The reality is, it’s way easier to build anything when people know who you are.
Today’s guest, Jeff Pfitzer, he knows all about organic social media reach the things that you should be doing, and the things that don’t actually matter.
Jeff is a mortgage leader for more than 500 million mortgage team. He’s bomb bombs, top 30 video influencers, labcoat agents and drunk on social podcast host, co founder of the business video school, real estate mastery pros and social coach app.
Podcast Audio Timestamps:
02:10 – The Beginning of AHA Moment
05:35 – How to Get People to Want to Watch You
08:57 – How to Not Spend Multiple Hours Creating Content
11:27 – Be Authentic
17:24 – What Could You Be Doing Wrong
21:24 – The Game Changer
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Justin Stoddart
So the big question is this. How do those of us in the real estate industry, with crazy amounts of ambition, how do we think bigger than the building of our own empires? How do we simultaneously see success and significance, income and impact? My name is Justin Stoddart. And this is the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. Welcome back to The Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I’m your host Justin Stoddart. Today, we’re going to talk about organic social media. The reality is, it’s way easier to build anything when people know who you are. And today, I have the guests that you’re going to want to get to know and follow. Because he knows all about organic social media reach the things that you should be doing, and the things that don’t actually matter. Before to introduce him, let me remind you that inside of the think bigger Real Estate Group on Facebook, we go deeper on these topics. Our intent is not just entertained, but to really help move and transform you. And that’s why we have the group to help you really go deep on these topics. If you’re not yet a member, be sure and join today’s guest, Jeff Pfitzer. Jeff, such a pleasure to have you here, my friend.
Jeff Pfitzer
Thank you for having me, my friend. It’s great to be here.
Justin Stoddart
Yeah, pleasure. Let me just give people some some background on kind of who you are kind of what you do. So that they don’t know your your face. If anybody’s been a part of labcoat agents. You’re kind of a household name there, right? You really help. You’re kind of the foremost podcast interviewer. You’re all over, you know, that forum really helping people to really become experts in the real estate space. For those that don’t know, he’s actually the mortgage leader for a 500 million plus mortgage team. Wow. He’s bomb bombs, top 30 video influencers, labcoat agents and drunk on social podcast host, co founder of the business video school, real estate mastery pros and social coach app. I don’t know of anybody more qualified to talk on this topic. Jeff fitzer. Again, pleasure to have you here. Jeff, when did you have the AHA of like, this social media thing isn’t just for kids. This isn’t just for like entertainment mess around and posting videos, or pictures of, you know, of people I love online, like, what did you realize, like there’s a real business case behind this?
Jeff Pfitzer
There was an aha moment, it was about five or six years ago, I actually started it was video first. And then social media was the vehicle, right? But so I was doing it and my phone, you know, again, I’m a mortgage professional. And you know, we don’t get invited into real estate rooms. Unless we’re, you know, bringing doughnuts paying for drinks are really those are the only two reasons. And and what happened was, is, you know, so we’re always chasing, you know, we’re always calling the realtors. And my phone started to ring back then, because I was starting to do video content, which was new at the time, right? Nobody was doing it. Well, they’re still not doing it at the level they should, but they weren’t doing it at all. And I started getting phone calls from realtors saying, hey, you’re the video expert. Can you help me with and it was that ding ding ding ding ding holy crap. I just cracked the code. I’ve flipped the table. I’ve got the person that I want to send me business needing me. They want me and I was like, I just figured it out. I’m going all in on video and social media.
Justin Stoddart
Man, that’s a really powerful Aha, you know, I had a similar high didn’t look exactly like that, where none of us really liked to be cold calling prospecting there probably a few people in the audience that are like, actually, I do think it will set you aside for the rest of us that don’t actually love having strangers say why are you interrupting my day? And we would rather have people coming to us saying Will you please help me because what you’re doing is impressive. And I would love to do that as well, where you move from being solicitor or vendor to be in appear. And then on to being a mentor and a leader. Right. And that’s where I think the future of the support industries need to go. I think it’s the future of where real estate agents need to be really modeling that as well. So I love that you said that Jeff is is it, you have to like it’s it’s one thing to say I’m an expert. But another thing for people to recognize, like that guy’s an expert, that gal is an expert. They know what they’re doing. I would love to be in business with them and have them teach me what they’re doing.
