do you guys think about this company? Just see what kind of reviews there are online and things of that nature. Because while the brand halo effect can be a positive thing, it can also damage the brand a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

Why go pursue partnerships? Like, this is a question that I actually run into a lot. I'm sure you've faced it in the past is like, well, my business is selling houses, or my business is selling coaching, or my business is being a coach, being on the phone with people all day. So I I think I would ask you, because there's a lot of people that I run into that have the same concerns like, why would I go pursue partnerships when I need to pursue maybe my thing or my my business or coaching or selling houses or you know, investing or property management, whatever. What to you, like what's your answer for a question like that?

SPEAKER_01 17:30

It's cross-planation of your brand into their existing database. In marketing, we call this kind of a host parasite relationship. And as gross as that sounds, it just means that you get indirect access to their database. I want to break down a simple strategy that I think is applicable as it relates to partnerships. And with your with your co-marketing partners, you could absolutely do something like this. I would encourage each of you, and by the way, to give justification to this strategy, in Q2 of 2025, 33.4% of all real estate sales in the United States were investor transactions. And you're probably thinking, well, that's Blackstone went in and bought up all these. The lion's share of the investors were individuals who owned fewer than three income-producing properties. So, with that said, my mind went to, okay, how can I earn the business of investors today? And I would encourage you to do this through partnerships. So I did a real estate investor seminar in Denver. The first time I did it, I did in a live ballroom, dealt with all the logistics of event planning and registration and hors d'oeuvres and cocktails after the facts and all that nonsense, right? And it was the Sean Kukoska Talking Head Show for two hours where I got to just educate them on how to invest in real estate. And yes, I picked up a bunch of business from it. It was a ton of work. I would never do it again. The second time I did it, I got a little bit smarter. I started thinking like Grant Thinks, right? I started thinking about partnerships and I identified seven key industries that I wanted leaders from those industries to participate with me in my next real estate investor webinar. So you guys might want to write these down. I'll give them to you real quick. So I reached out to a financial planner, a 1031 exchange specialist, a property manager, a mortgage originator, a PC insurance agent, a CPA, and a real estate attorney. That's your seven, okay? And then me as the real estate agent, I was number eight. Now, here's the thing: I had about 10,000 people in my database at the time. And yes, I can invite all 10,000. Now, with my seven promotion partners, is what I called them. Each one of them had an average database size of call it 5,000. So there's another 35,000 in addition to my 10,000. I'm inviting 45,000 people now to an event where before I could only invite 10,000. I hope this makes sense. So not only they're helping me promote it, and what I did grant is I ghostwrote a marketing campaign for them email, social media post campaign, text message campaign. I give them scripts, dialogues, objection handlers, man. I gave them everything they needed to promote the event, but it's their event. Now hear me. For these seven key players, I had each of them present from their industry's perspective during a webinar now instead of a live event. So much fewer logistics, so much easier, right? Yet each of them presented for 10 minutes from their industry's perspective. So the mortgage loaner engineer talked to him about how they could do a cash-out refinance from their primary residence, pull that equity out of the walls. It's not doing them any good, and put that dormant equity to work for them by purchasing an income-producing property with that equity. The financial planner talked to him about how to take a 401k, roll it over in a non-taxable event into a self-directed IRA, and they could invest that money into an apartment building or some kind of income-producing real estate, right? The uh property manager talked about how to identify and vet your candidates, how to do background checks, put credit scores, things like that. You know, I was the last one to present, but I MC'd the event, right? So here's the thing when the attorney invited one of their clients to go to this real estate investor webinar, well, they showed up because they trust their attorney, right, Grant? And this is what you're talking about, the brand Halo effect. Well, they automatically trusted me because I'm perceived to be in business with that attorney. So the brand Halo effect is in full toe here, that's for sure. And yet, seven people presenting for 10 minutes each, that's 70 minutes. We had some time in between. So it took me about an hour and 45 minutes to two hours to get through it. I was the last one to present, and I just shared with them three examples of mainstream investment opportunities. Like I did a single-family home, I did a duplex, and I did a four-plex. But hear this, Grant. I had people that were rolling over their million dollar 401k plan into a self-directed RA. They were buying you know 25 unit apartment buildings from me. I'm I'm cashing in checks like you would not believe, dude. And it's all through partnerships, though.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

