 These long podcasts that these guys are doing, sitting on the couch and filming, that's what YouTube is pushing because it's keeping people engaged on the platform the longest, longer than these 10 minute videos. And they like take off. Sometimes those videos will take off six months down the road or even a year down the road. Let's kick this off. Uh, Ralph and I have been doing these disruptors network events, both in person and virtually Ralph. I think our first one was 2021 where we had like Kyle Wistel, Mark Pattinson and everything. Yeah, you're right here. Just like this around this time of year too. Yeah, definitely. So, so, you know, and we had a really good live event. The last two, we've actually been fortunate enough to, uh, to sell out. And this one we figured, let's go virtual. Let's bring everybody in. And the topic that I, Lauren, like we were just talking about on the social media aspect, the funny story is, is that, um, I was one of the first people on my space and as it kind of went away when Facebook came into the picture, that kind of, um, that was kind of a black eye for me was social because I thought, well, all these platforms are just going to come and go. And I didn't really, um, value Facebook when it first came along. So I just never really got into that world until after I'd already made it in real estate and decided I wanted to get into coaching, writing, speaking, um, and try to build other businesses outside of sales. So that had something to kind of fall back on. See, that's the thing. A lot of people think, um, they want to sell forever because they love sales and I definitely loved it. But, um, you will get to a point where you don't anymore and you're going to wish and hope that you've built other infrastructures around something that allows you to step out of sales. If you want to, you may want to continue selling, but, you know, owning real estate and having cash flow from investments, you know, building a social media, you know, presence and being able to parlay that into other businesses is always really interesting. And so, um, I just ignored social media for a long time. And I just focused on phone calls, emails, and direct mail to build my business. I got that up to a hundred deals a year. I was doing a million dollars a year in GCI, single agent and, um, top agent in Alabama and all that stuff. And I just kind of got bored. And so I was like, let me write a book about how I've succeeded so well in real estate and share this with the world. And that kind of turned into people that took off number one. And then I started speaking and then I realized how, um, how much this was helping people. That kind of kept me going. But I started out charging for coaching, like for a split second, a couple of months, I realized that really wasn't the path to really see mega growth. See, the reason why I went free on the coaching is because I knew how important social, um, equity was in terms of just people that know who you are and really respect and love you. And I knew that going free would grow that big social presence for me to where then at that point, I could basically have my choice of what kind of businesses I wanted to get into or kind of what direction I wanted to take it from there. So put a lot of sweat equity into me. I was losing a hundred thousand a year for a couple of years building this brand, you know, and not everybody can do that. Um, but I knew how important after I really, after I made it in real estate and then took a step back, um, and really looked at what I could do in the coaching world. I realized how incredibly important social was. And now I preached agents to do social unlike what I did in my business. And if I did social in my business, it would have been on steroids compared to what it was, um, you know, but I didn't, but agent should, you know, so that's what I'm here to talk about with you guys today, whatever I could do to help you with whatever problems you're having with social, um, you know, in terms of building your, your real estate business or any, any businesses, you know, I'm just Ralph asked me to do this and I was more than happy to do it. Um, you know, to see what I could do to share my experiences to help you guys grow. Lauren, tell us a little bit. I know that you are, uh, you and I, we spoke in an event down in Charleston last summer and you had, uh, some really good stats around Tik Tok and then I'm watching your Instagram day after day, the heck are you doing to scale it like that? So yeah, tell us a little bit about when you made your transition into social and some of the results that you've had so far. So I was in, when you guys were selling out in 2008, I was graduating college. I started in financial advising the day that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went under was the day I got my financial services licenses. So I sat front row to the, uh, housing market collapse, but the thing that I had learned is we were one of the first eight schools on Facebook. I literally on Facebook, we had this beach that was probably like three, three or five miles from our campus and our freshmen could not have cards on campus. Okay. And so, and it was in Connecticut. So a whole bunch of cabs are running people back and forth and I was like, well, this is just incredibly inefficient. I'm just gonna put something on Facebook and said, Hey, five bucks ahead. I'll come pick you up from the beach and I'll drop you off at whatever party you want to go to because I was playing volleyball at the time and I didn't have, I wasn't drinking. So I was like, let's go make some money. So I did that and started, you know, my own little Uber service and that really