Nick Niehaus as a Co-Founder and Head Trainer at Business Video School talks about working with real estate agents. Nick discusses the importance of coaching and training, marketing tips and social media tricks. Last, Nick describes why, based on his experience, he believes video messages are very powerful to create a strong bond with clients.
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
Nick Niehaus can be reached at +1 314-548-9106.
This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
Thinking about adding more video this year to your branding and marketing but not completely sure how to do it? Well, don’t worry, we’re going to talk to an expert today. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solutions so that you can easily generate more business. There agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents. And for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show and in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with business video consultant, Nick Niehaus to tell you exactly what you should be doing this year to take your videos to the next level and attract more clients. Before we get to Nick. I guarantee there’s another realtor you know who needs to up their marketing game specifically around video send please send them a link to this episode Nick gives so many great tips and advice in here it was guaranteed to help them in your in their business. And they’re going to be guaranteed to be thankful to You for sending them a link. So please send them over to our website keeping it real pod.com Every episode we’ve ever done, and we have just about 500 episodes now they can all be played directly from a browser. You don’t even have to open up a podcast app, go to keeping it real pod.com Every episode there and also, we’re in every podcast directory so you can always search for keeping it real and hit that subscribe button. Okay guys, let’s get to the main event, my conversation with Nick Niehaus.
Today on the show we have Nick Niehaus with Business Video School me tell you more about Nick. Now Nick Niehaus is the co founder and head trainer at Business Video school he has spent the last six years working with 1000s of real estate agents to help them overcome the challenges of transitioning to video communication, and marketing. In doing so Nick has become an expert at helping email up sorry, me. Repeat that last sentence there I screwed up. In doing so Nick has become an expert at helping small business owners gain confidence on camera and learn how to use video to grow their business through branding. Please everyone go to visit Nick’s website which is biz video school.com Business bi Z bi Z video school.com link to that in the show notes. Nick, welcome to the show.
Nick Niehaus 3:48
Yeah, thanks, TJ. Thanks for having me on.
D.J. Paris 3:50
Very excited to chat with you. I you know the world has really changed a lot a while obviously the world’s always changing but certainly with the advent three years ago, you know, with when COVID hit, and we were doing work from home, I saw a shift in Realtors really probably more out of desperation than anything but just embracing some of the video conferencing technology, more video production when it comes to social media. And I’ve seen agents continue to evolve their video practices, even now we’re largely back to normal and we’re moving around and about of course, I’m still seeing that trend continue. Obviously the rise of tick tock has has also increased the popularity of video, but I am so excited to have you on the show because I want to talk all things video. You know, this is something that I think every one of our listeners or viewers can can relate to and try to figure out as they determine what they want to spend their time and energy on. In 2023, I think video is a great skill that really anyone can develop. And obviously, you teach people how to do that. So I’m excited to have you out.
Nick Niehaus 5:11
Awesome. Yeah, no, and I love talking about this stuff. But that’s the pandemic certainly sort of accelerated and disrupted all kinds of stuff with videos. So it’s been an interesting three years.
D.J. Paris 5:21
Well, let’s, let’s talk about the role of video. So first, let’s get into your background before we actually start giving suggestions to agents. So what brought you into into this space?
Nick Niehaus 5:33
Yeah, so I mean, I’ve been, so I actually, you know, when I went to college, I started working as a freshman for a company called College works painting, and then it worked in there for six years. And in that experience, like you basically you run a small painting business, kind of like an internship program. And so that was my first experience with with marketing, which I sort of put quotes around, because there was a lot of door knocking, because it’s like going out knocking on doors, putting fliers out, you know, all that stuff. And, you know, it’s going going away is back at this point. But the reason I bring that up is because I basically had been working in marketing ever since. And so it’s something that I’ve been good at, in some areas, you know, really bad at and others. What happened though, is I actually started a company, man, it’s been almost eight years, I think, at this point. And what we did is we would put out flyers for other businesses, right? So we got working with real estate agents. As a result of that, because of the concept of farming, we had this cool sticky flyer, you could like stick right in the middle of a front door, very, you know, I get kind of catching. And so we started working with them and started doing this farming stuff. And that was, that was probably about six years ago. And it was right when video was really starting to emerge as a marketing tool for small businesses. And so there was kind of this big, this big kind of moment in time where you can start to run your own Facebook, video ads, you can start to run YouTube ads, and very few small businesses were even kind of aware of these possibilities. And so we kind of went to these agents who you’re working with to in these flyers. And part of it was we didn’t want to be out there, you know, putting fliers on doors for the rest of our lives are like, well, what can we do, it’s a little bit more sustainable. And so we started making videos with them, and you know, bringing them into our studio and coaching them on camera. And you know, a lot of it ended up being sort of psychological stuff, you know, getting over that fear of the camera getting over their, you know, qualms about seeing themselves on that video screen. And then three years ago, right around the beginning of the pandemic, actually a little before that, we started to realize, you know, hey, these people are common, we’re making a video with them, you think this would kick start this, this sort of brand effort, hey, I’m going to use video everywhere, I’m gonna start, you know, sending sending my clients video messages and start making social media videos, you know, and it wasn’t happening, you know, and that’s, that’s what kind of led us to saying, well, there’s a gap here, you know, there’s something people are missing, or they misunderstanding, you know, how to use video is that the technical steps? And the more research we did it was there was sort of all of it, you know, and we said, Okay, well, we need to build a training program for this, we need to start teaching people how to use this, this new form of communication, which is the way that we saw it. And so timing, it worked out perfect, because we actually, we built a course and piloted it, we launched that December of 2019. And so like, within three months, the pandemic swept the country. And I mean, literally, we got shut down, we weren’t, we weren’t allowed to make videos with people for a couple months. And that that was a forced pivot, obviously. But we sort of immediately said, Alright, let’s start doing this training. We got this course, let’s see, we can do we brought some partners in, I think we had 900 people come through that first course within about three months, you know, so it’s like, okay, there’s clearly clearly a need for what we’re doing here. And we’ve just been kind of running ever since.
