KGCI: Real Estate on Air - How to Pick the Best Real Estate Media Company for Your Listing

Episode Date: February 17, 2026

Summary:This episode features Mike Wallace, a media expert, who provides a tactical guide on how real estate agents should choose a professional media company for their listings. The discussion moves beyond just price to focus on the quality, consistency, and range of services offered, including photography, video, and drone footage. Wallace emphasizes that high-quality media is a direct reflection of the agent's brand and is a non-negotiable component of winning over sellers and attracting premium buyers. Listeners will gain a clear checklist for evaluating vendors and ensuring their listings stand out.

Welcome back to the Age of Goldmine, the number one real estate agent podcast in the universe, in our personal opinion. Today, we actually have like a little bit of a plot twist. You know, normally it's Ali and I just talking about what's having going on in our businesses as we are building, I'm rebuilding from the ground up in a new state and Allie's just crushing in in Tucson, Arizona. Or we have on guests where we are interviewing them. But you know what? Today is the plot twist and the tables are turning where Michael, Wallace is here with us today. He is a local Kentucky media company owner. And what I mean by media company as applicable to the people who listen to this podcast is he does all things for listings

where photos, videos, 3D tours, everything when you think I have a listing coming up, what do I need media wise? Michael does that. And he hit me up on Facebook and was like, yo girl. He did not say it like that. Yo girl. It was kind of like that. Yeah, it was kind of like that. Kind of like that was like, hey, like I am doing this. He's creating a real estate media guide or real estate agents and asked me if he could interview me for that. And I was like, dude, let's do that. But let's like double down and let's do it on this podcast called the agent goldmine.

And that's, that's what we're doing today. Michael is here to interview Allie and I on real estate media things, right? Absolutely. Okay. I'm like, no, I'm just hearing by myself. I'm going to like now. Okay, so with that, Michael, and you can say whatever you want to, if you want to, like, set the stage or you can just jump right into questions. The floor is yours, sir.

Right. Well, I guess to begin with, the reason why I even reached out is because on my Instagram and Facebook, I started seeing videos of what you were doing and how you were making case studies. And I couldn't tell you how many clients that I've had where all they, want me to do is produce sales videos. And then they come back to me and they're like, the sales videos don't really have great click through rates. You need to help us. And then they double back and just like, we need to have sales videos. And so the, what I've been doing this year is taking all the questions and all the concerns that all my clients have and just putting into a book, because I'm really tired to answer these questions. And I went and I was trying to find people that

were really great visual storytellers and people that are, and I don't want to find people that are Instagram famous. I want to find people that are actually making money, having just a handful of videos and either self-producing or knowing how to use media providers and the tools that they have access to or like everybody else's story to actually put together like, hey, this is what this looks like. This is what you need to be doing. And the reasons why you need to be doing this and not doing just sales videos, why that's important. So that's the reason why I reached out. Allie, I saw the last case study you did was fantastic. I mean, you had a bunch of different shots, a bunch of different visuals that in hindsight, it might have been, what, 60 to 90 seconds.

But really, if you had actually looked out at each individual shot, there was a lot of pre-planning that went into that. There was a lot of thought and energy that went into saying, like, hey, this is how we're going to structure this, how to make something tangible that somebody who's watching that in 60 seconds can take away from it. And honestly, it represented you as a real estate agent very well. So yeah, that's the main reason why I reached out. And then once I found out about your podcast, I mean, Allie, you do the same thing. And it seems like both of you all have had it's like some really good success off of just posting that. And again,

both of you are not concerned about becoming like Instagram famous or YouTube famous. Like you really just care about representing yourself, your buyers and your sellers really well. And so yeah, that's the whole reason why I decided to approach you all about this. So thank you for taking the time to do that. I don't know if Alley's had an opportunity to actually look at the media guide yet. but it's still being written out right now it's more or less a really dense textbook so I'm

wanting to get more anecdotal stuff to add in between there to show like here's here's where we got so the last interview I did was actually with an entrepreneur he's got like seven businesses his last one was one for a thing called reviewsy which actually goes through if you're like a real estate agent it's not primarily just for real estate but if you have had a transaction with a customer, it actually sets up everything is automated. It asks about doing reviews for you. And it actually has a multi-step screen where just in case it's not a great review that you're going to be getting from them, you actually get to see it in advance and then actually

sit down and do the proper customer service. Like, hey, how can we make this better? Is there something that I missed to try to fix some really bad situations before? before they actually go live on your Google My Business listing. Mike, I love that you said that you're not going after those that are Instagram famous. You're going after people like Shelby, you know. Keep her humble. I love me, Shelby.

