Start With A Win - Using Instagram to Grow Your Business with Ed Stulak

Episode Date: November 20, 2019

On this episode of the Start with a Win podcast, Adam talks with The Millennial Realtor, Ed Stulak. Ed is a RE/MAX agent based in New Brunswick, New Jersey, who is an Instagram and branding expert, and he shares some of his main insights with listeners during this show.While working in the marketing industry, Ed had the opportunity to work with and learn from some of the best and brightest on Instagram. Along with his own personal experience using the platform and seeing the potential for building community and providing value to followers, Ed was able to translate what he had learned into the real estate space about 3 years ago. Ed believes strongly that authenticity is the key to success on Instagram from a personal and professional branding perspective, so he doesn’t abide by any set of guidelines or rules about what he should be posting, but he rather posts what is most true to himself in the most engaging way.Ed has been using Instagram since 2012 and he has worked hard to amass over 44,000 followers who are interested in his content and engage with his posts. Perhaps one of the big ways that he has built such a community is by taking a step back and considering the most engaging way to present each post. Instead of just posting a picture of a house he is showing, he aims to elicit an emotion by including something like him holding a puppy in front of the house that will make people stop scrolling. He has found that just by providing authentic and valuable content to his community, he is cultivating and converting leads without ever directly asking people for their business. Ed is constantly responding to comments on his posts, reaching out to new followers, and informing people of new deliverables he can send them if they are interested. These deliverables are items of value to the consumer and they are a way that Ed collects email addresses for his CRM. He is a big advocate of not putting all of your eggs in one basket, but having a presence on all social media platforms as well as old school media and methods. Ed approaches each new day with the mantra “Today is a great day to be great”, and it is clear that he wants to help others do the same.Connect with Ed:https://www.instagram.com/edstulak/https://www.facebook.com/Edstulak1181https://www.facebook.com/edstulak.realestate/?ref=br_rs

At top of the 12th floor of the Remax World Headquarters, you're listening to Start With a Win with CEO Adam Kantos. And top of the 12th floor of Remax World Headquarters here in snowy Denver, Colorado, Adam Kantos, CEO of Remax with Start With a Win. Got producer Mark in-house here. How you doing, buddy? I am fantastic. Fantastic.

You have like a parka on or something today. Yeah, you know, it's like a jacket with a hood. So it's multifunctional. You can wear it inside and outside. Whoa, check that out. It's very stylish as well. We've got some fun stuff to talk about. Yeah, I'm excited because I think that whenever we talk about social media, it's one of the things that people love to talk about. Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited. Cause I think that whenever we talk

about social media, it's one of the things that people love to hear about because there's just so much to know and learn about it. So we are going to break this down to some details and how a good friend of ours is using this to rock his business. So let me welcome to the studio here. It's Stu Leck. How you doing buddy? I am phenomenal. Thank you so much. Right on. You flew in in our blizzard yesterday. I flew in right through the blizzard. One flight got canceled. My rental car got canceled. I said, you know what? I ain't stopping. I got to get on the podcast. I love it. I love it. It's great to have you here. So Ed, I mean, you've got like over 44,000 Instagram followers.

Yes, sir. It took me some time. It took you, yeah, it took you some time. And you've been in real estate for what, three years? Yes, sir. You claim all your sales have come from Instagram? Majority of them have. Really? Yeah. All right. Well, hey, first of all, let's jump into who's Ed. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Cool. So my name is Ed Stulak, the millennial realtor. I gave myself that little cool tagline. Right on. I've been in real estate for about three years, but haven't been, didn't start off my life thinking, let me get into real estate. My mom was a cleaning lady. She always cleaned homes. My dad is a carpenter. He always built homes. I said, I don't want to do either or maybe I'll sell them. But no, I got into real estate for

different reasons. You know, I got into it for, for the money to get dressed up. I love dressing up, but then I came across this little issue, right? Social media. So many realtors are neglecting social media. They're not taking advantage of it the right way. And me, before getting into real estate, I was in social media for almost eight years. And just every single day learning the algorithms, learning what's working, what's what and what's not. I've worked with some celebrities, social media influencers. I learned a lot from these, quote unquote, social media influencers. And they've given me all their golden nuggets.

