The Power of Video to Grow Your Business

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. When I started because it was about two years ago, so I was right when COVID hit. So started making a lot of videos, ton of content, COVID's there. So all the in-person networking events that we're doing were no longer. So it was about a year of doing it and I hadn't gotten a ton of growth from that. It was pretty localized still. And then we had the first, it was like a remax grand opening. This was the first in-person event since COVID. And when I went to this event, usually like when you're networking, it's, you know, hey, I'm Trevor. I do mortgages and blah, blah, blah. There were realtors coming up to me that I didn't know who knew exactly who I was. And they were all coming up having conversations of, I love your videos, man. I watched all of them. That's amazing. Can we link up and talk? And I'm like, this is realtors asking me to coffee now. And it was crazy seeing that flip. And again, that was not a huge following. This wasn't millions of views like I'm getting now. It's literally just making videos that are good quality and adding value. And it led to a ton of business. Hey, hey, Jeff Zimper, host of the Market to Market and Radio podcast. Thank you once again for tuning in. So thrilled you are here. We're going to get into this week's show in just a brief moment. But before I do, can I tell you how amazing it is to see loan officers succeeding in the current market, stepping out of their comfort zone, showing up and delivering value in their local market, attracting agents, getting referrals on demand. It's really impressive to see that, like, you know, sometimes life we're put in situations where we've got to do what we've got to do, right? It is what it is, right? Things don't change sometimes unless who changes, unless we change, right? And the change many of us need to make in the current market is to get active, to actually be in pursuit mode, right? And by pursuit, I don't mean chase, I don't mean beg, right? What I mean is pursue the activities that will generate the results, what they are, right? And one of those activities, of course, gets down to creating awareness in your local market, expanding your brand, driving more conversations with the shortest path to business, to sources of business that exist usually in your local market. Still today is going to be direct access to those productive, active real estate agents who are talking to clients, potential clients are generating leads. And by the way, there's a huge disruption going on that not many people are talking about. And that's the disruption of relationships. The disruption of relationships between what was the status quo of a real turn, a lender which is now in disruption or open to, right? Other solutions. Reason being is because in any market like we're in with a shift, the tectonic shift, what happens, right, is the plates move, the earth moves, right? And it creates friction and there's differences that happen and sometimes those relationships and sometimes those relationships aren't what they once were and certain people are open to new opportunities. This is your opportunity, right? You've heard that quotes ad nauseam, I'm sure by now, about now's the best time to invest, right? Is when there's quote, blood in the streets where people are afraid, people are nervous, some people are attracting, but not you, not my listener, you're expanding, you're going to reach into your local market and you're going to attract and capture new agents that you haven't worked with before, where you're going to activate those agents. You don't yet have a deep enough relationship with or even better, how about contacting those listening agents, the listening agents, yeah, that you were on the other side of the transaction with and you never pursued, well, here's a great opportunity and platform to do that. It's called my agent classes and it's part of the mortgage marketing grow membership. And we have got success story after success story after success story. You can go check them out yourself over at mortgagemarketing.pro. Here's my, here's one from Michelle Castle, a wonderful producer out in Texas, and a wonderful just human being, right? She's already a top producer, she's already a hundred million dollar producer. She likes the my agent classes content because it frees her up so she doesn't have to create class content. She just chooses her class and launches the marketing platform as that simple and she's in front of agents adding value driving conversations, both new and existing agents, right? And then of course, there's my one of my favorite stories from Chris Cogel who's been a member user of mine for a long time. He's been teaching classes for years and he recently received after doing classes for several months. He's accumulated 35 referrals, close 25 loans for a volume of 5.375 million all from agent classes, right? Here's Melissa Condensa, she held her first class today on social media trends for 2022. She had 12 agents in person and another six on zoom. The agents love the content. Now she's got engagement conversations and you know what happens after this, right? The resistance is down. You're not chasing. You're attracting. And when you follow our process for the post class follow up, you get meetings. You get conversations by guys and gals, this game of working with agents. You've got ABC level agents, all at different levels. People process technology, people, agents, referral partners. We still need them process. How are you getting in front of them? What systems and tools are you leveraging to scale and accelerate your results? I don't know of a better platform to do that than leading with education, be a virtual or in person classes. The whole system is done for you. Go look at it. Mortgage Marketing. GoPro. Okay. This week, especially episode coming to you with my new friend, but fast friend, Trevor York, who's a mortgage professional up in Reno and his works in the same office team of Neil Dinger, some of you may know Neil. I've had him on the show twice before I think. I recently went up to a content day with Neil where I filmed a half a dozen videos of my own that you're going to be seeing coming out and really kind of dialed in my video content strategy, which I'm grateful for Neil to Neil for helping me with that. If you're a considering and rolling in Neil's program, the content accelerator, day with Neil content, anything, Neil does is great. We'll make sure you check that out, but Trevor York, Trev York on Instagram, I'll put a link to his Instagram in the show notes, he's got 108,000 followers and he's only been originating for a few years, handful of years yet he's rocking 30 million a year. And why I brought Trevon is because not only does he know a heck of a lot about content and creation and the ins and outs and how to do video and things like that, but he's got his own cool stories about how using Instagram in particular to generate consumer direct leads as well, but also to build a build a bridge to those realtor conversations that we're all looking for. And so I just thought having Trevon would be a wonderful education, a crash course in leveraging