She's flicking me off. No. She might be doing that to me, honestly. Oh, it was Ali. Sorry. It was Ali. I think it was to you, Mike. No, I'm excited to have you on this podcast because I do want to cover, well, a lot of things.

First thing is you mentioned sales video and even before that, well, actually, along with that, a lot of agents don't do the thinking as far as what they're looking for the outcome to be. So they know that they want a video. They know that they want to market their listing, but they don't really. So all they do is just copy and paste what they have seen other people do. and what other people do are, when I presume, you call a sales video, which is like, well, I'll let you explain it. But it's like copy and paste of the same thing over and over again without any

brainstorming or like taking some time to think, like, what will actually make this video different? So can you go into? Because I'm sure that you also hear this too when people hire you, like real estate agents that haven't really done the thinking and then therefore get not the results that they were looking for. Like, hey, the click through isn't high. why? Well, it's because you did a copy and paste of everybody else. You know, you didn't. So it's like not your

fault. It's, it has to be the responsibility of the agent, in my opinion, to know what their look, how can you make this different? How can you make this stand out instead of just hiring a video editor and hoping that they do everything along with like the brainstorming, the creative? Because they're not the ones that are marketing. Like the real estate agent is the one that's marketing the property. That's what they got hired to do. So can you explain what you mean by, sales video. So in regards to like a sales video, and I feel like I do get hired to help out a lot with like, how do I make this look a lot better? Essentially, it's like, hi, my name is Michael Wallace, and welcome to this three-bed, two-bath ranch on a quarter acre lot that's right next to a train

track. It's going to be the best house you've ever seen. And I'm trying to really drill in that, like if every house is represented like that, you're going to get the same sort of traction that you are across the board. And with the like the brokerages that I've worked with and agents who do like educational and case study sort of content, they always get a lot more interaction. They want to show the personality because at the end of the day, I'm not going to be buying anything off of Facebook based off of a video, like directly, if that makes sense. Like, I'm going to be using social media to see things that I care about. And I really don't care to see an ad every time that I open up my phone.

And that's, that's the part that sort of has been frustrating me enough to write an entire, well, it's 89 pages. Maybe I'll turn into a book. I don't know. I'm just trying to give like an educational reference so people can understand like, hey, so the videos you're producing, you need to be educating your audience. You need to be entertaining them. And then you need to be building that trust so that when the decision comes down, I think

Shelby was just talking about like how one of her videos where she was talking about her case study, somebody just reached out to her. Like that's that's really where the magic happens. It's not you. Oh, I was just saying that it literally happened this morning. I was super excited because the, and that's kind of interesting. So it wasn't a listing video, this one in particular. But it was a post that was one of those collaborations with a local business or you know that I've been doing those lately too.

But it was a collaboration with the Lexington Sporting Club, which is our soccer team that's like a brand new, whatever soccer team that's here. And it's like an inbound either head or assistant coach who is like, hey, like I'm moving and I need to find housing. can you help me? And I'm just like, perfect. Yes, absolutely. So anyway, I'm excited. And it is cool how like social media does work. And that's the thing that I think that agents need to realize is when they are, like you mentioned earlier, Mike, when they were, maybe it's a first sale by owner and maybe it's not in their budget to have high quality media. Allie and I talk about this all the time, where it's, that's not the point. The point is not the singular listing that you are marketing. it is that in addition to the brand that you are building online for other people.

It is your marketing budget in addition to that listing. It is your marketing budget to get future clients because everything that you put out online is a direct representation of yourself whether or not you like it. And so if you're like, oh, it doesn't work in my budget. I'm just going to do phone pictures for this listing. No, because now you are the agent that stooped down to that level and decided to put phone pictures on the internet. and now that's a representation of your brand.

I think I see it more with newbie agents, and you got to start somewhere. So I get that. And there are tools, like one of the things that I hope everybody from your podcast that gets this, I'm actually going to plug a thing called Imogen or Imagine AI. I actually started using that in my own personal photo journey or photo editing journey, just because I'm on the road too much to really,

look at every single photo. So really systems and processes, like if there is time being spent somewhere, I want to shrink it as much, but also not dip on quality. But say you get some discolored photos from a photographer, you can actually plug that in through Imogen and they'll do window pulls.

They'll do orientation correction. All you really need is a lightroom account. And if you're talking about like return on investment, Lightroom itself, you can get the Adobe package for $10 a month. And then Imogen does pricing based on jobs. So I think it's about $2.50 for every 60 photos that you push through it. And it's 15 minutes of editing. So I know not everybody understands how to do that.

