Outside The Box
Outside the Box is the podcast for real estate agents who want to grow their business. Every episode provides actionable strategies that help you grow your repeat, referral, and sphere of influence business. Referrals don’t happen on accident—they happen on purpose, and we bring you insights from top agents and coaches who have mastered the art of relationship-based growth. Tune in for practical, proven tactics that will help you generate more business from the people who already know, like, and trust you!
Outside The Box
The Big Mouth Club: Building Referral Networks That Last | Tim Langhauser
Tim Langhauser of Compass Home Group shares his journey from real estate admin to selling 170+ homes annually through his innovative "Big Mouth Club" referral strategy. With systematic client appreciation events and meticulous database management, Tim has created a self-sustaining referral machine that drives $65 million in sales volume.
• Started in real estate as an admin handling accounting before moving to sales side after seven years
• Created the "Big Mouth Club" to formalize client referral relationships and build community
• Hosts 4-7 client appreciation events annually including Amtrak trips to NYC, golf tournaments, and Santa visits
• Uses detailed VIP tracking forms to collect client data including birthdays, anniversaries, and preferences
• Sends birthday brownies directly to clients' children to build multi-generational relationships
• Combines client events with charity fundraisers to maximize impact and attendance
• Segments database carefully to track client interests, sports teams, and personal preferences
• Rewards referrals through quarterly drawings and custom appreciation gifts
• Shows clients their "referral trees" to demonstrate the impact of their recommendations
• Focuses on building fun, non-transactional relationships that naturally generate business
Remember referrals don't happen by accident, they happen on purpose. Build systems that nurture relationships, track important details, and celebrate the clients who advocate for your business.
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And watching the evolution of like our big mouths grow up with us and us growing up with them, is like the most rewarding thing in the business.
Chad Armbruster:Thanks for joining us on Outside the Box where we talk through actionable strategies that help you generate more repeat referral and sphere of influence business. Remember referrals don't happen by accident, they happen on purpose. For those who don't know, my name is Chad Armbruster, ceo of BizBox, and with me, as always, is my co-host, full-time realtor and son, justin Armbruster.
Justin Armbruster:Today we have Tim Langhauser, with the Compass Home Group, joining us all the way from Bel Air, maryland. Tim has been serving buyers and sellers in the Baltimore area since 2012, and he sells over 170 homes a year, resulting in over $65 million in sales volume. Tim, thanks for joining us today.
Tim Langhauser:No thanks for having me.
Chad Armbruster:So tell us, how did you get into the real estate business?
Tim Langhauser:Honestly, I got into real estate I was in my senior year of college. Somebody I knew was opening up a real estate brokerage and asked me as an internship to come in and handle the accounting department and like oversee the logistics and the admin side of a real estate office. So I spent seven years on the admin role and then kind of got a little frustrated and switched over and now this is my 13th year on the sales side.
Chad Armbruster:Really Okay. So that was more or less your kind of. Your first real job was the admin side.
Tim Langhauser:Oh yeah 100%.
Justin Armbruster:Were you the one, were you the one writing the checks for the realtors at the time? That's exactly what I was doing and I'm sure I can guess why you got into the sales side.
Tim Langhauser:Yeah, and you start to see the frustration of, like you know, we were a big education company so we were teaching and teaching and watching some of the agents get all the knowledge and just lack implementation. So we decided I, actually I met my now wife. We decided to both quit our jobs, start a team and never look back, love it.
Chad Armbruster:Well, I was going to ask what you got frustrated at, but I see what you're saying there. So was it difficult? I guess I've always heard that new agents have a difficult time Young new agents getting into the business. You know People may not trust them with their biggest asset and this and that. But I mean, did you experience that? You would have been relatively young? It sounds like.
Tim Langhauser:Yeah, I mean so it was mine was interesting though because, like I said, social media, as far as people saw, as far as my sphere saw me I was in real estate for seven years. They didn't know it was. You know it was not sales side of it, cause I would still get the phone calls from friends and stuff like that, like, hey, I see you do this, can you help? And I would actually just pass them off to my broker, um, cause I didn't handle the sales side at that point.
Justin Armbruster:Gotcha, that's actually super nice. I was in a similar situation, worked as kind of an unlicensed assistant for a couple of years, but people knew that's what you were doing, and so I was able to kind of still have a paycheck but work my way into going on my own.
Tim Langhauser:Yeah, and.
