How Realtors Can Make It Big With Content Marketing With Josh Culler  

Episode 447: How Realtors Can Make It Big With Content Marketing With Josh Culler  

 

One of the biggest struggles of people who veer away from real estate is not having enough knowledge about the industry. Thus, realtors can take advantage of dabbling into content marketing to help others deal with this doubt and turn them into clients. Josh Culler, President at Culler Media, sits down with Mitch Stephen to share his own content marketing strategies, from focusing on answering frequently asked questions, using analytical tools, determining the target market, to choosing which online platforms to concentrate on. Josh also underlines the most important ingredient in making content marketing work: baring your real self to your audience without any filters.

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I’m here with Josh Culler. We’re going to be talking about content marketing, what to market for, how to market and how to not look like a salesman, but get your point across and sell subtly underneath the surface. Before we get to that, let’s play homage to my sponsors, LiveComm.com. It is lead generation plus mass texting equals success. Check it out. There’s a lot of information on how to use lead capture from cell phones and mass texting to further your cost. Josh, first of all, where are at?

I’m in my home office right outside Chicago. I’m in the Chicagoland area. I live in Northwest Indiana. It takes about 20, 30 minutes depending on traffic to get from where I’m at, into the heart of downtown.

Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into this marketing and content marketing.

It stemmed out from being in the real estate investing industry. I’ve been in the real estate investing industry since 2013. One of my best friends in the world, my buddy, Gary Harper, does EOS implementation for real estate investing businesses now. I was working for a competitor doing about everything you can think of. I was doing Craigslist postings and putting out bandit signs. I was nineteen then when I first started. I worked with them for about six months and I wanted to change a direction on that. I reached out to my buddy, Gary. He brought me onto his team.

At that point, they had a pretty big wholesaling operation. We were coming off of the back of 2008, 2009 eras. Our area didn’t get hit that hard, but we still had a whole bunch of foreclosures that were on the market. You could snap your fingers and get a deal from HUD. All the marketing we were doing was not acquisitions marketing, which is what people are doing now. We were doing all dispositions marketing. I was with him. He and I were in the division of managing Michigan and Ohio. We were in five states including Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky. What we realized quickly, as Gary and I, we didn’t per se love the whole process of real estate, but we loved what it could provide.

You really only hear something the first time when you heard it seven times. Click To Tweet

He and I figured out virtual wholesaling on our own. This was around 2014. At this point, virtual wholesaling wasn’t a thing. It wasn’t a thing that a lot of people did. There wasn’t a lot of education out there about it. Nowadays, everybody’s doing it. He and I figured it out. The first year we were together, we wholesaled 70 deals together just in the state of Michigan alone. That’s where it stemmed off. From there, I got pushed into 100% of the marketing department for that entire company. We were at that point doing about 250, 300 deals a year between all the five states that we were in.

I was managing all the marketing, running all of it. Anything you can think of inside of marketing, it was all me doing it. That’s where I got everything where we were implementing a lot of the content marketing strategies that maybe I’ll teach and talk about now. Right around 2018, I started getting ahead of steam with my side hustle, which was our media business. It is what I’m doing now. In February 2019, I went full-time into this. Now, we 100% serve real estate investors. We service real estate influencers, people such as yourselves that have podcasts, YouTube channels, coaching programs, masterminds and all of that stuff. We also do a lot of consulting type stuff for content marketing and helping active real estate investors get their content marketing strategies up and running. That’s the quick rundown. I packed several years into that.

You said the word content marketing a lot. Can you explain that to us?

Content marketing is more of a concept and an idea as opposed to an actual thing that you could do in marketing. When it comes down to it, my purest definition for the term content marketing is answering the questions that your target demographic has about your product, services or your industry. As an active real estate investor, your target demographic is either going to be motivated. Let’s say for instance that you’re in the acquisitions game. Your audience is going to be motivated sellers. People that have a distress situation, they need to get rid of their house, whether it’s inherited property or the whole shebang. Your job from the content marketing side is to answer the questions that they would have approaching you. This is something that not a lot of people know. The number one question that sellers ask when they go to Google is what is a real estate investor? This is hard data, hard facts.

