April 9, 2024 • 17 mins
WATCH
▶️ Watch this episode on Youtube
***
EPISODE DESCRIPTION
In this episode, Brandon and Tom go over why building a bigger brand equals a bigger business. They share why they discovered they needed to build a brand and what opportunities have come from it so far.
Brandon and Tom discuss: → Why they changed their mind on building a brand, what the end goal is, and the hidden benefits they've found that have come with it. → How they've pivoted their consumer facing podcast multiple times to align with their vision. → And why they're now focusing on YouTube and the utility of short-form content.
***
CONNECT
📸 Connect on Instagram (Brandon)
🎙️ Canadian Mortgage Guide Podcast
▶️ Canadian Mortgage Guide Youtube
***
SAY THANKS
🙏 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts
***
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:10):
Brandon Love here with TomMoffitt.
And today we're going to go overwhy building a bigger brand equals
a bigger business for you.
We're going to share a little bit
about how we discovered that weneeded to build a brand, what
we've been doing in the meantime,and some opportunities that have
come as a result of it.
So stick around.
There's going to be a lot of greatpoints today, whether you're on
(00:31):
day one of building your brand oryou already have an established
brand that you're looking toleverage.
Yeah.
So why don't we start off by
explaining why we went this route?Like, obviously, there's two kind
of mindsets when it comes to themortgage space.
You have some people that arelike, you know what, I'm just
going to hum along and continuenurturing my database and my
referral partners and not reallycare about social.
And then you have other peoplethat are adamant saying, hey, you
(00:53):
need to be on social because ofthis, this, and this.
For us, we were really in thefirst camp of thinking, hey, why
don't we just build out ourrealtor relationships like we
always have been, just keepgrowing that and then nurture our
database as time goes on.
And while that is awesome and a
great game plan, we quicklyrealized the way of the future and
how things are going.
We want to have an online brand
(01:14):
and have brand awareness forseveral reasons.
So Brandon, why don't you take usto what your mindset was when we
merged businesses and why youthought it would be a great idea
to go the brand Yeah, for sure.
So I think really important before
we go through that is having thoserelationships, working the phone,
doing different things.
That's all the foundation the
business is built on.
From there, once you have the
(01:36):
framework in place, then you kindof put up the paint, you put up
the shingles, you do the rest ofthe house.
That's the brand that surroundsit.
So the foundation needs to begood.
You need to know how to actuallydo the mortgages, how to treat
clients.
All those pieces are still super
important.
But what I realized is if you look
at any major player in theindustry today, be it in mortgages
or real estate, they have thesebig brands built.
(01:58):
And I know some of you are saying,hey, there's guys like Jim who
don't have any Google reviews, whodon't have social media.
Yes, they built their business asa different era, and they're still
mining that database, which isamazing and great for them.
But for new players in the gamewho are competing with the online
discount sites, the banks being alittle bit more aggressive and
cunning that way.
You need to build out ways to
(02:19):
stand out.
Otherwise, you're just going to
kind of fall by the wayside.
And sure, you may pick up a couple
files a month, but are you goingto build the business that's
actually worth your time and yourintellect?
Yeah, that was my thought too.
And the way the future is going
with even AI and the banks justbeing super aggressive with rates,
like you do have to differentiateyourself and create that
connection and just be stickierwith clients and the brand
(02:40):
awareness and building that brandreally comes hand in hand with
that.
So that's the reason why we
decided to go all in on that.
I still am a huge believer that if
you're new in the business, thebest and quickest route of getting
business right off the bat is tocreate relationships with referral
partners and going that routeversus trying to build a brand
right away because leads don'tcome in from social media right
away in our experience and from alot of other brokers experiences
(03:02):
based off of our conversationswith others.
It does happen in the DMs.
It happens behind the scenes.
So you can either a buildrelationships with referral
partners right away and getbusiness that way, which in my
opinion is the quickest way.
Or you can just start DM and
people on the back end, which yes,it helps.
But if you don't have like anestablished profile or any posts
(03:25):
on your IG or whatever you'resending DMS through, it's gonna be
hard to get those leads, in myopinion, like you don't have that
brand awareness yet.
So I do still believe in building
relationships first before goingall in on social.
And that's what both you and Idid.
We built that stable base ofrealtor partners, which allowed us
to have some money to allocatetowards building a brand because
let's face it, it does cost somemoney if you want to do it
(03:45):
properly.
