← The Think Media Podcast
The Think Media Podcast
439: 58 Minutes of Social Media Strategy For Growing Your Business (Watch This Before 2026)
00:58:33
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, before we jump into the show, I just wanted to take a second and say thank you for listening. I know that life is busy and you have a lot of options when it comes to the content you consume. So whether you're new here or you've been listening to the Think Media podcast for years, I just want to say thank you and I appreciate you. Okay, let's jump into the show. You do not need a huge channel to Win Big on YouTube.
- [00:25]
B
The conversion rate on leads created in video social media close at an infinitely higher rate than almost any other form.
- [00:32]
A
Of lead gen. My guest today is Jason Abrams. He's the head of industry and learning at the world's largest real estate company, and he's the host of the Millionaire Real Estate Agent podcast. What would you say to people who think they have no time to make content?
- [00:46]
B
I don't know that you have time not to. We said, let's study as many podcasts as we can, and here's what we learned. Podcasts hit drive time. The average drive time from a human to get to work is 42 minutes. So we decided that the perfect time for a podcast would be 42 minutes. That was number one.
- [01:04]
A
Number two, Jason, I want to go zero to 100 real quick today and say congratulations on hitting a million downloads on the podcast that you're leading. What would you say some of the insights and tips that are behind that milestone?
- [01:20]
B
Oh, well, first of all, thank you, thank you, thank you. It was all the listeners. It's the people's podcast, my friend. So thanking them, especially before we launch the podcast, I work with a gentleman named Gary Keller. Gary wrote the book the Millionaire Real Estate Agent, which is the namesake for the podcast. And he doesn't do anything in life without a model. So he always says, be incredibly slow to start to perfect your model and then be very, very quick to then execute it. So we took a step sideways and we said, let's study as many podcasts as we can and learn as much as we can about what makes some of them incredible and what makes some of them easy listening and what makes some of them addictive and what makes some of them set it and forget it. Here's what we learned. By and large, podcasts hit drive time. And so although we might listen to it while we're in the gym and we might listen to it when we're in the kitchen, a ton of people listen to them when they're in the cars. The average drive time from a human to get to work is 42 minutes. So we decided that the perfect time for a podcast would be 42 minutes. The idea would be that you listen, by the way, that's total drive time. So it's usually 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the afternoon. So we wanted to make it where you could get it on the way to work, then you could turn it on after work and jump right back into the episode. So timing really mattered. That was number one. Number two, we found a ratio that we loved, which was host talk time to guest talk time, and we calculated it at a 5 to 1. So if you listen to the MREA podcast, what you'll notice relatively quickly is I, as the host, speak for one minute of every five minutes that our guests are speaking at a max. It's not about my brilliance, it's about theirs. And thank God for that, because I'm not that brilliant. We stick to that ratio as the golden ratio for us. Number three, there's a ton of podcasts on any imaginable topic, and there's a million general interview podcasts and ways to look at life. And we decided that in a world that seems to be getting more and more general, we were gonna get wildly specific. So we run a podcast built for real estate professionals in order for them to run better models and systems. That's it. We deviate from that very, very rarely. Meaning that I didn't want to compete for the entertainment ear time with Joe Rogan. I'm not trying to get you for five hours where you're going to get all making matter of life and all the things that happen in it. I want you for 40 minutes a week to get the most high level specific real estate conversation any human could ever have. And then finally, tactics and systems, meaning there were podcasts that were out there in our space and they're all great. Love the hosts, I think they do a great job. But a lot of them were like these bizarre walk down memory lane for 40 minutes with a real estate professional, which is great. It's though possible that you listen to it and at the end of it, you have no new time in your life and you have no new way to make money. And I'm not suggesting those are the only things in life. I am suggesting that when you have more of both of those things, life tends to improve. So for us, we teach a model on every single episode. And that model, and here's the key, goes out in writing every Thursday to our listeners. So on Monday, you listen to it. You don't have to take any notes. On Thursday, we Email out all of our notes and the model from the episode. And that's been really attractive to people who want specific information how what does.
- [05:01]
A
Production look like specifically for you and the amount of time this takes you per week to to launch this really incredible model. You just delivered for us, this podcast that follows a tight format, tactics, systems, getting the guests on and whatnot. And at this point you have help. And so you might speak to an individual agent that wanted to start a podcast or an individual entrepreneur comparing what they might do to also what you might do in regards to producing a show like yours.
- [05:30]
B
First thing I would tell you is that if I would have waited to have it perfectly, I haven't, I wouldn't have launched the podcast yet. Like, the reality is there's a ton of time that people spend getting ready to get ready and I would fight the urge to do that if I was out there and I didn't have any team when we started it. I had an amazing curiosity around the industry. I spent my time and trying to find the agents that were top in their marketplace. Once I found them, I simply asked if they were willing to do an interview for us. I did pre interviews. They take about 30 minutes. The pre interview is what's your model, what's your system, what's the thing that you all do better than everybody else and how does it work? Then the show takes 40 minutes to record, sometimes 50 minutes to record. I end up stacking them all up. I do them on Saturdays because I find it difficult to break from meetings and real estate business and then try to become a creative. I haven't been able to. I'm not that talented. So I need to wake up on a Saturday, enjoy my morning, have my coffee, love my life, then show up in sweatpants and then be wildly curious around real estate with four or five individuals over four or five hours. Then after that, I literally take my notes from the show. They're given to someone who can actually spell. They're then put into a one pager and then we send out the email when you actually end up doing the math because we do very little editing, we have about an hour and 40 minutes into each 40 minute podcast.
