You may have or may not have heard that I put out 100 videos for 100 days. This coming LiveTime, I want to talk to you about what that did for me and as difficult as it was I’m glad i did it!
In this edition of LiveTime with Alec…
- 100 Videos does not change the world, it changes you
- Your customer is not playing by your rules anymore.
- You should have started 10 years ago.
- Its going to take vulnerability and courage
Episode Transcribe
– What’s up, everybody?
Welcome to another LiveTime With Alec!
Woo, so good to see you guys. Man, this is fun. It’s fun to be back out of Tahoe. No beard, I know, I know. Don’t judge me, it was done, it was done. I looked like a hillbilly, it was so gnarly. You cannot have a beard like that anymore. My wife was like, “You’re done. “Get rid of the beard.” I’m like “Fine, it’s fine.” It’s fine, what we do for marriage in life, you know? So guys, this is gonna be a fun conversation today. This guy right here, this guy, what a crazy guy that guy is. 100 videos in 100 days. I have to revisit this topic because I see so many more people coming into the digital world. They’re stepping out, they’re putting the light on, putting the camera on, and I’m freaking loving it. I’m obsessed with it, I’m liking everybody. I’m so pumped that people are willing to do this. And I thought I would talk about this challenge. What happened in it? What was the purpose of it? What was the result of it? And man, I’d love to do it live with you guys. And then from there, what did it do for me? I think that’s a question people want to really know because it happened, it was a thing. And I joke all the time because I know you didn’t watch it. But I have to, I mean, you maybe watched one or you’re like, “This is novel, what’s he doing?” Or “This is weird,” and then you watch half of one or whatever it was. And that’s fine, I love you, I appreciate you. I know you didn’t watch all 100. I had a tough time filming them all. So let me explain why I did this. Let me give you some context and let me explain why I think you should do something very similar. And I’m not saying a hundred, don’t. Woo, it’s a lot. But let me explain the background here. I saw two clear trends happening in our industry. That’s part of why I wrote the book. This whatever, it’s back here. Two clear trends that are a threat to the local professional. And you have to remember that I’m a local professional. I mean, I was raised going door to door to talk to realtors, going to broker previews and open houses and networking events and going, speaking at the offices and doing drop buys and setting appointments and trying to build relationship with real estate professionals because they’re awesome humans. And they were getting customers and I wanted those customers, so I went and built relationships with them. Okay. Humans don’t do that anymore, meaning in 2003 when I started back then to get a… to find a house for sale, you didn’t go on your phone. Okay, we had a Nokia crappy brick phone. We did not have all of human knowledge in our hands. In fact, the multiple listing services was private, you couldn’t access it. This is real life, dude. Ladies and gentlemen, dudes and dudettes, real life. Now, our customers aren’t going to real estate professionals until they’ve already fallen in love with a home on their phone. Now you might say, “That’s not true “and there’s niches there” and fine, I’ll give you a little bit of that grace. But I’m gonna say it pretty emphatically, they’re not going to realtors first, they’re going on their phone. They’re going on their phone. And when they go on their phone, what are they looking and bumping into? Well, they’re bumping into mortgage companies like Zillow. They’re bumping into lead aggregators, like LendingTree. They’re bumping into digital mortgage companies, like Quicken and LoanDepot. They’re bumping into those places and what they’re not bumping into is the local mortgage pro. They’re not. They’re not because you’re not there, or at least you weren’t, you weren’t there. Now, we’re coming in full force. By the way, for those of you joining right now, thank you so much. We’re live on LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube. Drop a comment, let me know where you’re watching from. I love hearing the engagement. I love seeing where you’re all kind of tuning in from. It gives me kind of a perspective on things. And if you’re watching this in the future, hit me up with a hashtag bypass. It always gives me joy when I get a little notification come up, ’cause I know you’re not just pausing your day ’cause Alec Hanson’s live, I get it. You got a lot of stuff to do. Hopefully a lot of customers to serve. So, let’s dive into the why. No, our mortgage professionals weren’t there. They weren’t on the internet and the customer was going on the internet. I was coaching people and pushing people, being like, get on the internet, get into social media, build connection and do video, do video, do video. And then I turned around one day and I realized I am doing zero video. That pissed me off. It pissed me off. ‘Cause I don’t, I don’t like people. I should not say like. I lose respect for people that tell you what to do and then never do it themselves. I just have a hard time with that. I have a hard time with that. Now, if you’ve done something before and you’re not currently doing it now, I still want to hear what you have