You can do it for free, but you're
allocating more of your time doingit that way versus allocating some
of your money to free up some moreof your time.
And that's a huge point is itcosts time or money.
So pick your poison.
You have to allocate one of the
two.
And for us, we were of the mindset
where we can buy back our time.
Let's do it.
We're better served finding leads,creating content, building out the
(04:07):
framework that's going to help ourbusiness scale this year and
beyond.
So that's our mindset there.
But you might be in a differentplace.
I know when I started and I wasleaving the farm and starting my
mortgage business, I had time.
I didn't have any money.
So I started building using Canvatemplates, different things like
that, that I could do myself andnavigate just to get the wheel
spinning.
And then once you start to gain
(04:28):
the momentum, you can add on theseother pieces.
So Tom, why don't we kind of takea step back and say, where did we
start?What was our initial game plan?
And kind of how's that Yes.
So the initial game plan is very
similar to what we're doing now.
But we've made a lot of tweaks
along the way.
And by a lot, there has been a lot
with the podcast.
Like Commissioner Breath has been
(04:48):
like our stable horse and like, wedon't make any money off this.
It's just kind of like a for funproject and we're not changing
anything with this.
It's been the same, which has been
great.
But on the consumer side of things
with our other podcasts, we'vemade several changes.
I know some listeners here listento our other podcasts and you're
probably knowing exactly what I'mtalking about here.
Our first name of our podcast wasFITalk, so financial independence.
And the whole point of that was tohave discussions with people that
(05:09):
have either reached financialindependence, or they're on their
path to seeking financialindependence.
So we wanted to really start offby broadening the topics instead
of just talking about mortgagesand real estate, which seems like
the right call at the becausetime, our thought was, instead
hey, of just talking aboutmortgages and real estate, which
seems like the right call at thetime, because our thought was,
hey, instead of just building outcontent for mortgages, where
(05:30):
people only really need it, maybeonce every three to five years,
why are they going to stick aroundand listen to us on a weekly
basis, if they don't need amortgage, like that was our
mindset at the time.
So that's why we wanted to broaden
it.
And unfortunately, like we didn't
give it so much time and it wasbuilding, but we did transition
the name to the investedentrepreneur where we wanted to
niche it down even more and speakjust to entrepreneurs.
But one of the biggest problem waswe didn't really just want to have
(05:54):
a bunch of B files, like to bequite honest, like, we're like,
why are we doing this?Like, we're actually getting leads
from this now.
And a lot of them are like B files
that are taking up a lot more ofour time.
And yes, some of you might wantthat.
But for us, we really didn't.
So that was one of the reasons and
I know Brandon, you could probablyadd some more reasons as to why we
(06:14):
transitioned from that point on.
Yeah, I at that point, number one,
yeah, for sure, the file, the typewas not where we wanted to be.
Also, we found that there was alot of people that we talked to
who are really interesting and hadinteresting stories.
And we love sharing those.
But then when it came time to
talking about the solo episodesand things of that side, so much
of where our energy and ourpassion was flowing to was
actually in real estate andmortgages.
And we were like, OK, why are wehiding what we're best at?
(06:35):
This is literally our expertise.
Let's focus and double down on
that.
And then instead of always having
to seek out the expert, we canjust be the expert and sure, maybe
we'll find someone complimentaryto an episode that covers taxes or
something like that here or there.
But really, we can drive the ship.
And it's not always based on theavailability and the skill set of
others.
that's bang on.
(06:56):
And that was actually probablylike more of the driving force as
to why we made the transition wasI felt it was very broad.
We were talking about building abusiness and a lot of like the
topics kind of collided with whatwe do here just to a broader
audience.
And we're talking about mortgages
one week or real estate one week.
And it was just like a lot of
different topics.
And if you went to the channel,
(07:16):
you'd be like, I'm maybe going tolisten to half of these episodes.
Whereas we're like, why don't weniche down, talk about what we
enjoy talking about and what weknow best, which is mortgages and
real estate.
So it's going to really niche down
the avatar and the person thatcomes to our channel that wants to
stick around for the longterm.
So that's what we did.
And then that came to birth of ourthird title, Canadian Mortgage
(07:36):
Guide.
It's very, very early on.