D.J. Paris 8:32
I, that’s amazing. I remember back, really, before video was so prevalent in social media, in particular, when you would go to do anything in the video, they would typically ask you, have you been media trained? Right, that was that was the the old age sort of skill set that have you been you’ve been in front of a camera before? This is really before, we all just had, you know, high definition cameras in our pockets that could you know, take almost comparable shots with, you know, with these $20,000 cameras. And so it used to be a thing where you’re like, No, you really do need to get trained, you need to know what to say and what not to say. And you still do need to get trained. But thankfully, the barrier to entry obviously has, you know, your phone, which everyone has. And so let’s I think first what would probably make the most sense for our audience is let’s set let’s make the case for video. And when I when we talk about video, let’s define what what we’re talking about. Why Why should Realtors be focused on video this year?
Nick Niehaus 9:41
Yeah, and I love that question because I think you know, a lot of folks they get into tactics or strategy way too fast, you know, in a lot of these conversations that go straight to like, alright, what kind of videos should I make? And that was one thing that stood out to me when we first started the school and we started looking into Hey, what exists out there is that a lot of the recorded presentations, a lot of the top you know stuff people were talking on was just so far down the path in our eyes, you know, sort of like, hey, they’re skipping a lot of steps here. And no wonder people are thinking they should do these things, but they’re not taking action because they’re, they’re overwhelmed. They’re confused, you know, and it’s kind of a byproduct of the way it’s being talked about. So. So yeah, I think I think taking a step back and asking ourselves like, well, what, what is it? What is video, right? I mean, so that’s where I started, like, in my mind, video is a form of communication, I think it’s important to see it that way. Because everything we do to communicate with someone remotely, right, so if I’m gonna send a text and email, used to be sending letters, we don’t do much of that anymore. But you know, letters, all that kind of stuff. It was all it was all kind of created to supplement or, you know, sort of replace a face to face conversation, right? So the only reason we ever do any of these other kinds of communication is because we can’t be physically face to face with that other person, right? So if we, if we sort of say, Okay, well, ideally, I get into the same room I’m sitting across from the table, we all know that when we’re in that context, we’re able to build relationships the most effectively, we’re able to close deals at the highest rate, all of that stuff is kind of maximized. Well, that’s what video simulates better than anything else, you know. So when we compare it to a phone call, all this kind of stuff, the only form of communication we have available that feels as close to a face to face conversation is clearly video, right? And that has has a ton to do with trust. So when I can see somebody I mean, there’s actually a part of my brains called the fusiform gyrus that recognizes other people’s faces, and it stores that information and tells us, Hey, I’ve seen this person before. There’s an element of how many times right, if it’s somebody, I’ve seen a bunch, I automatically trust you. Because my brain says, Hey, this must be somebody who’s sort of part of my tribe, right? I see them every day, or I see him every
D.J. Paris 11:48
day, they’re safe, because I see them visually. They’re in my visual space occasionally. Yep.
Nick Niehaus 11:55
Right. And we evolved, I mean, that’s what’s interesting is like, throughout evolution, like we have not evolved to understand really any of these other forms of communication. So our brains at a at a fundamental level, when they see a person’s face, they the only thing that your brain can really understand is that person must be in the room with me, you know, so consciously, we know it’s not, but most of our brain is non conscious, right? It’s sort of,
D.J. Paris 12:19
it bypasses a little bit of, of those critical factors of the brain. So when we see someone, especially, you’re so right, because it’s not even just face, I think, I think when people are taking full body videos, it’s like, all of a sudden, we know what their, their physical being looks like. And just like we would with an actor, or somebody on television, we feel connected in some small way, consciously or unconsciously, simply because we, our brain thinks you know that, that yeah, you’re right. We’re in close proximity with them, even though we’re not.
