Zach Hammer: Welcome back to the Real Estate Growth Hacker show. On today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about how you can create content that is [00:01:00] easy and effortless, and yet actually builds your influence and authority in the marketplace. So, it’s going to be a, framework walking through really what we think about how we do this, a couple of steps to achieve this.

[00:01:14] Zach Hammer: And hopefully by the end of this, you’ll walk away feeling like, It’s easier, it’s clearer, and you know how to create content that actually matters, rather than just putting out time and effort into stuff that doesn’t really work. That’s what we’re gonna do. Charlie Madison here, back again with me today, wearing the Hawaiian shirts.

[00:01:33] Zach Hammer: Again, I’m always glad to see you in a Hawaiian shirt. It feels like home when you’re wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

[00:01:37] Charlie Madison: Risky today. I’ve got green on here. And I’ve got a green screen. So, it’ll be fun to see what happens post editing, if there’s holes in me. If there is, I did not get shot. It is just computer graphics.

[00:01:49] Zach Hammer: I love it. Charlie might be looking holier than normal in the edit. Love it. Again, the subject to what we’re talking about is, how to create content that’s actually impactful, [00:02:00] and how to have that be easy. Tell me about your experience.

[00:02:02] Zach Hammer: Is this something that you struggled with, knowing what you want to talk about and what might actually make a difference or not? Do you relate to that?

[00:02:08] Charlie Madison: Yeah. That’s the first question. How do I decide what to talk about? How do I actually do it? Especially, for me, I’m not a writer, so I got stuck for a long time. I’ve done the 80-20 marketing and sales, personality test, and I’m a live person.

[00:02:25] Charlie Madison: And it took me a long time to figure out, how do I actually create? And for me, I found out when I’m together with you or with someone else, it just happens. But every person, a lot of people are different. And the thing is, when the going gets tough, if I’ve got a lot of stuff going on, if it’s not easy, it’s going to be hard to keep doing it.

[00:02:48] Zach Hammer: Yeah, absolutely. And people listening to this, if you’ve been following this show for a while, we’re talking about AI a lot. We’re talking about AI’s impact in the world, in business, in your real estate business, [00:03:00] especially. And so, you might think that what I’m about to say is that you should just get AI to give you the list of what to talk about. And you should get AI to come up with that list for you.

[00:03:10] Zach Hammer: And here’s the reality to me, if you do that right, it can be powerful. But I think, what most people are doing is doing that completely wrong, and it might actually be hurting you rather than helping you. Because what we’re seeing is, we’re seeing really what AI produces is really contingent on the prompts and questions that you give it, for whether it’s valuable.

[00:03:32] Zach Hammer: And the biggest thing that’s missing is that AI itself, doesn’t have a point of view. It doesn’t have a line in the sand. It doesn’t have a world view. It doesn’t have an opinion. It’s opinion is mostly whatever the consensus is. And we’ve talked about this before, If you are trying to market by sounding like everyone else, that’s a great way for no one to notice what you’re doing.

[00:03:59] Zach Hammer: And so, you want [00:04:00] to stand out with your content. You want to have an opinion. You want to have a unique point of view that people feel like they can actually trust and actually bank on when you provide guidance around some sort of subject. And so, what’s really powerful here is that instead of letting AI lead us, we lead AI, and then yes, we can get some really powerful results when we come armed with our own point of view and our own experience.

[00:04:28] Zach Hammer: And really, that’s the key here is that, when we’re creating content, what we want to do, if we want to create content, that’s actually going to build influence and authority, and thus, drive people toward our solutions. Attract real estate agents to your team, attract clients to your real estate business, grow your business in general, whatever we’re looking to do, that’s what we need to do is, we need to have an opinion. And lead with that.

[00:04:52] Zach Hammer: But here’s the reality, a lot of people may not realize the opinions that they hold. It’s something interesting that I’ve [00:05:00] learned is that, a lot of the times, people haven’t actually done the work of sitting down and thinking, what do I believe that’s different than what everybody else believes?