quickly helped me understand the value that social media could bring in terms of putting your message in front of a lot of people. So when I went into finance and all of their regulations around social and messaging and marketing, like it almost killed me. Cause I was like, this is, it's exhausting. Like why am I on cold calling and running it like Ricky was, right? Which is, it just kind of was killing my soul a little bit because it wasn't an alignment with what I believed. I wanted to come from a place of education and service and information. So when I transitioned into real estate, where we have a lot more flexibility on what we can put out there, I was like, all in my husband was Navy. I went all in on serving my military community. I immediately saw an opportunity in Facebook groups, which is my first social media love. I started a local community for relocating military families and we grew that very quickly to support a full team. And then I expanded that program nationwide in 2018. And today we do about 5,000 transactions a year and serve about 100,000 military families. That was my first love, but you don't get a lot of street cred. You don't get a lot of like brand recognition for building Facebook groups, especially when you own them and you're running them. But you're not, I'm not in the groups every single day, right? And frankly, I don't really want a whole bunch of you guys knowing about them. And now I'm regretting sharing this. So don't do that for me. But then I want to expand the TikTok. And I was like, Hey, you know, I saw an agent and going off of what we had just talked about, who was heavily trying to recruit other agents to support them, to work with them. And at the end of the year, she shared her statistics of how much money she had made. And she was like, Hey, come work with me. I can help you sell houses. Let's do this. And, you know, the like last day of the year is like I made 12 grand in real estate this year. And all I thought to myself was if you can help people do better than that, you have a responsibility to get big in your messaging. And so I came from a place of service and I want to challenge each one of you guys here that may sound egotistical to you, but I hope it's not. If you've ever had a conversation in the back room about about realizing that maybe another agent has a bigger business than you, but you are that person who cares. And you come from education, you always put your clients first. You have a responsibility to be visible, but and it's on us, right? So that's why I really took it to TikTok. I grew 100,000 followers in a year. December 15th decided, Hey, I'm going to see if these tactics work on Instagram. And I think today I said I was at 2,300 followers when I started and today I met 48,000. So they work on Instagram, too. And just to put that into perspective last month, a week from this past Monday, she was at 30,000 followers on Instagram. And I think that that's that's what's really cool about like obviously there's codes being cracked. Ricky didn't get into it either, but Ricky, you're 250,000 followers on Instagram right now, right? Yeah, to 230. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess, you know, and and again, I I'm about 2,000 or 20, 20, 200 somewhere, 2100 somewhere around there. What did you guys, when did you all start seeing that? Hey, I'm getting traction, my branding, my videos, what I'm doing is is starting to work and like, you know, to go back like Lauren, did it did it hit quickly on TikTok or did it take time? I had glimpses of of I had glimpses of what could be, but my challenge to what I can made to doing, right? I woke up on December 2nd, 2021, I was like, I'm gonna post one TikTok a day for the next 30 days and see if this is like a viable form to grow my business and grow my personal brand. And I know I was trying to grow my personal brand, but that's really was what I was doing. So as I went through that process, I quickly learned that if I just set aside 30 minutes in the morning to record, like I can record three or four videos a day. So why would I only post one of them? And what happened was is that the third and fourth video that I was posting a day started really hitting different because I stopped caring. The first video I recorded was like for everyone else, but I thought that they wanted to see you. The second video got a little bit closer to who I am authentically. And then the third and fourth video is like, well, crap, I now I told people I was gonna do three or four videos. So I better figure out something to say. And those videos started taking off. And that to me was like a learning process of peeling back the layers of who am I actually versus who do I think people want to see on camera. And that is a big shift that I want business owners to go through is that you don't have to be a mirror of the people who already exist. You don't have to be a mirror of me. You have to be a mirror of Ricky and to be a mirror of Ralph. It's about figuring out what works for you and then duplicating it and multiplying it and compounding it and doing it over and over again. That's awesome. And Ricky, what about you? When did it start to kind of take off for you? When did you start getting traction? I know you mentioned building the brand is actually putting you in that in the red in the beginning. I don't know, man. You you tell me I'm still waiting for it to take take off. It's just an absolute grind. Nothing I had really went viral. I had a couple of videos that did pretty well, but it's just been a really slow, gradual climb. I didn't really have any thing that like popped, but I just consistently posted every day on all