Real Estate Sessions Rewind - March 2023 - Kurt Uhlir, Chief Marketing Officer

Kurt Uhlir is a man of many talents with an extensive tech and entrepreneurship background and unconventional experiences in high-angle rescue operations, scuba diving, and stunt work. As he transitioned to real estate, he brought a wealth of knowledge and skills, such as spatial data analysis, website creation, gaming, and targeted advertising, giving him a unique approach to the industry. Uhlir's perspective on transitioning to real estate revolves around the idea that agents should see themselves as representatives of brokerage and independent business entities. He underscores the importance of agents owning their website, a central hub for their marketing efforts. Furthermore, he highlights the significance of maintaining a clean database of contacts and the value of past clients and referrals. His experiences have shaped his belief that agents should take control of their marketing strategies and prioritize building their personal brand in the real estate industry.(00:01:47) Early Exposure to Tech through Family Involvement(00:06:00) Alligator Handling and Stunt Experience Mirrored(00:14:30) Revolutionizing Real Estate with Spatial Data Technology(00:15:51) Standardizing Data for Real Estate Success(00:20:30) "Real Estate Transition: Unique Marketing Insights"(00:25:46) Modern Search Tools on Agent Websites(00:35:14) Maximizing Agent Success Through Personal WebsitesTranscript00:00:00 - Bill RisserHi, everybody. Welcome to another Real Estate Sessions Rewind. This week we're going back to March of 2023 with marketing expert Kurt Uhlir, as well as some expertise in some other areas, which I'll save for the introduction. So enjoy.00:00:15 - Kurt UhlirBut if it's your business, do you have a site with technology that you control that that is the focal point for anything else that you do marketing wise, whether you're great with email and KVcore or follow up boss or you're wonderful on TikTok or social like, when those algorithms change, when Google spam filters change, have you trained your audience to come find you on kurtulur.com? And that's that second big thing, because then it doesn't matter where you choose to invest in marketing, you have a central hub that everything focuses back to.00:00:47 - Bill RisserYou're listening to the real estate sessions, and I'm your host, Bill Risser. With nearly 25 years in the real estate business, I love to interview industry leaders, up and comers, and really anyone with a story to tell. It's the stories that led my guests to a career in the real estate world that drives me into my 9th year and nearly 400 episodes of the podcast. And now, I hope you enjoy the next journey. Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode 348 of the Real Estate Sessions podcast. As always, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much for telling a friend. Today. We're going to have a lot of fun. Today we are talking to Kurt Uhlir. This guy did a lot of things prior to the world of real estate, including stuntman scuba rescue and high angle rescue. And he's a certified alligator handler. Yes. That's the first time I've ever mentioned that phrase on the real estate sessions podcast. So you want to listen in? Let's get this thing started. Kurt, welcome to the podcast.00:01:45 - Kurt UhlirHey, thanks for having me, Bill.00:01:47 - Bill RisserWell, look, most of my listeners know that I like to start at the beginning. I really, I am fascinated where people come from, how they got to be where they're at. And so the easiest way to start with that is, is your childhood. And I'm going to go, I'm going to ask you, looking at some of the things I could. In my research, I found out that it seems like you were preordained to have a life in tech and entrepreneurship. Let's talk about that. Your parents, I think your father was early on in this game, if you wanted to call it that. So let's talk about what role that your mom and dad played getting you.00:02:21 - Kurt UhlirYeah, my dad was. I'd say a glorified grunt at actually, Bell Labs used to be like the apple or Tesla of the day. And so I build my first hours thanks to him, when I was like eight or nine with Bell Labs. So I was really good at math, even very early on. And my dad was the person that would take all like, say, cell phones. Now somebody else came up with the whole network on schematics, and he would lead the teams to actually go build it in the field and so, and take what was on paper and make it, make it reality. And they'd had some problems and he happened to take me in an office and I solved something they'd been struggling with. And he was like, well, we pay people for this. So he built hours for it. So I got to be around some high techs very early on, but it was just also weird from a tech perspective. And I didn't think about it was