902: How to Get Hot Real Estate Leads on YouTube with Jesse Dau and Jackson Wilkey

Aaron Amuchastegui: Real Estate Rockstars, this is Aaron Amuchastegui. I have a treat for you guys today. I get to interview Jesse Dau and Jackson Wilkey. These guys refer to themselves as the YouTube agents. Now here’s the reason you should be listening. It is really baffling and crazy. Jackson’s been an agent for around 13 months. Jesse’s been an agent for 2.5 years, and over the next 12 months they are projecting $50 million in sales.

If you haven’t been listening or you weren’t sure if you’re going to listen to this one, that is the biggest reason to listen. You can be a new agent, just that far in and just be crushing it. Guys, how’s it going? Thanks for joining me.

Jesse: Going great, man.

Jackson Wilkey: Loving it, man. Thanks for having us.

Aaron: Awesome. You guys are living up in Portland, Oregon. What is shelter and place like in Portland? Is it a thing right now?

Jackson: Yes, it definitely is. Schools are closed down. It’s pretty much same as the nation, but it doesn’t stop. It’s not illegal to go out. There’s actually some businesses open, and for what we’re doing in the COVID situation, what we’re going to be talking about going forward and YouTube, it’s exploding right now. We’re doing more videos than we’ve ever done. When we get with the team we keep and stuff, but, yes, it’s like the rest of the.

Aaron: Yes. Video is exploding right now. If there was ever a time to be able to do it, and you guys will be the experts, but in my opinion, not even have to be the professional level that people were expecting before, because everybody’s in their house right now. If you’re ever going to start a channel or a page or something, now is the time, because you’re going to get the least amount of judgment toward your videos, I would guess.

Jackson: There’s never judgment in the value that people type into a keyboard and search. We’re already jumping ahead, but, yes, people are dying for information out there and these engines, the Google, the YouTube and stuff. If you’re providing that information, you can do it with your cell phone. You can do it with a web camera. It’s all about what you’re teaching in those videos.

Aaron: That is going to be so awesome for us to get into. Portland, Oregon, three months out of the year is really, really awesome weather. During the winter, it just rains like crazy. Right now, are you in that awesome weather stage but you’re supposed to stay inside?

Jackson: It’s been freakin’ nice the last few weeks, about yesterday, today, but we had about two or three weeks of that mid-60s to mid-70s and you being climate falls you get that in the Northwest. It’s like summertime. We’re definitely starting to get in. The trees are blooming and it makes for killer video and B roll.

Aaron: Yes, that is awesome. Let’s figure out, get started in real estate. Jesse, you’ve been around for 2.5 years. Jackson, just a little over a year. How did you guys meet and what has evolved in the last two years for you guys in real estate?

Jackson: Go, Jesse.

Jesse: Jackson was a title rep, and I was selling real estate, and actually, I’d always done title with another company. I was always doing title with the lawyers title. Then I got this really big mansion listing in a different area that they didn’t service. I opened up title with WFG, which is where Jackson worked and then he sent me this video message introducing himself. I thought to myself, I was like, “Man, this is pretty cool that this title rep reached out to me via a video.” No one else had ever reached out to me through video. I was already really interested in getting into the video space. That’s essentially how we were introduced to each other. Then he actually ended up living by me, and naturally our friendship and business relationship grew from there.

Aaron: Jackson, what software did you use for that video at the time? Was it just a text? Was it YouTube? Was it one short one of the apps that are out there?

Jackson: It’s funny. No, it was InShot. I was starting to mess with video. I’m not even from Portland, Oregon. I moved here now 2.5 years ago. Didn’t know anybody here, didn’t know real estate. Got into that, realized quickly that realtors wanted help with. I got super obsessed with it, started learning a bunch of apps. That one was InShot. It’s really good for any lead gen or just database or whatever. You can shoot a video and it’s a free app. Then you can have twisty little emojis on there. I would just send that stuff to a bunch of agents and they relish that. I was just using InShot, but as we progressed and started shooting video together, it was just free tools, cell phones, and iMovie to do videos.

Aaron: The way you guys work together, if I have it right, so Jesse, you manage most of the real estate production part of that, and Jackson, you do a lot of the online agency, helping people grow their YouTube presence?

Jackson: Yes, absolutely. To back this up, to really talk about how this really formulated was- I was a title rep only for about 10 months, and then realized I needed to get to the other side and we were really into this Gary Vaynerchuk style videos, the local interviews of shops, restaurants, bars, that we’re all told to do and realized quickly that we didn’t get much business or any. Actually, it’s never got an ounce of business from that. That’s what led us to this YouTube thing where I discovered SEO, people were actually typing into the keyboard.

We started really experimenting with this. We’ll get deep into the weeds about YouTube and all that, but how it really formulated was, “Oh, crap. Started coming in the calls, started really coming in and my mind doesn’t work in a way that’s very organized to close these deals when all these people call. Me and Jesse like, “Okay, here’s our strengths. Jesse can close these deals. He knows exactly how to work the systems of real estate. I’m going to go and focus more on the lead gen.” It just naturally happened this way to where I was really good at the YouTube videos and figuring that stuff out, and Jesse was going to close the deal. That’s how our partnership really blossomed was two opposite strengths together. He managed all the real estate. I was really diving deep into the YouTube marketing.

Aaron: That’s sounds like a great partnership being able to have. Somebody brings the business in, the other one puts it down. Jesse, what have you guys done in revenue in the last year? How many houses have you sold? Average sales price that sort of thing. What do you have projected for the next 12 months?

Jesse: In the last 12 months we’d done about 30 transactions, and that probably is around 20 million. The thing is, in the last couple of months, we’ve really expanded our team since joining eXp, because we are a very different business model where essentially we have our direct agents that work for us. Jackson and I are able to feed them off of our YouTube channel directly.

When someone calls in to our centralized system, which we call the hopper, it’s a Grasshopper app and it rings everyone, our agents are able to answer that phone. What we do, they get 30% split. We get 70, but they’re not doing any prospecting, no cold calling, no open houses, no door knocking, no nothing. That works very well. They absolutely love it. They’re working with hot leads. I think we put nine deals into escrow in the last two weeks, and that’s all through 100% YouTube and with zero prospecting involved.