Justin Armbruster:I mean, I think it's a.
Tim Langhauser:It's a great model. I think everybody is. Sometimes you have to, you know work to learn and then sometimes then you move into work to earn Um, and sometimes you just got to bite the bullet and suck it up and do the hard work and not know you're. The paychecks aren't coming in yet.
Chad Armbruster:Yeah, and I hear that for most agents it takes. It takes a while before that first one came in. Was that the same way with you guys? Did you have kind of a ramp up period?
Tim Langhauser:So we did, I mean our first year in real estate. I think my my wife and I I mean we weren't married at the time, but I think we did about 7 million. So for us it was like there was no looking back. You know, we had two mortgages to pay we had. We both had kids. So it was like, look, if we're going to do this, we have to go all in and everything we have into this business. But we were big on when we started. We mapped out like our entire business. I mean we had dry erase boards, set up that if, like, hey, if a lead or a contact comes in, a client calls you like, what are the next steps, what are the touch points in those steps? And then, once they become our client, they buy, sell with us, how do we never let them go? And that was, I mean I was from day one. It was the philosophy that, like, this is the type of business that we wanted to build.
Chad Armbruster:Well, it sounds like you had, you were on the ball from the beginning. A lot of people have to learn that as they go along, uh, as far as uh, you know, mapping out the, the sales process and this, and that what you just described.
Tim Langhauser:Yeah, I think, like I said, it was the benefit of seven years of being in this leadership position, the benefit of seven years of being in this leadership position, teaching it, going into masterminds around it. I mean I was, we were traveling the country with with our brokerage at the time and just learning and learning and learning and sucking in all this knowledge. And then it was to the point where, like, look, we know how to do all of this. Let's go build our own wealth through this avenue.
Chad Armbruster:So you'd mentioned sphere of influence. What's the's the one habit or routine that's kind of helped you consistently stay in front of your sphere of influence?
Tim Langhauser:I kind of put two of them. One is our client events. We do somewhere between four and seven client events every year, and the other one is touching them at least four to six times a year through mailers, different types of like raffles or giveaways that we do. Like super bowl is coming up, so we're on a super bowl block challenge for just our clients. Um, we send out birthday cards with scratch off tickets, just you know. Another touch point to them, but the most important one we probably do is we actually send boxed birthday brownies to their kids, really, oh, so they're specific to the kids.
Tim Langhauser:The kid gets it in. The mail comes from. Like you know, ups delivers it. It's in the kid's name, so nothing makes the kid more excited than getting a box in mail.
Chad Armbruster:Oh yeah.
Tim Langhauser:Oh, that's awesome. You build the connection through the kids and then you know families, all their families become our just you know legs of our own family.
Justin Armbruster:Here's a question, as I've ran into some of this myself how do you, how do you get that information? You know kids' birthdays, even sometimes client birthdays, is hard to find, sure.
Tim Langhauser:So, honestly, when a new client gets kind of enrolled. We call all of our clients big mouths, so like we have the compass home group big mouth club so when they join the big mouth club.
Tim Langhauser:They become our client, they're referred to us. However, they, you know, jump into our, into our sphere. Um, we actually have a vip tracking form. So we look at, hey, where do they currently live? And it's all the basics email, phone numbers, but it's when's their birthday, their anniversary, their kid's birthday, and then there's like three to five questions to kind of, what do they like to do, so that, if something does come up and we want to celebrate them, we're not sending them a bottle of wine when they don't drink or sending them a gift card to a seafood restaurant when they're allergic to shellfish. Yeah, so we want to know, like, what do you love so that we can celebrate you in that way.
Chad Armbruster:Cool, that's awesome, that is awesome. So now, when you describe the Big Mouth Club, is that something they know they're a part of, or is that something internally you call it?
Tim Langhauser:Oh no, they know they're a part of it, like our Big Mouth. We have a specific logo for our Big Mouths. It is on the hood of the car that our team drives around, so, like they know, it's the big mouth club they. When we do some of our events throughout the year, we actually have big mouth t-shirts. So we might have two, three hundred people at a baseball game and they all have the same t-shirt on. So they know what they're called.
Chad Armbruster:And so you kind of go into it saying that there's a little bit of an expectation that they're going to refer business. But you're making it fun. It's very subtle.
Justin Armbruster:Is that going to be big mouths about the real estate company?
Chad Armbruster:That's exactly it.
Tim Langhauser:So we want big mouths, to have a big mouth about what we do. That's super funny.
