Six Figures in Six Months - Levi's YouTube Success Story #ViShow 72

what's up influencers today we're talking about how to be successful on youtube even with a small channel especially if you're an entrepreneur or you own a business today's guest has made six figures in six months actually he's done way more than that but we're going to be interviewing him about how he did it and to introduce him i thought i'd do something different i want to read what i'm going to write about him in the second edition of youtube secrets you can you guys can get a copy on audible i would recommend getting that because when we uh update the second edition you'll be automatically included in that so this is what i wrote about our guest levi lassic picked up a copy of youtube secrets and he started his business as a real estate agent sharing information about dallas texas housing information and neighborhood tours he gets a few hundred to a few thousand views though this may seem modest in terms of impressions and might not make him super famous it's created massive traffic and he's been able to convert it into buyers for his real estate business leading to yes a million dollar revenue business in his first year so levi thank you so much for being here in studio i'm excited to get into the conversation well thanks for having me benji this is a tremendous honor i'm super excited yeah and it's so cool because we met on clubhouse obviously and we're on clubhouse right now your story is something that really is close to my heart because i also was a real estate agent and i talked about it in youtube secrets i can't take credit gary vaynerchuk was the one that told me to do it in 2009 so let's tell the audience what maybe is missing from that introduction what should people know about you and your story when it comes to starting a youtube channel for your business well yeah there's a lot to unpack there of course but it was one of those things where for 2021 i knew i needed to make a transition so for the last five years i had actually run a very successful financial business financial services business i had contracts with all the schools in the dallas fort worth area to work with the teachers on retirement planning and each year i kept getting better and 2020 even the first three months of 2020 started out i was 40 year-over-year in the first quarter of 2020 than 2019. well then of course you know what happened in april all the schools shut down and my business literally went to zero overnight now i've been involved in real estate over the past 10 years i've owned rentals i've had fix and flips i've had airbnb so i was very familiar on the transactional side of real estate and i'd always worked with agents to help me buy those properties and mortgage teams as well so i'd always done refinancing but so i was very familiar with real estate and during the pandit during the pandemic i sit there and watched real estate continue to grow and grow on top of that some of my most successful friends are in real estate and our real estate agents and so i have the privilege of michael reese is somebody i met 20 years ago and he's just one of the top agents in the country and one of my original mentors and you know he was always pushing me to you know go ahead and make the move but my biggest concern was is that i know that real estate agents have a high rate of failure in their first two years 87 percent of them fell within the first two years and the reason being is i know is because of lead generation and it's very difficult to go out there and just gain business especially if you with friends and family of course because they've seen you in some other light right so now you turn around and you say hey i'm a real estate agent they're kind of like well i know 10 other real estate agents so i knew going in i sat there for about six months uh during 2020 really kind of digging into what how do i make this transition i was also 41 years old so i was in a position where i felt like man am i starting over at 41 years old and i just was really concerned i was like okay i know i'm going to get into real estate and got my license and then but i was just really concerned about starting out i was like i do not want to be that 87 percent that fails in the first year and i knew that all came down to one thing which is marketing and at the same time i wanted to attract business so in my financial services business my partner was responsible for the marketing but what we did is we did all of that marketing up front and i had an appointment with somebody who was ready and willing and able to talk to me they already knew whenever i was going to meet with them we were going to talk about retirement planning about their financial future so i would literally just walk in there and it was kind of a done deal because 80 percent of the selling was done up front so i was like how do i duplicate that in real estate and has that really ever been done before because you know you look at all the traditional methods and it's kind of like cold called door knock uh spend money on postcards and if you price postcards they're extremely expensive and plus you've got to send them out all the time magazines ad you know you get the magazine delivered to your house and there's 500 agents in there and it's like how are you gonna compete with that old school yeah so i knew i was like okay it's gonna literally come down to marketing and i didn't want to bug my family and friends either uh on that so i was looking for a way i was like how do i do this how do i attract business and so i think that's a really big difference is i was patient which you know gary v talks a lot about patients right and so i was like let me be patient and let me research the best ways to attract business well i knew i was going to do that through social media of course but everybody was kind of saying the same things facebook instagram tick tock now i do believe uh tick tock there's a it has some similarities to youtube now in attraction-based business but at the same time it just didn't sit right with me i was kind of like i don't know if i want to do tick-tock and then facebook and instagram look like very labor-intensive as far as you have to do things daily multiple times a day you know you have