Aaron: Average sales price is like 700,000, 800,000?

Jesse: Yes.

Aaron: Average price point [crosstalk]. Go ahead.

Jackson: I think it’s important to notice or note that in Portland that’s around 450, but our YouTube average price is in that $700,000 range, so we’re definitely getting a higher price point too. There’s some tips and tricks on doing that in what you showcase, but there’s another aspect to this too that is really exciting too. Yes, we’ve really started closing a lot of deals on YouTube, but these people when they call, they trust us so much that we had a that opened up to where, “Hey, if you need to close on your house there to buy here, do you have your house there?” They’re like, “Well, yes.” “Well, we have the top real estate in your area.” Communication is key. If you want to close same day, we really need that communication up, so we suggest to you to interview these other agents. We’ve given out over $12 million in listing referrals to agents in different States as well. They just trust us so much from these videos that there’s so much business to be had all the way around.

Aaron: Gets you business in Portland, but it also gets you business in other places. People are trusting you with stuff and they’re saying, “Hey, but what about in Arizona?” You’re like, “All right, we’ll send you somebody.”

Jesse: Yes, we always tell them that we have our channel partner. Even one agent, Kenny Truong, past agent down in San Francisco, we’ve given him about $6 million in listing referrals in the last 6 months.

Aaron: Just from your YouTube page. As we unwrap that a little bit, so people are hitting your YouTube page, you’re sharing these stories. You’re going to tell us how to do that. Then they call your incoming phone line. Grasshopper is one of those apps that it rings 10 people at the same time. Whichever one of your agents that work for you in eXp, whoever answers the phone gets that lead, but they’re in a race to answer the phone because if an incoming person is a hot lead, so like, “No, I want to answer it.” They get it. They get 30% of it, you guys get 70% of it. Did I explain that right?

Jesse: Yes. That’s what we’ve done for our direct buyer’s agents. These are the people that we brought on with us from our previous brokerage. The thing is, Jackson and I both made an agreement that we would never start a team until we were actually able to provide a lot of business, because I came from a team environment where I was doing all my own prospecting, cold calling, door knocking, open houses. I was getting nothing from my brokerage in return as far as business goes, and that just drove me nuts. I knew that we could provide a substantial amount of business, but we needed to figure it out first.

Now what we’ve been able to do is, if an agent wants to partner with us and join our downline at eXp, and say, they’re a top-producing agent, but they want to focus on a different area, or a different niche, like say, it’s commercial Spanish Channel, or commercial, say, luxury, we give them their own playlist inside of our channel. We give them a different number that links to their channel or their playlist. That way when somebody is watching them, they call them directly, and we split those leads 50-50, then the agent, everything that they bring in on their own, we let them keep 100%. We just do all the post edit production, and all that stuff.

Aaron: Let’s dig in on that. Somebody goes to your YouTube page, what’s the YouTube page called? What do they see there? What are people going to find there? We’ll get it to SEO after, but what is the content you’ve got?

Jackson: That’s the biggest thing right there is what they see immediately. It’s called Living in Portland, Oregon. Which was a name that I had derived after a few months of not being named Living in Portland, it was just our Real Agent Now team. That was our team name. When you go there, you had no idea what that was, or it was another agent selling you. When you go to this page, the first thing you see is that big channel art, because if someone summons your video, now they’re going to go into Creek mode, they’re going to go to your channel and see what’s up with this. Do I want more information from this person or not?

When you get there, the first thing you see is, “Hey, tap subscribe to learn everything about Living In Portland, Oregon.” Nothing else. There’s no names, no numbers, no agents, no nothing. Then we’ve built the single greatest website for Portland, Oregon where now they can scroll through, and you’re allowed to have up to 10 playlists on your homepage of YouTube. We’ve taken longtail keywords, SEO keywords like living in Portland, moving to Portland, Portland Oregon weather, Vancouver Washington, Salem Oregon, Luxury Real Estate in Portland, New Construction Real Estate in Portland.

Those are all individual playlists. Let’s say, you want luxury but the next person wants Vancouver Washington. Everybody has their own flavor per se. We’re like the Baskin Robbins of real estate, so they can come there and find exactly what they want. That’s what you’ll see on our homepage.

Aaron: Do you think that everybody in their town they should go start a YouTube page that says, Living In Austin, Texas? Is that one of those ultimate hacks, or do you think it’s unique to every city?

Jackson: No, it’s definitely, it’s kind of a hack/unique, but it was something that I had thought of. It’s actually searched 2900 times a month. Now if you type that into YouTube, the number one thing that pops up is not only a bunch of our videos but our channel. You will see this way when you start looking at some of these other markets. YouTube channel names Living In, and we definitely trailblaze that, started that. We have another YouTube channel where we teach agents, we have Facebook groups and all that. The way it has started of the Living In channels for sure.

Aaron: I better go start a few Living In channels today. Yes, I went to YouTube, I typed Living In Portland, Oregon. I see your guys’s page at the top. [crosstalk]

Jackson: Not even at radio, how cool is that? Our freaking faces.

Aaron: This is your faces right at the top. Somebody searches Living In Portland, Oregon. Now you’re at the very top. It’s searched 2900 times. The next ones it’s got some different videos that are on there. Your guys’s faces are on most of them. The pros and cons. You’ve even got the rain as one of these ones, on one of the videos that I see that. All right. Now I see that that’s what happens when they come in. They go to your page, and you were talking channels. As somebody has different things, you go to your channel under the page, and there is a channel that says, “Living in Seattle, Washington “Is that what you’re talking about with the channels like the ones that you guys follow?

Jackson: That’s a separate channel, yes. That’s a separate channel we built because nobody was doing it there. We’re three hours apart. We’ve built that channel that produces leads. We are licensed in Washington, but obviously we’re not going to go work up in Seattle. We have another team member up there who lives in Seattle.