Nick Niehaus 12:57
Yeah. And that’s huge. And it’s actually I emphasize this a lot in our trainings when it talks about how you frame yourself in a video, right? So a lot of folks like, if they send a video to somebody, their head is for some reason, in the bottom half of the frame, you’ve probably seen this where it’s like, you know, vertical video and their heads right out of the bottom, and they go space above it, you know, for for no reason. And a lot of it’s just they don’t know how to hold the phone, or they feel a little uncomfortable about putting their body out there. But that takes away from that experience. Right? So rather like that, that makes my brain question what’s going on? Now? I’m kind of like, well, I think I’m talking to this person, but like, it’s just their head floating there, which is kind of weird, right? So yeah, I think the more any kind of video I mean, this, this goes for public stuff, it goes for the more more intimate one to one video messages, you know, you should try to sort of appear like you would in front of that person if you were sitting across the table, right? So you want to incorporate some of your body, you want to make sure your face is large enough that they can read all your facial expressions, you know, you want to be somewhat careful about lighting, but mostly just so they can clearly see your face not because you have to look perfect, but you need to make sure they can see you just like they would if they were face to face. And if you do that, I mean that it’s a game changer, right? I mean, this is like I love sending video messages. Like I love to send people like Happy birthday videos. 10 seconds long. It’s such a perfect example of this, because then they see me, right, they have that sort of mini experience of having this kind of really quick face to face chat. But they remember it for months. I mean, I’ve had people that I’ll send him a birthday video one year, and a year later, I miss it. And they’re sending me a message like, Hey, where’s my birthday video, you know, because they remember from the year before, right? So there’s all that there’s all that stuff that’s going on in the human mind. And the reality is, once you get used to doing this, a lot of people look at video and they’re timid about it. And they kind of put it off because of that. But once you get used to using especially video kind of as a one to one or one to just a few people form of communication. It doesn’t take any more time. Right? So the time it takes to sit in front of a camera and say, Hey, let me give you a quick update on the transaction. Here’s what’s going on. In my experience. It’s actually fun faster than typing it out. Because I’m, you know, I type and I make some mistakes, I gotta go fix it, and you gotta overthink what you’re saying and make sure they don’t misinterpret what you wrote with a video, you don’t have to worry about that people understand it better, we actually comprehend more information when we can watch a person talking versus just reading the text on the screen. So that I mean, you know, we could sort of create a huge laundry list of sort of all the benefits for it. But I think at a fundamental level, that’s what you have to remind yourself is, hey, this is it’s not out. It’s not always a performance, right? It can be a performance, just like you can write a blog post that might get read by 1000s of people. But we can also send a text or an email, right? And we don’t we don’t overthink those things, we just do it, it’s just part of our day to day experience. That’s where I think people really need to focus on videos, how how do you just make it a normal thing you do as part of your day to day communication. And if you start there, number one, you see benefits a lot faster, it has an impact immediately. And then you also gets so much more comfortable on camera. So when it comes, you know, a few weeks later, a few months later, when you’re getting ready to build that YouTube channel or build that Tiktok you’re you’re much more comfortable, you’re much more confident on camera, and you just move a lot faster because of that. So I think there’s you know, I think a lot of us have sort of mix that up, we sort of started on the heart and and we need to sort of reset a little bit and come back to the beginning.
D.J. Paris 16:16
Boy, you just said so much. And my brain is spinning a little bit because I was thinking we were going to really pretty much exclusively talk about how to do video better on social media. And you said something? And of course, you do teach that but I am you said something that that really resonated with me today. Specifically, because it’s just happened to me just before we started our show. So this is so perfect, because you were talking about using video for more regular communication. So yes, of course, there’s a social media sort of strategy there. And, you know, people, realtors are always trying to figure out how much of my personal life do I display do I put on display on my Facebook page and Instagram, etc. But you’re saying we’re really talking about as a different thing right now, which I think is really critical. Because this just happened to me before our show, which was you can send one to one messages to people because we think about branding and like I’m gonna put this out on Facebook, everyone’s gonna see it like you said, 1000s of people might read a blog post or see a video. But then there’s also one to one communication and I just received I will tell you, I we get pitched by advertisers, guests every single day on our show, a publicists, you know, whoever may reach out, you know, hey, book, our guests, I got it. This is probably happened in five years. I’ve out of 1000s of pitches. I’ve probably had this happen five times out of 1000s, no joke. And it was, hey, I made a video for you. I want you to check this out. I didn’t know if this was a guest. I didn’t know if it was a vendor. I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know what it was could have been a spam message. I had no idea. But he’s like, Hey, DJ, are actually wasn’t even meant to me. It’s for a producer. But but there was like, hey, zonna Check this out. And this guy has this company where he does computerized or robotic handwritten, you know, cards and notes and things anyway, and he was like, hey, DJ, I want to show this to you. I think there’s got to be a good fit for your show. Now, because I watched his 35 second video where he kind of like, I’m like, Oh, I know this guy. I instantly liked him. And and I don’t know anything about him, he might be a horrible human being. He might be, he might actually not be a good human being. I don’t know. But I liked him instantly. Because he took the time to make a video. I can’t even explain why I liked him. But there’s this unconscious part of the brain that when some when you do see somebody, you have a tendency to want to connect with them. And so there’s a visual component that bypasses even logic, like I don’t know this guy, he’s just some dude trying to get on my show, which happens all day long. Why do I really want and by the way, he’s not the only person with this exact kind of business. There’s lots of businesses that have these robotic things that handwriting, so it’s not even a unique value proposition. But for some reason I got so excited that he made me a video he made me though, it took him probably a minute to do it. It was crazy effective had he had just written me and said, Hey, I’ve got this thing I probably would have been like, no, there was something that lit up my brain automatically. The fact that I got a video message a one to one video message. And I know that isn’t necessarily the purpose of our conversation. But it just happened to me and it really affected. It affected the way we were like I’m like just bought it immediately book him.
