Justin Stoddart 0:00
Hey, welcome back to the think bigger real estate show. thrilled to have Karin Carr back with us today. She is the foremost national expert when it comes to YouTube for Real estate agents. And I am thrilled to have her here. She brings such value. I follow her. And she’s awesome. So I want to start off by just saying, Karin, thank you for coming back. We didn’t scare you away the first time.
Karin Carr 0:24
No, you’re awesome. Thank you so much for having me. This you, I love to geek out on this stuff. And anyone who will listen to me wax poetic about YouTube, I’m happy to take that opportunity.
Justin Stoddart 0:35
I love it. Let’s do, I’m really quick, let me revisit kind of the mission of all of this, why we’re doing this, okay, to help agents think bigger. It’s amazing what happens when you start to see other people that either is having great success or are helping other people have great success, that our own possibilities start to expand, we start to believe that this can work for me. And the whole purpose of the show is to absolutely do that as expand people’s possibilities. Knowing that as they do, their business grows, and then their options in life and their impact grows, which is what I’m all about. So you fit the mold perfectly. You’re a big thinker, thrilled to have you back on today. Tell us a little bit, Karin, really quickly. Just your what part of the country you’re in. And I’m how you stumbled across this YouTube thing for those that didn’t get the privilege of watching you the first time you came on the show?
Unknown Speaker 1:25
Absolutely. So I am in Savannah, Georgia. I had gotten my license in 2005 in Northern California. And I was that was during the crash. And so I was a big REO listing agent back then my parents live in Savannah. So about five years ago, we decided to relocate here. And when you move, you start over in a new market, you are literally a brand new agent all over again because you don’t have any clients there and you don’t have any market share. And you don’t have any name recognition, you don’t have any signs in the dirt. You got nothing you’re starting over. So I was blogging and I started making YouTube videos. And then I started getting leads where they said, I found your YouTube channel, I’ve been watching all your videos, I feel like I know you already. And I thought well forget the blog, I’m just going to skip over the blog and go straight to video. And my business has completely exploded. And now instead of being a solo agent, I have a team and I get probably 70% of my clients and closings that say they found me on YouTube.
Justin Stoddart 2:23
You go from hunting to being the hunted, you know I know that there are people that have great success buying leads on the internet. But I’m telling you when you show up in that space, you’re a means to an end, you’ve got no credibility, the only thing that you do if you’ve got the license, and the keys to open the door for them. However, when you come when somebody has a chance to observe you and receive value from you over a period of time, something amazing happens, right, which is what you’re describing about it’s like, I feel like they know you and it’s like they trust you already right totally changes the entire conversation.
Karin Carr 3:01
It is the entire conversation. It goes it’s the difference between buying a lead from Zillow, and they’re interested in 123 Main Street, and you call them but for other people also got that same lead. And they’re like, Oh, I already made an appointment with somebody else to see that house thanks. Or they don’t answer the call at all, and they don’t want to talk to you. It goes from that type of lead to me calling and saying, Hey, you know, I saw that you just downloaded my free relocation guide. Are you thinking about moving to Savannah, and they go, Oh, my God, I can’t believe you’re calling me your celebrity. You must be so busy. Thank you for calling me. What do I have to do to get you to take me on as a client?
It’s like, Am I being pumped to this? the point, he said that to me, I laughed so hard. I was like, I’m sorry, can you just wait one minute. I am not famous at all. But that’s their perception. They, they think of you like you’ve got a show on HGTV. And after you hear that over and over and over again, you’re like, I guess I kind of fake This is awesome, you know, grateful that you picked up the phone and call them.
Justin Stoddart 4:05
I actually teach a class around storytelling of how to get in command HDTV like attention. Now I have to share that within the think bigger figure. At some point. It’s exactly that. I mean, in the end, the example that I share is if chip and Jojo moved to a new market, let’s say Savannah, Georgia, would they have any trouble getting clients? And the answer is no. Right? There probably be a lion out the door to work with those two, right? Or, or the Property Brothers or whoever. I don’t know why it’s because their value has been extended over time to people there’s trust. There’s this relationship that’s built even though it’s been one way they feel privileged to be in conversation with you. And they already know the value that you bring. It’s no longer about. Get me to the house. It’s about giving me to you, right.
