Beatty is recognized as one of the leading experts in professional-to-consumer marketing. His professional career began in 1997 when he formed a marketing company to service the booming telecommunications industry. His clientele was composed of independent sales professionals for whom he developed proprietary marketing technologies. These technologies helped clients generate ongoing sources of pre-qualified prospects for their services. One sales manager in Ohio exclaimed her sales team had increased their sales by ten times after using Beatty’s technology for only five months. As other clients began hitting sales records, word of their success began to spread. Beatty’s business grew and, altogether, has serviced tens of thousands of independent sales professionals. During the first 15 years, Beatty successfully applied his expertise in over 15 industries including health & wellness, weight loss, legal, accounting, travel, medical benefits, nutritional supplements and more.
In 2012, Beatty turned his focus to serving the residential real estate community. He had a vision of doing something agents had never been able to do before: identify sellers before they came on the market so they could get the listing first. Using marketing and technology he had previously perfected, Beatty launched Master Grabber in 2012, which quickly became one of the leading marketing companies helping agents generate more listings.
Beatty consistently pushes the “marketing envelope” testing and finding new ways to deliver increased results to his clients. This vigorous pursuit has led to a number of never-created-before marketing services filling needs most agents and other sales professionals have no solutions for. It has produced patent-pending technologies, expansion into the residential mortgage industry, the title industry, and beyond.
3:51– What is Master Grabber? Where did you get the name? What do you do?
7:08– My long story told short…
10:12– My faith journey
11:47– How does your faith shape your leadership and how you run your company?
17:04– A word of advice
19:29– How do you try to mentor the next generation of leader?
24:58– What do you see as the next phase or season of life for you in business? And how do you see the Lord using you in the marketplace?
26:03– The 4:23 question
Full Transcript:
Ray: Hello everyone. This is Ray Hilbert. I am your host here at Bottom Line Faith. And we would like to welcome you back to another episode. This is the program where we have the incredible privilege of traveling across the country, and we get to talk and meet with and interview some of the top Christ-following business owners and leaders in the country. We have interviewed start-up business leaders and owners; we’ve interviewed very mature company leaders, including CEOs of international companies, and celebrities, and athletes, and pretty much everything in between. But what every one of our guests have in common is they love Jesus, and they are hoping to live out their faith in the marketplace. And so the analogy, the word picture we like to use here at Bottom Line Faith, it’s where we lift the hood, and we tinker around in the engine of Christian leadership. We like to learn how they think, how they succeed, how they fail, how their faith plays a role in their daily decision making, and how they try to honor Jesus every day in the marketplace. And so that’s why we’re here, and we hope that you are encouraged by this program.
Just a couple of housekeeping things here before we get started in today’s program, if you’re a first-time listener, welcome to Bottom Line Faith. We sure are glad you’re here. And if you’re a long-time listener, welcome back. We’re glad you’re back with us. Check out our website at bottomlinefaith.org. That’s bottomlinefaith.org. You can go there and listen to dozens and dozens of our previous guests and interviews, and you can scroll to the bottom of the page there and you can become a regular subscriber; it is free of charge. You can check out our program out; every week a new program is out. You can become a subscriber there on the Google Play Store, iTunes, Stitcher, all the normal platforms to subscribe to the podcast. If you are a Christ-follower, you’re a business owner, president, or a CEO and you’re looking for a group of like-minded business owners and leaders to meet with on a regular basis and develop a deep community and help one another grow your businesses to God’s glory check out truthatwork.org. We are the host ministry for the Bottom Line Faith program. Click on that tab that says Roundtables and check it out; get in touch with us; we have roundtable groups in dozens of cities across the country with hundreds of companies involved, and we would love to have the opportunity to chat with you.
But why we’re here today, we are here today to talk with our guest Bottom Line Faith, Beatty Carmichael. He is the CEO of Master Grabber, and I’m going to go ahead and give you the website. If you’re intrigued by what you hear today, go to mastergrabber.com. You can learn about Beatty and his company, and really excited about this. I’m back in Birmingham, Alabama; I’ve said on previous interviews, it’s starting to feel like my home away from home. This is about my 9th or 10th time here. It’s an amazing city. If you’ve never been to Birmingham, it is beautiful, wonderful people, and I call it not only the Bible Belt, but this is the polished brass buckle at the Bible Belt. And so some amazing godly leaders down here. Beatty, welcome to Bottom Line Faith. How are you?
