Understanding the Cycle of Attention with Aaron Novello - Part 1

Welcome back to Real Estate Business Builders. This is going to be awesome. It's a two part podcast series and it was at our real estate business Growth Summit where Aaron Novello is one of my business partners at exp. He teaches like, unlike anyone I know. He does use a few potty words. I think there's a few things maybe I wouldn't have said, but he teaches so good and he plays the game of real estate and he's a high level coach as well that you will want to pay attention. He's talking about understanding the cycle of attention. So how do you post four times a day, you know, with only eight hours a month? Understanding your avatar, you know, going through all the social platforms. He plays the game of social media and content creation and influence for the sake of, you know, getting people to take action and do a thing that you wanted to do. Unlike anyone that I know. So this is a two part series. Stay tuned. You're going to love it. It's Aaron Novello on understanding the cycle of attention.

Appreciate the opportunity. And what I'm aware of is I was recently at a school function with my son. He plays different sports and if you've ever been to a school function with, you know, other adults that you normally wouldn't speak to you, you end up having conversations with these individuals. Right. Anybody besides me ever had that experience before? Yeah. And we strike up a conversation and he begins to start talking to me about kind of social media devices and platforms, which is a current topic of conversation as it pertains to children. And he begins to share with me how to difficult it is, how much of a challenge it is for him to keep his son off of devices and platforms and video games. Anyone besides me have like a 12, 13 year old, maybe a young human in your house? Is this something that you experience having a challenge of competing with them for these devices? Right. And I was like, okay, interesting. And being that we were on that topic, then the conversation swung to kind of macro and how these platforms are so powerful, so powerful that something needs to be done because they can disseminate information so quickly and that it's beginning to affect the fabric of society and if nothing is done about this, it will kill democracy. Okay. And we have that conversation and I find out as I'm speaking to him that he actually is a real estate agent. So I started, you know, he's aware of kind of, I guess what I do because of social media. I didn't have to wear my name tag for him to tell me that for him to know that I was in real estate. Right. And he was proceeded to tell me, like, what's going on in his business and that he's having a little bit of a challenge because, you know, things have changed a little bit in terms of production volume. I asked him what he was doing from a kind of lead perspective. You know, what lead sources were his main lead sources, where he had. Was he adding any new lead sources? And then I asked him, what are you doing with social media? He proceeded to say two things to me, and I want you to be honest and drop in the chat if you have ever said these two things out loud. The first thing he said to me was, was I don't do social. First thing he said, Second thing he said to me is that I don't believe it'll work. I said, wait a minute, let me get this straight. Let me make sure I understand your logic here. So you just proceeded to share with me that these platforms and the devices that are the medium for these platforms are so addictive that you're constantly fighting for attention with your children, and they are so powerful that they can bring democracy to its knees. They can't help you to set more appointments and do more sales. Anybody besides me notice the enormous flaw in logic there? Enormous. Okay, write this down if you're taking notes, right. The most expensive thing you can own is a closed mind. The most expensive thing you can own is a closed mind. Also, one of the best questions you can ask someone like Lars or someone just perhaps like a little bit further down the path is what do I currently believe to be true? That isn't what do I currently believe to be true? That is because I know my tendency in the past. I want to be very clear. I was in that camp. I did not believe that that was true. I thought that these platforms were for my wife to post pictures of our children and the food that we were eating on vacations. Yep. Apparently Jill's done that because she's laughing. So I no longer believe that that's true, guys. And now, currently, I am posting four times a day on all platforms, 28 times per week, because I have an experience that changed my mind. Somebody asked me to be on a podcast, and I reluctantly said, okay. In my mind, I'm thinking, this is a waste of time. I could be doing something else with my time, more productive, talking to clients, you know, pre qualifying, going on listing appointments, things of that nature. I said, okay. He livestreamed it on Facebook. 