Aaron: Oh, playlist. That’s the other thing you talked about.

Jackson: The playlist are–

Aaron: YouTube has your home, your videos and a playlist. Playlist can have a category. Living in Salem Oregon, living in Portland Oregon, I guess. Full playlist. Now there’s 20 videos about Living in Portland. If I click Living in Salem Oregon. Hopefully I don’t search.

Jackson: That’s our very first one, we just released yesterday. To go back–

Aaron: There’s one on that playlist.

Jackson: Yes, because that’s in it. This is so cool about this is like, now we have these agents who are like, “Oh, my gosh guys. I just have to be a piece of you. I just want to be a part of you. I love what you’re doing.” We’ve got podcasts, we got YouTube channels. Instead of bringing people on who already are experienced real estate agents, and then having them give us a piece of their business, we’ve joined eXp strategically. Obviously, just the brokerage alone has helped us explode.

Now, these people can join us in our downline, we build them out a separate playlist. The number goes to them, anything that comes in through YouTube we split 50-50 with them, and then the rest of their business that they’ve been working their butts off for, they keep 100%. What better value proposition is that? That’s how we’re getting like top producers now to come join us, because they want to get on YouTube, they don’t know how to start to do it. It’s a lot of freaking work.

Aaron: You’re saying, “Join us, we’ll give you your own playlist under our video.”

Jackson: I’ll do it for you. I love this stuff. I’m the master. Let’s build your brand. We give them the opportunity to come into our studio. If they want to build a podcast about knitting sweaters, it doesn’t matter, we’re going to teach them how to build their own brand through podcasting, but the YouTube stuff, “Hey, we’re going to take care of you. We know exactly how these videos need to be done. I know which titles. I know all the metadata and stuff, you know the area.” If we want to do Klamath Falls like, I’m going to get you because you know it like the back of your hand. I don’t have to go and try and figure the stuff out. You can tell stories in your videos. Then that allows us to really expand, so I’ve been saying it lately, I think I’m changing the channel name from Living in Portland, Oregon to just Living in Oregon, as we continue to grow and grow and grow.

Aaron: Living in Oregon and your playlist will be part of it.

Jackson: And Oregon. Yes, the coast– Why not?

Aaron: If somebody’s getting started, do you have a list of steps or recommendations, because I see like the channel for Living in Beaverton, you got weather, you got places to eat, there’s a whole lot of videos on that playlist. If somebody was going to start focusing and say, “Hey, I’m going to start a YouTube page today. I’m going to name it Living Where I Live. I’m going to start my playlist.” What are the first videos they should record? How should they get started?

Jackson: Number one video out of the gate is cost of living video. Doesn’t matter which student, which anybody does that or whatever channel we start, that video tends to always just crush it. When somebody is moving or looking to move to an area, to know how much it costs, it’s a very good video that gets a lot of traction. Pros and Cons videos are very good. Three or four pros about living in your area and three or four cons about living in your area. People like truth, they like honesty. That’s what really personalizes you.

Jesse: Three in-betweens.

Jackson: Yes, three in-between. You could take this either way like, “Hey, in Oregon weed is legal.” For some people, that my bug you. For some, “Hey, now you can have weed legally.” Definitely–

Aaron: Got a little of both. You got ones that don’t move to the wrong area.

Jackson: Yes.

Aaron: You got a whole video about the worse neighborhoods?

Jackson: Basically, we definitely don’t do any steering, but we just pull up statistical data that’s on like the Redfin, actual stats that will read off and be like, that’s why this area actually has- lower areas has a higher unemployment rate. That’s what actually signifies it as worse place. We do everything.

Aaron: They can go start their YouTube page, they can start with their first videos and if they have more than one city, they can do a playlist for each city or each neighborhood or topics and everybody will find that. You said Portland has, the average price is 450 and your average price is 750 or 800. How do you get the top end of the market? Is that because the people that are searching organically on YouTube for the top end, or is it the content you guys put out?

Jackson: Yes, it’s definitely going to be a mix. I do want to say something first real quick about how to get started with YouTube. You cannot physically start on YouTube if you don’t do keyword research. I just wanted to get that in first. There’s a tool out there called, Keywords Everywhere. It’s a extension for your computer that turns your Google search bar into basically a goldmine. It’s going to start telling you how many times things are searched a month. That’s how you know which videos to shoot.

We’ve had agents come on with 300, 400 or 500 videos on their YouTube channel that have maybe 12, 15 subscribers. It goes to show that doing open house videos, listing videos, home tour videos with addresses and stuff, they never get searched, you’ll never grow. I would want to put that back, as growing, you really need to put in some effort to keyword research.

Then we started thinking about, okay, we’re doing all these videos, but how we want to start showcasing some of these areas. Where do we want to work, first of all? Second of all, what’s our niche? Where do we know. Jesse’s very good at luxury, and investors and some of these high-end areas, he did a lot of luxury listings. The guy can talk about it all day, everyday. We really started embracing that.

Me, I just moved here. Family, I got three kids, wife, so I’m in that move up, that four or five-bedroom house. We’re talking better areas, neighborhoods that can get you those style of homes. At the end of the day, the people that call us are our best friends. That’s how we went about, “Hey, we’re going to talk about these areas, these nicer areas, stuff that we really know well,” and that’s the business that we’re attracting.

Aaron: All right. Jesse, you had focused mostly on luxury before, so naturally, you could talk about it more?

Jesse: I would say, that wasn’t a majority amount of my business, but I definitely loved it, I loved the price point. When I was on the team, and that’s one thing I really noticed when I moved brokerages is that, where I originally started at Keller, I was always in that 300, low 400 range. When I went to my new brokerage, it was actually a very strategic move for me to move up into an area where the price points were higher. That just naturally allowed me to see and be around that environment. I wouldn’t say I was fully focused on luxury, but I did have a healthy part of my business was luxury.