Chad Armbruster:So those are two awesome ideas that I've heard so far. Do you guys come up with these ideas on your own, or who's the creative force behind all your events?
Tim Langhauser:So as far, as like the idea of building this kind of club. We actually stole it from another agent, not going to lie. We were at a seminar. He was kind of coaching us. He's local to us, he's, you know now, a good friend of ours. He was doing it, doing these client events, and I'm like, hey, let's take what he's doing and just step it up another level. And now it's fun because we get to watch other local real estate agents who kind of build these networks the same way and it's important. I mean, you know, we're not meant to go through this life alone. So by us building this big mouth group when we have our client events, you know, now some of our clients have become friends and themselves. So we get to watch all these relationships blossom and it's just a byproduct of what we're trying to do.
Chad Armbruster:That's good, that's super cool. So what are some of the common mistakes you see realtors make when they're trying to grow their real estate business?
Tim Langhauser:Be transactional. I think that's number one. So chasing a paycheck, you know, worrying about one transaction over over the actual relationship with somebody. There are plenty of people in our big mouth group that come to our events that we love on, who've never bought or sold a house with us, and not mostly because they just haven't bought or sold a house in 13 years. And there's nothing where you know, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just they're still in our club because they are. They are absolutely just like us. Everything about them is like us. They. They connect us with other referrals, they connect us with other members of their family who are doing things. But it's just, we'll love on everybody the same way.
Justin Armbruster:Yeah, absolutely. I always, uh, use the line that you know your best client isn't the one who buys and sells the most houses with you. You know there's referrals, there's, you know connections, there's all sorts of things that you know kind of decide who who should be in your big mouth club.
Tim Langhauser:Yeah, and there's and on the flip side of that, there are people that we get through a transaction with and it's decided in house. You know that, like hey, we're probably going to part ways after this. They're few and far between, cause usually we can weed them out up front. I mean, there's people we say no to for business. You know, day one could we do that? Not really. But now, with what we have built, you know, there are days that we can meet somebody and say, like we're not a fit to work together.
Justin Armbruster:Yeah, yeah.
Chad Armbruster:That's OK the big mouth club and you said there's people who are in our big mouth club who've never bought and sold from us. So I guess what you're saying is that, like this is a formal, do they get like emails that talk about being in the big mouth club or are they like your events? Is it a? Hey, this is a big mouth event. How is it a club? And then these, these other people are in it. Are they in? Do you see what I'm asking?
Tim Langhauser:I guess yeah, so I mean. So we have, like we have a social media. Literally we have a group on Facebook that is called Compass Home Group Big Mouth Club. That's private, that they get an invite to. It's how we kind of deliver a bunch of information to them. We do a monthly newsletter as well, so we'll send the newsletter out to them and just let them know, like hey, so we'll send the newsletter out to them and just let them know, like, hey, here's what's going on this month, updates on our next events.
Tim Langhauser:Like, for instance, I think our next event that's up is it's called the Sweetheart Soiree. So it's literally like an adult prom that we do at a local vineyard. That all benefits a local charity. It's called Pathfinders for Autism. So for us, we got into a few years ago to really tying a bunch of our client appreciation events into charity fundraisers. Really, some are not that way, some are just like hey, show up, have a great time. This one in particular started that way and charity saw the success we were having getting our people there and said how do we make this bigger and turn it into a fundraiser?
Justin Armbruster:That is so interesting and I'm going to ask you about this. I was on your guys' Instagram page before this, you know, prepping for the interview, and I saw you guys just recently did a indoor golf simulator charity event. Talk to me a little bit about that. What all goes into that, how does that work? How is it a fundraiser? How is it also a client event for you guys?
Tim Langhauser:Sure so that one was a double win. So, like two years ago we started that A client of ours opened, is the owner of the indoor golf facility, so he was just opening his doors. He's like Tim, you know, I know you have a lot of these events, you have a lot of clients in the in the area. How do we get involved? So I basically we were doing a toy drive at the same time and I was like, hey, let me see if I can put together this indoor golf event. You know we'll get 12 teams out here, have them come in golf, have this thing. You know, have sponsorships, we'll bring in some money Fully like we don't know where it's going to go.