platforms, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, every single day for years. I think that was really big. You know, but you're always reinventing yourself, you know, you you'll you'll you'll create content for months and months and kind of the same style. And then you won't even realize it, but you'll kind of look back at a video from like six months to a year back and you'll be like, wow, that is a completely different person and your whole editing style and scripting of the videos and stuff are just completely different. You don't even realize that you just kind of slowly transformed. There was a month last year, like maybe June or August, where I was at about two hundred and twenty thousand for about a year straight. And it just was I was losing people were unfollowing as many as were following. And it was like a year straight. I just was kind of stuck right there. And I just quit posting for like two weeks. And I was like, I need to really sit down and figure out this whole algorithm. And like so I talked to Meta a couple of times, like had deep conversations with people at Meta and like was really just researching and studying and watching. And I came back. This was before I was post like now I'm doing like four to six posts a day on Insta and, you know, which I don't I don't suggest that for anybody. If you're a real estate agent, really one a day is like really good. Like that's really what you where you should be. At least one a day have that be the goal. But, you know, I'm trying to build this global brand. So I have to do more. But I understood I started to understand the algorithm a lot more on Instagram. And that was when I started actually treating it like a job. So that's the point I wanted to make is that up to that point, I was posting whatever, whenever, and that only got me so far. And then I was just plateaued out. But then I then I got very intentional and actually started spending time brainstorming content ideas, filming, batch filming, you know, 10, 20 videos at a time and getting to where I had a system in place where I could literally pump out four to six posts a day. And until I started doing that, I didn't really, you know, I didn't really start picking back up the growth. Now I'm picking up 200 organic followers a day on Instagram, which is incredible. And it's all from that consistency of posting. I can get into like algorithms and stuff, you know, but but YouTube's a little different, right? YouTube is like some of these videos don't take off for like six months after you post them, right? And everybody, everybody looks at the gram stuff and the, you know, some of these guys that get 100,000 views and, you know, in the first 48 hours. And that's great. But honestly, not everybody, not all of us can be those YouTube superstars that go out and get hundreds of thousands of views. So how do you win on a lot of these platforms? You have to look at each platform and try to figure out what the game plan is for YouTube. It's like very long. What they're pushing is very long form content, like hour long videos, these long podcasts that these guys are doing, sitting on the couch and filming. That's what YouTube is pushing because it's keeping people engaged on the platform, the longest, longer than these 10 minute videos. And they like take off. Sometimes those videos will take off six months down the road or even a year down the road. It's really crazy how the whole thing works. So now my Instagram strategy is four to six times a day to get 200 followers. And then on YouTube, it's like I'm posting videos and getting a thousand views and I don't care because I'm playing such the long game on YouTube. It's not even funny. Like I'm hoping that I know that one of these videos, two, three, four, ten of these videos are going to like take off in six months, you know what I mean? So I think people are super impatient. They they they just they're not willing to treat it like a job. You know, so that's the main thing with agents. I always say make your calls all morning because I know, you know, you got to call somebody whether they're cold, warm, hot, whatever. You got to call them and follow up and so on and so forth. So your calls in the morning and then all of your media, marketing, social media, content creation, brainstorming, all that stuff in the afternoon. So you got all afternoon to really crush social media and all morning to really crush customer relations. You made a really couple of good points there. By the way, YouTube stuff, for instance, like that, I think people want immediate gratification with it and you're right. It's not that stuff takes forever and even TikTok. And I'm sure Lauren, you can speak to this too. Sometimes a video will start off really slow and then it picks up crazy traction and then you see over a couple of weeks and then it restarts again and you get more views and more follows. So I think the way these algorithms are working right now, it's that you have to be patient with all of it. And and both of you said something I think is really, really important. It's the consistency of it that every video of yours is not going to get a ridiculous amount of engagement, ridiculous amount of likes, but if you're consistent with it, some of it will. So, you know, maybe you guys should just speak a lot of it. Lauren, you can speak to that a little bit. Yeah, I mean, you don't want to build a following off of virality. You want to build off a consistency because that's what builds actual relationships and community. Here's the reality that me and Ricky have a tremendous amount of followers. We all have a tremendous amount of followers. Like who fucking cares? Show me your P and L, like show me