to stay current stories and stories disappear and i just thought also when people are looking for real estate do they is the first thing they think to do is to go to facebook or instagram to research real estate so but i bought facebook and real estate books so that's one of my keys to success what i did in my financial business and before i used to be in the pharmaceutical industry whenever i got out of the military and the one thing i've always done is i've always looked at who's at the top what are they doing how do i model that and then how do i adjust it to fit my personality and my style and then is there a way i could actually beat them in a good way you know so that has always served me well it served me it got me to the top in the pharmaceutical industry financial services and so i was like okay how do i do this in real estate but there wasn't really um examples in facebook or instagram marketing that i was really interested that really piqued my interest but i bought the books anyways nothing resonated then i started buying youtube books and i just looked at there wasn't a lot of options out there yours this was even before derral eve's book came out your book was there there's a couple others which are really not that great but when your book and i don't know it's like chapter seven or something in there you have one paragraph on there which was you know you talked about answering questions uh on youtube and so that just kind of really sparked it was kind of like okay you know what there's there might be something there and i never really thought about youtube in that perspective so then that sent me down one rabbit hole after another and i get under youtube i buy some more books there's actually a couple of real estate books out there uh in conjunction with youtube they're more like an overview there's not really a lot of in-depth information in there but i just kept looking and i kept looking i go down one rabbit hole after another then i start coming across some real estate channels and i start to see what i start to do plus with the brokerage i'm with i started to notice some of the agents kind of moving towards the top in the business i started noticing one thing they all had youtube channels and uh you know i spoke with one guy this guy named jesse and you know he kind of told me what they were doing and that kind of sparked my interest and then i started finding other influencers and so it all became a combination so at that standpoint i was like okay i think youtube is the answer and then i went dug in i just dug in and i researched the platform for about two months and i think that's what's really key and this is what i've been saying recently is that if you treat youtube like a hobby it'll pay you like a hobby if you treat it like a business it'll pay you like a business and i really think that plays into any social platform these platforms are very powerful if you understand the back end of it you understand the producer side of it versus the consumer side of it because there are analytics there are ways that you can understand that so i started digging into uh youtube the back end the seo the analytics and it's very complicated but i also believe that you can fast track learning almost any subject in this day and age you know you've mentioned before that you know people think it's too late to get on youtube but you say it's actually the best time there's more information out there than then you can handle more eyeballs too absolutely and so i the information is there you just have to dig in and research it and i spent about two months reading books and i've read your book now probably five times uh and so i know for sure because he's quoting stories in the book i've never had somebody do that in reference like oh i remember that story like wow that's pretty awesome well and you're and chris who picked me up from the uh yeah yeah he mentioned i was like how long you've been with benji and he goes 15 years and i go are you the guy that mowed benji's lawn and he goes yeah that is me so uh you know yeah i remember those stories you know that's the thing facts tell stories sell yeah and so that also kind of came into youtube right storytelling those types of situations so i dug in for about two months i don't do anything else i feel like you can really hyper learn a subject yeah i've actually heard jay shetty talk about this too where if he wants to deep dive into something he will read a minimum of five books on that subject and so i just grabbed all the information i could on youtube watch youtube videos i watch all these real estate channels and there's good ones out there and there's bad ones out there but you can always learn something from everybody and so that's what really happened right there is after about two months i was like okay i think i've got a really good concept and understanding of what i want to do and then it was just okay let's start filming and it was filming first i kind of put together a business plan which again if you treat it like a business it will pay you like a business so i put together a business plan to here's the videos we want to shoot um and let's shoot some first let's build out you know two three four weeks of videos because i also understood the trap to where if you publish one or two videos number one nobody's going to watch those videos right there and that's i think that's where people get discouraged because they're expecting big things to happen in the beginning it doesn't and then on top of that life happens yeah real estate happens health happens and then you get stuck or you don't film for another week or two and now you've got that gap so i understood in the beginning too that consistency was key yeah on youtube as well kind of like you mentioned in your book if you got 52 videos you better publish one a week for 52 weeks instead of 52 in a row for 52 days right and before we get into some of the best practices let's talk about not the uh first 52 weeks but the first what 25 weeks right the first six months um i want to reiterate that you have a fairly small channel and this is something that i don't usually do because most people are flexing how many subscribers or how many views in fact this is what makes you really unique less than 