KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Brad McCallum "What I Wish I Knew When I Started."

Episode Date: June 14, 2024

Real estate rock stars, we are back. And here's what you can learn in today's episode. How to build an entire business by doing listing walkthrough videos, the equipment you must have to make that possible, mistakes not to make, and what to leverage out first once your business starts taking off. Today's guest is Brad McCallum out of Calgary, Canada. He's been an agent for six and a half years and currently leads the McCallum group of five agents, one operations, manager and a full-time videographer. He's personally closed over 400 transactions, and in the past three years, he's averaged 100 million in volume per year. You guys have to check him out on YouTube, Brad McCallum, Calgary, Realtor. And you will see why he's known as one of the industry's

top voices when it comes to personal branding and video making. His high-quality, energetic, guided listing videos have built his channel to 44,000 subscribers on YouTube. He's led Real brokerages expansion into Canada and has built his network in real to 4,000 agents. Y'all, and we are one month out from the Real Estate Rockstar's Mastermind, and I am so pumped. We have a ton of legit speakers coming to this event, such as Cody Sanchez, founder Contrarian thinking. We have Tyler McBroom, who is Tony Robbins tax advisor in CPA. We have Will Grimes coming in for the hype. Plus, we have the CEO of GoBundance, Matt King, coming to speak to us. How'd you get started in real estate? Take us back. Oh my goodness. Okay, first off, I just want to say a huge

thank you for inviting me onto the show. I'm so excited to be here and so impressed with what you guys have built over here on this podcast. Okay. So why did I get started in real estate? You know what? I got started late in life. So I'm like almost 46. 36. 39 years old. I had ran a renovation design company in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It had went through over about a period of 10 or 11 years, a couple of massive recessions in the city. And I just decided after kind of going through a little bit of a life challenge, I had some health issues. And I was like, this is it. I'm done. done fighting, I'm going to go get some of that free, easy to earn real estate money. And so when I was 39, I got my GED. And I'd had a little bit of a, I'd had like a tumor actually on my cheek. And it was

actually a prorodotid gland tumor, which is the same tumor that actually killed Adam MC of the Beastie Boys. So if you know the Beastie Boys, that was the thing. I just remember when the doctor told me that, I was like, what the heck? So I just, I had this moment approaching 40 where I was like, I got to make a big change. Went got my real estate license and sort of the rest was history. Okay, so you're really well known on the internet, specifically for these amazing YouTube videos that you do showcasing like listings, really. So when you, you know, you said that rest is history. Did you know that video was your way in right from the get-go or how did you really kick off your business? Well, so first off, I'd say, like, I come from like a family of creatives. Like my mom is like a painter. My sister's always had like an Etsy shop making necklaces, beads, she paints. I really enjoyed the interior design aspect of my previous renovation company. So I knew when I was going to get into real estate, I wanted to do something sort of creative in the marketing space. I just had no idea what that would be. About six months in, I had already been doing about a deal a month just with my sphere of influence. My dad had purchased a

property for the purpose of renovating and flipping it a few months prior to me getting my license. And the promise was always from him that he was going to list the property with me. And so what happened is as it got closer to that time, I started texting him like, Dad, I heard the countertops went in, right? And he just starts ghosting me. And he's not getting back to me. I'm like, what is, wait, what's happening right now? Like this is, no. This is terrible, right? then I get them on the phone and dad says to me, Brad, this is a lot of money for your mom and I. And we're just thinking it might be better for us to go with a more established and experienced agent. And so at the time, I'd been watching like a lot of just YouTube, just like in my personal time,

I was watching these creators telling really cool stories about just their everyday lives. Nothing was related to real estate. guys like Casey Nystad out in New York and Peter McKinnon and Maddie Hapoy and all these guys up in Canada that were creating really cinematic pieces. And they were just doing it with a simple camera and a microphone just running and gunning. And I was like, man, that is so cool. So when my, all of a sudden, I was faced with losing this listing, I just in that moment on that phone call, I was like, Dad, I'm going to create a cinematic listing video for this property. And it's going to help you get more exposure than absolutely any other agent in the city can. And he's like a farmer

from Saskatchewan. So he just stared at me like I was an idiot. And what was funny about it, though, was after that, I was like, you know what, dad, if you don't give me this listing, you're never going to see your grandkids again. And so I got the listing. I was just joking about that. I kind of not really joking about that last part. The truth was, I was like, this is going to be detrimental. Like if I don't even work with my own dad, how's my own sphere of influence going to react? So I was went and spent like $7 or $8,000 on gear, bought it all on like Amazon. It all came in on a Wednesday afternoon. I unpacked it on a Thursday morning, took my laptop, went over to the house, and I spent 14 hours teaching myself how to shoot, edit by watching YouTube tutorials, how to hold a gimbal,