Jeff Pfitzer
100% 100% and there was actually a second aha moment. So that was number one. Number two, once I started doing this, and I was doing it too. This is Facebook Live infancy of Facebook Live. And so I was doing his Facebook Lives. I was talking about business. I was walking around my office saying here we are at a meeting blah, blah, blah. And I was boring myself. Now I was getting a lot of views at the time because it was new, right? So anytime you’re first to the game, you’re going to get attention. But I was just like, you know, this can’t be the ticket. This is not sustainable. This is boring. I can’t imagine that when people open up Facebook and this is even really pre Instagram days that people are going there to consume this. And I did a Facebook Live with at the time my 13 year old daughter she was making slime It was really popular at the time she was selling it on Etsy is my little entrepreneurial child. And I was like you know what is about let’s do a Facebook Live and let’s make slime for the audience and just have some fun. And you know at that age, they’re just normal to be in front of a camera. And we did it. And I still remember that video got hundreds of comments 1000s of views, which was fairly common, but the the engagement was off the charts. And so many people commenting about their kid does the same thing. And how cool is this and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, again, lightbulb moment, I just need to give my audience my life. That’s what they want. That’s what’s going to get them to engage and interact and see more of my stuff. So why not just give them what they want. And then I’ll sprinkle in the business to remind them what I do. But it’ll be a microcosm of the you know, in totality of the content.
Justin Stoddart
So for the Jeff, we were having similar experiences on the on, like, just in different states. So same thing, I actually went live every day for a couple years. And I watched my life because Facebook was trying to push that out there, right? I was getting quite a few views. And all of a sudden it started to like taper off. And I’m like, Okay, I’m just freaking boring, right? I’m like, crap, how do I actually liven it up? How do I actually get people to where they’re like, I actually want to watch you. And it was this aha that I had we did a gender reveal. For our last child. I don’t know if I told you how many have got six kids. We did a gender reveal. And like, I still give like comments on that. And then another time I did this crazy stunt into a pool wearing a full suit. And I still get comments on that. It’s like, people go to social media to be entertained. Yeah, right. They don’t go there to learn business. But if you can entertain and like you said, sprinkle in business, now all of a sudden, you’ve got a real opportunity and fantastic men talk to the audience. Now. How do you how do you systematize that? Or do you? I mean, is it as is organic as organic as let’s just see what happens today? Or is there some way for agents to say, Look, I’m so strapped for time right now. I don’t have like this creative muscle in my brain doesn’t have the ability to flex right now. Because I’m so I’m so busy. What would you say to somebody that says that like, Yeah, I know that it works, I believe what you guys are saying. But how do I fit it in? Like, how do I how do I make this somehow be like regular and consistent enough to where it’s actually going to have an impact?
