Ep #99: How to Build a Powerful Personal Brand With a Camera-First Strategy

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Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey listeners, Jeff Zimfer, welcome to another episode of mortgage marketing radio. So at the time I'm recording this, this is immediately after that Thanksgiving holiday and you're listening to this, we are in the month of December, most likely, unless there's an early release on this, which they're very well could be either way. Hope your Thanksgiving was a good one. Hope you spent time with family and friends. I was off in Iowa attending at Iowa State University game, go cyclones watching my nephew Brock Purdy, true freshmen starting quarterback for Iowa State cyclones, tear it up and just continue to break records for that team. So if your college football fan, do me a favor, go check out Iowa State, big 12 and check out some of the talent that's happening over there. Now in regards to talent, in regards to you and the new year and new planning, what is your plan for 2019? Do you want to get more real to referral partners? Do you want to drive sales through social media? Do you want to survive and thrive the digital real estate shift? If that's a yes for you and I know it is or you wouldn't be listening, what's your plan? How are you going to get the training? How are you going to learn what you need to do to build your personal brand online, to be able to create videos, to be able to engage with relevant social media in the right context? What about generating your own consumer direct leads, running Facebook ads and things like that? Look, you aren't trained probably in how to do this. You're a mortgage loan originator and this is something new for all of us and I get it. I'm learning it every single day and trying to bring the best of what I know to you through these podcasts, but this podcast is only one part of it. The next step, if you'd like to go further, if you'd like to thrive in 2019, if you'd like to be a modern originator and stay relevant, then go check out the mortgage marketing pro membership. It's the place where we unpack and do a deep dive on the strategies, tools and tactics that you need to pivot and succeed in the new economy, if you will. You may have heard it said that it's survival of the fittest, but the real saying is it's not the fittest that survive, it's the ones that are most adaptable to change, unless face the acceleration, the pace at which technology is driving change in our industry is moving at a rapid pace and it's getting even faster. We need to move quickly. And to have time, you've got to pivot and learn these strategies, it probably isn't as long as you think. So I'd like to invite you to come check out more and become a member, join the other mortgage professionals that are learning how to do social media, video marketing, how to engage on Instagram and Facebook and direct, you know, rather on consumer direct leads, how to actually attract real estate agents as true partners, largely by teaching agent classes. So check it out. Mortgage Marketing.pro. I'll put links in the show notes so you can learn more over there. All right, let's get into this week's show with my very special guest, Chelsea Pights. And Chelsea, I saw speak at a recent conference by commissions Inc. and was so impressed with what she presented when it comes to social media and strategy and just the psychology behind why social media is such a, you know, integral part of most of our lives and such a big part of how we communicate and engage today. I wanted to have her on to talk about this. Chelsea is going to talk about how to build a powerful personal brand with a camera first strategy. What does that mean? Well, Chelsea's done her research. She's really presented some facts and some psychological research as to why, right, this whole, you know, air quotes camera first social media strategy is growing so much and how it's moving more and more to the camera for Facebook say that they're going to be all video by 2020, right, with the growth of Instagram and Snapchat and all these visually driven social media platforms. It's because of the psychological impacts that has on it, you know, in regards to connecting with other people and particularly with our faces. So if you haven't got yet on video, you're going to understand listening to Chelsea as to why. If you're not using images in your social media on Instagram and other places, Facebook and so forth, you're going to understand why, right? Chelsea does an amazing job of unpacking the psychology behind why a camera first world is where we are living and that we, if we want to stay relevant, need to adapt and pivot. But who is Chelsea? She's a rock star. She's the National Director of Social Sales at Fidelity, National Financial. She's also contributing author to Inman and she has been in the real estate and title industry for, gosh, I think 18 years now. And she's known for her show on Snapchat called Chelsea Chat, right, Snapchat show marketing snappily ever after. She's the co-founder of Snappack Live, a Facebook group of nearly a thousand like-minded real estate professionals using social media. She's the founder, founding member of a real estate mastermind group that includes mortgage tech and other folks. She, as I said, Inman, she's a contributing speaker at Inman Connect. She's an expert trainer for breakthrough brokers. She's a keynote speaker, social media educator, author as well, author of the book, talking in pictures, which you can find on Amazon. And she talks about a camera first branding with social media strategies. She works with teams of individuals and companies, specifically within the real estate industry. So she knows real estate very, very well. And that's why I wanted to have her on because you can share this episode