I really focused on a specific area too. It’s a gated community, there’s about 60 houses in there. I sold a decent amount there. That’s where that all stemmed from, but in our area where our previous brokerage was, up in that neighborhood you’re looking at $600,000, $700,000, $800,000, $900,000, to $1 million price points. It wasn’t very uncommon to deal with those houses. For me, if someone’s like, “What type of business do you typically deal with?” To me, an average house for me is about 700.

Aaron: Did you guys have luxury homes as a playlist or is it metadata?

Jesse: We do because what we did is, we brought in a top-producing real estate agent from Keller to join us at eXp. He wanted to get into the luxury business, so we actually crafted him a luxury playlist, and we’re turning him into the luxury specialist of Portland through our YouTube channel. It’s going to take his business to the next level.

Aaron: If somebody wants to focus on your vacation home somewhere, or they want to focus on luxury rentals, or they want to focus on your military housing, whatever it is, if an agent can decide this is my niche, and they can build a brand around it on YouTube, they could focus with a playlist, with metadata, and be able to decide what their favorite niche becomes?

Jesse: 100%. The reason why is, because what you want to do is you want to put yourself in front of the people that are actually searching that information. If you know you’re moving to Las Vegas or New York City, guess what, you’re on YouTube, and you’re using this search engine now. You’re typing in those cities, and all of a sudden the skypes pop it up, that has nothing related to real estate, he’s teaching all about the city. Now all of a sudden, you also know he’s a real estate agent, guess who you’re going to go to your home needs? You’re going to the person that you’re watching, which happens to be us.

We get calls all the time with people saying, “Man, I was thinking of moving to Austin or Portland, I found your channel and you guys are the ones that made us make that decision to move into Portland.” If you are a niche, say, you’re in Colorado Springs, and you’re focusing on the military business, you can definitely create a military YouTube channel about living in Colorado Springs, and you will get tons of military business. We actually have a lot of clients and students that do focus on niches.

Jackson: I think it’s super important. I’ll piggyback off that because the hardest struggle people are having, no matter how much we teach them with YouTube is, the content. Like, “Okay, I got these SEO titles, but I don’t know what to say.” Well, that’s because you haven’t niched yourself. You’re trying to shotgun spread and do everything we’re doing?

First of all, you got to put in a little effort and do some research. Second of all, when you come across on your videos like, I can sit there and talk move up homebuyers and families that kind of stuff all day everyday, because it’s my life, it’s what I do, it’s what I enjoy.

When you’re able to niche down to something that you really know, really, really well, it’s no longer a script, it’s no longer a phony video. Once you start telling stories through YouTube, and that’s one thing that was hard for me is like, I wanted to do this Portland channel and here I am trying to talk about Portland like I know it. I just moved here at the time, a year, a year and a half. I barely knew some of these neighborhoods. The more I started telling my story about moving there, I was starting to see the comments and like, “Oh, my gosh, this is great.”

Then I started doing videos about, what it was like to move to Portland, what it’s like to live there after a year. All of these my story videos, and it just started blowing up my personal niche and brand. The families were calling me and I’m telling them, it’s hard to find daycare here in Portland, because there’s so many families. Now the calls I get are like, “Jackson, thank you so much for telling us to find our daycare. It took us two months to find it, so thank you so much. We’re moving there in a couple months.” Then Jesse per se, the guy is just a statistical database, then he can just run stats about these houses, so like, investors, luxury people, they’re calling him left and right, young professionals, business people. Once you start niching and talking about the stuff you already know, love all that stuff, that’s when you can do some killer videos.

Jesse: People know if you’re faking it. This is the thing, we’re 100% ourselves and that’s why people love it. Jackson loves drinking beers, he talks about it all the time. People always hit us up and like, “Hey, we’re going to come to Portland, going to have a Brewskis with Jackson.” Someone made him a YouTube hat that said, Brewskis with the play button on it.

Aaron: That’s fucking awesome.

Jackson: I talk about Brewskis in every video, and they just like [chuckles] and that’s who call me.

Aaron: [crosstalk] automatic hash tag, they’re so ready to–When you have your fans that want to come party with you, when really you’re trying to teach them about real estate, that is pretty awesome.

Jesse: I can say one last thing to that. As we bring these agents on, they’re still in the mindset that you got to qualify these clients and we’re just reading in the other day that it says, that now buyers and sellers are qualifying you before you’re qualifying them. That’s the great thing about YouTube, is they know that they want to work with us when they call us.

We have these agents that come on our team and then when they get a call from a buyer or seller, they’re still prospecting them, like they’ve been tricked into calling, so it’s funny to hear the agents talk to them because these guys actually want to work with them. We got two videos now from two different agents on their first calls and they’re like, “Dude, I cannot believe that these people talk to me like I’m already their agent. Is that not normal?” I’m like, “Yes. That’s what it’s like every single time.” They’re blown away. [crosstalk] These are high-end clients, not just someone calling with crappy credit buying a $300,000 house. I’m talking $700,000 plus, and they need to do a buy, sell and they trust you with everything. It’s the greatest thing on earth.

Aaron: It’s a totally different lead type, right? This lead type is somebody, you guys have been yourselves. You’ve been saying, this is who we are. They’ve been getting to know you, they’ve seen all of your videos. By the time they’re calling, they’re like, “Hey, I already know you, let’s do this,” or, “Hey, I already know you, I already know your new listing, let’s just get started.”

It is one of the funny things about social media too, if they’ve been watching these personal videos where you guys are just out and about, when they called you, they act like they know you already because they feel they’ve been having these conversations and speaking directly to them.

Let’s talk metadata. You said at the beginning, somebody forms their YouTube site, they start recording videos, they start their playlists, but you said, that they need to get the searches. I need to make sure that this podcast for sure on our YouTube page needs to be hit more than any other time because you guys are the YouTube agents. I better see a gazillion downloads on my YouTube page. What am I going to put in for metadata? Originally you said, there’s an app you can use to see what people are searching, so remind us what that is. Then, how do people turn that into metadata? If they’re brand new in YouTube, do they put that on there when they upload the video? Where does that stuff go?

