How to Build Influence in Today's Digital World

In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with the real estate agents is essential for success. However, finding effective ways to secure agent relationships can be a challenge. With so many mortgage loan originators vying for the attention of real estate agents, it can be difficult to stand out and establish meaningful connections. Our new case study featuring loan officer Chris Cogill is a must-read. Chris has closed a remarkable 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals. And in this case study, he shares his proven strategies for building strong relationships with real estate agents and leveraging those relationships to drive more business. To get your hands on this resource, head over to LOKestudy.com and download your free copy of the case study today. You'll find actionable insights and practical tips that Chris used to close 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals and how you can too. Don't miss out. Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey, thank you so much for having me. It is a pleasure. So Neil, I have to ask you coming out of the gate about your brand new book, which we're going to give people links to in the show notes. Your most recent book, The Age of Influence, the power of influencers to elevate your brand. So that word influencers gets thrown around a lot. And for us in the mortgage and real estate space, can we really benefit from quote influencer marketing? Why don't we start with what does that really mean? Yeah, you know, it's funny. I sort of redefine what digital influence means in the book. But if we take a step back, I've seen influence, I mean, before social media, we had influence, right? You had celebrities do TV commercials and now you have, if you have kids, they're tuning into people that probably we've never heard of, you know, on YouTube and Instagram. So definitely, you know, the concept of influence has changed. But for instance, when I do social selling trainings with insurance sales professionals, they talk about centers of influence, probably something that in your industry talk about as well. And these are influencers. Now, do they have digital influence or not as another, you know, question? But digitally speaking, there are people that have bigger communities that have more mind share than others. And these are people that we can tap into for partnerships, collaborations, and the more influential we become, the more mind share we gain with our community if we do it, right? And therefore, you know, with coronavirus today, it's hard to meet people in person, obviously. And digitally, the only way to meet people is through search email or social, right? So searches your website, obviously, your content, email, hopefully you're all doing that. But social is something that is really hard to get hurt and even for big companies. So, you know, leveraging the power of other people in your community that have influence to me as a no-brainer. Hmm. So let's bring that for the context of the listeners, right? Because I always like to get right to the, you know, the listeners and how can we ultimately serve them? We talk both strategy and tactics, but tactically, centers of influence, yes, we do use that term in the real estate mortgage space, also, you know, sphere of influence, same thing. You know, but still, I'm stuck on this for a moment because most people here like influence are marketing, right? And they think, oh, that's not for me. That's for the big Instagram guru or the YouTube guru, right? So how can we pivot this discussion to make sure we set up the context out of the gate, the right way? For those thinking that, well, that's not me, I'm a practitioner of real estate or mortgage. So here's the thing, even in that influencer marketing industry, they have different tiers of people with influence and everybody immediately thinks of celebrities. But now we have what's called micro influencers that have a minimum of 10,000 followers and we have nano influencers that have a minimum of 1,000 followers. You have people with 1,000 plus followers on Instagram that are worth that brand see value and working together with. Hmm. Maybe look around us like, huh, you know, I have 1,000 LinkedIn connections. I might have 1,000 followers on Instagram. You already have more influence than 90X percent of people out there without you're even realizing it. And maybe of all the partners that you work with in the industry, maybe some of them also have a bit more influence than others. And maybe we can consider collaborating online for something, right? Doing like a joint Instagram live, for instance, doing shout outs to each other. I mean, tactically speaking, there are a lot of different things you can do. But I think it's recognizing that if we're going to play in social, that we want to be strategic and we want to try to leverage the influence that other people might have in our community and see how we can work with them. We can go outside of the industry as well, right? There's no reason why if you're in the mortgage industry, you couldn't reach out to an influential local restaurant, for instance. And hey, you know, maybe I can sponsor a food giveaway, I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud here, but there are a lot of things you can do to tap into, you know, local community where you go above and beyond your industry in a more like lifestyle content. And I think that's where it gets really compelling where people follow you, not just because you talk about the mortgage or real estate industry, but because you talk about yourself. And you expose things about you