Beatty: I’m doing very well; thank you, Ray.
Ray: Well, you know, Master Grabber, what an interesting name. First of all, what is Master Grabber and where did you come up with that name?
Beatty: Well the name was pretty quick. The product that we started with was a better name called Listing Grabber; it was for real estate agents, and I needed a corporate name, so I just said well, Listing Grabber, Master Grabber, and that was literally the effort put into it. So that’s how I got the name.
Ray: Alright, so what is it that you do? What do people need to know about Master Grabber?
Beatty: Yeah, what we do is we work with residential real estate agents primarily, and maybe some in the mortgage industry, like loan officers, and we help them drive more sales. We are, our focus is professional to consumer marketing, not lead generation, but actual in the real estate world, you’d say, come list me now calls. How do you get people from the consumer side, either a personal database or geographic farm to actually trust you enough that they call you to sell their home? And that’s the type of stuff we work with.
Ray: So what’s that look like? So is this like a database, email-based marketing system? Or is it more comprehensive? Just give us a few pieces of the puzzle.
Beatty: The big picture, okay, is you have to understand why people choose you or why they don’t. And it’s not just real estate focus. It’s any type of business that you do where you have a you have a group of customers, and you have the provider of a service or a product. In marketing, there’s a concept known as outside perception versus inside reality. The way this applies to real estate, and what we do with our clients is the outside perceptions of most homeowner is that all agents are the same, that all they do is stick a sign in the yard, list a home in the MLS, and wait for someone else to bring a buyer. And because they believe that all agents have the same, they also believe, Ray, that it doesn’t matter which agent I choose, I’m going to sell my home, I can choose any agent I want and my home’s gonna sell on the same price for the same amount of time.
But if you look on the real estate agent side, there’s a huge difference between one agent and another. And so we typically work with the other upper-level clientele of agents. And so when you look at them, and their skill, and the expertise, their tenacity, their drive, and doing the best job for their client, everything from pricing to preparation to promotion to negotiating on the offer, there’s a significant difference. So the concept is if their people, if the people in their database or the neighborhoods that they marketed understood their skill, their expertise, and their tenacity at the same level that the agent understood it, then those consumers would choose no other agent besides that, that one. And so what we do primarily is we are a boutique marketing firm, we come alongside our agents, and we enhance what they do in marketing so that their list gets a better idea of who they are. So it drives more sales to them. That’s the thumbnail sketch of what it is we do.
Ray: It’s really fascinating to me, and I love to hear what problem that businesses are trying to solve, right? And so all the things that you, and you’ve had businesses, and you know, you’ve been successful in other industries. And so what was it about this problem that really attracted you to say, I want to solve that problem?
Beatty: 20 years ago, I’ll share my short story, or I’ll share my long story shortly because the only way to answer that question is to go back 20 years ago, I was a stay at home dad, unemployed. My wife was a stay at home, unemployed mom, we had a two-year-old, we had a baby that came that year, she had a root canal that came that year that we had to pay $1,100 cash on, we had a mortgage on the house and a mortgage on the car, and I was trying to figure out how do I make ends meet? We did, I did 13 different things that year to make an income. My adjusted gross income was $11,882. We gave consistently at that time, and still more now. But at that time, 20% of everything that we brought in back to the Lord first, and during that time, we never once missed a payment, we were never even late on a payment, and we felt God just really take care of us.
