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Mindy East: I say that visibility plus relationships equals opportunity. And there's so much talk right now about visibility. Be visible, be visible. I get it, and I think that's half the equation. But visibility alone does not equal credibility and trust.
Welcome to The Justin Landis Show, your real estate podcast about having conversations, building relationships, and creating freedom.
Justin Landis: Today I have a special guest with me, Mindy East. Mindy, thanks for being here.
Mindy East: Thank you for having me.
Justin Landis: Mindy is the CEO and founder of Lime Rock Consulting, a sought-after keynote speaker. Today she's going to be talking about one of her expertises, which is networking, both in person and online, which I think is a huge topic for real estate agents. Mindy, thanks for being here today. We're excited to have you.
Mindy East: It's like my favorite thing to talk about, so it's my pleasure.
Justin Landis: You told me that you usually start out when you speak by asking people if they've had formal networking training. How many hands go up usually when you ask that?
Mindy East: It really doesn't matter the size of the room, to be honest. It could be 50 people or 500 people. Almost none. Almost every event, no hands go up. And I thought about that and realized we have not only a need, but networking has changed over the years too. So even if someone had been taught, I doubt they were taught the modern way.
Justin Landis: Why is it that people, I mean, you hear all the time, you should network, you should meet people. People are paying thousands of dollars to go to networking events and have no training.
Mindy East: Once I thought about this, I was like, wow, I have no training. I've paid thousands of dollars to go to networking events. Why is it that people don't have any training on this? I think a couple things. I think people don't necessarily view networking as a skill, the way sales is a skill, and they may think networking and sales are the same thing. I personally believe they're not. Networking gets you a relationship to eventually sell to, if it's even a qualified lead. You don't want to just sell to people if you don't know they're a qualified lead. I also think people think if you're extroverted, you're good at it, and if you're introverted, you're not. That is a complete myth. Honestly, I think introverted people are often better networkers because they're such great listeners.
Justin Landis: I want to break this down. But before we do, there's also a difference between in-person networking and online networking. Tell me why you think both are important, and then let's dig into each one individually.
Mindy East: When people think of LinkedIn, I want to clarify, when I talk about virtual networking, I mainly mean LinkedIn, because it was designed to be the largest networking platform in the world. It wasn't designed to be like Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok. When it first came out, everyone thought of it as somewhere you go if you're looking for a job or hiring. We know that's changed. It's not just for job seekers, and it's incredibly powerful for keeping in touch with people. So the modern day networking formula is a combo of in-person and virtual networking. In-person is fantastic. We can build relationships almost faster because we can look someone eye to eye and really connect. But what happens after we leave that event? That's where LinkedIn is golden. You can post, comment on their post, connect with them before you even leave, and stay visible and memorable in between. When we think it's either LinkedIn or in-person, we're leaving opportunities on the table, because when they work together, that's when people see the best results.
Justin Landis: And you actually have an equation for that opportunity, right?
Mindy East: I do. I say visibility plus relationships equals opportunity. There's so much talk right now about visibility. Be visible, be visible. I get it, and I think that's half the equation. But visibility alone does not equal credibility and trust. It just doesn't. This isn't the same field, but imagine driving down the road and you see a billboard for a lawyer who handles accidents. You know him, you see him, he may even come to mind because you see the commercials all the time. But you don't necessarily pick up the phone, because you just don't know that person. So visibility is super important, and if we don't have it, we're missing out. But relationships are just as important. When we view networking as transactional, like I went to an event, collected business cards, came home and put them in a spreadsheet, that is networking, we're missing the key piece, which is relationships. When people say, Mindy, I have a great network, I have tons of people I can call, but if they don't have visibility in today's hyper-connected world, we're out of sight, out of mind. It doesn't mean they don't trust you, because when you have a relationship with someone, you do trust them more. The average professional gets 121 emails a day, not even counting texts, Slack, and everything else. So visibility is important, relationships are important, and together, that's where the magic happens.