Tim Langhauser:We had no idea about it. I mean, I think the first year we ended up raising like four or 5,000 bucks. We also pulled in toys for one to 200 kids, but the first invite to that goes out to our client database and basically the first one, I mean we sold out within like an hour and a half of it going live. So we actually added a second night to it. Oh, that's crazy. So now, like we, you know, we really don't even have to publicize it until it's sold out. This was our second year doing it. Once I reached out to the people who played before, they all want to be a part of it and you know, our electricians come, plumbers come, our mortgage vendors show up and then a bunch of our clients are the ones who bring the teams and play. Oh, that's awesome.
Chad Armbruster:And it's great.
Tim Langhauser:I mean we get, we fill truckloads and truckloads of toys this year.
Justin Armbruster:Oh, that is such a great idea, Full disclosure. I mean, I was contemplating what it could look like because I'm a big golf guy.
Justin Armbruster:What could it look like to do a client event, you know, in the winter, when things are a little bit slower, you know, at an indoor place that we have and you know I was running numbers and I couldn't. I just couldn't justify. Okay, I'm going to rent it out for this. I'm only going to be able to have this many people come, because you know you're limited and it's like I can't do it. But you know, doubling it, as you know. A fundraiser, where it's like, hey, we can support a great cause and you know it's going to achieve a very similar result, as you know. A sponsor term you know I just get to shake hands, see people. I, you know, get to facilitate it. Maybe you, as the agent, you know, carry on the bulk of the sponsorship of it, but you know you pick up others. That is a great idea.
Tim Langhauser:Yeah, I mean our contribution. You know we made a financial contribution to it, obviously. But and then our job when we're there is, you know there's 36 people playing golf. Some of the wives come, like my wife will come, she doesn't golf but she just kind of they have a bar so she sits around the bar and mingles with the other wives who come and we just walk around and talk and have a good time with people. We crack on them for bad shots and you know it's just. It's a. It's a great fun event and three to four hours sitting in the warmth in winter Love it that is so cool.
Chad Armbruster:Yeah, no, that's good. Yeah, Because I was watching your newsletter and I saw you you had you'd gone through like six different things um that you guys were doing. It seemed like it was November, december type type of events. Uh, so when I hear you say, oh, I do four to six events a year, I'm thinking you seem like you were doing six events right there just in November December.
Tim Langhauser:So, yeah, those you know, and we don't really we don't necessarily like the fundraisers as our events. I mean, in December we had, yeah, we had two golf nights, we did Cookies with Santa, where we rent out a huge like local mansion that is, you know, an event space. We bring Santa Claus in and we had about 300 to 400 people come through and eat cookies, ice cream, sundaes, hot chocolate and have their picture with Santa Claus and eat cookies, ice cream, sundaes, hot chocolate and have their picture with Santa Claus. The one in December that we did for the first time this year is we actually called Amtrak trains and said can we rent an entire train car and take some of our people up to New York City for the day? And they were like, yeah, well, we can do that. So we put that together and we got our people to New York and we didn't lose one.
Tim Langhauser:So it was definitely a win. That was. Our biggest fear was leaving somebody in New York City. That's funny. We already are on the phone with them this year because we're planning December 2025 and trying to set up Amtrak, because I know this year we could fill two to three cars. I mean, we sold out 72 seats on an Amtrak train within like 90 minutes. Oh, that's cool.
Chad Armbruster:Now, is that the thing that you're funding? You pay to rent out the whole car.
Tim Langhauser:So for the train, our plan with the train was we covered half of their ticket cost and it had nothing to do with them paying. It had to do with making sure who paid showed up. So we didn't want to fill a train with 72 seats and like 40 people the day before were like, eh, we're not going to go tomorrow. So the money was just having skin in the game.
Justin Armbruster:Yeah, no, that makes complete sense. Okay. So now I have to ask you have all these ideas? Who between you or your wife, maybe someone, someone on your team? Who's the idea person? Because I'm sure you know you do four to six client events a year. I'm sure there's 10 or 12 that are running through your head, yeah, it's, honestly, it's, it's, it's a collaboration.
Tim Langhauser:So we have about a dozen people who work here. You know we have three full time staff and you know, and agents'll have a marketing meeting once a month and in that marketing meeting, like we're looking out three, six, nine, twelve months, you know, hey, what's coming, what's coming down the pipeline, um, and some of the stuff is like we, we look at again what other people do we're in the research and development, we are rip off and duplicate other people we had seen, like lenders and title companies doing bus trips to New York City and I was like, well, I hate being on a bus. Our train station's 15 minutes from where our office is. I'm like, let's just give Amtrak a call, can we rent a train car?