- [06:57]
A
I have a lot of takeaways here and I'm curious if there's any nuances on these takeaways. I think start before you're ready. So no team when starting. If you wait until everything is perfect, you're going to be waiting the rest of your life. And so if you're listening to this, no excuses, you Got to punch fear in the face and start. The pre interview, I think, is a huge key. I've been a guest on a lot of podcasts, including yours, and it reminds me also of Michael Stelzner, the Social Media examiner podcast. It is so powerful that you have a pre interview that lets you maybe get some connection. But also think about what are the golden nuggets, what's new as opposed to just going into it. And a lot of 99% of the podcasts I've been on, they just kind of go into it. Maybe you get lucky with good information, but maybe you miss it a lot. Or if you have random pre production, you might have random results. And so that pre interview for listeners, I think more time spent planning in any kind of content you're doing is going to improve the final output. I also like this idea of putting it all on one day and you're a real operator, you're operating business, you got leadership, you got meetings, you got stuff to do. And these different parts of the brain, there's like operation brain and there's creative brain. So the fact you stack them up on Saturdays is very smart. And the grouping of similar tasks to do all that in one day is smart. And then notes from the show that can then later be turned into the newsletter. I'm curious if now, in a world of AI, my thought is the production of a newsletter to follow up a video podcast in today's world is easier than ever before because you could pull the transcript of the conversation and your original notes to probably formulate something pretty powerful. Have you started experimenting with that yet?
- [08:37]
B
100%. And it's great to get a running start and a first draft. What I find, and I think this will change, by the way, in relatively short order because AI is becoming so advanced, is it misses the nuance and it misses some of the depth, which, by the way, is the whole reason for the pre interview. I found that when I was doing the show without the pre interview when we launched, I still thought the content was really good. The challenge was I wasn't able to say, you know, in our pre interview, you mentioned blank and actually said, that's the reason you do it. And what I found was as soon as the microphones were running during the podcast, some of the brilliance would get left out because everyone's trying to be smarter and they're trying to converse and they don't. They're not on podcasts every day. So with no pressure, you get more diamonds in the pre interview that you're then able to build when the pressure is there during the podcast. I do think, by the way, that that the newsletter and everyone wants to discount that. And I don't know why, in my mind, the newsletter is as important as the podcast. The fact of the matter is, is in order to make something actionable, people need to know the steps. And so if you're providing, you know, entertainment, education, the podcast is the entertainment, the education, and the step by step is the model they're laying out. Getting it in writing on Thursday is what takes it from entertaining to actionable. And by the way, the open rates are so much higher than I ever would have imagined because I kind of looked up at the industry average for newsletters and said, okay, if I can get a 12% open rate, life is good. But when someone listens to your content and spends time with you on Monday and then reads your thoughts on Thursday, I, I think you can push 50, 60, 70% on an open rate, which is an incredible level of engagement.
- [10:26]
A
Are you struggling to find qualified real estate leads? Learn how to transform your business with the power of YouTube. On my free on demand class at Real Tube Class.com you'll learn for surefire video strategies to attract new prospects, build client relationships effortlessly, and discover why YouTube will give you an edge in this challenging market. To watch the free class, just go to realtubeclass.com or click the link in the show notes. So there's a lot of takeaways here. And so we're talking about your podcast, which is also distributed on YouTube, which is our core audience. But I think a huge opportunity for those listening is to consider, okay, this weekly show, how you're producing it, and the opportunity for content creators doing audio and video to launch newsletters. I agree with you, it is very underrated. Now, I'm curious, how did you build this newsletter? How did you promote it? I know at Keller Williams, I would imagine your contact list or the types, the segmentation of different lists is pretty massive. So did you start a newsletter that wanted this one thing and have you kept this focused? And how did you get people opting in and growing this for what you're delivering on Thursdays?
- [11:41]
B
By the way, I hesitate to even call it a quote unquote newsletter. And we didn't use any of the data from Keller Williams because the podcast isn't a Keller Williams podcast. The podcast is offered out into the industry. As a matter of fact, we don't ever talk about Keller Williams in it. We're providing the education for the entire industry to try to move everybody forward. The only thing that we did is we said, listen, odds are you're out in the car and you're going 110 miles an hour in the Range Rover. And don't take notes while driving. I'm going to take the notes. The notes come out every Thursday. If you want the notes, go to mreanotes.com, enter your email address and you'll get the notes. That's the absolute 100% only thing that we did to drive it. And very, very Quickly, we had 25,000 people raise their hand and say, hey, I want the notes. And I think the way that it happens is they hear one episode, they love what they hear, and they want that in writing. It's a one page outline that comes out with step by step. These are the seven steps to getting your YouTube world off and running. You know, something like this would be what you would have taught our people. And after that, now they're kind of in. And what they find is the notes come every Thursday and they open the ones that have a topic line that they're interested in. And I'm absolutely amazed. I get more emails thanking me for the notes than I do thanking me for the podcast.
- [13:04]
A
So does that two different URLs? If I want to spy on this for my own brand and look into it, it looks like I can find it at Millionaire Agent Podcast. Com. I enter my first name, last name, email. Was there a second URL you also bought that you give a verbal call.
- [13:19]
B
To action to MrEanotes.com. i just felt like no one could. At least I was using myself as the example. Cause they told me Millionaire podcast and I didn't know how to spell millionaire.
- [13:29]
A
Yeah, I agree with you.
- [13:31]
B
Here's the deal, gang. I can't read or write so well. And so when someone says spell millionaire, I'm like, I am one. But I couldn't spell it. We got to make that shorter. Yep.
- [13:40]
A
Okay, so I like that. So, and to speak to that, that speaks to the fact that you might have more than one URL. And it's a juicy tip for our listeners. Verbal call to actions on video and audio I think are key. But how easy is your URL to spell? So pursue and purchase a clear and simple URL to promote something cool like this. It could be a newsletter, it could be something else you're giving away. And you can always just redirect it. And some of the biggest pitfalls I see people fall into is hard to spell words. Also sometimes numbers, they might See, like, you know, the number one podcast, what was it? Is it the number digit or is it O N E? So you want to make these things where what are the pitfalls that people could fall into to drive traffic from the podcast over to that page or from the YouTube channel. Now, I also notice there's a really cool feature you have here that people could take advantage of. People can record questions. Is that something that you still do?
