I Broke My Golden Rule, Be Consistent.

Real Estate Marketing Dude

I always tell people you've got to be consistent. It's not just consistent in the videos you create or the content you create, but it's consistent in everything you do in life. Consistency is when you get results. I want to first start off by just apologizing to you guys, because I broke my own rule. And if you are an avid listener of the show, you realize that I haven't published in two or three weeks out of the last five. I've never done that throughout the history of the show. I totally regretted it, but I'll be honest with you, I got a little burnt out. I didn't have enough time to go out there and create the show, I had a guest cancel and I should have went out and created it. But consistency is what's gotten the show to be what it is.

I made a mistake. I realized something I was doing wrong in my own business and I broke my own golden rule. I had to come back, hit myself in the head and start being brilliant at the basics. What we're going to be chatting about today is the importance of consistency. I'm going to go through and show you guys on how I broke my own rule relating to consistency and why it's important.

Three Things You’ll Learn in This Episode

• The power of consistency
• Step by step how to get started (or re-started) on being consistent
• How to stand out from your competitors

Resources

Real Estate Marketing Dude

The Listing Advocate (Earn more listings!)

REMD on YouTube

REMD on Instagram

Transcript:

This podcast is all about building a strong personal brand people have come to know, like trust, most importantly, refer. But remember, it is not their job to remember what you do for a living.

It's your job to remind them. Let's get started. What's up ladies and gentlemen, welcome to their episode of the real estate marketing

goad podcast, folks, what we're going to be chatting about today is it's just me, me and you, one on one, I made a mistake. And I had, I realized something I was doing wrong in my own business. And I broke my own golden rule. And I had to come back, hit myself in the head and go back and start being brilliant at the basics, excuse me. And what we're going to be chatting about today is the importance of consistency. So what we're going to start versus I'm going to go through and show you guys on how I broke my own rule. For those you guys that know me, I always tell people, you got to be consistent, you've got to be consistent. It's not just consistent in the videos you create or the content you create. But it's consistent in everything you do in life consistency, is when you get results. If I wanted to, I'll give you a perfect example. So I probably lost about 10 to 15 pounds in the last two months give or take. And the only reason was is because I was being consistent in my diet. I was being consistent with the peloton was a however you say it. And I was always just kept showing on up. And no matter when you're building a brand, it really does require the exact same thing. And I want to first start off by just apologizing to you guys, because I broke my own rule. And if you are an avid listener of the show, you realize that I haven't published in two, I think actually went two or three weeks out of the last five, I've missed a show. I've never done that throughout the history of the show. And although I was just I totally regretted it, I just you know, I'll be honest with you, I got a little burnt out, I didn't have enough time to go out there and create the show I had a guest cancel and I should have went out and created it. But consistency is what's gotten the show to be what it is. In January of this year, we surpassed over 1 million downloads on this show on this podcast. Thank you guys for your reviews your comments, and you just started sharing the word and how we got there was through being consistent. See, I started the podcast in 2014. And it was zero audience zero anything but what I kept doing was showing up and publishing one a week no matter what. I never skipped a beat. I didn't run ads to this podcast. Once I didn't sit there and promote the podcast, I sort of talked about it nonchalantly. But it's not like we're running traffic here or anything like that. What we do is we share valuable content to all of you guys, people, investors, real estate agents, mortgage brokers in all the above. And because we keep consistently sharing these dis podcast, this is a form of media that has helped develop the real estate marketing dude brand. As a matter of fact, I would even go out on a limb and say if I didn't create this podcast in 2014, I would be a dead man standing right now. Because this podcast alone is responsible for much of our client generation from real estate marketing dudes video services. So you would think naturally that I'd be motivated to never miss a beat being that I attribute so much of our success to this podcast. But the truth is, is that look, life gets in the way. And everything we're doing is content. So I'm going to call myself out on this podcast. And we're going to make fun of myself today. And we're going to talk about how I broke all the rules and the results it had to my business. And it is no differently than when you're out there creating content and you forget to do something, and you just don't end up doing it at all. So I want to give you several different examples because my website traffic over the last three weeks has dropped significantly. Now the reason for that is because I wasn't publishing consistently. And the truth is, I'm probably gonna lose a couple of subscribers, I'm probably going to lose a couple of followers, because when you're creating a brand consistent communication to the same audience, over time is how you do it. So we're gonna go step by step, I'm gonna show you how this podcast through consistency work. I'm gonna show you how video through consistency works. But nothing works unless you're consistent. So do not ever do what I just did, by not publishing a couple of weeks in a row because that's the worst thing you can do for your business. And there is more than enough time in the day to find it and get this type of content created. So let's talk about why consistency is so important. And when we're building a brand, whether you're doing it on video, or you're doing a podcast like this, it's all about creating content, right? This podcast is a form of audio content I no longer publish the videos on so Social media and Facebook and all that, although I probably should, but we got too busy. But I am still trying to be as consistent, I promise you, I won't miss another episode. But every Saturday we publish this content. Now, as a result of that, because we're consistently adding value, it's people, I remain on top of mind. You know, when when you're creating content with video, you're putting your face in front of people. And that's the difference between a podcast and a video series.