5 000 subscribers on your youtube channel right there's definitely no like silver play button for that a few hundred to maybe a few thousand views per upload but you are capitalizing on the principle of it's not how many views is what kind of views and so tell us what you've been able to accomplish in that first six months as a business owner right as a real estate agent because i think that's what blows people's minds about what you're accomplishing because most people assume you've got to have a million subscribers you know tens of thousands hundreds of thousand views yet you're here with these kind of metrics and you're killing it so what have you been able to do in your business as a result of your youtube channel well and so that's the funny thing is that the subscribers it was never a concern that was not the goal from the beginning the only goal and you have to be clear on your goals right you speak about clarity as well in your book you have to be clear and the only goal was can we make the phone ring that was it so can we produce content that's going to get the phone to ring i don't care about views or subscribers now of course views lead to that so that is important but uh we got the phone to ring within about 30 days and i think i only had about 50 subscribers in 30 days uh which is still pretty good you know i know some and so it that kind of like that kind of helped me keep the motivation going when you get that first call well within 90 days we got the first deal under contract and i also just want to mention that i do have a partner travis plum that is really been instrumental in this i couldn't have done this without him because once that first deal came under contract at 90 days it is completely snowballed from at that standpoint and now within since march 1st since march 1st benji we have done 50 transactions that's crazy 50 transactions that's totaled we've broken over 25 million in production and if you want to do the math on that the average real estate commission is about three percent so do three percent of 25 million and that's what we've generated in commissions in the last six months now i don't say that to brag or to impress anybody but to press on somebody that the possibilities on there chris i love chris you know fly ride yeah you know he called me a super affiliate for real estate yeah totally and that's really i think i'm a youtuber that actually has a real estate license you know because that's what travis my partner has allowed me to do because he's really handled a majority of the real estate transactions actually really mostly all of them i still communicate with the the clients i was answering all the calls in the beginning i spoke with every single person and then travis would go out show them homes close the deals and he's one of the best negotiators and real estate closers i've seen uh in this whole business and he came from the car business so that really helped him as well and so from there i've been able to focus on the back end the business side of it the systems and i've documented everything something else i learned from garyvee where i always knew document from the beginning also because of my relationship with like michael reese and woods davis and these other top real estate agents that had systems in place you know they had already shown me good systems to put into place to be able to track the leads properly capture it like all of our phone calls are recorded that's allowed me to put together videos of like sizzle reels and all the phone calls and i not play them i've been able to speak at some conferences recently do some trainings uh through clubhouse and i've played these videos to where people call in this is the beautiful thing about youtube is if anybody's familiar with the sales cycle or the sales funnel or a sales process right people have to find you they have to get familiar with develop a relationship with you before they're going to do business with you i believe youtube does all of that but the client does takes himself through that whole process right they find your videos they consume your content they develop a relationship with you and then if you have the right calls to action in place they will call you when they're ready to do business and so there is zero selling on our part we don't have any scripts because when people call us they're actually surprised we answer the phone they're excited to talk to us and so the relationship is already there we don't have to sell anybody on doing this and to give some context here right for people like oh my gosh this is like mind-blowing i i need to start a channel right now you started in 2020 december 5th i was going to say november but december 5th okay we're talking like 10 months ago basically um obviously we're talking

about how you made six figures in the first six months neutrally let's see if you can do math faster than me three percent of uh 25 million right um i think it's definitely over a million whatever right it's right oh it's actually seven hundred fifty seven hundred okay cool maybe i'm not that good right but still that's way more than a hundred thousand dollars right um the title of this interview was making six figures in six months right um i think that most people can kind of wrap their brain around this but the reason i want to bring this up and let you kind of flex these pretty crazy numbers is the fact that this has happened in less than 12 months and so i think there's a few things that you definitely can share and you're implementing that makes your success you unique for you because not only was it so fast it's so massive one of them being you didn't focus on every platform right no um even like if you follow gary vaynerchuk you know even the first uh copy of youtube secrets we said like hey you know be on uh facebook be on social media make sure you kind of like covering all your bases uh plant some seeds be dripping and putting out content consistently you went a hundred percent on youtube why did you make that decision and how has it helped you in your momentum on this platform yeah so we focused a hundred percent on youtube it was one of in my research in the beginning those two months so for anybody that's kind of looking at the timeline there's also three months