that other people might be interested in listening to because you have a passion for something, right? And I think there's something a lot of people miss out on when it comes to social media. The reason that influencers became influential is that they consistently created content around a niche. So if everybody listening was to take that same model, in addition, everything else they're doing, I think that they can begin to yield a little bit more influence. And if they collaborate with others that I've influenced, I think that's going to benefit them as well. Yeah. So you raise a couple of good points in there as I'm thinking about this and it's kind of unfolding in my head on this as we discuss this further. First of all, we're in a business that requires us to be known, number one in mortgage or real estate. We have or need to have a certain amount of influence to get chosen, right? Because ultimately isn't that what leads, you know, the old cliche, no like and trust you, right? That's what's going to get you to. So first and foremost, I guess part of the game today, air quotes game, in becoming known and getting attention, do those two things lead to being influential right out of the gate, do you think? Be coming known? Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, when people tune into you, then you have mind share and it leads indirectly to more people listening to you. So I guess, you know, it's not about getting a million followers, it's about that sphere of influence and it's about showing up in the feed of your strategic partners or people in your community on a daily basis or on a weekly basis or with Instagram stories, even you know, this could be linked in this could be Twitter, it's not just Instagram. But it's showing up where they're consuming content. And I think that's the main thing. They may not be ready to do business with you now, they may not have a deal for you now, but when they do, you want to be top of mind share and social media is the place where you can do that because you can be publishing daily and you can be in people's feeds daily, right? And that's where you begin to yield, you know, more influence, more mind share, especially with the people that follow you and that engage your content. You begin to become one of their primary influencers. Yeah, 100%. Now, you raised a good point there in talking about being seen in the feeds. And so there's like a parallel audience, I think that we're looking to be seen in the feeds of as a mortgage professional. One of them is clients and consumers, obviously, but the other which you mentioned is partners, right? Referral partners. And so in our case, it's largely real estate agents. It could be insurance, it could be financial planners as well. And that makes me think of, I'm trying to pull him up here on, yeah, Eric Braun on Instagram who I had on the podcast a while back. And if you're listening, Eric shout out to you, man. So this guy in Instagram's got 13,000 followers and what he told me was that he leveraged Instagram to grow his influence and awareness amongst his local real estate agents, which led to conversations and deals. Hey, man, that's exactly it. Text book, right? Yeah. So that's why, you know, the concept of digital influence is applicable to anybody, right? Anybody can try to do that. But nobody does because most people just stick to this old, I'm just going to publish business stuff that nobody engages with or they don't know. They don't engage with other people. They may call these people, but do you follow them on Instagram? Do you engage with their content? Do you comment? Right? Do you give them shout outs? And that's the real difference. And I think as we get younger, the demographic shifts in this country, you get younger and younger, you know, younger generations, I mean, that's their number one thing in social obviously. So it becomes more and more important to have a presence. And if you're going to have a presence, you want to have as much influence in that presence as possible. Yeah. It's a great formula. You first start with trying to befriend people that are more influential in your community and they don't have to have 100,000 followers, even if they have 1,000 followers that there is value in building that relationship. So first translate the offline online and begin there. There you go. I love that. Translates offline online. Yeah. Good point as well. It's not about the number. It's quantity over quality. And a lot of people get caught up on that, like even with me giving out Eric's numbers there, like 16,000 followers is pretty, or 13,000 is really sizable, I think for the niche that we're in. But here's the thing, right? I'm sure you've heard this before, this example of if 100 people saw your post, imagine you standing at the front of a room on stage and front of 100 people, it's virtually the same thing. Yeah. I mean, obviously, you know, we have to take a step back and say if we're, it's like listening to a podcast where you're listening intently for 30 minutes versus seeing an Instagram post in your feed, where you're not going to be spending 30 minutes in that post. So, you know, there is a difference, obviously. But we're spending so much time in social media, are you seen or are you not seen, right? So it's stacking it repeatedly over time? Yeah, it is, right? And becoming, it's that no like and trust of being trusted. And hey, when it's time to make a decision, I'm going to call that person because they're top of mind. And what it comes down to. Yeah. So I think people in my industry, the two that we're dealing with here, right, real estate mortgage again, not that I mentioned that enough