If I'm in the real estate business, I am not starting a podcast, the only reason I have a podcast is because we can serve nationally real estate agents, lenders, and all all these other people and people were teaching and sharing tactical attraction, marketing tips, video marketing tips, all kinds of tips that people would want to listen to. However, if I was a real estate agent or a lender in a local market, it's gonna be very hard to develop a content strategy just in the form of a podcast, which is just audio, and actually have a lot of success with it. You have to remember that, you know, you guys are the brand. Ultimately, as long as you're in control of your own business, you're not working a job, you're running a business. And how you run a business is you have to always be promoting that business. And that's what content creation really does. See, when you're creating content, you're doing it consistently, you're not doing it for lead generation, but you are doing it for attention generation. And I still believe that real estate is one giant, popularity contest, because the vast majority of business comes from people that we already know, not from complete strangers. However, if we're out of sight, if we're out of mind, guess what? We might get cheated on that weekend. So I want to ask you guys a question. And I want to ask you, how do you? How do people remember that you're in the business, whatever the trade is? And I don't want you to say, Oh, everybody already knows I'm in business. Because my next follow up question, I'm asking me, Okay, how many people have cheated on you, with another real estate agent or lender in the past 12 months? And the answer is, for most people is going to be quite a few. We have to remember that it's not your databases job or your community's job to send you business, but it is your job to remind them to send you business. And that alone should motivate you with being consistent in whatever type of content creation you're doing. In content creation today is absolutely necessary, regardless of what business you're in. Look at from this point of view. We're all selling the same stuff. I did a video the other day at an event and I was asking people, Hey, what's the difference between you? And your competition? So if you're a real estate agent, what's the difference between you and your nearest competitor? And nine times out of 10? I get the exact same answer. The exact same answer is, well, I, I care about my clients. Well, no shit, you have a fiduciary duty to Him, you have to care about them. Otherwise, you're in violation of that, like caring about your clients is expected. I hear all the time people say, Hey, Mike, I have a great, I have great service, I picked up the phone. Well, no shit, isn't that your job? You see people don't, that's not a selling point, that's not a unique selling proposition that you're going to do a good job, or that you care. That's called something that you should have naturally, right? And I hear this all the time. And it's crazy to me that people can't differentiate what the hell they're selling. And the truth is that we all have access to the MLS. So we are selling the same stuff, we have access to the same properties, or the same loans as any other person out there. So what really makes us different from one person to the next? What is it that gets people to pick us or me over anybody else? Why would you guys want to hire me the real estate marketing due to do all your video content creation, versus hire a videographer or someone local? Or some other company like viral marketing? For example? What's the difference? Well, the difference is, is that people hire me because they personally like me. They personally trust me, they personally feel connected to me that we would relate. I've never once done business with anyone that has not liked me before. But how do they even know who the hell I am? If I don't know who they are? Well, I do that through content creation. Those of you who have been listened to the show, and trust me, guys, I get a lot of people like Mike, you swear to Butch and I don't swear as much as I have, okay, calming down, I'm getting older and get a little bit more mature. But it's just who I am at the end of the day, and I've embraced my brand. And I recognize that that's just the way God made me, Okay, I am who I am. And I'm not going to change for anybody. I'm gonna shoot from the hip. I'm gonna do it, how I do it. And some people might like that some people might not. But when you're in the business of content, creation, the authenticity of your brand, and also being consistent with it is the key to making it work. See, I'm not creating this podcast right now to because I feel like going out and creating this podcast right now. I'm creating this podcast right now because I know I have to publish a video or podcast this week, and it's going out and you guys are gonna listen to it. Okay, but I'm also Creating that podcast because I know a certain percentage of people who listen to it will schedule a demo with me in the following week to see how we work. So the question I have for you is, what are you doing that's consistent in your business that

