Start With A Win - Finding a Point of Differentiation with Brad McCallum of RE/MAX First in Calgary, Alberta

Starting point is 00:00:00 Every day is filled with choices. You're here because you're choosing to start with a win. Get ready to be inspired, learn something new, and connect with the win nation. And coming to you from the bunker at Fort Contos, not top of the 12th floor of Remax World Headquarters. It's Adam Contos, CEO here with Start With A Win. We got on the Zoomster, producer Mark, how you doing buddy? The Zoomster, live from the Zoomster. Sounds like a huge like dome, but it is. It is.

Starting point is 00:00:41 We have a cage and we have one of those big metal balls of people ride motorcycles around in you know it's flames everywhere it's amazing if you're not watching the show on on youtube you need to get over there and subscribe right yeah go over and check it out and see us on the zoomster that's right i think we need to rename this thing anyway i think everybody's burned out on zoom yeah Yeah, done. It works great, but for crying out loud. So, Mark, we have a fun guest, a longtime friend of ours on today. Excited to have him. We have with us from the McCallum Group, Remax First in Calgary, Brad McCallum. How you doing, buddy? I'm doing great, Adam. Thank you so much for

Starting point is 00:01:25 having me on the show. Well, we're honored to have you. I mean, you are one of those influencers that we see on the interweb, just killing it in real estate in Calgary, Canada. I'm one of our favorite Canadian friends here. So Brad, tell us a little bit about yourself. Okay. All right. Well, first off, I do not like that word influencer. That's one of those tough things, right? No one ever aspires to be an influencer. And I don't think even most of the time you grow up thinking at 12, 13 years of age, I want to be a real estate agent. And I definitely didn't. In the beginning, I wanted to be more a designer. I wanted to build homes, that kind of thing. And so I spent the first few decades of my married life following

Starting point is 00:02:11 that path. I had a renovation and design company, and I just got tired of spending 90% of the day doing things that just I wasn't very good at. And I found that the stuff that I really loved was the creative side, the design side and dealing with my clients, right? Helping them kind of see the vision in their property. And yeah, so a few years ago, I decided I'm going to make a bit of a change. At the time, I was pretty much deep in debt. I had a big tumor on the side of my face that I was really worried it was a bad health issue thing. And I didn't quite have my high school education yet. So I had a whole bunch of challenges I was kind of facing. I decided at almost 40 years of age, just I'm going to try something brand new. And I

Starting point is 00:02:57 went out, got my license, got my surgery, found out I didn't have cancer. And I got my GED so I could go get my license in real estate, even though I had a seven-figure renovation and design company. But I wanted to do something I was super passionate about. And that's kind of what's led me to today because not only do I do real estate, I use video and marketing as a huge keystone in my business to generate more leads, fans, and even a tiny bit of influence on the internet. Right. Well, I'm glad you mentioned the word video because that's what we're going to talk about today. You've done an amazing job of really turning yourself into

Starting point is 00:03:42 somebody who's taken your creative and you've put it into video. I don't know if anybody's watching this on video. I'm sure you are. But you just look behind Brad and he's got so much creativity. I've seen Brad play the ukulele on video. You got this really cool haircut. And for crying out loud, a great personality. So tell us what made you want to get into video to help pursue marketing your company and what are the results from that? For sure. So when I got into real estate in Calgary, there's over 5,000 agents. And so I was kind of thinking the same thing as everyone else. When it was time for me to sell a house before I became an agent, it was like, why would I choose this guy or that guy? And I fell for just

Starting point is 00:04:29 the same stuff. I'm like, well, I don't know, that guy's a top producer, or he seems to do a lot of business or his face is on all the bus benches. So I'll just give him a call. And by kind of by default, it was like whoever was spending the most money was probably getting the most calls. And then I had some of those experiences and I did not feel like I was super impressed with the experience. I didn't feel as different from agent to agent. I had some good experiences, some okay experiences, but you know what, for, I guess for me, I started to see this need to differentiate myself. I wanted to align with a brand like Remax, right? But there's 5,000 agents in my city and there's almost a thousand Remax agents. So that was going to get

