KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Kaila Lindsey on the Only 3 Steps Agents Need

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

Welcome back, Real Estate Rockstars. What you can expect to learn in today's show, the three steps agents must take if they're building or rebuilding their businesses from the ground up today, the 10-point roadmap to making YouTube videos that actually convert, and the most effective things to track within your business. Today's guest is Kayla Lindsay out of Charlotte, North Carolina. She's been an agent for almost nine years. She's closed 29 deals, year one, and has all.

only gone up from there. She closed 46 by herself this past year in 2023. She's received the EXP Icon Award five times. She's spoken at the Shareholders Summit and emceed, the Southeastern Coaching and Training Conference. She's also authored the book called The Viral Agent Formula, and she's the start of the Living in Charlotte YouTube channel. Yeah, we've had some really killer guests on lately. Ricky Carruth's show just came out. If you miss that, go check it out. We've got the broke agent on deck coming up soon. We've got real estate rock stars mastermind in March. Gall, don't miss out.

Go follow, subscribe on your podcast app or on YouTube. Turn the freaking notifications on 2024. Let's freaking go. All right, rock stars. Welcome, Kayla Lindsay. Kayla, you have worked and thrived in a bunch of different lead sources from cold calling to YouTube. You were a highly successful.

solo agent for years. You've also done the team leader position leading a team for years. You've worked through different types of markets, you know, over those eight years in the game where COVID madness, where things were just flying off the market to what we experienced this last year in 2023 with higher interest rates and a lot tougher, you know, maneuvering. So knowing all of that, if you had to start over and build your business from the ground up, what would you do? Gosh, okay. Simple question to start it up. I was going to say there's so many things.

So I will say this. I would actually still do the same thing I did when I first started in real estate. So I started in real estate cold calling. And the reason why I still recommend cold calling to people is because it is instant gratification. Now, I'm going to unpack that a little bit. Our definition of instant gratification is probably a little bit different. See, most people think I pick up the phone I call, I get a listing. Yes, but you have to do it over and over and over again.

So I coached a lot of agents and some of them have said to me, well, what did you do? What can I do? Get on the phones. If you don't have money, get on the phones, call for sale by owners. Literally, you could drive streets or just jump on Zillow and find their phone numbers. You don't even have to use a call dialer, but call for sale by owner, call expired. The challenges, they'll come back to me two weeks later and go, it doesn't work. What else can I do?

And I'll ask the same question every time. Well, how many did you call? And they'll say, oh, I called like 12 and no one wanted to meet with me. Here's what I saw them. Go do it a thousand more times. See, because a lot of times we get caught up in the, oh, well, this is supposed to be, it's simple. It's simple, not easy, right? So we misconstrue simple for it being easy and not having to go back and back and back and apply and apply.

And that's really what it is. It's the consistency of it that's going to get you to where you're going. And that's with anything. But if you're getting in the business, and you don't have a sphere of influence. Like, I didn't know anybody around where I was living. You know, I knew no one. I say no one.

No one that was buying, right? Or selling. So I hit the phones. And by the end of that year, that was many years ago. I did 29 transactions. And granted, of course, price points were a little different then. So I did $120,000 in GCI. And when I started looking at my expenses, because I tracked nothing.

So I'll get to that in a second. There are like three things that I would do. But I tracked absolutely. nothing, track your numbers. That's number two. Track them. So that's the big thing. When you're tracking your numbers, you're actually going to be able to look back at what your expenses were, where things were coming from, and we're all getting the detail at in a second because there are three. So call calling, what I realized was my overall expenses were pretty straightforward. It was my call dialer, which was like $100 a month. My leads, which about $100 a month. And then I

thought I had like one other minor thing. I think it was just like my CRM system that I decided to pay for. So in total, my expenses were like $3,500 for the year I made $120. So if you're looking for something that is quick, get in the door, find people raising their hands, I still hands down think that is a very valuable skill to learn in order to do what you want to do. So number two, I would track my numbers from day one. So I actually, I have a spreadsheet now, which my husband made for me because he walked in one day and I was like literally jotting my numbers down on the back of this peach of, piece of scratch paper. And this was like three years in, y'all. And he looks at me and he goes, what are you doing? I said, well, I'm tracking my budget or my, my, my, you know, so this is this bucket. And then I'm breaking it out to this percentage. And it goes, you need a spreadsheet.

I was like, no, no, no, I don't need a spreadsheet. He goes, you need a spreadsheet. So he makes me this very simple spreadsheet, which since then I have expanded. And literally everything in my business, I can look at on that one spreadsheet, what commissions I'm doing, what buckets they have to go in and how it's broken out. I have my list of literally since 2019, everything that I've made dollar amount. So when I'm starting to compare year over year, I just have to click through my little tabs on my spreadsheet.

And it's like, here's this year in a nutshell. Here's this year in a nutshell. And even just going back and finding old transactions is easy. So track your numbers in some way that makes sense to you, but have it that you can look back at it over and over, but it's also going to make it easier for your month a month because you can do your buckets. If you don't know what buckets are, I recommend the book, Profit First.

There's my little go read that. It's a quick read. So number three, what do I wish that I started doing right off the bat? Video on YouTube and social media. And I clumped them together because write this down, the loudest marketer wins, the loudest marketer wins. And I'm going to add to that, perfection will make you broke. Good enough will make you wealthy.

I was way too caught up in. be perfect, be perfect, be perfect. Like, if for anybody that's listening, how often have you done that in your business or even in your life that you're like, well, I'm not going to take action so I know exactly how to do it. I'm going to break all my groups up into this many groups in my database before I message them because I want to be the perfect message to hit them at the right time. And then you never do it because it's never going to be perfect.

I started throwing that out the window, but it was very late on in my career. I wish I just took action immediately. and YouTube and video and social media is how. So I'm going to break this down for you. The reason why I feel like social media is so powerful is, like I said, the loudest marketer wins. The challenge is most people don't do social media correctly. All right? Now, this isn't going to go down a whole rabbit hole of social media.