keeps you at the forefront? What makes somebody actually send you business and the importance of consistency is not to sit here and teach and preach it to you. But it's because you don't know when the next deal is going to come. You can't control the conversations that are being had by the people, you know, what you can control is how many of them actually know who the hell you are and what you do when the term real estate or lending is brought to mind. And that's why consistency is so important. So we all know the, you know, the story of the we heard this since we were kids, right? The story of the tortoise versus the hare. And who won the race. The tortoise won the race, even though he was much slower. He wasn't as fast he didn't take any shortcuts, he just kept on trucking along at the same pace remained consistent throughout the race. And the consistency actually earned him the win of that race. So when you're out there, creating content, and you're trying to build your brand by you only do it by being consistent. Because when people see you keep popping up each and every week, or each and every month and you do it consistently well guess what? People start to remember who the hell you are. Now, I want to play this out. And this is usually when people understand this. And we all know what the concept of direct mail farming is right? Direct Mail farming. This has been a real estate marketing strategy, since the dinosaurs ruled the earth. And real estate was first created back in the Garden of Eden with back in Genesis, right. So the you know, the farming strategy, how it works is you would typically, you know, you're a real estate agent, you pick a neighborhood, usually it's your own neighborhood or neighborhood you're trying to form and you pick 400 doors, 500 doors, and guess what, you send them a postcard once a month, right? You go out and you send them a postcard once a month, and then you sign up and you're like, this is a long term thing, right? You send someone a postcard just one postcard and never send him another postcard, guess what, it's not going to work, you're not going to make any money, it's not gonna be a return on investment. But people who farm will tell you that after 12 months, as long as they're doing it consistently, the first year farming might lead to like one to two listings, maybe three. The second year farming ends up being three to five, the third year farming, the same neighbor ends up being seven plus. And it's usually after three years that people start to see results from their farming efforts. And the question is, is why is that? Well, it's because each and every month, you've shown up on their doorstep. And with direct mail, 100% of people are going to receive it now whether they pick up that postcard and throw it in the trash. Who cares, they still acknowledge that you existed. And if you told me 36 times over three years, once a month, with a hard piece of marketing in the form of a postcard? Well, I would automatically probably I'm more likely to assume that the person that is sending me those postcards is that, quote unquote, neighborhood Pro. Now, if I were to go into month 14, of the same campaign, and let's just say oh, I want to go on vacation, because I gotta take my kids, get him to Mexico. And you know, I'm going to take two months off or three months off this campaign. Well, guess what, you just fucked up the whole thing. Because you weren't consistent. Right? I can't go 13 months a postcard take off for months and then restart up and expect the same results. I need to be the tortoise and I need to go the entire way through. And that's how I see the results. Now, folks, this is with direct mail. And yes, it does still work, but it's going to take a lot of time. And direct mail is the most expensive form of media that you'll get but is highly effective. And what happens in real estate, when you're going after a direct mail farm, who you're really marketing to are people you don't know. Well, in real estate, you can't get referrals from people you don't know if you ever referred anyone anything that you haven't visited or experienced yourself. Hell no, you have it. Have you ever referred anyone? Anything that you don't know personally? No, you haven't. You can only refer things you personally know like or trust. But it's impossible to be referred when you're not even thought about. So, I want you to think into the psychology of being consistent with your brand and constantly appearing because it is the exact same thing when you're direct mail farming. Now, let's switch over to video and show you how this works.