times, it's like, where's the dollar sound? Every time I should say that. To Ching. But the point is this is the demographics older, the average age of real estate age is 57. The average age of a mortgage broker, law officer, whatever, it tends to trend higher as well. But there is an influx of newer, you know, younger people coming in. But again, you know, let me put this out there, right? I believe that your attention, your investment in time, should be where your target market is. So just with that disclaimer up front, but let's face it to the point you alluded to is the younger generation. And the obvious thing we all know is that the millennials are the largest, you know, segment of home buyers ever to enter, right, the, you know, the buying pool that to your point, to what your book talks about is. Do you think they would risk, they are responding or they do respond to more, quote, people being influential on social, is that what they're looking for? I guess what is one I'm asking? They're looking for people to relate to, right? I think more than anything. They don't care if you're influential or not, but they look at your content. And are you doing what they're looking for people to relate to? Yes. They really like them. Yeah. So, you know, if you're targeting an older demographic, there's Facebook, there's LinkedIn. I mean, there's all sorts of different social networks. Younger demographics are a little bit different. It's like, who are you, right? You know, do you even have an Instagram profile? When I see you, do you, do you show who you are as a person? And those are key things. And it's really, you know, it's about, you know, people in your industries are great at developing relationships. It's just doing that online. It's actually, you know, following and engaging with other people in your community and authentically commenting and really building friendships from there. And I think a lot of people that have become influencers in their early days, that's how they started, right? I mean, they were publishing consistently great content, but they were also engaging with others, proactively reaching out to people to get noticed for who they are. Hmm. Interesting. So, in terms of being influential and across most of the platforms now, you know, we've got video as a key part of types of content we can post. How important do you rank video for becoming influential? You know, I think that there are certain content mediums that perform well in the algorithm. And there's this pushback that I'm not even on social media or it's hard for me to just publish a photo. Why do I have to do video? So, I want to keep everything sort of in, you know, under control here. You don't have to do videos the number one thing. And in fact, I don't think you should do video unless you do video. I mean, do you do normally video things, right? You have a GoPro. Did you have a flip camera back in the day? I don't know. I found one here today. And here's the thing, because whatever you do, you got to be consistent with it. And it has to last. And if you're not passionate about it, I don't want you to do it because it's not going to last. It's going to be a one-off. So, you know, if photos is your thing, obviously Instagram, if speaking to your thing, podcasting is great. If videos you're thinking YouTube, whatever it is, you know, find what you're good at and do that. Because otherwise, it just doesn't last and it defeats the purpose. So you can become influential in any medium, right? Or in any social network. Yeah, but I think that's a good point is that's kind of what I say to people to start with the platform you're already on, you know, and engaging on. Hey, while we're going there, let's then talk about, I'm going to do a segue that I don't often go to, but I like where we're going with this. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. What's the age of a home buyer? Exactly. Nuffset. And, you know, I've been doing social media marketing for like a decade now, right? So we've seen, you know, you've got to be on Google Plus or a couple of times we had MySpace and Snap. So I see, you know, Tick-tock is the eating away at SnapChat. It's a very, very young demographic. There are older people on it, like there are older people on SnapChat. But I let the other fools rest of those platforms. I'd stick with the tested and true platforms that still have way more people. And it's, you know, if you're a dancer, Tick-tock is awesome. If you like dancing to music, perfect. I just don't know how much business benefit you're going to get. Amen, brother. Amen. Where is the hold on? There we go. Thank you. Thank you. For the best, truest honest answer that's not a guru answer that says you have to be on X. Yeah, and, you know, Jeff, I think after you remember, I mean, you know, we can say all we like or don't like or how much influence social housing doesn't have. But, you know, in your industry, there's only a few things you can do, especially with coronavirus. So this is, you know, if you want to have a digital first mentality, social has to be, I mean, yeah, website, obviously, right? Content, obviously, email, you know, hopefully. But social is just one of those areas where there's just so much potential for that daily. You can't email someone on a daily basis. But you can publish in a daily basis and hope that they see your content on a daily basis, right? And I think that's, you know, when you look at all your options and if you think about the concept of influence and collaborating with other influencers, what you build up your own influence in the community, I think it begins to be compelling. If you enjoy doing what you do