- [14:37]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So when you go there and we call that out, every third episode, we call out the fact that at any point you can go to MRA notes.com and record your voice asking a question, and if picked, we're going to read it on the air and give you the answer. And we did that for three reasons. Number one, we wanted to see if there could be a way for us to interact in a more personal way. Because right right now, the podcast by its very nature is one to many. Could we start forming a one to one relationship? Number two, we were using the questions as kind of a governor to figure out, well, what topics should we cover next? And so we line up our questions all the time and say, okay, if we're getting a disproportionate number of people asking about door knocking or asking about social media interaction or asking about client events, this points us in the right direction so that we're following true north to make sure we're covering the right topics. And then finally, which was number three, we were trying little things, and we still do, to just find out how many people are listening and then willing to go take action because we asked them to. And this was a different way. Google has this idea of the heart metric, which there's an acronym for the word heart. It begins with happiness and it breaks down how they view. Someone would think about using any Google page. The last one is task. Did they actually get their task accomplished? And so we looked up and said, well, what would be the quote, unquote, heart metrics for a podcast? Well, number one, you'd want to see that your listeners are growing. Number two, we want to see engagement in the newsletter. And then number three, if we were going to start giving tasks to the listener to see if we're really in relationship, would they start doing it? It's a really powerful way to judge whether or not your audience is engaging if you're not selling a product. Because keep in mind, a lot of folks go out and they create a podcast or a channel in order to sell a product. That's not our model. We're simply Going out to garner an audience, to own the mindshare within the space.
- [16:35]
A
And I had never heard of this is a powerful insight of this Google Heart metric, which stands for happiness, engagement, adoption, retention and task success, which is a framework to speak of the quality of the user experience. I think this is one of the juiciest nuggets that has maybe ever been shared on our podcast and it ties into something that YouTube values. Because I think on YouTube we, we can get so stuck in math and we think about how many views do we get, you know, what's the biggest number of reach can we get? Whereas YouTube has been banging the drums about satisfaction, viewer satisfaction and Google's. Google owns YouTube. So heart speaks. Yeah, engagement, like impact depth. And you start thinking about these things. Well, yeah, there's views, but what al. What about also comments? What about the depth of the comments? In this case you're saying the action someone takes to go all the way to your website in response to it, an invitation to do so, to share just their feelings, record their voice. Such a powerful metric that I think a lot of times we can get disconnected from as creators thinking just about the, if you will, top line data metrics as opposed to those emotional connection metrics. You have any further thoughts on that?
- [17:49]
B
No, I think that's spot on. I think that there, by and large, there's only two ways to enforce an action in somebody, either by edict or influence. Edict, meaning I'm in some position to make a rule and then you follow it. Influence is a much longer road measured by people taking actions based on a suggestion. And if you're going to look up, and I'm a novice at all this, but when I look up at the influence economy, I'm reminded that you're either influencing or being influenced. And so I'm constantly looking for ways within the program, within the show to find out, is influence actually happening or am I just talking into a camera?
- [18:27]
A
Such a good insight. What would you say to people and leaders who think they have no time to make content?
- [18:33]
B
This is going to sound canned and crass, but I would say I don't know that you have time not to. And when I say that everything matters, but not everything matters equally. And you could be right out there that this whole Internet thing is a fad, that this social media thing is going away, you might be right. I'm yet to see any evidence of it. And you know, Dillinger robbed banks because that's where the money was at. I do a podcast and social media because that's where the people are. And if you're going to be in a people relationship business, I always think about the pyramid of communication. And if you think about being in emotional proximity. So let's think through this for a second. When someone gets close to making any decision in life, they do it with whoever's in either physical proximity or emotional proximity to them. Physical proximity, meaning I'm close enough to you to influence your decisions. This is why, by the way, all you parents out there get all scared to death when your kid's hanging out with knuckleheads because they're in physical proximity with knuckleheads, and knuckleheads make bad choices. And then your kid goes along on that ride. So let's pretend for a second that you're selling plumbing services. You could move in and live in the basement of your best client's house. And that way, anytime they had a plumbing issue, I promise you, you'd get that work. The problem is you can only do that with one of your clients. So physical proximity doesn't work for us. Now you're into emotional proximity, which means that I'm enough of a part of your life that you're going to include me when you make a decision around the thing I'm an expert in. So how do you build emotional proximity? Well, people do business with people they like. So in order to do more business, you have to be more likable to more people more often once you get there. By the way, I think you're 99% there in any sales or influence business. Because I have people every day that are like, Well, I made 40 contacts today, but I'm no richer. And I always look back and say, that's because no one liked you more. At the end of the day, people do business with people they like. So how do you become likable to more people more often? Well, then you look up at the pyramid of communication at the very bottom of it. I put email. It's very impersonal. We get a million of them every day. It very rarely moves me emotionally closer to you. But one step up from that is actual snail mail. It still works, by the way, all these things. Do I get something in the mail? Then I'm going to take a next step up from there, and that's going to be social media. And the reason it's above the other two, because even if it's one to many, you're still seeing my face. I'm still imprinting relationship. I'm more likable because you see me then from there we go to one on one touches. Now, one on one, text messages. I have great influence. If I'm texting you one on one, then one on one phone conversations and then the very top of the pyramid is face to face, which by the way, over the next 10 years might be the only thing that AI can't fake will be the face to face. But if you think about that pyramid and then ask the question about your business, am I living at the bottom of the pyramid or am I living at the top? I would submit to you that if you're not spending more time living at the top, the answer might be in owning the middle. And that's where social media, I think, plays an tremendous role.