For a local business. None of this stuff that I like to share with people is ever based off of theory I like to base everything I do off of mathematics. I like to see a return on investment. And the reason why marketing your database with video has worked with every single freaking person I've ever done it with over the last 15 years of my life, it's a lot of people guys, is because each and every one of us has a database or a network of people that know like trust and love us. And the truth is that those people are the largest referral sources of our business. But quite often we're too scared to convert with or converse with them, and remind them how we do business, which means it makes it impossible for them to refer us business. When you're building a brand, with video, the reason why I'd rather keep my content in front of people I know versus strangers is because strangers don't refer you business. But people you know, do. And 100% of the people that you know, this year, this is 100% of the people that are on your Facebook feed 100% of people that follow you on Instagram 100% of the emails you have 100% of the people you walk across in the grocery store, or you see when you drop your kids off at school, know someone over the next 12 months if they can refer you to everyone knows someone they can refer you to. But you have to remain top of mind you have to be referral in order to get that business, right. So what happens when you stop creating your content? Well, the same thing happens when I just stopped doing my podcast. My demos were down. Do you think that was a coincidence? No. I've been doing this for seven years, I could tell you exactly when my demos go up. And I fucked up. I messed up. I didn't publish the podcast for two months, that's probably going to cost me you know, three to $1,000. And opportunity maybe? Who knows? I'll never know. But it's because I broke the golden rule of consistency. So when you're consistent, folks, people don't let me get ours. Let me put it this way. People don't remember. And if you think everyone knows your real estate agent or a lender, you're sadly mistaken, I used to think the same thing. The truth is, is that you're not that cool, people don't think about you 24/7. And the same way you don't know what half of your friends do for work is the same reason how they don't know what you do for work unless you constantly remind them. I can't tell you how many agents I come across when we work with that fail to just remind everyone in their network, their social feeds that aren't consistent with marketing or branding. And then they wonder why they're not getting the results. Folks, this business is a giant popularity contest. And the key to it is consistency. I can't say this about every other business. But I can tell you that in real estate, everyone who is consistent when it comes to content creation, or anything in life always does well. So let's play this out. And let's see how it works. If I have a video email list of 200 people, okay, and I say video email, because I video, email, everything. I don't write text based emails to nurturing campaigns anymore, I always send a video with the vast vast majority of them. If you guys are on my email list, you'll see that if you want to see the videos on email list, just go to my website, sign up for our one of our things, and there'll be on that email list and you'll see exactly how we do it. But if I'm, if I'm an agent, I want to send out two videos a month, in 12 months, that will be 24 videos 24 pieces of content sent over to the two to 300 people that I know or invite to my wedding or funeral. Will you do more business? Well, mathematically, out of the 200 people that are receiving those messages, only about 40% of them are gonna open it. So let's dwindle that down to roughly about 80 people that are seeing your content consistently each and every time. Now, no one's gonna get 100% reach on email, but it's got it's a numbers game. So of those 80 people, eight to 12 of them will be moving. But all 80 of them have a referral for me. And when we're building a brand based upon consistency and content creation, and that's how we're doing it. Well, you have to be everywhere all the time, because you don't know when the next referral opportunities coming. And I'm not sending people on this email, list my content to sell them a house I'm selling, I'm sending them the people my email is content, to remind them that they can introduce me to their friends and family. And then as a result of that, I might get some direct business for the people that are also moving because it is also true that 10 to 15% of the people that see your content will be moving each and every year and 100% of them have a referral for you. So what I'm getting at folks is this is a numbers game. Now that's just email. That's just one channel. Now let's take that same concept and apply it to Facebook. You might have I see agents have let's just say you have 1000 friends on Facebook, okay, well, not all 1000 of them are going to see your content, probably only about 150 280 of them will see your content organically.