how the camera settings, how to do slow motion, how to walk, you know, the ninja walk with a gimbal. So it was nice and steady. And I started being just blown away by what I was seeing. playing on the back of the camera. I'm like, this actually looks professional. This looks cinematic. And so by the end of the day, I was completely tired. But I realized, I'm like, man, if I'm going to do all of this, I should just throw myself in the front of the video and at the back of the video. So at least like I can attach myself, you know, to the content. And, and the weirdest thing happened. Like the property came onto the market. We attached the video onto the MLS. And I shared it on my on my Facebook. And all of a sudden,

people would walk into the open house and they're like, oh my God, you're that, you're the guy from YouTube, holy smokes, right? And they're blowing away, right? Because our entire lives were conditioned to believe that the person we see on the other side of the screen has been like casted, you know, by some, you know, some like superior thinker that says, no, these people get to be stars or these are the people that you'll look up to. And so we see them as being an authority, right? Like, you know, if we watch a YouTube video on something that's hurting with their shoulder and the guy's wearing a lab coat. I'm like, that guy's a doctor. I should, I should listen to that guy, right? So I realized, wait a second, if I start showing myself

walking around properties like this and then I start documenting it in the background like, oh yeah, I was working on it for six hours editing today, right, or choosing music or whatever it might be, there was this perception that I was this busy agent and that I was this successful agent. And very quickly, my sphere of influence that really didn't care before and that I was super uncomfortable even marketing to, they started calling me up and saying, hey, dude, my sister's selling. And do you do those videos for everything? Like, are you seeing it's making much of a difference? And at the time in my market, there was probably only 37% of new listings were selling. And so people that were coming to the market only had like a one third shot of actually selling

their home. And so I was able to come in and oftentimes get the set, be the second agent on a listing and relist and do a video for it at the same price, and we would sell that listing 85% of the time. So it started to prove that it was an actual value ad. And then I became a lot better salesman when I believed in the value that I was actually able to provide them. Man, belief is everything. Like clients can, they can smell it when you don't believe in yourself.

And they're like, why would I believe in you if you don't believe in yourself? So, man, that is huge. So hypothetically, like, I'm a listener. And I'm like, oh, my God, I want to be like Brad right now. You know, he went to this house and he spent the 14 hours there and he learned. So what I would love to do is like, what equipment do you think is, you know, for someone starting out who wants to do this? And then what like essentials in order to kind of rip off and duplicate the Brad model?

Yeah, you know what? I'd say actually these days, it, you know, it's always so funny. Like I don't try to chase the trends. too closely. Like at the end of the day, I am a dad. I want to have a life. And so what I really try to focus on is, like the time that I'm spending,

creating content is this going to serve my family or my ego? And so I really want it to just serve my family. All right. And so if I'm on camera, if my wife or my kids are in the videos as well, it's for the purpose of telling that home story and serving our clients. But I would say to answer your question,

like these days, you can get a lot of attention and a lot of views, you know, with a basic $150 gimbled and like a little iPhone gimbal, and then just a smartphone with a great, great camera, like a new iPhone 15 or something like that. The HDR quality on those cameras are amazing. So some basic, basic tutorials, a basic understanding of Capcut.

And so many agents can just go out and start creating really high quality content that's at least going to get them a lot of views, right? And the other thing, of course, is now, like when I first started, we didn't have Instagram stories in the late 20 teens. But now, for me, when they came out, they became this, like, place where I could share the raw stuff because I got in such a practice of only releasing really high quality content that it was like the consistency was there. But, you know, the cadence was once every week or two weeks. And I wanted to be in front of my audience and show the background, scenes of what it looks like. Okay, it's, you know, 1.30 in the morning and I'm editing this video.

I'm really excited about. And people are like, man, I can't wait to see it. And you're creating conversations and the DMs and opportunities there. And so those exist now. I mean, the gear is an iPhone and a gimbal. And then from there, if you really want to step it up, you know, I would say always, I would recommend all agents work towards building a YouTube channel if it's something that, you know, if they have some creativity or if they have some desire to create something that they can truly, you know, kind of own an audience that will grow when they're not themselves in front of a client, that's been what's been most powerful for us. And listeners, if you are like, I want to check out his YouTube channel. Of course you do.

It is Brad McCallum, Calgary realtor. And did I say McCallum correctly? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So if you go to YouTube.com slash at Brad McAllum, it'll take you to our channel. You know what's cool about YouTube and the biggest thing that I love about it and why, you know, I would encourage agents like overtime to start, you know, implementing some sort of a YouTube strategy is that it just is searchable content. And so like Instagram is amazing. And you can spend three, four hours creating a really fire reel for a property and stuff. And it's out of the feed in four to five hours. And same thing on TikTok. One amazing video hits. and you get 200,000 views.