Nick Niehaus 19:50
Wow. And from that. No, I mean, I love that actually. I mean, I think realistically I mean there’s a lot of people talking about how to do video for social media. I mean that you know, because because you can There’s a whole career of influencer, right? So there’s people out there whose job is to grow a following on social media. And I think it’s it’s a little bit unfortunate that so many business owners are looking to those people, and they’re learning about video from them, you know, I mean, then there’s, you know, they’re not all bad. It’s not a comment that they shouldn’t be doing that. But it’s a distraction. I think that’s the real problem, right, is that there are you know, I actually put out a sort of small survey on LinkedIn the other day, I was curious was like, Well, hey, remember when email first came out? You know, it’s been about 30 years at this point, right? But it’s like, remember, when it first came out? How did you use it initially? Did you send email to a single person at a time? Did you send it to like small groups? Or did you blast out, you know, massive newsletters to 1000s of people? And obviously, every single person said, I sent emails to just one person, right? Yeah. And we miss that step with video. Right? So we got, we got to the Yeah, so it’s like we started on on the other end of the spectrum, because a lot of that, I think, is because we all grew up with, I sort of define it as three primary categories of video, maybe just to, obviously, movies, television, and then some of us home videos, right. So some people will say, like, well, one, my dad had a camera, and he recorded us all the time. So they were on camera, but as you know, very intimate setting. And I think what happened is that a lot of us as we started to realize, hey, we have cameras in our pockets. Now we’ve got these tools available. We thought about the kinds of video we had the most experience with, right? So of course, we sort of immediately went to public facing video television shows stuff that, you know, 1000s Millions of people might see and talk about intimidating, right? I mean, and I did the same thing my very first video ever made, I put on Facebook, you know, I may have even put some money behind it. So I’ve seen by quite a few people. And it took me months. I mean, I went out and I bought equipment. And I set up a little mini studio and all this all stuff I tell our students not to do now. I did it. And it took me forever. But I still you know, I’m a fairly early adopter. So this was still six years ago at this point. But yeah, I mean, the further I got into it, the more I realized, like, Well, cool, that was great. And if I do that, consistently, I can do this branding thing. And you know, that all worked, especially over a long term period of time. But then I started sending video messages, you know, and that and that’s, that’s your example. I’ve had that happen a bunch of times. I mean, I had, you know, I was a totally new entity in the real estate space, because we weren’t, we weren’t working with realtors, and we sort of made this pivot into real estate. And for anybody who’s ever done that, you know, you kind of know how hard it can be to get through that front door. You know, obviously, real estate agents get pitched all the time, there’s all kinds of salespeople trying to sell to him. And so I was sending these video messages to brokers saying, Hey, can I come in and do a presentation for your agents and talk about video and I was putting a video in those emails, you know, and I got booked, I got a lot of doors opened. And you know, I’ve even had people tell me like, this is the most effective cold email I’ve ever gotten, you know, now granted, they’ve gotten more video emails since then. I’m not the only one doing it in St. Louis at this point. But I think there’s there’s another part of this kind of coming back to your example that is, is really urgent, you know, because there’s, there’s lots of reasons to get started doing this stuff right away. One thing that happens today, though, is that when somebody sees you make them a 32nd video that was just for them, they still have the same reaction of hey, this, this feels like television. And so they look at it, and they go, I would be too intimidated to do that. So that that is that additional layer of sort of like wow, like, you know, somebody’s used to make a video, it’s quicker than writing an email. So for them, they’re like literally saving time. And then the recipient is going oh my gosh, what an Impressive, impressive effort feels
D.J. Paris 23:39
like Saudi did something big, like when I saw this, right, this guy was it was in his warehouse with all of his machines, you know, scribbling robotic hands writing letters, and I was like, wow, look, I’m getting a behind the scenes tour. Of in literally all he does pull his phone out of his pockets. adj that’d be Yeah, you’re right. It seemed like a bigger deal to me than it than the effort that he put in. So the, the reaction you get is actually amplified more than the effort that’s put in, in theory, right?
Nick Niehaus 24:14
Yeah, yeah. And obviously, you know, you can’t know if that’s going to happen with every person, if you email somebody who’s a professional, you know, TV presenter or something, they’re not going to be as impressed. But that is, I mean, that’s a big deal. I mean, that’s especially like we this is why we talked so much about birthday videos, because every single person that gets that video from him, it was so little pressure on your part, right? I mean, you can literally go to Facebook, on your phone on the app, and you get a list of everybody’s birthday and literally next to each name is a messenger button, you click that now you’re in a one on one chat with them. And there’s also a video recording feature built into the messenger app, you know, so you basically hold the button down you say a few words and you click send and you can send 10 of these in like five minutes or less. I mean, that is you know, in terms of habits because obviously everything you want to do you as much of it as possible should become a habit makes a lot easier for you. I mean, that is a very, very easy habit to form you know, as a every day. But as I get my coffee or as I have lunch or you know, you’re tied to something already doing daily, I’m going to pull my phone and we’ll look at the list of birthdays, I’m gonna send one to anybody who I want to say that to you not to do it all your friends, but But I mean, imagine like somebody has been dragging their feet on making their first video, and they’ve been building this this Megan in this big mountain that they’re having trouble kind of overcoming. Start there two weeks from now you’ve you’ve made 30 videos, you know, you’ve increased the awareness with 30 people substantially, you’re developing those relationships, you may already have business from that outreach, even though all you’re doing is saying happy birthday, just from being top of mind, we had a we had an agent pick up like a $3 million listing a few weeks after sending somebody a happy birthday video, right? So you might have results already. And it’s like, I just I I can see, I see people sometimes almost kick themselves because they thought five years ago, they should start using video and they spent the past five years, procrastinating essentially right sort of finding reasons to keep waiting. And all it’s harder than I thought, Oh, it’s you know, it’s instant. It’s intimidating. And then they send these birthday messages and like, wow, this I should have started five years ago, you know, like, this is not there’s nothing about this. That’s hard. And it has such an incredible impact. You know, and I think that it just resonates with people. But the the urgency I was talking about is that more every week more businesses are doing this, you know, and I think if you do it first in your industry and the first customer, the customers are kind of getting video messages from you first. The advantage of that, like you you’re an innovator, this is stuff people go tell their friends about I mean, wow, you’re the hotshot agent in town. If you wait another six months, another year, another couple years, there will be other businesses doing it. And now all you’re doing is catching up, right? You don’t you don’t have the innovation. So the benefits still there. But you don’t set yourself apart the same way, right?