video content and Instagram in particular to accelerate your results. So if you're looking for better results, more engagement, more leads coming your way, right? Conversations from Instagram. This conversation today with Trevor York is for you. So let's get into this week's show Trevor, welcome to show what's going on, Jeff. Hey, man. Good to see you again. Last time I saw you, I was up there in Reno getting some awesome video content, which I know we're going to talk about on this episode video content. I thought I'd kick it off though for listeners. Let's set the stage. Who is Trevor York? How long have been in mortgage? So yeah, loan officer been in mortgages coming up on six years. Okay. So built my business kind of the traditional way and then did a lot of stuff on social media. So now it's kind of funny because loan officer is obviously my day job, but a lot of people see me as a content creator now too. Yeah, right. Because somebody who doesn't necessarily know you per se, I mean, obviously you have an Instagram page. We'll talk about that. Any links you hear today gang, it'll be in the show notes. But let's let's go back then. So six years, first of all, what how'd you get in the business people? That's always curious. The origin story. Yeah, I think it's just like everybody. You don't, you don't plan on becoming a loan officer. I didn't even know this job existed prior to getting into it. Really long story, but the condensed version was I met a guy on a plane. I just started a business in casino gaming actually. So completely unrelated talk to that guy on the plane about it. So I'm again, a few months later, I'd sold the business. So when he was asking how it was going told them sold it. So I'm just skiing every day. So if you know anybody hiring like halfway kidding and he owned a title company and he's like, dude, I'll take you. So in the process of me going to like work for him at a title company, he actually ended up selling the title company going into lending. And he said, wherever I go, you have a place. So kind of a weird turn of events that led me in doing this. Then you got into originating loans and it was an instant success. No, definitely not. Yeah. Because that was about 2017, started 17. So I didn't do a re-fi for like two and a half years into the business. So for me, it was like your gaining credibility was your credibility. Right. I mean, yeah, first year I made close to nothing. And then it was interesting how quickly it starts to compound. But that first year was definitely not an instant success. I was a lot of grinding and phone calls and cold meetings and that's tough. Yeah, it is. It's actually tough to ramp up in this business and get that plane off the runway. What is your primary source of business today? Now a lot of it does come in one way shape or form. It comes from social media. That's a big pillar of the lead gen portion. And then there's still a lot of the traditional stuff of just calling on realtors and creating relationships with them, helping them with their marketing. Because I mean, you're the king of this, just find a way to add value and that's how you gain relationships and that's kind of the primary way. So even if they're not coming from social media by having the skill set that I've developed, it's definitely a leverage piece for me to get more relationships. All right. And can you give me a sense of like average units volume, you know, for the, for where are we now? 2021 or sorry. Yeah. Yeah. 20. Yeah. I don't even know. You know what I'm asking. I think over the last like, say 18 to 24 months, it's probably averaging around 3 million a month. So that's excluding like obviously the high months that we all had and then the freakishly low ones. So that's how the ballpark. Okay, man. Good for you. So like 30 million. That's good. That's really solid. Yeah. That's a good living. Yeah. Definitely. It beats working in the casino. That's for sure. Sure. So then this is why I wanted to have you on is because obviously I kind of get to see who you are and what you do when I was up there for the content day with Neil and group. And that's what I wanted to talk about is, you know, because we're riding this fence and you kind of alluded to it a moment ago is we're riding this fence. I use the term hybrid loan officer, right, which is somebody who's getting business from the traditional past database, referral partners, all kind of yes, but also getting business, you know, being modern online digital social, all that stuff. Yeah. Are you saying that you you kind of ride that fence like you get both sources? Yeah, definitely. But it's it is interesting how blurry that like the line is because there's the traditional way. There's the modern way. But it's the best way to I think take advantage of this modern way of getting business is to leverage it in the traditional form. So I think that's a piece of a lot of people misses. They think you just start making videos, you start doing online ads, whatever it is. And then all of a sudden you just get a massive amount of inbound, which you definitely do get those like the direct leads that come from creating this kind of stuff. But then using that skill set and those tactics to then go back to the traditional form of face to face relationships, that's where I'm seeing like the biggest return. So that line is it is funny because when people say like how much your business comes from social in some way, you could tie back almost all of it to that. So even if it's not a lead calling me from a video I made, it's a relationship I developed from it or for a partner that I wouldn't have gotten in the room with had I not done this stuff. Okay. So roughly six years ago, you started your career, were you good with this back then digital social media? Yeah. So I was actually like going through college, I would film weddings and shoot videos and stuff as as a hobby, past career was in television, live TV. So I always had a media background and want to do it. Social media has been definitely a moving target like you've seen it too. It's just you got to stay on it. So I've always been active on it, but not to the level I am now. And that video skill set's always been around, but now it's being applied very strategically. Well, if we roll back six years ago, right, it wasn't quite as prevalent as it is today. Like when you made that shift, you, I'm going to assume you probably started in the more traditional sense and did you, number one, did you start with like, you know, going after realtorches, door knock and all that? Oh, yeah. Yeah, cool calling. Okay. Wow, that's fun. Yeah. And when did you start layering in or when did this thing of social media and right, building a brand in presence, when did that open up for you? So it was actually about two years ago. So first four years in the business was completely old school was not utilizing this at all. I think in the first four years, I was doing loans. I made like two or three videos. And they got good responses. It's a different animal because it's a volume game. So I would put a lot of effort into these videos and how I'm shooting them, how I'm writing them, how I'm thinking about it. And then you're just not doing it enough. So it kind of worked to some level when people saw me, they're like, oh, yeah, man, you're doing like accounting or insurance or something, right? And I'm like, oh, loans, like, you know, everybody confuses the same like boring numbers. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, just saying the most boring job you could think of, but yes, I do mortgages. And then two years ago, I joined Neil, who is kind of all in on this stuff and me and him are in the same market. And there's nobody else in my market and even even like on a bigger scope, there's just not a lot of people doing this in the lending space. So joining him is when it started to go all in. And then we kind of developed this way of shooting videos that we have now, that's definitely not how it started. It was just, you know, turning on the camera and making boring videos. And then it progressed into how do we make these more watchable and engaging? So you started out not so as good as you are now. Absolutely. Yeah. Start off very bad. Which is interesting because, you know, this is why I love to illustrate this for those thinking, oh, you know, he's got the background and photography, all that jazz. But I mean, I think we all start out sucking, like learning this new medium, you know, great. Absolutely. Yeah. What do I, how do I place this put it? You don't even know what's going to get people to engage. I mean, you kind of do now because there's some patterns we've got a lot of history. Yeah, yeah. But I'm sure you're kind of a sort of like pioneering, you know what I mean? Yeah. And it's funny because like the background and video is great for like the technical aspect of being able to set a camera up and know how to do it. But any more, there's so many resources where if you really want to learn how to do it, you can figure out how to get a camera set up properly. And then our phones are so good that having the skill of using a camera is not as important as it used to be because a phone is going to get really good stuff. Right. So you buy a nice light, nice mic, watch a couple of YouTube videos, you're going to be able to get it to look right. And then the second piece is just sounding like you on video, which most of us know the first time you record yourself on video, it's painful to hear. Yes. And that's just the repetition. It's just like anything else, like you're not going to be really proficient at something right away. It's just like you're working time. Yeah. It's funny. So I was trying to think, you know, with the content day when I came back from that. And by the way, for those don't know what the content day is, that's essentially where you go up to your location, your office, you and Neil. For those of don't know Neil, you should. Neil Dingra will put a link to him in the show. It's at NeilHome.com and EEL. But Neil's like somebody in the industry who's definitely blazed a trail when it comes to content and putting a format together for that. But I would say to the point of confidence, that is probably other than the facets I got, the videos and the pics and all that kind of just, that was probably the biggest takeaway from that time I spent up there was seeing the formula live, you know, in real time and exchange, but then also just the confidence to be like, oh, that's all they do. Yeah. Dean mystifies it. Yeah. I mean, the main thing is just breaking down that barrier to starting. Cause it's like listening to you do a podcast. I mean, you're insanely good at driving conversations and carrying these and directing them. And if you've heard people who are trying to start podcasts, they're first like couple episodes. They're really rough. It doesn't flow, you know, and watching you do this is almost discouraging for someone that's trying to start a podcast. So even me, when I'm listening to you talk, I'm like, gosh, it's so easy for this guy. It's so fluid. Like, I don't know how to do that as someone driving a podcast, but I imagine, and maybe it was for you the first time, but was this similar process for you? Well, I know if I look back to the earlier podcast, they probably sucked. For sure. I'm going to be honest with that. Look at repetition is the mother skill, right? And once you get to this place of doing something over and over again, it just becomes kind of, um, you can go into that place of tapping into that resource and much more, I don't want to say it ever becomes like easy or you're just going to phone it in because you do have to follow a process or that there's a bit of preparation. But what you have is this, this base of confidence because you're like, I've either done this enough, like, I know what I'm here to do. I've got my purpose, my intention, my focus, and I know my process. That's what it comes down to you, I think. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like gym analogies get used way too much, but it is so true on like, we see the guy at the gym who's bill has whatever you're trying to achieve. You go on to the gym, you do a couple of pushups, you're not going to look like him. Right. And then you'll look at someone like that and be like, man, so easy, he knows exactly what lifts to do. Like, there's some, there's definitely methodical, like they know what reps they're doing. They know what lifts they're doing. But once you put in the work to get there, it's still, it's like, there's still a process to it, but it becomes a lot easier and yeah, just demystifies it. And it does help to have a coach, both individually and with your, you know, digital strategy. 100%. I would say, you know, again, that's part of the benefit of being there as I walked out of there with a renewed sense of confidence. And now there's no excuses because you're like, all right, you went there, you spent the money and time, you learned and saw the process. You walked away with assets, the actual deliverables, what you're going to publish. Like dude, if you don't keep going from there, you're, it's, you're the one, you know, you've got the dad bod because you didn't get their sizes, you know? Yeah. Yeah. 100%. It's amazing how many people still get hung up on it and don't continue. All right. That's good conversation. All right. So now I'm looking at your Instagram. Internet 1000 followers, you slacker. How much do you focus on that? Like how relevant is that in your consideration of, you know, your overall digital presence? It's funny because now it helps me in other ways. So I'm learning to use that in itself as an advantage and as a piece of like helping me get business from it. At the start, like in the process of building it, it meant absolutely nothing to me. Like I legitimately did not care about followers and care about likes or views. All I cared about was making videos that would help people lead to me doing more business. And that was the goal for it. I wasn't trying to be an influencer. I just wanted to grow my business and I like making videos and it's fun. And so I always like to tell people because sometimes that is a, is a barrier for them of I need to get to this level before it works. Like I was seeing a substantial impact on my business with sub 1000 followers, just connecting with people locally and making videos that is beneficial to them