They have no clue what it is. They don’t know that term. They think it’s a suit on Wall Street, somebody that’s a sleazy slumlord. That’s what they relate it to. It’s automatically a negative connotation. When you approach and you market yourself as, “I’m a real estate investor,” you’re putting yourself already at a disadvantage. It’s your job to utilize content marketing. There are different mediums that you can use content marketing with it like written articles and videos is a big one. It should be a primary strategy for your content. It could be about anything else that in terms of the mediums that you use. It is your job to figure out what questions that they’re asking, what your target demographics asking and then answer those questions in the content that you’re putting out. That’s the rundown and the concept of what it is.

Where do you start in content marketing? What’s the first step? You might’ve given us the first step. Let’s say that we’re looking to acquire houses from motivated sellers since we already started off on that example. We already know that the number one search keyword is, what is a real estate investor? Now that we know that, where do we go from there?

 

There are two stumbling blocks that people get in. As active real estate investor, let’s take influencers out of this completely. If you’re a coach, a mentor or anything like that, let’s take it out. You already know how to speak on camera and come up with all your topics. You’re an active real estate investor. You’re not on video a lot. You don’t do a lot of written articles. You don’t put out any content at all. The two stumbling blocks, number one, is coming up with topics and then number two is over complicating it. A lot of times what real estate investors will do is they’ll say like, “I don’t know what to talk about in my videos.”

Let’s eliminate that roadblock right now. There are a few ways that you can come up with the topics and the number one most sure-fire way to do it is to write down every single question that a motivated seller has when they’re on the phone with you. If you have acquisitions managers or people that are answering the phones for you, make them do this. Every single time a motivated seller asks a question, it doesn’t matter if it’s the same question that five people in a row that you’ve had on the phone with you.

It doesn’t matter if they’ve all asked the same question, write it down because you want to see a common denominator. You want to see what people are asking. If every single person you’re getting on the phone is asking the same question. That means you need to put out more content and more marketing answering those questions. That’s the first way to do it is the, is the easiest thing. Any time you get on a phone call, write down every single question. It doesn’t matter if it’s elementary. It doesn’t matter if it’s repetitive, write it down.

The second way I like to do is if you have a team member or you’re hiring somebody, they’re going to have questions during the training process, you’re going to have to train them. They’re going to ask questions along the way, write down those questions that they have because now you can get into the brain of like they’re trying to look on the inward side, which is the processes, the systems that you have within your business. If they have questions, then you know that potential customers are going to have those questions as well. Write those down. There are a couple other ways you can do this. There are two websites I like to use. Number one is Google Keyword Planner.

This is hard data. When you type in a keyword or key phrase into that search box that they’ll have as soon as you pull up the website and it’s going to spit off a bunch of other data that tells you additional terms and key phrases that people search in addition to what you search. Take, for instance, if you go to Google Keyword Planner, you’re going to type in real estate investor or sell my house now. It’s going to spit out a bunch of other data of what people are looking for in addition to that. That’s hard data because you want to know what people are looking for. This is what you’re using the content for is driving organic results back to you.

To put it like in a layman’s terms, you’re trying to figure out what are these people searching for so that you can position yourself so that you get found when they’re looking. You pick some things that you think they’re searching for, but then Google will tell you, “They’re also searching these keywords and that or they’ve slightly altered that question and what they’re hitting more is these keywords.”

Any content that you put out is still marketing. Click To Tweet

There’s another platform called AnswerThePublic that does the same thing, but it’ll give you a little bit of a different data. Those are the few ways that you can get started with it and creating the topics. I also have a list of 52 topics that real estate investors can do content on.

Everyone, go to 1000Houses.com/Culler, if you want to learn more about what Josh does or possibly hire him as a consultant or a paid vendor. Is that what you do?

Yeah. I want to point something out quick and I don’t want to skip over that. I want to address something that you did is you gave your audience direction. You told them like, “Instead of Josh spitting off the 52 topics on the show right here, you’re driving, pull off the side of the road and write down all these topics that we’re talking about, go to the show notes.” You gave direction for that specifically and that’s what a lot of people miss out on with their content. It’s almost exactly what you said at the beginning of the show here.

