Branding Advice From A Top Beverly Hills Real Estate Agent • Ivan Estrada

Ivan Estrada with Ivan Estrada Property Team explains that he understood that real estate was his passion while completing his Bachelor’s Degree in Finance & Accounting at the University of Southern California. Ivan discusses the importance of transparency with the client and using communication techniques like creating a weekly marketing calendar or making content videos helps strengthen relationships with clients. Last, Ivan emphasized commitment to a client is the key to a great bonding with clients.

Check out Ivan’s course “Brand With Video” and get 25% off using the code “REAL”.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Ivan Estrada can be reached at Ivan@IvanEstradaProperties.com and 323.574.2317.

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks.

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
What are the strategies to market and effectively sell a 1020 $30 million home? And can you use those same strategies for all of your clients? Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. There agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I have your guide and host through the show and in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with top Beverly Hills luxury agent, Ivan Estrada. Before we get to Ivan, however, just a couple of quick items to mention. First, thank you for continuing to listen and support our show, please check out our sponsors what they offer and provide we only work with brands that are going to help you grow your real estate business. So please support them because they support us and also tell a friend, think of one other agent specifically, this episode is going to be a lot about branding and marketing. So gosh, we all know agents that could use a boost in their in those efforts. So please send this episode over to them to send them over to our website, keeping it real pod.com. Obviously, we’re on every major podcast platform as well just search for keeping it real, hit that like and subscribe button, we appreciate it. And also just a quick sneak preview, I am going to or our team rather is going to start clipping our episodes and finding the best moments from each episode and start promoting that or pushing that content out via our various social channels. This will include tick tock Instagram, Facebook, Instagram, said Instagram twice, LinkedIn, YouTube, all of the major social channels are going to start receiving this content. So this way, whatever is your preferred social channel of choice, you can start getting regular content from us. Our goal is to push out a couple of these a day with little short 30 to 62nd clips. So stay tuned. We’re not quite ready for that couple of weeks, but this way, you’ll get regular daily tips and advice from the top agents in the country super excited to do that. And really the only reason we’re able to do that is because our listenership and viewership has increased so much that we now have a bigger budget to spend on these kinds of efforts. So thank you, thank you, thank you to our sponsors. Thank you to our listeners. But let’s get to the main event my conversation with Ivan Estrada.

Today on the show, my guest is Ivan Estrada. He’s a top 1% Realtor author and what you know and he does a lot of things. So I want to talk to you about Ivan here. So just to give you some more information. Ivan Estrada is a highly successful real estate agent in Los Angeles with over 14 years of experience, and this is an incredible and more than half a billion dollars in sales. He has a degree in finance and accounting from USC as well as a CPA and broker’s license. Ivan’s tailored approach to each client and expertise in business, finance and marketing has allowed him to work with a diverse range of clientele from luxury sellers and buyers to international investors. And of course, first time homebuyers. He’s a branding expert for high end luxury homes, and he has been featured in numerous news outlets including ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox 11 News. Ivan is a frequent speaker communicator and panelists for various organizations has established himself as a mentor of I’m sorry, a member of several boards, and has received numerous accolades. Oney is a mentor as well. He’s also the author of the book brand with purpose which you can find on Amazon. Also, we have a link to that in the show notes and he’s also got a video course called brand with which has 15 modules to help you take your business from video clueless to video prowess. Visit Brand with.com and use the promo code real for 25% off. But to learn about everything Ivan’s doing, go to go to his website, that’s probably there’s two websites, and we’re gonna link to both of them. One is Ivan estrada.com. So that’s IV anestrada.com. And also brand with.com. But Ivan estrada.com is a great hub for everything, Ivan, what a such a pleasure to have you, thank you for being on the show.

Ivan Estrada 5:27
No, thank you for thank you for having me. It’s, I’m ready to have some fun, let’s have some fun,

D.J. Paris 5:33
let’s have some fun. And there’s not there’s not enough fun in real estate, I think so that you can always use more fun, and I love talking to marketing and branding people because that’s my background. My sister, I only have one sister, she’s a brand branding person, a CMO outside of real estate. And so this is what I live for. I love talking to agents who specifically are really involved in their branding and marketing. And you You’ve not only you’re involved with it for yourself and your clients, but you also teach this to other realtors and other businesses, as well. But before we get into the meat of everything you know, and your expertise around video and branding and social media, I would love to learn a little bit more about you. Do you mind going all the way back to the beginning of the story for how you decided to get into real estate?

Ivan Estrada 6:20
Absolutely. So for me, I was born raised in Los Angeles. parents immigrated here from Mexico. And so the American dream is to go to college, right, which I did, I ended up going to USC, here in Los Angeles, majored in finance and accounting, worked at a big firm, got the CPA license, did what you were supposed to do, to work up your you know, to for the American dream, and, you know, about three years into it. I just realized, I think I made a mistake. Like, this was not what I thought it was going to be. And don’t get me wrong, I’m great with numbers. I’m great with people, but it wasn’t my purpose. It just was not my purpose. And a friend at the time, it was Season One of Million Dollar Listing and he said, I was watching the show, and why don’t you should do you should get into real estate. And I thought you’re absolutely nuts. Like that is definitely not my thing. I’m not in sales. I you know that that was a complete opposite of what I went to go to school for, right. And of course, that little, you planted a seed in my head, I read I think about 33 or 34 books on real estate, I went to Barnes and Noble. I went to the library, I just got a bunch of books, educated myself, and I thought, You know what, I think this could be my thing. You know, my guy. I love networking. I love business. I love branding. I love people, I love real estate, especially here in Los Angeles. And then I just decided, I left the accounting world behind me and jumped into real estate. And it’s been the most incredible, challenging, amazing, scary, and life growing to the, to the degree that it’s completely changed my life. And I mean, I’m so grateful for real estate for the life that it’s given me. And for what it’s allowed me to do. I’m literally living my purpose and my passion.