And then some other video you didn't even really think about doesn't. And it hits 800,000 views. But I tell you, I know a lot of creators in the real estate space because a lot of us all kind of talk to each other. And the most successful creators, the ones that actually put the most dollars back in their account aren't the ones that blow up on TikTok. They're the ones that blow up on YouTube. And the value of a million views on YouTube to a real estate agent,

that are based on, you know, views that are coming from their market, you know, something of a channel that creates content around their market. The value of that is between 400 and 600,000 dollars. But a million views on TikTok could be anything from zero to $10,000. So it just depends, right? Like, what goal are you pursuing? Like if you're looking for money right now, TikTok can sometimes be a really great advantage. But I would never trade tomorrow money or my tomorrow business for my today efforts. So I always want to be working on something that has, you know, an opportunity to kind of return back a lot, a lot greater return like over time. And the searchability factor of YouTube is is the biggest thing. So true. And, you know, you hit my heart when you're

talking about how it like just disappears and it like goes down the feet. Because, you know, I occasionally post on Instagram. Sometimes I'll do like a story with a poll and it gets a ton of engagement. I'm like, wow. I'm like, this is so great. And then the next day, It's gone. Yeah. It's gone. I know. It's amazing.

I've never, you know, I created one piece of recent content called moving to Calgary. And it's like a 10 or 12 part series for Instagram. It's one video on my YouTube channel, but we broke it up into like 10 or 12 parts for my Instagram. And the first one on that one, it's just hit some weird algorithm where every day it gets showing a certain amount of times and gets another 150 likes or something like that and gains me new followers. and it's all great. But the problem is, is those followers, just like YouTube subscribers, is they might not actually care about the next property tour I post or any of that stuff.

So yeah, it's tough. I find it, I find like the short form social media. It's awesome. I love it. It should be a part of every agent's toolkit. But you should also be building something that's ranking in the background for you. So when people who are actively searching with like high intent, for something related to real estate and your city, they should be finding your content somewhere.

And because Google owns YouTube, you have this massive advantage when people start writing in to Google what they want and Google starts serving up a YouTube video search result. That's when it starts to get really, really powerful. The algorithm. So powerful. I love that too. It's really tempting to play the short game in everything, you know, not just social media, but like in life, that instant gratification, which I think is a lot easier within, you know,

the short form, the Instagram, the TikTok, you know, right there. Whereas YouTube, it's, it's a longer play. But if you are playing the long game and you are caring more about your future self, you know, than your current, it just, it makes so much sense. You know, I, it's, it's, it's funny. Like if, like, if I was a, I get asked all the time about being a like a brand new agent, like, what would you do if you were a brand new agent? Would you start your YouTube channel? again, would you do like tours as well? Because tours is like, you know, sort of traditionally property tours would be sort of low intention for most people, right? Because like unless they want to buy the house and unless it's a 30 million dollar home or, you know, a hundred million

dollar home and it's being toured by like Ns Eel Mazar or some super YouTube influencer, most people aren't really interested in what a $600,000 home looks like in Calgary. But what I would say is like, I always think of my business as like, I need to be doing stuff that's going to be generating me business today. And then I need to be having some business that I'm working on that's going to be generating me leads and income six months from now, a year from now. And then I need a few lotto tickets. Like a few pieces of like content that might hit might go viral, you know, a few open houses, a few things here or there where you just might get lucky. Right. And so agents get lucky by putting themselves in situations where there's people with high intent to,

to buy ourselves. So agents that sit open houses can create wonderful businesses just off of open houses. Agents that show up as singles and join up with foursums to go play golf can set up a great business because they're spending two or three hours with captive listeners and they're building those bonds. Like whatever your thing might be, it's fine, but you need to have, I think, those three elements. Like, what can you get lucky with? What can you get over time? And then what are the things that are doing today right now to get business? And, okay, for those people who are maybe stuck on the house tour that you mentioned, because I know that that is how you built yours in a lot of ways, right?

So we have, we have the equipment list, which is pretty minimal and awesome. Do you have any, like, tips that maybe someone who's never done an open, like a tour before, tips that you found work really well or things that you used to do that you're like, oh, I should have never done that. Yeah, definitely. So I can tell you, I think it's really important that if you're creating any sort of content that you're in it in some capacity. So there's what the audience and the algorithm wants, which is oftentimes they don't want you in it. Right.

Like they would just rather see the house. But the problem is, is unless it's really flashy to trending music, really cool camera movements and transitions, odds are if the subject matter itself, like the house isn't stunning and everyone wants to see it, people aren't really going to. care. But the reality is, is that most homes have some sort of a story attached to it. So if I was starting out, um, all over again, what I would be recommending people do is to just really put your reps in at trying to figure out what the story is for each property, whether it's an investment property, a home, you know, for a family, obviously fair housing laws and everything and, you know, keeping those in mind. But think about like who this is really for and then speak to that person. And I would be on camera always as some part of the video so you can continually attach yourself to being a busy

realtor. So being on camera, I think, is just absolutely essential because if you create incredible tours or property tours and you're not in those videos, they're just moving slideshows. They're just consumable. People oftentimes aren't going to get to know you any better. So they're not going to take the extra steps to go into your bio and reach out to you. But if you, You can start sharing a thought or an observation or telling a small story about a property or inviting a viewer in to say, hey, I think you're going to, this is worth, this is worthy of like five seconds of your time. Come check this out.