You said, “It’s not advertising. We’re not going to talk about sales type stuff.” This is stuff that you’re using your content as a 24-hour salesman that doesn’t get COVID, doesn’t call off for holidays, get sick and have all these excuses to show up late. They’re working around the clock 24 seven. A motivated seller goes to Google and searches, “Sell my house San Antonio,” is your content going to pull up because it’s rich and answers the question that they’re looking for? They’re going to look for that question and answer for that. If it’s 2:00 in the morning, because it’s on their mind, because we all know you could say seven touches follow-up will sell a house for you, but that is not true. That seven follow-up-rule is meant to tell people like as a human being, you only hear something the first time when you heard it seven times. This is like Psychology 101.

If a motivated seller is motivated, on the second follow-up, you’ll convert them. If they’re motivated on the fifteenth follow-up, that’s when you’ll convert them. There’s not a specific number for this. A lot of people get that wrong. The advantage of content is that seller is going to go look let’s say at 2:00 in the morning because their problem is keeping them up at night because maybe they got a call from a tenant. Maybe they inherited a property from their pops, who owned a rental property. The tenant is calling now because the son owns the property. They’re like, “It’s 1:00 in the morning. Why the heck are you calling me?” Now they’re going to go look, “Sell my inherited house.” If your content pulls up, it’s 24 hours sales man and answers their question, guess who’s going to be calling you first thing in the morning or filling out the web form right there? That’s your opportunity and tell them a direction. After they’ve watched the video of you explaining how to sell your inherited house, “Click the link below, make sure you fill that out and we’ll contact you within the next 24 hours.”

Let’s be transparent. Why do I do podcasts? I’m not doing it because I don’t have anything better to do. I’m doing it for a lot of different reasons. Some of them are obvious and some of them aren’t. One is I get to talk to a lot of smart people that I would probably never talk to. Plus, I’m have to set time aside to talk to smart people so it keeps me sharp. It keeps me moving forward in my life. I don’t have to do anything anymore, but if I sit down, my informational box starts shrinking. Everything changes every day. What you know now will be less a year from now. You might think you know it, but it’s starting to change away from you or move.

 

The other thing is I’m on here to pick up students, private money and to find allegiances and networks. If I can get on here and show that I may know a little bit about what I’m talking about in my specific niche, endeavor, then maybe the people who are out there see and recognize that I might know what I’m talking about because many years and 2,000 houses that worked out and thousands of houses that didn’t work out. Maybe they would call me and that’s what that’s about. That’s what I’m doing here. This is a form of content marketing. I’m not sitting on here saying, “Hire me,” because I know the people that need me and the ones I want, can figure it out by themselves.

I want to take that and then point it in a very specific direction because I’m glad you brought that up. You’ve been doing this for a long time and you’ve had so much experience in the real estate investing industry. You have a lot of experience, a lot of knowledge and a lot of wisdom in this. You’ve got a good reputation and whatnot. Now it’s time to take that and amplify it through the content that you’re putting out, which is, for instance, this podcast. One thing that I find a lot of people do is that they look at content marketing from one perspective, like, “How can I get to my motivated seller?” What if there’s another perspective? What if you put out content that builds your credibility and authority as a real estate investor and now you can market specifically and educate your wholesalers to bring you deals? Instead of you spending your time and money on marketing to motivated sellers, how about going straight to the wholesalers? Maybe you are a wholesaler and then you can JV with people. There are a lot of different ways you can do it.

You drop a line in there about needing private money or I need some money for the deal tomorrow. I’m working all these fronts all the time. You picked up millions of dollars of private money. I picked up lots and lots of paid consultant coaching stuff. My job is when they come in, interview them and make sure we’re a right fit before I say yes or no to anything. It’s to make sure that there’s a right fit. If there is, then we go forward. If there’s not, then I don’t. I’m going on my 500th interview on the podcast. That’s a lot of work, hours upon hours. I don’t do it because it doesn’t work. It does work. When you get on a podcast or when you’re doing content marketing, you have to be very careful that you don’t deliver the advertisement of what you want.