your, like if you have 100,000 followers on TikTok or Instagram, but you haven't settled a goddamn house, you won't be here next week. It does not matter. Sorry. I curse. Delman. Okay. But in all sincerity, like this is one of the things that, that frustrates me is that I had this lady, I love trolls, by the way, and Ricky, let me know what your best troll comment is because I'm going to get a t-shirt that puts my best troll comments on it. And one of his was like, it's like her videos aren't even consistent. And I was like, number one, they consistently pay my mortgage. Okay. Number two, number two, some of my highest converting videos are my lowest viewed videos. Not every video is supposed to be viral. There are different kind of formats for getting as many views as possible for positioning yourself as an expert to, you know, moving people through your conversion and sometimes you hit the holy grail of all three. But the best question I feel like people can ask themselves before they post right now is what's my intention with this post? Am I looking to, you know, create new relationships and get them from as many people as possible because people who don't know you exist can't buy houses from you? Or am I really trying to get deep with the people who have already followed me to show them I'm a person of substance and that can really help them through this process? So ask yourself before you put out each post that question. And it doesn't matter if it gets 100 followers, you guys make 10 grand off of one good client. Like I'm so tired of like, let's chase a million views. Why not just get down to the real numbers of what you're trying to get out of this thing? And let's, let's focus on that. This is a, uh, this is a, an event here for real estate. These are all real estate agents, right? You guys listening? Is that correct? Am I right? Yeah, mostly, mostly real estate mortgage. Yeah. Oh, okay. So, so like there's two things. One, um, you mean a viral video, a viral video means like, you know, millions of people around the world saw the video, you know, um, your, your niche, like your geographical area is so small compared to how many people are online. It's just ridiculous. Like if you have, like as a real estate agent, if you have, like, uh, if you get like 300 views on a video, that is like super. Like if it's, if you're hashtagging your area and like you're, you're following is pretty concentrated to people that are in your market and you're really working social media the way that you need to, to build that local presence, like 2, 300 views on a video for free is like amazing. Um, you can convert so much business, uh, out of that. If you're doing it every day and you kind of have a conversion process, but, um, Lauren was right. Like the, like the videos, like that don't get that much engagement that are very niche to your audience and whatever your niche is. Um, you know, that's really like building that trust with your current followers, you know what I mean? Like, you know, you do viral videos to get more followers in and then, then these really niche videos that don't go viral because they're so niche really kind of continues to build a brand and the trust with your current followers. And you got to kind of have both, you know, you got to kind of do some general stuff to try to bring more people in. Hopefully the algorithm picks something up. But like as an agent, I mean, if you have like a thousand followers, man, you could have, you could, you could sell so much real estate, you know, out of that, um, you know, so I could get into all kinds. I could take this so many different directions. It's not even funny. I mean, what I, what I found, and you guys both mentioned it is local. And I always think that the, that the riches are really in the niches always with this stuff. And, you know, Lauren, I know that you do both of you guys do a lot on Tik Tok. I've, I've found that Tik Tok stuff really works more locally than any other, any other app that I'm using. Man, I don't know if you guys find the same thing that I see a lot more people see me locally on that app than they do necessarily besides my own followers, that people who aren't following me already on the, on the other stuff. I mean, how do you guys feel about that? I think it, I think it works across the board because part of it for me is, is like, if I'm an agent trying to get business on Instagram, I'm searching the area and I'm going to engage with people that's in my market that I've never, that I'm not connected to at all. I'm trying to find new people that aren't in my ecosystem to connect. I'm using, I'm using the social media platform to be social and connect and engage with people. Um, I don't know, like, as far as Tik Tok goes, like I had a big account, a verified six-figure following and, uh, they like erased it, like it was taken down and I didn't, I didn't know what happened. They wouldn't work with me. So then I kind of gave up on it. And then I just re-entered the Tik Tok world maybe like six months ago and I'm just kind of posting whatever I'm making for Instagram. So I have like a thousand followers or something like that, but I don't really pay attention to it much. So I'm not really an expert on Tik Tok. Ironically, it's like the Tik Tok lay in the room. I focused a lot of my attention on Instagram recently. So I'm a cool, let me give you guys a lesson on branding. Okay. The very first talk that I went to go, uh, give about Tik Tok and about, you know, how to grow an audience on Tik Tok. Uh, some of you guys know him. Oh, what's Sharon, president of Real, right? He was there. He's like, so you're like undisputably like the number one, like coach