of work before publishing that first video december 5th right two months of research a month of filming then published the first video december 5th then it took 90 days to get the first deal under contract so technically that's six months worth of work now i would ask you this are you willing to put in six months of work yeah without any pay if you know and that's the only thing i had to hang on to is belief but in my research in the beginning um you know there's uh jackson is uh he's he talks a lot about back-end analytics on youtube and that's one of the things that i learned from him was that that you want you don't want to share everything that's actually probably the only piece of your book i would disagree yeah is that um because and here's what i truly believe i believe when somebody's on tick tock instagram or facebook they're ready to consume that platform it's very hard to convert somebody from one platform to another you think about it facebook instagram i tell you what i do on there i kill time i'm in line for food i'm waiting to board a plane what am i doing i'm going to kill time because i know i can consume you know just i can do something mindless so to speak for a short period of time but people when they go to youtube they are in they are ready to learn research or be entertained 55 if you look at our back-end analytics 55 of our traffic comes from desktop mobile and tv which tells me people are sitting down whenever they're watching our channel eighty percent of the traffic on the internet is mobile but fifty percent of our traffic is from when somebody's sitting down now think about 25 percent of that is on the tv which means people are sitting on their couch watching us on their tv that is powerful that is like having that is like being friends on the centcom friends and that's the thing is that people sit down every thursday evening right for must-see tv and they're ready to consume that content that's why people identify that's why they have six different friends because there's six different personalities and everybody relates to one of those characters right and so that's the really the key aspect and so i've never shared anything on facebook instagram never even tried those platforms to generate business because i believe what happens is somebody's on those platforms if you share it number one facebook and instagram they don't like that anyways because you're sharing something from youtube number two if somebody clicks on it they're going to be like oh this is a 25 minute video i'm not in the mood or i don't have the time to consume that they're going to jump back off and go to facebook to me what my understanding is that kind of messes everything up and we want people to consume content now our analytics tell us people consume 2. 1 of our videos our average viewer watches 2. 1 videos our average video is over 15 minutes which means they're consuming over 30 minutes of content on average and so they say if you can get somebody to consume six minutes of content you have a customer well to do that on facebook or instagram in 30 seconds or one minute increments you've got to hit them over and over and over again plus you gotta pay for that because you know you post anything on facebook or instagram one percent or two percent of your following even gets it you have to pay to push that youtube's the only platform that wants people they recommend your content they want to find your audience right yeah i think what you said is what i've been thinking and actually influenced the title of our book user behavior the difference between how they use these other platforms and how they use youtube i used to say that youtube was the new tv but the difference is you know uh back in the day we had these remote controls kids okay we use this to change the channel or whatever on tv but with youtube and you just mentioned people watching on their televisions you're typing things in it's very active like you're searching for something this isn't new for even like netflix or um you know on demand tv but youtube is different because you really want to learn something very specific and there's probably a tutorial or some informative video on there and so when we first started video influencers we thought we're going to title our book video influencers but it was very clear to us that youtube was the king like by far like light years ahead of everybody else and i'd say like we were probably early to the game to think about this and this is why i love hearing your perspective and what influenced your decision to just go all in on youtube because people are getting get fomo because they're not on instagram or everyone's saying that everyone's been telling me oh you need to get on tick tock right i'm not trying to downplay the significance of it i just know you can have massive success on youtube more than anywhere else because of this idea that it's search based there's this archive library videos you can rank a video to become evergreen and get searches and searches so like when i go to your channel uh you know there's probably videos you put up last year in january this summer that not only are getting you views right now but probably will get your views next year anything else you want to add in terms of the

significance of youtube as a platform compared to other platforms absolutely well the fact that it is search based i mean if you search any suburb in dallas i can almost guarantee you that we will own three or four of the top five of those videos we rank and that's the other thing is because i really understood and i feel like i've learned some more additional tricks about seo in the back end to really get everything to rank and that's the thing is that i've got if you search forney texas or irving texas or plano texas or south lake texas it doesn't matter we're going to be up there they say that people make their decisions based on the first five videos that show up in search on youtube and we literally will own at least three of them in almost every suburb so we automatically look like the authority the other thing is that i have this little saying that your audience is not your audience until they're your audience see i'm so niched in to people that are searching for dallas texas but the