Jeff Pfitzer
Yeah, it’s a great question. And it’s loaded. You know, I would start with saying that is first of all, you know, not everybody’s going to be as creative as some of us, right? I think I have that creative bone. And for me, like, I can find content out of anything. But I’m just like anybody else you mentioned all of the things I’m involved with a running a massive mortgage team with with some partners, but it’s very big. So it’s, it’s very time consuming. And I’ve got multiple ventures, alongside that I am as strapped for time as anyone. And I would gladly put that up against anyone. I have four kids myself, I have a family, we travel a lot. So I time is not something I have a lot of. So I always had to figure out how do I make this as efficient as possible. And I still do most of my own content. So I’ve since evolved and grown. And now I have some content creators on my team. But the one thing that I’m trying to hold true to is that I know why I’ve gained, quote unquote, fame or become known and have been invited into circles is because I practice what I preach most very high level real estate professionals don’t start the social media game till they’re making a lot of money, and they just hire people to do it. for them. It’s not organic at all. It’s just somebody doing it for them. You can tell my stuff’s very organic. It’s real. It’s me. And so I like to stick with that. And so what I realized, again, going back to that slime was that all I have, this is a bit this is one big reality TV show. For me. That’s what it is. Now you have to wrap your head around the fact that not only is it reality TV, and it’s sharing my personal life, and it’s being authentic, but that is a part of the business. It doesn’t sound like it because I’m not talking about business. But what I’m doing is I’m playing the algorithm, right? And so I want to be top of mind when they open up Instagram or Facebook, what’s the top what’s at the top of the page stories, I want my little bubble to pop up on as many people as possible every single day. It’s subliminal, it’s no different than a billboard. It’s no different than a grocery cart. It’s no different than an email marketing. Except mine’s much more infinite. And so it’s just that consistency of saying, What do I have to do to where I don’t have to stop spend multiple hours creating content? Well, it’s easy. Just turn on my camera, what’s happening in my life more often. It’s that simple. And as time goes on, it evolves. I didn’t start day one posting every single day that took years to get to this point. Well, I you know, you crawl before you walk. If you want to do five to seven stories a day like me, start with one, just start with one a day, make it habitual, right, and and then build a strategy and I do have strategies for all of the above. I have multiple groups, I have all this stuff. And, you know, you build to it and you can’t get overwhelmed. I think one of the biggest problems Justin is just like with video, we go to a conference. We listened to a guy like a good friend of mine, Brad McCallum. He is one of the sexiest video creators and I’m not saying he’s sexy, although he was really nice here. He creates amazing video, and that’s what you go see. And that’s what you compare yourself to you immediately become intimidated, and you do nothing. And it’s no different than content creation as you go follow me and you’re like, Damn, this guy’s overwhelming. It’s every Single Day. There’s tons of stuff. I can’t keep up with this. Forget it. I’ll just quit. Well just understand that we all start you know, we all crawl before we walk Gary Vee, you know, Gary Vee inched his way up over the years to become what he has today now a team of over 30 you know, social media people on on just the social media team. And so you know, just know that and know that you’re not going to be Gary Vee or Jeff fitzer overnight, but work towards it. Just document your life more often. And then sprinkle in the business.
Justin Stoddart
Man, I think there’s such wisdom in what you said there, Jeff, because again, we look at everyone else’s highlight reel compared to our like, behind the scenes crap. And then and then we’re intimidated. Don’t think thinking that we don’t have anything to say. I think it’s interesting to go back and read for example, Gary Vee, you mentioned him some of his early work like that can crush it when he was a nobody working in his dad’s wine store. Right? A kid who people that respect kids in the wine business. And it’s like, you look at what like the work that he put in an effort that he put in and not so much that we’re not saying you need to work through the night like Gary Vee did. But just realize that he started putting it out there before he was the Gary Vee that we know today, right? He was the punk like Gary Vaynerchuk that had awful language. Right? That’s has changed but but like, he didn’t become that by starting off fantastic. He became built a massive brand. And now he can sell everything including cryptocurrency because he was willing to be out there before he was good. As opposed to I’m gonna wait till I’m good to be out there because that never works. Right? That’s backwards.