It was during that time that one of the 13 things I tried was a marketing tool for independent sales agents to generate leads in the consumer market space. And I just kind of fiddled some, put some things together, bought a service from one company, modified it, and sold it on the other side. And we started grow a business, and it started to take off so much that within two years, we were able to leave that little house we were in buy a new house in the second nicest area of our town and pay it off in five months. It was a rocket growth, but then what happened is I became prideful. I thought it was me, and you know, pride comes before the fall. And so that great business doing lots and lots of profit came tumbling down for about 12 or 15 years. But I learned a lot, and one of the things I learned is if you can solve that type of need in this type of market space, and you’re the only provider there, then you can do a lot. So when I retooled, as business was almost went bankrupt, and I was trying to figure out, do I get a job? Or do I try something else on my own? And I realized I couldn’t find a job that would pay me anywhere near what I’d been accustomed to earning. So I prayed about it. And I kept searching. And the thing hit me is the real estate world had the identical characteristics of what I had been doing at a bigger level. So that’s how I moved here. And all I can say is the Lord brought it into my life. And, and, and it took off again.
Ray: Thank you for that. That’s great context. And, and it’s also going to lead us probably back to some of the lessons learned in that time of brokenness and failure. We’ll get there, I promise. But before we go kind of down that pathway, tell us a little bit about your faith journey. How did you come into a relationship with Christ? What was that about? What was that like? When did that happen? Give us a snapshot.
Beatty: Raised in a Christian home, heard the gospel in 10th grade by a man named John Bradford who headed up Young Life. And so I became a Christian through Young Life.
Ray: As did I, by the way. You and I share that.
Beatty: Okay, cool. Yeah, that was 10th grade, November, I think, or October, somewhere in there. And then you could see immediate change in my life, but not significant in most areas. In college, had a real awakening in understanding that God’s Word is true, and just dug into that. And then from then on with, you know, the normal ups and downs. But normally just a real solid entrenchment in just spending time in God’s word, and, and doing my best and following him. I’ve, as we were sharing prior to this, you know, I kind of look at myself in business as a full-time minister, secretly disguised as a business owner. And I’m not sure when that really all started, but there’s just been this deep commitment and passion that I can look back to probably college years.
Ray: Okay, fantastic. So thanks for that. And so, you know, I get a chance in what I do here as host at Bottom Line Faith, and then, of course, as co-founder of Truth At Work, I deal with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Christ-followers who started companies, run companies and so forth. And so I quite often like to ask this question. I say, so tell me, how does your faith shape your leadership? How does your faith shape the way you run your company and so forth? And so quite often I’ll get the proverbial well, I try not to lie, cheat, or steal. And I say, well you know what, that’s just good business. That’s just, you know, any good heathen that just wants to be an honorable person is going to conduct business that way as well. So maybe help us understand how does your faith shape your leadership? How does your faith shape the way you deal with your customers and the way you run your company? What role and how does that look does your faith play in all that?
Beatty: That’s a big, broad question. Let me give you, maybe the way to describe, I’m not sure how to say, how does my faith shape it and be able to narrowly define it, but maybe I can give you a couple of things that I do in running my business.
Ray: That’s perfect, actually.
Beatty: So well, in all my staff meetings, I open in prayer. Right now, I’m building a sales team, and I’ve gotten I’ve got my ads running. One of the first things that it says is that it is written in the third person, that our CEO, Beatty Carmichael has four passions in life. The first is following the Lord Jesus Christ, and then it lists some other ones. And I just put it out there. And the other thing that’s really been has shaped me is, 1998, I was suggested by a leader of the Young Life group here in town to have a day of prayer once a month. I thought, what a great way to do it. And so to honor the Lord to give him the first of my best, I would take that one day out of a business day as a one day every month, that has probably been the most significant way that I’ve lived my business through my faith, because that has become the staple in my business in how I make wise decisions, especially running into challenges in stuff. So I integrate, I’m not sure that’s answering your question, but these are maybe some of the ways in which I integrate my faith.
Ray: Well, those are practical things, because to just say something so esoteric as, you know, I’m honest, I’m honorable, and those sorts of things, that’s great. But it goes further than that. Our faith should be practical; it should be measurable in terms of how it’s being lived out. So those are actually great, great examples. And so let’s then talk a little bit, kind of now I want to hit the rewind button back to something earlier in our conversation. You experienced this meteoric rise of this company that you had before and you, you know, you had a lot of the blessings, and I’m going to also say, the trappings of success, right? And then it kind of, I don’t know how fast or slow that happened, but you kind of lost most, if not all of that. In that season of brokenness, in that season of loss, or however we want to describe it, what did God reveal to you about you, and what did God reveal to you about him in that season?