with your real estate agents, add value to them. You can gift her book, talking in pictures from Amazon to real estate agents and just, you know, learn, listen, learn and apply. That's what I want you to do from today's show. And then also a quick shout out to Chelsea. She's one of the selected speakers at the Gary Vaynerchuk annual event called agent 2021. If you haven't heard of this, this is happening in January of 2019, January 17th of 2019. It's in Miami at the Hard Rock Stadium. And Chelsea is one of the featured speakers. I'm talking about social sales and everything that's camera first. And that's an incredible honor to be one of the selected speakers for the Gary Vaynerchuk event out there. And I'm going to put links to all this in the show notes. If you want to find out more about it, you can also go to agent2021.com. You can look up Chelsea online on the socials on Facebook. That's where you'll find her on Instagram. And I'll put all the links in the show notes as well. So without further ado, let's get into this week's show with my very special guest, Chelsea. Hi. Hey, Chelsea. Welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here today. Thank you so much. I'm honored to have you here because I saw you speaking at the recent commission's ink conference in Vegas. And it's not often I think that you see somebody in your role and you know, I'll allow you to tell people who you are, what you do real briefly here. But it's not often you see somebody in your role, you know, really having such a high level education and a knowledge of social media and things like that. So with that kind of build up for those listening who aren't familiar who you are, what do you do? Tell us your quick bio. I would file. I've been in the real estate industry for 18 years. I started as a real estate agent. I worked in new homes. I worked in residential resale. I went through the great times. I went through the bad times. And when the crash happened, I live in Arizona and hit us really hard. And so I personally lost all of my residences, my investments, my personal home I lived in. So it was a really interesting time to be in real estate. So I've seen the ups, the downs, and now the regular. So then I wanted to stay in the industry because I loved it so much. And now I'm working on the title insurance side with an incredible company I've been with for 10 years. But I'll be national financial. And I get to really educate my people who are real estate agents and lenders and title sales executives. And I get to share my passion every day about social media and communication. And so it's like a dream job. Yeah. And your content is really, really good. I mean, there's a lot of wannabees out there, if you will. A lot of people just regurgitate in content, but that's why what stood out to me when I saw your presentation was like, I have to have you on the podcast and just share your message. Yeah. Yeah, you bet. No, great job. So I'm looking at, I'm going to reference my show notes a few times here. So I make sure I'm on track because what you talked about is something that people don't always talk about. Or the only other person I've heard talk about this is Simon Sinek. When he talks about the whole dopamine thing, right, when you get the like and the thumbs up and all that. You talk about what you call the science of screen to screen. And you actually really like did a lot of research on this, right, as to why this is so crazy. Yeah. I did. I became obsessed. Would be the right word because again, as somebody who is a Gen Xer, I am, you know, almost a 40 year old mom. I am not the demographic, typically, that would be not only one on Snapchat, but building business on Snapchat, like people were like, you're doing what, where, and so I didn't grow up with it. So still to this day, I find it very odd and strange what happened. But my life was absolutely changed by using that particular platform at the time before we had Instagram stories and Facebook live and all of that was Snapchat. And I found myself connected with these people on a deep level. And I thought it was very strange and I was like, these people are my friends. They don't feel like they're my friends. They are my friends, but we had never met. And so I became obsessed with the why. What was it that had shifted in, like, with technology and communication styles that made me feel that way? And so I went on this, you know, you're a long journey of really deep into psychology and neuroscience. My background is actually in psychology. I was actually going to become a psychologist and I didn't end up doing that obviously. But so I was really interested in the human brain and how we are leveraging cameras and social media to create communities and to communicate and how it was changing our brains. And then our expectations and I later that in with technology and how now our behavior training with Facebook and Facebook ads and Uber and Netflix and Amazon, how all those things come together and how we now develop trust through technology. And so that's really what the journey was and the book that I wrote was really about that and how it changed. So I truly believe it. I mean, you can hear it in my voice. I believe that it absolutely has changed us as human beings and our behavior and it will continue to do so. All right. So to not not get into a debate here, but has it changed us for the better or is like like anything. There's always two sides. Yeah. Of course. I mean, anybody can argue both sides, right? And this is the way that I look at it because a lot of people ask me again, as a parent, how I feel about my child being involved with technology at high level whether watching the iPad or will I let you have social media, those types of things. And I have to think about, you know, back in the early 80s, right, when we were kind of