What I mean is you've got to be in front of your audience consistently. So I'm going to give you a story of what changed my mind on social media. And mind you, I've been in the business. probably eight going on into my ninth year. And I was about two years in and this gentleman had joined our firm. And I'm online. I knew his numbers. We were friendly. You know, you know how agents are. We all talk numbers. Like, what do we have? What's an escrow, et cetera? And I'm looking at his social media. I'm like, damn, he is crushing it. And I'd like look back at his numbers. And I'd like talk to him the next week. I'm like, oh, no, he goes, oh, yeah, I have one under contract.

Like, dude, your social media looks like you have like dozens under contract right now. And that's where it hit me. That's where it was like this boom, shatter moment of reality where even as an agent understanding the process, I even had an image of him where he was doing more business than he was. By the way, this is not a knock on that individual at all. He's a great agent, but it's more of perspective. And it made me open up my eyes to, okay, those that are not in real estate, my client,

future clients, prospective people, are they seeing these things? Are they thinking that same thing? Because I don't know about you. When I'm hiring an attorney or CPA or someone like that, I want someone who's experienced. I want someone who already has a lot of business because they obviously know what they're doing and they're in it every day that they're going to see changes. People think the same thing about their real estate agent. They don't want the person that's not doing business, right? They want the person that's in it every day. So for me in seeing that, I said, okay, well, this is an eye opener. If I as another agent knowing his numbers can see, oh, wow, he's doing more business than I think he is, it's time for me to jump on that bandwagon.

It's time for me to get in front of my clients. And you might be thinking, you know, wherever you are in your dream in real estate, well, I don't have a lot of business, right? I don't have any business. I have nothing in escrow. I have no clients right now. It's okay. See, here's the very simple thing you can do is just jump on and post showing this house, just started working with the new buyer. By the way, they don't have to be signed in an agency agreement in order for you to be working with somebody. It could be your mom. I don't care.

But keep getting content out there about you taking action. Not just, here's a pretty house of photos. It's here's a listing I'm representing because maybe you're doing an open house. Here's a tour of a home. Here's me out in the community. You have to build that representation of yourself online. And bar none. If you don't do any of one of the first of it.

I'm telling you to do. Here it be my number one thing. I know I went backwards. So technically I started number three. I'm sorry. Three, two, one. My number one, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube, if you don't write anything down, just write one note while you're driving in your car, YouTube. Text it to yourself as a memo, okay? YouTube is extremely powerful. Now, I did not even realize how powerful YouTube was until about a year and a half ago. Now, mind you, I told you I'm in real estate, eight going on nine years. A year and a half ago, I uncovered this, okay? So if you're sitting there going, well, I've already got my ways or I'm beyond that or, you know, it's already maxed out, it's not. So first off, I'll tell you, there are 30 other individuals in my market. I'm in

Charlotte, North Carolina, 30, 30, other individuals who are real estate agents with the same exact channel name on YouTube as me, as me. And some of them have been, there for five, six years, some for two, some for one. Here's what I tell you, it doesn't matter how many other people are in the space, just like it doesn't matter how many real estate agents are in real estate in a market. It's because people with work, people work, want to try that again, need more coffee. People work with who they know like and trust. Write that down. People work with who they know like and trust. So when we're on YouTube, you putting yourself out there consistently, people are getting attached to you because they now know you, they've begun

to like you, and they trust what you're saying. Truly, this is very interesting. By being on YouTube and being in video format, you become a trustworthy expert in your field. We get very confused with this word expert, right? You and myself, I'm like, I'm not an expert in real estate. Like there are people that are way better than I am. There's always going to be somebody better, Okay? But an expert means you are one step ahead of the next person behind you. Meaning if you have knowledge that you can share, you're an expert in that particular field. We gain the visual or the assumption. People assume we are experts when we have written something. When we have put a video together and publish that on a channel like YouTube, this is where you get expert status.

This is why people listen to you and what you have to say. So why else is YouTube powerful? Well, I told you all the things that might be a hurdle for you, like there's dozens of other people in your market doing the same thing. Well, there's thousands and millions of other agents in real estate. We're all doing the same thing. We're all helping people buy and sell properties, working with investors. With YouTube, however, people seek you out. So remember how I talked about a minute ago, coal calling because people raise their hands?

Guess what? The challenge with that and where I think they're both important, but the challenge with that is you have a split second to build rapport. And then you have to consistently call them back over and over and over again to continue to build that rapport and build trust. YouTube flips that on its head. It doesn't cost anything, but people choose to watch you. So I'm going to throw some stats down. And hopefully I'm on the right track and not boring anybody with this. Well, let me throw some stats at you when.

it comes to YouTube and some of my experience. All right? So YouTube, I started a year and a half ago. And I'm going to give you a little bit of my background story on this briefly to give you a firm understanding of the fact that this is possible. Okay. One and a half years ago, middle of July, I had recently found out I was pregnant. It was planned, but we didn't know it was going to happen that quick. And I'm sitting there going, crap, I can't be spending my evenings in people's houses on listing appointments, convincing them that I'm the agent for them above these other 12 people that they've interviewed, and I have a baby at home. I was deciding making the choice that something had to change. As I went down this rabbit hole of where do I go? Of course, I met with, okay, you could do

Zillow or other paid leads or things like that. But if you take a look at the stats from NAR, what you're going to find is most lead sources, pretty much almost every lead source that you could think of, even the ones that are like, just one closing, it'll pay for the whole thing. Yeah, we've all heard that. All of them have between a 0.4%, not 0.4 meaning 4%, no, 0.4% to 12% conversion rate. That's insane. By the way, the 12% conversion rate is usually because you're sending out like mailers consistently for years and years, so they're not even accounting for how expensive they are. So I said, well, that's not going to be the way to go. because you're still going to have to make those follow-up calls.