I think we're maybe two or threeweeks in at this point, and we
haven't officially launched.
But even just from creating our
Instagram profile and our YouTubechannel, we can see that people in
the industry, whether it's youguys as mortgage brokers or even
realtors, like a lot of realtorsare following us naturally.
And we haven't even like hardlyposted anything.
We haven't been following peopleat all.
People are wanting to follow ourstory and what we're posting out
(07:56):
there.
So we feel like we've really
stumbled on something that isgoing to fit for us going forward.
So that's what we're doing.
The same concept applies though.
Like we're banging out podcastsand YouTube episodes, but the
other transition we made is we'rereally focusing in on optimizing
on YouTube, because we really feellike YouTube is an underutilized
space in the mortgage field.
You have some guys that are
(08:17):
crushing it right now.
You have Nolan Mathias, you have
Mark Mitchell, and you have RonButler with Angry Mortgage.
Like other than those three, Ican't name anyone else.
And that's three frigging peoplein the Canadian mortgage space.
So there's lots of room to playand grow there.
So that's what we're doing.
We're really, really focusing on
YouTube at this point.
Exactly.
And with these pieces, what we'reusing it is we're using it as
(08:38):
leverage.
So when a client asks us a
question, we're sending them aYouTube video.
Now, all of a sudden they go toYouTube where we have subscribers,
we have engagement on there.
It establishes us as professionals
and it really makes us moresticky.
Additionally, for realtors who arepitched to all the time, broker
one comes in, I've got betterrates.
(08:59):
Broker two comes by and I alwayspick up my phone, even it's 11 30
on friday night i'm hammered andthen we come in and we say you
know what we've got great customerservice we do all of the whole
umbrella and things that otherbrokers do sure but we have this
established brand we have all thiscontent we really educate our
borrowers so it makes for happierbuyers on your side and it
(09:20):
actually also shields you from alot of liability too, which they
love as well.
Oh yeah.
And just having the library ofcontent, like once we have all of
these videos in there going overlike specific stuff, like purchase
plus and all of that, it's goingto be in there for a library.
If any clients have questions onthat, like, hey, like we'll direct
you to this video, watch this.
(09:41):
It goes over everything you need
to know.
If you have any questions after
that, of course we can hop on aphone call, but I've done this in
the past, like with my firstYouTube channel, I have mortgage
specific content.
And that's what I was using it for
is really just to send back toclients.
And it works and people love it.
And it's stickier.
And I'm actually pumped to say wehave three closed files from
(10:02):
YouTube so far in the developmentof all three channels that we
started.
So really two channels.
So it's been a what three, fourmonths going hard at it somewhere
around there.
We have some closed files from it.
We're not paying for ads.
We're not really expanding our
subscriber base to too much rightnow.
We're still getting leads inbusiness from this.
And they're sticky, like they'resuper sticky.
And even one of the files hasreferred me over to another friend
of his like, it works.
And I just can't imagine how big
(10:24):
and how many leads we're going toget once we actually hit like a
decent subscriber base on Yeah, apoint to add to that too, is you
can go back and look at our oldcontent, and even some of our
current content.
We're still very much in a
learning mode like yeah we fuck upall the time our videos sometimes
the lighting's off like i've got afreaking glare behind me i don't
know all these things we're stillfiguring out and learning and
(10:48):
adapting and we're still gettingleads through this phase so you
still do get business yeah in thisphase once you refine you educate
yourself you upskill and you growthat business bigger, you're going
to get more leads.
So it's going to scale as you
scale your knowledge in the areaas well.
So I'm super excited for thatbecause I know we will get there.
We've got a lot of pieces in play.
(11:09):
It's just a matter of now
deploying the next round of budgetand learning and strategy and
coaching and stuff around that.
Yeah, exactly.
And we're excited to share ourjourney along the way too, because
we're only getting better with it.
If you look at our first videos
compared to now, like in myopinion, I think we're much, much
better editing, lighting, the waywe speak, get the message across,
like all of it is getting muchbetter.
But the last point I'll add to thegame plan is part of that is it
(11:33):
feeds our short form content aswell.
So we're recording these long formvideos, and then we're able to
have Nikki and the team chop it upinto short form content to then
post out on our Instagram andYouTube shorts, which is actually
very hands off for us.
