How to Leverage Organic Video Content As a Real Estate Investor with Josh Culler

All right, Josh. So with that as a background, welcome to the show, buddy.

Man, I'm excited to be on. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, we get to hang out. I was kidding before the show because Josh and I were texting each other before his show and forgot we were going to be talking in a matter of minutes. And we did the same on this show. So I'm glad we're live now.

It's fate. It's fate. It's the way the world works.

Well, since I said show and I don't blank out and forget because that happens often, what— share with the audience your show, Josh, why they should subscribe. I mean, I already told them to, but, but share why from your standpoint.

Yeah, yeah. No, I appreciate you giving me the opportunity. I'll keep it short and sweet, guys. The podcast that I have is called REI Marketing Weekly. It is literally exactly what it sounds like. So if you're a real estate investor that's looking to generate motivated seller leads and figure out ways to do that, build brand, increase your marketing and that sort of thing, get more efficient with it, learn what type of KPIs are being tracked from, you know, the biggest real estate investors in the industry or even just the most successful real estate industry, industry leaders. Um, that's the podcast where I'm getting people on there to talk about that. And we only talk about marketing and that's it. Nothing else. We don't talk about business development. We don't talk about self-help, none of that stuff. So it's very, very niche. We keep it 15 to 20 minutes in length for every episode. Chris has been on, Zach's been on. Um, both, both Chris and Zach have been on like a couple years ago. Then we relaunched recently and they, uh, have recordings, uh, on the books for, uh, fresh, some fresh episodes. So. Yeah, man, we're everywhere. So REI Marketing Weekly is where you can go pick it up.

Good. That's a writer down there. We can spot listeners.

All right.

So you said something that's a key. It's like a hot button, Josh. You said seller leads. That's all you had to say. So I hope you got their attention with that because I don't care what niche they're in and you don't care what niche you're in, you can help generate seller leads. So let's go with them. Let's go with the video side of that only because when we started back in '13 on the real estate side and in '18, Sorry, 14 on the coaching side. We started with video and we just got a rhythm going. So talk about what they could do and think of the person that didn't touch it yet, and then we'll probably touch some more advanced later.

Yeah, well, the truth is, is that, you know, I got into the real estate investing space early 2013, and as you know, the market was just completely different back then. We weren't really generating motivated seller leads. That's not really what most people were marketing for. Most people are marketing to build brand, to acquire buyers. That's what we primarily used it for, was building a buyer's list and building a brand inside of our market. Properties came left and right through HUD auction MLS. That's how we were generating properties to get under contract. So it was just a much different market. But the funny thing about that, Curtis, is that the principle of marketing And the principle of video marketing remains the same no matter what type of market that you're in. If it's a buyer's market, if it's a seller's market. So the way that I really kind of construct this for people is the way that you need to think about not just video content. If you can wrap like social media, content marketing, like organic web development, stuff like that into one bucket, the way that I frame it for people is think of it as a resource for your motivated seller leads. It's a place where they can come to learn about the services that you offer, the industry that you are in, how you can help them, how they can just be helped in general, even if you're not. So a great example for, to kind of tee this up, a great example I tell people to do a video on is the difference between a real estate investor/wholesaler and a realtor. And literally you record a video topic just for that topic specifically. You're not really pitching your services at the time. Maybe a call to action at the end that says, you know, if you want to learn about working with us, then make sure to, you know, go down to the website below or whatever. But the entirety of the video there, you're utilizing it as a resource for that person that's watching the video for them to understand and get value and truly understand what the difference between a wholesaler and a realtor is. That's the objective. And if you frame it around that, That's going to be evergreen marketing. That's going to be a 24-hour salesman that's on your website, on YouTube, on social media out there when somebody goes to— and the beautiful thing about that, Chris, is because it's, you know, especially if you get these video, these types of videos on YouTube or your website, because they're going to be SEO-driven, they are technically going to be hitting that lead at the time of their motivation because that's when the lead is actually motivated and looking for a solution for their problem, as opposed to, you know, the outbound marketing, which is needed, but the outbound marketing, which is like direct mail and cold calling, voicemail drops and text blasting, stuff like that. But that's really where you— like, if I had to nutshell everything, that's how you would want to frame it. It's a resource for your leads.

So I love it. So if I'm brand new, because I remember doing this and remember the guy back Back then we hadn't met you yet and the guy telling us what to do. I'm like, oh man, it sounds like a lot of work and it ends up being not a big deal. Someone's brand new, where do they start? How do they start besides saying, Josh, help me and hiring you? But what, like, what precedes that?