You're still going to have to consistently prospect those people. And once again, as I told you, I'm trying to get away from that. I'm trying to find a way that I don't have to constantly be on the phones or away from my family. So that is when one of my coaches and shout out to Veronica Figueroa, she's a bomb. She said to me, look, Kayla, have you looked into video? She goes, I know you do video all the time, but have you looked into YouTube? I'm like, Veronica, I've been doing video for years, which I had on and off, you know, putting things out on Facebook.

that's why I was telling you there's a right way to do it, right? So she said, no, you've got to look into Facebook. So I start studying and studying. I'm reading the books and doing the things, just like I did when I got into real estate. And I realized this is the key piece to YouTube and why it's so incredible. YouTube is a search engine. All right? So YouTube and Google, they're owned by the same company, Google.

They're both search engines, which means as you're putting content out there, people are finding it and consuming it versus putting it on social. social media like Facebook and Instagram where it can be a lot more difficult to get people to then find it and follow you because it's not necessarily that they're searching directly on there for specific information. So if you want to be seen as the expert, get on YouTube, put in those keywords so people when they're searching, I'm moving to such and such a city. I want to know about the crime rates. Should I move there? What's the bad stuff? What's the good stuff? Tell me about the suburbs. Tell me about the schools. Tell me about the things. This is all important. And by the way,

thank you so much, Shelby, I've got a freebie for your viewers, your listeners as well. So it's going to be a plethora. I'll get it to you. It'll be a plethora of different topics you can do your videos on to get you started because that's something I hear a lot like, what do I even do video on? So anyway, so as I continued the dive into YouTube, I also realized people are watching when I'm not on. Right? So think about this. With cold calling, I'll call three hours a day, And that was my time that I was prospecting. With YouTube, I'm actually prospecting while I'm not even there. Now, what I mean by this is, when do you usually watch YouTube?

Like Shelby, when do you usually watch YouTube videos? Usually after my brain and productivity is fried, so it's like later in the day. Right? And that's not a time that you would normally go prospect, right? That's not an ideal prospecting time, probably for even your day at all. And that's most people, right? So what I was realizing, as I started launching these videos, I started looking at the analytics. Remember when earlier I said track your numbers?

Tracking your analytics is just as important because you need to see which videos are hitting, which ones aren't. You need to go ahead and compare your thumbnails, things like that. And these are the nitty gritty pieces, just getting started is what I would tell you. But with that, I started realizing people are watching my channel when I'm in bed asleep. Like, I'm not prospecting at 11 o'clock at night, but that's when people are consuming my content. That's when my comments are coming in.

So what I started understanding is there was a time and place where suddenly my hours watched exceeded the number of hours in a day. Imagine speaking at, like being on the phone for 24 hours straight, speaking to a client that wants to talk to you, mind you, wants to talk to you. Not that they hung up on you, not that you made a thousand phone calls in a day. they want to hear your message and they're sticking around to listen to you. Imagine talking for 24 hours a day to your ideal client. It's impossible.

Then I hit two full days, but there was like 50 hours in a day consumed of my content. That's like dozens of little me's running out, finding the right person and talking to them. This is the power of YouTube. I actually received before we hopped on this morning, I received a Zoom invite because I use Callenly, by the way, guys go to use Caliantly, received a Zoom invite from someone that said, hey, I've been watching your channel for months, months they've been watching my channel, and now they're ready to make the move. So the power of YouTube is that people seek you out. You put out the comment content, and I'm going to quote a movie. If you build it, they will come,

right? But just like Field of Dreams, only ghosts showed up because it was in the middle of a cornfield. all right. So you can make video, but you have to put it in the right place for people to find you. So just building it doesn't work. Just making the video doesn't work. You've got to get it on YouTube where people can search for your content and start to engage. So those are my top three things that if I could go back today, I would implement. But what I've gleaned from going on YouTube for a year and a half, over a $95 million pipeline and volume. closed 24 million this year. In addition to that, most of my conversions, they were YouTube, and now my entire pipeline moving forward, I've already got several already under contract and

ready to go. In fact, someone called me yesterday, said, hey, I already saw this house, Zildo sent me a random agent to go show it to me. I didn't really like them, but we've been following your YouTube. Can you write an offer for me? Sure. In 24 hours, we were under contract. I've never met them before. This is the power of YouTube because they already know me like me, And trust me because they've been consuming my content for months and weeks and days. All right. And I'll add another one. One of my clients who we recently closed their daughter's three years old.

And as we were walking the house, she kept looking up at me. And I'm smiling like, hey. So the husband immediately chimes in. He goes, yeah, you know, at night in the afternoon and the evenings or whatever, you and Bluey are the only two people on our TV. So you're up there with Bluey in order in for her. And I'm like, that's hilarious. Like you don't think about the impact, right?

you're in people's living rooms all evening long. It's so cool. So I'm sorry. I want a little bit of tangent there. So those would be my top three things and that's why. Dude, no, I love it. I love it so much. Okay.

So to break it down to your top tip, number one, cold calling, basically the takeaway being, get in those reps, talk to people, learn how to have conversations in a rapid method so that way you can get the feedback and adjust and learn and grow quickly because the better you can do that, the faster you can build trust. So like cool calling. That's so much better than me. Yes, exactly. Step one, but like simultaneously, two and three are also happening, which two is track everything, which we'll come back to. And then number three is that video. And you mentioned social, but also especially YouTube. And so my question, like, if I'm listening to this, I'm like,

dude, I'm with you. You just sold like the crap out of me. Like I'm 100% down. But I know, I know that YouTube can be a full-time job, that cold calling in this beginning when you're learning and you're figuring it out, like, it just feels like an overwhelming amount of, it's just very daunting. So if you could break down a little bit, how to either structure day, week, time in general, to attack these three things, how would you do that? I love it. I love it. So remember I said, perfection will make you broke.

