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Preston Schmidli recently worked with Gary Vaynerchuk's team at Agent 2021, a conference designed to help insurance and real estate agents rise above industry disruption. He shares three categories of content that every effective social media marketer must cycle through on a very regular basis.
Show Notes
And then what I recommend is that this is the content strategy. This is something you can do whether you're you're 18 and freshly licensed or whether you're 70 and been in the business for 50 years. So I would recommend starting off with what is the one type of type of niche in your industry that you love. So let's talk real estate. Let's talk luxury real estate. If you love luxury real estate, they need to start saying no to the mobile homes. You have to actually define your lane, which requires saying no to the wrong thing. And a lot of people say, "Well I have to eat this month." This is a personal opinion, but I'd rather go to the plasma center and be in my lane then selling out. Because the more yeses you say to the wrong thing, the more you repel the right thing. Okay, and that that becomes a downward spiral.
I would agree with that wholeheartedly. There was a Steve jobs quote that said, "For every yes, there were a thousand no's." At some point you have to take a stand for who you are and who you want to serve. And I know a repellent for people is that, if for example, you want to be luxury and they see you list a home that's far from luxury, in their mind you're actually not who you say you are. Yet. It doesn't mean that someone on your team can't service that person. Doesn't mean that you, if you get a referral from a close partner, you don't help them, but maybe your marketing looks different. You may just need to learn to say no and refer it out. That's probably a better strategy because with every yes, there's an opportunity cost. I've learned for myself that every time I'm meeting with an agent, that takes up space, and so that better be a good meeting. It better be a productive meeting and not all agents are productive. And so I have to be very careful with whom I choose to work with because there's an opportunity cost to that. I could be sitting in meeting with somebody and it takes the same hour to meet with somebody that will close 150 homes this year, compared to someone who will close four this year. Same hour, but the result is very, very different. And typically the one that's closing 150 they hear my value offering different and better. And so there's this whole added layer of that's actually even a better fit. It's not even just the opportunity costs. It's actually a better fit for not just who I want to serve, but who I can serve.
Insurance is where I spend a lot of time doing coaching and training and the differences is insurance agents are fishermen, real estate agents are whale hunters. You could get a deal as a real estate agent and pay your bills for three months. You will die as an insurance agent on that strategy. If you get one sale every three months, like you will literally die, you will starve to death. And so it's a different market. We have to get more deals every month in the insurance world. But it's still the same. I want to build that luxury brand and you have to take a deal in let's say a starter home to pay your bills--take it, but don't, don't make it public.
Obviously you have to promote the house to sell it, but like don't celebrate it. Celebrate the luxury homes. Put that out there, make that your brand, communicate that. So this is a content strategy. Once you've defined your lane, you know what you want to stand for, the first thing that you post regularly, 33% of your content should be about the one thing that if you could do this for the rest of your career would make you just ecstatic. If that's luxury real estate, then that's the one thing that you talk about. The next thing is, because there's three parts to this, the next thing is what's the one thing that you absolutely need as a human being to function. To some people that's faith, to some people that's family. So if you have a god that you worship, if you have a family that you fight for every day, what is that one thing?
Your "why" that you need this as a human being. That needs to be something that you share. You have to share. If you want to be successful in 2019 and you'll hear this from anybody, If you watch anything from any, Agent 2021 influencer or marketers sharing the reality of the situation is that if you want to survive longterm, you have to be willing to connect with people. Because if we're not willing to connect with people, and we're going to be them a digital avatar, then we're not going to be able to beat the big brands who have the big budgets, right? So we have to be vulnerable people. And so make your Facebook profile public. And if you've got pictures of your kids and you don't want to share those, make those friends only and that's fine.
But for the most of you, make your profile public so people can share and connect. And then make every three posts, or 30% of your posts, about the one thing professionally that you love. Let's call that luxury real estate.
The next thing is the one thing that you need as a human being, let's call that family, right? And then the third thing is what is the one thing that you like to do outside of work that if you didn't have to pay bills and if you were a trust fund baby, you would just do that. And so let's say that's travel or that's flying, that's the third thing. If you rotate through these three things on repeat like luxury real estate, family, travel... luxury real estate, family, travel.
If you do that you will have success, because what you're going to end up doing, and it's not immediate, and this is just like you and I talked about, it's a long game and that's everything. There's no short game anymore. And so if you play the short game, you will lose always. And so unless you get lucky, but then it's just deceitful to yourself. So when you're playing this long game and you're going through this three categories, the cool part is that stuff starts to get shared in those networks. And you start to attract the other people who like luxury real estate, their family, and travel. And before you know it, not only are you doing more of what you love to do, making more money, now you're actually having fun doing it because you're not flipping mobile homes anymore trying to pay your bills, talking to people who like things that you don't care about at all. Now you're literally spending time with your people because you've defined your lane and you've given them something to fight for. They're going to support you. They're going to fight for you and the people have to be willing to be slightly polarizing, right? It's not about being better than something, but it's about being a professional. A brain surgeon makes more than a general practitioner all day, every day, right? You have to be willing to go, "You know what, it's not that I'm too good for starter homes. It's just not my business model. So I'm going to connect you with one of my partners so that you can be best served for your situation."