Tim Langhauser:And it went from this idea of doing a bus trip to what are our other options. And you know, the bus doing 60 miles an hour up there is much different than the train doing 160. Yeah, you get there faster, you have more time and on the train you're up, we're walking around, we're interacting with our people. We had games for them to do on the, on the uh, the train car. We had a scavenger hunt for them to do in new york city that they could win a prize for. So just once the idea comes, then it's like all right, how do we take this little idea and just magnify the hell out of?
Tim Langhauser:it and really make it just this fun, fun time that we can have with our people. Oh, that's awesome that's good so we're a delicate blend, so our, our, our logo is have fun, share love and build community. I am the have fun part. My wife is the share love part. Like we are, both build community. But when we put it all together it's just like this wonderful crazy machine that keeps rolling.
Chad Armbruster:Yeah, that's good, that's so. You have all these events and different things you do. I guess what would be your I don't know favorite or the most unique that you do that helps generate referrals and you know what's the one that works the best. My favorite are the ones with all of our big mouth kids, because Before we dive into that, the Outside the Box podcast is all about building repeat and referral business, because smart realtors know that serving clients is the secret sauce.
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Tim Langhauser:My favorite are the ones with all of our big mouth kids, because so, like I said, we just did Cookies with Santa. After the event, post-event follow-up is huge for us. So we actually you know the little mixed tile like photo frames everybody who came to Cookies with Santa we call, we upload their photos, get mixed tiles delivered to us and then we hand deliver them to all of these, our clients' houses. Well, one of the coolest things is watching like when your clients have been with you for six, 10, 12 years is watching their little mixed tiles evolve. You know, husband and wife, husband and wife with one child, husband and wife with two kids and three kids and teenagers and watching the evolution of like our big mouths grow up with us and us growing up with them is like the most rewarding thing in the business that we do.
Chad Armbruster:That does sound and I don't even know. I don't brief explanation, sorry for being a dummy here. What's a mixed tile photo frame?
Tim Langhauser:Yeah, so it's big. I mean it's here. I can show you one on my desk because we're delivering them today. So shout out to this little family. It's this little photo frame OK. Yeah, so we deliver the same thing to them every single year, but it's just this evolution of their family growing up.
Chad Armbruster:Deliver the same thing to them every single year, but it's just this evolution of their family growing up, okay, and then this, this particular one, is that the the santa thing, and so they get to kind of see that, oh, that's cool, yeah, so we do.
Tim Langhauser:And I mean, we have a valentine's day event, we have easter egg hunt coming up, so we rent out a big space for an easter egg hunt, you know, have out two to three thousand easter eggs and kids just go wild. Um, and the fun part of the easter egg hunt is we actually have our parents do an adult easter egg hunt, where they're blindfolded and the kids have to kind of navigate them through to find their eggs, which are like this big and they're filled with, you know, adult appropriate prizes. Yeah, yeah, oh, that's awesome.
Chad Armbruster:That is good. So I just I keep seeing a theme here. It seems like a lot of these events are kid oriented. Is that a strategy or is that just nah? That's just your sphere of influence.
Tim Langhauser:It probably has to do with somewhat of, like, my level of maturity. If I'm honest, it's just, uh, like I love what little kids love, like I love watching them scatter like wild, crazy humans doing an easter egg hunt. It's like it's days and weeks of prep work for two minutes of enjoyment, because that's how quick it's done. Um, so, yeah, our strategy was just, you know, originally we sat down and when we started Compass Home Group, we targeted our who's, our ideal client, and our ideal client was us Two parents. You know we had three kids between the two of us. They were little at the time. We want to, we're trying to mirror match, like this is our ideal client. It's somebody who's bringing kids up locally, just like we are. And it's our ideal client really hasn't changed. Our kids have grown up. You know, our youngest is 20 at this point. Um, but our ideal target client is still that same. You know, somebody bringing up kids local in our area, love it.
Chad Armbruster:Uh, just as a kind of a strategy, I would think those would be great ones, because they're constantly going to be growing and adding their family or whatever, and changing houses.
Tim Langhauser:Yeah, you know, they buy their first house and then they have a couple of kids and they typically are two transactions in a decade where somebody who you know of my age is going and buying their 10, 20, 25 year house outside of any crazy life changes, Right yeah?
Chad Armbruster:Yeah, especially in this market.