to say ’cause you did it. But I just, I looked around, I’m like, “I’m a hypocrite.” “I’m telling everyone to make videos and get out there “and I’m not out there and I am not gonna tolerate that.” And so, I opened up a Google Excel Drive document. Yep, Google doc, Excel, and I started. In fact, let me see if I can even pull it up right now and then I’ll share it with you guys. ‘Cause that’s how weird this is. Oh yeah, here it is, okay hold on. Give me 30 seconds, ’cause I just maximized it and I don’t wanna do that. Okay, so let’s go share screen, remove, stop share, share screen, check this out. You’re gonna die. Share. Content strat, 100 in 100. Oh, there it is. Oh my gosh, so look at this, look how good this is. Now they’re all completed. But what I started doing is right here, I would do stories of being an LO, right? And then I would do like, leadership and then I would do like, technology. And in each of these subsections, I would write like, drive away from open house, right? And like, setting first appointments, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I started filling in topics that I was gonna talk about, that would be my videos. And then as I would complete them, I would highlight them yellow and put them in the completed box. And so look, here’s my intro. Here is, I don’t remember what blank was for number two, or maybe I forgot. Here’s my video on drive time. Here’s my video on video is king. Here’s my video on do a brand on it. And if you skip on over to YouTube, you can see where I started storing all of this content and I’ll get there in two seconds as I switch account. But this is exactly the process I would go through. And I put 30 to 40 topics onto the Google Drive doc, and I was like, “30 to 40 topics, I’m gonna crush this. “Let’s go for a hundred.” And I hit go. And I filmed my first video going for, where I declared I was gonna do a hundred videos in a hundred days. That’s how this whole thing started, dude. And I way overshot the mark. Oh my God, was that a huge mistake. So watch this, I’ll stop this and share this. This was a hysterical mistake, but we pushed through. So there it is. There’s a hundred videos in a hundred days that I started leaning into, and it was super fun. I started doing them and by the way, so here’s the hack, right? People think like, you know, you’re not gonna have the motivation to do a video every single day. First of all, you’re a busy professional. And if you’re working right now in our industry, you must be a slammed professional. Shouldn’t stop you, here’s how you do it. You have a T shirt rack, I had it right here, a tee shirt rack with seven or eight different T shirts. I would carve out 30 minutes on certain days of the week where I could find it, or I did it on the weekend. And I’d come in, I’d have my topic list, right? ‘Cause we just saw the topic list. I’d have my topic list. And I would immediately start filming one of the seven videos, one of the videos on the list. And it was hysterical, because I would just store ’em in Dropbox and all of a sudden, I’m gonna show this again. I want you to see how high level professional this is. Like this. I didn’t have some super secret plan here, guys. And sorry, the Twitter thing’s over my face, but we’re over it. It’s more important that you see how hysterical this is. But these were my topics. And as I filmed them, I put them in here and you can see, they go down, down, down and I started labeling them later, ’cause I got like, you know, I was realizing I’m losing my mind here. I started putting dates next to it cause I was losing it. But… it’s so crazy, the power of what this can do. It’s so crazy, the power that you will experience when you start putting yourself out there. I’m not joking, this process to create this and to just realize, “I can create content at scale. “I can do things that matter.” And I have to tell you, the amount of people in our industry that I’m wanting to connect with from other companies, from our company, from you know, just from vendors, from you know, man, most of them, a lot of them think we’ll look back and go, “Hey, you were the guy that did those videos.” They probably didn’t watch one of them. See, what you think is, you think you’re gonna make a video and you think somehow that’s gonna change the world. I’m gonna say this slowly. It’s at the nine minute mark and I want you to hear it. You think that you’re gonna make a video or a hundred and it’s gonna change the world. And I’m here to tell you, you are a thousand percent wrong. When you make a hundred videos and you step into that consistency, that hard work, you play the game, you make no excuses and you put that out there, it doesn’t change the world, it changes you. That’s the power of this kind of stuff. Sure. Do people recognize me more or have a relationship with me deeper, digitally, because they saw some videos? Yeah, yeah of course, that’s part of what it does. Did I immediately change my entire life and my business exploded and recruits just started calling me and falling down saying, “Please, Alec, can I work around you? “Oh my God, you’re amazing”? No, no, of course not, that’s not how it works. When you make 10 videos and you put ’em out in 10 days, are you gonna get 75,000 loans? No, no, you’re not. But if you start showing up consistently, if you start showing up authentically, it’s gonna change you, and then the