D.J. Paris 8:17
Wow. While you just said you said quite a bit. And we just heard heard some of your why that you know what’s interesting too is you have these these very to it, you know, the way I’m thinking about it, these sort of diametrically opposite skill sets with the CPA hard objective number driven, an analytical mind. And then you also have this incredible creative mind, which, which allows you to, you know, produce content and really have fun with your branding and, and be very intentional about sort of, you know, the messaging you’re putting out there. And where those two worlds meet is a really nice center, because usually agents are good at one or the other. Right? They’re either good at the analytics or they’re good at the people side of things or the marketing side. You sort of have both of that. So I love the fact that you’re teaching people who don’t have maybe both of those skill sets fully fleshed out that they can develop them over to absolutely

Ivan Estrada 9:13
you can absolutely develop them because I’ve heard this before. Well, I’m not good at numbers. I’m not good at planning. I’m not creative. But I’m like Baloney, you definitely are. We just have to find your creativity. We have to figure out okay, so you’re not good with numbers. That’s fine. What are you comfortable with? Are you good with planning? Oh, yeah, I can plan and then kind of figuring out how to kind of find those holes in their business and trying to fill them with something that’s going to create an incredible brand incredible real estate brand. I mean, that’s why we’re here and an incredible future no matter the recession, inflation doesn’t matter. Build a really solid business. That’s recession inflation proof.

D.J. Paris 9:52
Yeah, I agree. And everything is skills, right. And there’s certain predilections people have where they’re going to take certain skills more easily than others. But, you know, video, I think thank goodness technology has maybe maybe one of the best parts about technology is that it’s moved so quickly that it’s enabled, even the least savvy of us with respect to creating, you know, content, you know, maybe some of us aren’t people who have ever had to light a set, or had to worry about, you know, which camera angles to use for a particular shoot, right. Most Realtors probably don’t deal with a lot of that they’re probably hiring other firms to do the photos when they have listings. But I am so interested in, in, you know, the fact that now technology has allowed it so that agents can really can do this at any any level, they can create video content, we all have these phones, you know, attached to us almost like an umbilical cord that are as powerful as some of the equipment that you know, 10 years ago was was 1000s and 1000s of dollars. So it’s really been more, it’s probably never been more accessible and more easy to get into creating video content, even if your skill sets low.

Ivan Estrada 11:05
Oh, absolutely. I mean, when I started 14 years ago, I was lugging around one of those Sony handycams shirt, the big tripod, with the microphone that was not wireless, that you had to like, you know, I had to make sure I got like a nice 15 foot wire, wire microphone. And there was no lighting because it was too expensive. We didn’t have like those light rings that now you can put on your phone and right and just as a tripod and take it anywhere with battery operated. And so it was a lot harder back then, you know, in order to create content to do editing in order to come up with concepts, right. That was I think the hardest thing for a lot of people was like, What do I talk about? You can go on Google. And I was probably the number two agent who started using video that I know of, because no one else was doing it. And so there was like no instruction, there was no manual. But nowadays I tell agents, I said, just like what you said, we all have a phone, we all have. I don’t know if we’re going to talk about chat GPT. But if you don’t know what to talk about chat GPT will let you know exactly what to talk about. It’s the easiest way to come up with content, we’ve actually been using it for blogs and other marketing materials. And it’s absolutely amazing. But there’s literally no excuse, there is no excuse for not creating content, there’s no excuse for not using it and building your brand. And building your real estate portfolio. Because these days, buyers and sellers, regardless of what generation they’re from, they are Googling and they are looking for videos. And if you do not have videos, at least one that introduces yourself of who you are, what you doing the business, they’re gonna think this person’s not credible. Next,

D.J. Paris 12:48
well, and let’s talk about what an introductory video does for the consumer. So we you know, I think this is something that, that agents probably do want to be very intentional about if you’re creating a welcome or an introductory video of not a specific one to a client. But if you have a general one, that one you probably do want to think through I’m assuming, and that’s if that’s going to be somebody’s first impression of you, for example, if it’s on your website, you know, I assume that when we want, we want sort of to look a little bit better than some of the more quick form videos that we might do that are more throw away based on you know, something going on in the market today, we might do a little video there. But if we’re doing an introductory video, what’s your sort of advice on how to how to think about putting that together?

Ivan Estrada 13:34
So I would create both two videos, one for buyers and one for sellers, right? Because we’re both doing different things. So I would start there two different videos, one for buyer and one for a buyer and one for a seller. And then get in, get into the shoes of a buyer and a seller. And think to yourself, I would write down notes. If I was looking to buy a home. What would I want to hear from an agent? Like what are the things that are going to trigger me to call that agent amongst the ocean of realtors. Same thing for sellers. And the thing is that we have to be very careful. They don’t care about our awards. They don’t care about your achievements. They don’t care about any of that they care about. Are you a good negotiator, right? How long have you been in the business? And what are your results? Do you have any case studies? How do you differentiate yourself? Right? What type of branding and marketing do you do for the listings? Let’s say this is for a seller. That is that’s different from other realtors in your neighborhood. Are you part of a team? And if you are, why is that of a benefit to a buyer or a seller? So trying to talk to them instead of I’ve you know been 14 Like for example me? I’ve been 14 years the business like now it’s like 600 million in sales people are gonna be like I don’t care. Like what can you do for me? Like why should I work with you? I want to make sure at the end of the day They want to know, as a seller, I was able to get as much money as possible for my listing. And it was as easy as possible to get through the process. And for a buyer, I was able to get the best deal with a seamless process that was painless as possible.