Tim Langhauser:You know, in this market people are only moving because of, you know, death, divorce, diamonds, dependents. You know the D's of a real estate market. Yeah.
Chad Armbruster:Yeah. So if you had to start over today, what would be your top priority for building a strong network of repeat and referral business?
Tim Langhauser:Honestly, getting your database in place as quick as possible and segmenting it as best as you can. You know if you, when we pull our database in, we we're big on like tagging our database. So if this person's a Ravens fan and this person's a Chiefs fan, we want to know that. If we see on social media they're like, hey, they're going to the you know the Baltimore Oriole game and they're huge Oriole fans, great, we want to tag that in our, in our database. So we just start.
Tim Langhauser:I mean, big corporations collect data on us every day when we're on the internet. We just want to do it on a smaller scale with the people around us so that we know everything about them. You know that vip survey we talked about. Ask them who's their favorite sports team. Do they even watch sports? So if you know if we have extra tickets to an oral game, great, we know who to pick up the phone and call and invite for somebody if we haven't seen them in a while. So, building a strong database, because in my opinion, the easiest, most fun and rewarding business model you can build in real estate is through the people you know in your sphere. In real estate is through the people you know, in your sphere I know there's people who will pay these big companies for huge amounts of leads and they will be a lead generation. That type of machine doesn't work a hundred percent. I just think it's way more fun doing it this way.
Justin Armbruster:Way more fun and easier. Yeah, when you work with people who already know, like and trust you, you know not only is it easier and more fun, uh, but I also think you know when I work with someone who knows me well or as a past client I also as an agent I get less uh uh confrontation rebuttal on. You know what I charge. You know on a commission listing appointment versus someone who doesn't know and, like you know, that's the first thing they're going to ask and that's all they're interested in.
Tim Langhauser:No, and I think I mean one of the most fun phone calls I think we can get is hey, do you, do you have time to work with us? Like I've loved. The first time that phone call hit my phone and I was like, did they really? Like, a hundred percent, I have time to work with you. I don't care if you're buying a $50,000 house or a $2 million house. Like, you're the same human to me. You are just, you're a client, doesn't matter what you're doing. Like, we treat you the same.
Justin Armbruster:Let me ask you a question about that, as I'm kind of growing in my career. I've gotten that question a couple times and it makes me question how you know I don't need to be talking about every closing I have on Facebook, because it might give the impression I'm too busy for some people. Have you ran into that at all, or what do you think about that?
Tim Langhauser:No, I mean I don't. I don't think we've run into it. Some of the things that we as a team have kind of shifted away from just over the years or are like the annual celebration post that you know we see all the agents do and we did it Like I mean we did it all. You know, hey, we did $70 million this year. We had balloons in the parking lot, confetti and you know the.
Tim Langhauser:The public's perception is interesting. We, you know, we have a. We have a. Uh, we're right on main street of our town, so it's where our office building is, so we have a sign display out front. So when some of our agents have a great month and they do a million dollars in production in a month, we celebrate them out there. You'd be amazed how many texts and phone calls that people will get and say you made a million dollars this month. And I'm like I wish I made a million dollars this month. That would be fantastic. But so that, but that's perception. So we just wanted to kind of shift the perceptions to be focused on like what is the client's success story and what we help them achieve. You know, did we have to go in and say, hey, we need to help, you know we need to help you renovate this bathroom to get to a successful, more, you know, to increase the ROI that we're going to get on selling your house Like. Let's focus on those stories and less on our our own stories.
Justin Armbruster:Yeah, absolutely. That's a great way to you know people don't care that your house just sold. You know you just listed something. You know they will read a story and they can relate to a story and you know that's, that's fantastic.
Tim Langhauser:That's my wife's gift. Her gift is she is the storyteller Awesome.
Chad Armbruster:That's good. It's nice that you guys have a complimentary relationship.
Tim Langhauser:Things that have different strengths oh yeah, that's got to help it's definitely a benefit that most people probably don't have is we are polar opposites as far as personalities, but as far as like drive and like our vision and what we want to do are exactly on the same train track that um story you said about the client calling up and asking if you had time.
Chad Armbruster:That kind of reminds me of you. You were telling me about that person.