You have to deliver something to the listener. You have to give them something interesting that keeps them engaged. That’s what I try to do every day on my podcast is introduce them to someone. Whether my strategy is for you or my coaching programs for you. It doesn’t matter because the goal of this podcast is to help you find where you fit so that you can become financially independent. You can be what you want to be. If that’s not me, that’s fine. Along the way, I’ll find mine. You got to go at it with a servant’s heart. Let me help people get what they want. It’s biblical. I’ll get mine, tenfold.

There are two things I want to cap off there. I like to use the 90/10 Rule. Any marketing that you put out, any content that you put out is still marketing. Content marketing, that phrase has the word marketing in it for a reason. You still need to treat it that way, but it is a totally different approach than straight up advertising. For instance, straight up advertising is very transactional. That’s a sprint, content marketing is a marathon. There’s a lot more building blocks that go into that. The 90/10 Rule that I like to use is take, for instance, like this episode, 90% of the content that’s going to be in this episode is going to be all value-based stuff.

It’s all going to be like, “There’s no fluff, no sales, nothing.” It’s stuff that you can take away and apply it in some way, shape or form into your business. The 10% of it though, pitch whatever you want. It’s still going to be marketing. You want to drive them into a funnel. You want to take what you’re doing and push them somewhere. If you’re going to build off that 90% of value, you could use that 10% to pitch whatever you want. That’s where a lot of people get content mixed up. I see this all the time. We’re active real estate investors. All of the social media posts that they put out is all advertising. Mix it up a little bit with some organic type stuff that’s going to train and teach your motivated sellers how to work with you or answering their questions.

Don't ever put content out that is not you. Click To Tweet

I post on Facebook, I’m hunting on my ranch, got hogs, guns and fish. Before someone will want to go into business with you or do business with you, they have to feel like they like you or that they know you somewhat. It’s difficult to write. The bigger the check is, the harder it is. They’re not going to write a check on someone they have no clue what he’s about other than, “He does coaching.” “Great, so what?” “He seems to be a nice guy and a cool guy. He must have it going on because of this and this. I’ve been following his posts for a year.” Most of the people that call me and finally hire me, they’ve listened to 200 podcasts. They’ve listened to every YouTube channel I had before they said, “I’ve listened to a whole lot of people. I listen to this guy, that’s my guy.”

That goes into another conversation of relevance. People will attract to relevant content for you and your customers like between you and your customer. For instance, the reason I’m on this show with Mitch is because there’s relevance in what I do and what your readers are looking for. If you’re a coach or something like that, like for me, my clients, I have a very specific personality. I’ve got a very specific way that I carry out business. That attracts specific people and it detracts specific people. In the past couple of weeks, we went through an EOS implementation and one of my rocks that coming out of that, my coach, Gary, he said like, “These are the two clients. You need to fire these clients because they’re leeches on your business.”

There’s no relevance into what we’re doing for them and the way that they’re treating us on the backend as well so we fired those two clients. The relevance wasn’t there anymore. You’re never going to specifically attract the exact same person as you. There’s always going to be different personality types. Mitch and I were talking before the show. Mitch says, “You play music.” I was like, “I’m learning. I’m taking lessons right now.” He said, “What kind of music you do you like to play?” I said, “I like rock, metal and anything that’s heavy.” He says, “I’ve been writing songs for a long time and I do country,” but there was still relevance in that because he’s been playing guitar for a while and I just picked it up.

We talked about it a little bit. Relevance to creates a lot of bonding and trust with you and your target audience, which is why like Mitch, going back towards, active real estate investors. If you’re going to do videos, you need to make it relevant. Even the environment you’re in. If you’re going to shoot a video, that’s directed towards motivated sellers and saying, “If you’re a tired landlord, I can pick up your house for you.” Go to a house that you have under contract or maybe something that you’ve sold or like a buddy has under contract or something like that. Go to a house that looks very similar to what you would acquire and shoot the video with that house in the background. Don’t be shooting it in your office with a nice green screen. That’s not relevant to the motivated sellers. You want to be in the environment as well. That can open up a whole another can of worms, Mitch. That could go into a hundred different directions but relevance.