D.J. Paris 15:18
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I was thinking what while you were talking about this, that I just was hearing objections from our audience, which, of course, are not live now. But I was hearing. And I was and I had an answer to this. So I heard an objection, I came up with an answer, I want to give you the answer. And I want you to tell me what you would say it whether you would agree or disagree. So you had said, mate, you know, if you’re making this value proposition, I’m gonna make a video for buyers video for sellers, where you’re going to say, here’s what I do for you this is, this is what I have done for people in the past very specific stuff, here’s what I will do for you, here’s been my results. Now, which is great. I love all of that. What happens if you’re a brand new broker where you’re not going to have that track record? And, and and you might not have, you know, hey, I’m only been in the business six months? And I was my aunt, my thought of an answer and want to get your answer to that is I always like the it’s an old marketing principle. And I don’t know if it’s still as relevant it used to be, but it was called, if you can’t fix it, feature it. And so I always love that. So I know if I was newer, I might say, hey, just so you know, I am newer to the industry, but are and here’s why I actually think that might be a benefit to you, because I’m going to devote all of my time to you, because I don’t have as many clients as you know, somebody has been the business. Also, I work for a company that’s been around for 80 years, or whatever that might be, and I have a team there that’s going to work with me, blah, blah, blah, I would I would have I would address that. And I don’t maybe I wouldn’t step on it quite that hard. But I would do something to say, hey, here’s why I knew and here’s why it’s not a problem. I’m curious on what you might do.

Ivan Estrada 16:53
Absolutely. Because there’s no way with the way that that we have that we run the web and social media, they’re gonna know if you’re green or not, they’re gonna know, right, so might as well just tell them, and like what you just said, this is why it’s of a benefit to you, you know, I’m not working with as many clients, so you will have my full attention, right? I am hungry, I am the eager, right, I’m here to make sure you are part of, I’ll tell you what I tell my clients, you’re helping me build my business. And I want to make sure that you are going to be so, so happy with me that you’re gonna want to refer your friends, your brothers, your sisters, your minister, your priest, whoever. And then the other thing that I would also include in that video is a lot of new agents have been in other businesses where they have acquired skills that are complementary to our real estate business. By the way, this is what I did prior right? It could have been a teacher or a paralegal or whatever. And what are the skills that you learned there in that business? That that just absolutely make you shine in real estate and bring those out. Because at the end of the day, it’s real estate, we have mentors, right? We have people that especially if you’re a new agent, you’re part of a team, you can always showcase your team. But peep, every real estate agent is not the same, right? We’re all very different. We all it’s the same business, but how we market ourselves and how we actually provide the service is very different. Right? And, and so showcasing some of your previous experiences and how that’s going to help your buyer seller is incredibly important.

D.J. Paris 18:30
Yeah, I agree. I you work on a lot of very high end luxury homes, kind of in the ultra high net worth space, which is always so interesting to me, of course, because it’s such an unusual event, you know, these these big massive sort of compounds. In the West Coast, of course, all over the country. You’re in the West Coast, you’re in Los Angeles area, but Beverly Hills, specifically. I am curious, what what is different about marketing a luxury property versus a non luxury property? As far as how you think about the marketing the overall marketing strategy? How is it how is it different from a, like a $20 million property, something, you know, really on the high end, high net worth side to a, you know, three to $500,000 property? Is it the same strategy, or are there different techniques curious on what you’re doing? They’re completely

Ivan Estrada 19:21
different strategy. So when you’re dealing with people of that price echelon, a lot of them may be busy business men or women themselves. They have business managers, they have lawyers, I mean, these are people who, who have a lot of wealth and how they’ve gotten there was with the plan. And so if you are their real estate agent and you want to list their property, they’re going to say great, I would love to see your marketing proposal, and they want to see what you’re going to be doing daily, weekly, monthly. And if this is a really big property, let’s say it’s a one or two year con attract what is going to happen yearly. And they want to see a written plan and a written commitment from you saying, Okay, for the first month, we are going to be on this magazine, this magazine is going to be advertised here. Here is I’ve had people ask, I need to see the marketing budget for the first month, okay. 50 Doubt, whatever it might be, depending on the size of the property. Sure. $10,000 $5,000, I know that there’s agents in my office who have spent hundreds of 1000s, the first week of the launch of the property. And so those sellers, they want to know that you are committed with the plan with the marketing budget. And trust me, they will be checking if it’s if it’s not them personally, there people will be checking that it was on that magazine, that it was advertised that sometimes it gets a little invasive sometimes where they’ve said, Oh, you did spend $10,000, or $5,000. Great, we’d love to see the invoice. Right? Sure, it sometimes gets to that point. And so I think with a smaller property, it doesn’t get as intense than as a much larger property and keeping in mind that sometimes these larger properties do not sell, it might be the second third or the fourth agent that sells the property. But the marketing budgets are very high for these.