like growing up and stuff and it was like, oh, video games, that's going to ruin everybody. And you know, our parents and our grandparents, they're like, oh, my gosh, have you seen the rolling stones? Have you seen the beetles? They're going to ruin people, right? So there's always something that's going to ruin someone. So I think it's how you leverage it and I say jokingly for good, not evil. And I personally, it's enhanced my life, you know, from a very personal level, my parents who are in their 70s get to see me and their grandson every single day, and it's killer for them, right? Like they're with us on the journey. And so for me, I think it can be used either way. I like to choose to use it for good, not evil. With great power comes great responsibility, right? Exactly. All right. So love that. Thank you. Let's talk about a couple of things I know for my audience, the listeners, right? It's like, you know, the average realtor, a loan officer, 53, whatever the age is. And you were honest about this. I think when I talked to you last time, what I wrote down for notes was two things. Number one, remember to pick up your phone. I want to stop here for a minute because that's hard for me to remember, like you talked about demographics. So I got like 12, 13 years on you. So for me, like to go, hey, man, you know, like I even had to do it this morning. I went out with my wife or having a coffee at this awesome coffee shop where they do the hearts and all that. So I'm like, oh, wait, well, well, timeout. This is an Instagram moment. How do you get there? How do you get comfortable doing that? Yeah, it is really hard. I mean, it's the hardest thing about getting involved is that, you know, you might hear a great podcast or read a book or go to a conference and you're like, authenticity, you've got to beat you, right? And then you're like, well, first of all, being you on camera is a real hard and less redundant for a long time. So don't buy into that. That is where you want to get, but you're not getting there until you are forcing yourself to do the thing, just like working out. It's just like going to the gym and you're not going to lose the 20 pounds unless you're there for a year and you're eating right and it's a habit that you're building. And so people are saying, well, I still have time for social media or I'm, I'm Billy Debelly. I'm face to face. Great social media is going to help you like explode your sales and brand because you can do that more often with more people in one day. You just have to get this idea that it's totally different, like right now when we look at voice and all that, we can't comprehend it because it's not here yet. This is now just coming into our world and still it's a little weird because we're not used to it. So it's about prospecting and traditional sales. It's just a different format and we have to build the same time into our day that we do for for emails and thank you notes and all of the things we have to do for business. You have to build it and it's just another piece of the business. So honestly, I used to have to set reminders on my phone to like go off so that I would pick up my phone and do something with it. And then once I got into the habit, it became second nature. And then the other thing people always ask me is, well, my life is boring or I hate seeing what people are posting for lunch. I hate seeing their lattes with the hearts in it. I don't care about that. Listen, you don't have to believe something for it to be true, right? We've heard that in a million times and nobody cares what you like. And there is a magic in the mundane because if you think about it, when you're at the end of the day with your loved ones, your family, you're not all bells and whistles Disneyland every day. You're talking about, oh yeah, I'd take McCarran and get four tires. That was awful and that it up. That's where the weird boy you're part of us as human beings is at and you don't have to be exciting every time you don't have to be teaching or dropping a tip every time you're doing an Instagram story. You can just be you and if you don't like seeing the latte with the heart and tap on by the next one because there will be someone who says, oh my gosh, I love that place. I go there all the time. So and so is a great barista. I love it when he does the leaf or the Christmas tree for holidays in my coffee. There will be someone and you know what, you can tap on the next one. So we have to get out of that mindset of, oh, I don't like that. I don't want to see what somebody's eating for lunch. Great tap, tap cross to the next one and you don't have to do that. So it's just really a mindset. So you've heard the phrase, we're both fans of GaryVee and stuff. You know, he talks about document and what just popped in my head listening to your, to your great response there is you're really kind of documenting those segments of your life, right? Right. That you may think are boring and they and they may be boring, but you're giving, what you're doing is inviting somebody else into your life. You give you an example of what I thought of and this is, you just gave me this idea. I'm going to try it. But like, so one thing that drives me crazy in full disclosure, I'm going to have the haters come after me is my, my dogs. I didn't pick the dogs. There are these two little, you know, shits, you and a terrier mix. One's getting old. One's got like emotional issues and today, today I just found out he probably has anxiety or whatever. He needs a shrinker. Yeah. And I was just like, all the thought I got was like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to Instagram like this dog, but it's damn dog, the prescription, you know? So that's an example of just like sharing your life, right? Exactly. Exactly. And people have dogs with anxiety disorder. I am one of