thing is somebody in seattle washington may never have an interest in dallas real estate until they get a job promotion a job transfer they're tired of lockdowns or high taxes or whatever the situation may be or they got approved to work remotely now they're like oh dallas well i've never been there or i've only been there once and that was five years ago let me go see what that looks like and they go to youtube and they type that in and then we show up guess what they i don't have any competition because that person in seattle or la or new york doesn't know a real estate agent in texas or dallas texas right so i don't have to compete be the person in the neighborhood magazine with 500 other real estate agents because i'm not going after that business i want the people that don't know anything about dallas and then they find us and then they develop the relationship with us on and then they find and so that's the power of youtube and so i believe search is a big deal with that the thing about i know recommendations um and uh browse is really a big driver but at the same time if i get recommended somebody they've already been searching that content as well and so i don't know if i'm capturing them at the very beginning of their journey but at the same time search is an evergreen strategy as well because there's always going to be somebody every day that's getting a job transfer or a job promotion plus now with dallas being one of the uh it's the number four job market in the country and corporations are moving there now so you're talking about hundreds of people coming at a time and so every because we're ranked in search people are always going to be searching that for that content so that's an evergreen strategy another thing that's interesting about your channel is uh there's definitely competitors in dallas that are real estate agents putting out youtube video the difference with you is you're very purposeful and you're serving a specific kind of search right i always thought this when i had a real estate channel i thought you know people care about what schools are in this area what are the best schools in the city um you know what are some of the information and demographics of different areas or you know like where are families living uh where are the parks literally it's like endless and even though dallas obviously is a popular place for people to move to for real estate agents this can be done across the country across the world and this is what makes me excited for youtube and why i feel like it's going to be relevant for another 10 years which is kind of bold because we've seen social media platforms come and go right there was once when facebook was all there was and now there's so much but youtube is different because i don't think we've even tapped into the full potential right everybody understands there's the logan polls right the celebrities there's these viral videos um the obvious searches like for food or for cars or for you know uh technology or marketing but what about all these other searches the people are making and they're getting whatever content and they're just okay with it right because that's all there is when you can get very specific and you have a business model behind that not only do you provide like a service or some kind of value for that person that no one else is doing but you can convert that into business and so that's actually where i want to go with my next question is

do you feel like youtube is underrated or overrated when it comes to uh being utilized for entrepreneurs and business owners um and why completely underrated and i tell you with what we've done is any business owner can do and i think you should absolutely do it no matter what type of business owner you are which is if you it i built everything off of search first now i now because i understand my audience i can make videos that i know are gonna resonate with them or what they're looking for i actually made an hour long video which is unheard of right because everyone says there's zero attention span these days it's been one of my most successful videos even though it's an hour but i felt like they were they wanted the information and it was correct so the thing is that businesses i was actually on a podcast with a software company the other day uh and it's called the ibar experiment and

i said the same thing for them if you look for if you have a software company you can google and youtube tells you what people are searching for what questions do they want answered and if you build it around search first people will find you a lot easier in the beginning than they will if you just try to make uh content that you want to make i've never made a piece of content i wanted to make in the first 100 videos it wasn't until after 100 videos or so that i decided to i you know i really felt like i understood my audience and i could make content for them without having to search everything first i kind of equate that to if you're in the desert and you've got 50 gallons of water think of youtube as the desert you've got 50 gallons of water and there's people all over the desert but you're just sitting in one place nobody knows where you are nobody knows how to find you they want the water but they don't know how to find you yeah now if you had a gps and you're like man there's 50 people over that hill under that palm tree and you take 50 gallons of water over there they will drink and they will drink a lot yes and so that's what i believe search is so powerful in youtube in the beginning because you will get attract people a lot faster by answering the questions that people are already searching for those and so then you can adapt your content to more of what you want to make or what you feel will serve your audience i think uh what you tapped into is the significance of building a library even at the beginning it might not get a lot of views but you know it's going to serve somebody you just need that one video you need that one kind of breakout hit and so for in your case it's not like necessarily getting you millions of views but again it's getting you the right views and it's interesting even though your average uh views per viewer is two i'm sure the ones that are really interested that become buyers