for Tik Tok agents. I was like, you were totally right, Sharon. I am undisputably the only Tik Tok coach for real estate agents. That being said, um, I spoke, so I focused a lot of my time and energy there, but I think the appeal for Tik Tok is that we have this idea that we can get tremendous more views because that's what we've been sold. But the platform has changed a lot over the last 12 months and I do not see that same thing happening. So I think we need to be aware of that. Um, in my opinion, since transitioning to Instagram, my conversions to the roof and I'm more interested in conversion than I am interested in views. So I think that both of them can work. I think that there's a lot of limitations on Tik Tok right now for the messaging, uh, to be able to engage with people like you can't message with people who don't follow you and you don't follow them back. Um, I like that we can integrate some, you know, auto responses into Instagram. You really can't do that on Tik Tok yet. I think that if you have a great creative that's worked well on Facebook and Instagram, should you run Tik Tok ads potentially. Um, but I've definitely seen a shift in it recently and it was out of my fear, the fear that Ricky just said that they're just gonna wake up one day and I'll be gone. The, you know, that I'll have no recourse. I wanted to diversify my audience, which is why I moved to Instagram. I've been focusing a lot of my energy there. So I found Tik Tok to be much more inconsistent recently. You guys both made a good point, actually. Um, somebody pushed me to create my own website a couple of years ago. It's just my name. I'm raftingnarrer.com and I put everything that I put, you know, I try to post everything there. Are you guys putting it on a place that somebody can't take from you? Is every, everybody, your concept going to some place that you own that, that, that nobody can take away from you? Yes, 100%. Can we talk about this for a minute? Because the biggest like obstacle or the biggest one of the, uh, things I wish I could change every single agent and every single business in America. Like if I go your link tree and your Instagram sends me your Tik Tok and then sends me your YouTube and then sends me your Pinterest and then sends you. And it's like a whole like circle around to know where that you own or can capture my information. You are, or if you're sending me directly to your website, you are losing so much business. I was following these ladies on Tik Tok, great following, great engagement, 30,000 followers when directly their website offered them nothing. So if you are looking to truly build a community, the community is built on what you own. And you won't, they're really the only thing you can know is your website or those emails. And so you, if you don't want to develop a website, you know, getting those emails and being able to bring people, you know, even just one high value email a week, you know, use chat GPT, use your top performing posts, take the description, take it to chat GPT, have them rewrite it as an email and send it out. The people who read both are not going to realize it's the same because you have to tell something, something to someone 18 times before they remember it, right? Um, and the people who do are going to be like, oh, yeah, this girl's consistent. Gary Vee's been telling us the same stuff for 30 years. I'm glad that she's not changing her tone, right? So I, if you can make a massive difference in your business right now, it is to use these platforms to build that list. So then you're not reliant on the algorithm showing you to them again. So just to hop on that really quick. If you're a realtor, let's say you're selling 10, 20, 30 homes a year or something like that and you're starting to create content locally like Ricky said, what would you do for like, what is the signup? What is the registration or how would you try to get them to engage so that you can then cultivate the email list on that? Like you could have sent it from a weekly newsletter in your link tree, whatever you use. So just think of all the different, Lauren can add to the list of different offers that you can, that you can offer to your audience that could get them to give them your information because every single lead generation activity is the same exact process, right? It's to collect data, to then talk to them, to then remarket to them, right? Zilla leads, you're getting data to talk to remarket. Cold call, you get their data to talk to to remarket. Facebook, open houses, you get them a sign of things so you can take that data, call them and remarket. It's all data, talk, remarket. You know, so the better you are at collecting data and then using it to talk to people and remarket, then the bigger your business is going to be. He records every single thing we do. He uses all the stuff. He's very smart about it. And he always says, Hey, can I have the can I have the contact list for the people that go and I think that if you just consistently do that every single time, just really smart. It's really easy just being consistent with data. So I know that you you practice, but you preach. That's it. But yeah, I mean, Lauren, I'm assuming that you're capturing stuff through your website that you're turning into. You're trying to turn it to sales. Oh, I don't have a website. I use. No, so I took out for a year and that was a mistake. And that's on Instagram for 40 days, a mistake with that. But my next one's SEO. So I'll be they'll be pushing out website here. I want to play that game a little bit and see how that goes. I believe in terms of lead capture, I use. I use Stan. I just set up a stand store. I moved away from Easybiolink