Good enough will make you wealthy. I'll say it over and over and over again. I now live by it because I've been stuck and caught up in that before. So taking action is the initial piece, whether it's messy. By the way, my business is messy. All right. Like anybody that tells you they've got their business figured out, narrowed in, everything's perfect as freaking lying to you.

I'm not even kidding. Like I've talked to people in my market who even I'm like, dude, they've got their shit together. This is so cool. Look at their business. And I'll talk to them because we've become friends. And they're like, oh, dude, my stuff is so messy in the background. you have no idea.

Everyone is a mess. For sure. Everyone agrees. It's okay. I am a mess. It's fine. So what I would tell you is everything comes down to time blocking. So I'm going to give you a bit of an example here.

And you're all going to answer exactly how I know you're going to answer. So this is leading you to the answer here. If you were sitting in a $2 million listing appointment, you're sitting there. You know you're going to get that listing potentially, but you've got to have your best foot forward. If your phone rings in the middle of that listing appointment, are you going to answer it? I would hope your answer is no. And if it isn't, you need to go check yourself. But the answer is no.

This is how you have to treat all of your time blocking activities. Meaning each one of those is a $2 million listing presentation, a $2 million meeting. Meaning when you sit down there, you have the potential to be earning $40,000 plus dollars. That's how you have to think about your time blocking. So for me, I have a day set on my calendar that's blocked out where I do my recording. Now mind you, when you first start, and by the way, I would say my number one is truly YouTube, because you can still pick up the skills as you're going out and you could do additional things like go to open houses just to get in front of the public.

But doing YouTube is going to start attracting people to you. And it does have about a six month turnaround where you start consistently bringing people in, right? because you've got to get the content out there. Everything grows. Compounding growth is true for all things, and YouTube is not anything different than that. But what I would say is having a time blocked out on your calendar to do that, I'm able to do all my YouTube and video content for the week in about a three-hour stretch that I do on a Wednesday afternoon. That's it. That's all I have to do. I have an editor who, by the way, don't get caught up in that, get an editor. I have a phenomenal company I work with called Spear Rocket. If you guys go to sphere rocket,

sphere rocket, Kayla Lindsay. Online, you guys can get hooked up with them. They're amazing. And they understand what I do so they can get you connected with somebody who does what my editors do. But it really only takes about three hours of focused work per week to make YouTube work. That's what I'm going to emphasize again, focused work. Not you didling around on your computer for three hours and going, I don't know what happened. So take one hour in the beginning of the week. Here's how it's structure your week. Monday.

And by the way, you can do this any way you want, but I'm going to give you my schedule. Monday, either morning or afternoon, have one hour blocked out. What you're going to do is you're going to pull a topic and you're going to do some simple research on it. All right? So what I do is I keep either on my phone or running spreadsheet or something like that. That's just the way my brain works. As I come up with an idea for a video or someone suggests an idea or a client. or colleague or someone has a question about my market, I write it down on that spreadsheet.

That now becomes a video topic. Now, if I did a video about every single piece of information I know in Charlotte, it would be like multiple hours long video. You're just creating like a 15 to 20 minute video, guys. Like don't overthink it. You think that 15 to 20 minutes is long until you start talking and you're going, oh, shit, we're at like 18 minutes already. That's crazy.

Right? So go ahead and take that Monday. pick one hour, go down your list, and just go in order. Grab one, two, or three. By the way, when I first started, I would record two to three each week. I would post two videos a week. And then after six months, I dropped down to posting one video a week. Remember what I said earlier about the loudest marketer winning?

The only reason I dropped it down to one a week is because I was obscenely pregnant, broke a rib four weeks before giving birth to my son. So I was on bed rest, got back up, recorded eight videos, then had my son. But the cool thing was the entire time I was out on maternity leave, I was still dropping a video a week, meaning my prospecting was still happening. And it was taking me about 15 minutes to do it per week because I pre-recorded a few quick 15-minute videos about the best daycares in the area, the safest and the most dangerous places in my market. Side note, as an agent with fair housing, you can point those out as long as you credit that you got this from XYZ website and you're quoting them. Okay, it's not your own opinion. and this is just you pointing them to that information, screenshot and going, here's I'm going to talk about

it, okay? For any of you guys that are like freaking out right now, like, oh my God, that's fair housing. It's okay. Um, so you can pre-record all these things. So like Shelby, even, if you're going out of town, you know this life, you're going out of town on vacation. How many of you guys freak out when you go out of town on vacation? I used to, right? Because I wasn't going to be able to prospect while I was gone. So I was going to come back to work a week behind on prospecting and appointments and have to make that back up. Worse off, somebody would call me back finally after calling them a thousand times, be like, hey, can we meet? And I'm like, it's the one freaking day I'm out on vacation. And I feel like I lost money. With YouTube, I didn't have to. So take that money, take Monday,

take one hour, plan out the two videos that you're going to record that week, and then pick a day behind that that you're going to do your recording. Now, I recommend blocking off, even if it's a 20-minute video, lock off like at first 45 minutes per video. The reason why I recommend this is because you're going to fumble, you're going to screw up. That 15 to 20 minute video will probably be 45 minutes to film. It's okay. This is where editors are amazing. They will cut stuff out. I talk to my editor. Instead of like writing notes now to them, I talk to them while I'm filming. I'll be like, hey, Kim, actually where I said this, this and this, cut that out. I'm going to re-report that right now. Start it on here. And it'll be like, so that's why blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then I'll go, okay, keep that part. I'm going on in the next section. So as he's watching it, your editor is going to go in. They're going to watch the whole reel, the whole thing, and go, okay, now we have a game plan. Now we'll chop it out. Now while they're editing it, by the way, I don't have to do anything. I already did the recording.