What about distribution? You go out and you do this. That’s the other thing. You can have the greatest podcast in the world and you can have the best YouTube channel videos and everything, but how do you let people know? People think because they post it, they’re going to show up and it’s not true.

No. There are two things to cap off on that. This is Marketing 101. If you have not done exactly what I’m about to say, I’m serious, hop off this episode right now and go do this. It’s figuring out your target avatar. If you have not created the exact avatar that you’re going after from a customer standpoint, you don’t know them very well. For me, my clients, I know exactly who I’m going after. I know that my clients are entrepreneurs. They’re real estate investors. They’re experienced real estate investors. I do not work with newbies or people that have not done much in the real estate investing industry. There’s a threshold of how many deals that you’ve had to have done or marginal type stuff.

 

There are criteria that I have, but I know exactly the customer that I want to work with, which is one of the reasons why I fired those two clients that I mentioned because they’re not my ideal avatar anymore. They were maybe when I first started because they were original clients, but it’s changed a lot. For active real estate investor, if you’re going towards a motivated seller and by the way, this works for any exit strategy that you’re going with too. If you’re not a wholesaler, you’re somebody that maybe you’re a turnkey provider or whatever. You’re selling assets to investors, doctors, dentist, lawyers are going to buy asset. Everything I’m talking about here still applies. You need to figure out who you’re going after.

From there, you use that information to figure out where you’re going to distribute content to. Take, for instance, for my target demographic, my target demographic very much listens to podcasts. They are on YouTube. They are on Facebook. They are on LinkedIn but barely. They also read books. These are all things that I do from a content marketing perspective. I put out content on all those platforms. I also test a lot. I test on TikTok and Instagram. I don’t get a whole lot of leads from those because they’re not qualified people, but I do have clients that do go after newbies. Some of the clients that we do content marketing for them, they go after newbies. They want to coach the newbies.

The strategy is like, “Let’s stay off TikTok. Let’s stay off podcasts and YouTube.” They are going to YouTube, but they’re hanging out on the micro-content platforms like TikTok or Instagram. There are all these things that factor into it and putting your content out on everywhere, every platform, number one, it can get overwhelming. Number two is not needed. You need to figure out the top 4 to 5 platforms that people are searching for. The website is included in that. If you are an active real estate investor, Google My Business is a massive one that you should be putting content out on. Figure out what those top 4 or 5 platforms are, and then distribute the content there. Depending on the platform is depending on the medium. I’m not going to put a video out on Amazon Prime. It’s going to be a book. That’s the medium. If I’m going to put a podcast out, it’s going to be an audio. It’s not going to be written form. There’s a lot of different things that play into that. It’s easy, Mitch. Figure out who your target audiences, figure out where they hang out digitally and put out content there. That’s it.

Clarify for me, what could you do for me if I come to you? What am I hiring you to do exactly or how can you help me? I’ll tell you who this avatar is. This guy needs technology, understands that I need technology. I’m not technical.

Primarily what we’re looking for is somebody that has a podcast, who’s got a coaching program. We also do work with people that have like coaching programs or masterminds, but they haven’t put any content out. It’s like working from ground zero up. All the strategies are different, but primarily like what we do. We’ve got a whole process. The name of the game for us is to get out consistent daily content for you. We’ve got now 24 clients and I’ve got another eight that are in the waiting list right now. What we’re doing for these guys is we’re taking their pillar content.

For instance, your podcast here, it’s going to be a 60-minute podcasts. My team, I’ve got video producers and graphic designers, writers and then a distribution manager. What they’ll do is my video producers will go into this episode and chop out 10 to 15 different 60-second clips that are value nuggets. They’re like punches. What they’re going to do is they’re going to clip those out, reproduce them, put a nice little title, video graphic on it. Maybe add some music. That moves into a writing stage. I have a writer that will consume your personality and say, “How does Mitch talk? Does he use exclamation points? Does he use periods? Does he use emojis? Is he long-winded? Does he only keep it short and simple, 1 to 2 sentences?”