of yours are probably watching 10 right they're like and so if you don't have that library for them to watch they won't have ten to watch and in fact they might watch two of yours and then go watch eight of somebody else's so have those videos out there um let's actually break it down for some entrepreneurs right um one thing that's interesting about you is you're super late to the youtube game right we're talking like a decade afterwards but obviously you've had them old man you've had significant success in a short amount of time um but it's a business that has been using the platform um it's possible really for any business what would be some of your like let's actually bring it back to your process when you're thinking of okay whether you're gonna start a channel or these days just like what's your next video what is your process for figuring out the uh video ideas and then going into the title and thumbnail okay so i would equate really the success to one thing just to kind of circle back on that and that is massive action so being late to the youtube game being 41 years old and not a 20 year old youtuber right it is just massive action i knew the competition level in dallas think about it dallas there's a millions and millions of videos about dallas there's vloggers bloggers travel guides you know lifestyle everything really there was 10 other real estate agents and actually you think about 10 real estate agents on youtube in dallas texas that is extremely low that is not competition at all whatsoever zero that is really zero competition but what i noticed about them is they were putting out one video per week and so my goal in the beginning which i know not everybody can do this but i was gonna do three videos a week because i'm like i'm gonna overtake by volume that's how i'm gonna gain traction and i committed to that three videos per week now i've scaled down to about two because we're so busy with the business now that it is a little bit challenging but still i'm scheduled out three weeks on my content at all times so it doesn't matter if i get coveted travel to seattle it doesn't matter if i go on vacation or go to a five-day conference i don't i'm not concerned about my every there's videos publishing actually last night while i'm here in seattle and i'm walking around and getting coffee and going to dinner that's a beautiful thing i have one publishing on sunday it's already scheduled out but um the thing is that uh now it's just and now i have a feel for what my audience is looking for so that's the biggest thing um i get inspiration from other you know i watch nick nimmin and d nemen and roberto blake and you know all and that's the thing i watch other creators even like i said like chris a fly ride i'm not i would have never watched an automotive channel or automotive lighting but now i watch it from a different perspective as a creator you know what derral eves talks about netflix having thumbnails i never thought of netflix when you're scrolling through netflix is those are thumbnails so now i look at those as thumbnails right billboards are actually thumbnails and so now you start observing the world through a different way and it was i went to we went to eat one day travis and i told travis i was like the world is a frame you know i'm looking at everything through an iphone frame i'm like if we're gonna sit in this restaurant what's a good backdrop you know what do you want behind you the depth you know so now you're looking at everything through a creator or through a producer standpoint than a consumer standpoint and so i'm i'm gathering ideas all the time from everything billboards netflix all of that is thumbnail ideas right and so but also i got to think about what's going to serve my the audience the best and so now christina smallhorn actually she got on the phone with me the other day for like two hours and all of that's possible through the clubhouse has changed my life and my business in so many ways because i've been able to not just meet you and develop a relationship but people like christina smallhorn so many others i met jaime um powerful yeah jaime's a real estate agent in dallas he's got over 20 000 subscribers and still we're doing the amount of business we're doing and he's got an audience 10 times the size of ours you know so there is there's opportunity but now we're friends right and so and i've met him but christina got on the phone with me for two hours and gave me a thumbnail clinic you know i was like and she's been through derral eve's program and everything so just because she was able you know because she's just that type of person uh professor nez you know professor nes helped me develop my banner in the beginning oh that's awesome that that united that map of united states where people are driving in from california new york and chicago that was an idea drummed up on clubhouse with professor nez and he was one of the first people when i first went into clubhouse and found a youtube room he was running it and you know so i developed now i'm going to meet up with him in september i'm going to vidsummit yeah and we're going to meet up and grab a cup of coffee you know because we're going to be in his backyard and so all these relationships stem from that so now i'm constantly learning from everybody all the time and so the titles are really um you know i'm doing the series you actually complimented it the other day is what does 400 000 get you in frisco texas so smart and those videos are taking off like wildfire right now and guess what i did i'm doing what does five hundred thousand get you what's six hundred thousand i'm up to a million i've already got all that filmed out so now i'm just rinse and repeat when you find something that hits then rinse and repeat as until you know until it doesn't right and just i want to give the cliff notes version of what your answer just was you have to do it all right um you talked about research you talked about uh you know learning off of youtube networking and learning from people in the industry whether in your market or outside your market you know just looking at other types of content to get fresh ideas i think the most important thing and it has to do with the research but i think also experience is understand