as well on social, then it's a natural five, ten minutes a day. You don't have to spend an hour, two hours, three hours doing this, right? Especially if you're not going to do, I mean, video takes a long time. I'm even like doing video. I mean, even carousel plus an Instagram, it's like, you know, I just want to put one photo up there. That's enough or a story. So you don't have to go overboard on this and it shouldn't take you that long. It went you get into a process in the system. Hmm. Yeah, that's a good point. In turn, you have any recommendations on a process, right? Because we're also time strapped. Yeah, I think a process, I mean, it's going to be different for every social network. But obviously, there's the content. And what influencers do, which is religion, is they do photo shoots. So they'll hire a photographer and they'll go around their locale or maybe, you know, I live in Orange County in Irvine or hop at a real one, obviously, but maybe they'll go down to Newport Beach or they'll go to Hollywood or Santa Monica or someplace iconic. They'll bring a few different wardrobes and they'll just have pictures taken, right? And those pictures will last them maybe three months. So this is something anyone can do. You can go to Craigslist, okay? When I went to Tokyo on my last business trip, I found someone and Craigslist did this for me. And then on a business trip, I found someone on TripAdvisor that does this for me, right? It's like a hundred, two hundred bucks and you have content for 90 days. I mean, you say it does. You mean take pics? Is that what you mean photographer? So I'm taking pics and then just send me the digital photos. So now you have content. You can't see you don't have photos to post, right? Right. But it could also be you because we're talking about the community of going around, you know, locally, you know, taking shots. Once again, we're talking about photography here. It could be talking about your favorite restaurants, your favorite locales and other people. Oh, man, I love that. You know, hey, what do you recommend for what's the best ramen place in a river? I don't know, but it strikes conversation among locals. But this is the type of, you know, the type of thing where the process should be batch content creation. So you, you create content once and you have it enough. It's like podcasters will do interviews, you know, every day for the week and it'll last them two months. So it's the same thing. You, you back the content every day, you publish the content, but you also proactively reach out to people. So you look for people in your community doing hashtags, searches, or people that have, you know, checked in the locations, not as much of that with coronavirus, but you know what I mean? And you go in your, and you actually engage with, with, with people in your network as well, right? And you respond to people that have engaged with you. So this whole process, I mean, the content creation, assuming that you already have it made, this whole process, you know, five, 10, 15 minutes, you can say, okay, I'm going to follow 10 people a day, I'm going to leave 10 comments, there's all these, you know, there's all these different formulas for doing it. But I'd say you start something, stick with it, you see how you do. Yeah, it's great advice. And I know I've followed and engaged with and even featured a couple of those people in my book. Jason Ferris up in Fresno, he's got, you know, Fresno, he calls it Fres Yes, right? How's that for creative? And he's got this whole, he was over 20,000 fans on his Facebook page and a real estate brokerage that's Fres Yes, right? And that's how he kind of built his platform, he did video content, featuring all the great reasons to live in Fresno, right? Which became Fres Yes. And if any of us like you and I know Fresno, that's kind of cool and funny. And then there's Jonathan McKinnis, a loan officer in Missyanna, Indiana, Indiana area, and he's same thing. Like you know, we've heard the saying before that you're a media company with your backend as being mortgage or real estate. He did the same thing, started interviewing, became influential. Why does so many people struggle though with crossing that chasm or that gap from I am AX, right? Two. Oh my God, I'm a media company. I need to produce. Why is that hard? Yeah, it's just, you know, first of all, I think that people don't necessarily see the ROI of social media. Or they start you in it and then they just stop because as you know, it takes time. It doesn't happen overnight, right? It takes time for people to get to know you and it's no different over social media, especially if they've never met you for the first time. It's also that, yes, there is content that needs to be created because content becomes the currency of all of it. If you don't have content, you know, you're not seen in the feed. So those are the three things. And you know, the content, like I said, it can be really easy. It could be lifestyle content. You know, what do you enjoy doing? It could be shout outs to local businesses, you know, even to people in your network that you have a lot of respect for. I don't know. It requires a little bit of creativity. But you know, when I mean, I've spoken at some real estate marketing conferences and whenever I meet agents, they're like, I'll give you $500 a month, just do it for me, right? And there are things in real estate marketing where you can do something like that. But this is one that really you need to be on top of because it's representing your personal brand. But that becomes a business. People relate to you because of that brand and it requires you to create the content. Now, you