and I moved into Stan store. It has a lot of the functionalities that that removes like another need for a platform. So I can literally get an email down, you know, someone downloads something that gets it to them right there versus me have to plug in an additional landing page. I like the way the analytics read, which is really important to me to create videos that are converting, not just getting views. And in terms of value, I call value exchange items to exchange for emails or for contact information, right? We mean Ricky play the same game. You guys play the same game and put a whole bunch of free value out, right? I'm going to put so much free value out. But here's the reality of it. This is the book I'm reading right now. I haven't started it yet. So maybe Ricky will beat me to it. But if I were to tear out every single one of these pages and erase the numbers and I threw that stack of pages, these 320 pages in front of you and was like, Hey, what's that book mean? I'm going to give you an hour to read. I'm going to give you a week to read it. You're not going to have all the pieces of puzzle to be able to put it together, right? So number one, start from value without a place of fear that someone's going to take your idea, take your value and it's going to make them more valuable. When you put value out, it makes you more valuable to your community. And I see a whole bunch of agents gatekeeping what they actually do to help their clients and is killing your online presence. You just look like everyone else out there. Whereas I know Rob probably has some bad ass 12 week marketing plan and a 50,000 person local database and 60 business owners that he's been invited to this open house be scared to sell it to share that because he's scared some other agents could take that formula and make them more valuable. Well, we're actually losing business by not starting with that because we're waiting until we get on the listing appointment to share that. You're never going to gain the appointment. You're actually losing on the top end of the funnel. So focus on bringing high end value upfront and telling people what you actually do that serves them without fear that someone's going to recreate it because it's like them trying to put piece together all of those pages without numbers, right? So when it comes from building, you have to ask yourself, who is my client before they become my client? Because we want to step up the consumer funnel. So my military relocation program is also linked to a home buying education program savvy home buyer federally treadmarked we trade about still about 12,000 houses in the last two, three years. How do you come from a place of value to get them to opt in to your information? Again, what's valuable to the person before they buy a home? What's valuable to the person before they sell a home? Who is your client before they become your client? And we can brainstorm here, but I'm guessing it's someone who lives in a certain proximity. So what's valuable to those people? Someone who is coming into a place of change in their life, identify the top three changes that have happened and to prompt people calling you. Hey, just that curiosity, you know, Chris, I know you gave me a call, they I'm super excited to work with you. What prompted that call today? Just ask, they're gonna be like, oh, thanks for asking, I got a new job. Awesome, why not create a value change? I am about, you know, increasing your income, increasing your job, upgrading your blank because that's what upgrades your home, right? So I've always really believed in stepping up the consumer funnel where it becomes a very blue ocean where the majority of agents fight in the red. You guys don't want to get in a relationship with people until they're like, I'm ready to buy. And then we're like frustrated when it's a transaction that comes off a Zillow. Well, that's where people go when they're ready to buy. I want to be in relationship with them six months through a year prior. So that way when it comes time to buying, they're not going to Zillow, they're going to warn. Reach. I'm talking some smack over there. So that is like, that was really cool. So that's what you said, like, you know, this little scenario and you kind of wanted to dig deeper. Like, oh, what's got you thinking about doing that? That is so key. And that brings up such a good point to, you know, people choose the real estate agent. The number one reason is because they had a friend in the business. And so if they're meeting you on Zillow when they're getting ready to do something, chances are somebody already has established that more long-term relationship. Kind of tough, actually. I mean, I'm never really, I tried Zillow for like six months when they first came out. I was like, this is, this is ridiculous. But, you know, why would I pay thousands of dollars for contact for data when I can get it for a couple pennies and just call people? Same thing I'm going to do anyway and develop those relationships long before they decide to buy or sell. Meanwhile, running into people constantly that want to buy or sell and helping them as well if I can, if they don't already have a relationship. But it's all that. I like everything he said right there. That was pretty key. Ricky, I feel like you'll love this. I tell my agents, you're like, oh, I'm thinking about doing a Zillow contract. I'm like, great. Is real estate a transaction or is it based on a relationship? Based on a relationship, awesome. Then why are you going to Tinder for what you're looking for on match.com? Oh, snap. It doesn't make any sense. But here's the other thing, guys. I went through this space where I was, probably