Starting point is 00:05:10 me from 5,000 to 1,000. That was going to really help me there. But then I still wanted to, I wanted to beat out even my fellow brothers and sisters, right? I wanted to be in the top one or 2% in my city. And I thought the only way to do it without spending a million dollars was just to use and leverage video on social media, on all the different platforms and to do it at a high level. So I could really differentiate myself. I wanted a point of differentiation. So Brad, when you, when you really take a look at what are the benefits to being on video, you talk about marketing yourself. And I know a lot of people in Canada, especially don't buy leads. You are down into your communities, getting noticed in your communities, helping people through delivering value and

Starting point is 00:05:58 understanding what's going on, talking about, you know, the local ice cream shop or, or someplace to go eat or whatever it might be. Tell us, how did you build this foundation? What did the foundation for your video marketing look like to begin that? For sure. So for me, it was built on this idea that clients needed as much value as possible. Now, the Calgary real estate market, it has been a difficult place for the last five years. I've only been an agent for three, so I've never had a good market. Now we're dealing with COVID and all that stuff. But the reality was, I felt like too many agents weren't answering the question that the actual client had, the homeowner had, which was, what the heck's in it for me if I work with you?

Starting point is 00:06:42 And all of us agents had the same answer. I really care about my clients. I love my clients, right? I'll do anything for my clients. Well, guess what? That's not enough to actually tell your client that you're going to care about them. So what are you actually doing? For me, I thought, okay, I need in this difficult market a way for the properties I'm representing to stand out, give them a point of real value. So I built my foundation on using video, not so much on just communities or showcasing local businesses or letting people know what a great place or a great school district is. I built it on this very simple idea of if you hire me, I'm going to make your home look as

Starting point is 00:07:22 incredible as it possibly can. And then I'm going to expose it to tens of thousands of people more than the guy who's for sale down the block. And that idea of giving the highest amount of value to my clients is what forms the bedrock of my entire business is this idea that the best way for us as agents to fend off Zillow leads and the existential crisis of realtors in 2020 of like, what's the future going to bring? The best way to fend it off is to actually give more to our clients to deliver a higher level of service. And if we can do that, then they don't want the discount brokerage. They don't want the discount service. They don't want the AI. They want someone invested in their goals. And that's what we can actually do and show when people say, hey, do you care about your clients? Yeah, we'll show you how we do.

Starting point is 00:08:17 So you're talking about a person caring about a person here. That's it. That's it. I mean, it's fantastic because it really gets back to the heart and soul of, of this industry and really most industries for that matter. And that's that customers are people. And that means that if you want to work with a customer, you have to care about that person as a genuine human being, not as a transaction. I just, every time I talk to you and I see you on video, it's, it's interesting because you kind of wear your heart on your sleeve. Well, I'd say probably the best compliment I could get is that people will often say,

Starting point is 00:08:58 oh, you know, yeah, you're just not like other agents we've dealt with. And I say that not because I feel like, you know, realtors aren't, I feel like we sometimes carry this air about us that we need to know everything or we need to be professional or look a certain way or whatever. And then I've got a show, the Bob and Brad show with my good buddy, Bob Tompkins, who is someone who's just like me. He's different than me, but shares those same core values, cares deeply about his clients, but is also, hey, this is me, accept me who I am, and he'll find a tribe that really attracts to that. But if you look at it really from the very base level, so many people outside of our industry, their opinion, and I believe it's wrongly held,

Starting point is 00:09:40 but their opinion is that all agents get paid too much, they do too little, and they're all the same. And that's not true. And we all know that when we're inside the industry, but from the outside, that's what a lot of people think. And so when we show how we're different, and we show the actual value that we can bring people, it's a really clear thing. And those were beliefs that I held before. And so I very much, very strongly feel that is a huge honor to represent any of our clients at any point in time. It's a huge transaction. It means our actions can affect their financial future. Should we not be representing them at the absolute highest level possible? Of course we should. So it's a very easy decision for me because we can always end up doing the right thing. A person needs to pull their property off the market because their situations