can, you know, outsource some of it. Like I said, for photo shoots, you can outsource it for different things you can do. But at the heart of it, you got to have sort of this editorial calendar mindset that says, okay, what am I going to talk about, right? What am I going to post about and to create some sort of calendar and some, you know, ideas about content. And I think that's probably the biggest struggle. Mm-hmm. Yeah, 100%. It's got to be you because that's who they're connecting with, that's who they want to connect with. Absolutely. And that's, you know, getting back to, you know, the book about influencers, you know, reverse engineering it, every influencer is a content creator at the heart of it, right? Well, the key to influence really is content creation and consistency and content that's relatable and authentic that people would want to engage with. Yeah. So that brings up my next question then around content people would want to engage with. I know of the people I've talked to, they often struggle with the balance between posting business related content versus more personal, if you will, what would you say to that? Yeah. And I think that's a big struggle because the business stuff, it probably doesn't perform well. And I've seen it myself, especially on, on photo networks like Instagram. And I think what a lot of, you know, people that I know that do really well with the business stuff is the picture is not business. Make sure it's taken from a photo shoot with maybe a title saying, you know, interest rates question mark or I don't know, right? But it's still people engage with the photo and then go into the caption. I think the captions have become more important than they were in the past and still can do business with a non business image would be my recommendation there, but you also want to have a mix. So when I work with grants, we talk about content categories, right? So, you know, and I know it's not just about Instagram, but just sticking to Instagram as a theme here, you have nine squares when people go to your profile, what are the first nine things they see? So it could be nine different categories of content. So maybe one of them is business, maybe one of them is local community, maybe one of them is collaborating with other people in your industry, maybe one of them relates to local restaurants because you're a foodie, maybe one of them relates to like local sports teams because you're a big fan. I don't know, right? But this is the type of, and maybe two of the nine only business and another two of the nine will be collaborations, but that's, once you have that sort of system in mind, number one, you're not just posting about your business all the time, that's the key thing here, right? You're limited to one out of nine, two out of nine, three out of nine. But the other one is, you begin to create these categories, it's like, okay, now I need to create content for like restaurants, let me drive around town, take some pictures so I have some stuff to put up there, right? And you begin to sort of, you begin to get these assets as inventory of content that you can now place into these categories, and then when it's time, and even in advance, you know, using tools, you can schedule this, you begin to like have different ways of engaging with people, and you begin to see what content performs better or not, right? So in a lot of ways, this would help you sort of optimize what you're doing. I know it sounds like a lot of work, once you start to do it, it actually makes it easier, but yeah, the business stuff, you really want people to relate to you as a person, and then once in a while when they see the business stuff, they go, huh, I think that's really, you know, obviously, if you want to build a large community, it's going to go beyond just your business partners and your current customers, right? It's going to go to people that don't know you, and you probably want to build out like no interest from you as a relatable human with your more of lifestyle content than the peer business content. Any recommendations around frequency of posting content? Does it vary by platform? It does. You know, when we talk about Instagram, I mean, once a day would be awesome. That's even, I don't even do once a day, so I know it's really, really hard. You know, once a week, you know, that's where, you know, you have Instagram stories and they disappear, so that's a, you know, that's a great one if you could check in on, you know, once every day, I'd say minimum once a week, but the more the better, I'd say Facebook is the same. I mean, if you have a Facebook page, you really struggle to get any action going on. It's pretty much paid a play for most businesses, you know, which is why the whole notion of getting more influential as a person means that you can cut through the algorithm. So if you could do it every day, if not at least once a week, even if you don't post every day, it doesn't mean you can't be engaging every day and getting your name in the notifications of people in your community. So that would be, that would be my recommendation, at least have a daily process where you do it for 15 minutes, whether or not you have content. And then people with that have to get very clear on as we said earlier, your target market, where they at, it would probably make sense to filter your, you know, the amount of time you spend on a given platform and your, you know, the investment you make on that based on that criteria. Absolutely. Hmm. Okay, so cool. Let's, let's tell people a couple of things that they want to connect with you, such as your book. What is, is this your third book? It's actually my