And they do well, I would say the
purpose built reels and short formvideos that I do with my phone do
get more views, because I don'tknow why maybe it's the Instagram
(11:53):
algorithm, or I just come off moreauthentic with it.
They get more views.
But at the same time, the short
form content we're getting fromthe long form is a really good
library of knowledgeableinformation for people to consume
once they get to our page.
For kind of shared a little bit of
the results when it comes toleads.
But there's a few other resultsthat aren't immediately obvious.
And we wanted to just touch onthose because we think that's kind
(12:14):
of the hidden benefits behind thecurtain of deploying one of these
strategies.
Leads are amazing, but there's
also a whole other host of fringebenefits that come with And one
thing I'm learning from socialthat I'm super excited about, and
I've always heard this from othercreators outside of the space, and
I've always heard it, but youdon't really realize it until you
experience it yourself is thatsocial leads to other
opportunities that you can'treally imagine.
(12:34):
And Brandon and I an opportunitycame to us that we can't really
share as of right now.
So yeah, we're kind of teasing you
guys.
But it's a huge opportunity for us
that never would have came to usif we weren't active on social and
building this brand.
So that's the one big takeaway for
me is yes, like the leads arenice, but there's other things
that will happen that you probablycan't even map out in your head
(12:57):
right now.
But I promise you, we're not even
near where we want to be from ourbrand awareness and our authority.
But these opportunities are stillcoming to us.
Exactly.
If you kind of look at from like a
grade level, we're like a gradeone kind of reading capability.
And we're going to get up to auniversity level where those
opportunities are only going toscale and compound.
(13:17):
But right now, this has attracteda lot of things into our world
that weren't there six months to ayear ago.
And one, it's really cool.
And it's a lot of fun to it really
inspires you to create morecontent and do more pieces.
And then it's just good three, Sowe're really happy business.
with Wrapping this all up, that.
the whole point of creating this
content, creating the brand,growing the brand and building it
(13:38):
all out is so that you can becomea magnet and you start to attract
things and not have to always seekthem out.
And it takes time to do and toimplement and to grow.
It does require time to compound,but eventually you do start to
attract these pieces into yourbusiness and your life.
And that's the whole point of itall.
Yeah, it takes time.
It's not going to happen
overnight.
But another side benefit of that
is like when you become the magnetand you're attracting people,
(14:02):
you're also attracting realtorpartners as well and other
partners that want to give youbusiness.
And a good example of that is mybroadcast channel, which I've
talked about at length in otherepisodes.
If you haven't heard that, go backto the other episode, I believe
it's called Masterclass, how toactually get business off of
Instagram.
That's all about the broadcast
channel strategy that I'm using.
And it works, man.
Even just yesterday, I had a leadreach out to me directly on
Instagram.
It was in like my requests area
(14:24):
and the messages.
And usually it's like spammers in
there.
And this one was a lead and it was
this lady.
She's like, Hey, I got referred
over to you by X realtor.
And just want to know like what
the next steps are to get apre-approval for my son.
I didn't even recognize therealtor name.
I was like, I don't even know whothat is.
And I had to like search her andgo through my DMs.
(14:47):
And yeah, it was just from thebroadcast channel, which is super
cool.
So like they're referring me
clients without even pitching themon a four slide or hopping on a
phone call with them.
And like Brandon said, it's like a
magnet that leads come to you at acertain point.
And I And we found the same thingtoo, is with other realtor
partners, people will say, Hey, Iknow you work with so-and-so.
I've seen your content on socialmedia.
(15:08):
Do you mind if I meet with you andstart sending you leads?
And we're like, yeah, 100% you canstart sending us business.
That's amazing.
And I think back to my first
couple of months as a broker,having to make those calls every
day and try to get people to giveme the time of the day.
And it sucked.
It was hard to do.
It was a necessary evil to getdone.
(15:28):
But it was a challenge to actuallyget people to even book a meeting
and then from there to show up forthose meetings.
So now having this where peopleare reaching out and asking for
the meeting or asking to sendbusiness is just a total role
reversal and one that I'm verywelcome to having in my life.
so much easier to hop on thatphone call.
I just booked a realtor meetingwith two in the same meeting, like
her friend wants to join.
And it's not even me pitching,
hey, I want to show you X, Y, andZ to help you in your business for
(15:53):
like, you know, the typical fourslide pitch.
We're talking about YouTube andgrowing their YouTube channel.
