KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Leveraging YouTube for Real Estate & Recruiting

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

You're listening to the Coach Code podcast, and this is your host, John Kitchens. Join me as we unlock your greatest potential, collapse time, reveal your blind spots, and become the best version of yourself. What is up, Honey Badger Nation, man? And I'm super excited for today's conversation. We've got the one and only Mr. Jesse Dow hanging out with us. And we've been trying to have this conversation for a while. So I'm glad we're actually making it happen.

And, you know, you guys aren't paying attention. to what Jesse and his business partner Jackson have been up to. I know a lot of a lot of real estate agents have been. And I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about that as, you know, I'm sure there's a, there's a lot of modeling going on with these guys. I have been pioneering on YouTube in the real estate space. So I'm super excited to have you, have you on.

Jesse, man. Welcome. Thank you, man. I'm super stoked to be here. Yeah, it's been fun since I've been here. I'll just say that much. just getting uh getting uh uh never a dull moment that's for sure nope not at all yeah or uh yeah was crazy dude like i you know in real estate it's you know you have this all these different models

you know everybody sells you this this great hope of like more leads and you know we have the best training and all this stuff and then literally like it's unconceivable like what you get at ex p and like my business literally went from 10 million a year to 100 million a year uh unless than 18 months and I 100% removed out of production now and it's literally like I just bring these hot leads into my agents and they close them and I collect a check at the end of the day and then you know and then the same thing with their agent attraction you know I just put these videos out using my methodology and I get calls booked every single day on Zoom and I don't call a single agent you know it's the best thing in the planet it's the true true you know attraction that that we're all you know

in pursuit of is is building you know essentially it's it's along the lines right what is what is i think dan kennedy talks about it is that you know you make you just you you erase the selling you know element of it because you know everybody's consuming enough of your content and marketing and in and what you're putting out that you're just attracting they're coming to you instead of you having to to go out and you know chase chase them cold dude get this i literally got a referral this week from an agent or from it wasn't even an agent it was like a buddy of mine that's a contractor he sent me two referrals uh one was his father-in-law that turned out to be a complete disaster and we ended up not working with him and he sent me another referral and i reached out to this guy two

times and i said hey dude let's set up a zoom call he said okay i said what works for you schedule here he goes off and tells my buddy that i never called him i've never talked to him and this is what i said to him this morning because my buddy texts me and said he said he doesn't heard from you i'm like here's the conversations we had right here. I just said, dude, I said, welcome to real estate, dude. I was like, this is why I love YouTube, 100% committed clients that love working with us. I appreciate you thinking of me, but let's just stick to the deals that I buy. Please don't send me any more referrals.

That's literally what I said. I'm like, I don't want these referrals, dude. I only want to work with the clients that are calling me because it's such a night and day difference. I know Justin said this at the sphere rocket event. And it's just like, it's such a different caliber of clientele that you get, dude. And, you know, and actually the way that I even got started into this was I had this coach back in the day that said, you know, and it was a cold calling camp. And he said, you know, this is great hustle work. And it's a grind, man. He's like, but the ultimate goal with anything should be to get people coming to you. So, you know, you have to build yourself as this influencer style, which they were doing it through Facebook groups. And I wasn't really big on Facebook at the time. into groups just because I have a big background in social media marketing. And I actually, so I'm like, I'm going all in on YouTube.

I'm going to figure this out and spent, you know, 18 months eating shit basically, dude, and like spending 100,000 of my own money trying to figure it out. Do we did everything from Gary Vee to, you know, Kyle's system and, you know, digital mayor and all these things. And it just wasn't popping. Never got a call, got lots of love, lots of businesses took a lot of our marketing and built a lot of good relationships. but at the end of the day,

we weren't serving up what the consumers wanted, which was content marketing, answering the questions of the consumers. And once we figure that piece out, coupled with our conversion method that we use, just blew the phone up. And it's the same thing with real estate agents. It's like, you know, Curtis said this last week,

and I use it every day. It's like, I only want to work with people that inspire me. And I hope that I only work with people that I inspire, you know, because it creates an amazing, you know, ball of energy when you can be around amazing people, you know? And I, and you live by the same creed. So you know how it goes. And it's like I have this vision now because I've been, you know, working a lot on like, I work a lot with Dustin, Runyon. And, you know, we talk a lot about setting boundaries and things like that. So like I always have this vision in my mind now of like,

you know, like when you see, you know, warrior dash and there's like a wall and like there's ropes and then like there's people at the top pulling people up and it's like those people stopped running their race to help other people you know and you know if the person would have actually just worked out and climbed the rope they would have been well on their way right so it's like that's the way I look at business partners now as well it's like I want the people that have done the work and you know at least trying to climb up that rope versus me happen to reach back because it's preventing me from winning my race and you know I want to I want to roll with people that are in that same position so that's why I love YouTube it lets people self-select you realistically

Sure. Sure. I love, I know we're going to unpack quite a bit, you know, throughout this conversation. And, you know, you said kind of one of the things there around really diving in and trying to figure out what doesn't work. Yep. And you modeled after some really good stuff, but it still wasn't gaining, gaining traction. What, what clicked, you know, I mean, you've gone down a couple paths. Yeah. some, you know, kings of what they're doing from a content creation video aspect. But like, you know, you're just following that lead. But where did you guys have that, that aha? Like, man, we've been missing the mark just a little bit. So there's a couple of aha moments that, you know, we've benchmarked in the process of doing this. And really what it came down to was like there's some teachers out there that teach using keywords everywhere.

And realistically, keywords everywhere is a search engine optimization tool for Google. And so if you type in things like cheap homes in your city, you're going to see hundreds of thousands of searches on Google. And the problem is with that is like those are typically people that are looking for apartment complexes and like quick action. So what we realized is we started looking at these other channels of like what was getting the most views. And everyone sells views and subscribers. And my model is I don't sell views and subscribers. I sell houses because all these agents are sold views and subscribers, views and subscribers. realistically and followers.