Justin Landis: I'm stealing that equation. It is absolutely spot on. Let's talk about each of those for real estate agents. What do you see on the relationship side and the visibility side where there's more opportunity for them?
Mindy East: I'll start with visibility. A lot of business owners and entrepreneurs go straight to where they personally consume information and scroll. That can work, maybe they love Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, and they build a platform there. It's not a waste of time, because if you're there, people like you are there too. But not all of your ideal clients are just like you. LinkedIn, or even YouTube, are built to be searchable. I really want to concentrate on LinkedIn, because it's not a place to go viral, it doesn't matter if you go viral there. It's a place to keep relationships intact over time. If I were a real estate agent, I'd start with the minimum requirement on LinkedIn, which is posting once a week. You may not know this: 99.6% of LinkedIn users do not post.
Justin Landis: Whoa. I did not know that. I would have guessed it's high, but not that high.
Mindy East: 99.6%. LinkedIn's own research tells us you only have to post once a week to get visible, because no one's posting. They're scrolling and curating their feed to learn business information, but they're not posting. So if a real estate agent is busy, which we all are, and you want to be visible, the low-hanging fruit is once a week on LinkedIn.
Justin Landis: Once a week. And then the relationship piece.
Mindy East: Here's what I see as a consumer. I'm in one of those big Facebook moms groups, and it's become comical. Before anyone posts anything real estate related, they say, please don't spam me with DMs, I'm just asking a question. And inevitably you see the feed: comment, comment, comment, I'm a realtor, I'm a realtor, I'm a realtor. It's like playing the lottery, because one of you might get picked, but most of you don't have a relationship with that person, you've probably never posted in the group before, you're only there to catch these posts and go straight to DMs. It's like when you have all these people giving you directions at the same time and you're like, stop, wait, just give me a minute, I know you can all help me. That's what it feels like, and it's become kind of a joke in the group because everyone knows it's going to happen. If I were a real estate agent in a mom's group like that, I'd just be an active participant as a human. Talk about back to school, talk about vacation, talk about all these normal things. Then when someone posts and you comment, that person recognizes your name. It's kind of like the ketchup aisle at the grocery store, how are there 300 kinds of ketchup? We all want to stand out, and there might be a better bottle than another, but no one's going to go try every single one to find out. So if I were building a relationship as a real estate agent, I'd get to know people on the human side and forget the pitching side. Then that person is going to think of you when they have a need.
Justin Landis: You were just telling me an example about your real estate agent, Vicki. I want everybody to hear this because I preach this kind of thing all the time, and I'd love to hear it from the consumer side, having a good experience of someone building a relationship and being visible with you. What's your relationship with Vicki been like?
Mindy East: I've been in San Antonio for six years. We moved here during the pandemic. I actually flew down in the summer of 2020, we were all masked and you weren't even really supposed to fly. I found her on the internet, to be honest, through a search, because I wanted somebody who really understood neighborhoods, and she was the person who came up. From the moment I met her, six years ago, she really cared about my family. I have two autistic children, I have a husband, I wanted to not have a crazy commute. She really listened to my needs, and that was a great experience. But six years later, she's still commenting. I posted our back-to-school pictures two weeks ago, and Vicki commented, like she always does. She never reaches out to say, hey Mindy, do you know anyone buying or selling a house. She just stays top of mind. It's literally, I hope your kids have a great year. It's the relationship piece. I've referred a lot of business to her, and everyone's been equally happy. But there's other things too. She does this annual pie giveaway a week before Thanksgiving. She drives two hours to the best pie place in Texas, gets all of our orders, and we come to her house, which is amazingly decorated for Christmas, and takes pictures with us in front of the tree. Not one sales conversation in there. I feel like Vicki has become a friend who is a realtor, not a realtor who just comments on my stuff.
Justin Landis: Well, that's powerful. What a great story. Way to go, Vicki, that is absolutely awesome.