them. I get it. And I might say, oh, we have the same thing or, or hey, have you tried the, I think there's like a dog jacket that you can put on that makes them like less straight jacket or something. I mean, you never, I, and the way I learned this was the hard way because I did all business tips all the time for years. And I thought that is what value is, right? My perception of what was valuable to my audience was that it had to fit in this box. But what I found was is that value comes in all shapes and sizes. Value is when you make someone smile, value is when you make them remember something that was meaningful to them. You connect with them on your emotional level. You connect with them on their passion for food and food pictures or dogs and their issues that they have. There's all sorts of value and not every single thing has to be like, wow, that was a 10 out of a 10. And the things that you think that you spend time on that you were like, I've just taught you how to make thousands of more dollars by teaching you this Facebook ad tip. But then the next one was, you know, the nail color, the people are asking me on my hands. I'm like, people, not one person commented on the content I spent so much time creating, the stuff that I just, you know, was an afterthought, people are in view, right? So you never know what's going to hit, why you have to do it all. That's why you have to just keep creating it and just putting it out there. And if you force yourself to do that in like 90 days, you're going to be a lot more comfortable. You're not going to be less stiff. You're going to feel more comfortable. Your face is going to look different because you're relaxed. People always say, oh, my God, you're a natural on video. The only reason it seems like I'm a natural on video is because I'm relaxed now. And there's something that happens with your face when you're relaxed that people are like, oh, this is like a real human being. You can't get there until you do it every day for a long time. So you don't have to turn on the camera and be like, oh, my gosh, I'm super authentic. And here's my life. And 300 people are going to be messaging me. Now that's not how anything works, right? It's not how anything works. So why is this, you think? And this goes back to the psychology and research you did. I'm looking at one of your slides, which is reminiscent of, was it Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? Yes. Yeah. Nice. I love that. You don't see that every day at a real estate conference. Exactly. Why is this? Why do people love it so much? Why is it grown? And it's become just part of like. I'm going to give you a couple of really interesting statistics from Facebook, right? And then I'm going to tell you the why, because I believe if I can tell people the why a light bulb is going to go off and they're going to say, hmm, I may not rush in there and try this. But now I can see why this is a thing. And so here's the deal. Facebook has said as a, I think last week on their earnings call, they said, we're going all in on stories. That's our thing. We believe that's the future of social media. There's one billion stories being created per day on Instagram, on Facebook, on Facebook, on Messenger, on WhatsApp. Now, there is a reason that people are gravitating towards it. Number one, it's mostly faces. Our brains cannot tell the difference between seeing a face on a screen and seeing a face in real life. We love faces. We have dedicated areas of our brains to facial recognition. So we don't even know what's happening. We start to feel like, I really feel like I know this person because you're staring at their face all day. The next part of visit is it's in real time. And that's the part about like the psychology of Maslow here in this community is that we get to have a thing in real time. I can message you if I want to and be part of your story. That was the first time that ever happened to us. So we can watch YouTube and we can get into our YouTubers who watched every single week. But we couldn't talk to them while it happened. That was something that was already in the past. So now we can have a relationship and go on the journey together. And then you layer that on, of course, all the triggers of, oh, there's notification. I have to open it. I'm getting you hooked on all this, you know, this thing, the social media thing. And so it's so powerful and they know that it's so powerful. They're willing to leave money on the table because let's be real. Facebook and Instagram don't make money on stories yet because they can't monetize it the same way. They don't know how. They have to change their business model and they're willing to do that and to go all over here because of how powerful psychologically it is. And people want to have private one-on-one conversations. One in five Instagram stories leads to a direct message. What other content you're doing is 20% of the time people proactively talk to you. Nothing, right? And if you're in sales, you can use this to connect with prospects and clients and on a different level. I can talk to 50 people a day face to face. I can't do that in physical real life, right? So there's something really to it. So when I know that people like Facebook who are a for-profit company are walking away from money on the table, from the feed because they can put more ads in the feed. They can't figure out how to monetize quite yet the stories. They're willing to do that. That's a big deal. That's an indicator that something is changing here and they know it. And so everybody else needs to think about how do I start using stories to build my brand? Is that what we're going? Wow. That's good stuff. Well, then how do you figure out where to be? You know what I'm saying? Yeah. In the stories, Facebook stories. Come on. I give that a question all the