So it's just like a way in and anice warmer way in.
And you don't always have to likepitch yourself and beg for
business, which I absolutely Okay.
So quick recap here.
If you're not building your brand,get started.
You just have to start somewhere.
So invest either the time or the
money and get the ball rollingthere.
Once you start doing that, you'llbe able to leverage it to new
(16:14):
opportunities and it will justcontinue to scale and grow.
And it will inspire you to pourmore gas on that fire, but you do
need to start first.
If you've built an established
brand and you're listening tothis, share some tips and tricks
that you've done becauseultimately at the end of the day,
Commission Breath is an incubatorto help us all grow and scale
beautiful, amazing, awesomemortgage businesses.
Brandon Love here with TomMoffitt.
And today we're going to go overwhy building a bigger brand equals
a bigger business for you.
We're going to share a little bit
about how we discovered that weneeded to build a brand, what
we've been doing in the meantime,and some opportunities that have
come as a result of it.
So stick around.
There's going to be a lot of greatpoints today, whether you're on
(00:31):
day one of building your brand oryou already have an established
brand that you're looking toleverage.
Yeah.
So why don't we start off by
explaining why we went this route?Like, obviously, there's two kind
of mindsets when it comes to themortgage space.
You have some people that arelike, you know what, I'm just
going to hum along and continuenurturing my database and my
referral partners and not reallycare about social.
And then you have other peoplethat are adamant saying, hey, you
(00:53):
need to be on social because ofthis, this, and this.
For us, we were really in thefirst camp of thinking, hey, why
don't we just build out ourrealtor relationships like we
always have been, just keepgrowing that and then nurture our
database as time goes on.
And while that is awesome and a
great game plan, we quicklyrealized the way of the future and
how things are going.
We want to have an online brand
(01:14):
and have brand awareness forseveral reasons.
So Brandon, why don't you take usto what your mindset was when we
merged businesses and why youthought it would be a great idea
to go the brand Yeah, for sure.
So I think really important before
we go through that is having thoserelationships, working the phone,
doing different things.
That's all the foundation the
business is built on.
From there, once you have the
(01:36):
framework in place, then you kindof put up the paint, you put up
the shingles, you do the rest ofthe house.
That's the brand that surroundsit.
So the foundation needs to begood.
You need to know how to actuallydo the mortgages, how to treat
clients.
All those pieces are still super
important.
But what I realized is if you look
at any major player in theindustry today, be it in mortgages
or real estate, they have thesebig brands built.
(01:58):
And I know some of you are saying,hey, there's guys like Jim who
don't have any Google reviews, whodon't have social media.
Yes, they built their business asa different era, and they're still
mining that database, which isamazing and great for them.
But for new players in the gamewho are competing with the online
discount sites, the banks being alittle bit more aggressive and
cunning that way.
You need to build out ways to
(02:19):
stand out.
Otherwise, you're just going to
kind of fall by the wayside.
And sure, you may pick up a couple
files a month, but are you goingto build the business that's
actually worth your time and yourintellect?
Yeah, that was my thought too.
And the way the future is going
with even AI and the banks justbeing super aggressive with rates,
like you do have to differentiateyourself and create that
connection and just be stickierwith clients and the brand
(02:40):
awareness and building that brandreally comes hand in hand with
that.
So that's the reason why we
decided to go all in on that.
I still am a huge believer that if
you're new in the business, thebest and quickest route of getting
business right off the bat is tocreate relationships with referral
partners and going that routeversus trying to build a brand
right away because leads don'tcome in from social media right
away in our experience and from alot of other brokers experiences
(03:02):
based off of our conversationswith others.
It does happen in the DMs.
It happens behind the scenes.
So you can either a buildrelationships with referral
partners right away and getbusiness that way, which in my
opinion is the quickest way.
Or you can just start DM and
people on the back end, which yes,it helps.
But if you don't have like anestablished profile or any posts
(03:25):
on your IG or whatever you'resending DMS through, it's gonna be
hard to get those leads, in myopinion, like you don't have that
brand awareness yet.
So I do still believe in building
relationships first before goingall in on social.
And that's what both you and Idid.
We built that stable base ofrealtor partners, which allowed us
to have some money to allocatetowards building a brand because
let's face it, it does cost somemoney if you want to do it
(03:45):
properly.