Now I can jump on a YouTube. I can answer comments, things like that. In addition to that, once I record those and get them to my editor, they're also pulling shorts, which if you're not familiar with shorts, they're basically like reels, but the way in which to do them, don't overthink it. Don't create a new reel. Don't create a new TikTok. Literally just they will take pieces of your video, take a snapshot of sorts of it of like a minute and a half and post it. It's going to go on YouTube. That has increased my viewership substantially because then they're like, oh, I like that information. And then they come to my page

and watch the full length video and then watch more video and then subscribe. So an hour on Monday, either Tuesday or Wednesday, take like two hours, three hours to go ahead and record your content and send it out. And the third thing I recommend with that is, once you send it to your editor, do not assume they're in your brain. Do not assume they know how you want it to look. So as I first started, my editor has been with me for several years now. But at first, what I would do is I would actually fill out. And in my program, the viral agent formula, I have this, which is a editor pass-off sheet. So literally, I have a sheet that I filled out.

every time that would say okay here's the opening here's what I want the thumbnail the title to be this is what I want for this this and this I want you to use these kinds of transitions here's two samples of other YouTubers and their content and I like the way in which they do this this this and this please mimic this for mine it's okay to rip off and repeat guys it's a part of creativity have you ever read a book that you're like huh this sounds kind of familiar side note did you know that 50 shades of gray is actually based on twilight it's just like a raunchy version of it and like

quote unquote real life because everybody, you know, finds their soulmate through that. Anyway, so nothing is truly original. Don't freak out that you're using someone else's way of doing their videos. It's okay. And they did the same thing. I did the same thing. My intro outro, cool. I just got it with my enter.

I said, hey, there's three other YouTubers. I like their intro autos. Mimic this with my content. So once you have that, the final step is posting it. The cool thing about YouTube is you can schedule your post. which I do. So schedule them. And as you start to post more, you're going to see what times people are watching your content more. We can schedule it to post like 30 minutes before they jump on YouTube most often. So that's usually me on Friday. Put in both of my videos because my

editors got them all edited up. And then by the next week, I'm answering questions. I'm in the comments. I'm sharing it. So one quick tip that I would have for you on this is when you're recording. And by the way, I know Shelby, we talked about this earlier in the week, I guess it was. There is a method to how you should film your videos. So I'll give you a, excuse me, a second freebie here. But I do have my, I guess I'm going to, I've named it multiple things. That's why I'm like, okay, what do I have it named as now? But basically the 10 steps to have a proven converting video. And that'll be available to all your listeners. So the 10. Is that like the roadmap? That's the same.

Exactly. Same is same. Okay. Yeah. My video roadmap. And what it is is it's how to structure your videos so they convert. Right. Like that was one of the challenges I had in the beginning, you know, while starting this journey of video was I would put a bunch of info out there. And I was like, you sit there and you wait, right? And I liken it to any agent that's ever gone to a listing appointment. And they didn't get the listing. And I would always ask them as I was coaching them. I'd say, well, did you ask for the listing? Did you ask them to sign the contract?

And every time they'd sit there and they'd think about it, and by the way, I was guilty of this too, we assume we asked because we made a great presentation. So why wouldn't they say, let's get started? But usually they don't. See, people need a call to action. People need to be asked what they want of them. They do not assume. Speaking of which, Kayla, this is a perfect segue.

If you are listening and you did not know that we are on YouTube, head over to YouTube and subscribe and make sure you like this video so you don't miss any more as they come out in the future. Kayla, sorry, go on. And I will add on, make sure you click the notification button, so you're notified every time they drop a video. Yes, girl. Yes, that's my, I was into say, and having like an actual script like that is essential. Guys, go check out my channel, by the way, living in Charlotte, North Carolina, fully spelled out, living in Charlotte, California, I'll see a pretty little headshot there. I do another channel that's agent facing. So if you're like, I went to Kayla Lindsay and there's nothing here. Yeah, I shut that channel down for like two years

while I was focusing on my other one. So that's not the channel. And anyway, so with that, a call to action, you need to tell people what you want of them. And that's a big part of putting that video together appropriately. So if your viewers or listeners do not mind, I'll actually run through quickly what needs to be in that in order for them to start getting people to, you know, listen to them. I guess you would say we want it we we want it all I was going to say I had a feeling I was going to add I was about to ask I'm like you know what why am I even asking us that there's it girl yeah so the first thing that you're going to want you're going to want an opener all right

now what does that mean it's it's exactly how it sounds like you literally want a way to open up your video that people are going to go okay this is what this is about what I call it is a video trailer okay so a video trailer is literally going to be you giving a quick maybe 30 second rundown on what you're going to cover in that video, right? Have you ever gone onto a video and they started like talking about, okay, hold on, actually, I'm going to go back. You ever go to a blog, which you're going to giggle at this? You ever go to a blog post and like all you want is the recipe? And you know the recipe is like all the way at the bottom, but they're giving their life story of like when I was born. I was born to da da da da and you're sitting there scrolling through it because

you don't care. You want the content you came to look for, right? It's the same thing on YouTube. People have a very short attention span. In fact, even if you're making cool calls, you're having an introduction with someone, you have six seconds, six, not six zero, six seconds to make an impression and get people to listen. So what you need to do is make sure that they know you had a great thumbnail, you had a great title to your video, but is this really the content they were looking for? Yes or no.

So what I always do is I go into and saying, hey, so you're maybe interested in moving to Matthews, North Carolina, but you're not sure if it's the town for you. Well, you're in luck. In this video, we're going to cover XYZ, and then I have number two, which is the hook. The hook, the hook brings you back. By the way, if you don't listen to blues traveler, go listen to that song. It's all about the hook bringing you back and refocusing you on the song. And the hook is basically the course. But anyway, a hook you see all the time. You're seeing it on Instagram. You're seeing it on the news, right? How many times have we seen news coverage? where it's like, your child could be getting poisoned by your drinking water, news at five.