fourth. Your fourth book. You're crazy. I know I am. But you know what? First of all, my first book I wrote in 2009, so it was a long time coming. Yeah. Well, I understand the process of writing a book is definitely nothing easy about it for most people. If you're going to write a good book, right? Yeah. Which, which clearly I can tell you have, you have. So once again, it's the age of influence, the power of influencers to elevate your brand. They can find that on Amazon. You also have a podcast. Tell us about the podcast. Yeah, the podcast is called maximize your social influence podcast. So it's all about looking at, you know, marketing, digital marketing, social media marketing through this lens of influence. Mm-hmm. All right, and they can tune into that on any podcast platform, right? Indeed. And then you're also what appears to be a prolific blog writer. Is that true? Do you want to sleep, man? Yeah, I, you know, I've been blogging since 2008. My original blog was all about LinkedIn. And you know, back in 2009, I had these people saying, hey, I'd love to contribute to your blog. So I sort of opened up the blog. So I have like 20 bloggers that blog once every two months. Yeah, there's like 450 posts on anything and everything, social media and digital media marketing. That's Neil Shafer. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So let me ask you about blogging then, the written word, right? Where does that stand in, you know, the old, is it like the email is dead, right? What about blogging? You know, I think email is actually very much alive. Oh, I agree. Yeah, with coronavirus, you've probably seen a lot of email. So blogging is interesting. I mean, you know, getting seen in searches is critical. And I think if you do blogging about your local community, then you have a better chance of getting in searches when people search for, you know, for local information. So I would say absolutely blogging is important for that web part. It also gives you content to share in social media. So Instagram is visual. But if you wanted to share on a Facebook, on a LinkedIn or Twitter, then obviously these links are very, very good. So, you know, do searches for, you know, if I was looking for someone to do business with, what are the keywords I put in, right? And it's probably going to be no keyword than the city or county or state of what have you. Look who pops up and go to the content and see what it is. And I think you're going to get a lot of good ideas as to what Google serves for that content. And it's really about making, you know, a keyword strategy. It's like, these are the keywords that I want to show up for. And it's about creating that content. You know, content creation is something that you could outsource as well if you wanted to. There's loads of great freelance writers out there. And it's just a matter of, you know, making sure you have content that when people search for it. If you don't have the content, you're never going to be found in Google. So it is something that, you know, is sort of, if you have a website, you need content. And if you're going to do content, it should be targeted among those keywords. And the best way to do that is to blog content. Very interesting. So I'm glad you said that because, you know, I for a long time have been saying that, you know, the written word isn't dead and that like when we talk about how does somebody start on social, you know, if you're a writer and if you like writing, then go ahead and do that. But you never hear really hear about blogging anymore. It's really having any juice, you know? And, you know, I, man, here in Orange County, it's like, we, I didn't grow up here. I grew up in LA County and then I lived in Japan and came out here and just whatever resource you're looking for locally, like what, like what's the best soccer team if I kid in or the best ballet teacher looking for a tutor or what have you? There's so much uncharted territory that if you really want to become influential in your, you know, in your community, and you start talking about these things through a blog, I think there's a lot of places where you could start to rank for. And even this is the equivalent of lifestyle content in Instagram is this sort of community information that you know because you're an insider, but most people just don't know. It's just word of mouth. Now, I will say for people in your industry, this isn't a social network that I normally talk about, but next door is absolutely critical and I'm assuming you're all on it and I'm assuming you're all looking for opportunities to jump into conversations. But I would say that that is a critical, probably the most important social network to be on right now. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. If you're a real estate agent. If you're a real estate agent. But even if you're not, there's still are agents that are on there where you can be seen, right? It's funny you say that because I am on next door and I get emails from them every day. Like, you know, about the posts happening locally and stuff like that. I was looking for one right now. Yeah. So why do you think that's so critical for real estate agents? People, people are on it. This type of information that people use to search for in Google, they're asking questions. And so they're asking questions on next door that are kind of housing local community related. Absolutely. How do I get rid of a beehive? Think of you're the real estate agent that goes, hey, I always recommend you're snack the hell out of it. No, I'm scared. I mean, there's some stupid questions. Don't get me wrong. But the thing is whenever, you know, if it's like, you