Karin Carr 4:51
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so it goes from just all real estate agents are the same. You’re a means to an end, you’re doing nothing but a door opener to like, what am I? How can I get this person to take me on as a client because I want to work with them specifically?
Justin Stoddart 5:09
So cool. We’ve actually had a couple of comments. I want to point out here really quick. Speaking of the devil, Jesse Dau,
Karin Carr 5:14
Yes, I know YouTube is your new favorite.
Justin Stoddart 5:18
Jesse’s a disciple of this car here. So and then, Kyle Spencer, I got to put this one up here, right? love learning, marketing and best practices for me don’t matter, because I’ve got great people like Karin Carr in my network. So super fun stuff. Thanks for commenting, guys. Let’s get into the fact that you have this, this model this system that actually helps people, right. And you have people coming to you saying, Hey, will you teach me that? Will you teach me that? Yeah. And you kind of ran into a little bit of a wall? Like I got a lot of commitments already. Right?
Karin Carr 5:50
Right. Yeah. It was funny. I, probably a year ago, well, actually was more than a year ago, it was in about February of 2018, I guess. And I think I’d had the fifth conversation on the phone with an agent who was saying like, wow, does this really work? How are you doing it? How do you figure out what to talk about? And when I hung up the phone at 930, at night, my husband said, you need to be getting paid for this because you’re spending all of your time teaching other people and I said well, they’re all asking me for one on one coaching. But I don’t have time. I have so many clients right now. I don’t have time for one on one coaching. So I made a YouTube video and I said, Hey, listen, if I made a course, would anybody take it? And I had, like 150 people sign up on the interest list. So I said, I guess I’m making a course. Of course, what am I gonna do? So I started researching it. And I figured, okay, I’m going to make a digital course. So that when you sign up for it, you log in and you watch the video, you do what it says you watch the video, you do what it says. And it’s basically my method from start to finish of what do I need for equipment? How do I figure out what my video is going to be about? How do I research it, how I film it? How do I edit it? How do I promote it, all the things? So it’s basically my process that I do for myself every single week, and I make one video a week, it’s not that much. But I have made one video a week for two years straight. And I’ve only missed one day. And that was because we had a hurricane, we had to evacuate. So I think that was a legitimate excuse. I committed to a video week and I publish it on the same day of the week, every single week. And that consistency has rewarded me a million times over. So now when you go on YouTube as a consumer and you look for Savannah, Georgia real estate realtor in Savannah, moving to Savannah, living in Savannah cost of living in Savannah, I dominate the search results, and all that is organic, I have not paid for leads. That is just the beauty of SEO.
Justin Stoddart 7:50
So cool. Let me put up here. One other comment that I’m going to then direct people to go find your day in course because what I hear you saying about your course, is this Karin is that everybody that says boy, I would like that, in fact, let me tell you what you would like. Okay, let me put up here another comment from Jesse dow. He has three $1 million plus appointments this Friday, all via zoom. This is because he delved into deeply into the strategies that you’re talking about that you
Karin Carr 8:20
absolutely, so Jesse and his business partner, Jackson interviewed me on their podcast many months ago. And Jackson had said, I’m doing tons and tons of video, but it’s all on Facebook. And I said, By the end of this podcast, I will convince you why YouTube is where you need to be. And they went all in after that podcast episode. And now just a couple months later, they’re getting results like that, like, their phone is ringing off the hook of people who find them on the internet for free. And then they end up with appointments like that. And it’s not just I got a lead, it’s I got an appointment, who then signed an exclusive agreement with me, who then bought or sold a property and then I get paid. So they do not just lead, they are actual clients.
Justin Stoddart 9:03
So it sounds like the way your course is structured. All of us have a sticking point, right? Something that’s keeping us from taking the next step. Whether it be I don’t know what equipment to use, I don’t know what to talk about. I don’t know how to edit. Like, every one of those things is some reason why people are not taking action, right? This show is spreading beyond the Portland metro area. We’ve got agents all over the country where if you were to Google, your particular area and neighborhoods like there would be like very little or not very good. And it might take longer for you to step in, as Jackson and Jesse have done here in the Portland market and just start to dominate, right?