Yeah, I was about to say, like, it's so smart though, because it's like, well, I might have 5,000, 10,000 followers or contacts or whatever. But then if I go partner with somebody else that has 5,000, 10,000, now I've doubled. And then if I do that seven times, like you said, one of them had 35,000 contacts, it's like this isn't just a way to go make extra money per se that is a distraction from your business, and none of what I do is. It's it's a compliment. But it's like, no, this is a legitimate strategy to gain access to somebody's audience to fuel and accelerate your existing business. I'm not seeing anybody, you know, get outside of, you know, stay in real estate, but get outside of like the act of selling houses. I'm not seeing mortgage professionals thrive who aren't in partnerships. I'm not seeing software companies thrive who don't have partners. I'm not seeing title companies, insurance companies, almost every business that I see is thriving in today's day and age, in 2026, because of partnerships. Because of this whole trust recession that we've kind of entered and it's only gonna get worse with AI and all of the stuff. I don't know anybody that really believes anything they see online anymore. So it's it's kind of like if you don't have somebody that's helping you drive this business growth that has trust with the people that you want to work with, it's much harder. It's an amazing example you gave of how you can use partnerships. It's not a distraction, this is an accelerant for your core business.

SPEAKER_01 23:00

100%. And that enables you to list build like a madman, I'm telling you. And by the way, at the end of the event through um uh survey uh typeform, sorry, through typeform, we just built a quick survey for them to complete and it outlined all of the seven different promotion partners. Do they want to be contacted? And they just had to click a little box if they wanted to be contacted from that promotion partner and obviously a scheduling link right to my personal schedule. So we almost set a whole bunch of appointments. It takes you two weeks to promote this thing. I've got the the real estate investor webinar in a box. If you guys want it, I'll be happy to get it to you. I'm just trying to figure out the easiest way for me to get it to you. Uh, I'll tell you what, if you want to text, is it okay if I give them a number to text to to get it? Okay. Text 720-341-4876. And all I need you to do is type in investor strategy. Hit send. Oh, and include your email address so I can email it to you. That's it. Investor strategy email address, send it over to me. I don't care if it comes in now or two weeks from now, I'll know exactly what it is and we'll send it to you right away.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

That's amazing. Well, I got one more question, man. Uh one that I like to ask everybody is uh, you know, for all the people that are listening to this, how can we partner with you and help you grow your business?

SPEAKER_01 24:16

I'll do it. I wish I was more prepared for the answer to that question. You know, I I wish everybody would answer asking me that question, but um I'll tell you what, that I think the the the one thing I would I would ask you guys to do, if if you truly want to strengthen your foundation, improve your knowledge, your skills, mindset, and habits, if you believe that your business grows to the extent that you personally grow, I just want you to go to iconcoaching.com, click on that webinars tab. I do two webinars every week, and I'm bringing thought leaders like Grant Wise in to interview them. I'm um sharing strategy and tactic that all of my clients are blowing up their production with. Uh, this is proven best practices, you guys. I don't just take up your time, I give you actionable strategies and tactics that you can implement and deploy like right then to find additional traction in your business. So just plug into our webinars, they're free. And heck, follow me on social, please. Let's do that too.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Yeah, I love it. If you're listening to Sean, you're listening to somebody that's been in this industry for a very long time and has coached some of the most uh successful real estate professionals in the world. So definitely take him up on his offer there. If that's how we can partner with you, Sean, I'm gonna make sure we do that, dude. I appreciate you. Uh appreciate you a lot, appreciate your contributions to the industry, appreciate your sales pitch today, my podcast for everything that hello everybody, my favorite people. Grant, uh I grabbed this real quick. Hold on. Where did it go? Okay, he's got something, he's got something. What is it?

SPEAKER_01 25:43

See this?

SPEAKER_00 25:44

Oh, yeah, there we go. There we go.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

We can't read the writing on it, but uh, I had it upside down too. But uh this is a good thing. This was probably 2016.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

Yeah, it's a long time ago.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

This is 10 years ago, guys. It says uh Sean expected to have earned our first dollar together. Uh looking forward to many. Excited, there you go. Excited to have earned our first dollar together, looking forward to many, many more. And then you put the dollar bill in there and you signed it. I think that is just brilliant. And I've kept it for a decade so far.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

That's awesome. Uh that's awesome. I'm pumped you kept it.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

In case of emergency, break glass.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

I forgot that I sent you that. I uh I used to love doing that. I gotta get back to doing that. I'm sure everybody would love it if I did it. I appreciate that you uh you pulled that out. Partnerships are important. I'm I'm thankful for your partnership all these years, so definitely appreciate it. Everybody for listening to this, go connect with Sean. Go to what was it, Sean? Icon Coaching, go to webinars and check out some of their webinars, get some strategic and tactical training that you need to grow your business. You will not be upset that you did it. Thanks for teaching us all how we could grow our business and profit through partnerships today, brother. Appreciate you and uh everybody listening. We'll we'll see you all on the next episode. So yeah.