was having massive upside in my business. For example, what people communicate with you in the DMs and ask to be pre-qualled or something. So some of that, but the best story for it was when I started because it was about two years ago, so I was right when COVID hit. So started making a lot of videos, ton of content, COVID's there. So all the in person networking events that we're doing were no longer. So it was about a year of doing it and I hadn't gotten a ton of growth from that. It was, it was pretty localized still. And then we had the first, it was like a remax grand opening. This was the first in person event since COVID. And when I went to this event, usually like when you're networking, it's, you know, hey, I'm Trevor, I do mortgages and blah, blah, blah. There were realtors come up to me that I didn't know who knew exactly who I was. And they were all coming up, having conversations of, I love your videos, man, I watch all of them. That's amazing. Can we link up and talk? And I'm like, this is realtors asking me to, to coffee now and it is crazy seeing that flip. And again, that was not a huge following. This wasn't millions of views like I'm getting now. It's literally just making videos that are good quality and adding value. And it led to a ton of business. A lot of people ask and somebody recently came up on a conversation about the content being realtor versus consumer focused. If you have to make a choice or not, can you blend the two? What do you think? I'd always go consumer. It's a much bigger pool. And if you're benefiting the consumer, you're benefiting the realtors, you're benefiting the lenders. Like everybody wins if you're making stuff targeted towards this is an actual example. Somebody asked me they wanted to promote what they did a video on Instagram about an upcoming class they're doing, that agent class. And I told them it needs to be a real, not one of those animated videos that doesn't have your face in it. Yeah. Real with you talking. And his comment was, you know, I was trying to, I think he said because he was consumer focused, he didn't want to put the real estate focus class out, but what would your advice be on that? A lot of people get focused on like, I don't want to change the theme of my page or, you know, that's straight too far away from what my focus is. And platforms have changed a ton in the last couple of years. They're very algorithm focused. So when you think about like Instagram or TikTok or YouTube, any of them, their sole focus is time on platform. That's how they went public. That's how they have billions of dollars is there selling time on platform. What that means is they're going to show you what you would like to see in order to keep you on the platform. So anymore, you don't have to like, if you, if you stray from your usual stuff, so you're making growth pieces to have a broad reach and aiming for the consumers. And then all of a sudden you switch one like that. It doesn't kill your profile. I think that's a misconception a lot of people have is like, I need to keep it on theme or it's going to hurt me. If you make a bad video and then the next one's good, the next one's going to be shown to people because Instagram just wants people on the platform and the bad one wants. Bad one wants. So if you're making one localized talking about a real estate class, like it's going to reach the people it's supposed to reach and then it'll stop there and it's not going to be your best performing video, but there's no downside to it. Yeah. That's a better answer than I gave. My answer was, if anything, it would add to your credibility for the consumers. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. That's it. I don't know if that was self-serving, but that's just, you know, you're right. Yeah. Look at me. I on the flip side of that though, the content that the real, the remax example you gave, that was consumer facing content that they were like, oh, Trevor, what's up? Yep. Yeah. I'm going to get it realtor's. All of it was stuff that, because when you think about it and you kind of went through this process with Neil and I when we're helping right in your videos is, how can we take something that's, even if it's not complex, just how do we take anything and make it as short and simple as possible? So by sitting in a room and figuring out like what ideas we want to come up with and deliver to consumers, we're giving realtor's amazing talking points to use with their consumers. We're giving them shareable content. That's 30 seconds that they can share with their consumers. So it's cool because they get so much value out of watching consumer facing content that it doesn't need to be directed at them. They know this is helping them. And obviously it's building your credibility, expertise, brand, cash, that's the biggest word I used all day today. I like it. Yeah. You know, man, we get a little fancy here sometimes on everything. Here we go. Orange, a little bit. We use the word demystifying too. That was cool. That is a good one. No, I'm glad. See, that's a huge takeaway for those that are listening about like they're stuck between the content. So what I heard was you can't go wrong with a consumer focus because that's the bigger. That's what you're trying to do anyways. You can get the realtor business through the more traditional means we've talked about. However, I've also interviewed other people who use Instagram to farm, to pursue real estate agents and get a place, have you done anything like that? Yeah. Absolutely. And that's part of when you're making these things and you have kind of your portfolio now built out DMing agents that follow you or following agents that don't. So then obviously reciprocity, they follow you back. They see all the stuff. Then you DM them. It's no longer like this ice cold message because they feel like they know you they've seen your face. They've heard you talk and the the amount of responses you get from that tactic of reaching out through Instagram is, I mean, and I don't know if this is for everybody, but I'm seeing like a hundred percent response rate to those. After you've, I mean, give me an example of how you reach out. So it would be just something about like, if so if I'm trying to build a realtor relationship, finding someone that's making videos, even if they're terrible and just saying like, hey, see the videos you're making. That's awesome. Keep killing it. If you want to link up and talk about this stuff, let me know I'd love to have you drop out of the office. And now, naturally, they're going to click on your stuff, look at your things. And it's like, wow, you're making this at a really high level, people are engaging with it. You like my stuff. And then you, you know, offer a way to help them make their stuff better. All right. Let me play, play a devil's advocate here. What about a person who's not, who doesn't have the content like you who isn't, you know, doing your thing, and you know, can they still reach out and leverage Instagram to build relationships? Yeah, I think absolutely because it just, it just makes it where it's not a cold reach out. So even if your, your Instagram is made up of you, your family picks, your skin, right and your