where Ricky was, right? In my business, I was like, I want to scale how you get more relationships, how you get more conversations. And so it was that decision, do I invest into Zillow? And if I'm not going to invest into Zillow, what do I invest in? And I will tell you that decision, like that crossroad, to say I'm not going to invest in renting other people's attention and renting other people's media. I'm going to build my own that I own that I can turn up and turn down. I can turn on the faucet when you turn it down. It's protected my family's livelihood through ups and downs in the market. Whereas, you know, a lot of my colleagues who chose to go the seemingly easier route, the transactional route, the Zillow route, have been subject to Zillow Premier and Zillow Flex. And now it's per lead and now it's per zip code. And their livelihoods, ability to feed their families are as completely reliant on something they don't control. It's terrifying. So if you're going to invest like time, energy and money into something this year, invest into fucking something you own. And I know we don't own our social accounts, but I own it a whole hell of a lot more than I own Zillow.com. You mean Tinder? Can we get t-shirts made? You own your name at least, you're right. You're on your name and your image and all that kind of stuff, so you're building your brand one way or the other. But here's the thing, if Ricky goes down on IG tomorrow, he has 220,000 people, he's going to launch another account in the bank, Ricky! Like, he owns himself. And his likeness and his teachings, you know, it's not the end of the world. You could relaunch, probably grow faster. That's a good point. People will be seeking him out on social media trying to figure out where that account went and then come fly back into it, especially if you're spending a lot more time on Instagram. I just sent an email out. I just sent an email out. And all my followers will be right back. It's a good point. There's that email list again. But yeah, Laura, I mean, that ties into what exactly what Ricky was saying with the YouTube game. And I think that so many people, not only like, there's a whole plan behind it with the email marketing, if you can gather text message and everything like that. And I, Ricky, you and I are cut from, I'm a heavy like Mike Ferry agent. So cut from the similar cloth where I feel like prospecting is absolutely key. We run a large mega team and I didn't add Zillow in until Flex became an option where we just pay the referral back in 2021 or yeah, 2021, but that is such, it's such a YouTube style game where things just kind of pop. And I also feel like I personally lose sales from time to time. I have people call me and tell me, hey, we didn't go into your team, but this happened with an oil tank and we need your help with this and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I tell everybody, I'm like, you might lose, I had heard this years ago, but you might lose a sale, but never lose a client. So don't get bent out of shape when that happens. You'd be amazed how quickly three years starts to roll back around and those people have that life change where they decide to size up and whatnot from that. But I think it's super important having a plan behind and don't over prepare to the point where you're like in analysis for Alice's either, but having a plan behind that so that if you're gonna make the prospecting call, if you're gonna build the content that there is, what is the goal? Are you going to get an email address? Are you going to then nurture them with emails that go out, Ricky's three times a week, that's perfect for clients and that's incredible, but are perfect for realtors and that's incredible. But for the consumer side of things, is it twice a month? Is it once a week? Is it kind of figuring that whole thing out? Once a week, once a week. On the same day of the week forever. Forever. And never miss one. But yeah, I mean, that's- The client says 2007, I never miss a Wednesday. It's literally why I sell a hundred properties a year. That's awesome. I think that everyone's panicking right now. Here's my question to you, Ricky. How many emails is that you sent? One to my real estate clients per week. Per week for how many weeks? From 2007 to now. So 52 times 13, 14, 15. How often do you reuse your emails? Do what? How often do you reuse your top performing emails? Oh, well, it's a market report kind of thing. So it's all kind of relative to what's happening in the market right that second. It's more like I actually sit down and type my opinions and stuff around the current, you know, breaking news type stuff. I was so excited to be honest with you, because we have such a different approach to, I mean, both extremely valuable and both extremely work guys. That's the thing. If there are so many different ways to do this and sometimes people get stuck in the right or the wrong, there isn't a right or wrong. There is just due. But like Ricky, I do the opposite. Where I have like a capsule of like 52 emails and then I just recirculate my top performing emails. Yeah, so for me, yeah, that's awesome. It works. You see, you have to guys, it's such a good point. Like figure out what works for you. But for me, I can't do that because I want everybody to have the most recent. What I feel like is happening. What the inside market, like what's happening right now today, maybe a new restaurant opened down the street. I want them to know about it. No, I went there and know what the story was. Email back for a chance to win a gift card or I'll meet you there for lunch anyway. So, and that's why my emails are one so big because they're so customized around