Understanding the Cycle of Attention with Aaron Novello - Part 2

Welcome back to Real Estate Business Builders. This is Lars Hedenborg, founder, Real Estate B School. This is part two of our conversation on understanding the cycle of attention where Aaron Novello breaks down social media. All the platforms, your ideal avatar. How do you do all the posting without losing your mind? Right. This is part two, so stay tuned.

Okay, then this is what I do. Once a month, you can take an hour. Okay? You, you don't even need super fancy equipment. You just need your phone. And you can change on your phone. If you go to video, if you have an iPhone, you can select like 30 or 60 HD. You can collect, select 60. Then what you do is you go to cinematic, change the F to like negative 2. And then you can go and change like the aperture to like 1.3 and you'll be super high definition HD. Like you have all this stuff in your pocket. Okay? And once a month for an hour, shoot like 10 shorts yourself, 12 shorts yourself, okay? On various different topics, whatever. What works really well, what I suggest to my clients, have you ever seen those green screen ones where they're just like, yep, this is happening right here. And then you talk about it. Those are super easy to do. And they get a lot of views, like a thousand each, right? Anything pertaining to real estate and, and, and with those, those 10 or whatever shorts in an hour or so, you want to think about buckets of content. So one bucket could be valuetainment, which is like valuable, like information that's entertaining. Another bucket could be like those green screen ones. Another bucket, if you're in an area where people play golf, could be about golf. Another bucket could be about something else. So different buckets that pertain to your particular avatar. But with that, what I just gave you, you could post two to three times per day on all platforms and you would end up with four videos per month on YouTube. So you can start building the brand there because that's where we really want them to get to. Okay, now what I've learned in terms of like, what do you need to be able to do this? Well, the dyi thing is you do it, you do the editing yourself. And great. That's not personally what I do. So you need somebody who can give you ideas because that oftentimes can be a challenge, right? We're all running and doing stuff. So somebody who could just be like, hey, here's a list of ideas. And if anything, what they're doing for you, it's just jogging, like your creativity. You can look at it. You don't have to do what they tell you, but it's just, oh, I could do it this way. Or, oh, I can talk about that. Right? The second thing you need is a camera, which you have in your pocket, but one of these little things. Please get these. Stop doing videos where your audio sounds like garbage. I can't hear you. It's tinty. It's, like, ridiculous. These are 25 bucks on Amazon. Plugs right into your phone, clips onto your thing. Boom. You'll sound like a champ. If the audio is crappy, it doesn't matter how good the video is, okay? Period. End of story. You guys are all worried about how you look, worried about how you sound. That's that. That should be what. What is really the focus, okay? And that's all you really need. And then if you are of the edited inclination or you have people on your staff that can do that, fine. Another recommendation would be, is you can go to Fiverr, you can hire people that can edit these shorts for you for very inexpensively. And then the third option is that you have, which is a more expensive option, but you have like a team where you can just drop into a Dropbox the content, they chop it up, they do the editing, they do the posting for you. Okay? So there's two versions. One is the Dyi version where you have your camera, you have a $25 microphone, you do the shooting, maybe some editing. There's software out there that can allow you to plan out posts right for the week. So you just do all that in one shot, Then it's done. The second option is you have a team that you know. The second option would actually be like the Fiverr thing where you help. Have them help you edit it. And then the third option is, which is where you delegate it completely, where you have a company where they'll give you the ideas, they'll do that. Once you shoot the content, you can drop it into a Dropbox. They'll do all the editing and posting for you. Make sense? Good. So again, I'll just. And then we can open up for questions, comments, concerns, like, I. It's inadequate. The words are inadequate for me to try to emphasize to you how important this is, how enormous that the opportunity is, and how important it is that you have the skill that you're very good at and you create a brand around your name. So if I would have done things differently, I would have done two things differently from the beginning. One is I would invested in my business faster, hired people faster, because I could have grown faster, but that was coming from A place of scarcity. I was just afraid the second thing I would have done is I would invest more time, energy, effort and resources on a brand and building one over time. Right. Because we think we pound our hand like on our chest about like, you know, making a million bucks a year. But you know who made 10 times more money than us? The marketers. Who gave us the leads. You know who makes a hundred times more money than them? The brand. Awesome.

You ready for some questions or you got some more?

No, let's rock. All right, cool.

Go to the Q and A and ask questions just so I keep them. I think you mentioned it a little bit, but what do you recommend for someone that doesn't have a team to edit this stuff, like Justin Miller? Do you have an assistant helping you? You know, 28 posts a week. What does your team look like that helps you with that?