opportunity comes. This guy right here. This guy right here, man. Oh, thank you, dude. I’m a fan of you too, bro, I miss working with you. This is how the world works in this space, guys. And this is my encouragement to you. It is available to you, it is free. It costs nothing but the death of a little bit a part of you that says you’re not worth it, you’re not good enough, you don’t sound good, you don’t look good on video, that part is gonna die. And then it’s all good. I was joking with a buddy in the industry, Jimmy, who made a great comment about how he still struggles with going back and looking at content and like self-judging. And this is incredible because by the way, that ends, the self-judgment ends if you keep pushing forward, you stop really. I have people like, “I never listen to my stuff again. “’cause it’s terrible,” you know what? I listen to my stuff all the time now. Why, because I want to get better and I’ve let go of the self-judgment. Now I can listen to it and I have no self-hate about it, even though sometimes I know I’m sounding stupid and I said something dumb. I have no self hate on that stuff. It’s all now just like, “Huh, that was cool, interesting.” Or the best part about it, is I found opportunities where I saw something I filmed and I was like, “Man, you did a good job there, dude.” And I’m like, “Oh, I’m on the other side now.” I’m on the side of the demon that says all the stuff I put out is garbage, no one wants to listen to it, no one cares. And I actually can look at my own stuff and look at my own eyes and go, “You did a good job there.” And I want that for you! Now, don’t hear me inaccurately here. I don’t think you should do a hundred videos in a hundred days. That that was for me. I do think you need to be out there. I do think you need to figure out how to put yourself out there on a consistent basis. For me, a public challenge is exactly what I need, baby, I thrive in that environment. Put it out in the universe and now everyone’s gonna judge me if I don’t get it. And it just pushes me, it’s rocket fuel. But I’m playing my own insecurities against myself in that game, and I want you to do something similar if it’s helpful. But I think that if you’re gonna play in the mortgage space, if you’re gonna be consistent, if you’re gonna try to win, the only way, like I just talked to my buddy, Dave Savage this morning on the phone. And if you don’t know Dave, he’s a stud. He was on the RE resource with Ryan up in Seattle. Movement guy, great guy, talking about Quicken. Talking about Quicken, everyone’s talking about Quicken. And of course, why wouldn’t you? They’re in the news, they’re number one. They’re going IPO, there’s fun stuff happening there. And the conversation really surrounded is, how are you gonna beat Quicken, man? They’re beating you and by you, I mean the local pro. They’re beating, they’re stepping on you. They’re stepping on you. And they’re doing a dang good job. And you can say like, I keep seeing realtors and other people be like, “I never accepted an offer “from Quicken.” And I’m like, I keep checking the scoreboard and they’re the number one market share in your county, so someone’s accepting the offer from Quicken. Like stop, and why are you demonizing a company who’s just playing the game better than you? I know that’s the easy thing to do, I know it. We wanna hate on somebody ’cause they’re better than us. We want to be like, “Oh, they must suck “and they must be terrible people.” It’s like, they’re just, ’cause they’re winning? Like, stop. The reason they’re winning, I just did a little mini podcast this morning with somebody outside the industry who said, “Yeah, I mean, they’re quicker, faster, “and easier, and cheaper.” Really? They’re winning ’cause they’re quicker, faster, easier, and cheaper? Yeah, you bought their marketing line. ‘Cause any of us in the industry knows they’re not doing anything different than any of us out there. They have no technology that makes them so superior, no price position that somehow they figured out fulfillment to such a degree that they’re so much cheaper than everybody else, they’re not. They made a lot of money last year. You don’t make a lot of money at the cheapest place in the whole country. So it’s interesting to me and hearing this as you realize, “Oh, we’re just hating on these people “because they’re beating us in our own game.” And they’re only beating us in our own game because the customer is not playing by our rules anymore. Please hear me on this. Your customers are not playing by your rules anymore. What are you gonna do about it? Demonize the guy that’s beaten you, or start to understand why? And start to think of, what can I do now? And start to figure out what the opportunities are for you. This is where the true power lies. And this is why video, yes video, ’cause we’re talking about video, matters. You want to make human connection? You want to make personal connection to somebody, turn the camera on and hang out with them. Put yourself out there in a position of vulnerability and authenticity and make human connection and share what you believe in and have some fun doing it. Make digital connection and you will thrive in our business. If you think for one second that our business is not about relationships, you lost. It’s 100 percent about relationships. Now, let’s unpack that a little bit because everyone starts