time. The top questions I get asked are what do I say about content? How do I create content? The next ones are where do I need to be? And then after that, do I put the same thing on all the channels, right? So content eventually will come naturally to you as you force yourself to do it. It's like buying a white card, all of a sudden you see the same white card where you drive on the road. Once you start doing it, you become more aware and these ideas pop into your head. So you will never run out of content. It just takes a little while to kind of get comfortable with it. The second piece of it is that you have to be everywhere. And I'm sorry to say people are like, oh, I don't have the time for that. Well, if I did four stories a day on Facebook and Instagram, that's less than two minutes. Okay, you all have two minutes to do stories. There's just no excuse for it. And there's also no excuse for not building it into part of your marketing strategy. You have to market. So build part of that in. And you need to be everywhere because, quite frankly, we're picky, we're finicky. We get bored. If I'm standing in line and I'm tired of looking through my Facebook feed, I'm going to go over to Instagram and waste some time there too. So it's 2019. We're all in more than just Facebook. So let's be on all the places. Now the next thing is, should you put the same content in different places? I personally am not a fan of that. And it's because I know that people follow me in multiple places. And it's great when they get to see sort of like almost like a different part of the chapter that I'm talking or writing that day of my life. And it's easy because people think, oh my gosh, I have to create totally original content. No, I can be standing here with my phone. I can take a picture of you and me doing this right now. And then I can, you know, maybe when you have the show notes up or something, I can take a picture of the show notes. It's the same theme. I'm just not giving the exact same picture or video in every single place that I'm going. If I'm on a trip, maybe I do a picture of the sunset, then I go over here. There's a picture of the hotel. You get that I'm all the same place and it's the same theme. It took me two seconds to go from here to shift my camera over to here so that people who are going to different places will see different original content and still be engaged and drawn in. And that way they can say, oh, every time I go to watch her story, no matter where it is, it's all different stuff. And I love that because I don't get bored because we have no attention span. We're goldfish, right? Yeah. Exactly. All right. So how do you manage all that? Are you using any third party apps or you just doing all direct stuff? Yeah. I don't use third party apps. The socials really like you'd be native. They want you to go in there. They want you to upload content and create it there natively because they want people to spend more time in there. Because the more time we spend, the more ads they can sell and more money they can make. And they're stuck around with that, they're a corporate company, like I said. But yeah, no. You really should be. So no buffer, no hoots, wait. None of that. I don't. There's nothing wrong with it if you want to use it. And certainly for large corporations, sometimes you have, because you have a lot of content to scale. You may have multiple operations and people that you need to do that for. But as far as your personal brand, I do not believe you can outsource your personal brand. You can never treat it carefully enough. That's all we have because when any of these platforms go away, which they could all go away tomorrow, at the end of the day, it's all about a personal brand because now we have an expectation that we see companies on stories and showing their faces and all of that. And as an individual, small business or an entrepreneur, I personally believe you have way greater opportunity than like the Nike's, the Adidas, the apples because they can see your face, right? Those companies have to outsource their brand. There is no one person that they can like connect with on this journey. But as an individual, I think that's such a huge benefit because then there's like that one face that they always know is your brand. So you have to be everywhere. You have to do your own brand yourself and you have to create content on all the places. What is your response to, you know, those are the companies out there that will post content on your behalf. We've all seen it, we know what it's like. What is your response to, A, that's better than nothing, and or B, you know, I know the kind of the best practices, if you're getting that automated posting because you're at the company or whatever they do that, as long as you add your own little two cents, you're taken on that. Are you just, it's like, no, not at all or is a happy blend there or what do you think? Yeah, I think it's really dependent on, you know, the type of company that's out there. There are some excellent companies that do provide those services and I think it would be, you know, beneficial for people and brands of companies and hopefully those companies that you do work with that will help you build that brand and post things for you. You know, hopefully you can have a conversation with them and they can get to know a little bit about your audience and your content style because that's always great to have it personalized a little bit more. You know, obviously if you're in real estate, you don't want to be posting something that's, you know, not real estate related or maybe something in a totally different, you know, industry. So I think I would just be cautious about, you know, like anything else, whether it's buying a car or anything you want to research, you want to research the company and the kind of