- [21:50]
A
Powerful insight about the pyramid of communication and social media and video being such an opportunity for accelerating know like and trust. Let's talk roi. And it's fascinating to me earlier that you said you've got all kinds of business activities that are directly correlated to roi, but you're doing a podcast not to drive sales, but to stay top of mind, to build relationships and connections, speak to the potential motives, reasons and justification for the person that's like, all right, I'm still skeptical. I'm a busy real estate agent, I'm busy working in a corporate job, and I have this pull towards content, but I don't know if there's going to be a return on investment. What do you think are the different ways to measure that return on investment?
- [22:37]
B
I think there's a general rule about making money in business that Gary Keller told me. And he said, son, be careful how you make your money. And I always struggled with it. And finally one day I said to him, it sounds fortune cookie ish. What do you actually mean? And he said that at the end of the day, every great business owner needs to begin with a promise. What's the promise that my business delivers? Once they have the promise, they then need a pro forma, which is the math of delivering that promise at a certain number accomplishes all their financial goals. Once they have the proforma, they then need to perform, which is prove to the world that you actually can do this thing. Then immediately you're going to have proof. Go out and market the proof. Now you have scale. And he said, most people skip making the promise, doing the pro forma, getting the proof, and jump right into marketing. But they don't market proof that it works. They market proof that they work, but in the end, the consumer doesn't care if you work. It's about them. They care if it works for them. When you think about those things in alignment, social media becomes the amplifier for every single one of them. And I think when you look up now and try to figure out the ROI in the real estate business, it's the easiest figure in the world to do. And here's the math you're going to do. You're going to take your average sales price divisible by whatever rate you charge and you're going to get a dollar amount. Then you're going to look up and realize that it's next to practically free in order for you to start doing things on social media and video. And if you do one deal, you're going to have the greatest ROI ever. Then it will be a very short period of time before you start to realize that the conversion rate on leads created in video social media close at an infinitely higher rate than almost any other form of lead gen outside of your direct database. And the reason they're in emotional proximity to you and they feel like they have a relationship before they ever become a lead. And then the final thing that you'll do, you'll realize that you wake up every day currently trading your time for dollars. How many minutes a day can I do a certain activity that results in some sort of positive variable feedback, an appointment or a lead? The genius of the model that Sean that you teach and so many of the people you have on your show is that social media works while you sleep. Meaning to set the fishing lines and then go take a nap at the bottom of the boat is a hell of a lot more fun than fishing by hand.
- [25:10]
A
You are incredibly effective at articulating frameworks and, and giving us such things as the four Ps promise, pro forma, prove and proof. I do want to so much was unpacked there. Listeners may want to rewind. And I also would like to dig a little bit deeper there to walk us through those P's because you said at every level we could do that on social media and at every level where you're saying most are making the mistake and they're skipping to marketing and they're not even proving the product works or proving they work or the service and so maybe speak mistakes through the piece. Where do you think, why do you think people walk you through them? Why do you think people are ma. What are the mistakes they're making at the promise and how do you do it right? How would you do the promise on social media? What does that look like?
- [25:59]
B
I think most folks promise competency and the challenge with that is that competency is expected. Meaning if you were to go in, let's use the ladies in the audience and you were having a baby delivered and the doctor came out and said, I'm going to crush this and I'm talking about all 10 fingers and 10 toes. And you'd be like, well, wait a second, that wasn't my definition of crushing it. That's just competency. Like that, that better happen. Jay Bayer taught me this and he wrote an incredible book called Talk Triggers. And what he said is that people don't talk about competency, they expect it. The promise that we need to make has to be more than competency. So what's the promise that you're going to make around whatever product or service that you're offering is that's more than simply being competent. And here's how this will show up for you in your life if you've already been in business, which is you can't believe that your phone isn't ringing with more referrals because you sit there and you look up and say, well, I don't get it. The last deal that I had, I listed their house, let's just use that as an example. And I got it sold in less time than I told them for more money than I told them that they were going to get with fewer headaches. But they're not sending me anybody. Yeah, gang, that's what that client expected. That's called competency. So what's the part of the promise that's more than competency? And I think everybody skips that step. And by the way, how you use social media, it's two ways, number one, to figure out what people actually want within the service that you provide. Because one thing social media and the Internet is undefeated in is bad reviews. Like if you want to go find out what's really going on out there, just start reading about the horror stories in your market to figure out all the things not to do and then look for the missing pieces and what people actually write as a good review and you know what you'll find. And you taught me this. I believe there's a ton of five star reviews and there's a bunch of one star reviews. There's very few people that thought it was a three. So I make my promise by reading what the things that people gave someone a five star review for in my industry and then I piece those things together and that's going to be my promise.
- [28:14]
A
So I love that you mentioned using the real estate example that you. So you got My whole house sold faster than I thought, with less headaches than expected, at a higher price even than I thought I was going to get. And I didn't even talk about it because that was just expected. What would be an example in that same industry, then, of a standout promise that we could all learn from. Of like, all right, well, then what. What does an elevated promise look like staying on that example?