And I saw the opportunity to try to apply it to real estate. And it worked. And I said, all right, now other people have to learn this. So let me teach them. Now I'm in real estate for a different reason. Let's unpack your history a little bit more here. So you were in marketing before. OK, so tell us, what did you do?

And how did you come to figure out that Instagram was kind of the next big thing? Because it's still actually, especially in real estate, in so many different people's minds, it's still fresh. Yes. It's still new. So how did you get into Instagram? It was 2012. And I'm a big hockey guy.

I've played hockey all my life. And I was sitting with my friends in his bedroom. And I was looking at his hats. We were about to go play some pond hockey outside. And I saw this one hat of his, it was a Winnipeg Jets, I think. And I took a picture of it. I put it on Instagram and I got two likes on it. And that was the first post I ever made on Instagram. This was 2012. And I took a picture, two likes. And I said, what if those two likes bought that hat? This was just And I said, what if those two likes bought that hat? This was just me logically thinking, what if those two likes just bought that hat? That's free marketing. And then I said, okay, how can I get more followers to promote something and sell

that something to them? I mean, it's free marketing. There's no money into it. So then I said, how can I grow my following? So I started learning how to grow the following on Instagram. And Instagram is just the place to be. So I've been on it for quite some time now. But now it's really starting to flow, I guess, in the real estate world and in many worlds. But we kind of take advantage of it. That's the platform at the end of the day. That's the hub. Instagram is said to be the millennial place to be on social media, right?

So you started there in 2012. So seven years ago? Seven years ago. So tell us what all did you do to become, you know, this Instagram personality? You've got 44,000 followers on Instagram, which is, I mean, can you imagine walking into a room of 44,000 people? That's like sitting in a stadium and standing in the middle of the 50 yard line and going, Hey, at Ed Stulak right here. And everybody goes, literally I was at a football game, the jets. I think I don't go to football games,

but my buddy that took me, he said, this is a stadium of about like 50,000 people seats here. That's about the following you have. And I said, wow, I didn't think about it that way, but yeah, it took some time to build that. And honestly, I got into it. Like I said, 2012, I started learning how to build, how to build. But I realized that Instagram is not just for entertainment. It's a great platform to network with people. So I started networking with people across the world. I networked with some guy from Australia. And because of that connection led me to becoming his business partner and led me to the next opportunity, the next one and the next one.

I started working with Jonas Brothers. Kevin Jonas was my partner for a little bit. Just another social media influencers where I just learned what they do to really enhance their presence. All right. Let's start digging into this a little bit. So you've built communities on Instagram. I mean, is that where you start is thinking, how do I build a community? I mean, somebody's, let's say I'm signing up for Instagram today. Where do you start? Somebody who signs up today, what do you recommend that they do? Start building followers, start getting a community. Like you said, that's, that's the key word right there. When you hear content is King, right? You've heard that before, right? I say content is King, but community is

emperor. Your community is emperor. You need to make sure you have a strong community because no matter what kind of content you post, as long as the community loves you and is a strong advocate of you, they will always engage. And at the end of the day, engagement is key. You need engagement for your following, for your content that you post. And without that community, you're just posting content. It might be good content, but who's going to like it in that community? So let's talk about content here then. So you see people and they might say, okay, I had some eggs for breakfast and this is my dog and that's my car. It's snowing outside. I mean, do you need to have some sort of a theme to what you're doing? Yes, definitely. I mean, what do you look for when people join a community on Instagram?

I mean, what should we start with? What strategy? Authenticity. Oh, I like that. You need to be authentic, just like you, yourself. You are a CEO, which I admire so much about you. You are a CEO, which so many people look at like, oh, I can't talk to him.

He's up there. But you are so authentic online. And that's what so many people say about you. And I talk to my broker. He says great things about you. Everyone that I speak with, and I told them, I'm going to speak with Adam Contos. It's amazing.

But that's what authenticity is about, being yourself, being reachable, being just a good person. And people love that. People resonate with that. And they want to be a part of that journey with you. So if you're not authentic, if you're all of a sudden putting like a limit to your, I don't know, to your friendship or whatever it might be, you know, that might be a little, a little odd for people to perceive, but that's what authenticity is about is showing your daily

life, showing your business, showing your family, going scuba diving to Mexico and showing that. And even your clients, I have clients that follow me on Instagram and they see all my stuff. They see me traveling right now. They're not saying, why can't you show me houses this weekend? They're saying, Hey, you know, enjoy. I see what you're doing. It looks like a fun time, by the way, you know, what, when are we selling my house? No problem. Like let's get into it. I'll figure that out, but they're cool with it because I'm authentic. So again, authenticity, I've been doing some research on, you know, like business leaders and digital transparency. Yeah, digital transparency.