Justin Armbruster:Yeah, I recently ran into. I had a client that was closed closed on a house for them. They're buying their first home and they told me afterwards they said, yeah, I was gonna call, you know so, and so, realtor, I know them, you know decently well, but they're just so busy. You know she's, you know, super busy at a yada. And when she told me that and of course she named, dropped her, and I was like I know so-and-so, I was like I sold twice as many houses as she did. But it's like sometimes it's how you position yourself with your marketing. It's you know you want people to know you're busy because you know you want to know you're in the market, you're active, you can handle anything. You don't need to give the impression that you're swamped and run around with my head cut off.
Tim Langhauser:What I think there's. We can be busy and producing and not in a state of chaos, and I think that some people on social media make it feel like their whole world is a state of chaos. Well then, that's the perception you're creating for the people that you're speaking with. It's like hey, I'm always just like this ball of I'm so busy all the time, and it's like it's a badge of honor. And again, like I was 100% that guy five, seven years ago, like I wanted to do this much business and this much. And then I have a business coach and we actually like scaled back with our business coach, like or at least I did. I'm like, look, I had a year I sold a hundred and I think 30, some 40, some houses by myself, and I'm like I never want to do that again.
Tim Langhauser:You know, as far as like the workload and just the the running and the chaos, and I was like I know where my sweet spot is and I was like and this is where I want to hit every year and anything else we can funnel down into our team.
Chad Armbruster:Yeah, that's, that's, that's good. So can you share your, you know, most interesting referral success story and what you believe contributed to that success?
Tim Langhauser:than what you believe contributed to that success. I think our. So it was fun. Two years ago we had our 10th anniversary party for Compass Home Group, like 10 years being in business. We wanted to celebrate, so we invited really it was mostly family, friends, vendors, loved ones but we invited probably about two tables of clients specifically, one of which was like the client who bought and sold the most with us personally. The other one was this set of brothers who I met him in an open house. Um, what they were? I think he was getting engaged at the time.
Tim Langhauser:One of them but this family that I met at an open house was we were rewarding, that kind of like celebrating them. We gave them like a prize that was kind of, you know, dedicated just to them and their lifestyle and um, but they're, they're them getting into our big mouth club and attracting our events. They became, they were the top referring client we've ever had. You know they're they're firefighters, so they got us into, like their firehouse and got us into their family and the ping pong of like just the amount of referrals that they've given us. You know, I can probably list a dozen names of people and we had them all like on a list Like here are all the people you connected us with and those connections led to these connections. So that was probably the funnest one. Hayes Brothers oh, that's cool. So okay, so that was that was probably the funnest one at Hayes brothers.
Justin Armbruster:Oh, that's cool. So okay, so you had, you showed them the tree of. You know your relationships, you know your direct ones here led to these ones here. Oh, that would. I bet that'd be super rewarding for some clients because you know, as a business owner, you know we track those things. You know that's our livelihood on who's referring. You know, um, that's our livelihood on who's referring. You know who's bought and sold. And so I even think through some of my past clients, you know and I track. You know how I got all my business.
Tim Langhauser:I'm like I bet some of those, you know, after four or five years of time or whenever they would love to hear that. Yeah, and I mean internally, like some of the things that we don't necessarily do externally is, but internally, you know, every quarter in our newsletter, anybody who refers us someone, whether they use us, they don't use us, they choose to go with someone else, we drop their name in a hat and you know we do a quarterly referral giveaway and we send them this. You know it's like a one-page flyer. It's like, hey, here are four different things, you know a gift card to Home Depot, a solar stove, a Yeti cooler, what.
Tim Langhauser:What do you want? Like thanks for connecting us? You won this quarter. What do you want? And we're going to order and deliver to your house. We just want to celebrate it, absolutely. You know, at the end of the year it's kind of the same thing Anyone who referred us and connected us with at least two people who bought or sold, we custom delivered them like these, you know, 18-inch marble and wood charcuterie boards with, like, their name engraved through it. Oh, I love it.
Chad Armbruster:So is the Big Mouth Club. Is that something that You're really into this Big Mouth Club. I am interested in this I think it's an amazing idea, but so, is it the type of thing that, okay, you're just internally putting them into it? Or do you say, hey, would you like to be a part of the Big Mouth Club? And is there like a? And this is the benefits of being in the Big Mouth Club, you know you get invited to all of our events? Or or you, you know you get entered into these drawings.
Justin Armbruster:I mean what? What do you do if you refer Tim, a client? You could figure this out firsthand.
Chad Armbruster:You know anyone looking to buy in the Baltimore area? We can get you in. Yeah, that's going to be tough.