And then they go check it out and it was worthy of five seconds of their time. There's like a little trust bridge that's built, right? Like, okay, I'll follow this guy. Like he gets me, he understands me. I like their content. I'm entertained. I was maybe even educated a little bit. And those are the pieces.

So in the beginning, I saw. a lot of agents, putting in a lot of work, and not getting in the videos. And that was the one thing I just, I knew I wanted to do because I'm like, man, this video is fire. Like I want to look cool in it, right? Because I want to be the guy that they associate this work too, because I spent so much time on it, right? I wanted, you know, people to know that it was something that I did because it's, you know, the creative side of things. For the story piece, when you're identifying who the house is for and speak to that person, storytelling is so powerful. You know, the more I learn about it as I dig into YouTube and content creation and, you know, all these things, it's like so much of the power comes from the ability to tell a compelling story.

And I think that maybe listeners, if they're like, I need to find the story in this house and tell it, that might, you know, like, how do I do that though? What does that actually mean? Yeah. So, you know, I mean, the way I look at it is is people, because the first thing when I say this, people will say is, well, yeah, but this house is boring. or it's average or it just looks like every other house in the neighborhood. And so there's always some story. There's maybe a story about the city, right? Maybe there's a story about the community, right?

What's something that's really, really special about that community? Maybe there's a story about a journey that someone wants to take as they build their investment portfolio. Right. So like you always have to find that that property, like every good agent worth their salt, they know already when they see the property exactly who's going to buy it. Like there's going to be one of two sort of buyer avatars for this property. And the other cool thing about that people kind of always discount about video is your clients.

Like if you're doing a video on one of your own properties that you're listing, it's your client's words out of their mouth, right, into your ears, out of your mouth and into the buyer's ears. And you're bypassing the buyer's agent. And it's a really, really powerful strategy to get an emotional investment from the viewer and potentially an emotional investment from the buyer. Because if you're just going to sell a home based on the average price per square foot for the community and three bedrooms versus two bedrooms or upgraded kitchen versus not upgraded kitchen, like what is your deal, right? Like I truly believe that most agents are selling themselves and they're always going to be caught. that same sort of loop, like a popularity circle of like, ooh, you know what? They wanted to go with me, but then their niece got their license. And it's like, I would hate to have my business, my value,

my services discounted, just simply that. Like, I want to be able to provide something that is so clear value to the clients that they're like, and my sister's an agent, but this would serve our family more if we worked with this guy. Right. Like, so that's what, that's what I kind of try to build. Now, obviously, most times we lose to the sister, but sometimes we don't, you know? Yeah. The emotions, the emotional tie, man, it's so important. But so even listening to this, Brad, I'm like, okay, you know, content creation, playing the long game, tie in the story, tie in the emotion. There's like so many things that feel like they're not actually real estate transactions.

You know, it's not actually understanding your market and offering on a property and being able to negotiate and navigating contract to close. So I guess at what point as you continue on your journey, you're staying consistent in this content creation the whole time. But there's a whole business to run too. Can you talk about navigating that or the pieces that you put in place to survive? Well, you know what? I would say for the first and most and only important thing that an agent needs to do is have a transaction to manage. Right. So if you don't have a transaction, it meant that you didn't have a relationship. And if you don't have a relationship with a potential buyer or seller, you don't have a business.

And so I feel like everything else can be figured out once you have enough conversations and transactions happening. So I do have now, as my business is growing, creating content, all that stuff is difficult. So I do have a full-time videographer on my team. I've got five agents on my team. We do about $100 million or so of sales in a year. And I have a full-time operations manager that handles the backend. Because the one thing that it took me a long time to realize is that every agent is going to have strengths and weaknesses. So the agent that's not a great content creator or storyteller for video tours might be the perfect agent to talk about the stats and statistics of their city and create content that is really highly valuable to someone who wants to

search and understand a city before they prepare for a move. So whatever it is, you should always be shoring up those weaknesses with more help, whether it's a buyer's agent and operations manager, or a videographer that's just on contract or one that you actually have on your team. But we use some basic tools. Like we work with Curator on the back end to run sort of our paid campaigns. We don't do very much on that front. Most of our work is all done organically, but I don't want to trust just organically. So we always have some paid campaigns running in the background.

Our operations manager, she functions as an ISA. So rather than bringing in all these other services, I wanted to keep a smaller team that was highly invested in the outcome. So my ops manager, she'll just, like, we'll get a lead and she'll just call them up and then place them with someone on the team. And it makes it so it's a lot better. So for me, my business runs best when I'm not screwing around in the back part of it. It runs best when I'm the face of it creating the content because as a creative, I'm disorganized. That's why even this podcast, I was six minutes late this morning. You know, so that's, that's the reality of it.