You can do it for free, but you're
allocating more of your time doingit that way versus allocating some
of your money to free up some moreof your time.
And that's a huge point is itcosts time or money.
So pick your poison.
You have to allocate one of the
two.
And for us, we were of the mindset
where we can buy back our time.
Let's do it.
We're better served finding leads,creating content, building out the
(04:07):
framework that's going to help ourbusiness scale this year and
beyond.
So that's our mindset there.
But you might be in a differentplace.
I know when I started and I wasleaving the farm and starting my
mortgage business, I had time.
I didn't have any money.
So I started building using Canvatemplates, different things like
that, that I could do myself andnavigate just to get the wheel
spinning.
And then once you start to gain
(04:28):
the momentum, you can add on theseother pieces.
So Tom, why don't we kind of takea step back and say, where did we
start?What was our initial game plan?
And kind of how's that Yes.
So the initial game plan is very
similar to what we're doing now.
But we've made a lot of tweaks
along the way.
And by a lot, there has been a lot
with the podcast.
Like Commissioner Breath has been
(04:48):
like our stable horse and like, wedon't make any money off this.
It's just kind of like a for funproject and we're not changing
anything with this.
It's been the same, which has been
great.
But on the consumer side of things
with our other podcasts, we'vemade several changes.
I know some listeners here listento our other podcasts and you're
probably knowing exactly what I'mtalking about here.
Our first name of our podcast wasFITalk, so financial independence.
And the whole point of that was tohave discussions with people that
(05:09):
have either reached financialindependence, or they're on their
path to seeking financialindependence.
So we wanted to really start offby broadening the topics instead
of just talking about mortgagesand real estate, which seems like
the right call at the becausetime, our thought was, instead
hey, of just talking aboutmortgages and real estate, which
seems like the right call at thetime, because our thought was,
hey, instead of just building outcontent for mortgages, where
(05:30):
people only really need it, maybeonce every three to five years,
why are they going to stick aroundand listen to us on a weekly
basis, if they don't need amortgage, like that was our
mindset at the time.
So that's why we wanted to broaden
it.
And unfortunately, like we didn't
give it so much time and it wasbuilding, but we did transition
the name to the investedentrepreneur where we wanted to
niche it down even more and speakjust to entrepreneurs.
But one of the biggest problem waswe didn't really just want to have
(05:54):
a bunch of B files, like to bequite honest, like, we're like,
why are we doing this?Like, we're actually getting leads
from this now.
And a lot of them are like B files
that are taking up a lot more ofour time.
And yes, some of you might wantthat.
But for us, we really didn't.
So that was one of the reasons and
I know Brandon, you could probablyadd some more reasons as to why we
(06:14):
transitioned from that point on.
Yeah, I at that point, number one,
yeah, for sure, the file, the typewas not where we wanted to be.
Also, we found that there was alot of people that we talked to
who are really interesting and hadinteresting stories.
And we love sharing those.
But then when it came time to
talking about the solo episodesand things of that side, so much
of where our energy and ourpassion was flowing to was
actually in real estate andmortgages.
And we were like, OK, why are wehiding what we're best at?
(06:35):
This is literally our expertise.
Let's focus and double down on
that.
And then instead of always having
to seek out the expert, we canjust be the expert and sure, maybe
we'll find someone complimentaryto an episode that covers taxes or
something like that here or there.
But really, we can drive the ship.
And it's not always based on theavailability and the skill set of
others.
that's bang on.
(06:56):
And that was actually probablylike more of the driving force as
to why we made the transition wasI felt it was very broad.
We were talking about building abusiness and a lot of like the
topics kind of collided with whatwe do here just to a broader
audience.
And we're talking about mortgages
one week or real estate one week.
And it was just like a lot of
different topics.
And if you went to the channel,
(07:16):
you'd be like, I'm maybe going tolisten to half of these episodes.
Whereas we're like, why don't weniche down, talk about what we
enjoy talking about and what weknow best, which is mortgages and
real estate.
So it's going to really niche down
the avatar and the person thatcomes to our channel that wants to
stick around for the longterm.
So that's what we did.
And then that came to birth of ourthird title, Canadian Mortgage
(07:36):
Guide.
It's very, very early on.
I think we're maybe two or threeweeks in at this point, and we
haven't officially launched.