Karin Carr 9:42
Yeah. Now Jackson and Jesse are killer video videographers, they are a million times better than I would ever be. So they go out and they vlog and they use a drone and they’re filming in the community look like what yours looks like right now it is literally, I’m usually filming on I don’t know if you can see it, I’ve got it to tripod with a rim light back there. And I put my iPad in the middle and I feeling with my iPad or my iPhone. And when you turn this camera like right now I’m doing this on the webcam at my computer. But when you turn it around, you just see this pretty backdrop, which is much like what you have behind you right there. It’s just, you know, it’s mine is my backdrop, and a couple of pretty things on the wall to look at. So I’m not using fancy equipment, I’m not doing great editing, I’m not doing all of the great things, and I get a crap load of business. So I find that it’s not about the equipment, it’s not about how great your video editing skills are. All you have to do is be willing to be face to the camera because they can’t connect with you if they can’t see you. And they’re not going to judge your appearance. I mean, if somebody did, and they said, I don’t want to work with you, because you’ve got laugh lines, or you’ve got great routes, then great goodbye. Because I know you as a client, either I don’t want to work with anybody that shallow. And they’re not ever going to say, you know, I almost hired you to be my buyer’s agent. But I felt that your video editing skills were lacking, they just that doesn’t happen. They don’t, they don’t care. They just want to get to know you and your personality, I had to do a show-up and act like yourself on camera. That’s literally it.
Justin Stoddart 11:16
It’s interesting how often I’ll have similar conversations about the video. Because obviously do a lot of videos and people think that you need to be like a gifted orator in order to do it. And, you know, if-if you perceive that somebody is better than you, it’s simply because they started off where you’re at, right? It’s a reality.
Karin Carr 11:32
And I had an appointment this morning, I’ve got a buyer that’s under a contract that’s building a house. And we were talking about all of the travelings that I’ve been doing lately to talk about this because she found me on YouTube. And so she watches all my videos. And she said it’s funny, I went night I sorted your videos, oldest to newest, and I watched some of your first and oh my god, they were so bad. And I said I knew they were so bad as far as the lighting and the sound quality. And I looked like a deer in the headlights. And she said it’s amazing to see how far you’ve come in such a short period of time. And I said, right, it just comes from sheer repetition. It’s simply practicing, you don’t become a Heisman Trophy-winning athlete, the first day that you go play in a game, it’s because you go out there and you do it over and over and over again. And you get better with this year practice of it. That’s all
Justin Stoddart 12:24
one of my mentors, shared with me said the first hundred videos are not for your audience Anyway, there for you to figure out, like what you want to talk about. And that’s
Karin Carr 12:33
what that’s a really good point. I mean, I will argue that it’s time for you to figure out what you want to talk about because that’s what you can shorten that up quite a bit. But those first hundred videos are literally you just figuring out how to be yourself on camera and how to let your personality show through. And to decide who is your ideal client? Who are you trying to attract? And if you know that, then figuring out what’s talk about becomes much easier.
Justin Stoddart 13:01
So I had an episode a few last weeks about the importance of, of niche marketing of, or whatever you are own it right as long as it’s not super polarizing, own it, and allow like your tribe to find you. But the key is, you can be yourself all day long. But if you don’t ever put your face out there, right, there’s only to go out in the community and kind of the old school method of Chamber of Commerce and all these other ways, which I think are important. You know, they may play a part. But if you want to really ramp things up quickly, and have something that where your presence lasts forever, right last forever on the internet. What a great way to just go Be yourself and let your tribe come to you. Which is exactly what you’re doing right? You’ve got people flocking to you, because they’re like, Hey, I like her. She’s like me. So what ends up happening is you end up like filling your day in your schedule with people who have self-selected like, Hey, I’m like you. I’m like you like what could be better than that. Right?