And I'm so sorry for that. But that's, that's the challenge, I think, of all this stuff. I think agents feel maybe like a lot of overwhelm at any point in their business, whether they're just trying to get some momentum back behind them or they're trying to reignite their business or they're brand new. But I think we overcomplicate it. Like the agent that's really got tons of systems and the perfect client concierge experience, oftentimes is the agent that is not out there.

just meeting people and doing deals. And we forget that people, they actually just want to go shopping with someone they like. They just want to have someone that they can trust so they can get onto the part that they actually want, which is a house. A buyer doesn't want a real estate agent. They just want a great house.

So if you can help them in that goal, great. A seller doesn't want a real estate agent. They just want a buyer. And so the more we think about all these other systems, and processes in the background and tweaking. And once we have all that together, then we'll start creating the content that's going to generate the conversations.

The more we're telling ourselves a lie. Start creating the content. Get the business, figure it out. I would never go in like in the first year or two of being a real estate agent. They'd be like, oh, come in. We're going to be talking about tenancy law. I'm like, you know what?

I'm going to go get me a deal that has tenancy law that I need to learn about. And I'm going to get paid to learn about it because I'm going to go get a master's degree in tenancy law the second that it has an impact on my life. But prior to that, it's tough. It's like saying, hey, I'm going to teach you Spanish, but you're never going to go and be in a Spanish-speaking country and get immersed in it. It's like you can learn it on duolingo, but you're going to become an expert when you show up

in Spain, you know, because that's what you actually need. You need to practice this to actually get good. Okay. So to recap, you are going to create the content. You know, you're going to get the business, you're going to stay consistent in that, but your focus in being, getting the reps, you know, get the experience as the agent. And then as you're doing that for you, for you personally, or what you would recommend for anyone, as your business grows, can you talk about kind of your schedule managing it or what leverage pieces that you put in place first? Because I know you have the five agents now. You have a full-time videographer. You have the ops and all of that. But I'm thinking through like a chronological

growth standpoint, if that made sense. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, I think a lot of agents, you know, we get excited about starting teams right away. And we oftentimes start teams too soon. And then the next mistake is the team leaders, you know, steps back out of production, right?

And there's this idea that that's the ultimate goal in real estate. And I think really as agents, what we need to do, like if I'm a brand new agent today, the most important thing that I can do in my business is go out and do as much business as possible. So I personally am not in a position of need. And so what that means is that I'm going to go sit as many open houses as I possibly can. If I have to go door knocking, that's fine. I'm going to leverage tools like Capcut and Instagram and short form video to create a few reels, to get permission from a few agents and show some quick host tours.

this is my first three to six months in the business. And then on top of that, I'm going to document everything in Instagram stories. So everyone in my world, my sphere of influence, I'm never bothering them. I'm never wearing the T-shirt that says, hey, do you want to buy or sell a house? I'm never asking them at a dinner table like, oh, so you're moving in six months. Like, have you picked an agent or, you know, I'm your guy? Like, people don't want to work like that. So I would always say it's like you need to get, you need to do massive action in those first six to nine

months because the second you have enough commissions coming in to pay your bills and take care of yourself, now you can unlock the actual thing that you need in your business. And the actual thing you need in your business is to 100% of the time serve your clients and put their needs first. And it's really hard to do that if you're behind on your bills, behind on your rent, behind on your mortgage payments, wondering how you're going to get through because you're going to inevitably be in conflict, your needs and their needs. And so the second you can get through that, that first three to six months where you are taking that massive action, you've got enough stuff going for you where you can start to then say, okay, now, what am I doing here? What is the best use

of my time? Am I getting as much return from the open homes as I am from the social media? Right. Or am I not getting as much from the social media and the time I'm spending that is distracting me from the door knocking that I could do that could be business tomorrow. Right. So you just need to gather enough data from enough different spaces. to be like, this is where I fit in. You know, and so for me, if I was to, even if I was to start my YouTube channel over, I wouldn't start with doing property tours. I would start with the most important video that you could possibly make,

which is moving to your city. Like, that is the most searchable term that Google will find that you can rank for. And my only difference would be is I would invest in that. I would invest in a great videographer. I would take a Mr. Beast style format where it's quick cuts, super high energy, where there's no fluff, there's no selling in it. It's 100%. It is a 360 view over 8 to 12 minutes of your city in your market. I put one of these videos out in September of last year. It's got nearly 200,000 views and it's generated probably $250,000 in GCI just from that one video. And from it, it was,

was clear. I could have made 10 videos taking 10 times as long with property tours to generate the same amount of interest as my moving to Calgary video. The difference is that I have a promise with my clients that if you're listing with us, we're going to create a video content for you. And so that's part of my value proposition. And once again, my goal is not to be an influencer. My goal is to represent my clients. So I fit that other content in on the other side of our listings, like in between shooting listings and those other pieces. We've done a lot of talking about what you would do, you know, in the past and going through your experiences. And I'd like to bring it to kind of where you are now. So I think you've learned a lot because you keep mentioning it's not about the ego.