Beatty: He revealed to me that I was prideful. I read a book I didn’t really understand until I read Bruce Wilkinson’s Secret of the Vine, and it made a great comment. If there’s pain in your life, look at where the pain is. There’s either pruning or discipline. And if it’s discipline, what is he trying to discipline out? And I’m thinking well, or is it pruning something out? And I’m not really sure if it was pruning or discipline. But the point that he said, where does it hurt? And I thought it hurts in my pride, okay. And that’s when I realized I had a pride issue. What the Lord taught me about him is, he is faithful in all of our years of lack, we have never lacked, we’ve always had an abundance, we’ve had an abundance to continue to give. He’s never allowed us to out-give his ability to take care of us. And these tough years have been to the most joyous years in our lives because our children have been able to see us go through the struggles and yet stand firm, and it’s been impactful in how they live their life. So looking back, I’m glad I did it. I would never want to go through it again, but coming out of it, I’m you know, I would like to turn back the clock a time and never go through that pride issue. But the Lord’s been really gentle, been really loving, and just been really graceful and gracious and all that.
Ray: Well, thank you for the transparency in that. So success around the program here at Bottom Line Faith is if there’s one person listening to this program, who’s being encouraged or challenged by this conversation, you know, if, if they would take one step forward closer to who and what God’s called him to be, that’s a success, no matter how many thousands of people are listening to the program right now, the fact is, if one person moves forward toward the Lord, toward what his calling is on their life. So would you mind taking just a moment and let’s imagine somebody’s listening to our conversation right now, and they’re really discouraged. Maybe they’re going through that season of brokenness, that season of quote, quote, failure, feels like they’re, they’re losing on every angle, what they’ve built is falling apart, or nothing seems to be working, whatever those circumstances might be. What word of encouragement would you have for that individual listening right now?
Beatty: Gosh, word of encouragement. I can think of words of advice I would give.
Ray: Fair enough. Let’s go there.
Beatty: Okay, words of advice? You can trust the Lord, and if you step out on faith, then he’s faithful to honor his Word. The thing that carried us through the whole time, Malachi 3:10-11, to test his promises, and giving the full tithe and offering into his storehouse. I think it’s 2 Corinthians 9, the giving passage by Paul, and so the one thing we did through all of this is, is I displayed between me and my Lord, that I trusted him first by consistently giving first to him before we took out anything for our personal needs. And that was not only for our finances, but I actually have my quiet time in the morning during my business hours. That’s the prime time where I could be doing work, because I’ve chosen to give him the best of what I have, and that is the best time of the day. And I think if you’re going through struggles, and you’re not sure what’s happening, you can stand on God’s Word that says he’ll take care of you, that he’ll protect you.
But he also says trust me, and if you’re so afraid that you act in fear and not trust Him, then he’s not going to hold you up as strong, not as strong, probably, this is the best way to describe it. Ray. Jesus comes walking on the water, Peter says, Lord, if that’s you, command me to come out and walk Lord says come, so Peter gets out of the boat and starts walking on the water, and as long as he kept his eyes on the Lord, trusting Him, a miracle occurred. But as soon as he took his eyes off the Lord, and got on the wind and the waves and became afraid, the miracle stopped. What I’ve seen in my life is the miracle, both true miraculous, and providential miracle and the Lord sustaining us as long as I trusted in him and kept my eyes on him.
Ray: So let me ask you this, how do you at this stage in your life, you talked about your kids, and the lessons learned and so forth, that they’re observing through your faith and the way you’re running your business? How do you try to invest in the next generation of leader? How do you try to mentor and bring along a younger leader? Does anything come to mind? Is there anything that you’re doing or that you do to help in that regard?