Starting point is 00:10:27 changed. Who cares? That's a half million dollars to them, to you. You potentially lost a commission, big deal compared to what's really right on a human level. You do the right thing long enough, boy, the lucky deals, the quick deals, all that stuff starts to happen pretty quickly. So you, you talked about you, you've only been an agent for a few years, right? Yeah. So when you hit the ground running in this industry, did you immediately start the personal

Starting point is 00:10:54 branding? Was that right on the front end or what caused you to do that? Yeah, I started off lightly on Instagram, doing some posts and kind of more just kind of tongue and cheek stuff, fun stuff. I didn't want to get into just doing sold posts, and kind of more just kind of tongue in cheek stuff, fun stuff. Just, I didn't want to get into just doing sold posts, that kind of stuff for new listings. I wanted to have some fun stuff. So I'd post a picture of Sean Connery and post shoald, you know, just stupid stuff that people would like get a laugh out of and get some engagement from. But I got into video because I'm not a good marketer when it comes to my sphere of influence. And everyone who gets their real estate license, they're kind of taught, hey, go work your

Starting point is 00:11:31 sphere, talk to people, hey, you want to buy or sell a home, let people know that you're doing it. That's what Instagram and social and these different platforms are good for. They let people know that, hey, you're in the business, you're doing work, you're showing homes. That's awesome. But for me, I never wanted to be in a conversation with a friend that wasn't genuine, where, hey, what's going on in the future? And then they don't tell you that they're planning on moving because they don't want to get a sales pitch. I thought, hey, if I create really cool content, that'll get the home sold. But then the offshot of that is that other people saw the content and they engaged with it because

Starting point is 00:12:05 it was high quality and entertaining. And then they came up to me like, hey man, did you sell that house over in McEwen Park? Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. My sister was looking over there. She's thinking of selling her house. And it became such an easy conversation to start working within your sphere and then growing from there. So that was, as soon as I started releasing the videos, I realized the power of building your personal brand. That really started to change my business. And now the brand becomes strong enough where you actually develop fans, like clients that are actual fans that are excited when you're the guy that shows up at the listing presentation, because they've just consumed an hour and a half of all your listing videos.

Starting point is 00:12:50 They're excited to be working with your team. They're excited to see what are you going to produce and create for their property. We shoot videos for every listing. So those are the kind of things that we didn't even realize the offshoots are. And like a lot of good experienced agents will tell you, after doing this for a while, when things that you're doing are starting to work, you don't even realize all the seeds you've already planted that just aren't yet ready to harvest. And so the truth is, is that right when we think things are, oh, wow, we just went through a big push. Things must be slowing down. Like I've done like five deals in the last seven days, which is nuts.

Starting point is 00:13:22 That's life changing for my family. That happened once in a year. That's life-changing for my family. If that happened once in a year, that would be life-changing for my family. We're not a wealthy, wealthy family by any means, right? We're middle-class like everyone else and struggling to get through. But this really leveraging down on your personal brand and digging into the video marketing side of things

Starting point is 00:13:40 can mean things for your business that a year ago I couldn't have even imagined. So Brad, when we listen to what our listeners things can mean things for your business that a year ago I couldn't have even imagined. So Brad, when we listen to what our listeners are saying out there, and so many of them are real estate agents, real estate brokers, some are in the mortgage space, some are business leaders or entrepreneurs, or some are in business. I know we have some public servants out there as well, school teachers, law enforcement, whatever. People are like, how do I get into this video thing, the personal branding? Because it seems overwhelming and we still hear it even though we live on this little box right now during COVID. But what can they do? Let's say they have an iPhone. What can they do to start building