Meanwhile, at the five o'clock news, it's just telling you, oh, yeah, they dropped a little bit of extra chlorine in there today. It's probably fine unless your kid drinks like a thousand gallons a day, but we just wanted to make sure you're aware. Now, you don't want the hook to let people down, but you do want something that makes them continue to watch. So for me, the hook would then go into and be sure to stay to the very end, because I'm going to give you a quick tip on moving across the country that most people don't know specific to Charlotte or something like that. One of the videos that I did had to do with Lake Norman, which is the largest manmade lake in the East Coast, which is up here in Charlotte, comparing it to Lake Tahoe.

Sideway, they are not even comparable. Taos is way more beautiful, but you can actually swim in Lake Norman. So my hook was, stay tuned to the very end because I've got a pretty creepy story that I'm going to share with you that most people don't know about Lake Norman. Now, I'm going to let you guys hang out on that hook for a second while I go to the next part. Then you're going to want an intro to your video. Now, your intro video, so you might be wondering, we already had an intro. It was my little trailer. You just talked about this, Kayla.

No. An intro video is that little short clip, like any sitcom, any show you've ever watched, they have their opener, right? Where you like to see all some of the past clips of some of the past videos. It's that. Eight seconds. That's it. Eight seconds.

I've seen some where it like drags on. I'm like, bro, get to the video. This is just a little sizzle, right? That shows like, I do some video. Go watch some of mine. You'll see I've changed up my openers. But your video opener is very important because it's going to make you look more legitimate. That's right. There's certain things that make you look legit. This is one of them. Number four, about your channel and a subscription request. Okay. So this is where I drop real quick. Hey, so if you're looking for everything, Charlotte, North Carolina, the ins, the outs, everything in between the good, the bad, and things who didn't even know you needed to know, you've come to the right channel.

Be sure to like and subscribe and stay in touch with everything that I'm posting. And if you want to know exactly when I post it, click that notification button on the bottom, and I'll make sure I let you know. Then you jump right into the call to action. And we've talked about call to action before. This is something you're going to want to drop more than once in your video, okay? Just a little sprinkle here, a little sprinkle there. So my call to action is very simple.

So whether it's 90 days or 90 days, you're moving across the, country, the world, or just across town, be sure to give me a call, a text, an email. All my contact information is in the description below. I want to hear from you. Now, I change that up just slightly, but I keep it mostly the same. And in fact, a lot of my listeners, my viewers, and of course, the people that are calling me go, well, you said nine to 90 days or they'll repeat back to me what my call to action is. Because I say it so often, it's in my bones and it gets into theirs, right?

How many times do you know the jingle to your favorite show or something like? like that or your favorite character's call sign. That's what that is. All right. So number six, by the way, number five was contacting you where, how that's your call to action. Now you get into the meat of the video, right? So we told them the beginning what the video is about.

Now you get into the meat of it. There's a bigillion ways that you can set this up. Sometimes my videos are like the top five best areas and I count them down in number one. Some of them are just information. So if I'm doing, let's say a walk and talk, they blog tour. where I'm walking around a town, I'll start with the history of the town. And then I'll tell them a little bit about the commute times and what are some of the best places to be, the schools, et cetera.

That's your meat. All right. So it can be some of the top winners that I have are, you know, top five best or the best or the best XYZ or the worst XYZ. A versus B. So it could be this town versus this town. Home tours, area tours. Those are some of the biggest winners.

But one of the most major winners that you're going to find is anything negative, right? Humans want negativity. I know. We're attracted to it. This is why we watch reality TV. People want negative. So my videos that say, you know, the worst of this or don't move to Charlotte, honestly, by the end of it, I'm going, obviously these things are really not that bad, so you should totally move here. You know, like that's, I'm giving them what they want to know, which is the worst case scenarios. In fact, one of my students from the viral agent formula, she had had had a few hits on some of her videos. And all of a sudden, her, I think it was like her, 15th video that she put out, she was doing two a week, got 2,000 views in like the first six hours.

And I said, well, let's review what you did. Well, guess what? What she did is why her channel, the video was why people are leaving Charlotte. And then the thumbnail was worst city. That's what brought people in. They wanted to see it. Why do people leave? By the way, it's just because they get repositioned with jobs, usually. So it was nothing major, but it got her the views, which brought people in. So keep those in mind. Now you're going to go to number seven. We talked about the hook. Now you're going to expose the hook. You're going to tell the viewer what they wanted to know. And if you wanted to, you can kind of hint to it throughout the video if it's that major. So I'll give you the ending to the hook. One of the little known facts about Lake Norman is that it is actually

owned by Duke Energy and was created in order to cool the two power plants in the north and south side. Now, you may know that part, but here's what you don't know. They had to flood a town in order to make it happen. Don't worry. Everybody was taken out of town before they flooded it, but there is a grave site. That's right. There are graves at the bottom of Lake Norman, and the tombstones are still there. Now, they say they move the bodies, but I'll let you decide. So that's a great way to end that. It's kind of funny. Of course, they move the bodies, but I've seen polter guys, so maybe not. Then once again, I go into the contact me, right? I want them to have that call to action again. I get calls, text, and emails every day from people just like you.