It requires too much energy to fake being something else. Click To Tweet

We study all that stuff. She’ll consume the content and write relevant copy for that. That moves into distribution. My distribution manager pushes it out to the platforms. Most of the clients we’re working with, we’re doing two piece of content a day. I don’t always recommend that for people because it depends on what you’re going after. If you’re an active real estate investor, two pieces of content a day is not needed because you’re not trying to build an audience. You’re trying to convert motivated sellers to sell you a house. For instance, if you’re an active real estate investor and your primary source of income is that’s your business, you’re not going to build a podcast of 100,000 motivated sellers. It’s not going to happen. It makes no sense. They’re going to sell you a house and they’re going to be done with you then maybe referrals later on down the road. A lot of that plays into it, but that’s the synopsis.

That’s the one thing that’s hard about hypothetical. You got to drill down on exactly what you want. That’s why you should go to 1000Houses.com/Culler and have a private one-on-one conversation to see if he can help because we got to get to a finite situation. I even see it when I’m doing it with hypothetical real estate deals, you start doing well, if it’s this way you go like that. If it’s like that way, pretty soon you forget what you’re talking about because the tree has branched far off the original topics. What’s cool about calling for a consult is that we can forget all the other crap. What’s your problem? What’s your goal? What’s your issue? We can go from there and find a solution or give a proposal.

If some of this is confusing or overwhelming to anyone out there, it’s because it hasn’t been a fixed on a finite problem. We do want to let you know, there’s lots of different situations he could handle. I’m doing one 6 to 10-minute episode on YouTube a day for every working day for the next 12 months. I don’t have a writer, which the thing that’s hard for me. I’m writing the twenty scripts myself, which I hate, but I figured no one else could write or be me because it’s me that I’m selling. You said a very interesting thing. You have a writer that will consume my avatar. Is that what you said?

It’s both. Consume your style of speaking and dialect.

They got to consume the avatar too because they got to know who they writing. I find that very interesting. Are you doing YouTube promotional stuff like I talked about or you’d have a variation of that or what?

It’s very subjective. Our services are white gloves. Everybody’s strategies are different. I’ve got some clients that we go hard at Facebook. Some clients, we go hard at podcasts. Some clients, we go hard at YouTube. YouTube is one of those platforms where it’s pretty easy in terms of getting content out there because it’s a very SEO friendly platform. It’s the second largest search engine on the planet. We do production and distribution for YouTube videos. Where I draw the line is the advertising part. I’m not going to create an ad on YouTube for your channel or for your products or services. You shoot the video, you send the raw footage to us, we edit it. We create the thumbnails, create all the description, add all the links, titles, and then distribute it that way. It is primarily that. It’s all the backend work that you don’t want to do.

 

Yeah or don’t even know how to do it. I’m not going to learn how to do. This isn’t for newbies. You got to have a game.

It depends. If you’re a newbie, you could still be putting content out. What I tell people is don’t ever put content out that is not you. Don’t do it. We’ve all seen those people that put out Instagram posts of them with a Ferrari or with a jet in the background, with the cash like who the hell carries cash around nowadays. Don’t pretend, be who you are and that will attract people.

I hate that too because there’s people getting in and out of Lamborghinis on these things. I said, “I know that guy. He missed his truck payment last week.”

Focus on who you are. That’s the biggest thing. That’ll build over time. It’s like what Mitch said. He’s taking photos of himself out hunting and stuff like that, doing things that Mitch loves to do. Keep consistent with that. For me, I’m a very much of a techie person, but I do like cars. I’ve got a Tesla so I’ll post about that stuff. It’s not the focus-driven behind what I’m doing. It’s like I love my car and I don’t care about putting an Instagram post out about it. I love my car. Mitch, I’ve had about three people in the past ask me to do a photo/video shoot with them. They’re like, “Yeah, we’re going to meet up at this private airport. We run in a couple of Ferraris. We rented a private jet. We got them for an hour and we’re going to do some photos, videos with them.” I said, “Nope, that’s not me. I’m not your guy.” That’s doesn’t work. Be transparent, be who you are and put that stuff out.