Mindy East: She's really great, and she did know all the information about the neighborhoods, she really had the expertise too, which is why I initially wanted to work with her. But the reason I stayed, and the reason I'm comfortable referring my friends, even my friends' kids who are buying houses, I tell them go straight to Vicki, she'll take care of you, is because she saw me as the whole person and continued to build a relationship many years later. And the funny thing is, the house next door to us is for sale right now, and guess who's the agent? Vicki. She's not out of sight, out of mind either.
Justin Landis: I am so glad you shared that story, that is going to be powerful for the listeners. I'll chime in on the LinkedIn piece. At the beginning of 2025, someone said to me, Justin, you should put stuff on LinkedIn, you should do stuff on LinkedIn. It wasn't exactly the same thing you were saying, but it's ended up being that. They said LinkedIn is basically all business and very positive, and that's you. I was like, oh, I do like business and I am very positive, this does seem like it would be a better format for me. So I started posting and engaging on it. Before that I was on there very little, basically only when we needed to hire someone. It's been really great for me. I've consistently posted, if anybody looks up my LinkedIn profile and connects with me there, I post multiple times a week, I comment with lots of people, I've met a lot of people, and a good amount of business has come through it. So I'd encourage other real estate agents to take Mindy's advice, put stuff on there, and don't think of it as another thing you've got to do on your list. You can repurpose information you already have. If I'm sending out a weekly market update in my email list, I could put that on LinkedIn, right?
Mindy East: Not only could you, you should. You should repurpose any email communication you're already doing with your clients, and I'll tell you why. When people search for you, whether we like it or not, even if an agent had a LinkedIn profile in college and hasn't looked at it, or had one five years ago, it doesn't matter how old it is. When you search someone's name, their LinkedIn profile comes up, even if it's old and stale, because LinkedIn is the 18th most frequented website in the world. Their SEO is crazy. But here's the thing most people don't realize: when you post on LinkedIn, articles and repurposed newsletters are really powerful too, because they get a URL. A regular post doesn't get a URL, but an article or a newsletter on LinkedIn does. So when you do that, you're now searchable. Your newsletter that was originally just going to someone's private inbox is now information online where people can learn about your expertise. It's the lowest hanging fruit out there. Even if you never post, but you repurpose your weekly newsletter on LinkedIn, you're golden.
Mindy East: I know reviews are very important in real estate. Recommendations on LinkedIn are equally important, and I'll tell you why: they're searchable too.
Justin Landis: This is a great transition, keep going.
Mindy East: So here's the thing. I went down a big rabbit trail recently. I heard an AI speaker, and she was amazing. Afterward I went up to her and said, wait, this really affects what I do in a different way. Of course I use AI as a business owner, I love it, it's great. But I didn't realize how it impacted networking. Here's the quick overview: as much as many of us love Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, Meta has locked down their sites. If you're using Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, or ChatGPT and they search your name, those platforms are not going to come up.
Justin Landis: I did not know that until you told me. That's kind of scary.
Mindy East: Yes, it's kind of scary. I'm not telling you not to use those platforms, if they work for you, go for it. But what I'm telling you is, if you're not posting in a way AI can find you, that matters, because we know Google is basically a verb, we say I'm going to Google something. But now AI is getting 39% of the searches. And even if someone does a Google search, the first thing that comes up is often a Gemini answer. So if 39% of people are going straight to AI to search, we should start thinking about what we're doing to feed that, so it knows we're the subject matter expert. There are three top ways AI is pulling to understand your reputation. It's pulling your website for sure, but to validate your reputation, when I say I'm a networking expert, they want to validate that. The first is Reddit, honestly I don't know much about Reddit myself, it's something I need to learn, but as soon as I start talking about the word Reddit I start getting ads for services to optimize your Reddit for you. There's a service for everything. Reddit is really the main first thing that comes up. The next is LinkedIn, and the last is YouTube. Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube. I view the lowest hanging fruit of all of those as LinkedIn.