Starting point is 00:14:21 their personal brand? Well, there's basically a couple of styles of content you can create. You can create that high quality, all that high production. That's going to either cost you money or it's going to cost you a ton of time to invest and learn. I would say whatever you're doing with your content, though, at very least, you have an interesting life. Like no less interesting than mine or yours or anyone else's. You've got your own interests, your own friends, your own groups that you're a part of. You've got client stories to share. I would say no matter what you do, use your iPhone, use your phone. You've got a 4K camera on there and just start talking to it. Even if you're not

Starting point is 00:15:02 yet hitting upload, start putting it in your car and start talking to it. Even if you're not yet hitting upload, start putting it in your car and start talking to it and watch it back. And you'll realize oftentimes you might feel a little bit foolish or a little flat the first few times. The number one rule to getting started is to remember that when you're on camera, your energy is sucked out about 30%.

Starting point is 00:15:19 So you really need to be you times two. Be you times two. If you're comfortable with a stranger walking by seeing you talking to your camera, then you're not going deep enough. You really need to be big. You need to get excited. You need to be talking to your audience with enthusiasm, right? That'll set the tone. BU times two, practice on your phone. I had hours and hours of footage of me just driving around in the car, recording myself while driving and talking about a listing presentation, just practicing saying the words, putting the sentences and the thoughts together. So there's that. But the biggest thing is document, just document your life, what you're doing throughout your day to day, and then every week, learn some new skill in video editing software. Because you can start off with just your iPhone, you can improve your iPhone by buying a gimbal. But what you're really going to want to do is start to invest in these

Starting point is 00:16:20 skills that it requires to do that. And people think of, you know, like Adobe Premiere or editing software is this really hard to learn thing. The reality is it's like a scientific calculator. 99% of what you're doing is the plus, the minus, the multiplications and the division, and that's it. Right. And then after that, you can learn like what one of those other buttons on the top row do. And you're like, okay, cool. That's another tool in my toolbox. But you can get started really simply. Just don't stay at just documenting. Keep adding a skill every week. It's something that pays dividends down the road. You know, it's funny. I'm just listening to the things you're saying. I seem to remember people have heard these things before. And I, you know, it's just a lot of times we need to be reminded more than we need to be instructed.

Starting point is 00:17:08 But ultimately it boils down to people end up with excuses. I don't have time to do this. I don't know what to say, things like that. And you're right. You just got to do it. You got to go do it. It's something that somehow we rationalize our way out of because we're afraid of what is in that little device.

Starting point is 00:17:29 And once you've done it a couple hundred times, you're like, oh, that was a piece of cake. And I mean, frankly, my phone has sticky notes all over it half the time when I'm like, all right, I'm going to shoot a video. And then I just write down intro, then like three bullet points of the three words I'm going to talk about and an outro. And it ends up being two minutes and then you'll forget to smile. So you write smile and put that on another sticky note and excitement or whatever it might be. So, I mean, it just, it, it's kind of fun when, when you think about it that way, you get to be creative and you get to try new things without risk and that's where everybody thinks there's risk to this but there's not the risk is in the in not doing it the risk is the risk is that if your only lead source is zillow leads or your

Starting point is 00:18:19 only lead source is maybe you know executives in a certain industry. And then that industry leaves town. There's so much risk in not taking ownership of your brand that that's where the real risk lies. People thinking you're foolish or goofy or don't want to work with you because they don't like what you post on the internet. That's good. That's good in my mind. No one cares. First off, all your friends already like it. They don't care. And they appreciate the hustle. And then everyone who doesn't know you, they're judging you through the filter of them and their own insecurities thinking, I could never do that. Wow, that's incredible that this guy's out there putting that stuff out. They respect that. And people are looking for knowledge that each one of us have

Starting point is 00:19:07 that many of us are choosing not to share. So they're going to the agent that's just got the nerve to go out there and talk to them about it, right? So it's such a simple thing. You have to get out and do it. You have to double down on video. I think of it as sort of reverse engineering.