So all my contact information is in the description below. By the way, your editor can like zoom in on this if you want, is in the description below. Be sure to reach out. I go ahead and do my closing. And then I ask them, I say, guys, I want to hear from you. Comments in your videos are very important because it shows the algorithm, even on YouTube, that people are engaging with your content. So I tell them, I actually answer every single content on my page or every single comment

on my page. So be sure to comment below. I want to hear about you. What do you think of this video and some of the information I had here? Or do you live in the area? Tell me what you love and hate. Are you moving here? Where are you moving from? And it starts to get people talking. And then I give my wrap up, whether it's 90 days or 90 days, whether you're moving across the country or just across town. I look forward to making your move everything you want it to be. Until next time, I look forward to showing you around town. And it's the same every single time. I have my outro video. And then boom, it takes people to their the end screen, which you can just do this very simply on YouTube, just click it, and it allows them to go to your next most popular video. So it's a flow and a system. And as you're recording, if you just make sure you hit each of those checkboxes, you will have converting video. It's as simple as that. Now, there's a lot of the background of that that I go into in the viral agent formula, but that is how you need to record your videos. Okay, so much information. And listeners, just a recap so far from Kayla, you are getting the topics list for YouTube videos and now the roadmap slash 10 steps

to creating a video that converts. So make sure you go to real estate rock stars network.com and get access to the free toolbox where her tools will be uploaded. And Kayla, we're getting close on time here. We're going to have to wrap up soon. But one more question because we talked about it a couple times throughout in the very beginning. You mentioned digging into tracking.

And I know there's so much that we can track. So can you talk just a little bit. about what you think is most important to track me either big picture or you can do it YouTube you know specific since we just talked about that your choice love it love it so when you're just getting started some of the most and thank you for bringing me back to that because i got totally on a tangent um so when you're tracking your numbers that was the thing i always heard track your numbers i am not an analytical in fact i am a visionary if you've ever read the book rocket fuel i'm not an implementer i'm a visionary i slap things on the wall and i do

it over and over and over again. So I'm not someone who inherently wants to track anything. So when I created my spreadsheet, really what it came down to is tracking a few things. So let's keep expenses off the table for a moment. I'll get into that in a minute. But let's talk about your numbers themselves. So I have a few tabs on my spreadsheet. The first tab is going to be what I call it. Actually, I'm pulling it up because now I'm off the top of my head. I can't remember what I call it. So one of the tabs is called current and future clients. All right. Literally, yes, I have a CRM system. I'm not that archaic, although my very first CRM, by the way,

was a little black box with index cards in it with a filing system. So as I would call people, I'd make a note and push it to the back of the box. It was the first way in which I could keep myself moving forward in doing my prospecting calls and keeping up with people. So anyway, so this particular list, it has their name, the source where I got them from, their current status. So it could be appointment set, appointment booked. you know, listing agreement or buyers agency agreement signed. It'll have their timeframe, the price point they're wanting to buy in or sell in, and the possible commission on that.

I make an assumption, right? So then with that, I also have a quick note. Like, who are they? So I'm going to remind myself. Now, I do keep all this information, of course, in my database as well. And it's more detailed in there. But this is just, it gives me a quick glance to see what's coming up, what's there, etc. Now, the next tab I have, have all of the years.

Actually, I'm gonna go by next step, one more tab. I got all the tabs. So one of the other tabs I have is going to be my business plan. All right, so my business plan is my assumptions of what I'm going to earn that year. So it could be I'm getting this many from this lead source, this many from this lead source, and it helps me say, okay, I want to do 900,000 in GCI this year.

You've got to break it down, right? Everybody loves a good goal. Don't get me wrong. I have very high goals. But unless I break down where I'm going to get it and from what lead source, I don't know where to focus. So keep it simple. Have at least three lead sources. If you're newer, it's going to be YouTube.

I'm making that decision for you. It's going to be YouTube, your sphere of influence, which is anybody that you know and who knows, likes and trusts you. And pick one other one that's a nonpaid one. You do not need to spend money to make money. All right? I'm going to put that out of you. You don't need to spend money to make money. When I say that, little bits of money, not like I'm going to trade four grand for Zillow leads to get one lead back, right?

That's not what I'm saying. Little things. Wise decisions on spending. Now, one of my most important, however, spreadsheets is going to be my actual tracker. So I've called this many things in my actual database. I call it my commission tracker. That's really what it is. And the way it's set up, it has each month going down the left side with one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,

underneath it. Those one, two, three, four, five, six, seven are going to be filled in with contracts. All right. So along the top, I have the description. So it's going to be who the client is and what the property is. Then it's going to be the sales price. It'll be my commission amount. It'll be my commission deposit. By the way, I come back after it's been deposited. I fill in the date in which it was actually deposited into my account. Have any of you guys ever not known if you got your commission? Is it ever happening to you? Like, I've done that where I'm going. Totally. I don't know if this ever got deposited? Yeah, like, and I'm like, especially when I used to get like actual checks. And I was like, well, where's that check? You know, now everything is wired, which is great.

But I actually look at when it was deposited. For me, because I do have two team members that are my team. I also have a note of who the team member was that closed it. Now, this is where it gets into profit first. Go read this book. It's amazing. It's going to show you what percentages, at least a suggestion of how you pay yourself first to ensure that you're keeping your money managed. And it puts your money into different buckets. So I then have my, bracket. So it's going to take my commission and it's going to automatically spread it out into my buckets, which in my viral agent formula system, I actually do have this full spreadsheet available to all people who are in that group in that program. But it's going to be my executive

compensation, taxes, because yes, I do save for taxes, and I don't pay for taxes. By the way, I'll be doing a course on that at the end of the month. Investments. Education. Yes, I always put money outside for education. This could be going to a Tony Robbins event, hiring a new coach, paying for a program. It's good to have savings for your education. By the way, any education and training is 100% right off for your taxes. Just a side note. And then my operating expenses, which is any of my expenses that come into my business. Now, each of these have percentages that are associated with it. So I'm going to give you my percentages. Ready? 20% goes to executive compensation. That means my disbursement that I can pull out. 10% goes.

goes to taxes. By the way, I usually pay like two. Yes, there is a way to do that legally. I will do that in my tax course. Investments, 25% because I want to go really heavy on my investments now to get it back in the future. 5% for education and 40% for OPEX. Now, my OthX has been increased because my expenses have gone up a little bit. Then from there, I have some notes on the transaction, whether it was a listing or a purchase, who the lender was on that because I do have a lender relationship, so I get paid out on some of those. The percentage to me and what the lead source was as well as the closed date. All right. So all of those. Now, for anybody with EXP Realty, I also have another column that says how much stock

was purchased. So if you are part of that program, you actually receive stock if you've opted into it. So for example, 5% of my commission check goes to purchasing stock with EXP Realty at a 10% discount. So, and any stock that's purchased, I put that in that little box because obviously the commission I receive is less than what I quote unquote should have received because some of it goes automatically to stock as an investment. So I track all of that. Now, what happens is all the way at the bottom of this year's tally of each year's tally, I'm going to see a few different boxes that are being checked or or filled in. One, total volume. Two, total commissions earned. Three, total stock purchase.