- [28:46]
B
It depends. In that industry, it depends exactly the type of customer that you're going to be working for. Ultimately, we want customers to turn into clients because in that industry, we're going to have fiduciary. So the way that you'd have a promise and the way that you would have a talk trigger is you'd figure out, what specific need in the market am I going to solve? Because there's this idea that if I go after everyone who might be buying or selling a home, I'm going to be successful. But in the interviews, I've learned it's when you zero in on a specific type of client and then solve their problem in an innovative or more thorough way, that's how you end up becoming the biggest. Look at a guy like Tim Heil, for example. This is a young kid at the time who comes into the real estate industry, reads the MREA book, and instead of going in advertising, generally, all he does is say, the only people I'm going to represent are those that didn't sell their home the first time and became an expired listing. That is all I'm going to do. And this forces him to come up with products to help homes that didn't sell the first time sell the second time. These are things that were like enhanced staging or cash offers or the external cleanup. All these things that you don't need on every house. You just need on some that didn't sell the first time. So his promise is it will sell the second time. That all comes together. And that, by the way, becomes a talk trigger for people. And Jay Baer explained to me, he said talk triggers are things that people do organically when something surprises them. The example he uses, if I was to say to you, Sean, there's a certain hotel that loves chocolate chip cookies, which hotel would you think that might be?
- [30:31]
A
I wouldn't know the answer, but I haven't experienced that. And I know they give you chocolate at the front desk, right?
- [30:35]
B
That's right. By the way, it's Doubletree double tree away, 75,000 cookies a day. They've been doing it for 32 years. And they tracked that for every human that they give these cookies to, a third of them. Tell someone about the experience. Oh, you wouldn't believe it. They gave me a cookie when I checked. Gang, they got zero marketing and advertising budget because they have their promise. The warm welcome. That's their promise. And the warm welcome is so warm that they don't need to market anything else.
- [31:08]
A
Are you ready to start your YouTube channel, but you don't know where to begin? Or have you been posting videos but you're frustrated because you're just not getting the views and nobody is seeing them? For a limited time, you can get the number one bestselling YouTube strategy book, YouTube Secrets for free at ytsecrets.com this book is the proven blueprint that has helped thousands of people go from zero subscribers to a thriving channel. All I ask is that you pay shipping and then I will mail you the brand new updated second edition of YouTube secrets. And when you place your order today, there's a couple other super cool things that I'll hook you up with. First, you're going to get instant access to a free deep dive masterclass where I will break down the exact strategy I'm currently using to generate over 120,000 views per day, every single day on YouTube and generate over $100,000 per month on the platform, as well as the three biggest mistakes that most creators make when starting and trying to grow their channel. That class is free to watch instantly when you pick up this special offer. Now you're also gonna get my video series called the Perfect Video Recipe. One of the updated chapters in the second edition is titled the Perfect Video Recipe. It's actually a formula for how to structure YouTube videos to get maximum views and how to break through through in the YouTube algorithm. This is the exact formula that readers of the book and our students are using to generate millions of views. And again, that'll just be included when you jump on this limited offer. Third, you're gonna get access to our 1000 Subs Club email newsletter which delivers actionable weekly tips to your email inbox that will help you get to 1,000 subscribers fast. And we also do really cool weekly giveaways that includes lighting and microphones and YouTube equipment plus plus software that will help you on your creator journey. But here's the thing. Supplies are limited on this free book promotion. So if you want to grab this offer, go to ytsecrets.com right now and just place your order covering shipping and I'll get this book in the mail to you right away. So I'm unpacking a lot here. So the I think there's two big keys to if we universally applied to every single listener is this ideas of the power of of niching down and being specific. What specific need in the market am I going to solve? That's how you start to recommendable, that's how you create a talk trigger trigger and the specific type of client. And I think a lot sometimes this work can be very difficult. It could be hard. But as famous as Simon Sinek's talk start with why is marketing wisdom would suggest we should start with who? Because yes, why your values may be more important than what you do. But what because he'd go why do you do what you do? How do you do what you do? And then what do you do? But the missing piece in that whole three step equation and Simon Sinek's a legend and it's a great book but the missing piece is to start with who. And in a crowded 2025 world I think the start with who is more important than ever before. Because as soon as you start to specialize and as soon as you start to become a meaningful specific instead of a wandering generality, you also it honestly probably is impossible to make a general promise and actually fulfill on and do it well. You just can't. It's too difficult. There's too much diversity in if you will, the viewership and the clientele. But when you narrow down the who then you can start being recommendable and people are talking about you because you've really narrowed that in. What are you? Am I tracking?
- [34:34]
B
No, that's 100% right. People get really wrapped around the axle on getting narrow. But the reality of it is you go small to go big and the math of the world right now plays that out. Let's look at just the continental U.S. you have 380 million people, give or take, you have 8 billion on the planet. And so when I say go small just because math it ultimately is going big because someone might look up and say oh Tim Heil, what was he doing? Only going after expired listings. But in the year he did it, there was 5.2 million home sales friends. There had been over a million properties that had went on the market and come off. If you're a real estate agent, how many of those million do you need to do to hit all of your financial goals? And I bet cuz math you could play that game in almost any business in any sector.
- [35:24]
A
It's very encouraging because there's a lot of fear and Insecurity that comes our way that is constantly tempting us to try to go broad. And we're so afraid of niching down and specializing. But you just played it out. The world is different, quite literally, America is different. 880 million people. There's the. There's the A Thousand True Fans model, which my friend Charlene Johnson actually thinks is the 500 true fans model in real estate. If you're doing 500 transactions in a year, that's pretty great. You know, if you're doing 100, if you're doing 50. So, like these smaller numbers, thinking about what it is you're actually solving for, this is incredibly powerful. So we're talking about these four P's, and this is how to really stand out, trigger success. And really the promise of even this episode. You don't need a huge channel or a huge video podcast. In fact, go small to go big. Let's dig a little bit into this pro forma so we're actually better strategizing our channels, better articulating, and maybe even repositioning what we're doing in regards to our promise. Number two is the pro forma. Explain what that is at a fifth grade level and then explain maybe the mistake there and the opportunity there.