Yeah, so the team that helps me with that, I mean it's a company, right? And they give me the ideas. So once I was clear that this was like the way. Okay. And again it took me a while to get to that place, I went to my team and I said, hey, this is a critical component of everything that we're doing. But I don't really understand it. I kind of understand it, but I don't really understand it. So then I made a decision and I spent a bunch of money to get access to someone who makes a million dollars a month on social media so he knows what he's doing. And that's a year long thing. And what that's given me is a, is this understanding of these platforms and how to use them and like kind of tips and tricks on how to do that. But it's also I have the team that does the editing and posting for me. They're on those calls with me. So we're siphoning out directly from these guys heads all of the information so, so we can learn how to do it really, really quickly. So I have a team that does that for us. For people who may not cause that's, you know, that's a resource thing for what I'm doing it would probably cost like $2,500 a month, you know, for that team to help you with that. They have different packages, like if you only post a day, like once a day instead of four times a day. But for people who perhaps, you know, they're not at that level yet, I would propose, I wouldn't get involved in the editing no matter what because I don't think that's a Valuable, productive use of your time. I would hire Fiverr and just tell them what you want. Show them like an example, like, hey, I like these posts. Can you make my. My shit like that? And they will. And it's very inexpensive.

100%. When you made that comment about 70% men, that's just you going and looking at your Google Analytics, right?

Yeah. And you know what's wild, Lars, is when I start posting pictures of my kids, the. The women go up.

Yeah, that's interesting. When you're just like, yell at people's self.

It's all like, yeah, when I'm not that self, when I'm like, hey, here's my daughter. Yay. The females go up.

Yeah, that's. That's interesting. So Caitlin asked question, can you change, quote, unquote, change your avatar to be the demographics you want to attract? What's the best way?

Yeah, it's. That's super interesting. So I think that the. Where the magic happens is where what your avatar is interested in, you're actually passionate about, because I think we're as transparent as everybody. So people can read through your nonsense, and if you're faking it, they can tell. Right. So I think what's really true is, like, figuring out who the avatar is, and more likely than not, because they're probably similar to you, the things that they're interested in is what you'll actually be passionate about. So I think if, like, you figure out that your avatar likes golf and you, like, try to fake that you like golf, be able to see right through that. Don't do that.

Yeah, you'll be spinning your wheels if you're, you know, Russell Brunson kind of calls it the attractive character. So it's. It's just putting yourself out there in, you know, whatever. Like you said the four or five buckets.

Yeah. Like, so I'm very clear that there's some people on this call like, that immediately don't like me. They don't like the language that I use. They don't like maybe what I said, and, like, that's cool. It's perfectly fine. And what a lot of you guys are doing is you're trying to get people to like you. And that is not the appropriate approach because I just want. Okay, so think about this from a brand perspective. Branding comes from animals. Like, we would brand them, right. You don't need a lot of those. You just need one that once they're branded, it's unmistakable that there's a mark on them and where they came from. Right. And the idea is, is whoever's associated with your brand, what they say about you when you're not in the room, that's your brand. So I don't need like all you guys are obsessed with like, I need a million followers. No, you don't. I built a million dollar business with like 6,000 followers. But people that run with me, you'll be able to tell that they will because it's unmistakable. Does that make sense? Yep.

Awesome. A couple more here. Joe asked what was the app you linked to your Insta account called manychat.m.

A n Y C H A T. The free version gives you four words like skills or like, you know, sell or whatever. The paid version, you get much more. I personally use the paid version because there's various different courses and classes that we sell. But you could probably start off with the, with the other one and it's free and the paid version is like 15 bucks a month. It's not, it's not a big deal, but it's M A N y C.

H A T and it links to messenger as well. So it's, it's, it's a pretty slick tool. So he answered the dedicated editor. What about DIY software for editing videos? Any good ones?

Yeah, great question. And I'm not the right person to ask because I've never done that. I always again came from the kind of mindset that like what I've learned and perhaps I can share this. 65% of us came from families who live pig check to picture. That was my experience. Right. And because of that we get all of this type of programming. You know, one of the things you heard was eat all the food on your plate. Money doesn't grow on trees. And a penny saved is a penny. That's bullshit. It's a penny. So all of that programming affects us. So you guys are thinking like, well, how can I edit this shit? I would never think that. I used to think that way, but now it's like, no, that's not a productive use of time. So what you'd be doing is you would be trading. I know that my time, let's say in either on the phone is worth 500 bucks an hour. If I'm prospecting, I know that in a coaching setting, particularly a group one, it could be worth $10,000 an hour. So what I'm doing there essentially is I'm trading five to ten thousand dollars an hour work for, for six bucks an hour that I can pay somebody on Fiverr to do. Does that make Sense.