But if really, if someone's trying to DIY something and they're doing this from the ground up, it is a huge tool. It's a great tool for media producers, but it's also a great tool for even agents themselves, if they really are in a pinch or they have a marketer that's in-house that actually can take that off their to-do list. What would you say is one of the best ways for a real estate agent and a company like yours to work together? Like what are the prerequisites of that agent needs to have done or needs to have like thought about? Really the best results are going to be coming from understanding that if they are trying to get

business from online, they need to be seen. But it's, they need to understand that it's not sales videos. This is something that I ran into. Like, I used to work retail. It was a, it was small. We sold overpriced outdoor goods in Patagonia. The, the main thing is when I was working in the back doing logistics and working on the website, is that we really wanted to focus in on the product. And so we only focused on like, hey, we're, essentially, it'd be like going up to someone on the street and

just throwing a jacket in front of their face and be like, hey, look at this. When really you just need to be talking about the lifestyle, the things that impact what's going around why somebody would even buy that jacket. For them, it was like showing off hiking trails and showing off how comfortable you felt while you were on that hiking trail wearing this Patagonia jacket. Like, that's really what people cared about. That's how you associate two and two together. And for real estate, I think I just looked at.

a couple of videos that you did, Allie, where it was like the cost of living in Tucson, Arizona, right? Those are huge decisions that impact if somebody's going to make, make the actual leap to go and move to a different state. And you can't, you physically can't be in wherever that person is living at to be the agent that helps them when they first make that decision. So you have to represent yourself online in order to get in front of them. But other than that, you know, any real estate, real estate agent that has a listing, you know, I can do photos for. There's, that's a really low bar to go with.

But as far as agents who really want to push their online presence, they need to, at the bare minimum, understand that they are representing themselves and not the properties that they're selling, like first and foremost. Because at, at the most effective point that they can be is that, you. is that you will have built an audience of people that are watching you so that when you do post that sales video, you've got a ton of people that have eyeballs on it. I've seen examples. Like there was this one guy in Ohio that bought a flip house and he documented the whole journey. And he had no idea what he was doing.

He never knew how to like put in the floors or do trim or anything like that. He ended up getting like 100,000 followers and the open house was like backed up beyond the streets. And that's storytelling. That's the real nitty gritty of it. Just because you have a real estate license doesn't mean anybody gives a crap about what you're doing. It's like photographers. Like I can throw a rock and hit five photographers right out of the window here. Like what separates us from everybody else?

What would you say is the difference like in that storytelling? I feel like overall social media is going back to a little bit more of a vlog type vibe. Like maybe that's just what I'm seeing. Like a slightly shaky or like they start the video while putting the camera down. You know, they don't put the camera down and set it and then say, hello, my name is Ali Garcad. You know, they, what are your thoughts on high quality video versus the potential

vlog type lifestyle to sell a home? if that made sense as a question. Yeah, so that's the argument of overly polished versus being real. I would say being real is 100% better than having overly polished. Like, you can polish a turd, but it's still a turd. And I really, the fact that you're seeing a lot more vlog style content is that it's associating that people want to know information. People want to care about something.

They want to care about you. But you need to be able to tell your stories correctly. And then if you want to, you can add lights. Like, I love this little thing right here. 40 bucks. It's a little magnetized light. You can just set it up anywhere. You can start adding small little things as it gets better because it does look a little bit more professional.

But at the very base of everything, you have to know how to. tell a story correctly. You're going to see a lot more people moving into that vlog style, especially as AI video comes out because people are very distrustful as of right now. And it's only going to get worse as the AI video gets better. Like I can actually go on 11 labs, copy my face, copy my likeness, copy my voice. And I can tell ChatDBT and set it up with Zapier. And I can just say, hey, produce this every Monday and set up an automated system. So I'm actually not even talking. At that point, I'm completely separated from the content creation side of it whatsoever.

And without oversight, you know, without knowing if that story is actually going to be good, there's no real grounds for anybody to care. So you're going to see a lot more people that are going to spend a lot more time on their phones, just looking at what people are doing. So even if it's at your home, like just get a good window light just so people can see your face. and some good audio. And that's the bare bones of what you need. And that's what's going to work.

You don't have to have a studio production set up. Okay. I think at this point, we have covered the fact that salesy, not the way, copy paste, what everyone else doing, not the way. We've mentioned a lot about the power of storytelling. And I bet there are listeners out there who are like, okay, I'm bought in. I want to tell a story. How?