what the viewers are looking for and this was interesting about you i don't know how long you lived in dallas texas but even though you haven't been a real estate agent very long you understood what somebody might be looking for if they uh moved to dallas texas and i would argue i'm looking up your video account 135 videos later and however many comments that has yielded you probably learned even more and so um you know hard work is hard work there's no replacement um i was maybe looking for like hey what was the shortcut that other people can learn but you learn the shortcuts from doing all the work and every business going to be different let's actually bring it back to something a little bit more i'd say practical for the beginner you mentioned you have to be ready to put out videos without making a lot of money right potentially any money also maybe not getting a lot of views what made you believe that youtube was gonna work like those first you know so if i'm doing the math those first four months before you got one lead right and i'm sure during those four months you didn't get massive views even maybe not even a few hundred to a thousand yet right maybe there was a lot less what kept you going what was the belief that you had that this was something you can commit to and it would you it would lead to success the reality is i had no other option my back was up against the wall i had uh you know last year like i said when the my financial services business went to zero overnight and then i played around for six months i bought cor i spent the most money i've ever spent i actually invested into amazon stores over six figures i i bought more courses than i've ever bought in my life which got me pretty much nowhere but they everything triggered an idea right everything just kind of led me down one path after another so it got to the point to where it was like okay i knew i was like i know i'm moving into residential real estate but it was just one of those things where um i saw you know i saw some other youtubers on there i saw some of the real estate channels and there wasn't really a lot but the concept was there and i was like i'm just going to go all in and it was complete 100 all in now 30 days after the first video came out the funny thing is my first video ever published still has like 400 views i mean it's like nowhere absolutely nowhere you know and we got videos with over 20 000 views now but um but um the first call we got was a zoom call because we give a people an option to call text email or schedule a zoom the reason we do that is because everyone has different communication styles yeah and so we want to always have the path of least resistance that's another thing about an another thing i would disagree on your book is like you talk about linking social medias on the youtube channel i've never linked anything on there because youtube's number one goal is time on platform totally so the only reason we ever want to pull somebody from youtube is if they call us yeah and so we've converted them at that point so it was one of those things where the very first zoom call we got was with a buyer with a million dollar budget and we had 50 subscribers and mind blown yes right and the only thing he said was is he said i appreciate the content you're putting out he goes it's really smart and that was just enough the thing is that in this whole time frame too not a single person has asked how long have i been in real estate what brokerage am i with what's my production levels and or really what are the stats and data of the real estate market they really just want to know what's it like to eat sleep work live and play the good and the bad of living in dallas texas and that i can do because i've been in dallas for on and off for the last 20 years yeah so um you know the thing is that i was just i was not going to quit and i just committed and i'm like i just had this gut instinct that it would work one way or another and then getting the first deal under contract of course solidified that as well yeah but i'm telling i just believe if you stay consistent with it i don't care how many agents are in your area what you do uh how terrible you think you are if you think you got a face for radio it doesn't matter i said this uh we are we're at dinner the other night with a client uh travis and i and travis said this to me he goes i never thought of it that way but i was telling the client because he was like he's like levi we watch every single one of your videos yeah he's like we watch them and uh i said well the cool thing about it is everybody that we've done business with is like us yeah you know and we're attracting people that are like us and that's what will happen is i don't care if you have a face for radio talk have a high-pitched voice a low-pitched voice you talk fast you talk slow what you're going to realize is you will start to attract people that are like you and they want to do business with you yes and there's 500 people per day moving to dallas fort worth i don't need all 500 per day yeah i need one per week would be 52 transactions a year would that change your if you got one every other week and only did 26 transactions from youtube would that change your business so whether you want to make it your full-time lead uh source or you want it to be part-time if you're going to if you have one more than one year left in your real estate career you should be on youtube if you have one year left in your business like we talked about earlier this is for business owners too you start putting out that content it's what i call