That means you're missing 80% plus of your potential referral sources are business. So the more active you are in social the more you're seen, the more results you get. Have you ever noticed an agent or lender that's super active on some Should that doesn't do business? I haven't. There's nothing crazy, they're doing like some of the agents, Oh, I get a ton of business from Facebook. Well, they're also always posting on Facebook, they're being consistent on Facebook or Instagram or Tiktok, whatever they may be into. See, consistency is what leads to that. Because when somebody's thinking about either A, making a move themselves getting a loan or getting a mortgage or refinance, or they're having a conversation, or let's say they're, they're doing it themselves, well over 80% of people are gonna close with the first person they meet with the first person they meet with is always or there's a direct correlation with it happens to be the first person they call, the first person they call is the first person they think of, which is where consistency is so important, because if you're not the first person people think of when they think of real estate, or mortgage or whatever business you're in, it's impossible to get a referral from them, isn't it? See what a furl happens, which is, the reason why I'm talking about referrals, guys is that the vast majority of business, over 80% of our business comes from referrals, repeat clients, or people we already know or that we personally meet. That's a mathematical fact, that's over 80% of business comes from those sources, doesn't come from strangers. It doesn't come from Zillow doesn't come from autoresponders, or tech, or websites or any of that. This is a relationship based business, which tells me that the number one thing and the number one goal for any of my agents for anyone I work with is I want to make sure every single person in the world knows who the hell you are, and more importantly, what you do. But the only way I can make that happen is when you're everywhere all the time, and you're consistent. So back to social, if you have 24 pieces of content to month, over 12 months, how many people how many views is that create if you're doing videos, now divide the views 10 to 15% of people who saw it will be moving this year 100% of people have a referral for you. Now you take that same concept, you apply it to Instagram, you apply it to LinkedIn, wherever else your social profiles are at, because when you're creating content, you also must distribute it just like you must distribute your postcards. When you're farming a neighborhood, you can't just print them out and send them out. It's no differently with video creation, you can just create the video and then that distributor promote it. Number one mistake I see all the time. Oh, I did this video, but I'm getting results we'll do that's because you put it on your business page and the business page only put sends out to 3% of the 100 likes you got folks. Content Creation works for everyone, but especially in real estate, because you're the brand. You see, I'm creating this content, teaching you a lesson that I messed up on. Okay, and I hope you get a lot out of it. Because I won't let this lesson happen to me again. But the next time you log on to Facebook or social or you're at a dinner and you sort of hear oh, they used another agent or lender. It's not their fault that they're not addict or not mean they don't they're not bad people. You're a bad marketer. It's not their job to remember what you do, it's your job to remind them. And the only way that happens is to remain consistent each and every month. So that you don't just do what I just did. Right? You don't want to miss a podcast, you don't want to miss an episode because truthfully, you never know when the next referral or direct business opportunity has. But what I do know is that when I'm consistent, I increase my chances of my name being brought into a conversation or being thought of first and that's why I attract. So when people ask me, Hey, I want to run an attraction based business, I always tell them, it's very simple, be consistent. If it's not on video, then you gotta be consistent in some other way on social, but it's got to be consistent visually. What people say is more powerful than what they hear. Or what people see. I mean, it's more powerful than sometimes what they hear. When it comes to me if you think about how videos interacted is that the majority of video is, you could see me, you could read my body language, you can see my todo and you, I'm using it right here.

And that's what makes it impactful. So folks, don't overthink the model with creating content and doing it but whatever you're gonna do in your business, there's advertising and there's marketing. When I'm talking about today's marketing, I'm not talking about prospecting, cold calling or any of that. But even if you are going after those sources for business, you still have to be consistent, don't you? I can't just call five people day, I need to call 10 people a day for 20 days in a row. And if I discipline myself to do that, of course I would get some results. I can't just go knock on one door sporadically throughout the month, I need to knock on 50 doors a day and create a system to do it. Well. If you want to build your brand and run an attraction based business, you have to do the same thing. You can't create content sporadically. You have to do it consistently. And as long as you're consistent. You'll win that race just like the tortoise did. I really hope you guys got something out of this video today because any additional questions please feel free to reach out to me I'd love to help you build your brand, stay consistent and not do what I did. We script at it and distribute videos for people all over the country and we could handle yours as well. And if you need help with being you know getting on camera being consistent on video, take our coaching hires for our services or visit our website and start consuming more of this content and I will never let another podcast week go where I don't show up and break my own rule. Appreciate you guys have a good one. Thank you for watching another episode of the real estate marketing dude podcast. If you need help with video or finding out what your brand is, visit our website at WWW dot real estate marketing do.com We make branding and video content creation simple and do everything for you. So if you have any additional questions, visit the site, download the training, and then schedule time to speak with a dude and get you rolling in your local marketplace. Thanks for watching another episode of the podcast. We'll see you next time.