What does that even actually mean? And I know what we've covered so far is like kind of step one is think about who the best fit would be for this home. So you can, you know, get into the psyche, I think of that person, identify their, you know, pain points and how this property might solve them. What else? And if that's not step one, what do you think both of you is the, how do we tell a compelling story? Allie, do you want to go first? I only have an extra add on to that. It's almost like, should the story be about the agent, the owners that are selling or the house?

You know, because I'm seeing some agents make stories, but it's like about the agent in just one of their listings. If that makes sense, yeah, I don't know. I don't want to further muddy the question and turn this into a 14-part question. So I'll stop here. I think the short answer is that you can do whatever you want and you need to do. iterative content in order to make sure what sticks. It's the shotgun approach and you're going to throw anything at the wall to figure out what sticks.

But as far as how a story is built, I consider it three parts, right? You have your hook in the beginning. You've got the meat and potatoes in the center where you talk about whatever it is you're talking about. And then you have to tell your audience what you want them to do. And if you can frame anything, especially with social media, you've got three seconds in a hook to get their attention. You can do that through visual hooks. You're doing something weird with your camera.

You've got this really amazing shot that you're looking at. Or you've set your phone up in a corner at a really weird angle that nobody has ever thought about. You've got audio hooks where people say something that you can set it up as controversial. You can set it something that's funny. or you can say something that's like really high demand right there. And there's tons of creators that sort of break this down. But there's no one thing that you can do that works well. You need to figure out the one thing that you're really good at doing to keep eyeballs on your content.

So you can represent yourself. You can represent the house. You could represent your sellers. But the main goal with any of these videos is to get people to like, know, and trust you. That's bare bones. that's all you have to do. And actually, both of you all do that really well. And again, that's sort of the reason why I wanted to approach you about that.

So how would you all actually set up and you all make your own stories? Like I know that you're not outsourcing that. So what's your guiding, I guess, principle when you're coming up with like, how do you represent yourself online? When you're about to do a video, how do you storyboard that? If you're on a 50-50 split, it's time to rethink your brokerage. At EXP, the split is 80-20. And once you cap, you keep 100%. We show you how to get there faster.

I'm Ali Garcet or Ali the agent. My sponsor, Shelby Johnson and I, each close over 40 deals a year. We are full-time agents actively producing. And everyone in our upline is an icon agent. When you name us as a sponsor at EXP, you get full access to all of our systems and checklist and templates, our 200k GCI playbook to help you make 200K your first year, direct mentorship and direct access to us, no huge group calls. We also help agents add another stream of income, which is RevShare. We will help you with all the tools and trainings you

need to build revenue share that will help you retire early. If you're interested in building an actual business, book a call at theagentgoldmine.com. I try to think of the bottom line up front. And so instead of whatever, like the way that I think of short form video, rather, because it's different from the long form, my short form is what is the punchline? Like, what do I want the buyer or the seller or the viewer to do or to think about or, you know, like the not necessarily the call to action, but what do I want to be the point of this video? I put that in the very, very beginning.

But instead of just, but I try to, I put a spit on it. So that way it's like not just real estate market is falling 20%. That's boring shit. I wouldn't like hook anybody, you know? And plus like so it. So I take the bottom line up. Yeah. Yeah.

And to who and where and like why should I care. So I try to think about like is this for a buyer? Am I trying to get a listing out of this? Am I just trying to get like overall super top of funnel leads? Is this for brand? Is this for clients? because I kind of bucket categories into like either like come list me or come help me buy calls or just brand awareness.

Like Shelby right now is like killing on a brand awareness. I've always kind of been a little bit more toward like bottom of the funnel. Like call me for Tucson today. So, so yeah, I kind of like work backward. What is, who is this for? What is what do I want them to know or think about? How is this different? and then how can I make that, how can I play the words so that way it actually hooks them?

And sometimes the text, like the context itself is kind of boring. So then I will add on a visual like you said, like holding a huge sweet potato that has nothing to do with real estate. You know, like. And it works. Yeah. So stuff like that. And it works. Yeah. Okay.

For my process in, for listings in particular, not so much brand awareness stuff. right now because a little different process. But like what I've been doing with listings is I start with making a highlight sheet, which Ali and I have talked about before in our listing step by step process anyway, where it's like you take the time to list out every possible cool thing about this property, including like the actual property, but also like the area and distance from and improvements and all that stuff. So by doing that anyway, which I'm going to upload into the MLS as on my documents sheet, like I'm going to upload it anyway. I kind of have the format of like, oh, these are all the cool things that I've thought about for this house. Who actually would this

be a good fit for? And I don't gear it from the perspective of the agent or the seller, but I gear it towards the perspective of the buyer in the hopes that, you know, the buyer will see this and they'll be like, oh my God, this is the perfect fit for me. But twofold is that growing of your brand and your resume and all this stuff. But so highlight sheet, who is this best for? And then I have the next piece is, what is the coolest way possible that I can showcase this house? Because I know that people don't really care. Like Mike said earlier, like people don't want to see the, hi, this is our three bed, two bath, like whatever. They're not going to have that's boring unless they're specifically looking in that.