Jackson: The whole metadata is basically what’s triggering the algorithms of YouTube. When someone types something into a computer, like, “Where to live when moving to Portland, Oregon” or something. Fractions of seconds, YouTube is going through and researching all this metadata, so a title has to be perfect. Once you find this title– We did one the other day, which is a great one, anybody can do it in their city basically. It’s like moving to Portland, Oregon, seven tips on how to save money. It has a couple of triggers in there. Obviously, “moving to Portland” is a giant keyword.

What I’m going to do is, I’m going to take that, and I’m going to– You have a description. That explains your video. The biggest mistake people do is, they’ll either just put their number there or another link to go somewhere, or nothing. Well, that’s a huge area for you to start implying and putting a bunch of these other keywords. You need to take your title, put it right into your description. Now, YouTube sees, “Okay, someone typed in living in Portland, Oregon. It’s in this title, it’s in this description.” Then, the description goes on. You talk about, yes, this whole video is about seven tips on moving to Portland, Oregon, yadda yadda yadda. You do a paragraph, and then you have your tag section.

Tags are another way that YouTube goes through and starts filtering. By putting a bunch of random tags, that don’t make sense to your title that really hurts you and kills you. You need to take that title, again and put it as your first tag. Now you’ve told YouTube, “Pay.” There’s three freaking huge indicators right here, that tells YouTube, “This is exactly what this video is about.” When someone types that in, you have a really good chance now, to have your video start picking up towards the top. This is just getting going. As you go, you’re going to want to start– It’s called optimization, optimizing your videos.

There’s a lot of the top YouTubers and YouTube channels out there, who do not optimize correctly. You have a chance to outrank them, even if they have 500,000 views or a million subscribers. At the end of the day, your videos tend to drop out until you get consistent. The number one thing you can do in YouTube is be consistent, doing at least a video a week, multiple videos every single week, so that it knows you’re a serious creator and then, it continues to put you out there. There’s a lot more that keeps it going but-

Aaron: You can’t just do the metadata and all that, you also need to have a ton of videos, keep doing it because they rank you all sorts of ways. One of your videos, it’s titled, Cost of Living in Portland, Oregon versus Seattle, Washington. That must have been a search that someone did that you said, “Hey, this is going to get some people here.”

Jackson: Yes.

Aaron: The comment below or the description says, “This is the best video talking about the cost of living in Portland, Oregon versus Seattle, Washington.” That’s exactly what you said. You have the title and then, now your description says– But it also says, “Best video” because I think you’re thinking maybe somebody’s searching best video of this. Now, you’re a step closer. Now, you get down to your tags as you’re uploading that.

Do you have 3 tags, 50 tags, 500 tags? Maybe there’s an unlimited amount. I’ve never used so many tags in YouTube that I [crosstalk] up. I think probably people maybe start running out. What is the rule-of-thumb for that? You said your first one would be, “Cost of living in Portland, Oregon versus Seattle, Washington.” What else do you put in there? How many tags do you do? How do you figure out what those tags should be?

Jackson: The easiest way, there’s another tool called TubeBuddy. This is another extension and it actually works with YouTube. It has its own keyword explorer, that’s pulling data from the search bar of YouTube. The cool thing about that, if you pay for it, which is only like $19 a month, and it’s literally the golden tool, if you want to grow a channel.

You upload your video, and you put your title in there and it’s going to upload a bunch of tags for you that are the most relevant, most related, or that any of the other videos that are in that search pool, the most common tags that are in those videos, too. Now you can just go through, and start selecting those. Yes, there is a limit–

Aaron: Is that YouTubeBuddy you said?

Jackson: It’s TubeBuddy, T-U-B-E. TubeBuddy. Now, there is a limit, you can only put 500 characters in your tags, but they have to be relevant. Like, Vancouver, Washington and all these other tags, if you’re just trying to put a bunch of random tags. It actually can hurt you.

You’re going to have Seattle, Seattle, Washington, Seattle, Wa, Portland, Portland, Oregon, Portland Ore, pros and cons of Seattle versus Portland, living in Portland versus Seattle. A bunch of these really, really related tags that, if anybody searches something close to it, it has a good chance of your video up there too.

Aaron: Got it. You tell people, “Create the page, have the good name, create the videos, create the playlist that people are searching, the individual video, you put the content, you put the extra things.” I think that we’ll get into some of the gifts you guys are uploading that we’re going to be able to get out of the toolbox. As people want to get just more and more out of there, there’s some different apps and things like that, that people can use. We’ll put those in some of the show notes too, just so people have them. I might be emailing you guys after to be able to grab that.

You guys have created this awesome channel, where all the organic stuff coming– I think before we got online, I talked about the data that I did yesterday, with Trevor from Carrot that’s coming out on our state-of-the-market, or may have come out by the time this one airs. It talks about how organic traffic– It has a 5% conversion rate, 5.5%. That means somebody Googles, they find you. 5% of them are saying, “I want you to sell my house.” Or paid-ads, it’s more 1.5%. If somebody is buying an ad in YouTube, their conversion rate is going to be 1.5% of people, whereas if they find you there.

What do you guys think about paid-ads versus org– Obviously, organic’s better. Do you recommend that people start with paid-ads as they’re first getting started? Are you guys anti paid-ads? What’s the difference between paid-ads and organic?

Jackson: We’re anti.

[chuckle]

There’s nothing more powerful on planet earth than organic search. People are typing this stuff in, you’re doing the correct titles, tags, and people are finding your videos. They’re not getting hit or bombarded with anything. We went down the road of 100% organic, and then it was, “Okay, if we’re getting this many views, subscribers, calls, what if we started boosting it?” I’d done some data on– Another huge algorithm that you need to know about YouTube is average view time. You have to keep people on the platform of YouTube. If you do not, they’re not going to take care of you.

By doing a YouTube ad and getting our video out, now getting hundreds, if not thousands of views all the time, we were only getting 3 seconds, 4 to 5, 10-seconds view times. YouTube’s sitting there going, “Oh, shoot. Nobody likes this video, we’re going to stop.” They literally took all our videos and slammed them out of the rankings. It was not effective. YouTube ads are very effective if done correctly. If you unlist that video, do not do it to a public video, it will kill you. That was a quick little experiment we didn’t want.