But even just from creating our
Instagram profile and our YouTubechannel, we can see that people in
the industry, whether it's youguys as mortgage brokers or even
realtors, like a lot of realtorsare following us naturally.
And we haven't even like hardlyposted anything.
We haven't been following peopleat all.
People are wanting to follow ourstory and what we're posting out
(07:56):
there.
So we feel like we've really
stumbled on something that isgoing to fit for us going forward.
So that's what we're doing.
The same concept applies though.
Like we're banging out podcastsand YouTube episodes, but the
other transition we made is we'rereally focusing in on optimizing
on YouTube, because we really feellike YouTube is an underutilized
space in the mortgage field.
You have some guys that are
(08:17):
crushing it right now.
You have Nolan Mathias, you have
Mark Mitchell, and you have RonButler with Angry Mortgage.
Like other than those three, Ican't name anyone else.
And that's three frigging peoplein the Canadian mortgage space.
So there's lots of room to playand grow there.
So that's what we're doing.
We're really, really focusing on
YouTube at this point.
Exactly.
And with these pieces, what we'reusing it is we're using it as
(08:38):
leverage.
So when a client asks us a
question, we're sending them aYouTube video.
Now, all of a sudden they go toYouTube where we have subscribers,
we have engagement on there.
It establishes us as professionals
and it really makes us moresticky.
Additionally, for realtors who arepitched to all the time, broker
one comes in, I've got betterrates.
(08:59):
Broker two comes by and I alwayspick up my phone, even it's 11 30
on friday night i'm hammered andthen we come in and we say you
know what we've got great customerservice we do all of the whole
umbrella and things that otherbrokers do sure but we have this
established brand we have all thiscontent we really educate our
borrowers so it makes for happierbuyers on your side and it
(09:20):
actually also shields you from alot of liability too, which they
love as well.
Oh yeah.
And just having the library ofcontent, like once we have all of
these videos in there going overlike specific stuff, like purchase
plus and all of that, it's goingto be in there for a library.
If any clients have questions onthat, like, hey, like we'll direct
you to this video, watch this.
(09:41):
It goes over everything you need
to know.
If you have any questions after
that, of course we can hop on aphone call, but I've done this in
the past, like with my firstYouTube channel, I have mortgage
specific content.
And that's what I was using it for
is really just to send back toclients.
And it works and people love it.
And it's stickier.
And I'm actually pumped to say wehave three closed files from
(10:02):
YouTube so far in the developmentof all three channels that we
started.
So really two channels.
So it's been a what three, fourmonths going hard at it somewhere
around there.
We have some closed files from it.
We're not paying for ads.
We're not really expanding our
subscriber base to too much rightnow.
We're still getting leads inbusiness from this.
And they're sticky, like they'resuper sticky.
And even one of the files hasreferred me over to another friend
of his like, it works.
And I just can't imagine how big
(10:24):
and how many leads we're going toget once we actually hit like a
decent subscriber base on Yeah, apoint to add to that too, is you
can go back and look at our oldcontent, and even some of our
current content.
We're still very much in a
learning mode like yeah we fuck upall the time our videos sometimes
the lighting's off like i've got afreaking glare behind me i don't
know all these things we're stillfiguring out and learning and
(10:48):
adapting and we're still gettingleads through this phase so you
still do get business yeah in thisphase once you refine you educate
yourself you upskill and you growthat business bigger, you're going
to get more leads.
So it's going to scale as you
scale your knowledge in the areaas well.
So I'm super excited for thatbecause I know we will get there.
We've got a lot of pieces in play.
(11:09):
It's just a matter of now
deploying the next round of budgetand learning and strategy and
coaching and stuff around that.
Yeah, exactly.
And we're excited to share ourjourney along the way too, because
we're only getting better with it.
If you look at our first videos
compared to now, like in myopinion, I think we're much, much
better editing, lighting, the waywe speak, get the message across,
like all of it is getting muchbetter.
But the last point I'll add to thegame plan is part of that is it
(11:33):
feeds our short form content aswell.
So we're recording these long formvideos, and then we're able to
have Nikki and the team chop it upinto short form content to then
post out on our Instagram andYouTube shorts, which is actually
very hands off for us.
And they do well, I would say the
purpose built reels and short formvideos that I do with my phone do
get more views, because I don'tknow why maybe it's the Instagram
(11:53):
algorithm, or I just come off moreauthentic with it.