That's like a needle in the haystack. It's not going to happen. So I'm like, well, how can I make people watch me? Let's be as ridiculous as possible. And granted, this is like my style. I like to be ridiculous and I'm really into fitness. So like let me climb a tree. Let me, you know, jump in a pool or do a backflip or like, you know what I mean? So that's kind of my vibe. So I think that everyone has to think about like what is their vibe. Maybe it's not like riding a scooter and like a bike

and all these things. But that's what I love doing and it's really fun for me. So now I get to go and I get to plug in and be like, how can I make this as creative as possible, including props, including like outfit changes, you know, if it is applicable I did in my life. last couple listing videos. And then through that, I do the scripting, which the hook, so, so important like both you guys talked about. And I think that it's the visual and the verbal hook combined is like the best way I think right now because then you're getting more sets of eyeballs that are like and earballs.

I like ear balls, yeah. Yeah. And then scripting and taking whatever your. script is and trying to cut it down how many words. What word is not necessary? Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. How can I say this in less syllables? Go to chat. Chepte. This is the word I want to say. What is the shortest syllables possible and like inserting those words and dumbing it down? Because that's again, like every, what is it? Allie we talked about before. It's like you have an opportunity every three seconds to lose someone. So it's not even just the hook. It's like the hook gets them, but every three

seconds is another chance for them to keep scrolling. So like how can you keep them engaged? How can you make this as concise as possible. Yeah. And then, of course, at the end, the call to action, which mine are not, like, so Ali, like you said, you're much more like you're toward bottom of the funnel. I'm much more like top of the funnel, brand awareness, like share with a friend, not like book your appointment today. And so that's another thing that you kind of have to figure out your goals. Because that's, I and I talk about a lot about like, do you need now business or are you building your future business? Because there's a difference. And yeah, so that's my process. Well, I think the important part here is that you all put significant work that goes into every single one of these videos.

And that's the main reason for that success, because again, I can just sit here in my office and create content all day, every day. But if it's not geared to what the people that I'm trying to do business with, what they care about, it's not going to go anywhere. Also is a weird note. I'm like an ultra nerd. So in talking about like you have an opportunity every three seconds to lose somebody, that actually all started. There was a case study specifically for Lord of the Rings, the two towers in that movie. The battle at Helms Deep was such a long battle that people started stopped losing interests

over halfway through. And people were trying to figure out like how do we do that in cinema? to keep people's attention. And so now ever since then, you can actually watch the style of videos. And so they'll actually swap screens. If it's a short, calm setting, you might actually have that same scene on screen for eight seconds.

But as like tension begins to rise, it's a screen swap every four seconds, every two seconds. And sometimes if you've exhausted the audience's attention enough, you have to switch storylines altogether. But that's cinema. That has nothing to do with how you represent yourself online. But I thought there was like an interesting parallel there. I feel like I'd be remiss without like asking you all, like, how do you all come up with your hooks?

Because I feel like hooks are a really good buzzword and not everybody fully understands them right now. So like, how would you define a hook, either one of you? Like what's the first thing? You've got a house. Let's make up a listing in our. head. You've got a house. And so how are you going to use that sweet potato to make a visual hook? Just starting with the sweet potato thing. So I took a, I took a course with Adley, A-L-D, no, ADL-E-Y, dyslexia. And so she's like all about short form. She has a media company that like

where like huge, huge brands hire her to promote their business, like Bud Light and shit like that. Um, so she talks about the hook in depth. And, um, it's almost like, so she actually creates those videos that you see on social media that are a minute long because that's on Facebook. That's when you get paid is app. If, if you can keep somebody for 61 seconds, that's when that's when you can get paid through content creation, whatever. So she does these like dragging on things like suspense and then like, oh, this happens.

And almost there and almost there. Uh, but it's all. about the beginning. Otherwise, people don't care about the almost they're almost there. They want to stick around. So same concept applies to real estate listings or brand, whatever. So in the very, very beginning, as far as the hook, she talks about combining two almost separately, like different things. So the voice to be different than the visual. So for that, so that way when people, it stops the scroll, right? Like, why is this person? So essentially you're combining two separately different things that do not belong.