D.J. Paris 26:47
Boy, I agree with all of that. I actually think the one to one sort of option that we’re talking about one to one, meaning I’m going to produce a video for one person, in this case, the example of the happy birthday. This, this is such I’m only giggling because it is it I think about this, I was thinking about this, as you were talking that every year, of course, I have a birthday and Facebook tells you know the world that it’s my birthday, and I get you know, however many people say happy birthday, and I you know, 100 or whatever it is. And it’s lovely. And I’m so grateful for that. I get exactly zero video messages from anybody who say, you know, hey, I noticed it was your birthday today Happy Birthday, even if it was a 15 second message? Do I remember who out of those 100? Who wrote me on my Facebook page? Happy birthday? No, I mean, you know, whatever. It’s probably the same people every every year, I would remember who who made me a 15 second video because it would be the only video. And you’re right, it is a simple and easy thing. And it’s also a great way to get introduced to video if you’re not comfortable in front of the camera, because there’s really nothing at stake. You’re just like, Hey, happy birthday. And that is it. You know, you can use there’s other social media platforms that that can be used to prompt things like this. So birthday on Facebook? Absolutely. Like you said, go there every day. Look, first of all friend everybody you know, on Facebook and Instagram and or Instagram doesn’t have birthdays, but or maybe they do I don’t know. But But LinkedIn, LinkedIn does something very interesting where they show you when people have work anniversaries. So that’s another huge opportunity. Oh, I just saw you, you know, your fifth year at such and such company. Congratulations, hope you’re doing well. Or promotions or new jobs or you know, other life events. LinkedIn is really good. So that’s another place where you could find reasons to do that one to one short video. Why, you know, I’ve we’ve been doing this podcast for five or six years now. Nobody has talked about one to one videos. I am so one to one video messaging, I am really, really grateful to for you for this because it’s kind of blowing my mind.
Nick Niehaus 29:06
Yeah, well, I mean, I this is one of those things, too. It’s like, this is why I like you know, what was in our school, like, I get to focus 100% on video, my job is to learn about video and all different ways to use it and you know, kind of be as much of an expert as I can. And it’s an incredibly broad category. I mean, there are so many different kinds of video. But yeah, I mean, that was one thing that I’ve still been, I mean, the companies that make these tools like you know, just to name a few like, you know, bom bom dub, Vinyard loom, right? They, you know, they all kind of do similar things now, I mean, they talk about this stuff, obviously, you know, they some of these companies have written books and whatnot. But I don’t know if it’s just that people will just hear that as hey, you’re just trying to sell your product and so they tune it out or what, but when I’m listening to and I’m trying some of this stuff and I’m talking to some these power users, I mean, it’s it’s a no brainer. You know, a lot of the folks that I’ve seen that they get into a habit and hey, I did this for three Three weeks, I am never turning back, I will never stop using this tool like my clients are all understanding me better, my customer service has improved drastically, I’m getting more referrals, I’m getting more repeat business, it impacts everything. And here we are, and everybody’s still talking about tick tock and YouTube and all this other stuff, you know, and it’s not, you know, it’s like, I think we get stuck in this hole, one or the other type of mentality, it’s not the don’t ever do those things, there’s just so much more benefit to be had in the short term, especially from this much more intimate, you know, much higher touch kind of kind of experience, you know, and so as soon as Yeah, I mean, I’ve, we actually, you know, as we started to understand more of this, we sort of we created our curriculum and our school to focus on it, I mean, we, we sort of redeveloped our entire process, and we said, look, you start with video messages, you know, we actually have sort of four strategies we recommend people implement, so they start with video messages, they get that, you know, make that a regular part of how you talk to people, you know, to the point where it’s like, you just can’t help but reply by video, when it’s appropriate, then you start to incorporate video, basically, sort of scale yourself with video now, so this is like your, your FA Q’s, you know, like training for employees, if you tend to have employees on the team, you know, think things where you’re, you’re saying the same thing more than once in a several month long. Period, right. And so then that at that point, then those videos out is intimidating, you know, it’s not as hard they come because you have all this experience on camera now, you know, and then it’s like, so then the third one is, is build a video marketing funnel, something that you you control that’s designed that you can sort of predict the outcome from that you can, you know, put people in at the top and expect a certain amount of results to come out the bottom. And then once all that is in place, that’s when we recommend doing the social media stuff, you know, and if you do it that way, then all that new attention you generate from hopefully cross your fingers getting, you know, going viral on social media, then all that attention, which by the way, is more likely, because you’re you’re good on camera, you know how to make a good video at this point, you know, that that drives those people into a system, right, so then they hit your marketing funnel, they get, they get nurtured by that automatically, they come in your loot, you’re using video to convert the leads, so they’re seeing, you’re continuing to see you, you know, it’s like, it’s always, it’s always been kind of weird to me, that we have these folks out there that have all this video from a marketing perspective and running video ads or doing social media video, and then somebody comes into their system, and they stop seeing them on camera, you know, how all of a sudden everything’s just text and email, you know, and I’m always just kind like, when they’re kind of weird, like, you know, they already know you at this point, they’re seeing you on camera all these times, you know, and all of a sudden, the communication becomes less personal feeling like, that’s interesting and disorienting. You know, so I think we do it the other way around, you know, it just continues to feel like I’m just getting to know this person that much more. And yeah, I mean, I just the just the efficiency of this stuff, you know, getting to a point where by the time that person calls you and they say Okay, I’m ready to sell my house, like they’re well educated, they’ve been watching you. I mean, you know, we hear examples all the time people talking about like the the father in law, disrupting a transaction or something, it’s like, well, now you can educate people ahead of time before they ever even contact you. And they can forward those videos to their, their relative and say, Hey, you’re, you’re wrong, stop trying to tell me all this stuff, you know. But yeah, there’s just there’s so many different ways that this has an impact. And I think if you go in that order, if you sort of start with the simpler stuff that’s more direct, and then you build to the more public facing stuff. I think it all just just works more cohesively makes a lot more sense to your customers, right?