not only me and my personality, my opinions, but also the current market and what's happening, you know, in the market and locally. So I, unfortunately, I can't do it like that because I'm trying to really bring them like so much value, I like as much value as I can rather than just sending them the same email I sent a couple of years ago or whatever. On the, on the email side of things do you folks ever go in with the video component as well and then try to drive back to YouTube or something like that? I don't, because once I do that, they get lost in the YouTube shuffle and the YouTube algorithm and it could shoot them anywhere. So I did that a couple of times and I didn't really like the fact that it kind of took them out of my ecosystem. You know, now I could do in bed, I could do what's the one company that does those. Bomb bomb. Bomb bomb, I could do bomb bomb where it's embedded or something like that. But I just got to a point where, you know, images and like just typing out, you know, my thoughts or whatever I think or map market stats really worked really well. So I just never did the video. I kind of leave the video stuff for social media, right? So like if they're getting my weekly emails and they're following me on social, then they'll see my videos on social for the video aspect of things. You know, and then they get my little blog style, you know, emails, you know, for their fix on stats and analytics and my opinions and stuff like that. So. Lauren Taylor tells you to do it for a second. I do it for a second. We have a question, guys. Jacqueline's asking what tools you guys are using to make the videos. I'm using, I think the best thing, and I guess you guys can comment on this to where I've seen the best engagement is if I use the tools that are in the platforms themselves as much as I can between the captions and the music and that stuff within each platform. So I try to film the videos in one way that I could post on every single platform. And then I use, I always use tools within the platforms to edit the video or caption the video, whatever it is. It helps, I think it helps with engagement, but you guys may know better than me. Lauren. I was, when I was only working on TikTok, I was using within the platform, but now I've moved to recording natively on my phone, 13 with no special settings, except for probably 4K recording. I, any of my talking or speaking videos, I don't speak directly a camera anymore. I haven't done it in more than 45 days and I'll probably never do it again. I think that that is incredible. And there's a small, not small, maybe, but could be potentially huge group of people who could do that really well. But I found where my sweet spot is just having a camera right here, recording on the side view and then cutting those snippets so I can just be myself. And so if you're struggling with how I overcome this obstacle of creating video, like don't create video, just document yourself on what you're already doing, talking to clients, taking coaching calls, talking to vendors. And then your true authentic self can really come out. So that's why I put it in and it's performing just as well. So now to reinvent the wheel. Lauren. Lauren, are you recording right now? Yes, I am. You will see this. Everyone say hi. Hold on. I'll say hi. I'll tag you all. Send me your IG. Ricky, I'm going to show me that you have some kind of fixed camera set up to how much you're recording. Yeah, I got a camera sitting right here and then I'll do like two or three zooms a day with like entire offices, teams, stuff like that. I'll have it right there. You guys see all that stuff on my videos and stuff. But I'll do, I'll do both. So I'll do a lot of documentation, chop that up for YouTube and Instagram and all that stuff. But then I'll also do a lot where I'm talking directly to camera and actually create as well. I like that diversity of having a video that's from the side talking to a zoom. And then the next one is me talking directly to you. But something else that Instagram did here lately is pictures. They actually came out and admitted that they kind of overdid it with engagement on video and went too hard on video and they came and brought it back to try to equal it out a little bit between images and video. And right now they said it's about a 50-50. This is what Instagram said about a week ago that they've got it pretty balanced out, which is really cool. So I also try to do like a Twitter quote or something like that every day or five times a week or whatever. Those get the most engagement. Like my videos will get 200,000 likes, but those Twitter quotes will get like 2,000 to 3,000 likes. A lot of reposts, right? A lot of shares. Yeah, a lot. Yeah. Yeah. So those do really well. So I like to diversify it between documentation, creation and images versus videos. That's what's helping me really grow a lot right now. It's just kind of hitting it from all angles. I really appreciate you, Lauren and Ricky. You guys are awesome. Brett, thank you for helping me put together and I'll let you close it. Yeah, no, definitely. I mean, I would just say guys go follow what they're doing. It's really cool. Totally. Again, all three of them, semi-different styles. And it's just, it's excellent to see what's happening here and how they're just doing amazing things in the industry. So hey, thank you so much for watching today's video. I hope it brought you tons of value. Let me know what you think in the comments and I'm going to put the next video right here for you. So you don't have to go anywhere. You can just click this video to keep that Ricky train rolling. Hey, we'll see you guys on this next video and I'll talk to you soon.