Another way to put it is and I’ve had a lot of people go, “I like your schtick. It’s your schtick. Who you are when you’re on stage?” I say, “What do you think my shtick is?” They say, “You’re a down to earth country guy, put don’t in the wrong places. You’re dumb like a fox. This company guy with a lot of common sense. You’re wearing a cowboy hat. You’re taking photos at the ranch.” Half the time I got some dip in my front lip and I said, “That’s not a schtick. That’s who I am.” I schtick is as soon as you go off and you turn off the switch, you’re someone else. You’ve seen that before, like with Robin Williams and some of these guys. They’re regular people. When they get on stage, everything changes. I’m pretty much the on and off because it’s too energy too much to fake being something else.

One of my buddies, Shaun McCloskey said it perfectly. He said, “Be yourself because everybody else is taken.” If you get so deep into this and I’ve seen this with a couple of people before where they get so deep into it and they are putting on this persona of somebody that they’re not. Influencers get way too deep in the woods with this stuff. Even if you’re an active investor and you’re a newbie, we started the conversation with talking about newbies. Newbies, you should be still putting content out, but the rule applies, be yourself and focus on what you’re doing. Because if you put out content and you’re talking about something that you are not knowledgeable in it and you’re not speaking yet correctly, you’re not speaking the language correctly and given the right information, it’ll come back to haunt you. Somebody will call you out on it or legal actions will be taken. If you’re putting out videos to a motivated seller and making promises that you can’t keep or putting out guarantees that are irrelevant, then it will come back to haunt you. Stay focused on what you can do.

Fear should be used as a caution flag about your roadblocks ahead. Click To Tweet

Some people get the idea of fake it until you make it. They take it a little too far. You all got to be a little bit bigger than you are or try to step into a room that’s a little bit bigger than you are, but you can’t step from a no place to Learjet. Just a little bit of an air of I’m a little bit more or how I don’t like to present it like that. We have NLP that I learned how to use them. People can have their own imaginations and I don’t squelch them. I didn’t say that. I won the Tejano Crossover Song of the Year in 2005. It’s too long to even talk about it. I wrote the song and it won Tejano Crossover Song of the Year. I went around telling people, I call it my little Mexican Grammy. I knew what would happen. What do you think happened?

You tell me, I’m curious.

Everyone thinks I won a Grammy. I didn’t ever say that. I said, “I call it my little Mexican Grammy.” Don’t take that fake it until you make it thing too far or too far out of bounds because maybe even fake it and to make it might mean a little bit more. Imagine yourself in your mind there.

I hate that term so much. Even if we’re not talking about content marketing, even from an entrepreneurial business standpoint, being a person, faking it until you make, it’s such a miscued and misused word and term that they take way too literal. They take it overboard and they become uncomfortable with the person that they are. Is that a life you want to live, faking until you make it? Live it. You only have one life. Tomorrow’s not guaranteed. If I hop off this podcast, the next minute that I’m off this podcast. It’s not guaranteed for me. Faking it until you make it is an irrelevant stance for you to get to where you need to be.

The things that you need to change are like who you are. A lot of people stem this off of like mindset. For instance, if you’re fearful of something, they’ll tell you fake it until you make it. If you’re going through something and it’s hurting you, whether it’s physical or emotional or mindset wise, like they say, “Fake it until you make it.” You need to get through it, but learn your lessons along the way. Don’t fake it. If you’re struggling with something, then figure that out, solve the problem. People carry that past when they get past their pain point.

My biggest thing on fear was if you’re afraid of something, you need to go right to it. The sooner the better and get it over with because it ends up not being the dragon that you thought it was. You’re way more worried about some things than you need to be worried about. Massive action overcomes fear. Get so busy conquering it that you don’t have time to be afraid of it anymore.

I love these conversations. I love talking about content marketing, but I love talking about stuff like this too. I think a lot differently than most people. I know everybody says that, but l hate following the pack. It makes me sick to my stomach every time I hear the word fearless or somebody say like F-fear or get rid of fear or fear sucks.

They just haven’t got out of their comfort zone.