Four, total stock gifted, and that's specific to EXP because we do get gifted stock. So I want to keep account of that's an income that I'm getting, right? That's something that I'm getting. Five, revenue earned or revenue share earned because, yes, with EXB, I also get revenue share. So I put that on this spreadsheet. By the way, are you noticing any money I receive is going on this spreadsheet? And it's all siphying up to full received profits for the year. And I should change that.

Full received revenue for the year. profit is after your expenses. And on here, I also put the number of closings that happened and my goal amount because I want to put my goal. I usually put my goal right next to what I've received because I want to look at it every single day. And I do this literally this spreadsheet is on my screen all day, every day, day in, day out, I will say over and over again, keep it in front of you. But here's the cool thing. Now with a click of a button, I can see 2020, 2021, 2021, and make instant comparisons year over year to what my production was, what my revenue was, what my expenses were. So I know we're running out of time,

but I'm going to point out the expenses. I said I'd come back to it. Get a bookkeeper. Get a CPA. I'll say it again. Get a bookkeeper. Get a CPA. If you were like me, you ended your first two years sitting there crunching numbers in your bank account, trying to figure out how the hell to make a P&L statement because you've never done it before and you still didn't even know what those numbers meant, right? You had no idea what was going on. The interesting thing was year two over year one, I actually doubled my income and yet I had less money to show for it. How the hell does that happen? Because I wasn't tracking my expenses. Side note, if you grew up kind of poor or with very little money, you're not used to having

money to just go, let's go eat out, let's go buy the wine we want, let's go buy a car, let's go do these things. And in doing that, I wasn't tracking where my spending was going, so I didn't know much to account for at the end of the year. Once I started getting very, very focused on tracking where the money was coming in, where it was going out, how quickly it was coming in, then I started to be able to see a pattern. So here's the next most important thing. You can start seeing and gleaning patterns from your spreadsheets. See what I can look at now is in 2020, I had, actually I'm going to expand this 2020 in December I had nine closings. Here's the interesting part though.

That following January and February combined, I only had four. So what is that telling me? Well, by studying those numbers, I can see, oh, that means that because I was so busy in November, December, I wasn't prospecting. By the way, this was prior to YouTube. I wasn't prospecting in November, December because I had too many closings too many. I had closings happening, which I'm very excited about. But then the following months behind that, that, I didn't have anything to show for it. It wasn't because the market was down. It wasn't

because it wasn't busy. It was just because things were slow because I didn't prospect. So you can start looking in that and seeing all of your habits. You can start seeing all of your processes. Like it'll all come out in the numbers. But it's something that you need to track over and over and over again in order to see it. So I want another little tangent on that. Hopefully you guys are writing that down. You can like pause it, rewind it and write it all out. But this has been an absolute game changer for me. And here's the thing. I only started my spreadsheet at the beginning of 2020, like end of 2019, so I don't

actually have it filled out. 2020 through 2024, I am extremely clear on what my numbers are. And I can look back at it anytime. It's amazing. I love it. Most dope. Okay, Kayla, how can listeners help you in your business? What action do you want?

Let's call to action them right now on what to do. where to find you. Call, help me help you. Like, I'm really passionate about teaching, if you can't tell, about showing and teaching people how they can truly do YouTube as well. Go check out viralagentformula.com backslash watch. You can also go to Kayla Lindsay.com. I've got a link to the viral agent formula there. You could also check out my Stan store at stand. Store backslash Kayla Lindsay. All of those ways will be helpful to me. I also have so, I'm sorry, dot store back slash Kayla Lindsay all of those places have free to use have information have content that you guys can glean from and I know I went into a little bit of taxes and you're

probably like how the hell did you do 600,000 when you're not pay taxes on it guess what in my tax strategy course which is going to be a 60 minute web 60 minute webinar followed by Q&A with all of my tax secrets and strategies that will be at the end of the month that's also on my stand store. So if you guys want to start the year off right and start being able to write off things correctly, go check it out by Relative formulas on there as well. And get involved. Follow me, Kayla Lindsay Realtor on all social media. And guys, if you are listening and maybe you're not going to go back to your phone and see how her name is spelled. This is Kayla, K-A-I-L-A, and Lindsay is with EY at the end.

So if you search that, you will find it. And y'all, like, she's amazing. Like the amount of information that comes out of you on like one, dude, I don't even need to be here. And that's like my favorite because you're just like so thorough and so informative. And I can tell that you have so many layers of understanding. You're not just, it's not surface level at all. So Kayla, thank you so much for coming on and hanging out with me today. And listeners, go give her all the love in the world.

And if you want to hang out with me and the owner of the show, we are The Shelby Show and Aaron Amooka Stakey on the gram. Go to our YouTube channel. Like, subscribe, notifications, everything that Kayla said, go to hers. And also just hit us with feedback always. Comments on YouTube or Instagram, DMs. I love hearing from you guys. And I really implement and, you know, care about what you say.

So do all of that. And otherwise, Kayla, thanks again for coming on the show. Your amazing real estate rock stars. Thanks for listening. I love it. Thanks, guys.