And even the best editors like that. There are editors in countries that have a lower cost of living that, like, really, really good editors are like 12 to 15 bucks an hour.

Yeah. Like, amazing. But you can easily all day long, no questions asked, don't pass go, don't collect 200 bucks. Six, seven bucks an hour, you can get somebody that can produce content for you.

Yep, those are ours. It's like six to eight bucks an hour.

Yep.

All right, so this is a good one from Amy. So what advice do you have? If you have the ideas, you have the editor lined up, but you just cannot get comfortable on camera and you stumble over words. I have an answer, but I want to hear your answer.

Yeah, I mean, what comes up for me is like, get over yourself, man. Like, we think, okay, we're spinning on a ball around a burning ball of fire at 66,000 miles an hour. You can Google it. Okay? You think that your one post that you're gonna make is be fucking earth shattering. Like, your mom's gonna watch it. Stop it. Like, get out of your own way, dude. Like, it's. It's all. You're like, in a way, it's selfish because you're thinking about yourself. It's like, I'm so overly concerned and self concerned. It's like being in high school again. Like, oh, my God. Like, what are they gonna say? Like, nobody cares. Nobody. Nobody. And the thing that I want you to be clear on, too, okay. In one to one settings, you do not want to, like, talk about politics on a listing appointment. Probably don't want to do that. Okay. In the social setting, you do want to create friction, because friction gets attention. My things that get the most views, 50,000, 100,000. Is when I make definitive statements, because half of them are like, I hate you. The other half are like, that was awesome. So I used to be just like, you guys. Somebody posts something negative, you're like, oh, my God. Oh, my God, I can't believe it. Now I'm like, yes, let's get it started, baby. Because that. I know that the algorithm likes that. It's going to want people to chat and be like, no, you're stupid. Like.

And practically on the practical side, Amy, I would just commit to 30 days Facebook lives. Just keep it or whatever Instagram's equivalent is. Just go with those topics. Just the beauty of Live is that it's like, I'm live with you guys. There's 124 people on here. And if I like, oh, crap, I lost my train of Thought like, oh, man, I'm nervous. My palms are sweaty. Like, my hair looks crappy. Just say all of it, right? And just get those reps out there and just commit to one Facebook Live every day for the next 90 days. And you'll just. You'll get over all of that as quickly as possible, and you'll end the cycle of stopping this nonsense of, you know, of. Of not putting yourself out there. Because you do have a gift. You will impact others, but not if you don't get over that.

Yeah, I agree. And then what just popped into my head, Lars, when you said, that is for the next 30 days with all of your, like, client clients that you're currently working with, instead of calling them facetime them, it just forces you to get like, okay, this is not a big deal. Stop telling yourself a story like, this is like, a huge deal, because it's not.

Yeah, Bombbomb had a. They had a really good example of this sweet older couple that was obviously struggling, and it was the most endearing video. They're like, is this thing recording? And they're like, yeah. Oh, it is recording.

Okay, Harold.

Harold, come on, let's go. And they sent the whole thing out to their database, and it was like a smashing success.

Huge. Because it's authentic and it's real. And we crave, guys, we crave authenticity and we crave connection. So you think that what you should be doing is putting your best, most polished version out when it's actually the opposite. That's true. Right? It's just the real, normal, natural you. How you actually are. And if you'll notice, also, too, coming from a place of like, instead of like, oh, like me, like me, like me, like me. Have you ever had somebody approach you that way? How does that usually feel? It's fucking repellent. Like, get away from me. Versus how many of you guys have watched somebody in a movie that's like, diabolical, low down, like a terrible person, but you're like, I kind of like that guy. I don't know why, but I like them. You know why you like them? Because they're unapologetically them with no reservations. Like, they know they're a dirtbag, but they just, like, that's who I am.

Yeah, authenticity. And Michael has a good point. You know, just, you can. I saw a video. Dan Martell is a guy. I'm in a coaching program with him, and he does a pretty good job on YouTube and. And the whole game. He creates long form, and then his team just does the Thing and he had a guy just videoing him in the car, you know, and just asking him like three or four questions just to create some content, you know. So there's so many ways you can kind of flex, flex that muscle and build.