D.J. Paris 21:21
Yeah, and, you know, are there some lessons that agents who don’t play in the ultra high net worth space could learn from agents that do in other words, things that they could bring from from these, you know, these massive sort of marketing proposals that the high net worth clientele expected, and their teams maybe more even than they expect? Because they might not even be reviewing it? It might be their their advisors, their, you know, agents that are attorneys or their accountants. But I’m curious if there are some things that we could extract from from those high net worth proposals that we could bring in to the the lower end, I don’t even say lower price property, because they’re not lower priced properties, but more average price properties? Are there things that agents could do that would actually make it easier for them to win even more modestly priced property? Yes,

Ivan Estrada 22:12
absolutely. I mean, the marketing proposal that we talked about, for example, we create marketing calendars for all of our clients, it doesn’t matter the price point, will daily, weekly, monthly. And we commit to what we’re doing. And at the end of the end of the week, we send them a report of everything that was done. And why that is so important. I feel transparency in our business, especially with our clients, regardless of price point, is very important, especially when it comes to the marketing because, you know, for example, I I like to do a lot of research and I look at other people’s listing proposals and reports. And, you know, they’ll say we’re going to do photography, and it’ll be on Zillow and you know, kind of line item everything through. But then that’s it, right? They’ll tell you what, like, some people will say, Okay, well, you just told me everything that you’re doing, but show me on how you’re going to do all of that for my property. So there’s been times when we will, upfront in a listing appointment, depending on the property, we’ll run everything as if it were already our listing, right. And this is a report that you’re going to be getting weekly, like let’s say it’s week one, this is report that you got, this is what the marketing proposal looks like, this is the marketing calendar that you’re going to get every month that the property is on the market. And these are all the things that are going to be checked off. And so I think that’s incredibly important. Because the more transparency you have with your clients, the less they have to worry about, and the more that they’re going to feel comfortable during the whole process. And if you have a client who’s comfortable, let’s say it’s been on the market for three or four months, right? As long as they know that you’re doing everything on the list saying, hey, this was what we did this week, hey, this is what we did this week, you’re probably going to get an extension instead of you know, it’s been sitting on the market for two or three months. And I’ve had people in the past say, I haven’t heard from my agent and like, whole month, I don’t know what they’re doing. And so the less that you can, the less worry that you can provide to a client, the more they’re going to feel comfortable with you. And then we referrals, right? You want to make sure that that’s going to lead to future referrals.

D.J. Paris 24:20
I mean, I just I’m just thinking that any anybody who is selling a property, the friends, or the Friends of that seller, everybody knows they’re in the process of selling, they’ve probably told their friends and family of course, you know, maybe they’re even posting about it on social media. So people know, the home is is in the process of being up for sale. And as a result, friends are going to ask how’s it going, how’s the home sell going? Right? And imagine if every realtor on the planet who had a listing contacted their client in some fashion every single week, in your case, you you know, you have a report that’s here’s what we’ve done for you this week. Eat. And then here are the results. There’s what’s happened. Imagine if every real I mean, I’m almost sort of chuckling because 99% of Realtors do not do this, right? They’re not or I’m making that number up, but it’s probably close to accurate. Where it’s low. Yeah, it’s single digits, probably. But, but the top agents do. And it’s funny, it reminded me of I had a top one of the very top agents here in Chicago, we’ve got about 47,000 agents here. And she’s in the top 10, like, literally the top 10. And I asked her, How do you think why do you think you’re in the top 10? And obviously, everyone else really isn’t. And she goes, I hate to see because this is gonna sound really stupid. But I call every single person that’s a client of mine every single week, and say, here’s everything that’s going on. Here’s what I did. Here’s so very similar to sort of your approach a different way that she does it. And I go, and what what else? She’s like, Yeah, that’s kind of it. And she’s like, it’s a lot of work. But she goes this idea of of staying in touch with them, letting them know, imagine, you know, I’m at a cocktail party, hey, DJ, how’s your home sale going? Well, I can tell you, because my guy sends me a thing every single week telling me exactly what he did. And like, it’d be like he did, like no one else has that experience. So it’s such a great way to even just get noticed among that person’s friends and family, because they’re gonna be bragging about that.

Ivan Estrada 26:12
Exactly. And if when it comes to let’s say, you have to do a price cut, right? We’re in a different market. They’re going to know well, we you’ve done everything that you said you were going to do, and then some so the only thing we can left we have left to do is cut the price.

D.J. Paris 26:27
Yeah. I love that. What are some of the mistakes that agents make? With video on social media? Because we’re talking about video, so much video, I think we associate that with social media content more digestible. Here today gone tomorrow content? We see agents making videos all the time, what what do you think when you see good examples of this versus examples where you say I would have done that differently?

Ivan Estrada 26:55
So I mean, for anyone who’s just doing video, it doesn’t matter the quality or the, you know, just the time or whatever. Good for you. Because that’s a step. One thing that I would say that is not benefiting a lot of agents is they’ll do videos when they feel like it. Right? Let’s say they get super busy for two or three weeks. Well, I didn’t do any videos this week. So I’m not going to put anything on social media. Consistency in the video game is key. Having a marketing plan for your videos is key. Since I started producing content, there hasn’t been one week, maybe here and there, right? Maybe during a holiday week, where I didn’t have at least one video posted. on all my social media, we actually have I believe it’s three videos that go out Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, different content, different style, different audience. But we have a set schedule that goes out every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, on social media. Just producing one video, every once in a while for a listing or market report is not going to work. So having a set schedule of this is what I’m going to produce my content. And this is what I’m going to put it out there. Because even with Facebook, like Facebook Studio, you could put all your videos in there and schedule them to go out during certain times of the week at a certain time. And so consistency in the video game is what’s going to create results, not just on the fly videos every once in a while.