Beatty: You know, there’s nothing in business specifically within my business that I do strategically for that. I’m doing outside of business with the church and, and trying to lead people into how do you just get out there and just do street ministry? How do you go out and just walk up to someone and start praying for them or command healing or whatever it is, and to get them over that fear, okay? And so my passion, while I love what I do in marketing, I really love going out and just loving on people. And, and the witnessing approach, and so I’ve been working and trying to encourage people that direction.
Ray: Alright. And so what’s that look like? I mean, are you sitting, do you have some folks that you meet with on a regular basis? Or is it more of a classroom setting? How are you helping to shape that?
Beatty: Yeah, so, well, actually, next week, we have a group from a church coming, not even my church, okay, one that I’ve been partnering with on this coming over to our house. We’re going to teach them, how do you go out and walk up to someone and share the gospel? So we’re doing that Friday night in a low risk, no risk, pizza party type of environment. And then the next day, we’re going out on the streets, out to a Walmart or wherever, and two by two or three by three, and just taking them and in and showing them. And so I’ll take someone with me; I’ll go through the process a couple of times, and then I’ll walk up to someone and then turn it over to that person, and just try to engage them so that they get experience and they go, well, this isn’t that bad. And as long as they realize it’s not that bad, then they’ll keep doing it. So that’s kind of been what I’ve recently been doing.
Ray: Okay, man, that’s really scary, right? I mean, people are gonna look at me like I’m weird, or whatever. So how do you help them work through that part of this?
Beatty: Oh, they just got to get over that. I mean.
Ray: It’s that simple, right?
Beatty: I mean, it’s it. The worst they can do is say no. I’ll just walk up to someone, hey, we’re out here praying for people. Is there anything I can pray for you about? It’s either yes or no. And what’s interesting, this is what I’ve found, Ray is those people that the Lord has brought into my path to pray for, they will say, yes. And I’m just like a squirrel looking for an acorn. I’ll look all over until I find that acorn. And then I found the acorn.
Ray: Yeah, I love that. And, and, and one of the things and I’ve done this for years and observed this and seen it happen many, many times. Love to do this when we go out to eat. It’s real simple, you know, and maybe this could be a takeaway for somebody listening today is just when your server comes up, and they bring your food, it’s a real simple thing, just, you know, get their first name, always ask their name. There’s nothing sweeter, right than the sound of a person’s name. So let’s say Sally, or Joe, or whatever, you know, that usually they have their name tag on, but sometimes they don’t.
So always ask your server’s name, but then just say, Sally, Joe, we’re going to ask God to bless our lunch. How can we ask him to bless you? Anything you got that we can pray for you today? And I’ve had. Literally, I’m sure you’ve seen this happen in your world, too. I’ve had servers break down and cry right there at my table. Because how did you know? I said, well, I didn’t. But God did. I’ve had servers, like, literally yell across the restaurant and get all the other servers over to the table. I remember we were in this restaurant one time recently and this wonderful, sweet lady said, girls, y’all get over here. We’re going to pray together now. And it was like, Okay, great. Now we’re gonna have church right here. But it really is lifestyle evangelism, and it doesn’t have to be unnatural, right? It can just, if you genuinely love that person and you’re genuinely out there to serve the Lord, God’s going to put them in your path. You don’t even have to manufacture it. That’s what I hear you saying.
Beatty: Yeah. I was at a restaurant, and I did that. To my surprise, her name is Tracy; I said Tracy, can I pray for you about anything? She looked at me like a deer with you know, with eyes in the spotlight. And she said how did you know, just like that? And I said what? And she was suffering with a really bad back, and she was about to go into doctors a couple of days from there. So I prayed for her; the back totally healed, and then she told me about some cook back in the back that hurt his foot, so I go back there pray for him, prayed for someone who was pregnant, and they just had me praying for all these people. It was really fun.