And then what ends up happening is that person's gonna respect your honesty and transparency. And when they have an uncle or a cousin or whatever that is in the luxury real estate market, they're going to go, "You know what, I didn't get to work with him, but they sound like they're dope at this, so you should talk to them." And if people start to identify with the fact that this is what you do. So that's, that's really what it's about is, is defining your lane, letting people know what is important to you in work, outside of work and just at your core as a human being. And then those people will orbit around you. And then those people will build a tribe around you. And then once you get that, that audience of people, it just grows on its own. As long as you're consistent.
I love it, man. One thing that came to mind, when you open up Instagram, when you go look at your profile. It shows your nine most recent images. What I'm hearing you say is that three of those ought to be what is important to you in work, three about what is important to you outside of work and then three that are important at your core as a human.
So like this is like for me this is more like family. And to be honest, this is also helping people. Like I have to help people, you know. If I'm not working, honestly when I take a vacation by like day four I'm freaking out. I have to be working. And so, whatever that is for you, you need to communicate that. And this is what ends up happening though. This is the cool part is people not only latch onto this, but you start becoming more like obsessed with your work because you've given yourself permission to do what you love. And that's huge. Most people don't love what they do. They do it because they have to.
I think more and more as our lives are becoming more transparent because of social media, people want to do business with other people who they not only know, like and trust, but people that are like them--people that have the same attributes. And this, your strategy is fantastic. It's a great way for people to not only to find that out about themselves, but to start to broadcast it, so as you said, you start to attract this tribe around you press. I want to thank you for what you've shared today. This has been really helpful and I appreciate it. Again, I want to invite the audience that in the Think Bigger Real Estate group, probably later today, there will be a video that we're going to post of Preston on a panel at Gary Vaynerchuck's event. It's going to be gold-filled with all kinds of things to help real estate agents thrive amidst the disruption.
And in addition to that, I would invite everybody here to a friend and, or at least follow Preston. He's coming up with some solutions for real estate agents that are really going to change the game and I don't want you guys to miss out. So find him, follow him. Preston, one more time I just want to thank you for coming on. It's been fun. I can see why you're on big panels with big names. You are a really bright guy.
I would agree with that wholeheartedly. There was a Steve jobs quote that said, "For every yes, there were a thousand no's." At some point you have to take a stand for who you are and who you want to serve. And I know a repellent for people is that, if for example, you want to be luxury and they see you list a home that's far from luxury, in their mind you're actually not who you say you are. Yet. It doesn't mean that someone on your team can't service that person. Doesn't mean that you, if you get a referral from a close partner, you don't help them, but maybe your marketing looks different. You may just need to learn to say no and refer it out. That's probably a better strategy because with every yes, there's an opportunity cost. I've learned for myself that every time I'm meeting with an agent, that takes up space, and so that better be a good meeting. It better be a productive meeting and not all agents are productive. And so I have to be very careful with whom I choose to work with because there's an opportunity cost to that. I could be sitting in meeting with somebody and it takes the same hour to meet with somebody that will close 150 homes this year, compared to someone who will close four this year. Same hour, but the result is very, very different. And typically the one that's closing 150 they hear my value offering different and better. And so there's this whole added layer of that's actually even a better fit. It's not even just the opportunity costs. It's actually a better fit for not just who I want to serve, but who I can serve.
Insurance is where I spend a lot of time doing coaching and training and the differences is insurance agents are fishermen, real estate agents are whale hunters. You could get a deal as a real estate agent and pay your bills for three months. You will die as an insurance agent on that strategy. If you get one sale every three months, like you will literally die, you will starve to death. And so it's a different market. We have to get more deals every month in the insurance world. But it's still the same. I want to build that luxury brand and you have to take a deal in let's say a starter home to pay your bills--take it, but don't, don't make it public.
Obviously you have to promote the house to sell it, but like don't celebrate it. Celebrate the luxury homes. Put that out there, make that your brand, communicate that. So this is a content strategy. Once you've defined your lane, you know what you want to stand for, the first thing that you post regularly, 33% of your content should be about the one thing that if you could do this for the rest of your career would make you just ecstatic. If that's luxury real estate, then that's the one thing that you talk about. The next thing is, because there's three parts to this, the next thing is what's the one thing that you absolutely need as a human being to function. To some people that's faith, to some people that's family. So if you have a god that you worship, if you have a family that you fight for every day, what is that one thing?