Karin Carr 13:57
I know. It’s crazy when you act like yourself on camera. So you’re not trying to be someone that or not. If you don’t wear suits on a daily basis, don’t wear a suit in your video, just be yourself. You attract people that have very similar personalities as you. So I’ve got a client right now that is moving here from Texas. And she was like, Girl, I’m going to buy a house of the pool and you’re coming over and we’re going to have like Margarita is in the hot tub on Friday night. And she was saying this stuff before we had ever met. It was we’ve talked on the phone, we had email, but we had not ever met yet because she lived in Texas. And it’s funny how went not only are they self-selecting you, but they are people like you nine times out of 10. And so you have a great experience working with them. Because they’re people that you would naturally gravitate toward anyway.
Justin Stoddart 14:47
Yeah. And there’s this bit of you’ve been edified, right? You, you aren’t just like any other agent, they’ve been watching you and senior value to where they respect you more.
Karin Carr 14:57
Yeah, they’ve totally vetted you so that the very first lead I ever got for my channel was a listing lead. It was a come to list me but I didn’t know that. That’s what it was. So when he said, Will you come over on Saturday and tell us what we need to do to get this house on the market? I’m going okay. I’ve only lived in Savannah for three months. I’ve never sold a house in this neighborhood before. These are the objections, I always get it. How many houses in my neighborhood? Have you sold? And my answer is going to be a big fat zero. So I’ve got to have all of my objection handlers, what am I going to say? And when I did my listing presentation, and I said, so who else are you interviewing? They said, Nobody we already picked you. So I said fabulous. Here’s my listing agreement, this is what I charge. And they’re like, awesome, give me a hand. Push back on the commission. They didn’t say, well, I’ve got three other people I want to interview before we make a decision. Call me next Thursday. They’ve already decided.
Justin Stoddart 15:49
And then a question they have for you is, can I borrow a pen? That’s great, that’s a great listing appointment. The right is the only question is like, Where do I sign? Exactly. Okay, one last comment. And then we’re going to direct people, your course. And this is Jesse Tao just every nose is not a plant, he had no idea you were coming on other than I promoted it yesterday. We did not ask him we’re not paying him for this. This is his comments. Karin definitely got us rolling in this space, it opened our eyes to a whole new way to build long term brand. equity. Thank you, Karin. So
Karin Carr 16:17
I did and Jesse did not take my course I want to say that he just they just what I said when I was trying to when I was talking about this on their podcast, and they were so good with video already, they didn’t really need the hand holding, they got it and they just went for it. But if you need the hand-holding, if you don’t know how to do SEO, Search Engine Optimization, I would just like to say
Justin Stoddart 16:40
SEO is my
Karin Carr 16:45
I did a five-day challenge in my day. And I said that I would challenge I was like, I don’t know why I just said that. I have no idea where that came from
this coffee mug.
Justin Stoddart 16:57
Love when I saw I saw that that has you said
Karin Carr 17:02
but it’s true. Because you don’t just make a video and call it you know, come with me as I tour this neighborhood like you have to give the title of your video something that people are actually searching for either in YouTube or in Google. And Google owns YouTube. So if you have a good video show up on the first page of Google, and I use this as an example the other day, I said open up an incognito window in Chrome and type in moving to Savannah, the number one organic spot was my blog post, there are three videos and two of the videos were mine. So of the top four things that showed up organically on the first page of Google, three of the four were me. So it’s to be that is you people pay really a lot of money to have that happen. And I have paid zero dollars because of search engine optimization, SEO. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s fine, I will teach you headed to that in the score.
Justin Stoddart 18:02
Alright, let’s cut to where people can go to actually get this training, we’ve got the testimonial in place. Thank you, Jesse. Now, let’s put up here YouTube for agents calm, you’re going to go to this site, and you’re going to click enroll. And by doing that, you’re going to like the value of what you are offering Karin, you had to think about restructuring this pricing to where you earn, like a finder’s fee like a referral fee for all the business, comes in from that I think you probably retire in a year you’d be done. Because the results I mean, I’m seeing them firsthand from people that are you know, learning from you. And I think it’s just such an important message in a time in an era when we have massive tech platforms that are working to make the agent irrelevant to make them the equivalent of a barista working a cappuccino machine, an agent working, you know, some technology piece, that’s where they’re headed, and the compensation is going to match it. The way for you to fight that and to only space and own your margins that own a business it’s worth owning is to build as Jesse said, build brand equity. And Karin will help you do that in a place where you’re where people are going and searching. So I’m excited to again, share with this audience again, you know the magic of what you teach. And I want to thank you for joining us today, Karin.