Fear is not a bad thing. Fear should be used as a tool. It’s a caution flag saying, “Here’s the roadblock.” It’s courage that people don’t have. Courage is the overcoming of fear. Be courageous. Their fear says like, “Here’s the problem.” If you, as a human being and you use fear to stop yourself and not overcome that problem, that’s your fault. It’s not fear’s fault. It’s your fault. You didn’t want to overcome that. Fear says, “Here’s the issue. We need to get past this point.” For me, I use fear as like, “That’s my roadblock. That’s a problem I need to solve. How do we solve that?” It’s the overcoming the fear, the courage is where that comes into play.

Courage, Mitch is what separates the boys from the men. That’s honestly what it is. If you have courage and you use that as a very vital piece of your life, that is where people elevate to new heights. Fear can stop you. Everybody’s got fear. If somebody says I’m fearless, they’re full of shit. Everybody’s got fear. People say I’m fearless or they’re like, “I hate fear. I have no fear.” They say that as a way to amp themselves up. Everybody’s got fear. It’s the overcoming of the fear is where the human element is played out of it. That’s when you become a superhuman. It’s like, “I’m courageous. I’m going to overcome this, solve this problem and get past it.” Fear is a tool. It’s not something that you should get rid of.

Go to 1000Houses.com/Culler. He’s going to give you 52 topics that you can talk about to spark your imagination on content. That doesn’t mean all 52 are going to fit you, but try to read those 52 and get inspired and find your own if they’re not on there. If you’ll pay attention in your daily life, there’s probably 2, 3 or 4 things that are happening every day that are perfect for your content. You haven’t thought to make notes of like, “That was a cool conversation I had with that guy. Maybe that’s good content.” Contents are readily available if you open up your eyes a little bit. Read those 52 topics for content and let that open up your mind. You’ll start seeing content everywhere. Is there anything you want to say to folks who are struggling with all these Facebook marketing and Google AdWords and all this stuff? What do you want to say to these people?

The last thing I’ll leave you with is keep it simple. KISS is my anthem when it comes to putting out content marketing and marketing overall in general as well. The more complex you make it for yourself, the less likely you are to keep up with it. Take, for instance, if you want to start a podcast, if you want to start shooting videos for your content efforts, to be able to market towards motivated sellers, don’t worry about getting a camera, getting lights, getting a green screen, use your phone. People are more okay nowadays with consuming content that’s from your phone. If anything, the demographic for motivated sellers, if you’re looking at the age demographic, they want more personal content. Use your cell phone. The microphone is meant to pick up your voice and delete any ambient sound around you.

Keep it simple and then you can work your way up from there. If you want to start adding a camera and bring a videographer out there to shoot videos with you because you’re seeing massive value in it. The bottom line is if you over-complicate it for yourself, you’re not going to keep up with it. You’ll say content does work to throw your hands up. You’re going to be one of the hundreds of thousands of people that have tried it and said it didn’t work. You’re going to be always looking at the people that make it work and wondering how could I be that person? How could I get to that level? It’s because they stayed consistent. Keep it simple, stay consistent.

I would like to thank LiveComm.com for sponsoring this episode. There’s a reason why I only have like nine days on the market and I’m afraid to even tell you what the last days were four days, but I don’t want to set expectations that high. My last 50 houses during COVID have been four days on the market. There’s a reason why that’s happening. It has a lot to do with smart phone numbers that capture incoming call or cell phone numbers and then being able to text to them very cheaply whenever you have a new house for sale that’s right to your target audience. Check it out. I want to thank you for stopping by to get you some Josh Culler. Check him out. It’s been great.

 

Important Links

• 1000Houses.com/Culler
• 1000Houses.com/Livecomm
• 1000Houses.com/Moat
• 1000Houses.com/101
• 1000Houses.com/aof
• Josh Culler

 

About Josh Culler

Josh has been in the real estate investing industry since 2013 and has been apart of hundreds of deals as a marketing director. Owner of Culler Media and REI.VIDEO.

I have 10 years of experience in graphic design, photography, videography and content production. Culler Media provides all of these services, plus we’ll help you with any media questions you have (we don’t charge for it)

 

 

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