Your "why" that you need this as a human being. That needs to be something that you share. You have to share. If you want to be successful in 2019 and you'll hear this from anybody, If you watch anything from any, Agent 2021 influencer or marketers sharing the reality of the situation is that if you want to survive longterm, you have to be willing to connect with people. Because if we're not willing to connect with people, and we're going to be them a digital avatar, then we're not going to be able to beat the big brands who have the big budgets, right? So we have to be vulnerable people. And so make your Facebook profile public. And if you've got pictures of your kids and you don't want to share those, make those friends only and that's fine.
But for the most of you, make your profile public so people can share and connect. And then make every three posts, or 30% of your posts, about the one thing professionally that you love. Let's call that luxury real estate.
The next thing is the one thing that you need as a human being, let's call that family, right? And then the third thing is what is the one thing that you like to do outside of work that if you didn't have to pay bills and if you were a trust fund baby, you would just do that. And so let's say that's travel or that's flying, that's the third thing. If you rotate through these three things on repeat like luxury real estate, family, travel... luxury real estate, family, travel.
If you do that you will have success, because what you're going to end up doing, and it's not immediate, and this is just like you and I talked about, it's a long game and that's everything. There's no short game anymore. And so if you play the short game, you will lose always. And so unless you get lucky, but then it's just deceitful to yourself. So when you're playing this long game and you're going through this three categories, the cool part is that stuff starts to get shared in those networks. And you start to attract the other people who like luxury real estate, their family, and travel. And before you know it, not only are you doing more of what you love to do, making more money, now you're actually having fun doing it because you're not flipping mobile homes anymore trying to pay your bills, talking to people who like things that you don't care about at all. Now you're literally spending time with your people because you've defined your lane and you've given them something to fight for. They're going to support you. They're going to fight for you and the people have to be willing to be slightly polarizing, right? It's not about being better than something, but it's about being a professional. A brain surgeon makes more than a general practitioner all day, every day, right? You have to be willing to go, "You know what, it's not that I'm too good for starter homes. It's just not my business model. So I'm going to connect you with one of my partners so that you can be best served for your situation."
And then what ends up happening is that person's gonna respect your honesty and transparency. And when they have an uncle or a cousin or whatever that is in the luxury real estate market, they're going to go, "You know what, I didn't get to work with him, but they sound like they're dope at this, so you should talk to them." And if people start to identify with the fact that this is what you do. So that's, that's really what it's about is, is defining your lane, letting people know what is important to you in work, outside of work and just at your core as a human being. And then those people will orbit around you. And then those people will build a tribe around you. And then once you get that, that audience of people, it just grows on its own. As long as you're consistent.
I love it, man. One thing that came to mind, when you open up Instagram, when you go look at your profile. It shows your nine most recent images. What I'm hearing you say is that three of those ought to be what is important to you in work, three about what is important to you outside of work and then three that are important at your core as a human.
So like this is like for me this is more like family. And to be honest, this is also helping people. Like I have to help people, you know. If I'm not working, honestly when I take a vacation by like day four I'm freaking out. I have to be working. And so, whatever that is for you, you need to communicate that. And this is what ends up happening though. This is the cool part is people not only latch onto this, but you start becoming more like obsessed with your work because you've given yourself permission to do what you love. And that's huge. Most people don't love what they do. They do it because they have to.
I think more and more as our lives are becoming more transparent because of social media, people want to do business with other people who they not only know, like and trust, but people that are like them--people that have the same attributes. And this, your strategy is fantastic. It's a great way for people to not only to find that out about themselves, but to start to broadcast it, so as you said, you start to attract this tribe around you press. I want to thank you for what you've shared today. This has been really helpful and I appreciate it. Again, I want to invite the audience that in the Think Bigger Real Estate group, probably later today, there will be a video that we're going to post of Preston on a panel at Gary Vaynerchuck's event. It's going to be gold-filled with all kinds of things to help real estate agents thrive amidst the disruption.
And in addition to that, I would invite everybody here to a friend and, or at least follow Preston. He's coming up with some solutions for real estate agents that are really going to change the game and I don't want you guys to miss out. So find him, follow him. Preston, one more time I just want to thank you for coming on. It's been fun. I can see why you're on big panels with big names. You are a really bright guy.
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The road to success for real estate agents is well-marked. The road to significance is not. Here, we help you to Think Bigger than just your business. We inspire you to seek success AND significance, income AND impact. We do that by interviewing the biggest thinkers and highest achievers in the real estate industry, extracting the secrets to having it all.