D.J. Paris 28:33
Well, I can I can attest to that here, just with my podcast. We, you know, we started out there was we didn’t do video at all, it was only audio. And it took a full year. Before we got any real traction. I used to have to fudge the numbers when people would ask how’s the show doing? And I’m like, you know, we would have 60 people that listened. And I’d say we had 100 I don’t have to do that anymore. So I apologize for those that I’ve liked in the past. But the point was is is that it did actually work because I focused and I’m not here to say of the best podcast on the planet for realtors. But thankfully, we have a lot of people that do appreciate it. And thank you for that. But it was just focusing on meeting the audience’s needs. I’m not particularly gifted at being a talk show host or a radio host. But I just thought gosh, if I were a new agent, what would I want to know from top producers? And and that also is probably a good way in a similar way to actually get content. So I’ve been you had mentioned chat GBT and I thought this is so interesting, because, you know, we worry a lot about chat GBT and what it’s going to do to you know, sort of jobs and so all of us it’s, it’s going to affect everything but but one really, really great way to use it is to use it to to create content. So, you know, if I was an agent, and you know, you were saying, Hey, you got to post regular video content you were doing let’s say you’re doing two videos a week and by the way, these can be 62nd videos, they don’t have to have a certain amount of time. It’s all about, you know, the the quality of the content. And if you’re thinking well, right, yeah, and I was I did this earlier today because I found I have to create a deck, I need to create a PowerPoint presentation for this thing. And I went to an AI powered up like, PowerPoint building company where you literally type in a question to that you would type into chat GBT and then it creates a slide based on the answers really cool. But anyway, so I had written a question I had written in there, you know, what are what are the do’s and don’ts of conducting an open house and I got about 50 different answers. And I thought this could be a 10 different videos, you know, because you can make these videos okay, if you’re doing an open house and by the way, you could send these to other you know, other agents or again, I work on the more the b2b side, so I would be doing content for other realtors. But it could be for for you know, people buyer’s or seller’s maybe a seller’s here’s how to get your home ready for an open house. And you could literally use chat GBT to get a whole list of of answers there. And, you know, just kind of saves you time.

Ivan Estrada 31:12
Oh, absolutely. And then if you want if you really want to get traction, because like Chachi Beatty can give you like a set of questions that you could ask that are pretty standard to real estate. But if you really want to do something timely, I always ask I asked my friends. Hey, quick question. What are some questions you have about real estate right now? Like, right right now in this moment, and then create a video about it. That’s timely because, right like with what’s happening with what happened with SPV bank? I had clients asking me, yeah, how does that affect me? How does that Okay, great. Let me go do some research and figure it out. And let me do a one minute video, maybe two minute video, put it on Instagram, and make sure you put that in the caption and I promise you that will get a lot more hits, then here are some rules for open houses, even though those are great. Those are great. Yeah, right. Those are evergreen videos. More evergreen. Yeah. But something it’s very timely is what’s going to go what they say viral, or you’ll get a lot of hits and a lot of traction. And it also shows you as a knowledge broker who really knows their stuff.

D.J. Paris 32:19
1,000,000,000,000% could not agree more. And I would be talking about well, the Fed just raised rates again, for the ninth time, consecutive time last week, right? They raised at 25 basis points. That was in the news, you know, the euro, everyone who’s listening, if even if you didn’t know it, your clients saw that. And if anyone is in the process of buying or selling, they may be wondering what does that mean for lending rates? And that could be a video. And my suggestion is to find a lending partner that sends you the agent weekly information about here’s what you as an agent need to know about the three banks that collapsed? What’s going on with Credit Suisse? What’s going on with, with the Fed raising rates, like get information from your partners, convert that into video content and make short form content that, you know, you know, yeah, chat, GBT isn’t going to give you really reliable answers to things like that. But that’s where you would then go and and find that information yourself, which takes maybe five minutes of reading about it online, or ask one of your lending partners, hey, what’s going on? What do agents need to know about this? Or what is one of my clients needs?

Ivan Estrada 33:25
100% 100%.

D.J. Paris 33:27
I love that one. So we let’s talk about so the idea of finding video content is actually we just came up with some ideas. If you want more evergreen content, maybe there isn’t much going on. Right now. When you’re thinking about creating content, then you can go back to your sort of, you know, whatever your clients are regularly asking you about over the years, you can just put those in a little folder and say, what about this or in Illinois, we have transfer tax and like I don’t I still don’t understand how it works. But anyway, that’s sort of thing that that people get confused about? And how do I how do I choose certain? How do I determine like, what schools are in what, you know, what areas what districts? I mean, there’s a million evergreen things that people are always going to want to know, you know, where? How do you know like, this could be a good one, you know, I’m just sort of having fun with these. But it could be like, Hey, should you go see your home that you’re about to buy at night on a Friday at 1030? It just to see what the neighborhood is like, especially if you’re in like an urban environment? What’s the noise level? You know, there’s like little tips and tricks that are evergreen things that you can just put in a spreadsheet and then whenever you’re like, I don’t know what I’m going to do today for a video. Just go to one of those. Anytime your client asks you a question, write it down and just go that’s going to be a video or find out what’s going on in the market or in the industry. That moment right now. High rates, right, low, low inventory. Those are the two big things people are curious about. I would be making videos about that all day long. Exactly. Let’s talk about Got your video course? Because you are a branding expert. We didn’t really talk too much about branding. Well, let’s let’s define what is let’s just define what branding is for real estate agents? Like, how would you think about branding when you’re talking about realtor stuff?