[00:05:09] Zach Hammer: And it can, it could be hard. When you’re in a business like real estate, and you’re offering a lot of the same things that other people are, let’s be honest, real estate as a business, you have conversations, ultimately, you tell them how you’re going to help them, either buy or sell a home. You’re going to put that home on the market. You’re going to look through listings and help connect them to the right stuff. You’re going to help them maybe secure financing, deal with incoming offers, all of that. The sum total of what you’re doing is going to be the same thing as what everybody else is doing.

[00:05:39] Zach Hammer: And so, in the smaller, more nuanced levels where you probably differentiate, you offer something different, a specific way of doing it, a specific thought through process, a specific set of connections, partners, etc, your unique thing is going to be, maybe a little bit harder to detect than in other businesses.

[00:05:56] Zach Hammer: And so, here’s what I found is really the foundational thing [00:06:00] to uncover your opinion without even knowing what your opinion is, and that’s to lean on your experience. What have you done? What do you do? What does your approach look like, especially in terms of what has worked for you?

[00:06:15] Zach Hammer: And so, here’s what kind of this process looks like for how you could step-by-step create content that’s going to build influence and authority. So, the first thing that you want to do is, you want to ask yourself, what are the problems that the people I’m looking to attract are dealing with?

[00:06:33] Zach Hammer: What are the things that they are struggling with for whatever path they’re on? Where are they heading, and what are the problems that they’re encountering along the way to get there? So, let’s go from the angle right now of real estate agents that we are looking to attract to our real estate team.

[00:06:48] Zach Hammer: Charlie, in your experience, what are some of the problems that real estate agents are often facing?

[00:06:54] Charlie Madison: The number one, I need more business, right? How do I get more clients? Do it’s usually systems? [00:07:00] How do I have the systems? Probably three, four would be support and training.

[00:07:03] Zach Hammer: Yeah. Let’s go off of the first one. Let’s go off of, how do I get more business, right? Or I’m struggling to generate enough business. this could be very nuanced, right? It could be, I’m struggling to get leads to respond. Maybe, I know how to generate leads, but they’re not responding to me. Or I’m struggling to know how to make use of my time in a way that best results in business.

[00:07:24] Zach Hammer: So, there’s a lot of angles to even that one question, and you could get more specific, and go through some of the variations of what are the aspects of this that people are struggling with. And what’s interesting is, I don’t know about you, but for me, starting with problems is a lot easier than trying to come up with solutions that people care about. But when I start with a problem, then I know anything that solves that problem, potentially brings some level of value to that process, right? And it’s easier to think of the pain sometimes, than it is to think of the exact solution.

[00:07:56] Zach Hammer: So, we know where people are heading, right? They want a massively successful business. They want to [00:08:00] make as much money as possible with the least amount of time, at least amount of effort required to do so. So, anything that we could do that helps them do that, we’re on that path.

[00:08:09] Zach Hammer: And so, you might be looking at this process and thinking, I don’t know the perfect answer to this. I don’t know what the ideal thing is to do. And what’s powerful is that you don’t need to. What’s going to work drastically better is, you look in your own life and your own experience, what has worked for you?

[00:08:28] Zach Hammer: What did you do to solve that process or what have you in your experience been able to help other people do? Go with whichever one makes sense for you. If you don’t have bankable experience to say, Hey, we’ve helped people do something else, right? We’ve helped somebody implement an idea and gotten that, then go with what’s worked for you. What has worked for you to get business? What lead sources, what processes, what follow up strategy, whatever that looks like, just document and describe [00:09:00] that, what has worked for you?

[00:09:01] Zach Hammer: And here’s why that’s powerful. You don’t have to have the answer to everything. You could grow that over time, right?

[00:09:07] Zach Hammer: When you bank on your own experience, it’s something that nobody else can take from you. And it’s something that nobody else can argue with, right? If I say, hey, this is what you need to do to grow your business. There’s going to be some automatic resistance to that. But if I say, here’s what I did to grow my business and how I solved this problem, people fairly naturally understand, Oh, that could apply to me too.

[00:09:30] Zach Hammer: And if you giveth clearly, and you layout those steps well, then they’ll see how they can apply it, as well. But it’s a lot easier for them to take that in and run with it, and trust the information because it’s being shared from a place of real lived experience rather than purely just me handing you advice or my opinion.