- [36:34]
B
The mistake is not having one. Because a lot of folks look up and to them the idea of pro forma means some wildly large, complicated financial projection for the next hundred years and 400 different columns on their spreadsheets. And I think all that is complete horseshit. Here's what a proforma is. Proforma is I understand the math that dictates my business, and I understand how that math equates to me making the amount of money I need to love my life. That's it. And I think a lot of people forget how they make their money. And they wake up in the morning and they make poor timing decisions and poor financial decisions because they're not using the pro forma. As a guide. In the end, the path is always in the math, and the math is always the path. So the way that I like to do it and the way that I learned through these interviews was you look up and you ask the question, whatever product or service I'm trying to solve sells for blank amount of dollars. My cost of each one of those sales is blank, which leaves blank profit. How many of those do I need to do in order to make my freedom money for my life? And now you're going to have a number. And then every day we wake up in pursuit of that number. And I always say, live at the top of the funnel, which means the top of my funnel is everybody that hears my voice. The bottom of my funnel is everybody in my business that actually ends up buying a home. So how and what are my ratios to go from the top of the funnel to the bottom? Once I'm comfortable for that, I just live at the top. And I know that if I put enough people into the top of the funnel, the bottom takes care of itself. I know that sounds overly simplistic, but gang, the best things in life are the most simple. And yet everything naturally wants to become more complicated.
- [38:23]
A
This is very powerful. It does. It's a very important question for every listener too to think about. Again, what are the important actions that I'm doing that should be driving results versus what are just the random activities? There's so much distraction in today's world and I think the trap of content creation is just thinking like, oh, I don't know what I should do today. Should I just, you know, go live on my Instagram or make some reels? Should I make a YouTube video? What YouTube video should I make? Do I need to? And what other actions do I need to set up in regards to, around, around my business and to create a real content business, let's say? So I was kind of looking into this and it was, it's getting clear that okay, what could the math on my channel be? What are my income Streams? Might be YouTube, AdSense, affiliate marketing, brand deals, online courses, digital products, or all kinds of different things. So then the actions, am I Uploading 2 to 3 SEO driven videos weekly and then measuring that these videos need to have a certain retention or click through rate that I'm solving for. So I'm making improvements. I don't want to just get so far ahead where I have so much volume going out and results going down. Well, I need to fix something, something's broken in that particular case. But then am I doing a certain number of brand deal reach outs or brand deal sponsorship reach outs? As an action, have I even built something perhaps as a product or written my book? And then are my actions to follow up on that? Whether that's the video, I create that as a lead magnet from an email series to an offer, all these different facts, am I on track for what essentially a pro forma is? It's the math of how your business is actually going to work and reverse engineering that and then the actions that correlate to that math.
- [40:05]
B
That's exactly right. And for so many of us that that people like me that have to make it wildly simple. I'm simply waking up in the morning and saying I need people to, in my case, email me that they want to do business with me. I think about like a, like a, like a guy, like a Ken Posick who runs a YouTube based real estate business. And he wakes up in the morning and there's only two things he thinks about. How many people local in Orlando are watching him and then how many of those people email him that they need his help. And yeah, There might be 400 or 500 other things on his mind, but those are the two things that drive it. And to the point of this episode, he said to me, you know, one day I made an incredible video. He's in Orlando, it was about Disney. And, and he picked up like 30,000 subscribers. And when he looked into it, he found that a ton of those folks were in Japan because they were wildly interested in this really niche thing in Disney that he had been talking about on the video. And he looked up and his immediate jolt of excitement over more, more, more viewers became this wah, wah moment. Because Ken wants people in Orlando or people moving to Orlando listening to him. So his Performa is specific to that. I think it would be an awful feeling to wake up every day and not know the numbers that drive the business and feel like I was wandering through the wilderness hoping I find my way. The path is in the math. And by the way, if you don't know the numbers, you're highly susceptible to on any day, waking up and quitting. And I know that sounds really harsh, but that's the reality of it. If, if the numbers are the path you're on and you wake up without it for a long enough period of time, that's when one day you just stop because you decide that it's not working. The world doesn't decide. Your listeners certainly didn't decide. The viewer didn't decide. You woke up one day and using the Ouija board method of life, decided it didn't feel good and then decided it's broken. And I think that there's an awful lot of dreams that fall out of the realm of reality because of that.
- [42:08]
A
That's genius. Now, as I think about Ken Posak, you mentioned he thinks about two numbers. Could we combine those? Is it really one number? He wakes up saying, how many local people emailed me that specifically want help with real estate? Is that really the one number?
- [42:27]
B
It is. The only challenge is in Orlando you have people from out of state that are Moving to Orlando. So they're not local yet, but they will be in most markets. Have you lived, by the way, if you're. And this isn't a knock on West Bloomfield, Michigan. I grew up there, a great place. There's not that many people moving there. That one should be one number. How many people locally and then how many of them are emailing me?
- [42:48]
A
I see what you're saying. Okay, so in his particular case, what I love there is this exercise that I threw out what a creator business could look like. And it's like you're tracking your affiliates, you're tracking all this other stuff. But what a great thought exercise to break it down to say what are the ones or two things? Makes me think of the book. The one thing you know, what is just like the one thing that's moving the needle. And we, we talk about views, lead sales in our accelerator program, which is a simple framework, but it's quite profound. It's like I'm getting views on YouTube, but how many qualified leads am I getting that are actually leading to sales and having these metrics that I'm measuring and even maybe sometimes more importantly, sometimes we have multiple income streams. Like for us, we got a book and there could be book sales and that's a level of impact. And then we maybe have lower cost products that are really cool and people love. But we. The deepest transformation is like, what's the one number? And that might be our program that, you know, brings the most transformation possible. And what's the 1 number in your business? Then in a way makes all other numbers unnecessary. All of those are to manage. But if we're not, if we solve for this number, it solves everything else. And so for Ken, as his core business being real estate transactions, whether local or people moving to Orlando, again, you get distracted. Well, I got a viral YouTube video. Do I double down on that topic? Do I make a part two about that? You look at the audience, a bunch of people from Japan. Do I start a travel agency? You know, you can like lead you to other things. Do I, should I get on the phone with them? Do I try to create something new and where there could be bright spots that leads you to something. Oftentimes staying committed to the core mission, being purpose driven, knowing what that is, and actually fighting distraction. Because social media can lead you in some, in a way, dangerous pitfalls. Even when you have good things happen, like a video popping off or going viral, what are your thoughts?