Ivan Estrada 35:16
So the easiest way I could put branding is, I always tell agents think about, what are people saying about you, when you’re not in the room? That’s your brand. And that could be positive, or it might not be positive. And so figuring out who you are on a foundational level, and what separates you from on a business, if we’re talking about business, what separates you from everyone else as an agent, right? Like, what why are people going to go to you, instead of anyone else. And I think that’s probably a part of, that’s the most important for a real estate agent, when they’re building their brand is really diving, it’s, it’s like personal, it’s personal development, right? It’s really diving deep into who you are. And and this is something we do in the course, to figuring out, okay, what makes you special? Like, what are the things that you want people to say about you, when it comes to your service, when it comes to your product, when it comes to your social media? When it comes to your delivery? When it comes to your website? When it comes to every every perspective about you as a brand? What do you want people to say? And then we work our way backwards, right? How do you want to make people feel, oh, I want to make them feel like this? Okay, great. These are the things that you’re going to have to do in the next six months to a year in order to get that, that that to that finish line. And so when building a brand, I tell people, Look, we’re all brands, believe it or not, even you know, the single mom with a three year old child, she’s a brand, she doesn’t know it, but she’s a brand. And so really understanding who you are as a brand is key in order to be successful, not just in real estate, but anywhere, right, really knowing what you’re good at. And that’s something that we put together in the course, and you know, it is a video course. But at the end of the day, it’s building a brand, and a goal and a vision, and then creating video content to support that brand vision. Because that how point,

D.J. Paris 37:19
how important is it to determine the brand prior to create because, you know, we have this inclination to want to jump right on, I have a video idea, I want to jump right into it. And that’s great, but might not align with the overall strategy or the vision. Right?

Ivan Estrada 37:34
Exactly. I mean, like, for example, let’s say the St. Regis right there a hotel chain, they only create videos that are in line with their brand, they’re not going to do something, oh, let’s talk about sneakers today, because I want to talk about sneakers, they’re not going to do it because it’s not in line with their brand. In the course we create brand pillars. Every company usually has about four to five brand pillars. And that could be like, for example for myself, its real estate, its technology, its community, its travel. And then under those brand pillars, there’s all these, then we go we dive deep into what those mean to us. And so when we’re creating content, when we’re updating my bio, when we’re writing blogs, when we’re doing creating flyers or updating our flyers, we look at those brand pillars. And we and we always say, Is this in line with our brand pillars, Is this our brand pillars, or this is our voice is this in line with our voice because if it’s not, I’m not going to do it because a it’s going to confuse people. And B, it’s not going to support the brand and and brands that we know that have been here for a very long time. They stick to their brand pillars, and that’s why they’re so successful.

D.J. Paris 38:46
Yeah, they stick to it. And then going back to the consistency piece. They, they understand that there’s a time delay on getting acceptance and traction. Just like there’s a time delay when you start your real estate business and having wild success. Most people

Ivan Estrada 39:02
don’t years, it takes years years.

D.J. Paris 39:05
And the same sort of thing for for social media or video content is we live in such a immediate sort of, we get immediate feedback and we get immediate metrics. And so you know, when we post something on social and it has a low number of likes, we feel a certain way about that, you know, some of us feel more deeply about it than others. But all of us have a reaction, whether it’s it’s probably more of a reaction than we ought to have. But it’s but it’s a reaction. And so people have this tendency to to put a lot of time and energy into a video. It doesn’t perform at the level they want. And it might not be because the videos not have good content or good quality. It might just be that they’re not favored in the algorithm yet because they’re rarely putting up content or their audience hasn’t gotten used to it yet, or just hasn’t been seen. And they get discouraged and they stop making things.

Ivan Estrada 39:54
Exactly and that’s when you have to go back to the intention. Why am I creating these videos for life? for comments, or am I creating these videos because I know it’s providing value to my current and future clients. And it’s also helping build my brand. Because if it’s about the likes and the comments, then you’re going in here with the wrong intention. And so I it’s very important to really be clear with that. Because, you know, I have friends, and I’ve gotten people asking me, well, these types of videos are getting a lot of likes, right? They could be real estate agents doing parodies, or, you know, things that are funny, and that’s great, right? As long as all your video content is not that and you’re not just going after the likes, and the comments, because I know a lot of real estate agents with a lot of likes, and a lot of comments and a lot of views, and no business. Yeah. So you’ve got to be very careful, very intentional with your content and be very patient.

D.J. Paris 40:51
Yeah, it is, it is a marathon. It is not, it is not a sprint. But boy, it’s it’s one of those things that, you know, has so much opportunity, because I noticed that I’m in I’m not even a social media, I’m not really a heavy social media user. But I’ve noticed that I’ve started migrating over to back to Facebook and Instagram, and I’m not somebody that just infinitely scrolls, but I do check out the stories and reels for about a minute a day. Because you can cycle through those pretty quickly, within a few seconds, I can, I can get a sense of what the video is about, I can see what my friends are up to. And some of you know, just other brands and what but I’ve noticed that even I when I’m like, I’m not gonna I’m not somebody that just you know, is on Facebook all day. Even I am now looking at these at the short form at least short form video content, what is your opinion between short on social media short form versus long form?