D.J. Paris 33:27
It does. And it’s really a quite a shift of process if you’re going to really think so you start with the easy quick video messages, the one to one, celebrate celebratory stuff or the universe, you know, things that are easy quick and you can you can just do daily, happy birthday, happy anniversary, but all those kinds of happy home anniversary, whatever, you do those and just a really quick procedural question. Because I’d love to get your thoughts so you mentioned you know, like, you go to facebook you see here’s five people’s birthdays today you make five videos. Are you sending them the video via Facebook Messenger which is you said you know, you could do or are you texting it to them? So that it’s been my experience that people open S texts more often then like Facebook Messenger, but curious on what you might suggest for like a happy birthday video.
Nick Niehaus 34:28
Yeah, I think you’re looking in that situation at a trade off between convenience versus impact. Right. So I think if number one, I don’t have the phone numbers of a lot of my Facebook friends so because of that I just have to send a message that’s kind of the first question is what do you have in terms of contact info? I also because it’s so fluid, you know, and I have all kinds of qualms with Facebook but not to get into that some of the stuff they do is really effective right? So the birthday things I mean, that’s been one of their their home runs from basically day one right? They got it ready to give them their per day. And that’s been one of the things that keeps people engaged in the platform, the fluidity of basically looking at the list clicking I mean tonight, and if you’re listening to this, like, try this sometime, you’ll see how fluid it is, right? It’s like you go in, there’s the messenger button, you click it, you click the button for the video, camera turns on, you hold it down, you record hits that I mean, and then you just hit the back button two or three times, and you’re back on the list. Right. So that yeah, so I’m always looking to kind of like, if I tell somebody to do it certain ways, like, are they going to do it, you know, that that’s obviously a challenge you run to with coaching quite a bit. Right? So that would be that’s the first thing I would say. Now, you are right, though, which is that people are going to be more likely to see the text message, right. So I think the way I would sort of think about it is like if you have a core group, you know, so you’ve got maybe like those 20 3040, people that are like, they’re the ones that pass you the referrals, they’re the ones that are repeat customers, the ones you really want to stay, you know, 100% in front of, that might be worth sending them a text, you know, and then even then even following up, if you don’t hear anything back from your student 100%, sort of certain that they’re going to get it everybody else, I think just doing it through Facebook is probably fine. Mostly because it is just so easy to do. And it’s a lot easier to build a habit because of that. So I could set an alarm on my phone for 9am. Every day it goes off, I go to Facebook, boom, send my five or 10 messages, and I’m done. So I would say you know, think of it that way, right? What’s going to be sort of the most, what are you gonna be able to execute on regularly.
D.J. Paris 36:28
I also, that’s a great answer. And I also love the idea of sort of jumping ahead a bit to having these sort of intro videos as well. So now that you’re going to be doing this regular, happy birthday, happy anniversary, kind of kind of, you know, event focused, you know, videos, you can also then create longer form videos that can be reused. So hey, you know, here are 10 questions that first time homebuyers tend to ask, I’m going to send this to you, I’m going to send you this video, which will maybe answer some of your questions. So I don’t waste your time later on, you sort of I guess you package it around, this is to help you and us, you know, be more efficient or effective, and provide value along the way as I made this little 510 minute video, which is here’s some pitfalls to avoid, or whatever, or here’s how to prepare for our meeting, or here’s what how the process works. It could really be anything that a realtor has found that their clients continually ask about. So that could be like the basis for how do I come up with these videos? Like what’s the content? Think about the questions you’re most commonly asked. And then you can make videos about that and say, Hey, I’m gonna send this to you ahead of time. And yeah, I’m always available, you can call me anytime, of course, too. But I want to sort of start edge leading you down a path and providing content to you that’s relevant and valuable. Instead of you having to ask me, I’m going to be pushing this to you proactively.