thinking, “Well you know, I’m the local pro “and all the relationships are with me.” No, relationships are with a brand too. I say this a lot and people don’t hear me. You shop on Amazon. You don’t know a fricking person there. You have zero connection to a human being at Amazon. You hang out with Bezos? Bay-zos, Bee-zos, whatever it is. You hang out with that guy, no you don’t. You have no connection with Amazon at all. None. You have a connection to their brand. Wake up, like that’s real talk. You have an absolute connection to their brand. Not a person. And yet, I see the same loan officer turning around and being like, “Well, it’s all about personal brand “and I’m the local guy” and I’m like, no, they don’t care. They don’t care, consumers don’t care. An individual might care. A group of them, a consumer base, they do not care. They’re gonna go where they have a connection, right? And if you’re thinking, “Oh, they’re not gonna go “to the big global brands, you know, “cause they don’t have a connection,” you’re delusional, they’re doing it! You’re doing it! This is where video changes the game. This is where video changes the game. If you’re willing to put yourself out there through video and make the effort to create digital connection, you can win, you can absolutely dominate. You can do something they can’t do, which is create both the emotional connection to you and to your personal brand, as the same connection they have with the mega brands. Like the Amazons and the Netflix. You don’t know anybody at Netflix, you love Netflix. It’s a one, two punch, guys. Quicken swinging hard from the right, with a full brand play. What are you gonna do? And this is where I’m just telling you, if you play in video, you’re gonna be shocked and delighted, and amazed, and realize you should have started 10 years ago, like I feel. I should have started 10 years ago. This is your opportunity. And it’s gonna take some vulnerability, some courage on your part, it is. And it’s gonna take you being willing to learn new things. I’m going live next week to talk about why your video calls suck, and I’m very passionate about this because video calls right now are terrible. Mainly because people don’t know how to leverage video or use video and they don’t know how to set it up. They don’t have mics, they don’t have camera angles. They don’t have lights, they don’t think. They’re not thinking about this. But if you start in video production, you start putting that out there, you’ll start thinking about it a lot. Like where’s my camera in relationship to my eyes? Where’s my mic in relationship to my mouth? Where’s the light in relationship to my face? And now all of a sudden, you transform not only your digital ability to connect, but you transform how you handle video calls and it’s gonna improve your ability to close and sell people because you can make authentic connection with them through this. So I learned a ton. I learned about camera angles. I learned from other professionals. I learned about microphones, I learned about lights. I learned about what makes what people like and don’t like in video. I got much more comfortable talking just like this, with no script and no bullet points, just with a topic. And I got much more comfortable engaging in this medium and hanging out with you guys digitally. And all of a sudden, now it spurred into a podcast that’s now done live every single Thursday. I try to do one podcast a month. That was my goal after the 100 videos, one podcast a month. I’m doing one a week now, because this stuff compounds. And plus, you realize it’s fun. I talked to somebody of the day, a great originator, who basically just said, “Originating is fun again. “This is so fun, I’m having so much fun. “Making videos, doing jokes, meeting people digitally, “hanging out, connecting, and I’m having so much fun.” And I sat there being like, that’s what it’s about. That’s it, that’s it, this stuff is a blast for me. I love my Tuesdays to go live at 9:30, I love this. I’m always looking forward to it. I love my podcasts on Thursdays live with the guests that I bring on it so much, I love it. Why, because I get to see you guys watching and I get to hang out and I get to see comments like this from Will. I mean, I don’t know if I ever would have met Will if I wasn’t doing 100 videos in 100 days. The amount of people I’ve met across this industry now through this stuff has been so fascinating and so fun. And my encouragement to you guys is all available to you. And I don’t mean, for whatever your goal is. You guys saw my social media collab, I hope you did. If you didn’t, you can go to YouTube and check out the social media collab, but go to Andrew Cady’s session on digital connections. This guy spent two years building up his Facebook profile to be 400 plus, I’m sorry, 4,000 plus realtors. Man, anytime he puts on a video, he’s hanging out with 4,000 realtors. Can you imagine? And I also have to tell you this, those of you that are gonna judge yourself and not get a million, ’cause we’re in a like society and you know, it’s all bullshit. But we’re just like, “I didn’t go viral.” Check this out, check this out. I guarantee you, you put out five videos in five days, three videos in three days, dear God, just something that’s not just one for the day. Like just do something and your first video, by the way, can be about how awkward you feel doing this