Yeah, honestly, like I would tell people, like, don't even come to me if you haven't started yet. Like you, when we, when we started working with you guys and Smart Real Estate Coach, you guys are phenomenal clients of ours. You guys have been doing this for a long time, so you understand the principles, you understand what it takes to put content out, that sort of thing. So if you are listening and you've not even started, first of all, I shouldn't have to preach to you on why you should be starting on video content anyways. You should by now know the value of it, you know, that it is, it is worth doing. But some— Chris, I like to start with some basic like why to do it before I start with the how to do it. And the reason— and you know this— but the reason you do that is just because like people aren't going to get motivated to do something unless they know why they're doing it in the first place.

100%.

But the thing that you gotta understand, mindset set-wise is once again, like I talked about framing it as a resource, but for you to invest your time into it, you gotta understand a few things. Number one is it takes consistency to get any kind of results and consistency for a long period of time. Generally speaking, anybody that's doing organic content, organic video, organic social, whatever it is, I tell them that if you haven't consistently done it for like 8 to 12 months, then you have no room to complain about any type of results that you're getting. You've got to remember, you're not the only one that's putting social media content out there. You're not the only one that's putting video content out there for generating leads. So you have competition, right? You have competition in your market. So you've got to stay consistent. And there's a lot of statistics out there about like preaching statistics and with consistency and that sort of thing. But Like, it is the truth. Everybody wants the secret sauce, Chris, but like, that is the sauce. It's like, stay consistent, do the fundamentals correctly, whether you're putting out one video a week, one video a day, one video a month, doesn't matter. Like, whatever consistency you're able to put out there, stay consistent with that frequency. So that's like the why is, you know, obviously, I gave you the example of like, hey, this is a 24-hour salesman that's parked onto your YouTube channel or your website as a resource for people to consume when they're motivated. If even if it's at 2 o'clock in the morning and nobody's in the office taking calls, they are going to watch your video about, you know, you know, they just inherited a house and they have no idea what to do with it. It's keeping them up at night. So they watch your video, you give them the answer. Who's the first person they're calling in the morning? It's going to be you because you already delivered value. That's a nutshell of the value of that. So where you start is, and again, like Chris, you've worked with me long enough, you know that I like to keep things extremely simple. So in the world of social media, guys, like there's a lot of noise. There's a lot of noise about video content. There's a lot of noise about organic web traffic and that sort of thing. And you really need to boil it down to a couple of like just step 1, 2, and 3s. Number 1 is The video topics. I actually, funny enough, Chris, just put out an episode on my podcast, the REI Marketing Weekly, specifically telling people how to get unlimited video topics as a real estate investor. So go check that out.

Yes.

Because I'll, I'll, I go super deep into that for 20 minutes, but I'll give you the skim of it is number one is you just literally, who, if you're taking calls from your, your leads, if you have an acquisitions person taking calls, a lead, lead manager, whoever it is, Every single time a lead asks a question, have them write that question down. That's a video topic that you're going to record a video on and put that out because that's hard factual data of what people are asking for. And the principle of content marketing, just something kind of offshoot tip here, the principle of like the pure definition of content marketing is answering questions that your target demographic has about who you are, what you do, and your industry. And that's literally what it is, just answering questions that they would have. That's where you start. And one last thing, and I'll kick it back to you, Chris. One of the first rebuttals I ever got, and I've just kind of like crafted my answer to this to be just super blunt, but people will say, well, Josh, I'm not good on camera. I get a little nervous. Like, I'm not sure. So then I just kindly pat them on the shoulder and say, Suck it up, cupcake. Because like in business, there's things that we hate doing, we don't want to do, but we have to because we know that it's going to move the needle. And that might be one of those things. So practice makes perfect. The more you do it, the better you're going to get at it. Like, guys, I'm going to embarrass Chris here, but go back to the very first episode of The Smart Real Estate Coach. I guarantee you Chris sucked at it. But, but he's gotten excellent at it. He's become an expert at being a podcast host. And that is the way it goes for Everybody, pick your best, biggest influencer out there. They started the same way. So not that you're becoming an influencer, you're leveraging this as marketing, but that's the way you kind of shake it out and just get started.