And at the end of the day, I don't care if I only have one person watching me that's a real buyer versus 10,000 people that are not buyers. So the aha moment came is when we realized, we actually saw inside of keywords everywhere, living in Portland, Oregon was searched 40,000 times a month. But when we looked in TubeBuddy, which is the search engine optimization tool for YouTube,

and before it used to be another tool, but it switched up and now two buddies is like the holy grill of SEO tools for YouTube. But when we searched that, keyword in YouTube, buddy, it was searched 300,000 times a month. So we knew right then, we were like, okay, and cheap homes in Portland was only searched like, it wasn't even searched at all. And so same with escrow process, buying process. So we started making videos around what people were actually searching for. So living in Portland, Oregon was the keyword. And now we could put on anything to that to make it essentially the title. So when agents are always like,

I'm running out of content, I'm like, your keyword is only one piece of the title. Now you can add 5,000 different things to that keyword and make it a different title. You can even repeat the same verbage every single time. You can't use the same video because it has a fingerprint on it and YouTube knows what's up with that. So anyways, we started doing that. We started getting a lot of views and a lot of subscribers. And what is also cool inside of TubeBuddy is it ranks your video. It'll show your optimization strength.

So how do you rank amongst your competition? it will show is that video being competed with, that title, and is there search results happening? So the one thing that we noticed is all of these videos had amazing search results, but nobody was optimizing their videos. So we started optimizing our videos with SEO, and instantly we would post our video, and on a brand new channel, we would rank number one.

And they would show up there for a couple of days, and it would fizzle away. So that's what happened is like we started basically hacking YouTube, and we started getting a lot of views and a lot of subscribers, but no calls. And, you know, this was like the frustrating part. And this is like when you get to that point in your business where you're like, I'm just going to give up, you know.

And Jackson started saying that talking about that. He's like, dude, I don't get what's in the way. We're not getting calls. Like, this is crazy. Like we're getting all these views, all these subscribers. Like, what's up? And he's like, he was ready to throw in the towel. And I'm like, hell no, dude.

I'm like, I'm the one that's invested all my money. I give you 20% of my business to make this happen. And I said, we're not giving up. I said, something has got to go. And I said, this is what happened. with every entrepreneur is they give up too early and you never know it might be that next day where everything breaks loose and the in the flash flood happens right so we actually went and met with our so that was the aha moment number one was those figuring out the titles and jackson still has it he mentioned

this last night we hosted a webinar we had 100 agents on the call um it was exactly 100 which was i thought was pretty cool but uh um he said that he built this list called the youtube f and gold mine which was like the top 30 titles that he knew would get us basically a lot of traffic action. And so we shot those videos. We started getting a lot of views, getting a lot of subscribers, but still no calls. And then we actually, this lender that was doing great videos in our market, he actually set up two meetings, one with Jackson, one with me. He didn't know we were working together. And I literally like walked out of this. I was walking out of the meeting with the lender. And he's like, I go, what are you doing today? He's like, oh, I'm going to meet with this other agent

named Jackson. I'm like, dude, that's my business partner. And I was like, let's just meet together, you know, so we ended up meeting up. And so this lender was doing videos. He's like, dude, I want to earn your guys' business. I love what you're doing. He goes, how about if I edit your videos for you? Would you guys give me the deals that come in off the channel? And I'm like, hell, yeah, you can. And so he started editing.

Jackson was learning how to edit from him. And this was way back in the day. And so this guy's boss at the bank, the owner actually called a meeting with us. Because he's like, I love what you guys are doing. But dude, are you guys getting calls? And we're like, no. And he's like, I'm going to tell you why. And this is why he called the meeting.

Literally, like game changer, changed our whole life. I literally just got goosebumps when I said that like all over my arms. He goes, your guys' videos are great, but you're not telling people to call you. He goes, you have no call to action.

And in real estate, everyone says you got to be add value, add value, add value. He's like, that's great, but dude, these people love you. They're idolizing you.

They're seeing you on the screen. He goes, you have to tell them to call you. He goes, but here's the key is you don't tell them to call you at the end. You have to tell them

to call you at the very beginning because most people are only going to watch two minutes of your video and start fizzling away. So that's when we created our, you know, our undercover conversion method, which is something that Jackson and I developed, which is the structure that you hear a lot of people talking about now, which is the hook, the call to action, the branding video, the meat of the video, the outro with the call to action once again. So this is what happened is we did our hook, which is like, and actually that day we went out and shot a video and Jackson's like, dude, I've been thinking of this crazy hook and this called action. I'm going to drop it.

And so what we do is at the very beginning of the videos, you'll notice is like we will. always give a hook. We're going to tell the audience exactly what they're getting, but we're going to give them enough to keep them, you know, keep them on the line. So you're going to give them a little nibble. And then you're going to give them a, like a carrot, right? So I'd be like, you know, in this video, I'm going to talk to you about, you know, five reasons why I absolutely hate Portland, Oregon. I was living there. Dumptsters were on fire. Riots were everywhere. But if you actually want to move to that type of an environment, there's some amazing places to live. And I'm going to talk about those five great places that I'd personally go and go back and move to.

if I move back to Portland and we're getting after it right now. So I literally just told you, I gave you a little story. I gave you my hook. And then we go right into our call to action, you know, which is our way that we wanted to do it was the way that we would do it without like telling people were the greatest real estate agent on the planet that, you know, everyone's calling us. If your uncle Larry's moving to Portland, he has to call us because we just thought that was super cheesy and salesy. So our whole call to action is very simple. And I do it the same way with recruiting as well. So it's just like, hey, what's up?

I'll do my EXP one because we're talking to XP right now. I was like, hey, what's up? This is Jesse with the cloud-based brokerage. And if you want to know everything from revenue share to real estate right here at EXP, reality, go and smash that subscribe button and top that little bell so you're notified each and every time I drop a new video. And honestly, I'm getting so many calls from team leads, broker owners, real estate agents, and influencers want to talk about EXP, and I absolutely love it.

So if you want to get a hold of me, you got to give me a call, shoot me a text, send me an email, or even schedule a zoom down in the description. below. However you want to get a hold of me, I got your back when making a move to ExP Reality. Dude, the next day, we did that same. So what we're doing is we're creating a little phomo by saying everyone's calling us and we absolutely love it.