video. There, you’re welcome. And have a goal for your 10 videos or five videos about what you’re gonna do. Here, I’m gonna set you up for success. COVID’s messing up everything in the world today. Most people are confused. How do I buy a house right now under COVID? Or should I be refinancing right now with rates here, are they going lower? Both those mega topics, right, should I be refinancing now with rates going lower potentially? I’m seeing in the news, or how do I buy a house in COVID when I am scared of getting the disease. Make three to five videos on those, one of those topics. The first video should be how uncomfortable you feel, but you have an important message and you want to get it out there. Make those videos and watch what happens. Michael, dude, good to hang with you, dude. We gotta get on Zoom again, man. This guy’s the man. Check this out, I had a friend who was like, “I did a video and I got like three likes “and I didn’t get any loans.” And I go, “Let me see the video,” I pull it up. In fact, I’m curious if I can pull up something right now on Facebook and actually show you guys what I’m talking about. Let me see while we’re talking, I’ll scroll here for a second, see if I can find it. And I said, “Let me pull up the video. “Let me pull up the video and see what it says “and take a look at it for you.” And they go, “Oh that’d be great, Alec. “Thank you, I’d really appreciate that.” And so I pulled it up and yeah, you know what? You’re right, it didn’t have a ton of engagement. It didn’t have a ton of commentary. It didn’t, I can see it didn’t, you know, generate what this guy thought it would generate, which is like a million views or whatever it is, or, you know, whatever. But then I looked over at the view count. I’m gonna do this, and then I looked over at the view count. 275 views. Now, I recognize some of those views were likely a scroll through or maybe they didn’t watch the whole thing, or they just looked at it for a second. Got it, put that aside. But do you realize, you just filled a room with 275 people who watched your one minute video? Sure, maybe a couple of ’em got out in the first 10 seconds and they walked out ’cause they were over it. But you made an impression to 275 people with one video. You know how many people that is?! Have you ever spoken in a room in front of 275 people? Like, I can’t tell you the power of this. You are missing out. 275 people got exposed to that. Hung out with that, watched it. You can’t buy that kind of exposure. And yet, you’re still afraid of the stupid camera and the stupid light ’cause you’re judging yourself so harshly and I could tell you right now with 100 percent certainty, nobody is judging you like you’re judging you. You need to stop it. ‘Cause life’s on the other side of that stuff, man. I went a little longer than I normally do on this one, but I just, I want to impress upon you the power of video. If you are in sales today, and I don’t care what you sell. Yourself as a leader, a mortgage product, I don’t care what you sell. If you’re in sales today and you are not going all in on video, you are going to lose! And let me end with this. Man, this thing is so important. Please freaking hear me on this one. And Mikey, clip this and send it out to everybody after this, ’cause this thing makes me nuts. I hear so many garbage excuses like, “I’m not for video.” “I got a voice for, I got a face for radio,” whatever it is. First of all, shut up and stop judging yourself. Second of all. I had a guy and we got into a heated discussion because he was like, look, and he was an engineer style brain. If you guys know those people or if you’re one of them, you realize like, oh yeah, yeah, he’s very analytical. He doesn’t speak fast, he speaks with intention. He’s a good listener. He pauses, he doesn’t rush into things. He makes good decisions. He is very analytical when it comes to numbers and things he believes in. He would describe himself as an introvert. Which by the way, don’t judge, I’m an introvert. So stop it, but we can do good things. But he said, “I could never do a podcast “or a video because of who I am. “No one would connect to that.” And I called out BS on that, right to his beautiful face, because here’s the deal. If you’re watching me or if you hang out with my content, you realize that I come and bring the noise, I do my best. I come with energy, I come with excitement, I’m passionate. Sometimes I cuss inappropriately. I’m in, like I want this for you! And he’s like, you know, he somehow had, and he’s working with another guy who podcasts, who has the same outspoken charismatic style. And I go, “Come on, man, come on. “You think that’s what the world wants? “There is a unique audience for “every single person out there. “You cannot tell me that if you got out “and started a podcast, other people who “are analytical, thoughtful, who wait and think “before moving and acting, who crunch numbers, “who have great analytical capacity, “you think they connect instantly to me? “Of course not. “Of course not. “But they’ll connect to you.” You have unique audience waiting for you, dude. It’s amazing, they’re there. They want to connect, they want to hear from you. They want to hear your voice, your authentic-ness. They want to know how you think. They wanna know your opinions. It’s time to show up for ’em. Have a wonderful day, my friends. I’ll see you on the internet.