Yeah, I don't know what you think of this, Josh, but I always tell people, because I'll tell our associates just exactly what you did, start somewhere with the videos, right? Tell them, look, just act like you're having a conversation with a friend or your spouse. That's all you're doing. And answer the question to them. I mean, it's not a big deal, right?

Yeah, there's a few different ways that you can kind of like chop it up too. I mean, obviously, like, that's one way. That's a really easy thing to do. I think what people get tripped up at, Chris, is that they want to be perfect on it. And that's just not the way it works, especially with the way social media and video is nowadays. But you got to remember, guys, like, there are video editors out there. Video editors can take your video where you screw up 20 times, clip all that out, make it one congruent video, and then boom, you're there. So Don't worry about perfection, just get it out. And again, like going back to the principle of content marketing, it's answering questions that your target demographic has about who you are, what you do in your industry. And if you frame it up the way Chris just said, is pretend like you're talking to, like, you know, you're answering a question from a friend or someone on your team or whatever, that's the way you should be answering it anyway. It's just like you have a seller that's on a call with you and they ask you the question, What's the difference between you and a real estate or a realtor or a real estate agent? Answer it that way. That's how you record the video. If you're the type of person that you're super self-conscious about yourself, don't even watch the video. Just send it to an editor, send it to somebody on your team, have them post it and then let it go. And then you just do more and more, get better and better over time.

So, Josh, prior to working with you, now you get them going, let's just say hypothetically, right? And you got them on a roll for 6 or 8 months, what's it going to cost them? They didn't even talk to you yet. They're just doing it on their own. Just time or what is it?

Yeah. So there's a little bit of it and it's very subjective too. So the way that I kind of will look at this is just about with any hire that you have. So for example, I know people that run and you do too, Chris. I know people that run a $10 million real estate business and they still are their own TC. So they They still coordinate all the transactions and all that throughout their business. Maybe they only do like 2 or 3 deals a month, but they're big hitter deals, so they don't really see a need for a transaction coordinator, so they just do it. So they're at that point, it's just costing them their time. Or they could hire somebody for that, even if it's part-time or even if it's a third party that's going to be a transaction coordinator for them. So there's always that subjectivity depending on how you like to run and operate your business. If you're a delegator or if you're a do-it-all-myself type person, it's going to be dependent. So the thing I would tell you when it comes to this kind of thing is obviously the number one, the easy thing to kind of take off the table is the recording of the content is going to take your own time, right? So it's going to take time for you to sit down. And I tell people to batch their content. So let's take for instance, you want to put out 2 videos weekly. On all your pages, answering questions that a motivated seller lead would have about what you do, then record once a month, 8 videos, like just record all 8 videos once a month and then you can get them put out that way. Then you don't have to worry about it for the next 29 or 30 days or whatever. And then do that once a month. You're going to have an insane amount of content that's out there that people can utilize, but it's just going to take your time. The next step of that would be, okay, well, if you're going to get edited, I would recommend having them edited. Number one is you can send them to us, we edit the videos, you know, we could do that shameless plug. The other thing is like, if you are wanting to hire somebody, you can obviously hire a virtual assistant that's going to edit the videos, you can, you could even go to Fiverr. Fiverr is like a dirty word for a lot of people. But Fiverr has improved drastically. Like you can, you don't just pay $5 for services anymore, you could pay, you know, $5,000 for services on Fiverr. So, you know, generally speaking, you could get, you could expect anywhere from $50 to $100 per video to get your video edited. You might say that's a lot of money, like $800 bucks is a lot of money to have 8 videos edited. But let's just give a great example here, Chris. If one of those videos generates a lead that turns into a $20,000 wholesale deal for you, was that $800 worth it? Just—

Yeah, well, I was gonna say, in our deals, our 3 paydays are worth low $45,000, high at $350,000. If you're not familiar as a listener and that's new to you, that's what happens with our 3 paydays. So it's insane. It's like saying I can't afford a VA because I If I can't afford to pay him $5,000 a year, that's stupid.

Yeah. Yeah. And that video can literally— like, the way I look at it too is like, that video, it costs you time, costs you a little bit of money, but it's still marketing, right? So like, marketing costs you— there's a lot of marketing you could do that costs you time. There's a lot of marketing you could do that costs you money, and maybe a little bit of both. This is one of those things, is recording content. However, this content that you record is evergreen. It's gonna— once you get it edited and put out, it's going to remain on your Facebook page, remain on your website, remain on your YouTube channel, your Google My Business page until you take it down. And it's going to be valuable and a valuable asset, marketing asset for any lead to come around and consume for you. So it is subjective, that, and you know, the answer to the question. However, like, if you're going to do it right, if you're going to do it consistently, like Generally speaking, I would say if you're listening right now, you're probably not a professional video editor. So hire a video editor to put it together for you, snip it all together. And it's just going to cost you your time to record the content, a little bit of money to edit it. And then you or an assistant or somebody on your team can publish it on all the platforms and get it out that way.