The human brain gets confused. The human brain wants to figure it out. Therefore, they will stop the scroll. So, for example, if you're holding a sweet potato and the potato is like, you have a knife, like people know that you're going to be taught, something related to food, okay, got it. But if you're holding a sweet potato and you're talking about interest rates or if you're holding a sweet potato and you have a saw in your other hand, something just like that does not belong, that stops the scroll.

And that's all you need. Like that is all you need as long as you have something, um, audio to maybe either further confuse it's like that bow, that fine balance of you don't want to lose somebody, but you want people to say what, wait, what is going on? Um, so that's kind of how I think about it when, when it comes to those videos. It's, it almost sounds like you're trying to engineer curiosity. Yeah. So, uh, definitely engineering curiosity.

and then also having some sort of like stakes to it too. Like what is this person outside in public about to embarrass herself or or is this person about to cut her cut the sweet potato with a saw? You know, like what is this person about to do? And like I am vested. Like that's the whole point. Like get the viewer invested. Is she going to hurt herself? Is she going to whatever it is?

Yeah. Oh, I was going to say, have you all seen those. those viral videos where this has nothing to do with real estate. But it's like a camping hack and somebody just takes like 1,000 yards of cellophane and makes like a little hammock out of it. And you're like, what is this crazy person doing? Have you all seen those? No, but stuff like that is exactly like, wait, that's not a hack.

You know, like the brain wants to fix it. The brain wants to connect the pieces. And so as long as like the payout isn't until the very end, if they can stick. around. Yeah, that's, yeah. Yeah, that's the, that's the main goal. Yeah, if you all ever spend too much time at doom scrolling on social media, which I don't think that both of you all do that, you end up coming across those like really weird videos where it's like really out of the way ways to do DIY things that normal people would not do. It was actually started as an as an art a social media experiment that just got way out of hand because it went viral to the point

where they just started making careers out of it. And so now there's like a copy of it in every country where just just find one one day and just like watch the train wreck as it goes. But yeah, that's essentially they've engineered curiosity to the point where like you just have to watch. You just have to know what's going to happen. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I do want to mention to the as far as I mentioned payout before like you want people to stick around to the very end. That is not my goal because I'm not getting my goal is not to get paid from Facebook. So I don't need 61 seconds of watch time. I just need the payout.

My payout to be what the call to action is, which is, you know, open house or whatever it may be. So I don't need the payout to be at the very, very end. In fact, I want the payout or the call to action really to be in the middle at least or if not even earlier, wherever appropriate. but I don't want to be, I want, I don't want people to have to stick around to the very end of the video to find out what the purpose is or what they should do with this information that I gave them. Okay.

Well, I was going to say, Michael, do you have any more, like specific questions that you wanted to ask us? I want to make sure we had time for that. I know that we have like a couple more that we were hoping to ask you. But ultimately, this is your show. So do you have anything for us? Yeah. Or do you want to go deeper?

Well, I mean, what we've covered quite a bit of the topics, but I was actually curious. if you wanted to divulge this to your audience, like, what's the kind of content that actually moves the dial for you? Like it, and I'm going to be surprised if it's actually a sales video, like specifically representing one property. Like, what's the one piece of content that's got you the most amount of work or the most amount of people that are like, hey, you know, I'm moving here. Can you help me? I don't know any real estate agents, but they found you in a completely unrelated the topic. Of all time, my most impactful piece of, singular piece of content was being interviewed on the Bigger Pockets podcast. That absolutely, I got a thousand followers overnight and I had hundreds

of DMs on every single platform, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, emails, text. It was absolutely crazy. And so that's, I don't think that's super applicable to this other than the overarching idea of the more ears, earballs that you can get in front of and show a level of competency and whatever and authenticity. It's like that balance between warmth and competence where you hit that charisma mark. The more that you can get in front of people for that, I think that that converts. Also, with that, that's long form as opposed to short form. and that long form allows you to build a deeper relationship with the audience than short form,

which is something Allie and I talk about all the time. I know today's, you know, we're talking about Instagram or, you know, shorter clips, but Ali's big on YouTube. I have done the podcasting thing for years and I'm also getting into YouTube. Did I tell you that? It's a new surprise. But, yeah. So all that to say, it was not very concise.