So now people don't feel like they're bugging us. And literally what happened was the next day, like when we dropped that video, we literally had 14 hot leads call us. I'm not talking about warm leads. I'm not talking about freaking no squeeze page is nothing. Literally the phone. Like Jackson called me. He's like, dude, I'm on the way to show this shitty zillow lead.

house. It was like one lead our broker gave us. And he's like, he goes, this guy like no showed me the day before. He goes, I freaking hate it. He's like, I literally just got a call from someone from our YouTube channel and I had to pull over. He goes, they were like screaming that I answered the phone. And that's what we started encountering like with a lot of the clients is they would freak out like when we meet them in person or we get on the Zoom call. And that was another big game changer. Like we started like talking to these people like they were a cold lead. Right. So I would be like, you know, hey, hey, this is Jesse with a EXP Realty, you know, how can I help you? And then they're like talking me. I'm like, oh, are you looking to buy a three bed or a two bath?

You know, but like I was prospecting. You know, they're like, dude, I'm moving to Portland. I'm freaking, I got an $800,000 pre-approval letter. Can you help me buy a house? And I'm like, hold on a second. And so what we started realizing is like, okay, now we have to build the system to like handle this monster because it was crazy, dude. Literally like we, Jackson will tell you like he, we had 14 clients come to

one time and Jackson was showing the houses. And he didn't put one in the contract. And I called them up. And I was like, what's up with these deals? And he's just like, well, what do you mean? Like, won't they like, I'm like, why didn't you write an offer with any of them? He's like, well, won't they ask me if they want to write the offer? And I'm like, no, dude. I'm like, you got to like ask them, what do you think of the house? Is this the house you want to write? If they're excited, they want to buy it, right? And so I said, you're no longer showing houses ever again. And I was like, you're done with real estate. I said, I just needs you making content. And so from that day forward, he never once worked with another client.

So he's only seriously sold two houses in his life. And they're under his name. He'll say I sold them. One was his house. And anyways, so what now the process happens is like these people are calling, texting, and emailing. Typically, it's text and email. On the recruiting side, I'm having them book on Zoom.

And it's 100% Zoom books. I literally get maybe one text message a month now before it was like 10, 10, text messages a day I couldn't handle it, but I like the booking of the Zoom now. But on the real estate side, what we do is they come into the hopper, we call it, and it was just like, hey, I've been watching you guys on YouTube. We're moving to Portland. Can you help us buy a house? And we're like, that's awesome. Like, where are you moving from? And they're like, oh, moving from San Diego. And I'm like, what, do you not like hot weather? Do you not like great beaches? Like, what's the situation? Then they tell you, and we just say, awesome, are you looking to

buy a rent? And it's very simple. It's a lot of people overcomplicate this. They just say, oh, I'm looking to buy. We say, cool, here's our Zoom link. Go ahead and schedule at your convenience. And if they say they're going to rent, we just say, unfortunately, we don't work with renters here. They're not in the MLS. And a lot of people are like, cool, we give them a link, whatever. But in some states, we have a rental team. So we give these college kids, these rentals that are licensed agents. We have some agents in Texas, dude, making like 10,000 a weekend showing rentals. It's crazy. We have literally, we've had like 2,500 inbound leads on our Texas channel in Houston. And here's the crazy thing with that channel.

And people will say like, oh, is SEO really important? Do you really need these stats? So we started that channel 14 months ago. We have 10,800 subscribers, 42 videos. That's it. We've closed. I think last year we closed 17 million on that channel. And then there's another lady down there.

You can check her out. Katie Day. She has had her channel for five years. She does the real estate style videos. She has 700 videos and she has 2,000 subscribers. So it's like, you know, realistically look at, look at the results. There are proofs in the pudding. But so we get them on the Zoom call.

And here's another magical piece is that we get these clients on a Zoom call. And it's our agent. Jackson and I are not, we're not involved with this at all. We are not working with clients. We don't talk to clients. And it's our agent that handles the onboarding and the lender. So they're there together. We never ask them if they're pre-approved.

None of that stuff. We're driving the boat, right? So they get on the call and we just say, hey, we find agents that are really big personalities because we want them to have an amazing experience. And we don't really want them asking like, where's Jesse and Jackson? And then if they do, we just say, those guys suck at real estate. We're the team that is the best at real estate. So if you want a house, you're working with us. And then they say, oh, we love that. Yeah, we totally get it. So they get on the Zoom call. And we just say, hey, this is our lender partner. His name's Addison.

Whether you're pre-approved or not, doesn't matter to us. He's here as a resource because 90% of our questions are always about, you know, needing pre-qualification letters. You know, how much can I afford things like that? And he's just here as a resource. He works on our team. Everyone's like, oh, that's awesome. 90% of their questions end up being lending. And last year, like in Portland, for example, I always mentioned that because that's

the team I still earn 100% of. He closed 66 of our deals on the purchase side. So lenders love this. And you can get them to spend, we have them pay for our editing and resources and things like that, you know, but they also get on every Zoom call, which we only do on Tuesdays and Thursdays that people are booking themselves. And here's another thing, dude, I'm giving you guys magic nuggets right now dropping bombs and anybody can do this in their business is we started getting a lot of people that would come to town and say like, oh, I've never been to Portland before or like,

oh, I don't know if I'm really here to buy, you know, and a lot of agents will get in their car and they'll drive them around like a tour guide and then this person never shows up. So they're hounding them. They're like, dude, they're like dripping on them. They're freaking pissing these people off. And, you know, do we've had people disappear for three years on us and then show back up and say, I've been running for three years. I've been watching your channel. I'm ready to buy. But so what we do is we built this self-guided tour system. So now when people come to town, we don't even get in the cars with these people until they're like ready to buy. So we say, hey, we're going to send you a self-guided tour based on your criteria of what you're looking for. And feel free to stop into any open houses, go into new construction

sites, all good in the hood. If you do decide to write an offer and you may, think all of a sudden you have this epiphany that this is your city, you need to be represented. The people on site represent the sellers, and there's a reason they don't want you to have an agent. It's because it's not in their best benefits. So you need to have an agent, whether it's us or someone else, and do we get calls all the time? Oh my God, I love this self-guided tour system, but we found this house. We run our ad and offer. The agent said, I need to contact you.