It's about serving clients. And maybe you knew that already or maybe that was an evolution. I don't know. But could you talk about kind of like what? you are in your business now, where your energy is spent, where your time is spent and kind of like where you're headed. Yeah, you know what? I think the thing that I discovered over time was just how painful real estate can be if you're completely transactional, right? Right? If you're, you know, that feeling when you have a listing, you're like, this is amazing. And then it's like, it's sold.

And you're like, what do I do? Like, you did the thing that you wanted to do. You sold. You sold. the listing, but now you feel like you're out of work. Right. So for me, what I realized was, wait a second, I 100% need leverage in my business. Like, I need leverage. And that's what a YouTube channel and a social media can provide. It's this leverage for your time. So, for example, my YouTube channel gets watched about 18 minutes for every one minute of real time. So that means every day, it gets 18 days worth of content. But that's not me cold calling or door knocking them. That's them opting in and pressing play. They're cold calling and door knocking my business to see if I'm someone that they like to see

if they could build trust with me. So for me, when I was really focused on the sales piece of my business and growing my team and doing more transactions, I wanted that leverage. YouTube provided me that. In 2021, though, I did the real estate dream. I sold more luxury homes than anyone else in the city. I did $71 million in personal production and I hated it. I hated every minute of my life. I hated sitting on the couch at 1130 at night and having my kids sleeping up against me and being a million miles away while I'm working on a condition or an amendment or an offer. I felt like someone had a voodoo doll. I mean, they were just stabbing like, write an offer. Show me this house. Do this thing. It was cool because I wanted to provide for my family,

but I realized it wasn't at all costs. Like I didn't want to do so at all costs. So now in my business, I'm much more focused on how the work that I do today, how can it impact as many people as possible, what's the biggest leverage point that I could possibly do? So one of the things that I did sort of early on in COVID during the COVID times was I started looking around for a little bit of a different brokerage. I heard about this brokerage called Real Revenue.

broker. The CEO had called me up and CEOs don't normally call me up. So I took the meeting and just told me a little bit about his vision for the future and the way they were going to do it. I was pretty skeptical about cloud-based brokerages. I had a very personally, I just thought anything that had a revenue share model, it had to be inherently toxic or something, right, because it would create competition amongst agents and recruiting and those kind of things. And so I wasn't really sure how to how to feel about it. But I did see it as an opportunity to kind of put my thumbprint on on the industry like kind of help create the culture that I always wish existed. And so I helped bring real, real broker into Canada. And what I found really quickly is that I actually

had a brand amongst agents. And that was the part that was, I knew I had lots of friends amongst agents. I had agents that were reaching out and stuff. But now I realized in my business that I can create a piece of content and I can leverage it in a whole bunch of different ways because all the different viewers, someone might reach out and say, hey, Brad, I really, You know, I saw you on this podcast, you know, I'm interested more about video. I thought about doing like the courses and the mastermind thing and I've just never felt comfortable with that. Like I would just be paranoid if I sold someone something that at the end of it, they'd be like,

that wasn't worth it. So one thing that I've done that in my evolution is I've realized that I have a passion for sharing this stuff with agents. So I've actually built a new YouTube channel that's launching here in a few days. I've already got about five or six videos on it. Oh my God. It's called Brand it like Brad. Okay.

Brand it like Brad. Okay. And it's just going to show people or just share with people my journey on how to start a YouTube channel if I was starting all over in 2024. What's the content that I'd make? What gear do I shoot with? That kind of stuff. It's just all based around stuff I'm really passionate about.

And the idea is that if I can continue to follow work that, I'm really passionate about, that's probably where the best returns will come from, right? Because every time I've tried to engineer ROI in my life, it's never worked. So, you know, you would never start a YouTube channel or do a listing tour based on the idea of like, well, how much did you pay the videographer and how many exact leads did you get and how much can you contribute to ROI? Because on the surface, I'd say, I don't know, I don't have enough information and I've been doing it for five or six years.