So good stuff. Okay, 2 things I want to ask you. What I didn't ask you, okay? She have a nugget or two to share. But before I do that, where can they reach you? Any sites, social, etc.? Feel free to.

Yeah, yeah. You guys, I would say like so there's there's a couple ways you could do this, and I'm very responsive on all platforms. However you reach out, find me on Facebook, find me on Instagram, Josh Culler, C U L L E R. I'm verified on both, so it's like. No questions asked, like you know that you're hitting the right account. The other way is that you could email me. So if you're listening to this podcast right now, just say Chris sent you and then I'll you know get you a quick response and happy to hop on a call and talk to anybody that has questions or needs some guidance or direction to you know get this journey going. But you could email me at josh@colormedia.com color C U L L E R. So either follow you know follow me on those platforms and then once again of course like we mentioned earlier the podcast make sure you do go. Check that out. We get some awesome interviews on the books there. And then I do solo episodes talking about the things I'm experts in with video content and social and stuff like that, all built around improving your marketing for your business.

Awesome. This is one of the episodes, guys, and I say it at the beginning of every episode, but there's a lot of actionable items here. A ton. So it's your turn to take action. Josh, what didn't I ask you, buddy? You host shows. You know where I'm going with that. Like, I, I can't think of it all. I've done probably 5 or 6 shows today. What didn't I ask you that you want to share?

I'll piggyback off of what you just said too, is like, yeah, there's a lot like, I mean, social media as a whole, but also video content as a whole is a really big seemingly challenge for a lot of people. But to me, it's one of those things that there's a lot of folks out there that do video content and they do it at such a high level And then we, so here's, let me backtrack. Here's a good example I can utilize. I'm a big basketball fan, love the NBA, grew up playing basketball, still play basketball to this day. What happens is with video content is people imagine, like, let's say for instance, you've never played basketball before and you're like, I wanna get into basketball. It looks like a fun sport, looks like something I would enjoy. And you're watching the NBA. And you're like, wow, I could never do that. Like, that's— I couldn't shoot threes from that distance. I couldn't dunk the ball. I couldn't dribble like that. And you're comparing it to and watching professionals, like, at the highest peak and level that basketball can be played at. That's what you're— that's what you're aiming for before you even start. How about you go to your local park and watch the 6 and 7-year-olds play and see, like, okay, well, That's where we start. And then we develop over time. That's how video content is like, you take that first step, you take the second step, you take the third. The problem that I see with a lot of people, and I get on calls like this all the time, where people will literally hop on a call with me and say, you know, I see what, you know, Alex Hormozi spending like $20,000 a month on his video content, or Ryan Pineda spending this much, and he's doing all this stuff. Like, I feel like I could do that. And then I ask the question, have you ever done video content before? No, but I really think I could do that. Okay, well, let's, let's, uh, pull your ego back just a little bit and start you off with step 1. Everybody starts at step 1. So just get started, continue that starting point, don't stop, because if you do stop now, you fall in as a statistic. Because again, consistency over time gets you to where You're the top 1% of, you know, whether you're putting out video content to generate motivated seller leads, you're trying to build a podcast, trying to build a YouTube channel, whatever it is, just start and take it one step at a time. And don't get too frustrated when you're at step 3 expecting to be at step 99. Like, be careful of that. It's a poison and it's, you know, gonna kill the whole process. So.

Good stuff, Josh. Guys, Josh Keller, look him up on social. He gave you his private email. And Josh, I really appreciate it because this was like a little mini seminar. It was fun to hang out with you as usual. And as I always say to the Wicked Smart listeners, especially at events, we bring people who we do business with, plain and simple. This isn't theory. This is what we do. So we say, oh, that'd be cool to share with everyone. So I'm happy to share you with the entire Wicked Smart community. And thanks for coming on, my friend.

Yeah, I appreciate you having me on, man. And Hopefully I'll have you back again on my podcast sometime soon. I know we just had you, but yeah, happy to.

Make it a great week, buddy.

All right. See ya.

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