Molly Wolchansky is the owner of The Agent Nest, a SaaS that provides digital and print content to real estate agents. She has experienced exponential growth and is expected to reach $10,000 in MRR by September. The $32/month plan grants access to all content, while the $59/month plan includes scheduled posting. Customers can now post directly from the platform to their business pages. The narrator has a background in entrepreneurial mindset, having sold aluminum foil vessels from a refrigerator for 25 cents.
The Agent Nest is a SaaS that provides real estate agents with digital and print content. Molly Wolchansky established the business. She receives roughly seventy-five trial signups each month and has experienced exponential growth. It is anticipated that she will attain $10,000 in MRR by September.
Who are you and what are you actively working on?
The owner of The Agent Nest is myself. My name is Molly Wolchansky, and I am 30 years old at the present time.
The Agent Nest is a SaaS that provides digital and print content to real estate agents. Two distinct monthly programs are available, one for $32 per month and the other for $59 per month. The $32/month plan grants access to all of our content, including, among others, social media posts with captions and hashtags, postcards, flyers, listing videos, listing templates, Instagram stories, and Facebook cover photos. Each piece of content contains a link to Canva, where users can customize the content to their liking. The $59/month plan includes scheduled posting, enabling users to schedule a month’s worth of social media postings in approximately 15 minutes by clicking the schedule icon next to each post. Our customers can now post directly from our platform to their Facebook business page, Instagram business page, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google business page because we have white-labeled with another company.
My job duties include content development, marketing, and customer service. I recognize it’s a lot! I’ve enlisted the assistance of several freelancers in content creation to alleviate stress.
What is your background and how did this concept develop?
I’ve always had an entrepreneurial mindset. Approximately five years ago, my sister and I used to peddle aluminum foil vessels from a refrigerator for 25 cents each. Even at that age, I desired to demonstrate that our “product” worked, so I filled a container with water and positioned the receptacles atop it. If the canoe did not float, I would redesign it so that it did. We performed comparable tasks frequently. We sold painted pebbles, notebook paper boats (which did not float), and aluminum foil boats, of course. We only made about a dollar.
I attended college and graduated with a degree in English. I launched an Etsy business specializing in long-distance relationships during my undergraduate years. The item that sold the most was a coffee mug depicting a long-distance relationship. When the glasses were joined, the dashed lines connected each location to its corresponding state. During this period, I also developed an appreciation for marketing and realized how much I enjoyed being an entrepreneur. I took some online marketing courses, and through extensive practice, my marketing skills improved. Before terminating the business, I generated nearly 2,000 sales over a three-year period.
I closed my Etsy shop because I had a new business concept in mind: real estate marketing. My mother is a real estate agent who required marketing assistance, so I began disseminating Canva-created content on all of her social media channels. Numerous acquaintances contacted her to inquire about the origin of her content. The penny abruptly dropped in my consciousness! I reached out to each individual, devised a monthly plan for them that was approximately $450 per month, and then established MoRealty Marketing. Among other duties, I would post on my client’s social media accounts daily, manage their comments and followers, and generate print materials for them. I carried out this duty for six years. It was too much work for a single person to handle. Then, after some time, I began designing advertisements for open houses, flyers, and videos, and people began approaching me to design their mailers, business cards, and logos. Keller Williams contacted me about teaching marketing seminars at a few of their offices, so I traveled throughout the Dallas metropolitan area and instructed large groups of real estate agents. My biggest mistake was saying “yes” to everyone, which resulted in my becoming overburdened. There was a maximum number of consumers I could manage simultaneously.
I came up with the concept for The Agent Nest in October of 2019. I desired to create a program that would operate autonomously and accommodate an infinite number of members. I also desired to create a company that was more cost-effective for the average real estate agent, as this was one of the most significant issues I encountered with Morealty Marketing. Fortunately, my fiancé is a programmer and also conducts his own SaaS, so we had numerous late-night discussions and brainstorming sessions to determine how to resolve these issues.
How can I acquire more customers?
How can I lower the cost?
How can I reduce my stress?
The Agent Nest was established after these questions were resolved.
How did you turn a concept into a product?
Late in October of 2019, I conceived of The Agent Nest, which we launched on January 1, 2020. My cofounder and I worked together to impart my vision for how I wanted everything to look. Each website page was hand-drawn on paper, and we began as a SaaS that required no coding. After our business began to grow, we decided to implement coding; we now use Vue and C#.
Due to my prior experience administering a comparable business, I determined that the startup expenses were reasonable. Approximately $500 was spent to establish the enterprise. We faced a number of obstacles. For instance, when a user registered, we wanted to ensure that they understood how to use The Agent Nest; however, the first few users were a bit perplexed. Despite the fact that it is fairly intuitive, we wanted to make sure that everyone was aware of all the features we had to offer. To rectify the situation, we created a landing page to which all registrants were redirected. On this landing page, we embedded a video walkthrough that I had created of the platform.
Regarding the introduction, we did not need much time. I have previously attended real estate conventions and have the contact information for all of my previous clients. I sent a mass email to approximately one thousand individuals on my email list to announce the launch of my new product. Wonderfully, I knew each individual personally and had met them before; consequently, we received signups from this group of individuals due to the trust I had established with them. In March, it erupted due to a Facebook advertisement that I created.
How did you expand your business using marketing strategies?