So I should probably be broke because I don't know how to link it. but I just know that enough good things happen when you do enough of the right things that you don't have to worry so much about the ROI. With Real. So I don't know much about Real. I'm with EXP. But Real is like, you know, everywhere. And so I'm curious because I know that you have your formal team, which is five agents

close knit. And then your real family, I believe has like 4,000 people in it. Yeah. Is that correct? which is amazing. Congratulations. Yeah, thank you very much. It's a, it's a really, it's weird, right? And so when you, when you talk about that, like, obviously we want to like, I don't like to share stuff if it's not going to be valuable for like a listener, right? Because I always think about it. So even when people ask me about real, I'm like, I have atypical, like very atypical growth. Like, you know, I think it might be the second largest network at the company. I've built that 4,000. agent network, but it wasn't me. It was the people I partnered with and then and then just trying to help them build their things because they were on this journey with me and trying to, you know, trying to ask that question first in my real estate business was like, what's in it for the people

that work with me? And then now in the real world, like, okay, well, what's in it for the people that are are working with us over at real? And so now I'm more challenged to think about what can I do to scale support, right? Like, I can't get on the phone and chat with 4,000 people in a day or in a week or in a month or in a year. So what can I do? What can I create that can maybe add some small piece of value in the one or two areas of the real estate business that I have maybe a slight advantage in. I also didn't, you know, I also know that there's just so many brilliant people. Like I saw like Ricky Cruz, for example. You had Ricky on here, not too long. Brilliant. Brilliant in such a different way than I am.

And that's what I love about this business is there's just, man, you can just really pick your own path. Okay. Makes sense. And I believe that probably the scaled support will also come through the brand at like Brad YouTube channel. Yeah,

you know what? Like I teach a little bit in the real academy, which I know EXP, I think you guys have like the online classrooms and all those kind of things. So something very similar to that. You know, I've never been. built sort of like a Brad network in the way of like, okay, well, you know, if you're part of my

world, you get these, you know, private masterminds or classes or courses, those kind of things. We've just, we've kind of always went with the idea of like, hey, if you got some value to bring Brad, just poured into the whole brokerage, let everyone gain from it. That's like been the philosophy at least. And I think for the most part, it's worked well. But the reality is, is there's like a lot of great brokerages out there. EXP is an incredible brokerage, right? They pioneered this model. And so I think at the end of the day,

like the one thing that people get tripped up with brokerages is this idea that there's gonna be some one winner and there's just not. The reality is, is that for a lot of agents, a cloud-based brokerage is not the right fit. Many agents wanna be in a little boutique, family-like setting where they get that real personal support where they have an office to go in,

they have accountability. Other agents want to plug into a much larger network, right? But at the end of the day, whether it's EXP or real, whether you're doing listing videos or not, the real secret in life is to be on a journey with the people that you want to go on that journey with. You want to spend your time working with people that are like you, people who like you for who you are and people who you like for who they are.

And there's enough of us that are similar that we just want to be together, right? And we find we find our tribes and our spaces and all that stuff. And so, you know, wherever a person ends up, I think is great. I spend so much of my time saying that too, where I'm like, this is not for everyone. It's really not. Let's talk about what you're looking for because I'm not going to say that this is a good fit if it's not. Question about, so I have one more question. And then we're going to head to kind of our wrap up.

What's a piece of advice that you give, but you find hard to follow for yourself? Oh my batch content. No. Yeah, you know what? Gosh, I'm the last person that should have ever been successful. I am very much rely on motivation and inspiration rather than great systems and routine to create. And because of that, I think if you're someone who has that in you, I think there's just something super powerful about the person that wakes up,

owns their morning, gets more done by 8 a.m. than most other people do. If that was one habit that I wish I could do, it would be that. I find myself sort of careening from one moment to the next inspiration to not. But then again, I look back in hindsight and I say, and I think all agents should do this, is like we condemn ourselves for all the things that we're not good at. and we never recognize ourselves for the strengths that we have. And usually it's the strengths that we have that will really be like the source of our business. So like for me, I suck at managing my database.

I never remember to do a regular email mail out. Those things are really difficult for someone with my mind. But I've obviously had success in the industry. So I don't know what I would go and change about myself in order to go and make, you know, some maybe if I change that thing, it would take away the special thing that I have in some other department. But I would say, yeah, the advice is, I think the people that own the morning, I know a lot of people that create more content, higher quality content, all that thing. Man, those are the people that really, that I admire. Because they can manufacture their destiny

rather than wait for algorithms or inspiration to spur them on. I need to transfer my mornings into content creation at some point. I'm like such a morning person. Like I'm miracle morning all the way, get so much done. But I have this like hurdle within me right now. Like something is stopping me from pushing forward in content creation. Like I know, man, I've talked to so many people.

I'm like so logically sold on YouTube. And like I know it makes sense. Like I know it is the way and yet I have not. And so maybe, maybe this is just now, you're my therapist. Maybe I just haven't hit that point in my time. Because I really do feel like if maybe I hit that moment of like real clarity about the direction I want to go and real clarity about what I want to speak on, I think that that will like, I think maybe clarity is what's holding me up.

I'm so sorry. You're now my therapist, Brad. So here's the thing, right? You are obviously incredibly talented on camera. You're so well spoken. You're very passionate about what you do. People follow passion and energy. They just do.