Starting point is 00:19:26 Where would you go? How else would I get people in my market to decide if they wanted to work with me before ever meeting me and before spending weekends away from my family, showing them homes just to find out that I'm not their cup of tea? No, I want them to figure that out long before they ever give me a call. Don't call me. That way, the calls that I do get are already pre-vetted. They already have a relationship with me.

Starting point is 00:19:52 We've talked about this parasocial relationship before. They feel invested in you. And you can get away from that whole awkward sales portion of introduction of who you are. And you can get onto like being all about them. Okay. That's cool. Great. You, you know, my stuff, you know, what I'm invested in, you know, who I am, you know, my family, let's talk about you. Let's talk about your needs. Right. And then that gets them excited. That's awesome. Okay. Brad. So a final question on that,

Starting point is 00:20:20 where should they put these videos? Everybody wants to know, okay, do I just put it on YouTube? It's not hard to put it in a couple of places. Tell us what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, for sure. So I think if you're creating like a piece of content that you want people to watch, let's say it's two, three, four minutes long, not just like a documented Instagram story, something like that, throw it up on Facebook, but remember who your Facebook audience is. People read the paragraphs of information you put below it or above the post. So post it up on Facebook and share it there. Put it also natively on Facebook, then put it natively on YouTube, and then think of tagging it the way a YouTube search engine would look for it. So think about creating content

Starting point is 00:21:06 around searches, what people are searching, moving to Calgary, what's pros versus cons of Calgary, cost of living in Calgary, those kinds of things, housing prices in Calgary. Then post that same video onto LinkedIn. But now on LinkedIn, odds are for me, if it's a listing video, I'm not going to sell that one house to someone on LinkedIn. But my audience on LinkedIn, odds are for me, if it's a listing video, I'm not going to sell that one house to someone on LinkedIn. But my audience on LinkedIn is more interested in the business perspective. They're interested in personal branding, in entrepreneurship. So I changed the same video. I just changed the dialogue, the conversation that I want to have with my LinkedIn people to the context of whatever platform I'm posting on. So post it everywhere.

Starting point is 00:21:47 And then if you're really, if you're up for it, if you're proud of what you've posted, throw a few dollars behind it. You know, if you took six hours to put this piece of content together, what's your time worth? Is it not worth 20 bucks to have a few thousand people see this thing, like make sure you get it out there. And an okay piece of content beats the perfect content that never gets posted all day long. Awesome. I love that. I love that.

Starting point is 00:22:16 Some great advice there. Thank you, Brad. So Brad, I have a question I want to ask you that we ask every one of our people that are on our show, all the interviews we've done, which is over a hundred now. So this is a pretty heavy man. All right. So Brad McCallum, how do you start with a win? Tell you what, I start with a win always first and foremost with my family. I keep my day centered around getting up, spending some time with my seven-year-old daughter, my 10-year-old son, seeing my wife.

Starting point is 00:22:54 And then from there, setting up the rest of my day, looking at just kind of reviewing what I'd already set up earlier in the week for the day. And then starting to always keep a little part of every day for some long-term planning. Always keep a little portion of it. So I know, you know, what does Brad need to achieve this week, this hour, this day, but then what's the goal for this season or this, or by 2021? And, you know, big goals can be met if you're spending a little bit of time each day, just kind of reorienting that focus or that direction towards it. That's awesome. Some good, good takeaways there. Thanks, Brad. Brad McCallum, the McCallum Group at RE-MAX First in Calgary, a great friend of mine and of RE-MAX. Thank you so much for all you do, Brad. And thanks for being on Start With A Win. Thank you, brother.

Starting point is 00:23:46 I appreciate it. Thanks so much for listening to Start With A Win. If you'd like to ask Adam a question or be on our next episode, give us a call at 888-581-4430. Don't forget to go on to iTunes and subscribe. Five stars, please. And leave a review. It helps us get the word out about the show and reach more people. For more great content,

Starting point is 00:24:06 head over to startwithawin.com and follow Adam on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. And remember, start with a win.

Start With A Win - Finding a Point of Differentiation with Brad McCallum of RE/MAX First in Calgary, Alberta

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