And we have a good relationship with a lot of the agents in the city. They all know who we are. But even on the new construction, we'll pre-register them. If the builder says you need to be there, we'll send an agent out there to meet the buyer. And dude, it's crazy. It's crazy. It's the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life. And people are like, how many deals do you guys do?

So in 2021, we just because I only get paid on the YouTube deals, my agents get 100% of their deals. We closed over 190 transactions on YouTube for about 93 million in sales. And it's all 100% inbound. And, you know, it is a lot of relocation. but the thing is, these people also send you their family, their friends, and we're getting a lot of listings now.

Because the one thing I realized is I love these clients because they have a lot of money. Typically, people that are relocating are very wealthy. They have great credit, so they're buying nice homes, but they also, like,

they don't like to stay still. Like, they love to resell really fast, you know, whether it's a bigger house, a downsize house, or they're just moving. So the other crazy piece to it, too,

is we just say, hey, like on that Zoom call, this is another reason why it's important is because you can say, hey, do you need to sell a house to buy a house? And they're like, yeah, I do. And we're like, cool, do you have a real estate agent? They're like, yeah, oh, we've been talking to this agent. I say, awesome. What I have a business partner in your market. I'd love just to you get a second opinion because they work just like we work. And if you find more value in them, you know, you have the opportunity to work with them. And if not, no, no problem. Like every single one of him's like, dude, send me your person, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And my first year in doing it, you can ask Kenny Trong, we sent him like $12 million in listing referrals because he was like, and I, and this was before EXP, dude, I knew him through Instagram. And that's all the only way I knew him. I was just sending them these referrals because I had so many clients moving to Portland from the Bay. That's crazy. That's awesome.

That's kind of the story and like where it's evolved to today. So now we have 11 channels in 11 markets and we have other agents. Like basically the phone call, it directs to the agent that's in that market. They answer the call. We have 13 channels total. One's for recruiting. And then Jackson has his for the channel junkies. But the recruiting one, I have almost 100 frontline agents now, 42 FLQAs.

And my rev shares like 25,000 a month. I've been here for less than two years. And it just keeps growing, dude. And I give our systems and tools with all the agents. And I tell every agent, too, I'm like, dude, start a YouTube channel. I don't care if it's for agent attraction. And here's the deal. People are, and this is what agents will think all the time.

They'll say, oh, there's already someone doing YouTube in my market. I don't think I can do it. And I'm like, dude, there's 90,000 agents in your market. Like, why are you selling real estate? There's 90,000 people cold calling, buying the same Zillel leads, buying the same freaking Facebook leads. Like YouTube is crazy because it's self-selecting. And that's why I even say with EXP, like there's 1,000 agents coming over every week.

500 are not even using a sponsor. There's plenty of us to go around. and people are going to align with different people, dude. I guarantee you there's people on there that hate me. And there's lots of people that love me. But at the end of the day, I want them to choose who they want to choose. And people are like, I don't have a value to give. That's BS, dude.

People are coming to EXP because of EXP. People have too much ego involved when they think that they don't have a value to add because when I see that 50% are signing up without sponsors, that just tells me that the model is that good. And everyone has an upline with amazing people. What would you, what, what are kind of the, the recommendations on, you know, a channel, do you, do you separate it out? Do you recommend as agents get started that they, they do something separate for, for agent attraction versus something for real estate or is it okay to combine it? Like, what are, what are, what are, what are, what are you guys recommend? Yeah. So the way you always want to think of your YouTube channel is like, it's like a, it's like a show, right? Like a TV show. So if you're going to watch, if it's two different audiences, you want two different audiences, you want two different. channels. So like let's say for example agent attraction is geared towards agents. So that's an audience. Real estate leads are home buyers and sellers. So if your home buyers and sellers are watching

your channel and then all of a sudden you pop an agent attraction video on there, they're going to be like, what the hell are you doing? Like this isn't this isn't, this isn't applicable to me. So you definitely want to. And this is the crazy thing. Like YouTube's algorithm is like more powerful than Facebook's lookalike audiences and it's free. So once YouTube can start figuring out who your audience is, this is why we say, do not share this on any social media platform. This is the biggest problem that agents have is they'll like,

because they want that views and subscriber count up. So I don't know why everyone thinks that that equals something powerful. I think they all want to be influencers or something, or they want a viral video. But what we notice, because YouTube will suggest your video out there, and it's called an impression of like when somebody stops on it for a half a second. You'll even see inside of the analytics of this.

They break it down by suggested videos. YouTube search videos, outside source videos, which would be like Google promoting your video. And even go to like Google and type in EXP Realty and click on the video tab. You'll see all the top agents in there that are doing videos. But yeah, you want two separate channels. And so like if you were doing a channel, say like for getting clients

and you were like doing a channel in Dallas, now you wouldn't do a channel for Dallas and one for Fort Worth. That would be one channel. You could create two different playlist because in my opinion, that's the same audience. but if you were doing Dallas and Houston, that could warrant two separate channels, or Dallas and Houston, that could warrant two different channels. You could still make a playlist, especially if you were primarily in Dallas,

and you were just showing some Houston stuff and you referred that off. I actually have an agent that's in my downline named Carrie Fletcher. And this is like when you talk about niching down and knowing who you want to work with. Like he started out doing it like Jackson and doing city channel. And then, dude, he's a cowboy and he like loves Lane and Ranch. So he actually switched over to the commercial side. And he just closed the $3 million ranch. He was telling us off his YouTube channel.

So now if you just type in Linen Ranch, Texas, it's his channel like dominates that. He has like every channel, every video Linden Ranch is him. And it's insanity. So he completely switched over to that. And he's like, it's crazy because my wife, she's at EXP 2. She's a luxury agent. And she's like, he's like, yeah, she would die to sell a $3 million house. He's like, I'm wearing cowboy boots and freaking selling dirt.