Ivan Estrada 41:45
So you should be doing both. And but both of them go on different portals. So the long form should only be going on YouTube. So you people use YouTube as a search engine. So that’s where you want to create all your, you know, long, long version q&a videos about real estate questions, answers that you have to questions. Maybe like your company, video, your team video, anything where you want to have it live on for a long period of time, a community video, for example, that is evergreen, three or four minutes, you want to put it on YouTube, but still also have a short version, short version for Instagram, Facebook, tick tock, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn is probably the where I’ve been getting a lot of viewership. So make sure that you don’t forget about LinkedIn. But the short term videos that’s that’s for those, those portals that I just said those social media accounts, the tick tock, Facebook, and Facebook, sorry, Instagram, Facebook, tick tock and LinkedIn. And the only the long versions go on YouTube, because YouTube actually prefers the longer videos. Sure.

D.J. Paris 42:59
They do. And they and now and YouTube even has has little shorts, shorts. Yeah, which is, but But you’re right. And this, this idea that now and there’s technology, like we’re actually using technology right now where we’re streaming to four or five different platforms, as we’re recording this, and it’s like the the technology is there, and you can learn how to use it. Now what about video editing? Right? So we Yes, we have phones, we know we can film things? And but for those of us that aren’t skilled at editing, do you have in your course you guys talk about that? Or give some suggestions about how people can get things edited?

Ivan Estrada 43:38
Absolutely. I mean, we have a partnership with a couple of companies iMovie I’ve been using. For the longest time there’s another app called cut. But honestly, when I’m creating content, like like on the fly content that’s not highly produced. What Instagram has is vary and tick tock, I don’t really like to go outside of that. Because sometimes it actually doesn’t favor your algorithm if you use another app to do editing, and then you embed it. So you don’t really need complicated editing software, if you’re using complicated editing software is because you’re doing a more highly produced type of video. I always tell agents, look, your time is valuable. You should be prospecting and lead generating in this market to not take classes on editing. Unless this is something that you want to do as a part time job on the side. There’s no time for that. Go out prospect, lead, generate network, do all that. If you need to do complicated editing. I would be doing that with a videographer. There’s so many applications out there websites, where you can go on there, you give them the the raw content, like Upwork, right? There’s so many people on Upwork are looking for work. It’s all over the world, by the way all over the world and it’s super cheap. So that way you don’t have to be doing any The editing, and they can do some really cool stuff at a very low price.

D.J. Paris 45:04
Tell us about about the program bandwidth. So talking about which by the way you can learn about a brand with.com. But tell us about the the video program and how it turned somebody in, you know, from a novice into into more of an expert.

Ivan Estrada 45:17
Yeah, absolutely. So the idea came to me, right before the pandemic, this was going to be an in person coaching seminar, two and a half days, to eight to 10 hours a day. And I already had the idea of okay, well, first, for the first section of the course has to be breaking those mental blocks and the mindset and the fear. Because I could do all the teaching, I can teach you how to be in front of a camera, how to talk, how to write script, how to edit, how to syndicate how to track and measure for results. But if you don’t get over the fear, the hurdle of you saying, Well, I don’t like the way that I look today, or I don’t like by the way how my voice sounds, or I’m just afraid of judgment. So I’m not going to do the, none of the the rest of the courses useless. And so once the pandemic hit, then we thought, Oh, crap, I can’t do any in person trainings for this. So we put together a system, there’s no system like this in the world, where it’s, we have the 15 modules, and we have it divided into four sections mindset. And then we go into the mechanics. And then we go into actual, the actual filming and the editing. And then the last part, which is super important is, like I said, before, having that marketing calendar, tracking for results, and constantly measuring, to make sure that all the work and all the effort and everything that you’re doing is actually working. And the course which is really cool, it’s you’re not just watching videos, because you’re not gonna learn by watching. It’s not, you know, you can’t learn how to play basketball by watching a ton of basketball videos. So every module is, is connected to each one, there’s a lot of work that you have to do, there’s a lot of typing. It’s it’s pretty much it’s like a college course, it’s everything I’ve learned for the last 14 years on building your brand. And I’m testing you and I’m asking you questions, and I need to see the answers. And then you’re actually filming video, and you’re submitting your video and you’re seeing your progress. As you go through the course, you’re doing daily video diary. So it’s a very robust system that we have set to make sure that people have all the training to feel confident to not only create videos that they’re proud of, but videos that work because like I said, you create all the videos you want. But if you don’t have a plan, you don’t have a brand that it’s attaching itself to. Then what’s the point?

D.J. Paris 47:46
And you you know, you’ve had it you’ve had TV experience, you’ve you’ve been on NBC is open house, a house honors Million Dollar Listing,

Ivan Estrada 47:54
I just did a TED talk last year, like the training that I got for my TED Talk, which we have in here on memorization like I had to learn of you. By the way TED talks are 100% Memorize. So 18 rows memorize, and it takes strategy that I thought I was like, There’s no way I can learn a one or two minute video by memory, but 1314 minutes, there is no way. And everything that I learned in there is in this course.

D.J. Paris 48:22
Amazing. Yeah, I want everyone to check this course out. It’s brand with.com Use the promo code real for 25% off. I’ve been you know, what would you say to an agent who says I know I need to do video I haven’t yet started? What’s the best first step for somebody to start getting involved in coming up with a video strategy?