And for me, I've always suffered probably from like a disbelief in myself. Not really a, like I know, like I've been wanting to release these, like these five videos I have for branded. Like Brad, they've been in the tank for anywhere from three months to nine months. And I haven't released them. despite, you know, speaking on a lot of stages last year, despite having a really great track record of selling, I haven't released them because I just don't know if people want to think about me in that way. You know, like, I don't know that I, that people want to learn from me in that way. They're like, no, no, no, you're the, you're the tour guy.

Just talk about the tours. Like, don't, don't, don't complicate it, right? And, and so there, it's just that self, that self-belief issue. But the reality is, is for someone like your. who creates so much content. YouTube is such a massive, massive support because it's all the stuff that you get to do that you're great at, communicating, storytelling, connecting with people, sharing that passion. As you share that information that they need to help them make a decision in their life, whether it's for agents, whether it's for your local market or your real estate

business, people feed off that. There's not enough people who are passionate, champions for the causes that they believe in that are willing to put themselves out there. And so I think that's something that you would do. Oh, so good at. So, so good. Thanks, Brad. I really appreciate you. Okay. As we had to wrap up, is there anything that we did not hit on? We hit on a lot. But is there anything that you're like, I really want to share this? You know what? I really want to share this belief that you don't have to be a creative to create content. You don't have to be some super influencer to have success.

You don't need to have 10,000 subscribers before you start seeing a return. All you need to do is start. And you need to start. And if you took four or five guiding principles and just said, okay, first off, who is my audience? Like, who am I speaking to? what matters to them and what is necessary, as in what's not being said right now that that audience needs to hear. If you make necessary content, you don't have to be eloquent. You don't have to be attractive. I'm living proof of that. You don't have to be any of those things. You just have to

have something that's necessary. And all of us agents, we know our markets, we know our clients, we know their fears, we know their worries. We know something that could help them in their lives. And if we're not creating that content, someone else will help them through that time. And so I would say you don't, there's no magic. There's no magic in any of this. It's just purely find out who your audience is, know what concerns them, help them solve their problems and try to make necessary content, not the content that you want to make,

the content that they need. Brad, you're pumping me up here. Okay. Wrap up question number one is, what is something cool that you've learned recently? Something cool that I've learned recently. You know, I saw when, you know what I'd say, I'd say there's a lot more people watching you than you have any clue, whether it's your content, whether it's in the internet, industry, every agent has a personal brand. They have different ways that they can scale that.

But even agents that don't believe it, once they start to test it out, realize very quickly, wow, you know, I inspired this agent when I released this piece of content. It didn't matter if I have 100 followers or 20,000. People are watching me. They were inspired by it. They liked my business. There was something. And so I think everyone has a lot more influence than they think. and I've noticed that myself and I've seen this for others. So it's the ones that just get outside of their heads and go after it that realize that same truth for themselves. Love that.

Okay, Brad, what events are you going to in the next 12 months? Okay, yeah, absolutely. So I'm actually flying to Orlando. I'm going to go check out Elite Retreat. That's the Tom Ferry coaching program. It's at the end of Florida. immediately following that, I'll be flying to New York to speak, actually in Jersey, I guess, with my friend Ed Stulac. Then I'll be flying for the second of March to, yeah, to Phoenix.

And then a real broker is releasing its first Canadian conference. So I've been working with them to organize that. That's going to be in Banff at the end of May. So just after May long weekend. And then I'll be at the Rise Conference, which is another. the real broker conference, sort of like an EXPCon, end of October. And the destination has not been announced yet for that. But I'll be at five or six different events for the year. I usually go to also Summit, Tom Ferry's Summit in August. It's always like, it's five or six thousand agents.

It's a great community of people. Yeah. And it's my kind of people, a lot of creators. Totally. I was hoping, you know, I'm like writing down all the events you're going to. And I was like, please say summit because that's the one. I mean, I went for the first time this past year and it was just freaking awesome. Wasn't it great? Oh my God. It was so good.

Yeah. I'm going to track you down and find you this year. I would hope so. I would hope so. Because we're now best friends, Shelby. Yeah. BF. Yeah.

Okay, cool. Brad, how can listeners help you in your business? Well, you know what? I've got a team here in Calgary. I'm incredibly proud of how they work with the clients that we have. I think they provide a really top level service.

So whether you have someone that's selling in Calgary or you're buying, you have a client that's relocating to Calgary or someone who has a property up here, whatever it might be. Our team, we'd love to work with you. We're obviously happy to pay referrals. You know, honestly, even with our new channel coming up, branded like Brad, if you think that, you know, growing a personal brand, understanding YouTube, social media, those pieces anymore, you know, might be helpful to you.

Hopefully you can check it out. Thank you. Well, Brad, thank you so much for coming on the show today. And listeners, go and show him all the love, follow him, subscribe, all the things. So do both of those things. And otherwise, Brad, thank you so much for coming on the show today. And real estate rock stars. Thanks for listening. Hey, thank you so much.

I'm going to go post that review now.