Tim Langhauser:But no. So I mean we talk about it all the time. When we first meet our client it's a buyer consult or a listing appointment. It's in our presentation. There's pages dedicated to you. For two reasons we explain what it is and the second reason is we tell them it's not derogatory for us to call our people big mouths, just so they understand. Like when we're on social media we're tagging someone like, hey, thanks for your big mouth. Like this isn't a bad thing, just so you know that. But no, we talk about it all the time, and I mean as soon as, as soon as they're referring us business, they're connecting with us, they've used us to buy, sell, they're under agreement, like they're invited into this club. And you know it's extremely rare that somebody gets kicked out. It does happen, you know. If we sold someone a house four years ago and they listed their house with someone else, you know it's ultimately like hey you're, you know, kudos to you.
Tim Langhauser:I hope they, that agent you use, is doing the same thing.
Chad Armbruster:Yeah, hopefully they have their own big mouth club.
Tim Langhauser:Yeah.
Chad Armbruster:But they're not going to go on your train to New York city.
Tim Langhauser:No, no, they're not. They're not going to come and drive my train.
Justin Armbruster:That's good, cool Tim. As we wrap up our time, we like to end with just some rapid fire questions. Just first thing that kind of comes to your head, we'll just shoot it to you, you ready?
Tim Langhauser:Okay. Zillow realtorcom or homescom what do you recommend to clients use?
Justin Armbruster:For the client to use.
Tim Langhauser:Neither've gotten that, yeah but I know that they all lean towards zillow.
Justin Armbruster:Yeah, I just know what they do yeah, actually they mostly lean towards zillow and redfin yeah, oh yeah, a lot of redfin. Yeah, it was a trick question. The right answer neither. But yes, are you an office guy or a home office guy? Office guy, office guy? Instagram or Facebook?
Tim Langhauser:Facebook timeline, instagram reels.
Justin Armbruster:Love it. It checks out Podcast or book Book. Who is your most influential coach, mentor or influencer that you listen to for real estate?
Tim Langhauser:Probably honestly, tom Ferry.
Justin Armbruster:Tom Ferry. Yeah, yeah, what do you like about Tom Ferry?
Tim Langhauser:You know I think he speaks to every agent at every level, whether whether you want to come into real estate and you want to help supplement your household income and do six, 10, 12 houses a year and know that that's your goal. This is all I want to do and that's fine. Or if you want to go and you want to dominate and build a business that is in four different States doing a thousand transactions, he speaks to that. That is in four different states doing a thousand transactions, he speaks to that and I think that's a big thing, is like everyone's internal goal doesn't need to be somebody else's goal. Yeah, what's the most impactful book you've read, most impactful from real estate side of it?
Justin Armbruster:It's got to either be the one thing or the millionaire real estate agent all right, I haven't read millionaire real estate agent, but I hear nothing but raving things about it.
Tim Langhauser:That needs to be added to my list, it's kind of how I mean we moderate our business off that book okay, okay, um, what's the most underrated app that you have in your phone, either business or personal I'm gonna pull my phone up and see what I use the most. I'm like the most under I mean my newest favorite one's ChatGPT. Yeah. Because I you know I'm well-educated, but my English is like, or my grammar is atrocious.
Tim Langhauser:So it's really just like hey, I know what I want to say Help me, just make it sound a little smarter.
Justin Armbruster:You sound like me. Instead of sending it to my wife to read, you know whether it's something I'm putting together, a marketing piece or whatever, or a long email, it's like hey, throw it in the chat. Gpt, Fix the grammar, Make this sound a little bit more polished.
Tim Langhauser:But take out those big words. I don't use those. Yeah, that's it. Like I don't want it to write anything for me.
Justin Armbruster:I just want it to rewrite what I'm already, you know, putting out there. Love it. Finally, if a listener wanted to refer a client to you, what local areas do you serve and what would be the best way to get in touch with you?
Tim Langhauser:Yeah, sure. So I mean we are basically the greater Baltimore area, baltimore City, baltimore County, hartford County, everything that's kind of Baltimore City Northeast to up until like Southern Pennsylvania. And we're actually getting our license in Delaware now as well, because we spent some of our time on the Eastern Shore, so we sell houses down on the Eastern Shore as well.
Justin Armbruster:Love it Awesome, Tim. Hey, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been. This has been awesome. Appreciate your time. Thanks, Tim.
Tim Langhauser:No problem.