Jeff Pfitzer
Yep, you will not become good without practicing without doing it without just putting yourself out there. And that’s what makes authentic content, the best practice field, especially for video, because you don’t have to be perfect. In fact, really, actually, it’s now since evolved. In that sense. You don’t want to be perfect. I mean, I, I will script out a lot of my videos and put them in a teleprompter and intentionally build in mistakes. I will intentionally drop something to force myself to say um, because if I’m too clean, if I’m too crisp, I don’t relate to everyone. They want to see real so that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that. And and being that authentic. That’s why Gary Vee is so you know, it attracts so much of an audience, honestly, is the cursing. Because a lot of people just just turn it off because of that, which is fine. And Gary doesn’t care. But he knows that he’s going to attract the raving fans because of that real authenticity. And that’s what you want to have. That’s what you want to be. And the one thing that you haven’t asked me yet, but I probably coming and I’ll jump to it is okay, okay, Jeff, I get it. Or Justin, I get it. I need to be doing this. But listen, I follow Jeff for a little while like he’s interesting. Not really. I mean, yes, I have a pretty cool life. I’ve made that life based a lot because of this. But at the same token, it didn’t start that way. I’ve gone through struggles I’ve been broke is a joke, right? I’m not the most exciting person in the world. But we’re all different humans behind closed doors. Don’t be afraid to put it out there. Or I’ve had people say to me, Jeff, I’m boring. I don’t do things like you. I’m not into fitness or diet. That’s not all I do is sit around and watch Netflix on my free time. And I’m like, bingo. There’s your content. Like how many other people sit and watch Netflix, you should be doing reviews, you should be talking about the shows you’re watching, you should be talking about what you’re binge watching people eat that crap up. There’s nothing that you can do. You know, I’ve got a I’ve got an ELO, who grows tomatoes, as a hobby. I’m like, bingo, Amanda. Like, you know how many people out there will relate to that and love that kind of content. Sure, not everybody, but you’re gonna have several 100 raving fans who love your tomato content will like you as a result of it and wants to do business with you. And it’s just that’s just how it works.
Justin Stoddart
You know, for anybody that’s listening live right now I know we have a kind of small audience listening live, the rest will catch it afterward. Whether you’re listening live or after the fact I want you to answer the question that I’m asking right now. What is the thing that you love to do that you spend your time doing when you’re not doing business? Is it growing tomatoes? Is it watching Netflix? Is it exercise? Is it you fill in the blank? And then how do you just start simply documenting that you write Jeff, everybody wants to hang out with people that have their similar interests. And you’ll never get there by trying to please everybody and being so vanilla, right? to please everybody because, well, these people might not like tomatoes. Well guess what? You probably wouldn’t like to be in a room of people and serve clients that could care less about homegrown tomatoes. But if all of your clients were actually people who also were like energetic, enthusiastic gardeners that love their tomatoes, you know how fun that would be, you know what kind of life you’d be building for yourself where all your clients, we’re just attracted to you because you get them and you understand them and now you’re able to help them find homes and investment properties that revolve around good gardening spots and you know, son at the right time of day, like all of a sudden your world is a playground. Because you’ve just been yourself and you’ve put that out there and attract the people like you now you’ll get to hang out together and make a great income doing it
Jeff Pfitzer
100% and ask yourselves this. If you go out and pull 100 random Facebook friends Let’s just say your Instagram followers and ask them let’s just use tomato as the basis and you ask them you said, what would you prefer for me? Would you prefer me to talk about the, you know, Monday market update, and my show you my newest listing and my latest open house and my real estate awards? Or would you rather me talk about tomatoes. And on the surface, you’re thinking to yourself as a real estate agent, well, definitely the real estate stuff. That’s you, you’re in real estate, the only people that are watching that stuff are your fellow realtors, they’re not potential clients, your neighbor, maybe your mom, your mom might be watching all of your stuff. But outside of that, nobody gives a rat’s patootie. I don’t know, if I can cuss on this show about our real estate market. They just don’t care unless they’re buying a home. And even when they’re buying a home, they don’t care. So even me as a non tomato grower, I might that might stop my thumb, because it’d be like, Oh, what’s this? A purple tomato never seen that before? It’s just things like that. Right? But if but if I if I’m scrolling and I see Oh, another open house post, Oh, another listing? Oh, another Monday market? I don’t care. I don’t care. And I’m in the business, right? I’m not it’s you know, it’s not why you go to social media. It’s not business media, it’s social media. There’s a reason for that.
Justin Stoddart
What’s the ratio? Jeff, that you recommend? You talked about sprinkling in business kind of, on top of all of this, because if you’re truly authentic with yourself, you realize that part of your day is business. It’s not all growing tomatoes, unless you’re, you know, a professional gardener. What ratio? Would you say if you’re a real estate agent and you love tomatoes? And that’s your thing. And you talk about tomatoes all the time? Is it 25%? Right? 20?
Jeff Pfitzer
No, 80/20, I’d say, at 20.