That's worth $8 million. And, you know, it's just funny. Like you attract your audience. And he had the Wall Street Journal reach out to him to interview him about how COVID has impacted land and ranch sales in Texas. And that was pretty cool. And then we have another team that's with us, Will and Eli in Denver. And they're actually, they had a company to reach out to them that pitches ideas to networks. And they're in there.

They actually made it to the pilot round. and now they're pitching it to a Netflix peacock and HGTV, which is really cool. So it's a, I mean, you can make it whatever you want. And you can make it your own. And like I said,

you just attract your, your type of audience, you know. So the example there on the land versus, you know, the luxury, it's still in the same geographical area. Is that a different channel or is that a different playlist among the same?

No, it would just be a playlist. Like if I was doing something like that, He just did land because he loves Laning Ranch and that's what a specialty is. So, you know, if you wanted to do, you know, moving to Texas, like, if I was doing something like that, like, if I was really going into it and like trying to get this thing popping, I would just be like all like moving to Houston, Texas, like everything you need to know. And literally I would be doing like a playlist on Land and Ranch, a playlist on luxury

real estate, a playlist on, you know, like virtual tour, not of homes, but, oh gosh. full vlog tours of the areas. That's another thing. Like the only people that are watching these like house tours that everyone's putting on their channel are people that are bored that can't even afford the house. Dude, people really want to know what it's like living in these markets. It's even when I moved to North Phoenix area, dude, nobody was doing a YouTube channel. And this is why I chose Phoenix. I was like, I'm going to come down here and create a channel and blow it up. And that's what I did. And Jackson went to Houston. So neither one of us live in our own home cities. And so Jackson went to Houston. I came to Phoenix because when I was moving to Phoenix, I was like,

like, dude, I can't even see what it's like living here. Like there's all these channels, but it's like nothing that a consumer. So you have to put yourself in the shoes of the consumer of say, if I was moving to the city, what would I be looking for? And quite honestly, when I moved here, I still didn't even understand like why everything. I didn't even know that there was even like houses here, dude. Like there's one of the biggest cities in America.

And when you drive around, it just looks like cactuses and freaking dirt and rocks everywhere. And I now know that everything has to be painted the city as the earth here. like that's a rule that they have and like every like they try to keep it as natural looking as possible which I think is super cool but you can drive through a row of cactuses and you end up in a freaking mall that you can't even see from the road you know so that's like something to show on you know on your channel and things like that you know and we have our strategies and we have our um you know our system like I said last night we hosted a webinar with 100 agents and we have it dude it's copy and copy and paste literally all your thumbnails are built you literally just have to change your picture your channel arts built your thumbnails already created. Your freaking titles are already there. And you can shoot all your videos from Zoom. This is where people get it complicated. I do 100% of my videos just like this. I literally hit record on Zoom. If I need to stop, I hit pause. And I just keep it going. I try to one take everything. And if I mess up, you know, the editor will cut it out. But everyone also, this was another big issue

that we had early too, is that we were paying $2,000 a video, dude. We had a production crew. We had this big old freaking production. I'm going to show you this real quick. Hold on. Dude, this camera right here, I have this camera. I've never used it in my life. It's this Canon camera. And I don't even know how to turn it on. Dude, I have this GoPro right here. This is the, this is the glory right here.

This is like, this is, these things belong in the Smithsonian. But like the, that's like, the reason that we love GoPro so much, especially for outside is because it's stable and it has real wide lens. And you can drop that thing. You can put it under water. You can do all sorts of stuff with it. And it'll keep going. But, you know, what we realized at the end of the.

today is these consumers are dying for information and you literally just have to answer the questions of what they're looking for. And they want someone that they can reach out. And it's more of that connection piece. And that's what Jackson talks about all the time. He's like, I've sold two houses yet I get hundreds of agents or clients calling me every day dying to work with me. And I'm not even the one answering the phone. It's our agents that are doing it. So if you want a scalable product that you can actually exit and a sellable product as well, the YouTube channel in my opinion is the best. You know, it's also just creating that, you know, the right content. Because like I said, a lot of agents, dude, they're out there like, look at my listing, look at my open house. Dude, I see agents with, because we work with a lot of agents.

I see agents with 900 videos on their channel with like two subscribers. And I know what agents take like, oh, I have all these videos on my channel. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. It's like, no, what you're doing doesn't work. But there is a way to make it happen. It feels like kind of what you share. couple things to help to help that is is definitely the call to action of oh yeah i appreciate you

clarifying you know the the production quality as as it's not as important as you know trying to get an expensive camera more so as it's you know creating the content that's actually what what the consumer's wanting right what what the person that's searching is really being able to find the answer of what they're of what they're looking for what are some of the you know the red flag or the dead giveaways that you see even for people that follow your program that still aren't having success what are some of the things that they may be they may be missing or they may be skipping over they need to pay a little more attention to yeah i i can i can go to anyone's channel and i'll know within a minute of like what their what their issue is um and it's just because

i've done it so many times and i and the biggest can the biggest issues that i see of of what i personally believe is like one is a couple things like one is the title is is incorrect uh their optimization is incorrect so like your title always needs to be the first sentence in your description um and the first keyword a lot of people also do what they call keyword stuffing youtube came out and they said that keywords are no longer relevant to the videos maybe one will drive a little bit of traffic so tags don't matter anymore uh as as much as people believe that they do um but the biggest issue is is the length of the video is that um youtube gets paid for marketing.

That's how they, all these companies make money is advertising. So the longer you can keep somebody on their platform, the more YouTube is going to serve you up to the audience. So the suggest, and here's the crazy statistic is that we, on our Houston channel, we have average view duration of like 14 minutes on that channel.

So when everyone says short videos are the king, no, short videos are the demise. People watch short videos for entertainment purposes. People watch long videos when they're making real purchase decisions. And, you know, Jackson always says, like, if you're sitting on the toilet, you're watching TikTok. If you're looking to buy a house, you're sitting in front of your computer watching YouTube. And so longer view durations are very important.

And so when people are like, I don't know what to say, it's like, you know, that's why you inject stories. Like people are interested in stories in you. Like, so I say, instead of saying like, oh, I'm saying like, oh, over here, there's a park. I would say something like, oh, there's this park over here. And this is the park I actually loved going to when I was growing up. We'd have a lot of picnics.