Mindy East: And if you're using Reels on any other platform, immediately start putting them on YouTube Shorts too. You don't have to have a long-form video on YouTube, just start putting the shorts up, and fill in as much information as you can in the caption, because that's searchable on YouTube too. Of course LinkedIn is the largest networking platform, so I feel like it's actually easier and cheaper. A lot of talk right now is about optimizing websites to be GEO friendly, and I'm spending a lot of money doing that for my own website, so yes, it's important. But what about an agent who's just starting out?
Justin Landis: Let's get some advice for an agent who doesn't have a marketing department or a web developer. They're thinking, how am I going to do this?
Mindy East: I honestly think you should start strategically growing your network on LinkedIn. There are really three things professionals need to have in place. One, build the right profile. It should not look like your online resume if you're not looking for a job. Think about yourself in the right way to attract your ideal client. Two, intentionally grow your network. That can be never leaving a networking event without connecting with someone on LinkedIn. I teach this inside my program, Networking School, how to grow your network and what that should look like, really low-hanging fruit, easy ways to grow it. When you think about LinkedIn versus Facebook or Instagram, when you post on those other platforms, you post and kind of pray someone follows you. But on LinkedIn, you can actually invite people, talk to them in the DMs, have a two-way relationship. So grow your network, and last but not least, post some piece of content once a week. If you can get recommendations on there too, that's awesome. And you don't need the premium platform. I always tell people if they want to try premium, which is an extra $34 a month, try it for a month, you can cancel anytime, there are perks to it for sure. But if I were just starting out and money was tight, I'd be focusing my time and energy on LinkedIn.
Justin Landis: This has been so practical, I'm going to summarize and wrap it up here. 39% of searches are AI driven, and they don't pull from Meta, so we need to think about how we're being seen. LinkedIn is a free, easy way to do it. Optimize your profile, grow your network, post once a week. On YouTube, agents are making a lot more video content than they have historically, but I don't think many people are putting it up as shorts, they're primarily leaving it on Instagram or Facebook. Putting it on YouTube too has no additional cost.
Mindy East: No additional cost. You're already making the content, so let's take what we're emailing out, the content we're already making, and make sure we're getting the best use out of it, so we have visibility to go along with the relationships we all know are so important.
Justin Landis: Mindy, I think this is absolute gold today. I really appreciate you sharing this with the audience.
Mindy East: You're welcome. I really love helping any entrepreneur succeed. Information is power, and if people don't understand modern day networking, how to be seen, and why relationships are so important, honestly more important than ever in a hyper-connected world, we're missing out on opportunity, and I hate to see that.
Justin Landis: For sure. If somebody's listening and they want to raise their hand next time and say, yes, I've had professional help, how can they follow you, connect with you, and see if it makes sense to get some actual professional training on modern networking?
Mindy East: I'd encourage everyone to follow me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or YouTube, those are my three channels. If you go to my LinkedIn, you'll immediately see a button at the top that says Join Networking School. That's my signature program where I teach in-depth everything we talked about today. It's actually an inexpensive program, and everyone gets a week free if they want to try it. When you go to my LinkedIn, you're going to see that button, and I think it's a perfect program for real estate agents.
Justin Landis: I love it. Go to Mindy East's LinkedIn. If you hadn't answered that question with LinkedIn, I was going to give you a hard time for not practicing what you preach, but you are practicing what you preach.
Mindy East: My LinkedIn is one-stop shopping. You're going to find how to contact me, everything. It's my online billboard, I call it my online billboard.
Justin Landis: I love it. Go to Mindy's LinkedIn, sign up for one week free, learn how to modern network, and then we'll be able to have the relationship plus visibility equals opportunity. Mindy, thanks so much again for being here today. Everybody, make sure that you like or subscribe so you don't miss a single episode, and we will see you again next week.