I'm going to use that word a lot, digital transparency. Because I think more now than ever, people want digital transparency in a business, in a personality, just any human being. You look at Ed Stulak. You know what I'm going to do when I meet you? I'm going to go on social media. I'm going to go, OK, what is this guy about? All right, what do we have in common?

What do we not have in common? What's his family life like? What's his friendship? You learn all about me. I was speaking at an event the other day and they were asking me, you know, what kind of content do you post? And I said, all right, for the realtors listening, right? If you're going to post a picture of a house that you're selling, it's a three bedroom, two bath on a cul-de-sac, you know, no one cares. That's the truth. No one cares. Right. If you post a picture of the same thing, same caption, same description, holding a dog, different responses.

Oh my God, the dog is so cute. All of a sudden attention grabbing, right? It's about attention grabbing. What can you do that is going to grab your attention, your community's attention for them to really dive into that piece of content, for them to get sucked in and to learn about your brand a little more.

So we're trying to activate a emotion here. Yeah. Because a dog activates the emotion of love. We see a dog. We see a human being smiling, whatever it might be. We get a dopamine hit because it makes us feel good where we relate to a good memory, a good situation in our lives. That's what we're looking for, not a house that is just an object sitting there.

Right. As much as we're salesmen, as realtors, I like to not be salesy. I'd rather have business chase me than the opposite. So what can I do that makes consumers look at me and say, wow, I want to be a part of Ed's journey, or I want to help Ed in some way, or I want to work with Ed in some way without me actually saying, Hey, want to work with me? Want to work with me? I don't want to grab, I don't want to shove my services down their throat. I'd rather have them approach me. And that's how the Instagram leads have been coming. They just come to me and say, Ed, I see everything you're doing. I love it. Can you, you know, list my

house? Absolutely. Let's talk. So how do you sprinkle, I mean, you, you know, how do you sprinkle in your brand in, in what you do in there? Obviously, nobody knows you're a real estate agent until you say, hey, I'm selling a house or listing a house, something like that. How do you put that in there without being salesy, without turning people off, like what you're talking about? How do you fit that in? Well, that's a good question. I'm going to go to a house. Let's say I'm showing a property. I'm just going to maybe highlight one of the cool things about that property. I went into a house once. I'm not even lying. There was a rock in the middle of the room. The rock, the size of this table, just sticking out of the ground, like tiles built

around it, like the wall built around it, just a big rock in the middle of the room. I'm like, that is going on Instagram right now. And I posted it on Instagram. I said, Hey guys, would you buy this type of house? And people laughed. People said the comments that I got were just, you know, engaging. Wow. That's so funny. Well, I've never seen that before. I would totally not buy that house. What does that rock do? Like people, it sparks some type of engagement. So that is what makes people say, Oh, is he in real estate? If he's showing this property right now and it said, I'll probably throw in the REMAX logo in there to give people a little bit of a hint, like, yeah, this is a REMAX property, whatever it might be. But I'm

not in any shape or form saying, hey, looking to buy or sell, hey, want to work with me? No, I'm just saying, hey, look, this is funny that I came across one of my showings today. So you're just kind of activating that reticular activator in the brain of, okay, they see Ed, they see the balloon, whatever it is. You're like, oh, Ed, Remax, Realtor. If I have something, and how do you get people to make that transition to, all right, I'm interested in buying or selling. I mean, do you have to kind of stimulate a thought or throw a question out there? Do you ever put out there, are you going to list a list your house? Are you interested in buying, selling, whatever? I can, I don't. Okay. I'd rather, I'd rather just continue

doing content. Like I said before that people see my audiences and then eventually they'll, they'll spark a conversation with me. If I get people that reach out to me sometimes to say, Oh, Ed, you know, I have my property listed, but I know you're a realtor. What do you think of this? Should I stage my house? People are asking me that are already selling their house that are following me, but listing with someone else. It's what it is. But people just, I want to make people engage. You have to create engageable content. That's what I talk about. What is going to create more engagement? So I post a picture like that, for example, on Instagram, someone reaches out, whether it's a funny one or a comment