There was like big swings. There was a metal slide here that I'd burnt my knees on 900 times, you know, things like that. You know, it's just to add fuel to the fire. And this is the thing on the suggested videos and what I was going to say is on YouTube search videos, say our average vieweration is five minutes. But on YouTube suggested, it's like 10 minutes. It's like, oh, it's about double. And the suggestions you'll see because YouTube shows you how many times they've given it out is massive. And here's the other thing that I love is like at the end of your video, you can,

put like what video you want to direct people to or you can let youtube select for you best for the audience so we see when youtube let's you let you let youtube choose it has an 88% click through rate but when you when you choose which video you want your audience to go to it has like a 2% click through rate so once again we're just like YouTube wins again so it's like you have to let it organically do its thing and agents will be so YouTube can't like serve up ads until they hit like the four minute mark so we say if everyone watches your channel or your video for 50%, you need to at least be eight minutes because we know that most people watch about 50% of the video.

We get up on my channel I see like for recruiting, I get about 90% watch or 33% watch 90% of my content, which is pretty good. And my average iteration is about six minutes and that's for recruiting. But for the city ones, we do big old long ones. And the longer, the better. And people will say like, well, I walk talk for 30 minutes. It's like, dude, I don't care if it's for three hours. Like these people are going to absorb that, you know, information.

And here's another piece is that like we say if somebody watched a one minute video, 100% of it, but watch 25% of a 10 minute video, you're going to that two and that one that they watch 25% is going to get way more action than that shorter one. Because YouTube knows now, especially with the shorter videos, they're like, I can't even make money on this person. So I'm in whether you have the getting paid feature on or not, which you have to have a thousand subscribers and 4,000 viewed hours. They don't care.

The thing is, is they're getting paid on every channel. And optimizing your channel for getting paid, it won't affect your channel one way or another. People ask us that all the time. And we have about 50,000 subscribers. We have three channels with 10,000 plus. And we only make probably like $2,000 a month total. So the views aren't really paying the bills.

Sure. Now, I'm with you. No, that's great. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. So it's almost like, you know, long form versus short term copy. Yeah.

And you look back at from an email marketing perspective and people are like, no, man, nobody's going to go through that. The real people that are that are really making buying decisions will consume all of that. Oh, yeah. And this is the thing too is like, and the channels always go through these funny phases. Like people will call us and be like, oh, I'm not getting any reach out. And then it goes to like, I'm getting renter reach out. And then it goes, I'm getting buyer or, you know, real buying clients reaching out. And, you know, the way I think of that is I think like the renters are looking at content so fast.

and like right now and they're like so that might take a little bit for it to engage but like i was saying will and eli in denver they're like i always reference them and like gregg fosters in san antonio there are two completely different audience different styles of youtube great foster's 100% green screen from his office he's never done a vlog in the streets and i think he said he closed 90 deals last year from his channel and then will and eli they do 100% vlog and they just go set up their tripod on like the street and they shoot in a stationary piece but then they like they like like put in a lot of B-roll and they did about I think 80 million in sales off of their channel this year and um you know but that's why I say is like go watch those guys as good examples of you know

to see two different completely different styles and and here's the thing is like I'm not discrediting short form content it's just not what I play in and um I also am really good friends with a lot of people that teach this at super high levels in the Instagram space and TikTok and they're like number one customers are doing like seven million a year in sales I'm like I have I have $100 million sales clients. So I'm like, that's the discrepancy of differences. But everyone's so,

like, fascinated with TikTok and Instagram. And I'm like, yeah, that's great if you're selling soap or, you're selling Valentine's Day gifts because you miss Valentine's Day.

And you're like, shit, now I need to buy a gift really quick. Like, that just spurred you on. You know, so I still, I'm still not sold 100% on those platforms

being like a giant lead generator, but I do think that they all serve a place. And I use TikTok and Instagram as my supporting roles. And that, That's the way I look at it. So I create my YouTube videos and I have a team now that all they do is they take my content and they build a snackable content off of it and they just clip, clip it off. And then I repurpose it for Instagram and TikTok, but it's not the video. It's completely different content because I don't want to link those videos because what happens

when you link your videos, this is what I don't know why people say this. They're like, put your video links and everything. It's like, no, that's the worst thing to do because what you do is one is you're serving up bad data to YouTube because that's not the audience that you want. want and two, your friends, what they're going to do is they're going to subscribe to your channel and not watch or they're going to click on it and watch 30 seconds of the video and bounce. So what did you just do? You just drove your bounce rate up through the roof. You dropped your average view duration down significantly and you told YouTube that your content sucks and now what YouTube's going to do, they're going to put you in the freaking doghouse.

And so that's why we say, we even tell our agents that close our deals. We say if you ever place our links on any social media platform, you're done. We will never. it's a done deal. And so now, you know, a lot of them started at the beginning and they'll even tell us, even other agents not that don't work with us. They'll say, yeah, the worst decision I made was putting my channel out in front of everyone because everybody wants that view and subscriber rate up. And I totally get it. But trust me, you just let that baby build organically. And then you'll be looking at your channel going, holy shit, I have a million views. And I closed amazing business, you know. Yeah. What's a, what's a reasonable amount for that organically to grow? If you're following the

process kind of, you know, what's, what's, what's reasonable to kind of, these are milestones attention. Yeah. So like our new platform that we just built the launch program, we have a design. So we, you know, our goal is to get you 100, get you to get your channel up to 100 subscribers within four weeks of following our recipe. And, you know, it really just, it's variable by market, you know, like so like I look at someone like Will and Eli and Denver who did, you know, almost 100 million on one channel. They have 7,000 subscribers. Then you look at our channel and Texas and Houston with 10,000 subscribers and it did 17 million. And then our Northern Idaho channel has 800 subscribers,

but we closed 20 million. There's no real indicators, you know, of like what really, you know, get you the views and the subscribers and the calls, you know, but I do, there's a gal actually that just joined us. Her name's Rachel. She's in Boise. And she's been doing her YouTube channel for about a month now.