know, Neil Schaefer license realtor is my profile name. And every time I respond, I'm building trust and they see that I'm a realtor and it's right. And you're not pitching, by the way, when you come in to respond. You're adding value, man, social media is all about adding value. You're not. But everything, most questions are sort of home related or home services. So there's no, you know, I work with a realtor in Newport Beach. And one of the most invaluable things he gave me was a list of trusted service providers. Yeah. That is huge. Because he's, you know, he sold hundreds of homes, he didn't do it for 20 years. So that is like critical and extremely valuable information that everybody listens to this podcast, hopefully, has. And when you start to share that, it doesn't cost you anything, but you win friends, you win fans, the no like and trust. And now there is just just just to put a cap on that. I think that's a great example of another way that you can become an influencer. Because think of the positive impact you're having on behalf of these fears of influence of those people, you're featuring as your trusted, you know, provider list. Yep. And there's your content, you know, once a week, we're going to introduce one of our favorite providers. We're going to highlight a new partner once a week, exactly, exactly. So you love that. I love that. Yeah. So you, it's, you know, there's a lot of layers here, right? But once you start to appeal it, there's a lot of different ways in which you can influence others digitally. In someone of an easy way and you're adding value and you're making people happy, right? You're, you're solidifying relationships with them. And they, you know what, they're just going to be even bigger fans of you. And hopefully they're going to refer more business your way as well. Because we're human beings. That's how it works. Well, I hope by people listening to this, they get inspired and to share this also with somebody else that you think could benefit from hearing it. If you're a loan officer listening in a real estate agent should hear it, please pass it on to them because there's so many ideas to, to, as you say, peel away from this. You know, and there's so, there's so many things people could take into advantage of as agents or lenders to, to up their content game. But most aren't for whatever reasons and hopefully we broke through some of those. But if you choose to take this on, you too can be an influencer. You know, yesterday, our next door, it's almost saying I heard because of coronavirus that they're not going to raise lease fees in the apartment. But I just paid, you know, additional lease fees. What if an agent came in and said, hey, let me help you negotiate this? It's, I mean, it's, it's there for the taking. So, yeah, all kinds of ways to show up, all kinds of ways to show up and be of service online and social media. Hopefully you got some ideas today. So once again, let's go around the horn. Neil, for people who want to connect with you, where's the best place you want to send them? So it's, first of all, my name is sort of hard to spell. And there's no Starbucks brista that gets it right. So it's the real Neil NEAL, NEAL, and it's shape for SCH AFFER. So NeilShaffer.com, NeilShaffer, everyone's social media. The age of influence is the name of the book. And maximize your social influences, the name of the podcast. We'll just keep it real easy. Yeah, I love it. Thanks for being here, man. I learned a ton and I think our listeners did as well. So thank you so much. I'm honored to be here, man. Yeah, appreciate it. And listeners, you know what to do. If you like this episode, like I said, share it with somebody. Or, hey, leave us a review wherever you're listening to this. And we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. Hey, guys, what's up? Real quick. You've heard about the mortgage marketing pro, membership before. And you just want to quickly remind you if that you're in a place in your business where you simply need more purchased loans. You need to fill your pipeline with purchased business. Let's just face it, agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources of purchased business for you. Well, good news. Our mortgage marketing pro membership helps loan officers like you close more loans without the hassle of chasing agents or cold calling. Done for you, agent classes, expert training videos, a marketing automation platform that automates the entire process for you, everything you need to build your personal brand in your local market, attract and convert agents into referral partners. Plus, done for you proven marketing materials and plug and play content to make promoting your class, getting agents, butts and seats, partnering with affiliates, real easy. But that's not all. You'll also get access to our weekly mastermind calls with top L.O.'s authors, speakers and coaches to learn the best strategies to grow your business right now in today's market. And as an extra bonus for limited time, for all new members, you'll get access to a database of 200 agents in your local market that have closed anywhere from eight to 50 transactions in the last 12 months. And we'll provide that list uploaded into our platform for you so you can get off to a fast start in reaching actually productive agents. So what are you waiting for? You can check out more at mortgagemarketing.pro, see more of the success stories there. And if you feel compelled to do so, book a call, we'll have a chat. We'll see if it's a fit. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your mortgage business to the next level right now. Head over to mortgagemarketing.pro.