content that they share and do they have a good support staff. So I definitely don't think it is, you know, blanket, don't do it, it's negative or anything like that. I think there are great reasons and opportunities for doing that for different brands and companies and you just have to make sure you find the right company that will partner with you in the best way to provide the kind of content that you need. But I also think that, you know, that's great to have sort of that, you know, content built up, but I think again, too, you can still grow, but I think that you'll grow faster and more exponentially if you can inject your own persona, your personality because we all want to work with you and being that we know, like, and trust, right? We all want to say, oh, you've got to get five, so do I. That's awesome. You're something that we can connect on. And so, you know, you've got to put a little of you into it no matter what. Yeah, absolutely. All right. For a second time, let's give people a couple of quick, you know, best practices take away in referencing what I saw. You present there. You have this slide that basically says, do this now. I don't know if you remember what I'm referring to. Yeah, I do. So, I just kind of just saying, people ask me, what should I do in what order? I do believe Instagram stories is it for now. I think that you need to get on Instagram stories first and foremost. I think it's probably going to give you the most engagement. You're going to learn more about the people. You have much more of an intimate relationship with the people that are on there that you're engaging with. Then I would do Facebook Live mainly because of the algorithm and the ability to get some more organic reach. You want to build brand awareness. You want people to see you in the feed. I don't care if you don't watch Facebook Live videos. I don't care if people don't watch your Facebook Live videos. What I do care about is the build order fact is you're passing by through the feed. So that's really important and then, you know, Live video does help you get really good on stories too. Live video is the hardest thing to do because you're live and there's something mentally that happens when it's even just you and your phone and nobody else there that you're like, oh my gosh, I'm live. So it does have some extra benefits where you can kind of get better at, you know, public speaking or giving your sales pitches or, you know, talking across a client and doing a listing appointment. All those things will improve. Then, I think I said, was it Facebook stories, a camera? Yeah, Facebook stories. Facebook stories. Facebook stories. Why Facebook stories? People are saying, oh, nobody uses Facebook stories yet. Right? Okay. Great. Nobody uses Instagram TV yet. So you might as well be the first person that's in the top of everyone's feed for free. It takes you one minute a day. So what's it hurting? I mean, I want people to open up the apps and say, oh my gosh, every time I open it, I see your face. You are everywhere. You're the person I want to work with. Great. That's all perception and marketing. So Facebook stories, for sure, especially now that they've made an announcement that they're going on in on it, they're going to be pushing hard on stories. And then I do think you need to do, you know, LinkedIn too. LinkedIn is really coming back on the scene. They're a great content platform. They just changed their algorithm last month to help the small creator to get more exposure. So it's not all just going to the top 1% like the Richard Branson's and, you know, all the big players that are on LinkedIn. So definitely, I recommend using all those things. But I would say Instagram stories that Facebook live and Facebook stories. Absolutely. I agree with you on the LinkedIn thing as well. I've been testing that recently. And the algorithm is definitely playing in favor video views. I'm seeing. It's interesting as you watch, as you see different patterns, you're like, why did this video get like X views and the other one didn't? It's still kind of figuring it out. But I've really seen like in terms of the view count on Instagram much higher than what I've seen on Facebook of recent anyways, but things are always changing. It's dynamic, right? So that's why it's like you need to be a student of this these days. If you're going to stay relevant for the future, which is what we can talk about as well as what you see coming for 2019. When we wrap up, I want to make sure we cover two things. Your book and your flash briefing. Let's handle your book last because explaining to the listeners what a flash briefing is might take a little bit more time. So what is a flash briefing real quick? Yes. So I have one of my home smart speakers in this room. So I'm going to say let's say not the full name, but you'll get all of you where we're going. So voice is the new future of everything, right? I know that sounds so weird in Jetsons, you know, like it's something you can't really think about what you're doing with it. But remember, we felt the same way about YouTube when it came out. I felt the same way about my iPhone. I was like, I'm never going to be 600 dollars from an iPhone. I have a flip on it. And it makes all these things. So we just don't know because we don't know. But what's happening is, remember, just like this awesome podcast that you have, I can do something else while I'm listening. I can drive my car. I can clean my house. I can do these other things. This audio is passive. And now they're building in all of these smart speakers like Lexi and Google Home and all of that into new homes, Lanar and KB are doing it. BMW and Ford have them built into the cars, the new cars now. Facebook just released portal, which is like an iPad type of visual thing. And that has Lexi built into it too. So we're