Ivan Estrada 48:45
Well, other than taking the course, the next best strategy would be you need to have some type of accountability to yourself that you are at least going to start with one small video from a camera doesn’t have to be anything produced. But you need to have an accountability partner in order to just put out your first one because I’ve you know, even people who have had on my team, it took me weeks in order for them to pull the first one out because again, we go back into our head of I don’t like how I look. I don’t like how my hand gestures were all over the place. My left thigh was a little weird. And I’ve told my clients what you’ve got my agents, you’ve got this all wrong. You’re making this about you. This is not about you. This is about the value that you have to provide to someone else. So we first you need to have that mindset shift. And then you’ve got to have me as your accountability partner saying where’s the video? Where’s the video? Did you publish your video so someone in your office, it could be your manager if you have a coach? Well if you have a coach they’re making you do video so if you have a coach I’m pretty sure you’re doing videos but if you’re not asking your coach, I need to do a video. This is I need to do it by Friday, make sure that you have the goal, right? By Friday, I’m going to put a one minute video out that’s going to go on YouTube, Instagram, tick tock be very specific, by this time, in order for it to get done and have there be some type of consequence. And if I don’t create this video, by this time, I am going to send $100 to my, you know, a charity that is not one that you support. Let’s just put it that way. So that that way you have some type of accountability and a little fire to make it work.

D.J. Paris 50:31
I love that it’s accountability is so important. We just it’s not any sign of weakness. I think we’re, we look at it sometimes as I need somebody, I used to think about that having a personal trainer, I used to think, what’s wrong with me that I and it’s like, no, because now with a trainer, I actually get to the gym because I have accountability. And also, I have somebody that shows me what to do. But most importantly, I have somebody that I don’t want to disappoint. I’ll disappoint myself all day long. But disappointing, someone else is a lot harder for me. So that accountability piece, it will help shore up this like, I’ll do it later mentality, which we all have we you know, and we all you know, it’s just a normal part of the day to want to think that and having that accountability that check in. Also in the same thing you have, you have weekly accountability with your own clients that you’re helping them sell or buy homes, you’re checking in with them weekly as well. So this is this is a great approach, get an accountability partner and come up with a goal and say, here’s, here’s what I’d like you to hold me accountable for and here’s the consequence, and maybe even put a reward at the end of it if you get it done. But definitely put a consequence so that it gives you a little bit of the carrot and the stick. Absolutely. Let’s um, yeah, let’s I think this is a great place to to wrap up. I really want everybody to check out the brand with.com website, this really goes through Ivan’s program, you know, this is a guy who does very, very serious marketing and branding proposals and executes them is very, very strategic does this for high end, luxury homes, he sold over 600 million himself, him and his team. And they also now we’re going to show you the 14 years of experience that Ivan has wants you to learn from him. And these are tips and techniques you can use to really separate yourself from the competition. You know, we’re we’re all I think a little tired of seeing standard posts on Facebook and Instagram that are just listed just sold. Nothing wrong with that. But that’s typically the majority of the marketing I see for realtors out there is look what I just did. Look what I’m currently doing. And that’s all great. But there’s, I think there’s more that you can learn. You can solve problems you can create value without just only bragging about accomplishments. As Ivan said, you know, the clients don’t really care. I mean, I guess it’s a good thing to say I’m busy. And here’s what I’m doing. And that’s great. But you should also it should be a certain percentage of it should be educational. Here’s what you could learn today. Here’s what you might be worried about. And Ivan’s going to show you exactly how to find that content, cultivate it, shoot it, edit it, produce it, and consistently drop it, drop it live so that you can of course get people hooked on your content, which is the whole point right? We want people hooked on your content, but it takes time. The good news is it doesn’t really take any additional equipment. It just takes time but it also takes creativity and Ivan’s going to show you how to do that. And again, you can use tools like chat GPT to give you some ideas of what type of video content you want to create. Ivan’s going to go through all of that for you so I’ve been telling for anyone wanting to explore the video program again is that the best website brand with.com

Ivan Estrada 53:47
Absolutely So brand with.com is where you’ll find the course brand with video my book brand with purpose. It also my podcast brand with podcast and we also have a copy of my latest TED talk on there to inspire you.

D.J. Paris 54:03
Yeah, we will have links to all of that in the show notes guys subscribe to his podcast check out his book if you’re not yet ready to invest in the program and guys you should be because I’m gonna go through it myself. I am super excited Believe it or not, I had do a terrible job of video content for our podcast so I am like a lot of you going I should be doing more and this is the year that I’m going to commit to doing that because guess what, it’s going to bring me more listeners so even Podcasts can benefit from this of course but of course your real estate business can as well and so check out the podcast brand with podcast check out the the program brand with just go to brand with.com or Ivan estrada.com For all things Ivan check out his TED talk as well. We will have links to all these in the show notes. You can go check these out. And you should just be following Ivan on all of his social channels as well because guess what, that’s where he’s posting a lot of his video content. So great place to see what Ivan’s up to and you know, you can borrow from the Masters check out what he’s up to. Everything can be found at Ivan estrada.com or brand with.com. And again, remember to use the promo code real for 25% off the brand with video program. On behalf of our audience. Ivan wanted to say thank you so much for being on our show. Really appreciate you and all of the tips and advice you have given to the audience. It’s been awesome. And on behalf of Ivan and myself, we want to say thank you to the audience for making it all the way to the end of an episode here. Please, outside of checking out all the cool things Ivan’s involved in. Also, tell a friend about this episode. I know you know somebody in your office that’s not that is frustrated with their own branding or marketing efforts, send them a link to this, this might be just what they need to make 2023 a better year and let’s face it, it’s up to half a year for realtors. Let’s make it a little bit easier for them. Send them a link either over to our website, keeping it real pod.com Or just tell them to pull up any podcast app search for keeping it real. Hit that subscribe button and also leave us a review. Let us know what you think of the show what you like what we could do better that helps us improve as well. Ivan, thank you so much, sir. It was a pleasure having you on and we will see everybody on the next episode.

Ivan Estrada 56:13
Blast. Thank you