[00:09:51] Zach Hammer: And in an age where AI is making it, where anybody can sound like an expert, you want to be able to stand apart by actually having the [00:10:00] receipts to say, I’ve done this, I have this experience. And that doesn’t necessarily always meaning like, here’s a screenshot of this result. Sometimes, it’s literally just in the way that you talk about something saying, this is what we did and how it worked, and what that process was that we followed. And then from that, we were able to get this result.

[00:10:16] Zach Hammer: So again, so far, the steps that we’ve looked at, as we said, step one, what are the problems that the people that I’m looking to reach, that I’m looking to attract to build influence with? What are the problems that they’re facing?

[00:10:25] Zach Hammer: Step two, what in my own experience have I done to solve that same problem? And it can be your experience for yourself, or it can be your experience in helping somebody else get results.

[00:10:37] Zach Hammer: What do we do if we don’t have experience?

[00:10:39] Zach Hammer: Honestly, what you do is you stay quiet until you go out and get experience. You don’t need to have an opinion on something that you don’t have some sort of track record in. You can build your influence over what you’ve gotten experience off of, in order to have powerful content, in order to bring forth.

[00:10:59] Zach Hammer: And [00:11:00] here’s the key though, you can go out and get that experience, you could try things. You can try them in the market and then go out, and have that experience to point toward.

[00:11:08] Zach Hammer: The other thing that you can do is, you can make content around going out and getting experience. So you could say, I haven’t tested this yet, but here’s the plan that we’re trying currently in the market in order to do this. And you could report back to people and say how it’s working, and bring them along the journey with you.

[00:11:25] Zach Hammer: That can work well. Trying to act like you’re the expert on something that you haven’t actually proven, will often shoot you in the foot. Does that make sense?

[00:11:33] Charlie Madison: Yeah, that’s how I started referrals while you slip. I went to some of my colleagues and said, Hey, I’ve got this idea. I don’t know if it’ll work. Would you want to try it with me for 90 days? And then, they became my first clients. I didn’t come in and say, Hey, I’ve got this great plan. I’ve studied all this. I know it’ll work. I’ve got this idea. Do you want to play?

[00:11:52] Zach Hammer: Exactly. So, that’s our process here. Overall, fairly simple. Start with the problems. Two, think about where is your experience. [00:12:00] And then three, this isn’t really exactly part of the process, it’s more, what do I do if I don’t have the experience? If you don’t have the experience, you go out and get it, and you could create content around that process. Around saying, I don’t have the proven answer for this, but this is what we’re trying, this is the idea, this is how we think about it.

[00:12:18] Zach Hammer: But I think, approaching those things with that humility, of saying, this has worked for me, I can’t guarantee it’ll work for you, or this is what we’re trying, I can’t guarantee it’s going to work. I think, it’s a lot more likely to bring people along into your world where you’re basing your content, you’re basing your concepts off of what’s actually worked.

[00:12:36] Zach Hammer: And that means, if you’re not the expert on Facebook ads, you don’t need to be the one teaching it. You either go out and build the expertise or maybe you bring somebody in who that has worked well for them, and you feature them, you uplift them in your content and say, Hey, this is something that’s working for them. And he get access to it, by joining up with our team. But as the world becomes more and more influenced by people being able to create content at scale, that [00:13:00] may or may not be based on experience, if you really want your content to stand out and you want it to actually build influence, more and more of it really has to be based on your real experience. And there’s no way to shortcut that, right? You do the work, you get the experience, and that’s what allows you to stand apart.

[00:13:16] Zach Hammer: Now, you can leverage other people’s experience. You can give them the opportunity to have a platform and a place at your business in order to leverage what they’ve done.

[00:13:25] Zach Hammer: But yeah, in terms of the content itself, that’s really always the best strategy. And what’s nice is that also makes it a little bit easier in many ways, that you don’t have to feel like you have to have the perfect answer, or that there’s the exact right way to approach something. But instead, you say, what’s worked for me? And then, lean on that and speak to that. Think through the problems that you do have a solution for, think through the problems that you know somebody in your business, your life, your team that has the solutions for that. And then, start leaning on those actual experiences rather than what’s right or what’s wrong.