service based content versus selfish based content you know selfish based and that's where i think a lot of real estate agents make mistakes is they post about their open house or their listing and if your listing is under a million dollars it's not going to get any views at all whatsoever and so and the thing is by the time somebody finds that it's not ever green either by somebody finds your open house video or your listing video that's three hundred thousand dollars on you know one two three main street it's irrelevant you know and plus nobody really cares about that like we on the videos that i do i never go inside homes i just show the outside and i show the neighborhood and i think that's what people really love is they they're like i want to see the neighborhood you can look at the inside of homes on zillow and realtor and redfin all day long so people know what the inside of a 300 000 home looks like but they don't know is that neighborhood going to be safe for my family is it got a school district are there boats and broken down cars parked everywhere because a lot of times when i'm in these neighborhoods then i drive the neighborhood and take footage of the whole neighborhood and include that as well and people absolutely love it my lord i feel like you're giving a master class for real estate agents and how to start a youtube channel um well you know i we're about at the end of the interview we're gonna get into q a i just first off wanted to say thank you i think that your enthusiasm is one of the reasons people love your videos and people are just like collected around you obviously that's how you and i met um i always love having conversations with you on clubhouse it's kind of surreal to have you here in person we've been talking for almost a year now but i guess the reason i bring up all that is because that is really important to have that belief in yourself number one but a belief in the process and so what's interesting about youtube secrets sean and i we believe that the principles are way more important than the tactics because the tactics the algorithm the tools they're always going to be changing but the principles and i love that you're literally quoting principles there's a seven c's right and um i just wanted to also add one more note about the social media in the second edition we changed that whole chapter because we also believe the power of youtube is that you don't have to use any other platform be on social media if you commit like you did you can have massive success so um that was a huge plug for the book youtube secrets i highly recommend getting i brought my confidence oh for sure and we'll get sean assigned too uh get youtube secrets on audible i highly recommend it because number one um you know we're all busy people but also when we update the second edition i believe you're just gonna get uh freshly updated the second edition the first edition will work obviously uh there's some disagreements with how and this is why we wrote the second edition but i'll tell you this we did not change the principles and this is why i guess for me to be selfish i'm proud that the principles have stood the test of time because that can be applied to any social media platform um i guess uh before we get into q a and you guys if you are watching the replay the q a exclusive for members only so join the members only club here on video influencers hit that like button if you're getting a lot of value i know that i'm excited about youtube and subscribe to video influencers um but before i let you go um into the q a round uh what's your last words of

wisdom what would you want to tell to that person that maybe does have their back against the wall no options or the person that's maybe been struggling on this platform not gaining a lot of traction um in terms of like uh you know sticking with it and not quitting yeah so i you know i love what sean cannell says which is just press record right but i do believe there's a little bit more than that and i'm going to go back to if you treat youtube like a hobby it'll pay you like a hobby if you treat it like a business it'll pay you like a business so the information is out there i would buy any youtube book i could buy especially youtube secrets uh you know youtube formula i think are the two best books out there i would watch youtube videos i'd watch other creators in your space outside of your space you know there's channels like i said denim and nickname and roberto blake people that talk about youtube in general even there's even this one uh young lady called annie dubai dube or something you know i mean i think she's 18 but i learned stuff from her channel all the time so you can learn from anybody but put together a plan you know it's more than just press record i believe you have to press record of course but i think where people struggle is they don't have a they don't have clarity like one of the c's right they don't have clarity on what to do and you're going to fast track if you set put together a plan first not analysis paralysis don't sit there and get you know in this loop of never pressing record but hyper focus understand a plan put it and you have to take massive action at that point and then just stay consistent you have to develop a schedule that you will stick to people ask me how many videos are you doing i'm like well how many videos will you commit to can you do one per week which i think is the absolute minimum you want to do one per week but if you can do two or three then you're gonna your growth curve is gonna go much faster right and so you have to do what works for you ultimately i mean i can give you lots of tips and guidelines you can the books can but you have to do what you can commit to and what you can um really focus on yeah the plan i think is massive and obviously that's part of the clarity um i've never even thought of like yeah really just write out what your goals are on a piece of paper right who you're going to reach out to what are the videos they care about and then what are you going to do to execute on creating those videos if you do that you will have more success than 90 percent of people on youtube were just going all over the place and trying to be on instagram and be a tick tock or all that kind of stuff it is totally possible levi is a great example we'll put all the links down below to his channel if you're looking to uh move to dallas realist dallas texas can we just ask him to search dallas oh yeah i actually don't want the thing is i never share a direct link because i want everybody to find the channel search based there you go i'm this i mean you're like the ultimate channel because you really don't care about the views you care about the view were and if you do that you will win on youtube so thank you guys um so much for checking in remember subscribe to video influencers for more interviews just like this with people crushing it on this platform