Justin Stoddart
I like it, there’s a lot of power behind that ratio.
Jeff Pfitzer
There’s no scientific data to back this up. It’s just a general thought process. It’s a simple number. But the point is, is if you go back and do an audit of your own, posting your own content, just go take the last five, right 80/20. And how many out of five, were authentic, personal versus business. And if you’re finding the four out of five or business, you’re in, you also go through and look at those posts. They’re probably relative graveyards, they get a couple likes. They get a couple comments, maybe. But then you go posted about you know what you did over the weekend? Bam, you got, you know, 50 likes and 15 comments. Yeah, it’s it’s just the facts. It’s just reality. Just go look, anybody can do this.
Justin Stoddart
That’s fantastic. I just got back from a family vacation. We documented a lot of fun stuff. It was interesting, how engage my audience was there. I mean, just like, I don’t have this all figured out, right? first to say that Jeff doesn’t either. But he’s further down the path and all of us. He’s somebody that we all need to follow. Jeff, great stuff. What what’s what’s, before I move to our signature question? Like, what else are we missing? What questions should we be asking you anything else that like, you need people to hear that they’re not getting right now that they’re not doing right, that they’re, that they’re missing the big opportunity? Well, so
Jeff Pfitzer
Here’s the thing is, this isn’t there isn’t? You know, this is not one size fits all? There’s not an exact playbook. In fact, if you even asked Mark Zuckerberg, he couldn’t even tell you exactly what the algorithm is looking for. Because it’s all run by computers. But the reality is, is understanding what this is. And so many people look at Facebook as a nuisance, right? You know, oh, political, drama, blah, blah, blah, look in the mirror, if that’s what’s showing up on your feet, it’s because you’re engaging it and the computers, the algorithms are saying, that’s what Justin likes, therefore, I’m gonna show more of it. If you’re seeing that stuff, you left Facebook, because of that, get back to Facebook, there’s a lot of opportunity there just you control the narrative. Same thing on Instagram, same thing on tik tok. Same thing on LinkedIn and everywhere, right? They’re all run by algorithms. And so at the end of the day, use the platforms for what they are. So for me, it’s business, I can 1,000,000% my partners, the same will attribute our success to video and social media period, like we wouldn’t have a fraction of the opportunities that we now have today that we’ve gone to a 500 plus million dollar branch region, we’re going to call us as a result, we were stuck, we were plateaued. And that 100 230 million, and we’re successful, but we could never get over the hump, you could ask one of my partners, we just put it along. And all of a sudden, over the last few years, we’ve we’ve just hockey stick curved. And think about what I just said last two to three years. I started this five, six years ago, it takes time. But once you build that momentum, all of a sudden it starts to go. So the answer to the question is really consistency is just been understanding that you’re just trying to figure out how to get that little algorithm. It’s not a human back there, that little algorithm to show me on my audience’s feed more often. Therefore, I’m just subliminally and they’re bred just like email marketing. Justin, you know this email marketing statistics are bad, like open rates sub 10%. We still do it. Why do we still do it? Because every time my name shows up in their inbox, even though they’re never reading it that’s a good thing. And it’s easy to do. So I’m going to keep doing it. And this is the same thing, although I would say this is probably 10 times more effective because of the authenticity because you’re creating parasocial relationships with people, they get to know you without actually knowing you. Man, if I had if I had a nickel for every time I got a phone call from a real estate agent, who’s my audience, and another market that said, Hey, Jeff, you don’t know me, but I feel like I know you like and they’ll name my kids by name, or my wife by name, which is creepy in a way. But also like, I’m winning, like, I created that. And now they have this parasocial relationship with me, I don’t even know who the hell they are. I already won. And that’s, that’s the name of the game. So just think of it on a micro level on a local level. Imagine walking into the grocery store, and somebody’s like, I know you. And then all you can do inside is like, boom, got him.That’s what you want to do.