- [44:42]
B
Be careful how you make your money. You gotta wake up every day with Complete focus and clarity on how you make your money and everything else in the business world is a distraction.
- [44:51]
A
Okay, so we have two more as we land the plane and we've got prove. So we're defining these, we're defining the mistake, and then we're applying these to how these become 4Ps that are critical for us having success even with a small audience. What's prove?
- [45:07]
B
Prove it is you had this promise it was going to help this specific group of people or these folks that need this service and did it. And if it did, that's awesome. If it didn't, by the way, and you go out and scale something that doesn't work, that doesn't make you a great entrepreneur, it makes you a charlatan. You don't want to do that. We have morals. You want to better the people and provide. And so if you've made this promise, you understand the math of it, now you go out and start doing it. And by the way, it doesn't have to be at some kind of tremendous scale. Odds are if it works locally in your market, there are people in other markets that have the same problem. And so ultimately there's only two ways to solve something. Either number one, present an opportunity or number two, solve a problem at scale. Those are the ways you're living in. Number two, in this moment. And so you have to prove that whatever you said you were going to do actually works. And I think this works across services and products. If you're selling a product, you want to have people that are using it, that love it. And if you're selling a service, coaching company, any of these things, you got to go make sure that some people actually get to the finish line with this thing. Because if you go on and you say, I got this great idea, I can make your whole life better, I'm incredible. And you haven't done it yet. You could end up harming people and none of us want that. And I don't care, by the way, on the people that you're working with to get to proof what you have to do to get it done. You may have to go pick them up and carry them around all three bases and then drop them at home plate. Any way you slice it though, you need to have some proof that this thing works. Because in today's world, and this is crazy to me, people put more credence in the online reviews that they read than they do in face to face referrals from friends. There's a generation coming up right now, friends, that's going to inherit all the money. And they go to check out what strangers think about something before they ask their friends what they thought, which is incredible to me. So you got to have proof.
- [47:12]
A
This is a good challenge too, because, you know, people in an audience like ours can fall into. Well, this is what a lot of times we can become obsessed with. And this is, I would say, the promise of our Think Media podcast. It's really a marketing podcast. We're helping people get more reach, get better at getting views, get better at going viral, get better at building a personal brand, becoming famous. But the danger of all of the above is the toxic side of even influencers. You're like becoming famous for famous sake, and yet there's not depth underneath whatever that Persona someone builds. Dave Ramsey spoke at our event and he said the days of influencers with nothing to say are ending. And oftentimes we're now seeing the deflation of even, let's say the, the paid sponsorship online. That is an inauthentic. It wasn't something, it wasn't a product that actually works. It wasn't. The individual had not actually used it. They're just being paid. And why they might have made short term money. They hurt their long term brand. Makes me think of Fyre Festival. And so Fyre festival was Billy McFarlane, man.
- [48:23]
B
God. And by the way, he was just about to do it again.
- [48:26]
A
I know you're just about to do it again. And it was. And actually the promise was amazing. So the original promise was incredible. And maybe a case study and one of the greatest promises of all time. Because they made this video when they say if it's too good to be true, it probably was. It was too good to be true. But the promise was good. And so sometimes I think it's like this is the promise we want to make. We create a product, a book. We want to get out there. We start making these promises. This prove it part is just so key. And I think this should. My challenge to every listener is, is to not be discouraged. If you do a version of the product that fails, that's entrepreneurship. If you do a version of the product that even has dissatisfied customers, the commitment is you don't give up. You don't give up. You fix it. You, you, you do. That's why you do a beta test. That's why you experiment. Early days before our YouTube course, I. It existed in my head and I started to do coaching for free. And it was a hard enough challenge to find someone who would even listen to me for free. But Here was my first obsession. I went into the prove it season before selling of. Okay, I have these seven steps to what I believe it takes to rank YouTube videos. And they've worked for me, but where will they work forever for others? So I started to reach out to people at this time in Facebook messenger. And I started to say, hey, would you be interested at all in me helping with your YouTube presence and seeing if my advice could get you results? And. And if it could, and if it does, no charge, would you be willing at the end, no pressure to share a testimonial about the results it got? So step one was go test, prove it, experiment, even get their feedback. That made sense, but I got stuck here. And I feel like that's a missing step for a lot of individuals today. They're like, hey, let me just like, make a product, slap something on it, make a course. And so if your promise are the best cookies ever, then prove it. And do people line up for the cookies? Do teachers actually ask for them? What's the proof? And so creating some happy customers, some great reviews, some real results, some repeat business. And there's plenty of entrepreneurships that might entrepreneurs that launch a product and it might be tough. At the start, I think about the launch of Xbox originally by Microsoft, there was so much external pressure they'd never done. They were competing against Nintendo and PlayStation, all who had a head start, and they lost money early on. There was production malfunctions early on. They needed to get the product to market, so they did. That's kind of where the concept of ship it comes from. Like, move fast, get your product out there. But a relentless commitment to actual transformation, quality product, quality experience, you know, and Fyre Festival being it, I suppose it could have gone a better way. The other thing was probably how quickly it went. The think you could do in six months something you'd never done before. And you're right, he just postponed Fyre Festival number two, which is its own online story that I love following, but prove it. Any other thoughts before we go to the final one?