4,000 people watched that. And within a week, I had five people from California to Florida call me and want to throw money at me. And I said, wait a minute. This is more than just entertainment. And then it got my undivided attention. So I spent the last two and a half years using social to build a company that does over a million dollars a year in revenue. It's also been part of the glue and part of, like, the gasoline that has allowed me in 11 months, to recruit 117 agents to exp. And it creates a revenue of $10,000 a month in rev. Share drop in the chat, if that would be pretty dope for you. Now, I can already hear what you're thinking. Okay, well, that works for you, Aaron. It doesn't work for me. Let me ask you guys a question. Okay. How many of you guys have watched chiropractors on TikTok or Instagram clip little cameras? Yep. Annalise has watched those videos. Little teeny cameras and little teeny microphones so you can hear the snap, crackle, pop, and they end up with a million followers. I'm curious, do you think those million followers of attention have. Has equated to revenue and clients 100%. Let me ask you another question. How many of you guys have seen the Pimple Popper? Yup. Rita's seen it. You watch those videos? I know you do. They're oddly satisfying. I don't know why she's popping disgusting cysts and pimples. Millions upon millions of views that turned into a TV show and millions of dollars in revenue for her. Do you think she is booked consistently for people to pop her pimples? A hundred percent. Of course. Right. Money and power follows attention, guys. And then attention follows money and power. Attention is a currency, and in my opinion, it's more valuable than money. We're living through a time where we're watching people turn attention into enormous businesses. How many people know who Mr. Beast is on this. On this call? If you have a 12 or 11 or 15 year old, you know who Mr. Beast is. Mr. Beast is 23 years old, 24, something like that. 150 million subscribers on YouTube. He created a burger company. Hundred million dollars in revenue. The first actual location, physical location you could go to. He had 10,000 people show up. How interesting. The other guy, Logan, I'm sure you've seen him. You know, the podcast guy. He created Prime Energy Drink. How many people have seen Prime Energy Drink in their store? Yep. It's competing against who? Gatorade. It's a hundred million dollar company. These. We're living through A time where with attention, you can become a conglomerate with attention. So it's a currency and it's worth paying attention to. Okay. And I really do believe that everybody in this room, you understand this intuitively without being told, you know, it's important. I did. I just really didn't understand a few things. The first thing I didn't understand was what these platforms are actually for. I didn't understand what they were actually for. I also didn't understand the life cycle of attention and how we have to be creating a life cycle of attention, kind of a ecosystem of attention for prospective clients, people that have interest in what we're doing. And I also didn't understand how to create a content calendar to do it, because I'm aware that a lot of the agents that I coach and train, you know how they do social. Oh, I got an extra 30 minutes right now, Let me just post something. Yeah, look at Jim, he's nodding his head. Yeah, he does that. You see what I'm saying? Like this is. And I need you guys to understand how critically important this is. I don't want you to become like, okay, so all of these people on this call have a parent or you yourself that was really uncomfortable putting your credit card into a computer. How many people besides me had that experience when they were young? Uh huh. And now you don't even think twice about it. You have watches that send money, venmos, but you don't even pay attention to it. And your children probably will never touch physical cash before and will look at it and be like, what the hell's that? So don't become like your parents because your parents shit on technology before they understood it. We start to do the same thing and we tell ourselves a story. Brad, that's not me, not my personality, not my thing. I don't do that. That's for the youngins. Okay, well basically what you're telling me is you don't want to make money and you don't want to change. That's what you're telling me. Okay, So I know, we know that this is all important and with the right roadmap, right, the right mental map, how to think about this and the right understanding of these platforms, what they're for, how to use them, the ecosystem of attention, you guys can do anything that I've accomplished with these platforms and probably 10 times more. So what we're going to do over the next 30 minutes, let's say 40 minutes, is I'm going to go over those precise things, right? Which is actually the best platform to create a brand. Period. End of story. Hands down. Drop in the chat if you would like to know that. The second thing we're going to go over is the life cycle of attention. The difference between short form content, medium form content and long form content. They're different. Okay. And I'll give you some very specific things that you could be doing with each one of those forms of content. The importance of understanding your avatar, who you're creating content for. Because you guys think you're creating it for everybody. I promise you you're not. You need to know your demographic, know the avatar. I know when I go into my analytics that 79% of all the people that follow me are men. I just know that. And they're between the ages of 18 and 45. You need to understand who your avatar is, who you're actually creating content for. Right. And then the third thing we'll go over is a content calendar. What you could be doing to get the same volume. Because this game is about volume. Okay. According to Google, people touch their phones 150 times a day. Think about that. Check an email, check a text message. You know, Google something. Go on yelp in that 150 times a day, maybe four or five times, they're looking at social profiles maybe for cumulatively like an hour in the day. So if they're looking about an hour in a day, what would increase the probability that they would see me? Volume 100%. So it's V over T volume over time. That's the equation. Most people drastically underestimate