Yeah. And then the other thing, Lars, that comes up for me is a lot of you guys think you need something. You don't. You just have to document what you're already doing. You do really cool things, you sell really big homes, you go to cool places. You just have to have the presence of mind. How this started for me is I started to document me on the phone with live, with people setting appointments, just having the presence of mind to flip the camera. And right now, like, Lars, I'm live streaming this because this will become long form content and then we'll put it on YouTube. So it's just having the presence of mind to document what you're doing. It's not so much creation, it's just documentation. Yeah.

Any thoughts on time of day for posting?

Yeah, you know, my team, we've played with that and people can get like all into like, you know, I don't know the best way to do it. I'm not somebody that's like, I don't know, analytical that way. I think that volume matters more than time. So what I've learned is once I upped, I went from one to four times a day and we went from. It would take me a whole year to get a thousand people to follow me. Now it takes a month. So, like, we saw a dramatic change when we change volume. So I think volume matters more than timing.

Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Andrea asked question, you know. So on Fiverr, what do you search for? I would search for video editor, but.

What do you search for? Viber.

There's kind of, there's a whole category on Fiverr.

Yeah, you could put like social video editor and there'll be like a zillion options.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's highly in demand. And I, I would imagine there are good video editors with economies, you know, doing what they're doing. There's going to be some good talent available all over the world that can.

Help you with all that stuff.

Gabe says, do you implement stories, Insta, Facebook, YouTube, into your content calendar?

Yep. So stories, though, are something that I, I don't outsource it because I think, again, authenticity matters. I think people can feel when you're doing something that's like, not where you're like mailing it in. And I remember Gary Vee Saying one time, like, you know, he's built this whole ecosystem of attention that has turned into like, I don't know, a zillion companies and hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for all of those companies. But the way that he built it was one at a time answering all of the DMs himself, like doing all this stuff. And sometimes people freak out because they'll reach out to me and they'll be like, is this even you? And then I'll FaceTime them live and they'll be like, oh my God, I didn't even. Right. So like, I think that it's important for you to be a part of it. I don't think it makes, I know we're in this, like, kind of people can get in this mind frame where I need to like delegate everything. And yes, delegation is helpful as far as leverage is concerned for low level activities. I don't believe this is a low level activity because what you're doing is you're engaging with people and that engagement over time formulates like connection. And the way that my experience is, is that, that, that ecosystem of attention and the life cycle of attention. I'll show you what will happen. So I will go, let's say, and I'll be on something like this. People will follow me, they'll start to consume content. The more I need you guys to understand that consumption is a form of payment. I'm gonna say that again, not because you didn't hear me, because it's like important. Consumption is a form of payment. There's nothing that you own that's more valuable than your time. So you spending time watching stuff you're consuming, as you consume more, it increases the probability that you'll do more things. So it goes from short form, somebody will follow me for a while, then they'll go on to the long form, watch the podcast, whatever, and then a year later they'll reach out to me, be like, hey, I'm thinking about doing this thing. Can you help me with it? Right? So I think you just, I think it's important to be involved. And the stories that I post are directly from me, right? But I think in those stories you should be showing multiple pieces of yourself. You should be showing your kids, you should be showing like different. Because what people want to see is like, who is Lindsay? She's just the person that's like, hi, here's the five things about like, you know, home ownership or is she a mom, is she a daughter? She like, you know, is she into Horseback riding. Like, what's her thing? I don't know. But the more people can see that stuff, they can see all these different parts of you and they make a decision that you're the type of person that they would want to work with. There's many people that have come into my ecosystem that I have physically never met in the. In the physical world ever, because they spend all this time getting to know me in the digital world. And I need you to understand that that's what this is. And then I'll leave you with one other thing which really tripped me out to really eradicate this idea. Like, I don't do social. So there was someone in my sister's friend. She passed away at, like, a really young age unexpectedly and kind of tragically, but she would post on social a lot. And I said to my wife, I'm like, wouldn't it be interesting? Like, she has this guy in her family, the grandfather, who was like, you know, he had like 18 kids, he owned a whole tobacco farm in Cuba. Like this really interesting person. Wouldn't it be awesome to look through his feed and be able to see him and see him speak and watch videos of him and for my grand. For my children, his great grandchildren, to be able to see. That's who Constantino was. That's what he was about. So what this is, is it's a. Like a digital repository of your experience. So let people see it, all of it.