But that was the singular piece of content that was most impactful for me. And then for me, I had to. million views, a little over, over two million views now on my first post that I did about the BAH rates and how much a military member can afford to purchase. I reposted it recently, a couple of days ago, hasn't gotten the traction, but also the timing is, you know, we're six months into the year. People already know the BAH rate and PCS season is like almost over. But I figured I'd reposted anyway. That one, the two million views got me about 1,300 followers on Instagram. It was only on Instagram and Facebook too, but I actually don't really do too much on Facebook. And then it turned

into like 70, 65 and 7 to 70 outbound referrals. But I won't be doing that again, even though I just reposted it. I reposted it for more so brand and to get more earballs, earholes. And then as far as on my YouTube, I had 34,000 views on why people should not move to Tucson, why Tucson is not good for them. What I would say real quick, just to jump in, I do think that it is, there are layers. So like when we think about like a singular piece of content, I don't think that for me, like it would have been as impactful if I hadn't also been present on in other areas and showed like, you know what I mean?

So that's the thing too. like when we think about how man one platform, it's like, well, it's kind of like this omnipresent thing. And I go back and forth where it's like all in on one platform or be everywhere and whatever. Okay, now I'm done. Sorry. Michael, back to you. No, you're fine. I actually, the reason why I ask like what one singular piece of content is because I normally

follow that up with, you know, it always comes down to you've done a lot more work that went behind that. right if you made one video and expected that one video to carry you you're not going to get far so yeah it's what was the one thing that attracted most attention to you and then all the effort that you went into the back end and that's something that I talk about in that guide where it's like you don't have to be on LinkedIn Facebook Instagram blue sky Twitter you don't have to constantly be posting on all of those. You have to figure out which one actually works best for you, whichever carries your voice the best. And then you work around from there. But I think the important part is like the most interaction almost entirely comes from non-sales videos. They're either educational or funny videos.

It's the humor really gets people. So I guess the last little bits that I have, if you have, Say either if you want to role play and say that you're talking to Little Allie or Little Shelby, if you wanted to tell them how to start this journey a little bit sooner and like what hurdles you're going to have to come over, what would you tell them? I would say, okay, if I'm going to talk to Little Allie, I would say the first to back up, I used to not be comfortable talking on video. on social media. You know, back when I was still in the Air Force, I didn't need to. I wasn't selling anything. There was just, I would post a little bit here and there, still photos,

you know, that was it, never any video. So to get over my fear of the camera, I went, part of our Five Pillars crew, our training was to do a live every single week for seven weeks was the length of the program. And so by the end of the seven weeks, actually, no, sorry, it was 12 weeks long, the program. By the end of seven weeks for me, I stopped being scared because after I went on live, live is what helped me not be scared, not the posting, because you can just redo, redo, redo until you tie yourself out and then you want to just go to sleep instead. So had I then, had I compressed that seven weeks, you know, going live for 30 minutes once a week for seven weeks, had I done that 30 minutes a day, every day for seven days, I could have

significantly compressed that and started making videos even earlier. So I would have gone live earlier. That's number one. Number two is, well, and also number one teaches you that you're not going to die. Like, and it's okay to make mistakes. And therefore now you know kind of what to what to polish things up a little bit better when you post something like an actual real. Number two is know exactly who you are looking to attract in this, in that two million plus view that I recently had. at the time I was doing mainly outbound referrals as a way of getting paid.

But the outbound referrals were like 80% close rate because they were just qualified buyers and sellers. This one that I had was great for follower count and great for overall, you know, top of funnel brand awareness that I was prior military and blah, blah, blah, top of funnel, which was like what I wasn't used to doing. But then also because it's top of funnel came a lot of. unqualified leads that I was not able to handle. I didn't have that, that became a bottleneck. So that's number two is know exactly who you are trying to attract. If you are posting about

videos in a side of town that you don't even want to be working, don't post the video. Instead, make it more about you or something else, you know, just something else. Actually, those are just, those are my two. I'll let you let me take it from here. I just did too also. But when I would tell little Shelby is that it's exactly what you just said about being strategic because that's something that I did not do the first wave of Shelby in real estate about and so think about who specifically do you want to attract what type of person, what price point, the location, all of those things. Where do they exist online when people are deciding a platform? It's like, okay, if you identify who, then you can figure out where they exist, which goes back to that thing that we talked about,

like people who are on TikTok all the time versus the people who are on LinkedIn all. all the time are different people. And then within that strategy piece, I would tell little Shelby to buy into long form, buy into long form, buy into long form, buy into long form. And then the second piece of advice that I would tell myself is that there is no real end. Because a lot of people are like on a sprint mode, like let's go fast and let's get to X. But like in content, it is a treadmill. It is a, it is a, it's a consistency. Whether it's long, short form doesn't matter. It's like you're still, you're going. And so if you go in with that mindset of committing to the long run and buying into the process as opposed to the results and by results, I mean like vanity metrics type of thing. Like, oh, no one saw my, whatever. Like you have to buy into the process, then that will be a lot healthier for your long term ability to commit to something. Yeah. So strategy, treadmill. Those are my things. Okay. So something that constantly comes up, and these are questions that I even overheard at like the real producers, like social media panel that they had a lot. And this ties specifically into audiences. I want to give everybody sort of an action item like on helping them figure out who their audience is. Allie, you had mentioned earlier that your best video was very specifically tailored towards like veterans, right? Yes. So I know both of you all served.