Ray: Well, if any of you’re listening to the program and you’re wondering what does marketplace ministry look like? I hear this term all the time. Or how can God use me in the marketplace? Well, you’re hearing some practical ways right there, and it’s very natural. Just do this. I honestly don’t think; I think the worst answer I got ever, worse right? The closest to a rejection was this: I don’t believe in that stuff, but if you do, go ahead. Here’s what you can pray for. And I said, well, I do believe in this stuff. So we prayed anyway, It was the most, closest to rejection I’ve ever got, hundreds of times. So that’s great stuff. Folks, we are speaking with Beatty Carmichael here at Bottom Line Faith. He is the CEO of Master Grabber. If you want to check out Beatty and his company and what they’re doing, particularly working with real estate agents across the country to help the phones ring, help them build business and have success, check out mastergabber.com. I just have two more questions for you is what do you see as best you can describe it? What do you see as the next phase, the next chapter, the next season of your life in business? And how do you see the Lord using you in the marketplace?
Beatty: I’ve been really impressed with, and real touched on the focus to complete the Great Commission, my drive in business, I firmly believe that based on what the Lord has been revealing to me, that we’ll be growing 15 or 20 times over the next handful of years. And it’s about the growth for me to do it, and then to give the money away to fulfill God’s Word. We make enough; we don’t need it. But the, where I see where the Lord is using me is to help fund the fulfillment of the Great Commission. That’s what drives me.
Ray: I love it, especially the fact that it’s that clear for you. And so that is the target; that’s the mark, and you’re going to keep your eyes fixed on that. That’s, that’s fantastic. Well, for those of you who listen to our program on a regular basis, you know, this is the time the program for our last question, and it’s what we call our 4:23 question.
Beatty: Can I leave now?
Ray: You cannot leave quite yet. Well, you can. I guess I’ll have to answer it for you. But in all, in all seriousness, it’s based out of Proverbs chapter 4, verse 23. These are the words of Solomon. He says, above all else, guard your heart, for from it flows the wellspring of life. In other words, Solomon was saying, look, here’s the one thing you need to take away from everything I’ve taught you, is you need to guard your heart. You need to protect your heart. You need to surrender your heart to the Lord so that he can direct your path, so that he can clarify your motives and your objectives and your goals in life, that it needs to be guarded closely because it’s easily stolen by the treasures and pleasures of this world. Guard your heart, for all of life flows from it.
So, Beatty, the last question that I would like to ask you is, let’s, let’s just kind of dial the clock forward. And let’s say that it’s towards the tail end, and none of us know when this day an hour are, but let’s just imagine that you’re toward the tail end of your time this side of eternity, you have a chance to gather your family, your friends, your loved ones, the most precious people on the planet. You have a chance to sit down with them and pass along that one piece of advice. So finish the sentence for us: above all else…
Beatty: Above all else, trust the Lord. You may not know what his hand is doing, but you can trust his heart. And you can search out His Word, and His Word is true, and it will give you truth. Above all else, trust him.
Ray: Simple, profound, yet transformational and life-giving. Trust the Lord, right out of Proverbs 3, 5, 6, right? Thank you for being on the program today. You’ve been an encouragement and just, I’m encouraged that not only you’ve been able to share the low points of your journey and in business and in life and how good God’s brought you through that, but there’s a lot of excitement in where you’re going and I appreciate that, and I think God’s gonna really, he’s already blessing that, but I think some great things are in store. Thanks for being on the program.
Beatty: Thank you.
Ray: If you’re just checking this out for the first time, we sure hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode here at Bottom Line Faith. If you want to become a regular subscriber or if you want to listen to the dozens and dozens of other interviews that we’ve done on the program, go to our website at bottomlinefaith.org; bottomlinefaith.org. Scroll down to the bottom, and you can subscribe there for the program and catch it on a weekly basis. Also, the host ministry here at Bottom Line Faith is Truth At Work. It’s a marketplace ministry that’s been around for 20 years now, and we have roundtable groups for Christ-following presidents, CEOs, and business owners in dozens of cities across the country, hundreds of companies involved with the model. And if you’re interested in being in community and really focusing on developing and building your business to God’s glory, we’d love to talk about that, and we’d love to talk about that with you. So check out the roundtable program at the truthatwork.org website. Until next time, this is your host, Ray Hilbert, encouraging you to live out your faith in the marketplace and understand that God has called you uniquely to serve him right there in the marketplace and at work. God bless, and we’ll see you soon. So long everybody.