Aaron: That’s great advice. If you’re going to run an ad, don’t do it to one of your public ones, do it to an unlisted one.

Jackson: There’s so much to that ad. You have five seconds generally because of that “skip” to catch it. There’s such a script and there’s a very, very in-depth script that we use for organic videos, too, that we can get into but yes, this is 100% organic. Now, look at these numbers, we have literally over 2.5 million impressions.

What that means is that, in basically 13 months from when we’ve started this, YouTube has placed our videos in front of 2.5 million people most likely to watch our content. It’s going out there and people who watch it, it finds people mostly like them. Obviously, the more videos you do, the more content you do, the better it gets.

Those videos, when people actually get hit with a video either through suggested or browse features, which means, “Hey, you were typing stuff like this, and then I think you’re going to like these videos.”

Those videos have an average of six-and-a-half-minute view times, whereas organic search where they just find this, type it in, click it, is usually around like this 3-minute, 45 seconds. Almost double, if you’re allowing YouTube to just place your videos. The only way to do that, is to get more consistent. Get lots of videos out there, have your tags, your data, all this stuff in there, so that YouTube can start.

It goes all the way back to these YouTube ads, if you’re doing a bunch of public videos and boosting those out there. Your average view times are just it’s never going to reward you. Yes, we are 100% organic. Let this thing put our videos out in front of 2.5 million people all day. Hell yes, that’s where I want to live.

Aaron: How long should someone’s video be, if they’re going to start a YouTube tomorrow, 5 minutes, 10 minutes?

Jackson: We like 10 to 12, or longer. Sometimes 7, 8 minutes, it just is what it is, but that’s the biggest misconception. Again, is that we’re in this Facebook-Instagram world as realtors and you have to have a 30-second catchy video. Well, nobody searches that, nobody cares. You need long videos because YouTubers came out and said that it favors a video. Let’s say I do a 10-minute video and you do a 3-minute video, I get 40% average view time and you get 100%.

That means my video kept somebody on the platform for four minutes. You kept them on there for three minutes. It’s going to boost my video in front of yours. Longer the better. Jesse did a 40-minute presentation on our YouTube agent channel and they were getting 9 to 10-minute average view duration. That’s only 25% average view time but that’s 9 to 10 minutes that we’re keeping people on this platform. It’s going to rank that.

Aaron: YouTube likes it.

Jackson: Yes.

Aaron: Jesse, let’s jump to some real estate focus questions. Again, you guys have been working for not very long. You haven’t been in the business for that long. You guys have teams that do a lot of that different production for you. When your agents are first getting started, what’s one of the biggest problems in real estate right now that occur after somebody gets the lead? It’s obvious you guys use YouTube to get the lead, but what are people saying after that? What does your team need after that? Now that you have this lead, what are people doing right? What are they doing wrong?

Jesse: Like Jackson said, is like we have a very specific script on getting people to call us. Before, we were doing videos for you stuff for three months, four months, then we got really focused and started figuring out what was building up the views? Well, we never were telling people to call us. Now, we hit them with that little bit of that hook at the beginning, to tell them what the video’s like. We go into our static intro that we have in every video, and then we go into our call-to-action, which is basically, “We’re working with clients all around the world and we absolutely love it.

Text us, call us, email us, anytime, day or night, we got your back moving to Portland, Oregon.” Literally, the next day our phone rang eight times then, we knew it was game-on. Now, people call us all the time and we do still see a lot of people out there doing videos, without the call-to-action and they’re saying they’re getting no results. We know why. We tell them and try to coach them through that, and it still doesn’t change. The biggest issue that I see with our agents is that when the call comes in, we instantly want to get that client on a Zoom call, because it really solidifies that relationship. We get them on the Zoom call with our lender.

I would say the biggest issue I think, is getting the initial call-set with the lender, because a lot of times sometimes clients don’t want to get on that Zoom call if they’re skeptical or a first-time homebuyer or whatnot. When we’re giving so much business away to these agents that don’t have to do any prospecting, or learn scripts or anything like that, I think they don’t know how to handle those situations when somebody’s giving them pushback.

Aaron: That works for YouTube videos or any other ways. If somebody gets an incoming call, agent calls you and says, or a buyer calls you and says, “Hey, I think I’m ready to buy a house. I saw you guys from this” or “I saw your ad” or “My friend told me you’re a good agent. I’m looking for somebody to help me buy a house. Can you be my agent to help me buy the house?” You also mentioned that people right now are qualifying the agents.

There’s some of that, they’re may be just trying to see if you’re good or not. What is that first conversation? If you answer the phone, they say, “Hey, so-and-so told me, you’re going to be my agent? I’d like to be able to buy a house. Can you go show me some houses this weekend?” What’s your answer?

Jesse: The conversation is always like, “I’ve been watching you guys on YouTube. I freaking love what you’re doing.” It’s the same exact conversation every time.

Jackson: “Oh, my God, it’s actually you, holy shit.” [laughs]

Jesse: We just saw a text come in asking, “Is this really Jackson Welkey’s number?” That literally just happened like five minutes ago, I just sought him through. What happens is we just say, “Hey, we’re really busy right now, we need to schedule a Zoom call. When are you available?” Or, we send them our Zoom link that links to our and then, they can get that scheduled. What we want to do, is we want to get them on a Zoom call with our lender partner.

Addison, our lender has been an instrumental piece of this whole business from the very beginning. He’s on 100% of our Zoom calls. Our meetings with Zoom take precedent over everything else that he does. When we schedule the call, he’s going to be there, whether it’s 5:00 in the morning, or ten o’clock at night, because we work on clients all around the world. If a client-

Aaron: Do you lose people at that point? You’re like, “Hey, I know I can’t show you this weekend, but let’s get this Zoom call scheduled so we can do it.”