[00:13:57] Zach Hammer: Cause I feel like that ends up [00:14:00] causing people to get their own head and start thinking about things too much. And honestly, this is a little bit of like, how do you deal with that imposter syndrome? How do you provide answers to some of these bigger questions? Just lean on what’s worked for you. And that’s powerfully going to be one of the easiest ways to actually have good things to share. Cause that makes your content more interesting and more unique, but it’s also going to make it more powerful because it’s clear that people actually connect what you’re doing to your unique experience rather than just vague general principles. Does that make sense?

[00:14:30] Charlie Madison: Yeah, and the other bonus I love about it is that, now you’ve actually got context that you can give AI. Now, you can invite AI into your world and it’s got the context of the problems and your solutions. And that’s where I’ve found AI is really great at taking those types of transcripts and pulling it, like really describing it, pulling it out. It can take that world and explain it. Amazing.

[00:14:59] Zach Hammer: That’s the key, [00:15:00] right? So, knowing what to say is probably the biggest portion of the battle. Having some unique experience, having done the work of testing ideas out and forming an opinion. That’s really the most valuable aspect.

[00:15:14] Zach Hammer: What AI is doing is, it’s making it really easy that you can literally have a conversation with somebody and record it. You can have that conversation live. Maybe you’re doing coaching calls with your agents. And you take those coaching calls where they’re coming to you with their problems and you’re conveying your experience in order to help guide them towards solutions. That content can become the impetus for AI generated derivative content. Or maybe you want to show up and do something like Charlie and I are doing here where it’s more of a direct, like we’re creating content right now. When you do that, you know that you’re looking to answer questions like, what are the problems that people are solving or encountering? And what are the solutions that I have encountered? What’s worked for me. What are my favorite ways? What are my most successful methods, [00:16:00] right? And being able to bank on those experiences really gives you a great amount of content to be able to go off of. And it can be intentional, like we’re doing now, or it can even be recording sales meetings, and coaching calls, and team trainings.

[00:16:15] Zach Hammer: And just know that when you’re speaking into those scenarios, try and share, what was your experience? What worked for you? What did that process look like? Look more at documenting what you’ve done rather than trying to prescribe exactly, what you think should happen in the future.

[00:16:30] Zach Hammer: And when you do that, your content is going to be more powerful. It’s going to stand out better. It’s going to feel easier to create because you’re doing it off of your own experiences rather than off of some perceived ideal. And it’ll make the whole process easier to actually make it effective.

[00:16:46] Zach Hammer: Yeah, there you go. Do you think that process would help you, Charlie, and in that process of trying to come up with content?

[00:16:51] Charlie Madison: Yeah, I really like that idea. It makes it pretty simple. And I think, it just creates so much more authority too, because the stuff that I’ve got experience with, [00:17:00] it’s the small little intricacies. If you’re listening to this, you think about the time when clients or maybe even other realtors will say, Oh, I’ve never thought about that. Oh, that’s neat. When we’ve solved our problems. It’s the ability to really obsess on the solution and come up with the small little pieces, especially in real estate.

[00:17:20] Charlie Madison: I was talking to someone the other day. They’re like, man, I’ve done this and this, and I haven’t gotten a closing. Like 90% doesn’t work in real estate. You really need 110% to be able to consistently do well. And it’s all those little bitty pieces, how to manage the realtor, how to manage the appraisal, the lender, the title, like all those little pieces. And all of those are just many problems that you’ve solved.

[00:17:44] Charlie Madison: And as you share your process for that, me and a realtor, we were actually just going through that. And as you start, it’s almost like spaghetti. There’s so much stuff that if you’re successful that you do to be able to get that out on paper, or get that [00:18:00] in content is amazing.

[00:18:01] Zach Hammer: Yeah, exactly. It makes me think, my buddy and I were talking about, anytime that you’re doing like repair work or like building your own stuff, it is amazing how big of a difference having the right tool for the job makes. And sometimes, it might feel like, Oh, this one should be good enough.