just walking around all the time saying, hey, you know, order this or do this. But a lot of people, that's where it stops, right? They think, oh, you're going to be asking the weather and ordering things and playing music. Let me give you this example. Imagine you're standing in your kitchen and you're talking to your wife or your husband. And you're like, you know, babe, we shouldn't really repaint these walls. I'm just kind of getting tired of it. And then, you know, your spouse says, yeah, you know, and it's just so stuffed in here. Now that we have the new baby, that's what's going to happen is a short listen to what you're doing. And they're going to start picking up on those things just like Facebook does. They look at our behaviors and they serve up those algorithms and all of a sudden you might get Lexi saying, would you like me to give you five different painters in the area? And by the way, are you interested in the market value of your home? So-and-so. Once you free on street, you go on the way, just sold their home for $500,000 and you might say, well, yeah, actually, we are. And then there you go. You're connecting them with an agent and all of these things. That's how it's going to be, right? It's not really really standing around giving just these, you know, things, these asking devices for X, Y, and Z, they're going to be serving up like in an algorithm. What we're asking for, we don't even know it. And now people are like, oh, that's so creepy. Stop it. We love algorithms. You love an algorithm. You love Netflix that tells you the next thing you should watch. And you're like, oh, I'm so glad Netflix told me to watch this. It's awesome, right? We all need algorithms. So- All right. So let me, let me interject. Are you saying, are you saying Alexa's going to interrupt us while we're in the middle of a conversation? Because that's what people think is creepy. You're interrupt, but- Okay. Excuse me. Did I ever hear- It only feels creepy because I'm still, yeah. Right? I know. Everything's going to be not creepy soon enough when everything's like robots and- Yeah. Black mirror. Black mirror. Netflix. Yes. It's very black mirror. It's very black mirror. I'm sure that there were some Lexis that were going rogue and like doing a crazy laugh in the middle of the night. And I thought that was- I would have loved to do one of those people- Oh, my gosh. I just got chills thinking about that. So a flash brief thing- Yeah. It's just simply a very short mini podcast, a minute, two minutes, three minutes, and when I get up in the morning and have my coffee, I say, Lexi, what are my flash briefings? And it plays all of these mini podcasts. You could have it from any type of variety of content, whether it's news or whether a mortgage or a real estate or marketing. And that's really the future of how people are going to be taking in information so they don't have to read it or they don't have to Google search it. It's just there. It serves it up. So think of it like a YouTube channel. You know how YouTube works. You know you can go to it and you can search categories. And when you find something you like, a channel you like, you can subscribe. It's the exact same thing. So you have the topics that you want to learn about or hear about. You go into Amazon, you can actually go to what they're called skills and you can search in that. And so I can look for real estate and marketing. And I can see all the flash briefings I can choose from when I just subscribe to that clutch briefing. And that's as easy as it is. It will continue to get easier sometimes a little convoluted at this point where you have to go here, go here, go here, go here. But it is the wave of the future. It is where we're going for just marketing in general and content. Yep. Yep. No, absolutely. I've been messing around with it for a while too. And I do find it very convenient too. As you say, you're multitasking, doing other things and you're just like, hey, Lexi, read my flash briefings and whatever you've subscribed to, boom, it's going to come up with those flash briefings. Exactly. It's actually really cool. All right. Good stuff there. So tell us briefly about your book and then we'll, you know, we'll wrap up. Yeah. So my book is called Talking in Pictures. I selected that title because the CEO of Snapchat really talked about this profound statement that he said, you know, parents look at their 12 year old daughter. I wonder why she's taking 10,000 pictures of things they would never care about. What they don't realize is she's not preserving memories. She's talking. And so we are now all talking in images and pictures and sharing our lives. Now it really did focus on how Snapchat itself really is the catalyst to change all of our communication and behaviors. However, the information in it applies to Facebook stories and Instagram stories as well. So it's called Talking in Pictures. You can find it on Amazon and you can find it really anywhere online. Okay. And I'll definitely put links in the show notes. And by the way, for those listening, I'm always looking for ways for loan officers to better engage with realtors and a concept we've talked about a number of times is a book study. And the number one is just gifting them a book of value. Secondly, though, you could do like a small, you know, book study group on this book as well. Because you're in front of agents all the time, even those brokerages, KW and all these others who have great training, agents are still, they're hungry for this kind of info, aren't they? Right. Yeah. Social media is changing all the time. Yeah. And, you know, it's a real value that you can connect with people and either have an understanding of our practitioners and or no people that they can introduce me to for those little little tidbits and tips because you're right, you know, we