Yeah. So good. One practical question, and then I'm going to. I'm going to. Patty had a really deep philosophical question that we're going to end with. But let's go vertical or this way. How do you shoot videos? Or does your editor just go in and take the take?

Yeah, the editor will grab the clip. So on different platforms, they prefer different types, vertical or whatever. But for me, the editor, I'll drop it in there and he'll chop it up and edit it for the appropriate platform. Yep.

And then demographic info is just on business stuff, right? Uh, like, can you go.

You. Yeah, you can do the same thing on TikTok. If you go to TikTok and you go to Settings, you can find it there too. And you can see how many views I've had where people are watching. What's the demographic of the people that are watching? You can get hyper, hyper clear on who is actually consuming content. And I find that to be very helpful because we operate under this hallucination, hallucinatory state that everybody wants to hear what I have to say. And I'm creating content for everybody. Like you're not. You're creating content for a very, very specific. Like the avatar is a representation of the people who consume the content.

What was the quote? If you want to get paid in the future. And who said it?

What was that quote? Naval Ravikant, he wrote a book called the Almanac. He didn't actually write it. Somebody grabbed all of his tweets and put it into a book. It's a fantastic book. It radically changed my thinking over the last probably year. It's called the Almanac of Naval Rabikant. But his quote was, if you want to live in the future, you need to get. If you want to get paid in the future, you need to live in the future. So you need to find something that you can either be really good at or the best at and then create a brand around it with your name. Because in the Future, unlike Google ChatGPT, you'll be able to speak to it at version 7, 8, 9. They'll be like, yo, who's Judith Karen? And if you don't come up and it's not like you don't. You don't exist.

And I'll. I have it on my phone, but I didn't know who recommended it. Maybe you said it to me. That's it. Right back of Naval N A V.

A L. That's the one.

I K A N T. Awesome.

Yeah.

The. The. The deep question we have is from Patty. Can you answer your own question, Aaron? What do you currently believe that isn't true?

That's a good question. I can tell you. I think that that's hard. I think Lars might actually be good because I work with Lars individually. I think everybody, you know, coaching. I currently have three coaches in my life, like one physical, one in business, and then one on social. I think it's difficult to spot what you currently believe to be true that isn't because you're in it. And oftentimes it requires someone from a different vantage point and perhaps a few steps further along the path that can point that out to you. So Lars was exceptionally. He's been an amazing relationship for me because he has helped me to unwind some thinking through books and through him telling me things. I think one of the things that I am currently working through. Okay, so it's in process. I'm unwinding it as we speak. Is that, like, there's a shortage of money. Right. And I think a lot of. I think there's four different idols that people have to be careful of. One is money, one is fame, one is pleasure. And I used to make money like it was the main thing. It was the main way I made decisions all the time. And it came from a scarce place. Like, oh, there's not gonna be enough, you know, like, what do I have to do? And I was with the mindset too. If there's any money on the table, I want it all. You know, I'll work 80 hours a week to get it. And Lars just kept gently reminding me over and over again. He was like, dude, that's never gonna be a problem for you ever. So now the decisions that I'm making, Patty, are no longer money's not the main thing. Now it's the third one. The fourth one was fame. But I wouldn't interchange fame with influence, because I believe that what I'm doing currently with, like, Lars and with EXP and all that stuff, I view it as like a ministry, which is like, the more people that I can get into the ecosystem, the more I can love on them, pour into them and help them. So I want the influence. Not for me. Like, oh, look at me. And I'm so cool, even though I am, you know, I'm human. So is there part of me that likes a little bit of that? Sure. But most of it is the more that I can. Attention I can get. Not because I want to flex on people, not because I want to be like, I'm better than you. But the more attention I can get, the more people I can serve and the more impact I can have. Because I think that in the end, that's what really matters. Right? Is the accumulation of memories and experiences and the impact.

I hope you love Aaron as much as I do. I hope you learned a ton from those two episodes. And again, if you're listening to this one and you missed the first one, make sure you go back one episode. But if, you know, you want to hang with, you know, agents and team leaders that are playing the game of real estate at this level, selling 100 plus, 200 plus homes per year, and they're not losing their life in the process. They're home every night by 5pm they're not working weekends. Grab a business growth assessment. Let's see if this is possible for you. We're just going to talk about where you are in your business now, where you want to be in the future, and what's holding you back. Go to rebs growth assessment.com. that's rebs growth assessment.com and we'll see you over there.