bikes, like, you're going to look like a real person. And then hopefully you're targeting people that, you know, would be a similar fit for you to work with. But yeah, I think Instagram is just a great way to reach out because it's not, I mean, we get so many emails and text messages and you dehumanize those when you reach out through Instagram. You're, you're humanizing yourself. Right. Right. Well, but yeah, plus partly through email or text, there's really no way to kind of sniff you out and see what you're all about. Obviously, on Instagram, it's very easy. I can just click over to your profile and see what you got and like, oh, yeah, he likes dogs or he's a, you know, I'm freaking Niners fan or whatever. Yep. That's cool. Are you, do you have a main focus for a platform? Definitely Instagram right now has been the focus. And then YouTube's kind of the thing that I'm, I'm starting to embark on now and figure out. Are you posting the TikTok also? Yeah. So I repurpose all the stuff I do from Instagram on YouTube shorts and TikTok and Facebook as well. And it's crazy because we're seeing a lot of like traction on those platforms as well, especially YouTube shorts. And then Facebook, it's actually your business page on Facebook. You could post Reels 2 directly. And some of our students and our accelerators seeing like huge reach on that as well. And I've had a few videos get some good traction there as well. That's cool. I'm trying to pull you up here on a, on a TikTok and of course, it goes to the first video, which the audio goes off while you're trying to talk, um, always annoying. All right. I hadn't followed you on TikTok, but now I have to okay, here we go. Is there any differences you want to mention about TikTok versus Instagram? I think TikTok is a different, uh, it's a different animal as much as like the basics of making content that people want to watch is a lot more pop culture. Um, you don't have to worry as much about the hooks as, as much as like finding a way to entertain just because the way that TikTok works, it's, it's a lot of entertaining videos. Like more so than some of the stuff that you're seeing on Instagram. So you just have, you have to definitely mix it up. And if you're, if you're making stuff for TikTok, you kind of want to be intentional with that platform. Yeah. So that's what makes me curious is TikTok, just the way you're looking at that is like, Hey, I already got these short form videos. I'm also thrown over there. It's really not a focus, but is that kind of your approach? Yeah. Yeah. That's been the, it's just my, my assistant repurposes it throws on it because we have them, but it definitely hasn't been a focus of mine. Do you think you really need to focus on a single or two platforms to succeed? Yeah. I think, I think so because if you make, uh, if you're not being intentional with how you're making it, you're not going to see bigger results. So the people that are really going all in on YouTube shorts and trying to create an account that gets traction are going to see more success with it. So I think like knowing what your focus is and then it's always good to repurpose the stuff like I've even thrown it on LinkedIn. And I've had conversations on LinkedIn that have led to business. So if you have the stuff to repurpose it just in the, in the like spirit of sustainability of if you're trying to make five different forms of content for five different platforms, like it's not sustainable and you're going to burn out. Right. So if you could find one that you're going to go all in on and you might as well repurpose this stuff because even if you're not seeing the massive upside, you'll probably see something from it. Yeah. And it's just a matter of a little bit of extra time if you already got the content created. Yeah, exactly. Why not? Hmm. So Instagram is your pro any reason why Instagram was the thing for you? Is that because you're, you know, whole background you think or yeah. I think for me, it was when we started in on it, it was kind of pre-tick talk. And then as Reels came out, Reels was something that we were seeing a lot of success in and then seeing this growth on our accounts. So it's kind of just double down and keep feeding what it is that's hungry. And then also for the part of like the reason I love Instagram more than any of the other platforms is because of the DMs. So there's the ability to do it in TikTok. And I think you too, but it's, it's significantly underutilized. And then also if, if you want to have conversations and relationships with people, you, you naturally go to Instagram to connect with them. So if I'm trying to connect with Realtors in my market, which is kind of like step one if you're building this stuff out is connect with the people you want to see your stuff. I'm no way of really doing that on on TikTok or YouTube. That's just going out into the ether and, you know, trying to get reach for the sake of reach. Are you using hashtags at all in your strategy? Yeah, but they don't, it was the, the president of Instagram was actually talking about how it kind of helps the algorithm categorize what it is you're making, but doesn't really help with reach reviews on that much. So I've kind of copy and paste in the same hashtags for the last year. Yeah, I mean, I kind of do that as well. It's interesting. This whole world of social media, as you know, you can have, you can have competing positions and data on stuff because I'm a big guy. Like I like to like dig into the, the data like I'm like, I know when that came out, when what's his name, Adam Messeroni or whatever's known to do from Instagram, he came out and said that then there's some other Instagram experts that actually ran tests against that, right? When they said, Hey, less than 30 hashtags and all that. And they ran tests against that and and had data that showed, well, I used 30 hashtags like I've always been and I had bigger rank and reach and all that. You know, so Adam, you know, yeah, well, that's what it's like, was that a correlation or causation, right? Like if you're making amazing stuff and put 500 hashtags, your stuff's still going to reach people. So I'm like, Oh, it's because I did 500. It's like, no, it's probably because your videos were good. Yeah. And then that's the debate, right? Which is just been putting out the same videos I've always put out. But yeah, I don't understand what you're saying. Yeah, and it's so weird though, because there's, there's so many immeasurables like people think of this, the, the algorithm is a pretty like black and white thing of this than that. But when you think about it, if you put this in like 12 point font, this would take up like a mile long wall, like the algorithm goes into the brightness of the video. How often you're smiling, it's used in AI and machine learning to focus on the words and what time do people want to hear you talk about finance? Is it during the day or when they're at home? Because at home, they want to be entertained. They don't want to learn. But when they're at work, all of a sudden they're stressed out and they want to escape. So then they're listening to these people talk about how to become a billionaire. And it's like, there's so much depth to it