Nick Niehaus 38:03
Yeah, yeah. And I love that. I mean, that’s where, you know, it’s a shame, because I feel like a lot of times in these sort of business contexts, you have to talk about doing something from almost always from the standpoint of making more money or growing your business, right, like, that’s the hook, right. But it’s a little bit too bad, because video is so effective for customer service, you know, and I’d love to be talking more about that. And there are obviously a lot of agents that care about that. But that’s the place where of all the impacts it has. And there’s there’s I mean, you can you can double and triple E conversion, and just the numbers, you know, in terms of what video does are kind of mind blowing. But the customer service part is really crazy to me, because you can preempt I mean, you can give people an experience where they feel like you’re you’re reading their mind, right, because you know what they’re going to ask, you know, what the processes are, you know, are the sticking points in a real estate transaction are going to be, and this can all be automated, I mean, so it’s this incredible experience where somebody comes in, and every couple days or whatever the right touch frequency is they’re getting, you know, hey, by the way, the next thing is going to happen is this, and here’s me explaining it to you and, you know, video allows you to show versus just tell, you know, so you can talk about, we’re going to fill out this document, here it is, here’s what it looks like, here’s where you’re going to put this information. This is why you need to have this number figured out. Because it’s going to go here in this document. I mean, the sense of clarity that that creates for people is is immense. And you cannot do it. I mean, it’s almost one of those things where you can’t even really do it in person. I mean, you can make a video that has like multiple different clips in it that cuts from one kind of, you know, piece of paper to another this is obviously getting a little more advanced, but you can you can design it in such a way that it actually explains things in a way that’s more fluid and more easy to understand that even if you were sitting in front of that person and showing them the papers, you know, so I think when you do that, this is the kind of thing that then people come in the door they come in as a lead or maybe they become a customer, they start getting this communication, but it is you Do and I think that’s the part a lot folks overlook is like, they’re not just getting an email with this text in it that could have been written by anybody, they’re actually listening to you, they’re watching you there, as far as their brain knows they’re sitting there across the table from you, while you explain all of this to them, you know, so it’s building the relationship, so you’re helping them, they appreciate that you’re informing them, this is the smoothest real estate transaction they’ve ever been involved in. But they’re also getting to know you. And so it’s almost and I’ll tell you, I experienced this myself all the time. Now, it’s a little weird, then when you meet that person, because they know you there’s it’s called the parasocial relationship, they already have a relationship with you, though, as far as their brain knows, they’ve talked to you several times already. And that’s all going to be there, you know, so So once you do that on a regular basis, for a few months, like don’t, don’t be surprised that a lot of these folks come in, and they’re much friendlier, they’re much more comfortable, you know, they’re not at all considering working with another agent anymore, like they’ve already hired you in their head, and just talk about, I mean, you’re gonna find a better fit, you’re gonna have more of the right people choose to hire you, you’re gonna have higher lead conversion, transactions going a lot smoother, I mean, just just so many different things. And then one additional part I’ll just sort of throw into there is I really, like these are all pre recorded, right? So that’s great, you know, tell me about the process. But if you ever run into something that’s especially like frustrating or has a lot of emotion to it, that’s where you really want to use video, right? So if you’re going to share bad news, like, oh, they didn’t accept the offer, you know, that sort of thing, record a video message, because the empathy is substantially higher on video, right? So that they can, you know, so even even phone calls, you could call somebody, but then watching your face and seeing your facial expressions, and being able to read that empathy on your face, that does still go much further. So I think that’s another place you can incorporate it to, to really, you know, maximize that that sort of sense of, hey, this person has the bases covered, they’re totally in control, I can trust them completely. And that I mean, just in terms of the enjoyability, so to speak of the process and working with your customers, it really helps.
D.J. Paris 42:08
Wow, I mean, we’re almost talking a little bit of kind of a mini revolution here and communication, like change. Oh, yeah. Like, we’re really talking about one to one video communication, whether it’s pre recorded or live, there is something that activates and lights up our brain and makes us feel connected to the other person. And through repetition, whether it’s, again, whether it’s pre recorded or live, you start the brain starts to sort of build these neural pathways of familiarity. So all of a sudden, we’re like, Oh, I know, I know, Nick, I seen it all the time. is familiar to me, which familiar nice, comfortable, which means non threatening, which is, which is typically a gateway to the ability to sell somebody something, right. So trust, we’re now talking about, you know, know, like and trust. And I think you’re, you’re really on the cusp of this and agents that can start to move away from that. And not that there’s anything wrong with texting, if that’s appropriate for a relationship great. But you can pepper in, like, I love the idea of the bad news video message. So let’s do a real like a use case example. So I’m a realtor, my client loses this bid that they put in this this offer to buy a home, I have to give them bad news. Now. Would you recommend I do that live video? Would you recommend a pre recorded video? What do you think is? And again, it could be anything, every relationship is different. But what’s a general rule of thumb on something like that?
Nick Niehaus 43:50
Yeah, I mean, I think that one’s that one’s going to depend on the customer a little bit. I think it depends on sort of the question, the difference between those two is that when you when you try to get on like a video chat with them, you’re interrupting them. So it’s like a phone call. That’s one of the disadvantages of phone calls. They have to answer and you’re disrupting their day.
D.J. Paris 44:09
And they might not be, they might not be in a place where physically they want to be seen.
Nick Niehaus 44:14
Yeah, they might not want to be on camera, you know, they might not feel you know, so. But that being said, depending on the type of client, like they might prefer that because they want to ask questions, they want to, you know, they want to be able to dig in a little bit on it. On the other hand, if you pre record it, they can watch it at any time. You can be succinct, you can get straight to the point, you know, you can get right to the news right off the bat. So it really just depends on how the previous communication has been going. Right. So I think the thing to look at there is like, Is this somebody who calls you you know, do they like having a lot of conversations on the phone? Have you done zoom meetings with them? In that case, I would say hey, would you mind hopping on Zoom for a couple minutes want to give you an update on on the situation here, right? Sure. And again, that’s one where you want to get to a quick because you don’t want them you know, waiting for hours to get that info. On the other hand, if it’s somebody who’s been doing a lot of texting with you, or things like email, which are, you know, we call it asynchronous, right? So it’s something you should do, you can watch it anytime it doesn’t have to happen right at that moment, then a pre recorded message is probably going to be better for them.