growth takes time. And my dad is blessed with one of those people where he didn't sleep. And so, like, until he had cancer the third time, I think he slept an hour to an hour and a half a night. Then he started sleeping more like a normal person. And so between, he just put in more hours than anybody I'd ever seen. And my mom just had this country work ethic where, I mean, I remember, like, I mean, I did spend, we moved to Alabama when I was eleven. I mean, I still remember, I was probably like seven, maybe eight, in Michigan where we had cat outages when we lived in Chicago. And like, it's, it's late at night, late enough that the moon is way up in the sky. And I just remember telling my mom, like, when can we go to bed? Well, we were out, like, raking leaves for this like one acre, like, garden that she had. She's like, we'll go to sleep when we're done. Wow. That work ethic, I didn't even, I had no, there's no way I could ever go and pay for that kind of like, basically coaching and consulting that taught me, like, what it's like and exposure to both working hard and really just like, technology at an early age.00:04:15 - Bill RisserYeah, I think that, that probably drives into the fact that when you attended school, you went to Vanderbilt, which very cool school, you were a track athlete, you loved running, and, which is, for me, that's, that's, I don't get that, but that's awesome for you. And, and I think you, you talked about the fact that, you know, being an athlete and having that discipline and all of the stuff that that takes, especially at a collegiate level, really primed you for what you're going to do in your life, you know, running companies and growing businesses and things. Let's talk about that.00:04:47 - Kurt UhlirYeah. I mean, even now, it's like, you know, if you want to ring my bell, if I'm hiring something, like, I love hiring athletes and healthy addicts, and, I mean, every, every athlete is a healthy addict. But I mean, to say that in terms of people that have had, like, true, like. Like, bad addictions but have overcome that, I mean, that's a huge kind of, like, that's a process into itself. But, I mean, as an athlete, it's like, there's nothing you could do, like, from a running perspective or pick any sport where you could make up for a week or three weeks of, like, screwing off by just going and make up practice in one day. And so, like, I was running, you know, 60, sometimes 120 miles a week, especially, like, in the summer when we're working on things. And it's like, you couldn't. You can't do all of that mileage, like, in one or two days. It has to be spread out. So it's small things done consistently, which is what it takes to be successful running companies. I mean, at the end of the day, it's perseverance that wins. Perseverance and operations. Like, everybody has good ideas. I mean, and good ideas and bad ideas. Like, they're the. They feel the exact same until you realize that a bad idea was bad and you shouldn't have been doing it for six months. But what matters is operations and just putting in the time you get out of school.00:06:00 - Bill RisserAnd I, first of all, you have the most varied background of anyone in the tech world that I've ever interviewed. And. And I'm probably, you know, this is episode 348, so there's a lot of people I've chatted with, but I'm going to throw some things out there, like stuntman, unbelievable, a certified alligator handler. And I live in Florida now, so that really is intriguing to me. And a member of something called high angle and scuba rescue teams. I get the scuba part right, especially with what I'm watching in California, where I grew up, there's a lot of rescue going on in water. But let's talk about, first of all, what's high angle rescue and then really, alligators?00:06:41 - Kurt UhlirYes. On both, it goes back to largely, I mean, to my dad as well. I mean, I picked up those genes where I do not need to sleep like most people. And so I'm in my mid forties. But, you know, when you only sleep two or 3 hours a night, you get more hours to do things. And so, like, when my wife and I got married, it was like, hey, do you want to go to. Do you want to go to go to bed with me or wake up with me? And I asked her that a couple weeks before we got married, and she was like, it took her a minute. She was like, you do email me at, like, 03:00 in the morning. And then, like, that was just like a mind shift for her. And I was like, so I get a little bit more time. But literally, I became a member of the Alabama state rescue squad in Marshall County, Alabama, at 14, shouldn't have been able to, but there was a bad ice storm, and in the county, there were four total people, my dad and me being two of them, that could drive on the snow and ice that we had. And so he got permission at the. At the state level for me to join the rescue squad. And