Interview with Thomas Bible, RealtyZapp Founder.

We are fine. We have followed recommendations of wearing a mask in places where social distancing is not likely, we carry sanitizer everywhere, keep it in our cars for each time we exit a public area, and limit our in-person meetings with more than 3 or 4 people.  We are not letting fear dictate our actions, but rather common sense.  It has always been a good idea to wash your hands several times a day, distance from anyone who shows signs of an illness and clean your surroundings on a regular basis.  Anyone who has had kids will tell you that.  The only new thing is the mask ritual, which is a pain no matter who you ask, and we look forward to a time where that is not an inconvenient necessity.

My career began in marketing, where I helped many companies grow their customer base by showing the importance of brand awareness and a multi-faceted approach to marketing, employing various short-term tactics as part of a well-defined long-term strategy.  I never considered myself a salesperson, but rather a business consultant, often helping clients with initiatives outside of the scope of what served my interests, as I knew it best served my clients’ interests.  This built relationships that lasted years, and friendships that remain to this day.

I entered the commercial real estate field in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks, as I predicted there would be much uncertainty in the market for some time to follow, but I knew there was relative stability in Commercial Real Estate, and this was a place where I could help others with my marketing skills.  I was the first in my market for example, to send out a monthly broadcast e-mail cataloging all my firm’s listings in a single, indexed multi-page PDF, that caught the attention of several other brokers.  I was among the first to create interior 360 virtual tours of office, retail and industrial spaces before Matterport existed.  And I have helped many of my real estate clients realize greater returns through creative solutions to common problems.  I’ve always been an early adopter of technology, and have enjoyed teaching those around me how to best use it to benefit their business.

I launched RealtyZapp a little over 5 years ago to bring much of the proactive methodologies that served me so well in marketing and commercial real estate to help other brokers accomplish more with less.  I saw the potential of Wall Street monopolies placing pressure on the main street brokerage community and thought “Someone has to step up and offer marketing solutions that provide a cost-effective, sustainable option for CRE professionals who simply can’t afford thousands per month for online marketing, that honestly, shouldn’t be that expensive”.  To this day, I help individual commercial agents realize the importance of personal branding through vehicles like YouTube channels, social media and professional collateral materials and help to automate these things so that brokers can focus on a more pro-active and productive marketing strategy.

We are Broker driven rather than investor driven, so innovation comes from my experience as a broker, collaboration with professionals in our field, as well as feedback from our clients, which we often act on in short order.  Many of our features have come directly from client requests and feedback.  I look to see where inefficiencies exist in a broker’s business process, then we integrate features that are easy to set up, modify and employ to lessen the time spent on redundant tasks, while improving the brand consistency across their website, marketing materials and online profiles.  Our primary concern is empowering agents to get their individual listings ranked in prospect Google searches, helping them connect faster with these buyers and tenants when they call, and to ease the process of follow up, activity and pipeline tracking.  If it relates to marketing, which is a broker’s primary role in this business, we want to be the leader in providing the most cost-effective and simple solutions in one platform, so we look for ways to improve upon this by constantly improving and optimizing elements of our site to enhance speed and functionality. 

Covid only effects our ability to meet with the entire brokerage.  We are looking forward to doing that again soon, but in the meantime, we use Zoom to conduct on-screen demos with the firm’s decision makers, then again for training and on-boarding with the team.  We have been Zoom clients since our launch, so we were doing this before, but now just use it on a larger scale.

We have not really had to make any difficult choices as a result of Covid.  We are happy that we have been able to provide firms with a better, more cost-effective solution during times when they have all had to make some difficult choices.  In doing so, we have also extended our 25% firm discount rate to all, regardless of whether the entire firm signs up or not.  This was an easy decision, and people are very thankful.  My biggest lesson learned though this pandemic is that the power of the entrepreneurial spirit is strong enough to turn any adversity into an opportunity for growth, and if we just help one more broker each day realize what can be done to overcome the obstacles that are sometimes placed in our path to be able to focus on the bigger picture and emerge better for it, then word of mouth will spread among brokerage communities to enable entire markets to better collaborate through the tools we provide and drive their business further.  If we help enough brokers improve their marketing and business process, we will reach our goals as well.

Since I am inspired by helping others succeed, speaking with a broker who understands marketing and wants to step up their game puts me in the best frame of mind, so I usually block off time each week to cold call and spread the good news about RealtyZapp.  Those who take the time to sit for a brief demo usually thank me for it and are amazed at all that we do for so little.  This usually results in a new client who soon enough sends us a testimonial to use on our site.  For me, this is the best stress therapy.

If you are in the commercial real estate business, you know of LoopNet, Crexi and Brevitas. These are our primary competitors, but since we offer solutions for all things marketing, I would include MailChimp or Constant Contact, ACT or Apto on the CRM front and a few others on the design side.  There have been several platforms that have emerged in the last 5 years, but none that do as much as we do for so little.  We intend on being the sustainable option, keeping our rates affordable, and locking in a client’s book rate for as long as they are with us, when others come into a market, get a following by offering free listings, and then leverage lead information to force the agents to sign up to receive any value from the platform.  We believe that if you continually bring value to your clients, and treat them honestly and fairly, they will be with you long-term.  Also, our platform is strictly a broker-upload model, which means that listings are more accurate, and photos come directly from the broker, insulating us from copyright infringement issues.  We plan on being around a long time, to be able to serve the brokerage community through bull and bear markets.

I endeavored to build RealtyZapp.com after learning that investor-driven platforms cannot effectively serve two masters, and as a result, we have accepted the challenge of growing organically.  It is a tougher road, but we are committed to serving our client’s best interests above all else.  We have been approached by several investment firms and realize that the process of exponential growth would be greatly accelerated, but the result would be higher fees for our clients and an eventual forced exit strategy that would jeopardize the trust we have built and potentially disenfranchise those who supported us.  This is happening now with other Goliaths in the industry, and my commitment is to the industry we serve. As I truly enjoy helping others, I can’t see myself doing anything else, so I encourage any broker reading this to register on our site for your free trial, take a look at our YouTube channel linked below, add your listings, and take advantage of all that we have built to improve your business.  And will continue to listen, respond and innovate to support and empower the brokerage community like no other firm, while allowing you to keep more of what you make.

https://realtyzapp.com/

Video Overview Commercial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG3mpXwas3c

Our YouTube channel has a few more commercials as well as a full line of tutorials.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcpBCpFngpQLs9tFBwxHmnQ