Karin Carr 19:19
Well, thank you so much. And I do also have a free Facebook group if anybody wants to join just to start learning this stuff at the beginning. If you just go to Facebook, and you look for YouTube for real estate agents, it’s group cash, I think we’ve got 1500 people in there now, which is pretty awesome. And I do things like a free five day challenge to help you get started if you don’t really know what you’re doing just lots of stuff like that. So,
Justin Stoddart 19:44
so good. Alright, last question. Signature question of the show, Karin. What is it that somebody like you does, obviously a big thinker, hence, you’re here, right? Yeah. The emblem in the background, think bigger people like you. What do you do to ensure that you continue to be a big thinker?
Karin Carr 20:03
Because I don’t really consider myself to be a big thinker. I’ve never been super ambitious, like I was never the person that said, I want to become a real estate agent. So I can have a team of 70 people and be in 12 different markets and you know, make billions of dollars a year there was I was just happy, being comfortable, I was happy doing enough business to pay the bills and be comfortable. And then when this whole thing kind of snowballed. It’s been it’s happened accidentally like I made the course by accident. And now I’m loving it. And I’m doing a lot more teaching and speaking and training and stuff like that. And I’ve hired a team of agents that are now working with the clients. So I’m doing more coaching and training last speaking. And the more people implement what I’m telling them, and then come back to me and say, Oh, my God, I just got my first client. Oh, my gosh, I just had my first closing of like, Oh, my gosh, I have to hire an agent to help me. I need to hire a video editor to like, do this for me because I’m now so busy. And I have so much business that I can’t do it all myself. Like seriously, that just makes my freakin day.
Justin Stoddart 21:08
So to be a big thinker, you almost accidentally stumbled into the fact that Oh, my goodness, I need to add people to like I need leverage.
Karin Carr 21:17
Yes. phrasing it so eloquently. That’s what it what I tried to do it all myself for far too long. And now that I have help, I’m like, why didn’t I do this so much earlier. So I have a virtual assistant in the Philippines who does my editing for me, and boy has freed up so much time. So in the beginning, we don’t have any money coming in, you got lots of time, it’s okay to do all of your own video editings. Because later when you outsource it, you know what to do, and you know how to do it. So you can explain to them what you want them to do. But then when you get that off of your plate, and now you’ve got several hours a week of free time back to work with clients or do something else. Yeah, I wish that I would have convinced myself, you gotta suck it up and hire somebody even though you don’t feel ready, because they free up so much more time that when you’re working with clients and you’re making a lot more money, like the commission check that you make is a heck of a lot more than what you’re paying the virtual assistant. So like you should have just done it way earlier.
Justin Stoddart 22:17
And you’ve just answered probably one of the biggest questions to this entire audience, when a great idea comes across someone’s played and they’re like, I love it. I just don’t have time for it. My guess is you need to get something off your desk. A right opportunity like this comes around to build long term brand equity have become the hunted is instead of always hunting. It’s time that you look at your desk and say, Okay, what is not a high dollar per hour activity? And how do I outsource offload that? I love it, Karin, what a great answer. And you’re such a great guest, I thank you for being a friend of the show. And coming on again. It’s always so fun to spend time with you. So I wouldn’t get again, encourage everybody to go find Karin’s Facebook group, YouTube for real estate agents. And then also for those that are like, it’s time, it’s time I’m paid. I’m tired of paying for dumb leads. I’m tired of hoping that my you know, like friends and family are going to produce, you know, enough referrals and they’re not and everything I do isn’t working. I need to find another stream of business coming in. Go take a look at what Karin’s offering. It’s working for people that I know and love firsthand. So anyway, thank you again, everybody, for tuning in to this episode, Karin. I appreciate you so much and everybody