[00:18:17] Zach Hammer: But when you use the right tool, it makes the job easy that would otherwise take you hours to do without it. And I feel like that’s what you’re describing here is, if you need to drive a nail, you could use the butt end of a screwdriver and potentially make it work. But if you need to drive a nail, a hammer is really the tool for the job.

[00:18:35] Zach Hammer: And even more specifically, you may find that if you want to drive a finishing nail, that’s like a pin nail, that studded end, that what you need is not only a hammer, but you need a hammer and a setting punch, right? That drives, just on the head of the nail rather than the area around it.

[00:18:50] Zach Hammer: And that’ll make a big difference, for how your work comes out and how polished it is and all of that. And literally, that’s part of what you’re discovering in the work of real estate, whether it’s working with a [00:19:00] team or whether it’s doing the work of real estate directly with clients that there’s all of these intricate problems, and it’s all about discovering the right tool for the job. And you will have discovered tools that nobody else has, or nobody else has thought about them in that way, or those sorts of ideas. It’s what do your coaching calls actually look like when you’re doing this process with your team, right? Maybe that’s different than what anybody else is doing. Just having a process for that, could be the thing that makes a difference.

[00:19:27] Zach Hammer: What is your suite of tools that you use to help people get results? What is your process for ensuring that somebody is able to secure financing or that offers are accepted?

[00:19:36] Zach Hammer: And it’ll be similar to what somebody else is doing, but your way of doing it will be unique to you. And it’s part of how you can stand apart. And the more of those ideas that you collect, you’ll start to be able to detect, what are the things that I do that are really different than everybody else? But you only really know that by trying to share what you’re doing.

[00:19:55] Zach Hammer: And when you find those things that are really different than everybody else, you just start leaning [00:20:00] into that more. You start talking about, those are a key part of our mix. And that’s really what it comes down to is that, when you lean on that experience, it starts to discover.

[00:20:07] Zach Hammer: In marketing, people talk about your USP, your Unique Selling Proposition. And I feel like a lot of people think, you need to know that before you start, but I feel like it’s often discovered in the process of doing the work, that you do the work. And you figure out what is unique about what I’m doing here, right? And you might have ideas that sort of vaguely guide you, where you think, I think, this might be part of what makes you be unique. But really a lot of the time, it’s looking back on what you’ve done and you see, what worked well.

[00:20:34] Zach Hammer: Where was I getting good results? Where did I help people in a way that was easier or more effective than other work that I was doing? And then, you start to detect, Oh, maybe this is what I do unique, or this is a unique group that I know how to help well.

[00:20:47] Zach Hammer: Anyway, in terms of creating content though, that’s going to actually be impactful.

[00:20:51] Zach Hammer: Having it be unique is important, and banking on your experience is one of the best ways to make your content unique and impactful. So, there you go. If you [00:21:00] like that, if you want more help, being able to leverage those sorts of concepts, that’s part of what we’re doing with Real Estate Growth Hackers. And how we’re working with real estate teams on implementing AI into their business.

[00:21:11] Zach Hammer: If that’s something that you want help with, feel free to reach out to us at RealEstateGrowthHackers.com\contact, we can connect you to what we’re up to on that front. Something that we also have, if you want to get help right now on something is the vault. You can go to RealEstateGrowthHackers.com\TheVault and that’s collection of AI prompts that really help you to put some of these concepts into practice of when you start with your unique experience, how could you then leverage it out into other things?

[00:21:37] Zach Hammer: Charlie, you and I haven’t talked about this, but one of the things that I’m looking at doing, it’s possible I’m either going to be pulling down the vault or limiting how often people could get access to it. If you want access to it right now, I do recommend that you go and take action on it because what is included in the vault might be changing or I might even be doing something where I limit, how many people could even get access to [00:22:00] it per day. So that at any given point, there’s only a certain number of people who have access to it.

[00:22:04] Zach Hammer: And anyway, if you want that, go take action while you still have the opportunity to. Otherwise, thanks so much for coming out to another episode of the Real Estate Growth Hacker show and we’ll catch you on the next one.