And she's got, she's had nine hot leads caller directly. So it really just depends, like how your personality is and how you're serving up. the content, you know. And so if I was going to start a channel tomorrow in any market, like, we know the perfect formula. But what we would do is we would, you know, get all of our video shot in advance and we'd have it set up so we could drop three videos a week for that first four weeks because you're basically, you're just basically going in there to fight, a dog fight against

a lot of different people. But as long as your SEO's on point, you'll rank up number one instantly. And it might fall down over the next couple days. But your goal, because when we started doing this, nobody was doing it. So we were fighting against like worldwide vloggers like Nick Nimman's and, you know, Brian G. Johnson that has all these city channels and a world according to Briggs. So we would copy their titles. And that's the thing is if you're like,

someone's already doing it in my city, it's like that's awesome. Copy their exact titles. Sort it from most viewed to least viewed. Copy their one with the most viewed and shoot that title. And now what that YouTube's going to do is they're going to serve you up at the back end of their video because now they're like, all right, cool. We have a new player in town.

If they can hold the audience longer than me, I'm going to start serving their videos up to the other audience because, like I said, they're getting paid. So it's a lot of craziness, man. And, you know, we really have it dialed in to get fast results. And I mean, you see all the agents out there that follow the recipe and they get great success. And I'm not talking about, you know, some of these agents are brand new that are just crushing it now, dude. And I'm freaking applaud that, man. And I couldn't be happier because I'm like, I love impacting agents and giving them a system. And my ultimate goal really was it was like I didn't want a cold call because I was like getting so sick from not knowing when the deals were coming in.

But I was like I want to build a long term sustainable platform that has deals calling me that I can exit out of. And I never thought I'd exit out. But when I moved to EXP, Chuck was like, dude, you have to step out of production. Like this is the craziest system I've ever seen. And then I did it. And then my business 10x and it gets better every day. It's amazing. And real quick before I want to kind of shift gears on you for a second.

but on that call to action, is that something that you, you kind of, you pre-record or you just say it every time? We just say it every time, but it really, you know, and this is the other thing,

like even with the call to action is like, a lot of agents will be like, oh, my thumbnail doesn't match my clothes. Like I got, do I have to wear 50 different outfits? Like when I go out and shoot and like battery record, I'll,

like today, I'm on recording day today. I will literally shoot probably 10 videos and just wear the same shirt, look the exact same way. I might not even turn the green screen on. It just depends, you know.

So to me, I don't think it really matters. The only thing I will say is you'll definitely need to do the hook. And also like in our call to action, we'll always use a piece of our actual video into our called action. So we personally do it every time. But it doesn't matter. You can have it pre-recorded.

It doesn't matter. Cool. Because what we do is we do our hook, our branding video, which is a little piece of us. And this is like something that you'll see a lot of agents do. It's like, with Jackson and I, we started doing this branding video a long time ago, but it was just like 10 seconds of us goofing around, right, to kind of break that ice and build our brand.

And it was like me riding a scooter, him drinking beers, us like dancing around in the park, like having fun. And, you know, I mean, dude, we get people hitting us up all the time like, hey, I want to come to Portland and buy you guys bruskis and things like that. And so, yeah, in that branding video can't be longer than like five to 10 seconds. Like I see these ones too, like where the agents are like, my video doesn't work. I'm like, I look at it. And it's like they're literally like their intro, their branding videos is the first thing for two minutes. I'm like, do you think someone gives a shit about like they don't want to know two minutes about you? And they're seeing that every time.

So yeah, that's what I say. Just make it five to 10 seconds. And dude, no one cares. No one cares if you're freaking you got 900 of credentials. No one cares if you're certified buyer's agent. If they know, like and trust you, like we always say, they're going to call you, you know. Right. I love it.

And then goes into the call to action and then into the meet. Yep. kind of of the content and then back to call to action. Yep, yep. Yeah, you do that outro. So like I always, if you guys watch my videos, um,

I always, we always roll our call to action into the video because the, this is a thing that also you don't want to do is you don't want to say thank you so much for watching my video. Uh, now two videos are going to pop up and go ahead and select one like for the call cards, whatever, or the end screen cards.

As soon as you say thank you to anybody, they think you're done. So in their mind that triggers them to get off your video. So what we just, So we do that like right at the very end, we just hit them really quick with that call to action. And then YouTube will naturally just either give them a suggested video or bring up your card.

So we never say thank you. We never say it's the end. That triggers people to get off. So we want them to click to the next video. And so yeah, it's just literally like if I'm talking, you and I were talking like this. And I was like,

yeah, John has been awesome, you know, being on your show today talking about all this EXP. And if you are watching this and want to talk about EXP, there's only one way to do it. You got to reach out. Give me a call. Should me text send me an email or even

schedule, zoom down the description below. However you want to get a call to me, I get your back and making a move to EXP. So, like, that's how I would drop that call to action in my video because I wanted to be quick and snappy without them feeling like they're going to get off, you know, without hearing me. Yeah. No, that's fantastic. So I want to switch gears as we kind of wrap up for, you know, this conversation is, you

talked about partners and, you know, really trying to align with somebody that can pull themselves up the rope themselves without you having to stop and pull them with you. So obviously partnering with Jackson. I mean, kind of talk through because, you know, a lot of, I'm pro partner. Obviously, choosing the right partner is key. But how did how did you go about that decision and, you know, what led you to, you know, you and you know, what would you say for anybody else out there thinking, you know, hey, this is a big endeavor.

I still got to sell. I see how important this is. You know, how should I create some leverage in my business to get this done? So the crazy, the crazy thing is, is like, I'm only been in real estate for four and a half years. And, you know, I didn't really pay attention that much to like any traditional real estate stuff. Like I was like, I loved cold calling because it was really hot deals. And I loved open houses because they were hot deals.

But that was like, you know, that was misery. And, you know, the one thing I loved hearing somebody talk about on a show, I think it was Joshua Smith. And he said, when you choose a partner, they have to be 180 degrees out from you. And so if their strengths have to complement your weaknesses. and, you know, because if you guys both love doing listings, then you guys are going to be fighting over listings. And then now no one likes working with buyers. So you're literally taking your salary and dividing it into two, you know, instead of going one plus one equals three, you're going one plus one equals one, which isn't the way you should do it. And this is actually where I see a lot of people make mistakes when choosing partners. And it turns into a catastrophe. So the one thing that I realized when I was, you know, and people, I didn't even talk about the story of how we met, but Jackson was actually my title rep.