Jesse: We’ve just lost our first client ever to that situation, where he hit us up. He just said, “Hey, I want to look at some homes in Portland.” He didn’t say he was coming to town because we’ve had people show up to our office, that came from like Florida, and thought we would just be sitting in our office doing nothing. Well, obviously, that’s not the case. In our videos, too, we always say, “Hit us up because we want to set a specific process.”

This is another point of, the agent owning the process and helping their client, direct them. As soon as we can get them on that Zoom call, their guard comes down 100% and we can start working with them like a real client. If somebody just basically says– If they don’t want to do the zoom call, or they’re anti zoom call, and they ask us why we need to do it– And now, with this COVID thing, it’s really opened up the floodgates to Zoom. We were doing Zoom for the last year.

Aaron: I guess you’ll get way less pushback now than you used to.

Jesse: We always just say, “Hey, we want to just confirm that you’re not a serial killer” or things like that. A Craigslist killer, and they think it’s funny. They’re like, “Oh, that totally makes sense.” Sometimes people don’t have video messaging, which we totally get, but typically 99% of people figure it out. Like I was saying, we just lost our first deal, where the guy came to town.

He didn’t tell us he’d made his trip out here. He wanted to set the appointment, we set up for the following week and then, he sent us an email on Tuesday morning saying, “Hey, I was in town. I went out and contacted an agent. He showed me the house, we wrote an offer.” I don’t know if it’s true or not, but that’s what happened. Usually, we’re pretty available. Our policy is, we try to get them on the call that day and usually it works out. That’s doing opposite [crosstalk] situation.

Aaron: You’re saying if somebody calls their prospects, say, “Hey, let’s get on a zoom call right now, let’s get on a zoom call with a lender.” I would think that you’d lose some people like that, and the answer really is, “No, you haven’t.” You have lost one but in general, people do get on that call. When you get on that call, what’s the lender’s job? What’s your job? How long is that video call, that onboarding call?

Jesse: Yes, absolutely. We never tell them the lender is going to be on there. We just say, “Hey, let’s set up the Zoom call.” We make it very casual, and then when they get on the call, we introduce everyone. Usually it’s our buyers’ agents that take care of the calls. We try to be on there every time we can be. Jackson doesn’t handle any of that stuff. It’s primarily me, but Addison, our lender’s very good at controlling those conversations.

What happens, get on the call, “Hey,–,” Introduce everyone and then, Heather, one of our buyers’ agents, she is really good at controlling conversation. “Why are you moving to Portland? What’s bringing you out here?” We just basically have the conversation flow, like we never talked to them before anyways, because we’re getting bombarded so much that we don’t know. We can’t track every single person.

One thing that we do too, is we record the video. We send that to them, tell them to download it because it’s going to get deleted. Therefore, they can always reference back to that video, because 90% of the questions– And a lot of people know this, if you’re an agent listening, is that 90% of the people calling you are typically not qualified.

They’ve maybe spoken to a lender, but usually, their conversation typically always leads to lending questions. How much they can afford, they don’t know. It’s amazing to have that lender there with you on every call, to build that relationship with someone. 95% of our clients has used our lender in every situation. If they can’t use him for some specific reason, say they’re moving from Canada, and they have no American credit.

He still works with a client, and helps us get the deal under contract. We currently have about 50 active buyers that he’s working with. He was telling me the other day that he’s done 150 Zoom calls this year with clients, because now he’s adopted Zoom to his business.

Aaron: Yes, a lot of that beginning one, that first onboarding call is like, “Hey, yes, we look forward to working with you. Let’s get on a Zoom call.” You get on there, you record it, you answer a bunch of questions, and you just start from the beginning, just getting to know them. I think a lot of agents have that practice, like, “All right, tell me why you want to buy a house, when you want to buy the house?” How long do the video calls go?

Jesse: They’re usually about 30 minutes. Because Zoom has a free platform that you can use and it kicks you off at 40 minutes, Typically-

Aaron: Not anymore. It does not kick you off anymore. During COVID, it’s free Zoom for everyone. Go ahead. Sorry.

Jesse: You’re saying I’m getting ripped off? I get it. I have webinar features and all that stuff. No, they try to keep it around 30 minutes or so, sometimes it extends a little bit longer. It really depends on the client, because some clients love talking, some like telling you their whole life story. Some don’t say anything, and then by the end of that conversation–

Then, there’s a follow-up email, say, that we tell them that we’re going to build them a custom search, which to the CRM is something we now actually do. We figured out that if they need to sell a house, every person that tells us they need to sell a house, they always tell us they have an agent, “Oh, I got an agent already” whatever.

As we start talking through the process, by the end of it, they’re like, “Hey, by the way, can you just send over the agent that you recommended, because the person that I was actually going to use, I don’t really want to use” or, however that conversation goes. It really makes for a great transaction because we’ve qualified a lot of the listing agents that we work with, and I can statistically say this, that 100% of the clients that we refer to our agents, have gone flawlessly, super smooth, communication is amazing.

The 100% of the clients that have used their agent of choice, has gone horribly wrong. We’ve had clients close a week early, and we never were never notified. Our client shows up in U-Haul van with their stuff and they didn’t even tell us in the client email, and it’s just this weird situation.

Aaron: You’re like, “That’s way different.” Jesse, do you still do deals yourself, or is it just your team now?

Jesse: Very rarely. I try to do the listings and I still have– My sphere will call me but no, we typically– Jackson has a buddy moving here right now. Our agents are working with them but no, we have so much stuff going on with this video social agency, with agents joining us every single day. It’s really hard for me to participate in real estate. I noticed one deal really takes a lot of time away from me but for the most part, it’s our team or our agents doing it.

Aaron: They do that. Can you think of anything non-video, non-YouTube-related if you were going to go back to yourself just two-and-a-half years ago, getting started in real estate. What would you tell yourself to do, be ready for, to expect? What advice would you give yourself as a new agent?

Jesse: That’s a great question. I left Corporate America making six figures plus, and I didn’t have time to start wasting in real estate. I think this is a big mess in a lot of agencies, is that the training is– If you’re doing one training a week, dude, a lot of people don’t have that savings, or a lot of people don’t have weeks to wait to start growing their business. My biggest recommendation is, get to where the hottest leads are today, and start figuring out how they work with those buyers and sellers.