or whatever it might be. Sure, I'll try to turn it or tailor it into a nice real estate conversation. Like, oh, where are you from? How long have you been living where you have been living? And then we kind of get into it. And then they'll tell me, oh, I'm looking to sell or looking to buy in three years from now. Boom, no problem. Give me your email, CRM. I love it. I love it. So let's talk about that. Cool. Email, CRM. So there's a phrase, don't build your house on rented land, which a lot of social media experts say, like you can engage with people on Instagram, on Facebook, on Twitter, YouTube, whatever it might be. But if your account for some strange reason gets shut off tomorrow, you're going to

lose 44,000 people. That's right. That you do business with. How do you collect those relationships, those names, that contact information, and keep that so you can nurture it in the future in the event that some catastrophic incident happens at Instagram headquarters and they go, we're done for the day. And you lose all your customers. I mean, how do you build that? I mean, is there a way to move people into your own contact list? What do you do to do that? Take us through that. Working on creating a CRM, I'm working on and preparing myself for that day. What if Instagram just unplugs from the wall and then what? That's what so many social media influencers go wrong with. They rely on social media and they rely on their brand growing

and growing and expanding because of the one social media platform. So number one, my best advice I can say is spread yourself out across all platforms, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, whatever you're on, be everywhere. Just like you as a consumer, if you go and type in Starbucks on Twitter, you expect them to pop up because it's such a reputable entity, such a reputable company. Same thing if you go on Facebook, on Twitter, wherever you go, you expect Starbucks. The same thing with you. You should probably pop up on every single platform.

That's number one. But number two, what if all of them die? What if just social media, just internet goes, you know, the walking dead begins, right? All of a sudden, there's just no internet, no nothing. I have to say, you have to start building your brand online as much as you start building it offline. So following, you know, I mean, farming,

you know, just sending off mailers and whatever it might be, that's the old school mentality, but it still works today. And I still do it. As a millennial, I'll go door knocking. I'll do that stuff. But my point is on social media, I talk to my followers.

I want to give them something. You have to create, again, going back to the content, you have to create valuable content for them to want to engage and want more of it from you. So what can you do that your consumers want today, that they're going to want tomorrow, that they're going to want the next day? Once you figure those questions and those answers out, you have to give it to them upon receiving their email, upon receiving their information. So I go on Instagram story,

I'll pull out my story and I'll create some sort of story. I don't know what it might be saying. Hey guys, if you want the latest tips on Instagram, you know, the latest algorithm, give me your email right now and I'll send it to you. And all of a sudden I'll get like 56 emails. Boom, I start building slowly but surely. But if you're a realtor, if you're a realtor and your main focus

is to get more renters, more sellers, more buyers, you have to give them something that they want. So not exactly what you want to give, but what they want to receive. So if a buyer wants to receive the three home buying tricks that any home buyer needs to know right now, put that story, make an Instagram story. Hey buyers, if you're looking to buy this year in 2020, you're looking to buy in 2020, give me your email right now and I'm going to send you my PDF that I created on the three most important advices that I can give you for when buying your house. Give me your email right now, and I'm going to send you my PDF that I created on the three most important advices that I can give you for when buying your house. Give me your email.

And just slowly start building. OK. So key takeaways here. One, create an item of value. So a PDF that might be a checklist, a list of three things, a list of five things. We all think in odd numbers, three, five, or seven things. Dress it up a little bit. Maybe send it off.

Have a designer. Make it look decent, but don't over-brand it. It shouldn't be a sales piece. It should be a value. Yes, yes, valuable. So do that, and then just reach out to your network and say, hey, just put together this amazing new checklist of X, Y, and Z for people who are thinking about selling and buying their house.

Or maybe you're not thinking about selling and by your house, but you might want to consider these things in the event that you eventually do. Exactly. You got the right sales hook, you got their attention, and then you're going, I will give you this piece of value in exchange for your email address. That's right. So they're not giving you a fake email address because they won't get it then. Right. And then you just kind of nurture that. Yeah, and just start nurturing it that way. Absolutely. Gotcha.