D.J. Paris 45:14
I love that too. And at the end of a pre recorded message, you can always say, I’m going to call you in a couple hours, to just to check in on you as well. But I wanted I didn’t want to wait for this, I didn’t want to wait a couple hours, I wanted to get get this information over to you immediately. That is, that’s huge. All of this, all of this is huge. It I guess, at the end of the day, it demonstrates care concern, effort, whether it’s warranted or not, is another conversation meaning for some reason, our, our physicality, our the way that we are built as humans, we just like that we just like getting one on one videos. I mean, it’s just kind of how it how we’re wired. So if forget about anything other than it just, it used to be It felt good to get and it still does feels good to get a handwritten letter, those are sure pretty much done. Now, although I still think that that is an amazing thing. But what’s taking its place is these one to one videos, I think, and they’re still very rare. So if you can make a one to one video process, again, start with birthdays, start with home anniversaries, start with, you know, hope your kids are going doing well, when they’re going back to school this fall, you know, whatever it could be, it’s your kid’s birthday, happy birthday, whatever you need to get this information put in and you can do those all day long. And even if you had just did that, if nothing else, if all you did was birthdays, and any other you know, life event stuff that you know, I bet you’d get I bet you’d get business just just from doing that. And obviously that’s like 1% of what you actually do, and still learn the other 99% that is what Nick and his company is going to teach you. So Nick, tell us about about the service. And and you know, what it entails and why our listeners should be checking it out.
Nick Niehaus 47:13
Yeah, I mean, I think the the main thing to understand about Business Video School is you know, it’s a school for real estate agents, it’s about 95% of our students are real estate agents. And we teach pretty much all aspects of video. Now I will say we’re not for the video expert. So if you’ve been making video for five years, and you’ve already got a YouTube channel with hundreds or 1000s of followers, that kind of stuff, like, you know, there’s people to help you. And we certainly could, but that’s not who we’re built for. We’re built for the beginner. So beginner and intermediate, right. So folks that are, you know, having trouble making your first video, or maybe you’ve made a few, but it hasn’t become a habit. Everything we do is about building video habits, right. So just you know, kind of a quick overview of what we have included, there’s a lot so you don’t do you don’t kind of come in and try to take it all at once. But we’ve got nine different courses, some of which we teach live on a monthly or quarterly basis, we have something called video recipes, which is a script and example of us doing the video ourselves. So you can imitate our delivery style. It’s all the instructions on how to make it it’s the social media posts, it’s any sort of assets like music that might go in the video. So it’s basically all the ingredients, you need to make a video and make a new one of those every week. And then we do things a lot of fun stuff. Like we have challenges every month, we split up into teams kind of compete to make different themed videos, we have q&a sessions live q&a is you can come on to if you ever get stuck. And then a community you know, I think the community is a big part of it. It’s just a bunch of folks that or it’s very much no judgment. You know, this was a lot of folks, Sharon, I this is my first video ever made, you know, what do you think? And obviously, there’s lots of things they can improve. But we’re just there to encourage them when they’re first getting started, obviously. So I think that that’s really what you got to look at is that video, it’s a form of communication, and it is going to take some time to really start to understand and implement fully. So we work with folks sort of incrementally speaking so you can come in, you take a class or two you work on implementing you come in with your Q and A’s and you need them. And that’s why we set it up as a membership because we felt like hey, it’d be nice if it’s not just a course you don’t just buy something and it sits on your computer and you got nobody to talk to you like we wanted to have that community want to have the support the ability to come in and kind of get your questions answered. And that’s what it comes down to you know, so a video is a concern. You know, if it’s something that you want to do more with, I strongly recommend you come check us out. I mean, obviously, it’s one of those things that the sooner you do it, the more benefit you’re going to get. Because it is only increasing more and more people are doing this stuff every day. So I think we we did create a coupon code so if you’re listening and you want to save 10% Just use the code keep it real when you check it out, and you’ll save 10% on your monthly membership.
D.J. Paris 49:46
Yeah, so everyone please go visit biz video school.com bi Z video school.com link to that in the show notes, use the coupon code, keep it real and get 10% off on the monthly membership, which guys, it’s, it’s less than 100 bucks a month. And imagine if it just, you know, for a year What’s that? We’ll say it’s $1,200. It’s less than that, actually. Let’s just say it helps you get one additional deal. What’s that, on average, maybe $7,000 of commission. So I’d spend $1,000 To make $7,000. Guys, please please do this video is, is what people are. There’s a little bit of a desert of the last three years of interpersonal communication, intimacy, physical interactions, right? We, we even now, we are still recovering from this lack of, of in person stuff. Video is the closest thing we have to simulating real life interactions. It works way better than text, an email, and other even voice, you know, voice voice messages. So please consider doing this. You don’t have to have a big production studio. You don’t have to have special lighting. You just have to be willing to start this process. But let the guys at biz Video School, Nick and his team help you do this. We’re big fans. You know, this is the biz Video School has been around for a while they are huge. labcoat agents is a big fan of you guys. They’re the largest online community for for Facebook. So I know that that this is this is definitely a great service. So I encourage everyone out there to check it out this video school.com Use promo code keep it real? Well, this is perfect timing. I know. Nick is heading off to his next meeting. So we will wrap up this episode. We want to thank Nick on behalf of all of our listeners and our viewers. For all what you contributed to the show today. Thank you for all of your great content. And also on behalf of Nick and myself. We want to thank our viewers and listeners for continuing to support and listen. Support our show, please tell a friend think of one other realtor that could benefit from hearing this great conversation with Nick send them over to our website keeping it real pod.com Every episode we’ve ever done can be streamed right from a browser and sign up for Nick’s abyss video. school.com Use promo code keep it real and let’s get your video up and running. This is the year to do one to one video. Nick, thank you so much for being on the show. And we will see everybody on the next episode. Thanks, Nick.
Nick Niehaus 52:23
Yeah, thank you for having me.
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