the volume of activity that's required and over the extended length of time to get the 1% outcome. Everybody wants the 1% outcome, but we don't understand that. V over T. Right. So I'll give you the calendar that allows me to do all this posting and it only takes me 10, 10 hours a month, not all of my time. Okay, awesome. So the first thing we're going to talk about is platforms. What are they actually for and how to use them. So let me ask a question. Let's drop in the chat. I'm just curious what your guys thoughts are. What do you think most realtors would say the most important platform for them to be on is drop in the chat. And where they spend most of their time? Instagram. Let's see. YouTube, Insta, Facebook, which is owned by Insta. Insta Facebook. Okay, good. You guys noticing a pattern? You're all 90% of you are saying Instagram. Well, I didn't know this until recently. Is that hands down, period, end of story, don't pass go, don't collect 200 bucks. No debate, no argument. The absolute best platform to build a brand is YouTube. Here's why. YouTube is the only platform that does short form and long form content. No other platform does that. Also they have built in search because who is Google? Who is YouTube's parent company? Google. So you have a built in search engine. So a lot of you guys are spending all your time on Instagram when that platform is really just a communication platform. And it's for day trading attention. Think about it, how many people DM often in Instagram like you sms. It's a way of communicating and it's also for day trading attention. So what do I mean by day trading attention? During those 150 times that you're touching your phone and those four or five times that you're on these platforms, if I'm in front of you, that three seconds that you see me is attention. It's day trading attention. Like, who is this person? Who is Janine? I don't know who she is. I mean she's got a nice shirt on, but like who is she? I don't know. What is she about? That's what a platform like Instagram is for day trading attention. People say TikTok. TikTok's also for day trading attention. Very short snippets of information. Who is this person? But the goal and objective is to get them to YouTube because YouTube has those two things that are very powerful with YouTube shorts, which is basically TikTok just on YouTube they day trade in attention, but they also have long form content. Is this making sense? Drop in the chat if this makes sense to you. Now how do we use these platforms? Well, with TikTok, YouTube, excuse me, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. I want to be volume on short form content. Again. Who is Lars? Who is Annelise? Who is Marion? Who is Steven? Who is Cher? Like I don't even know who this person is. Okay, Day trading and attention to get them to medium form content, which would be on YouTube. A medium form piece of content is between five to eight minutes long. That could be a property tour with you in it. Okay. Have coaching clients. I could do a property tour. I'm like, where are you, bro? Like, I don't. I don't even see you. Well, I don't like being on camera. What do you think the main barrier to entry is for this game? What stops most people drop in the chat. What you think stops most People from taking this seriously. Fear. Yeah, it's insecurity. I don't like the way I look on camera. My hair is not right. I don't have any hair. I have too much hair. I have a beard. Somebody's gonna not like what I say. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Guys, if you can get 50% of the population to hate your guts, you become President United States. Okay, so we go from short to medium to long form content. Short is 60 seconds or less and it can be valuetainment. You guys flipping the camera on and being like, hi guys, we're going to talk about the four things with an inspection. Stop doing that shit. It is incredibly boring. Nobody watches it. Yes, Lindsay, I know you do that. Stop it. People are going to swipe through that immediately, like, just see ya. And like the camera's lame and there's no audio. It's all tinty. Hi guys, we're going to talk about the five things. The home inspection. Stop it. Okay. Valuetainment. Mean it's valuable, but it's also entertaining, right? I'm teaching something, but I'm also doing it in an entertaining way. Okay? That includes props. That includes like different things, right? Make it entertaining. Guys, you're vying for attention. You're vying for someone to want to stop and be like, who is this person and why should I listen to them? Right? Medium form content could be local business highlights. You guys want to become the Hyperlocal expert? Do 5 to 8 minute video on the new restaurant, the new, you know, tavern in town, Some cool place for kids to go. That's a five to eight minute video, right? Property tours, because people watch property tours, but also communities. You guys want to dominate a community. Do a 5, 10 minute video of what it's like to live in the hills. Because I'm curious, do you think people Google and search what is it like to live in the hills? Uh huh. They do. Marian, I know it sounds crazy, but you do it too. All day long. You're like, what is it? Like where do I go? Not, not, not, not, not. But we don't do that ourselves, right? And then long form content would be things like podcasting, right? Where a podcast. If you guys interviewed, I don't know, local builders, insurance people, like anything pertaining to the real estate community. From that one long form piece of content minutes, you can get 15 shorts because you can chop them all up into short form content and then post them on all different platforms. Okay? So the life cycle of attention, it goes again. It Goes from short to medium to long. What? Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube shorts for the sport is day trading. Attention. The name of that game is volume, right? Volume over time. You guys are like, yeah, I post once a week, twice a week. Guys, little. Little hint for you, that's not enough. Not nearly enough. You're in a sea of people that are like, hey, pay attention to me. An ocean of people. And I post twice a week, and I'm like, maybe they'll see me. And, like, my glasses. It's not a realistic expectation. Okay, if you. I heard Naval Ravikant. He said something recently that was really awesome to me. He said, if you want to get paid in the future, you need to live in the future. So what you need to do is pick a skill that you're really good at and then brand it with your name. Now, this idea of understanding your avatar, like, who you're actually creating content for, go into your Instagram, go to account details, go to engagement, and it gives you all of this information. It'll tell you who's watching what and where. I know that the majority of people who watch my content, they either live in Florida, California, or New York. I also know that they're between the ages of 15 and 45 and that they're predominantly men. That's helpful to know and understand, because now I'm clear on who the avatar is. Now we can start to dig in even more. What are their psychographics? What motivates them? I know that that demographic, what motivates them is freedom, status, significance, and money. Almost uniformly, there's exceptions. Right, Cool. I'm clear on that. What's their online behavior? What type of content do they consume when they're online? Are they reading recipes? Probably not. They're watching Grant Cardone, Tony Robbins, like all these different types of people, right? Brian Penida. And then what's their offline behavior? What are their hobbies? What do they do? Probably working out or whatever. What brands are they into? Where you really dig down into who you actually creating content for. And I'll give you an example. So one of my coaching clients, he's in Kentucky, and he started to take this thing seriously, and we started to drill down on the avatar, and he looked, and he's a little bit older. He has gray hair. So he's like, yeah, my Avatar is between 35 and 58 is what his analytics showed him. I said, okay, cool. And then I said, all right, so what are their psychographics? Because you're in that age group, what motivates them? He's like, probably like retirement, because they're thinking about it. Probably like doing stuff with family. Probably like vacations. I'm like, okay, cool. Now you just got three buckets on how to create content. You could create content around those three things. I said, what are their hobbies? He's like, well, they play golf, they go to Kentucky Derby, and they drink whiskey. Great. Would it make sense for you to have a whole series of. Or bourbon. It's like basements with bourbon where you're with your clients tasting bourbon in their basement where you sold their house. Does that make sense? Of course it does, because now you're creating content specifically for the avatar. Does it make sense for you to create, you know, a whole series about where you're playing golf? 100%, because that's the hobbies of people. That is your avatar. I think we. We get myopic with it. Where, like, the only content I'm producing is about real estate. And there's more to you than that. Right? I gotta give people, like, because what they're deciding with all of this content and with this ecosystem that you're building out, where you're taking them from short form to medium form to long form content, is can they trust you? And are you the type of person they would want to do business with? If you're only talking about the five things with a home inspection, that's not going to do it. Okay? It's just not. Now, the other thing that I noticed too, which is a pro tip for you guys, is a. Is a software called ManyChat. So I noticed that a lot of people, when you guys post content, you never do a call to action. There's no cta. It's like, here's the five things. Thanks. Hope it was helpful. See you later. Bye. But a call to action would be like, hey, Lindsey, if this is, you know, if you're somebody that's considering. So let's say you shot a piece of content about the market. Here's what's happening. Inventory is actually kind of low, and we are seeing that when homes come on the market, they are selling right away. So if you're somebody that's been considering it and you want to have a confidential conversation about your property and how much it's worth, DM me the word sell. But with Manychat, the free version, you can get four free words. So when somebody DM's you the word, you can set it up that way. If they DM you the word sell, instantaneously they'll get a DM back that sends them to a landing page where they can fill out information, or instantaneously, they get a calendar link that sends them to something where they can get your information. If you want to see how this works, go on for me. Aronnivella on Instagram dm, the word skills. And you'll see immediately what'll happen is you're gonna get a land, you'll get a funnel, a landing page that'll take you to somewhere where you can do something, but integrating calls to action into what you're doing. Because, guys, the purpose of social is to get attention and sell people stuff, period. And it's just the new tv, it's where everybody is right now. It's where all the attention is. Just go into any restaurant, everybody's on their phones. Everybody. Go into any social event, everybody's on their phones, everybody. So it makes logical sense