I decided to provide members with a two-week free trial in order to familiarize them with the program, and also because people tend to appreciate free trials! During the two-week free trial, the customer would receive emails with information on how to develop their real estate business, how to create business pages, and how to target their desired audience, among other topics. In addition to content, we desired for people to perceive that they were receiving value. The first demonstration of The Agent Nest began on January 6, 2020, and I was ecstatic! It was a former client of mine from Morealty Marketing. By the end of January, I had seven paying customers, and my MRR was $145. I increased the frequency of my Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest posts in February, created a Facebook group related to real estate, and introduced my first Facebook and Google ads. I had a limited marketing budget during this period, so it is understandable that I spent more than I earned. By the end of February, I had a total of 17 members and my MRR was $430. I was ecstatic that my MRR nearly tripled month-over-month, but I have a propensity to be self-critical. Can you believe that after only two months, I was exerting THIS much strain on myself? It hindered me more often than it helped me, but it strengthened my resolve. Since my marketing strategies from February 2020 appeared to be effective, I continued to use them in March 2020, but I extended the 14-day free trial to 30 days. I then created a Facebook advertisement with a monthly budget of $400 for this promotion. The Facebook ad was successful. By the end of March, I had 122 30-day trial signups, and my MRR was $517. My MRR increased to $2,443 in April, and my trial conversion rate was 65%.
After creating various real estate marketing-related boards, I began promoting my content on Pinterest in order to continue expanding The Agent Nest. I continue to pay approximately $75 per month for Pinterest advertisements and receive an average of 90,000 monthly page views. I’ve also hosted numerous real estate webinars and promoted them via Facebook Groups, pages, and ads. I thoroughly enjoyed being interviewed on the podcast “Getting your Real Estate Life Together” in August of 2020. Always available for podcast interviews!
How is your day going? What are your goals for the future?
Today is going incredibly well! Our growth has continued, and we receive approximately 75 trial signups per month. If this trajectory continues, we will reach 10,000 MRR by September, which is exciting!
In approximately one month, I will release a podcast. I have compiled a list of real estate agents to interview, and the podcast will concentrate on both successful and unsuccessful agents. How they became real estate agents, how they acquired their first listing, where they are now, etc. will be discussed. Each podcast episode will include a 10-second advertisement for The Agent Nest.
We are also working on a team sign-up plan in addition to a brokerage sign-up plan. Since many real estate agents are part of a team, we want teams to be able to sign up together and further customize their profiles. For example, we will add a section where users can add their team hashtags, location, etc., and these hashtags will populate automatically at the end of every social media caption on The Agent Nest.
I would also like to commence sending biweekly newsletters. Initially, I did this, but eventually I became too busy to continue.
When The Agent Nest’s monthly recurring revenue (MRR) reaches $10,000, I will hire personnel to assist with business operations.
I would like to discuss my path to my current position at real estate and SaaS conferences. This is the ultimate purpose!
What have been your most significant discoveries since establishing The Agent Nest?
Stop your negative self-talk: I would not be where I am today if I had given up every time I thought I was inadequate.
Respond to customers as promptly as possible: Whenever I saw an e-mail from a customer, I would think, “I’ll get back to them as soon as I finish this!” On occasion, I failed to do so. In a business, customer satisfaction should take precedence.
As you can probably tell, I am a bit of a perfectionist, so I always strive to achieve all of my goals. Previously, if I failed to achieve an objective, I would consider giving up. Now, if I don’t meet my desired MRR for a given month, I evaluate what I could have done differently and investigate why one month was different from the last.
Post daily on social media: Posting daily on social media, even if it’s something as simple as “Here’s my morning coffee!” is the best way to establish credibility and attract customers.””I also began uploading photos of myself at the office, photos of my clients, and even began a series called “Agent of the Week” that is adored by all.
What were the most challenging obstacles you overcame? What were your biggest mistakes?
When your entire program fails and your entire system goes to slumber, it is always extremely amusing. Thankfully, this has only happened once. I promptly sent an email to all of my customers apologizing for the inconvenience and informing them that we were diligently working to resolve the problem. I was distressed and began to engage in cascading thought processes. What if the program never returns? What if everyone gives me poor ratings? What-if, what-if, what-if I try to avoid listening to “what-ifs” because they are not particularly useful. My beloved author, Shel Silverstein, composed a poem about the “What-ifs” that reside in people’s imaginations. Strongly suggested.
As far as competitors in this industry are concerned, there are a variety of platforms that provide social media posts and print marketing for real estate agents. Attempting to differentiate ourselves from the competition was one of the greatest challenges we faced as a company, and my biggest error was excessively comparing myself to the competition. This is not an intelligent line of thought; I would frequently feel discouraged and want to give up because I kept telling myself, “I will never be as successful as they are.” I needed to put more of that negative discourse behind me and focus on how I could be somewhat different. In May, we made the decision to White-label with another company, allowing our customers to post directly from The Agent Nest to their social media accounts. This was a moment of decision! We figured out how to distinguish ourselves from our competitors by being the only company in our industry to offer this platform capability. Additionally, we were able to add a second plan, with access to the scheduling feature costing $59 per month versus $32 per month for basic website access. I am ecstatic that we accomplished that!
I also encountered improper budgeting as a problem. I am the sort of person who believes that one should invest significantly in marketing, and we spend approximately $1,500 per month on advertisements on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. I was negligent for a period of one month. Typically, I create multiple Facebook advertisements concurrently and allot the same daily budget to each. I determine which advertisement is performing the best after approximately three days and terminate the others. Once, I failed to do so, and I was forced to pay $1,000 for an ineffective and ineffective advertisement. That was an effort! I am now more vigilant!
Which resources and instruments do you recommend?
We utilize ConvertKit for all of our email automation. Drift has been an exceptional instrument! We have deployed Drift on both the frontend and backend of the website to facilitate communication between members and prospective members.
For further information
Website, Facebook, and Pinterest are a few places where you can find out more about my business.
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