all want to know how to improve our business with real estate. And there's so many ways to do it. And this is an area where people are confused and it seems like too much and they don't want to do it and they want further hands up because they just don't know where to start. So that is a really great angle to help that client tell us to be able to understand it and make the hard stuff easy. That's all you have to do. So you have to learn how to do the thing and then make it easy and be able to explain it to someone. You bet. And of course we're going to put links to all your social media sites in the show now so people can follow you and watch what you do on social media because you're great to learn from. Number one. Lastly, real quick, I don't know, 30 seconds, 45 seconds. What do you see coming 2019? What are you doing differently? Hmm. I'm definitely going all the numbers. So I've already pre-loaded my flash briefings and going more into the podcasting. I'm going to, I have already been really going all in on stories. I've been doing that for a number of years. What I would like people to kick off for the New Year with is something that when I started in stories really helped grow my community and brand and it's very simple. I make a rule. I call it don't stop unless you talk. Meaning don't watch people's stories unless you're going to send a message. That will absolutely incrementally increase your community and not only does it do that but the algorithms when they are watching who you're watching, they're watching who you're commenting on and talking to and what happens is if I'm talking to you quite a bit on my Insta story, all of a sudden you're going to start seeing my Insta story a whole lot sooner up in the lineup. So it's reciprocal, right? So it's a way to build brand but it's also a way to really build community and get people to know you and you get to know them. So do that 60-day challenge where you're talking when you're stalking and also the first 10 posts in any feed, whether it's Instagram or Facebook, comment on it. Comments are really, really important in Facebook. That's the number one algorithm trigger right now. So you must be commenting and talking and I talk a lot to people and say, less contenting more commenting because that's where the magic happens and I make content all day long. I'm not saying to stop doing that. I'm just saying, we need to be thinking about how we're engaging because there's so much content that it's easy to get lost and it's just too noisy, too overwhelming and people aren't going to watch or subscribe or listen or engage with your content unless you engage you from first. Now that's a great tip and I want to thank you for sharing that because I applied that when I first saw you talk about it at the conference and so now I make a conscious effort to definitely comment. What did you call it? The emoji is just like the drive-by high five. Oh, the social drive-by. Yeah. The social drive-by is yeah. The social drive-by is you actually have to make a comment, no like, no little emoji, the hearts that no double tabs down Instagram doesn't count. And that's the thing to remember. It's a conversation. That's really what we're trying to drive. It's a conversation and engagement. The only way to do that is comment, right? Just like here to here, you wouldn't be just sitting there quiet, right? You'd be like, no, commenting and engaging. So best practice. Exactly. All right. So Chelsea, before we sign off, I have to make sure that we acknowledge you because you've got a very special opportunity coming up with a conference that Gary Ve puts on. That's like growing in wild popularity. And so tell listeners about that because some people might want to go and register. Yeah. I am so excited. I mean, this is like a bucket list. Gary Ve is one of my icons idols. I'm totally going to Fandrule when I beat him, but this is a conference that's called Agent 2021 and a lot of people are like, what's with the name, right? Well, so he really wanted to create an event with an end date because he was like, we have a short amount of time before the world changes, right? So we're going to go out there. We're going to get it. We're going to do this till 2021. And that's it. So it's a limited time conference, hugely popular last year. It's in the hard rock stadium. We are on the field, on the football field. There is a mortgage track. There is a real estate track. And it's the top minds. And it's actionable items and tips. It's not high level stuff. It's like, hey, this is how you do this. They're having Instagram will be there. They will be hosting Instagram Story Treaties with Instagram. How cool is that? And then I'm one of three people in the real estate world who were blessed to be chosen to speak. And I'll be talking about building your personal brand in a digital world. And then it's on the 17th of January, 2019. All right. So January 17th, 2019, I'll put a link to the registration page in the show notes. Yeah. That's a huge honor. Congrats. Thank you. All right. Awesome. I know we both have another meeting to go to. So I can't thank you enough for being here and passing on your great wisdom. And thanks for what you do for the real estate and mortgage space. Oh, thank you so much. It was really fun to be here. I appreciate the offer. Oh, you bet. And listeners, as always, if you like what we're doing here, please let us know. Leave a little comment out wherever you're listening to this, you know, on podcast channels or on the blog. And we appreciate you. And we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. Thanks for listening to mortgage marketing radio. One more truth in mortgage marketing. Get more free training and resources at mortgagemarketinginstitute.com Hey guys, what's up real quick? 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