And I got this listing and it was in this outer market that the title company I was working with didn't cover. And then Jackson had me with this video message. And I was like, dude, I love video. I've never seen anyone do this before. This is crazy. So I was like instantly like attracted to the fact that he did video because I was doing video. But like nobody was doing it in an effective way at that time. And so I was like he saw how much money I was making and all these house I was selling.

But I kept telling him, dude, I'm doing this from cold calling. I'm not doing this from video. Trust me. And this is the problem with real estate. is a lot of people see people doing things and they think that's how they're making their money so then they start doing it and that's not really what works.

And so, and a lot of people spend a lot of money and they sold a lot of bad stuff. And I was like, so Jackson got his real estate license and he couldn't close a single deal to save his life. Like I haven't told you, 14 hot leads and he couldn't even put one under contract.

So he, I like asked him, I'm like, how's things going? Because he was like really good like on the video side. And he was a, freaking lightning, dude. He had no experience in that. I just like, I knew because like he built some

funnels too for the for the business. And I was like, how'd you learn how to do that? And he's like, oh, I just watched some YouTube videos and figured it out. I was like, all right, dude, this is the guy I like want to work with. So he was really good. And then he started editing my videos too as my title as my title rep. And he would always meet me out. He'd shoot videos, get him edited. You know, he was adding real value as a title rep, you know? And so he got his, when he got a real estate, I was just like, how's it going? He's like, it sucks, dude. He's like, I'm probably going to have to quit and go back into title and escrow or whatever. I said, F that, dude. I said, just come work with me, dude. I said, just be my assistant. I said, my business is thriving. And, you know, and I said,

hey, and here's the deal. I said, I'll give you 20%. And I said, and when YouTube passes my business, I said, we'll split everything 50, 50, no questions asked. I don't care if I close it, you close it, where the deal comes in, dude. I said, it'll be 50. How's that sound? He's like, all right, because I wanted to have like real build real skin in the game, dude. And I was like, I wanted to build something big. And so he is 100% the opposite of me. If you, we couldn't find more of an opposite person. Like he's married with kids. I'm single. I have no kids. Like he likes drinking bruskees. I don't like drinking bruskees. Like that's, that's a lot of, you know, pros and cons. Like I love the I love the transactional real estate

side. He doesn't like real estate at all. So like I like now, not working with clients now that I've gotten the taste of that, you know, and things are good. But when you choose a partner, you have to really find someone that really complements your weaknesses. Otherwise, you're going to be stuck in the same position you are today. And this is the thing, too, is because I work with the amazing partners. I mentioned Will and Eli.

And they're two guys that literally have great complementaries to each other's weaknesses. Eli is a lot like me. And Will's a lot like Jackson. Like Will can get up in front of the stages. If you haven't had them on your show, you need to definitely do it. Yeah, because a former recon sniper,

motivational speaker. Yes. He's been on Andy Faselli show, Jocco, all that stuff. and Will Grimes, they have Day 1 Dollar Zero podcast. But that's what I say, man. You're choosing a partner, dude. That's what you have to do.

And it's really been an interesting change of my life, man. I literally like to say like four and a half years ago, even two years ago, I wasn't even at EXP. And I was grinding out the calls, you know. And our YouTube business was really just starting to take off. And, you know, this is crazy because like, and when you talk about partnerships with people, like that's one thing. But dude, probably in a partnership with like your brokerage and having

people that believe in you is a whole other thing because we were at freaking next home, dude. And they freaking told us that YouTube was a flash in the pan and it would never evolve anything. And they wouldn't even let us speak on the stage to the agents and even teach what we knew. And here's what happened is I was getting calls from agents all around the country like asking to work with us. And they said we couldn't even work with them. Like not even in any form whatsoever because the brook because they're like, you can own a franchise and then open all these franchises. That's what they're trying to get me to do. And I was like, hell, though, do you know, how expensive and retarded that sounds?

Yeah. You know, part of my choice of word there. I didn't mean to use that. But like, do you know how ridiculous that sounds? But, you know, that's what happened. And then I was like, there's got to be a better way out there. And I'd already been like, you know, hit up by 900 EXP agents, not adding value to my business. And so my coach, actually, the one that got me to do YouTube, went to EXP, Frank.

And he's like, dude, I know your business inside now. He goes, you have to take a look at this model. I don't care what you say. and I'm like, all right, cool. So then like I sat down with Sam Rodriguez. He took two hours with me, dude, showed me everything. And literally like I called Jackson that day. I was like, dude, this is the freaking thing.

Actually, I said, what I said is you'll never believe where we're going. And he's like, expe. I said, yep, he's like, I'm in. And I literally like the, dude, it took me a little bit to make the move. I was one of those agents that was like, I have all these deals under contract. And it has, the lines, the stars have to align. Here's the problem. I was like I had all these YouTube deals coming in and literally like we had contracts out every day,

every day. And so we were always in this negotiation. And finally I told my team, I said, you guys, I don't care if the client wants to write a deal. I said, we have to stop for one day. I said, I'm going to make the move. And then you guys will come after me. So I literally shut operations down. I made the move. I think I was in Lull for four hours. EXP did a great job with that piece. And we were back up and running. And like, it was no hardships at all, dude. I'm like, I wish I would have came sooner like everyone else always says. That's amazing. Yeah, I love it. I appreciate you, man. I'm a, I'm a go to the source kind of guy. And there's a lot of people out there that have gone through your course, what you and Jackson are doing and have done a phenomenal job at just, you know, following the process. And, you know, for you guys listening in, you know, get to the source. Connect with Jesse, connect with Jackson. I know I want to bring Jackson in to the fold on future expert mentors live, be able to get his perspective. I know he brings a ton of value to the conversation. And so we'll look forward to having him on the future.

make sure you guys connect with Jesse get into the channel junkies and we'll look forward to seeing you guys next time Jesse thank you brother