- [51:25]
B
I'm glad that I didn't buy the Promethean package for the million dollars for Fyre Festival 2. So I have that going for me. But Rory Vaden, who's a buddy of yours and mine, he always says that if you're going to be an influencer, you have to be cautious that your reach doesn't run wider than your character runs, deeper, deep. And I think that's so sage, and I think you could take out the word character. And add the word promise if it hit too close to home and you could say I don't want my reach to run wider than my promise does deep. Because the worst thing that could happen would be to scale a bad idea.
- [52:00]
A
Yep. And as we transition to the last part I've got two things. One that does actually without revealing the individual, there was a fitness influencer who who over promised and promised all this customization and all this coaching. I'm going to help you with your macros. I'm going to help you with all of this. And made a lot of sales. And then the whole thing broke down. And I think what happened. Let's even assume good intent. I probably wasn't bad intent but you just said it. The problem on social is you actually might blow up bigger than you ever thought. You want to make sure your influence doesn't run wider than your character runs deep. That's why the power of if slow and steady wins the Tortoise and the hare is sometimes you don't want to go viral. You don't want to blow up too fast. You want to grow at a scale with which you can refine your product. And in a knowledge worker type of business in the economy of ideas where we're also compensated in our creativity for those that especially literally content is the product that they make. Pace yourself, be patient, focus on character building. I we think about this all the time at Think Media. We want to be built to last. And Proverbs says an inheritance gained too early in the beginning will not be blessed in the end.
- [53:13]
B
Wow.
- [53:14]
A
So it's something about I want to. There's so much opportunity to make good money. We don't believe in get rich quick but I'd say fast money ethically in the creator economy. But sometimes you don't want it to be too fast because if you sacrifice what matters most in the process scaling quick and oftentimes you you would probably know this scaling quick is you might start to really scale. Like I'd say a lot of people probably think think media is scaling quick. It is like where the numbers we're getting today are pretty rapid by a lot of objective standards. What most people don't see is that we're about to be on our 10th year anniversary in October of 2025 and there was 10 years before the start. There always is pain and process and so fast. The flywheel of fast scale which I'm all for but thinking about that timing and I think it's, it's, it's a little overrated. Because I don't want to have 15 minutes of social media or YouTube fame only to fizzle out and be gone shortly thereafter.
- [54:25]
B
You don't want to have a good year. You want to have a good career. And I have that written on a whiteboard above my recording studio desk, and I look at it all the time and it keeps me from saying things that I'm glad I didn't say, and it keeps me from taking actions every day that I need to take.
- [54:41]
A
Well, this has been so rich and valuable. We're going to hit this last point, but I want you to give a shout out to some of the things where people can connect with you and follow you. We have one more of the four P's, and I know this conversation has been so rich and I want to just acknowledge you, Jason. It's been awesome to get your wisdom. And I know, I was like, yeah, we'll probably go 40 minutes, but here we are. Because the tactics here are immediately applicable for every listener. And I believe we're going to be better for it. And we do need to get this final point. But before we get there, how can people connect with you? What are some of the resources, things they can follow, connect and follow up?
- [55:11]
B
Just check out the podcast if you enjoyed this, the podcast, even though it's real estate focused, those models are transfer to almost every different business. And everything I've said on this podcast, I learned asking questions on mine. So it's the Mrea podcast. You can find it anywhere you get yours.
- [55:29]
A
I love it. Okay, so we're talking about these four P's, and we had the promise, we have the, you know, prove it, we have the pro forma, and then we have proof. And so break this down. What's the mistake here? You said a lot of people say skip here, proof of scale. What's this one?
- [55:48]
B
This the last step, right? So now that I have my proof, all I go do now is market and talk about that proof. So instead of marketing me, I'm great. Now I'm letting everybody else tell their story about how I helped them get where they want to go. And that's all done in story format there. There's a brilliant author who we had on the podcast who I just love, named Kendra hall, and she wrote a book called Stories that Stick. And she's awesome, right? And you listen to her and what you realize is that stories, they light up both the left and the right side of our brain. Stories allow you to make a point without being pointed. Stories are remembered and facts are Forgotten. These are all sage things that I made up. None of them, but they're right. And so the proof when you can have your people say I hired so and so or I'm working with so and so and because of that my life has gotten better. You'll never have to look for clients again if enough people say that. And I truly believe it. And that's why I say go make the proof and then market the proof. And you know, I come back to Jay Baer. He said, the reality of it is is that face to face communication will be the only thing that AI cannot fake over the next 10 years. And I believe that. And that's someone telling your story. I'll leave you with this thought, Sean. There's a lot of folks that sit out there that say I have a marketing problem. Number one, I don't have enough budget to go hit all the homes I want to in real estate or I don't have a channel big enough hitting the right people or I don't have a budget to go out and take out radio ads or take out newspaper ads or I can't advertise during an NFL game. Gang, I got to tell you, you don't have a marketing problem. From what I've learned, those are marketing tactics. What you have is a strange story problem and you have a talk trigger problem. And the reality is when you have enough people talking about your proof, you will never have to look for a client again. And I think social media is literally the way to amplify those stories.
- [57:49]
A
Jason, this has been genius. Think Media podcast listeners, here is a recap for you of these four P's Promise. What do you promise to do better than anyone else? Prove it. Can you show that your promise actually works pro forma? Do the math to make your promise into a real business. Proof of scale. Can you grow and repeat your results for more people in one sentence? Promise something awesome. Prove it works. Plan your money and grow it like a boss. If you got value today, like rate, share, review wherever you watch or listen. My name is Sean Cannell, your guide to building a profitable YouTube channel and this is the Think Media podcast. Looking forward to connecting with you in a future episode.