that I don't think you could trick the algorithm. And especially because they invest a lot of time in energy making sure you don't trick the algorithm because again, the whole point is they want to keep people on the platform. So they only want to show what is watchable good content. Do you try and post your videos at the same time? No, actually have tried a bunch of different times and seen zero correlation on on each. Oh, so you tested different times and you haven't seen it differently? No, I mean, I'll post on Sunday evenings and have a ton or lunch and have a ton and then do the same time a different day and the video doesn't do as well. So that whole best times to post thing? Again, that was more like when it was a, when the timeline was chronological, it was really important because you wanted to reach the maximum amount of people before it just gets pushed down on this timeline. But now, again, you post something at one in the morning and the 15 people that are on Instagram all watch it to completion. It's going to keep showing that and keep showing that and then you're going to get that, that reach. Interesting. What's been anything surprising to you on this Instagram or this content creation strategy, something either good or not so good that you didn't expect? I think the surprising part for me was how like I kind of talked about it earlier, but I enjoyed having the smaller reach a little bit, like making more localized content. Yeah, and it's funny because it gave me more freedom to like, I knew who I was talking to. And now when you have such a broad audience and you get just tons of DMs and people asking questions, and now when I make videos, I have to make sure that it applies to 100,000 people rather than the 700 that I kind of know are all in my space or all in my city. And now it's like, I got to make more broad styles of content. So I think that was the one surprise for me was I think I just find it funny that I really enjoyed the the smaller. You get a lot of DMs? Yeah. Like I might be a rough ballpark. I mean, probably five to ten a day. I'm telling you that. And this is none of them are qualified. So I mean of all different types. Yeah, of all different types. I mean that you get a ton of like just people who, because when you're in finance to a lot of people, just hope that you have some secret hack to becoming wealthy. So there's a lot of like dead conversations in there. A lot of realtors and other lenders, which is cool. But then a lot of people just asking for questions on how to shoot videos and you know, a lot of a lot of asks. So then it's just it's kind of a one-way street in the DMs and feels like sometimes. This is kind of putting you on the spot, but in terms of a number, you could correlate to, you know, to your presence on, let's just say Instagram, for loans or volume. Is that a fair question or two? That's what I'm saying is it's really hard because in some way I can tie back almost all of them to like if I get a realtor from social and that realtor sends me 20 deals, then feels like all 20 of those deals came from social. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like it's hard to I was thinking about linear, right? Because I know there's a case studies or examples that I know of where you know, yeah, somebody DMed you, dude, tell me about that, you know, zero-down program, whatever. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Those, I mean, not as much as you would think. A lot of them too, it's your personal sphere, which is kind of neat is when you're making these videos. It's reaching people that maybe I haven't seen in 10 years, that again, prior to doing this, would have seen me and be like, oh, yeah, you're doing like insurance or something, right? Where now when I see anybody that I know if they're connected with me on any of these, like it'd be shocking for them not to know what I do. Right. So I get a ton of personal sphere deals that I don't think I would have gotten had I not been doing this or I know for sure I would not have gotten had I not been doing this. All right. I'm clicking your link here on your Instagram profile and it takes you to this cool landing page. Yeah. Got work with me. Actually, because this is going to go on YouTube for those listening, make sure to check the link in the show notes to YouTube. There you go. Trying to grow the YouTube, baby, you know. I like it. All right. So you've got this kind of pre-qual page or just learn more page with different options. Work with me for realtors, see how we can work together, join our community, Facebook group. Oh, Facebook group. Yeah. I didn't even know that. Let's see what that's all about. Is that anything you want to say about that? Yeah. So it's funny about that. And hopefully the people listening are more realtors and lenders than consumers. But I made this as just a I needed to have something to capture people. And I've not done anything with this yet. And I think there's like 350 people in it and I haven't done anything. But I have it there now. So at some point when I figure out what I what I'm going to do with it, pre-consultation. What's this realtor thing? Are realtors using this button at all? Yeah. Let's work together. What's what's the premise of that? Let's work. So a lot of this was just like, I'm getting a lot of realtors following me and engaging with my stuff. And I need just needed to have something to when they go here know that we could work together. And these are the states that my team and I do business in and having something specific. And so there's a video on here that says how I introduce myself says the states I'm in and how I help my realtors. Which I'm pretty neat. Well, that's cool. I love you. I mean, you're taking control. You're not chasing, right? It's like, oh, you want to talk great. Here's my calendar link. You know, let's talk. Yeah. And it's funny because so many people do this wrong. Jeff, like this is one of the things that I talk about a lot when when I'm helping realtors or other lenders or our students is like, you go to their Instagram, you hit the link in their bio and then it's pushing you to like their YouTube, their Facebook, their TikTok, their and then if you click on it, it's the exact same repurposed content. So why are we pushing people to this stuff? Like you're not going to see any conversion. So instead focusing on like what what is going to be on the mind of the consumer? So for me, it's direct leads or realtor lender relationships. So when you click on the link in my bio, you're going to like, all right, if I'm a buyer who wants to buy what are my options? You could join a mailing list, join a community. So if you're really early on in the stages, that's kind of where you'd go. Free consultation, which we kind of when the industry know is a pre-approval, but significantly more people click free consultation than get pre-approved because it's a lot less threatening. And then people that are taught ready to go, you have the pre-approval option. So I kind of just giving like whatever state someone in my audiences in, I should have an answer or something for them to take action on in the bio. Interesting. Yeah, it's a very smart use of that real estate. That real