That’s going to be open houses, and for-sale-by-owners because you know that those are, a willing buyer and a willing seller. Dial-in your scripts, get to know exactly how to prospect the client, and that will really help your business grow substantially.

In my first year, I did a little over $11 million, and it was all through cold calling and open houses. I think I did a pretty good job. The next year I did 15 million. The thing was, is understanding those scripts and really building my business. I started writing my own scripts because I knew what the power of empathy was, and I saw every other caller was doing the exact same thing. They were always calling and using the same script, that I heard 100,000 other people.

I heard a caller, one time, Brian Casella make this call. The seller was very, very sad about a situation. Brian actually started showing a lot of empathy in that call, which I picked up from. I said, “Oh my Gosh, if you actually align yourself with these people, and show them empathy, understand their situation, I’m going to build a relationship that they’re not used to.”

That’s exactly what the difference was between me and everyone else. I think that’s why I was able to close so many more deals and get more listings, is because at the end of the day, I was developing a great relationship. I’d still always ask for to sell and always keep it professional. The same thing went with open houses. I had a very specific open-house script that I always used. I’d always take notes when they walked in. I would talk to them like I was already working with them. At the end of the day, that led to me a lot of business.

Aaron: It’s great advice, especially with people who need to hit the ground ad run, they don’t have time to wait to get it. Focusing on the hottest leads where you have the best chance of converting, and then master your craft. You did 11 million in your first year, that’s awesome. Free gifts, you guys uploaded just a ton of stuff into our Dropbox, that’s going to be in part of our Agent Toolbox.

You guys go to hibandigital.com/youtubeagents, you’re going to see this interview, the text, all their links, and then you can get access to everything inside the Agent Success Toolbox. Jesse, what is some of the stuff people are going to see in there?

Jesse: The things that people are going to see in there are going to be our eBook. That talks about our journey from start to finish, and even today. It just finished a couple of weeks ago, so it’s very new, and it’s very fresh. People are going to be able to hear all the real stuff because it started a while ago. We had to make some edits at the end, just because the way things changed. We also uploaded our top five videos that you need to shoot for every market.

Aaron: Cool.

Jesse: I uploaded– I call it the 10X growth strategy on really how to make a YouTube business work for you, because we repurpose the content into blogs, and into podcasts. We also convert all of our blogs into Pinterest boards, which we’re getting about 50,000 hits a month on our Pinterest board.

That links right back to our website, so I can see the traffic is really working there. That whole growth strategy is in the toolbox. I think I also added our Vlogging hyperlinks, what you need to get started as a Vlogger into YouTube. I believe I also put our clickable software links that we use with those Snapper, PicMonkey, keywords everywhere. I loaded that thing up. Anyone that wants to get started today can easily do it.

If I was going back to start real estate excluding– I know you said not YouTube, but I would have started on YouTube doing it the right way, because Jackson and I spent a lot of time and a lot of money doing it the wrong way. We’ve really come here to alleviate everyone’s pain points and share exactly how you can be successful. We have buyers and clients that have gotten deals after turning to their YouTube videos in one week. It can work fast.

Aaron: You guys loaded up our toolbox with stuff. There’s a bunch of stuff that people want to go do it themselves. Obviously, if people want to find you, they just need to search, “Living in Portland, Oregon.” They’re going to find your YouTube page and all of your stuff. You guys also, you have your own agency now, though too. Somebody can say, “Hey, I’m an agent in Florida. I read all this stuff–,” You guys have told us the way to do it. It’s not complicated. It does take time. If somebody says, “Hey, I don’t have the time. I want Jackson and Jesse to do it.” What’s the best way for them to reach out to you guys?

Jesse: We have our website, theyoutubeagents.com. You can hit us up at info@theyoutubeagents.com. If people are a do-it-yourself type of person, we have our course. It’s start to finish, step by step. It includes keyword research, it includes editing, which is a huge piece. That’s where everyone gets hung up is in the editing. It’s a pain. I hate editing, I can’t do it. That’s why Jackson loves it, and we get along so well.

Our agency, on the flip side of that, can do 100% of everything for you. They will send you the keywords, the tags, the titles, the descriptions. You shoot the video, you dump it right into our right management system. We edit everything for you, help schedule the post, do the End Screen cards, do your thumbnail. You don’t have to do anything else.

We’re specifically researching those keywords and titles for your area, specifically. We do an onboarding process, we get to know exactly what markets you want to work in, and then we just go to work and get you the top-performing results instantly.

Aaron: You guys have gotten me so pumped about YouTube today. I’m going to make sure that this podcast gets a million downloads compared to our other ones. You guys have been great.

Lots of actionable data out there, fun to see people from Portland, Oregon, just crushing it. Again, the inspiration part of, you guys have not been agents for all that long to be having such a big booming business right now. It’s really just also just crushing it during COVID shelter in place and everything– Other than not being able to go out and enjoy your Portland weather, you guys are doing just fine.

Jackson: During this COVID situation, our phone calls and emails and texts are blowing up. Everybody’s at home binge-watching. All of our YouTube channels are absolutely exploding. We’re getting so many calls. Actually, like Jesse said, we’ve put nine deals in Escrow in the last week, all 100% from YouTube. People are binge-watching.

There’s also one more absolute gift. go to YouTube, type in “The YouTube Agents” that’s our channel where we literally teach you a hundred– There’s already over 105 videos teaching you every single thing you need to know about growing a YouTube channel for real estate. It’s all free, it’s all out there. We love this stuff. You can definitely learn on your own.

Aaron: It is such a time right now. Our podcast downloads are down, people aren’t driving their car anymore. Our YouTube views and subscribers is growing. People are consuming more video, less podcasts. You guys were great. There’s so much info in there. I’m sure I’ll be reaching out to you to help with all sorts of different things later. Thanks for coming on.

Jackson: Yes, man.

Jesse: See you then.