for me to be intentional and purposeful to create this ecosystem so that people know who I am. Because write this down. If you don't know me, you can't flow me. If you do not know me, you cannot pay me. The most abundant thing on this planet is unsuccessful people with talent. Right? Known is better than best. Write that down. Known is better than best. A lot of you guys are like, I'm the best agent in my market. Nobody cares if they don't know who you are. Okay, well, you know, Aaron, I've been in this business for 25 years. Nobody gives a shit. Whereas the other one, who's banging on TikTok and everybody knows who they are, they kick your ass all the time because they get in front of people more. Okay? So no one is better than best. Now. Now we can start talking about the content calendar. Okay? So I know, you know, when I have this conversation with agents, it takes. It's like this whole hurdle to get them to buy into this idea that social is like a thing that they should pay attention to. And trust me, I totally understand that. I came up in a different kind of environment and system where I built my business and grew it initially for 15 years just by beating up the phones. I prospect three hours a day, six days a week. And that's all I did. I didn't do anything else. Right. Didn't spend any money on branding or marketing or any of that stuff. Right. Wrong and indifferent. That's the way I did it. And it took me a while to get clear on it. That's the first hurdle, is to get them past this idea. Like oh, this is really important, and I should pay attention to it. The second hurdle is like, okay, where do I find the time? Because we tell ourselves a story that is going to take a tremendous amount of time. How many people besides me have told themselves that story? Like, this is way too complicated, too much time, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Okay, so what I'm going to share with you is a content calendar that you could be using, which is what I use. That what it produces is, again, enough content to post four times a day on all channels, right. And five YouTube videos per month. But for you, you know, maybe it's like two YouTube videos per month. That's fine. So the first is. Is doing two podcasts per month now. Podcasts, they're really easy. I told myself a story for a year is super complicated. You need a camera and like this thing called iris, which is 15 bucks a month. Like, it's not complicated at all. Okay. And that could be content, let's say, for your real estate, you know, potential consumers, past clients, there's influence, things that nature. I'll ask that I answer that question. No, I'm not going to ask them to subscribe. If I am going to ask them to do something, the CTA is going to be in the middle of the video because that's where the attention is. Most people wait till the end to do it, and they leave as soon as you're like, well, thanks again, guys. For. They're like, see you fucking later. Gone. Right, Patti? The moment they're like, well, thanks again for another great episode. And right before you ask for something, they're gone. They left because they realize, like, oh, this is done, right? So if I do do a cta, it'll be in the middle. And I could show you a video, like, with that example. But two podcasts per month, okay. And that could be content that you're creating for potential consumers of real estate buyers and sellers. Anything pertaining to real estate, right. Insurance changes in your marketplace, changes in, you know, violations, changes in zoning, like 1031 exchange. I mean, there's an endless. Real estate is this thing with like, this endless amount of things that you can talk about, right? And if you do two of those per month, which only take an hour each, they don't require too much planning. I know we get a lot in our head about it, and you're like, oh, what? I'm gonna say whatever. Just, like, have a conversation with people just like you would anything else and ask questions, right? You guys are all great salespeople, so just ask Questions. And from those two, you can chop those up and get 12 to 15 shorts. So that's enough to post once a day on all platform. Short form. Are you with me? The second thing you can do is you post two medium form videos per month on YouTube. That could be a property tour with you in it. Right? You guys spend money for these videos, but it's an opportunity for promotion. Be in it. I know Patricia, but be in it. Hey guys, you know it's Adam here. We just had our new listing here on 1-265-BANANA-ST. It's got some awesome features and amenities. Let's take a look. Simple. Now those videos can be three, five minutes long and you can chop those up and probably get eight shorts for each one. Another video idea for the for the two per month could be a particular community that you want to dominate. Whatever that neighborhood is, whatever that building is. What is it like to live in the meadows? What is it like to live in the hills? What is it like to live in this geographic area? And that could be another five to eight minute video. And from that video you could chop that up and get 10 or 15 more shorts. So now we have enough to post twice a day short form. You guys with me?

I hope you enjoyed part one of the two part podcast series here with Aaron Novello. If you're at the point in your journey where you know you want to be in a group with players like this, playing the game of real estate in life at a very high level, grab a business growth assessment. Let's have a conversation about where you are in business now, where you want to be in the future and what's holding you back. Go to rebsgrowthassessment.com that's Rebs growth assessment dot com. We'll see you over there.