So that's somebody that you can speak to that you can speak their language. But when somebody who is just getting interested in real estate and is considering this is a career and they know that content's going to be like a next step or maybe they're already an agent and they're like, man, I really have to move this needle a little bit further. How do they? And I feel like the answer is going to come down to a little self-exploration. Like I'm a granola kid at heart because I grew up in the woods. You know, like I was a trail builder at one point in my life. So like I get to speak their language pretty fairly well. And that's going to be different for everybody else.

And they've got no idea how to reach that audience. So how would you all go about like giving an action item to teach Little Allie or Little Shelby? Like this is how I learned to talk to them. I want to make sure I understand the question. You're saying how do you figure out how to talk to your target audience? Is that the question? Yes. Just talking to them and then just figuring out like I only want to focus in on here

because on my end when I see a lot of real estate agents that have not taken the content journey, they want to attract everyone, anyone and everyone. If they got a pulse and they got money in their pocket, come on. If you're for everyone, you're also for no one. And the riches are in the niches. I'm just going to keep throwing out little quotes. But they're so true. I think that the easiest way to figure out who you could speak to is someone who you know really, really closely. And oftentimes that could just be yourself. If you think through, and maybe that doesn't work if you're not in the right price point or whatever. But like for an exercise, it could be helpful. to be like, what do I care about? What are my interests? You know, that sort of thing. Or someone close to you, like a best friend or a best friend's mom if you want to like, and like actually go through and think very specifically about a singular person and then talk to a singular person on your videos. Like when I'm doing a video, I'm talking to Allie's mom. And then it makes it easier because you can really,

really hone in and make it really specific, which again, I know scares people, but that is the way. And then what I would add to that is, well, actually, by doing that, you're going to be using the specific keywords that are tailored to that niche. You know, mine is people that are PCSing to Davis-Monten. So by using that in the actual video and in the captions, the descriptions, the comments, the Instagram name or title, the bio that you have or the bio in your YouTube channel, just the more that you repeat your niche, the more the algorithm will push it out to your niche. So that's what I would add to that. I think at this point, we are about done on time. So if there's anything burning, any other questions you want to ask, Mike,

then definitely send it. And if there's not, And make sure you got to tell people where they can find you more information on you if they need your services, all that stuff. Yeah, absolutely. And I don't have any immediate burning questions because I also know that we burn through this podcast already. So thank you all for having me on here. I'm going to be having this book or media guide ready to actually sell relatively soon. And I'm hoping to interview a lot more people for different aspects on it. But primarily I'm active only on Facebook right now, just because at the scale that I'm at, that's where my market lives. I've sort of stopped caring about my Instagram account just because I was not attracting the right leads. And so I said, you know, this isn't, you know, this is me spending some time. And my voice is primarily for Facebook.

And that's where people that I do business with tend to hang out. Have we got any time? I know you all still had some questions for me, but you can also just send that as well. We will hit you up offline. And everyone, yeah. Okay. If you, so wait, did you drop your actual, where can they find you on Facebook? You can honestly just type in Odyssey Optics Media on Facebook.

You'll find me wearing a construction hat and holding the drone in there. Or even on my personal one, just Michael Wallace. And those are two really active places. Or go to my website at www. Odysseyoptics. com. Those are my primary online areas. Perfect. Love it. Okay, listeners, you heard him go do it. And otherwise, we'll see you next time on the agent gold mine and be a bro and share this show. If you're on a 50-50 split, it's time to rethink your brokerage. At EXP, the split is 8020. And once you cap, you keep 100%. We show you

how to get there faster. I'm Ali Garcette or Ali the agent. My sponsor, Shelby Johnson and I each close over 40 deals a year. We are full-time agents actively producing, and everyone in our upline is an icon agent. When you name us as a sponsor at EXP, you get full access to all of our systems and checklists and templates, our 200K GCI playbook to help you make 200K your first year, direct mentorship and direct access to us, no huge group calls. We also help agents add another stream of income, which is RevShare. We will help you with all the tools and trainings you need to build revenue share that will help you retire early. If you're interested in building an actual business, book a call at theagentgoldmine.com.