And one thing that I always do, and this is like my biggest thing that works the most, is on Instagram now, you can leave voice messages in the DM, in the direct messages, right? So instead of actually texting someone saying, hey, my name is John. Pleasure to connect. I'm a realtor in your town. First of all, someone's going to look at that. They're going to think, oh, I have to spend and invest like two minutes now of my time to read that whole thing that he just sent me. Or you could send a voice message, which they're going to receive, right? They're going to receive it and say,

huh, I can't read it. I have to listen to it. And they're going to have to listen to it. But all of a sudden, it's a more personable kind of message that's left for that person. Now, all of a sudden you're pulling out your phone. This is what I do with new followers, by the way, if I get a new follower, right? Let's say this, this person, Kate guides you home. I'm not sure where she's from, but I'll go ahead. I'll start leaving her a message. So once this loads, I would go ahead and I'll say, Hey Kate, pleasure to meet you. My name is Ed. Anything I can help you out with your social media or personal branding needs, I'm always here. Again, reach out to me.

By the way, I see you're located in Ontario, Canada. How's the market over there? I love it. Done. Just spark a conversation. She's going to respond. Oh, the market's great. And boom, there you go.

Same thing with your consumers or your followers. And the human voice activates emotion way better than just a text. Yeah, you could do a video if you choose to do so. But some people are uncomfortable in front of video. So no worries. You've got audio. That's another option.

So you can send a video response as well? Yeah. Oh, if you want to, go for it. Yeah, I like that. So cool. All right. So we've dug into quite a few cool things that people can put into their business here. You do a lot of

coaching on how to improve your social media presence. Give me top two tips that you have for real estate agents on how to improve your social media presence. Awesome. Well, number one, you have to, again, it might be very cliche, very corny, provide valuable content. You have to understand who your desired audience is, and then you have to provide and tailor the type of content to their fit. So if they want tips and tricks, they want funny, they want entertainment, you give it to them. You have to understand what your following wants. So ask them, those are your best sources of feedback for your brand. You have to ask them, hey, do you like what I'm posting? Or hey, what would you like to expect from the next post that

I post? And they're going to tell you. And once you finally start to gather the feedback and the intel, you go ahead and you create it. So that's number one, create valuable content. Awesome. And another one, give us one more. So one more, engagement, right? So, so many people do not engage. And for example, when you get a comment on one of your pictures or one of your videos you just created, someone might leave you a thumbs up emoji or someone might actually leave you an in-depth comment, right? Wow, that's so cool. I'm actually his neighbor or that's a beautiful beach. I have no idea what they're going to say, but always engage. Whether it's a thumbs up emoji or it's

an actual in-depth comment, you engage. So if it's a thumbs up emoji, you leave one back. Or if you say, hey, thanks so much for liking this picture. What do you like about it the most? Spark and engagement. Number one, algorithms of social media platforms love that and they gobble it up. So every time they see, oh, John just responded to Jane. Now Jane responded to John. Now John just responded to, and it goes back and forth. All of a sudden that comment just built up like another additional seven comments. Algorithms love that. They'll say,

okay, let's give that a piece of piece of content, some more exposure. So more comments, more exposure, more exposure, more potential leads. I love it.

I love it. Okay. So wrapping this whole thing up, a question we ask everybody who's on the show, how do you start with a win? Start with the win. It's really the mindset. And I've learned over the past couple of years, everyone always says it's the mindset. It's the mindset. I always said, yeah, yeah, sure. But now it really is. As I grow older, it's a mindset. I wake up in the morning,

I always say today is a great day to be great. That is my saying. I love that. It's a great day to be great. That is my saying. I love that. Today is a great day to be great. What can I do to make today great? And then I just go off of that because that's the mindset. That's the mindset of foundational mindset of the day. I wake up this morning, for example, I say, what can I do today that is going to be great? So today's a great day to be great. And that's the mindset that makes me start with a win. Awesome. Ed Stulak from Remax Platinum in North Brunswick, New Jersey, branding and Instagram coach and real estate professional extraordinaire. Ed,

where can we find you on social media? Ed Stulak, E-D-S-T-U-L-A-K, all over the platform. So follow me on there. Awesome. Thanks so much for being with us today, Ed. I know our audience got a lot out of this and we appreciate how you start with a win. Love it. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to Start With A Win. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Don't forget to go onto iTunes and subscribe, write a review, or rate the show. It helps us get the word out and reach more people. You can follow Adam on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. And remember, start with a win.