estate meaning that the link in bio thing. Yeah, like what you said, there's why would we drive them to repurposing of the same content they already saw? That's pretty brilliant right there. And if someone clicks in there, they're not looking to just get pushed in all these different directions. Like you want them to be able to work with you, talk with you, have a non-threatening way to move forward with you. Which reminds me of this realtor who I like. I don't think me don't know, is there a tie-in to Carla up in LA? Linktree here. So Linktree is something, it's obviously very popular, but this is like to me a cardinal sin. For those who can't see this, Linktree is a link in the bio where you can drive them to a page that gives you, and by the way, she's a badass real estate agent. Like she sells a ton of real estate. She's right. But the link in here, she's got like 15 different items of way too many men. That's a little overwhelming. A little overwhelming. Yeah, yours is just very clean to the point. Where did it go right here? You got one, two, three, five options, right? So this better. Join our VIP list. Oh, this is for videos sent straight to you tips in your inbox. Yeah, that one's been cool too, because I put that in there and I don't really have any CTAs. I'll put in the description of my videos to just, hey, make more videos like this, going to more depth, click the link in my bio if you want more information. And I think that one has like 400 people on the list now, which is cool. Just that voluntarily raised their hand saying, please send me more information. Those are a mix of consumers and realtors. Those are 95% consumers. And then there are definitely some lenders. I just want to see what it is. I'm sending my clients. Sure, yeah, makes me want to obtain too. That's really smart too, because this is a way to get them on your quote newsletter, right? VIP, whatever. This also could be, you could use Homebot here. Homebot or something like that, which is something good. Don't send banana recipes, send relevant information that has a high open rate like Homebot, for example. It's cool because that was again, just something I hadn't been capitalizing on. And you're getting millions of people engaging with their stuff. And then you have nowhere to funnel them or drive them. And it's cool that without really doing any verbal CTAs that it's grown to that number, because it's, I mean, the fact that there's 400 people saying, please spam my inbox with information about loans is like amazing to me. Well, and that goes to what we were saying earlier, about you've built the trust with the content previously. So they're like, hey, I want more of what this guy does, man. That's good stuff. I guess the last question or two is any advice on, like I'm looking at your graphics, your video overlay, which is that blue and white text box, essentially. This is just my own curiosity. Is there any relevance to changing that up over time? I know you've got different colors, but essentially the layout or format. Is that relevant at all? Not really. That's just more of a taste on, you know, when people see a video, they click on your profile, what do they see? For me, I geek out on this stuff. I don't think it does anything for your growth, but it is part of all your personal brand. Like, what are you doing to build that? So for me, I just want it to be clean, precise. And then also when you flick through my profile, you know, you could go watch any of those videos, because you know what I'm talking about. It's like a brand awareness thing. It's like this is clearly you, okay? Yeah. And then it also just becomes a library, a resource where you could click on that and go back as far as you want. And you know what videos you want to click on. Now, I'm going to ask this question. I think I know your answer. I already asked a question of Neil. You've got one carousel on here, right? And a carousel for those who don't know is essentially a series of images that if you're on your mobile phone, you swipe right left and you can have the 10 images. There was a time not that long ago that I was reading about carousels being the overlooked opportunity. Yeah. Facebook. What's your take? I think what you said is 100% accurate. There was a time. And at one time that was like, people were sleeping on it. There was awesome. The engagement was higher. It was pushing these to people. People love sharing carousels. That time was short lived. And they're still, you know, it's interesting because there's people in like the writing space. I see a lot do this. And it's very simple. It's less graphics than it used to be. Like a lot of people used to focus on this ongoing image. Now the ones that are seen a ton of success with their like tweets. So it's just a series of tweets that they put into a carousel. Really? Yeah. And those are the ones that people are still growing their accounts doing very simple straightforward things. But you have to be incredibly good at writing copy. Yes. And I think that's a really hard skill to master. Well, I like to bring up our boy, Chris Doe. Chris is a beast. Yeah. Now you mentioned you got to be really good at writing. Oh, there's that. There's more, right? There's more. Oh, wow. Cool. You got to be really good at writing copy. And Chris, of course, is a design ninja. Yeah. And I wish I could see his analytics on this. But it's interesting. It goes back to really the bigger question is, you know, your strategy, who are you? What do you do? What do you sell? Chris is Chris is a graphic design person, right? And provides, you know, solutions to help graphic designers build their brand and all that kind of stuff and create. So he's a creator. So it would make, I think a little bit more sense that he would have carousels. And the thing with Chris, though, is that man has, he's a wizard. And he's built a ton of authority over time. Like he has built this audience up to where what he makes is going to get on their feet because he has people that rock hard with him and always want to see that his stuff. So as a growth tactic, it's really difficult. If you have like the audience that doe has, there's they're going to see what you're posting. Yeah. Yeah. But and and Neil's experimented with a lot more than I have. But his carousels are kind of DOA now relative to what you could get with with video. Yeah. I think it's interesting. I don't know. I'm going to hold off judgment on that because, you know, I think in situational like if I think about a travel like page or something like that, pictures, carousels would seem to be right might get more even there. Because believe it or not, there are some people who are like, depending on the what it is, they're consuming. It's like, I don't want to watch a video, man. Can I just read it? You know what I mean? Yeah. A hundred percent is my assistant prior to working with me managed a, there's a scuba diving company. And that a really big following, organic following that they had built up. And it was a lot of photos and informational stuff about scuba diving in the environment and really, really solid engagement. And then as we started to see this kind of reels era of Instagram take off, she was managing this and it