Justin Stoddart
That’s powerful. Everybody only they internalize what Jeff said, he’s been working at this for five to six years. Over the past two to three years, his business has hockey stick growth up words. In other words, you aren’t going to see immediate results, you just aren’t you got to be okay with that. But trust the process, trust the model that Jeff has proven out for us. The fact that if you consistently show up as your authentic self talking about what you genuinely love to do, and using the 80/20 rule, 80% of the posts, are you personal life, and 20% of them are business life, then you will see great results. Jeff, let’s move to the signature question with show and then I got a bounce. I wish I could spend spend all day with you. I feel like there’s so much stuff that I learned from you. You are a big thinker, there’s no doubt there’s nobody that will question that. What does Jeff fitzer do to continue to be a big thinker to continue to expand your possibilities.
Jeff Pfitzer
That’s all about a thesis, it’s all about who I surround myself with. You know, I’m always I’m always so for me, it’s it’s both social media and live and in person. And obviously, over the last 12 months, that’s been a challenge. But a lot of this all started with me taking a chance going to a real estate mastermind that I got invited to as a result of my video, not having any idea what I was going to do with it, just knowing that I was going into this room with a bunch of big thinkers, millionaires, there’s even a couple billionaires in this group, this little peon sitting in the corner, sucking my thumb, having no idea what I was going to be doing. And still, even after I left, that first mastermind, not really sure what I was going to do with it. But I just thought, and I remember telling my wife, I’m like, I just feel like I have to do this, like I have to invest in this. And that was a big chunk of change to be a part of this group. And that has been a game changer. For me, it also created the relationship. That’s where I met Tristan. And so I’ve become really good friends with him. And you, you couldn’t have drawn that up. Right? If that doesn’t happen, unless you put yourself in a position to be around bigger thinkers. And I, you know, Sam crania is the one who told me this. And when he invited me to this first mastermind, he said, Jeff, I can’t tell you what you’re going to gain from this. But I can tell you, from my experience, being a part of a mastermind similar to this, it has absolutely changed my life. And and he was right, and you cannot pinpoint anything. All you can do is surround yourself with bigger thinkers, successful people. And and, and here’s the key, figure out a way to bring them value. Like it wasn’t me just going to Tristan and saying, hey, man got a second kind of pick your brain. This happened by accident, by the way. But what happened was, selfishly, I was like, you know, you labcoat agent, I didn’t even know what labcoat agents was when I met Tristan and, and I said, Man, once I learned about it, I was like, would you ever think about doing an event in my market? So again, selfishly, I’m bringing an event to my market, I’m gonna look into my realtors. And it turned out he was like, dude, I’ve been wanting to do this. Several people have offered, nobody’s followed through if you’re willing to follow through, we’re in. We’ll come there. We won’t charge anything. And I did it. We blew the doors off. It was a packed house. He was so impressed. He said, How do I get you to keep working with me? The rest is history. And But see, that was it. I didn’t mean to now I know exactly what I what you should do find these successful people figure out a way to bring them value, they won’t let you get away. they’ll pull you in. And then all of a sudden, it changes your life.
Justin Stoddart
So funny. You didn’t need to do this. But that’s exactly the template of the upstream model of with real estate agents. So far, it’s I mean, there’s patterns everywhere, right? And they show up in all kinds of different places. And so powerful, so fun to see what you’ve done. Jeff, I know this is just the beginning for you, of what you’re going to continue to do and accomplish that we’re going to impact not just all of us, but even a much, much bigger audience. Thank you for being so generous with your time today. Such a pleasure. I look forward to staying in collaboration with you. And please let us know we can do here. And in the meantime, everybody listening here today, my final request, are these three simple words. You know what they are? They are go think bigger. Appreciate it, Jeff. Thanks, Rob. Let’s do that today.
Jeff Pfitzer
Thank you, man. Appreciate it.
Justin Stoddart
I want to thank you for tuning in to this episode of The Think Bigger Real Estate Show. If you found value here, I asked three things. Number one, give us a review. Number two, go to Facebook and in groups search think bigger real estate and apply to join. Here you will find a community of big thinking professionals that will help you grow your income income, your independence and your impact. And my third request is go think bigger.