kind of just fell off a cliff. So they pivot into reels and they see the engagement go back up. And she's still it's weird because it's a, it's a crapshoot on some of them still get reach photos. But the vast majority now are, are not getting what they used to. Like not even remotely close. And again, it comes back to the platform because that's what they're pushing is the short video. Yeah. And the audience you built out to, it's the audience is huge. All right. There's been some good nuggets and lessons, man. I appreciate it very much. Yeah. Absolutely. Thanks for having me on here, man. Let's do this for anybody who wants to learn more, wants to level up their game when it comes to content and video. Obviously, you heard me rave earlier about the content day with Neil. That's currently not available. So there is something else called the content accelerator. You want to explain what that is briefly? Yeah. So Neil Binger and I his Instagram's at Neil home. Me and him have an accelerator where we teach students how to get better at social. So we have biweekly Zoom calls. We have all these training modules that you get a portal you log in. You see how to set up your studio, how to set up your Instagram, optimize it. And then we also write scripts. And there's about 15 of them a month that you get in your inbox. And then you can get started on social media. And you don't have to worry about what you say because you figured it out for you. Yeah. And that to me is what I call a no brainer because what you're going to, I mean, look at the biggest, the biggest problem I'm sure you know this too is what do I post? What do I say? Yeah. And you guys are solving that problem. And that community is amazing too because there's so much support in there. And then there's a Facebook group and everybody interacts with each other because a lot of people are different phases of their journey. And it's cool seeing like so many other people go through it with you because you don't feel like you're on an island and you're isolated. Right. Yeah. So it has my highest endorsement. I'm not getting anything for this guy's listening. So just so you know, that's, you know, not how I wanted to roll here. It's just because I've gotten so much value out of it. And we're going to put a link in the show notes so you can check out more to the content accelerator. It's all done online and zoom in Facebook groups, which is cool. And you can kind of learn at your own pace. But you will. And then if you guys want a DM me too and tell me that that you heard this on Jeff's podcast will hook up your listeners and give them a discount. That will be the link in the show notes will be Trevor's Instagram handle, which one should give that out. By the way, it's at Trev York at Trev York. So it's at Trev York Instagram handle. If you're listening right now on your mobile phone, you know what? Just go to Instagram and look him up. So that will all be in there for the content accelerator as well. Which by the way, you know your big time when you have somebody who's trying to swipe your account. Gosh, unfortunately, man, I think there's like 11 of them right now. For those listening, yeah. So what's funny is you and I were kind of messaging and everything. And just yesterday, I got a DM from this other Trevor York, which is like Trevor underscore York. Yeah, asking for crypto and yeah, that's not me. I'll never ask you for crypto. You can tell when it's not you, you know, the person you know and they're like, hey, yeah, that people send me screenshots of like, hey, is this you in the opening messages? Like, hi, sweetheart. I'm like, no, that's not that's not me. I don't talk like that. Yeah, there's only three guys that message me with that. Yes. And I'm excited to read your book to a man. Oh, yeah, you got it there. I cracked it open and I'm excited to get going on it. Be honest, it's a coaster right now, right? No, it's sitting on the my bookshelf, but I'm taking that home with me. Awesome. Awesome. There's there's what do you call that when there's something in there, you know, there's somebody supposed to find an Easter egg, right? Is that it? Yeah. So this will make you finish it. There's an Easter egg. There you go. Yes. So I can't lie to you and say, I read it. If I haven't, something to get it done with Van Halen. It's just like, you know, if you get the whole, you know, that story, man, you might be too young. No, yeah, no, no, no. All right. We'll close out on this. So one of my favorite bands of all time saw him in 1979, first, first concert, mine melted. And so they used to have this rider in their, in their agreement for doing shows around the world, right? And this is harms and buried in there. They had all these, you know, it's a contract, right? So buried in there is like line 417 is like no brown M&Ms in the hotel room, right? And though they ask for M&Ms, but take all the brown M&Ms out. And so if they got to the hotel room or backstage, it was actually if they found brown M&Ms, they're like, all right, stop production. This means that the dudes who set up the show and the lighting rig and all that did not read the rider and therefore hold on. Wow. And they were like trash the room and all this kind of stuff. She's the famous story. And the whole point of it though was like, it was the Easter egg, which was if they didn't take that out, that told them they didn't pay attention to the details and something could happen. Yeah. Yeah. So that's interesting. I like that. So you hid one of those in the book. Not literally brown M&M, but yeah, sort of a sort of yeah, the in the in the the very short time mean you got to interact with each other. I took away so much value from just like these short conversations that I've been applying to my and this was I mean, that was what a week ago. Yeah. And I've literally already, I mean, on Monday started using some of the tactics that you and I had gone over. And yeah, I'm incredibly grateful to gotten to know you and I can't wait to dive into this because if five minutes with you delivered value, I can only imagine what pages will do. It's very kind. Hopefully I keep your attention with the book. I'm like, hand the Easter egg is either there or it's missing and it could be in the chapters. I don't know, but so that's enough about that. I'm sure we're all busy. We got to jump to our next appointments. Everybody listen, Trevor, you guys are awesome. Everyone listening, you need to check them out and follow the links in the show notes to go learn more about content accelerator. Thanks for being here, man. Thanks so much, Jeff. Appreciate it. You bet listeners, you know what to do. If you like this episode, leave us a review and or check out the show notes. And I will 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 I just want to quickly remind you of that you're in a place in your business where you simply need more purchase loans. You need to fill your pipeline with purchase business. Let's just face it, agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources of purchase 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 seeds, 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 to 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.