They get more views.
But at the same time, the short
form content we're getting fromthe long form is a really good
library of knowledgeableinformation for people to consume
once they get to our page.
For kind of shared a little bit of
the results when it comes toleads.
But there's a few other resultsthat aren't immediately obvious.
And we wanted to just touch onthose because we think that's kind
(12:14):
of the hidden benefits behind thecurtain of deploying one of these
strategies.
Leads are amazing, but there's
also a whole other host of fringebenefits that come with And one
thing I'm learning from socialthat I'm super excited about, and
I've always heard this from othercreators outside of the space, and
I've always heard it, but youdon't really realize it until you
experience it yourself is thatsocial leads to other
opportunities that you can'treally imagine.
(12:34):
And Brandon and I an opportunitycame to us that we can't really
share as of right now.
So yeah, we're kind of teasing you
guys.
But it's a huge opportunity for us
that never would have came to usif we weren't active on social and
building this brand.
So that's the one big takeaway for
me is yes, like the leads arenice, but there's other things
that will happen that you probablycan't even map out in your head
(12:57):
right now.
But I promise you, we're not even
near where we want to be from ourbrand awareness and our authority.
But these opportunities are stillcoming to us.
Exactly.
If you kind of look at from like a
grade level, we're like a gradeone kind of reading capability.
And we're going to get up to auniversity level where those
opportunities are only going toscale and compound.
(13:17):
But right now, this has attracteda lot of things into our world
that weren't there six months to ayear ago.
And one, it's really cool.
And it's a lot of fun to it really
inspires you to create morecontent and do more pieces.
And then it's just good three, Sowe're really happy business.
with Wrapping this all up, that.
the whole point of creating this
content, creating the brand,growing the brand and building it
(13:38):
all out is so that you can becomea magnet and you start to attract
things and not have to always seekthem out.
And it takes time to do and toimplement and to grow.
It does require time to compound,but eventually you do start to
attract these pieces into yourbusiness and your life.
And that's the whole point of itall.
Yeah, it takes time.
It's not going to happen
overnight.
But another side benefit of that
is like when you become the magnetand you're attracting people,
(14:02):
you're also attracting realtorpartners as well and other
partners that want to give youbusiness.
And a good example of that is mybroadcast channel, which I've
talked about at length in otherepisodes.
If you haven't heard that, go backto the other episode, I believe
it's called Masterclass, how toactually get business off of
Instagram.
That's all about the broadcast
channel strategy that I'm using.
And it works, man.
Even just yesterday, I had a leadreach out to me directly on
Instagram.
It was in like my requests area
(14:24):
and the messages.
And usually it's like spammers in
there.
And this one was a lead and it was
this lady.
She's like, Hey, I got referred
over to you by X realtor.
And just want to know like what
the next steps are to get apre-approval for my son.
I didn't even recognize therealtor name.
I was like, I don't even know whothat is.
And I had to like search her andgo through my DMs.
(14:47):
And yeah, it was just from thebroadcast channel, which is super
cool.
So like they're referring me
clients without even pitching themon a four slide or hopping on a
phone call with them.
And like Brandon said, it's like a
magnet that leads come to you at acertain point.
And I And we found the same thingtoo, is with other realtor
partners, people will say, Hey, Iknow you work with so-and-so.
I've seen your content on socialmedia.
(15:08):
Do you mind if I meet with you andstart sending you leads?
And we're like, yeah, 100% you canstart sending us business.
That's amazing.
And I think back to my first
couple of months as a broker,having to make those calls every
day and try to get people to giveme the time of the day.
And it sucked.
It was hard to do.
It was a necessary evil to getdone.
(15:28):
But it was a challenge to actuallyget people to even book a meeting
and then from there to show up forthose meetings.
So now having this where peopleare reaching out and asking for
the meeting or asking to sendbusiness is just a total role
reversal and one that I'm verywelcome to having in my life.
so much easier to hop on thatphone call.
I just booked a realtor meetingwith two in the same meeting, like
her friend wants to join.
And it's not even me pitching,
hey, I want to show you X, Y, andZ to help you in your business for
(15:53):
like, you know, the typical fourslide pitch.
We're talking about YouTube andgrowing their YouTube channel.
So it's just like a way in and anice warmer way in.
And you don't always have to likepitch yourself and beg for
business, which I absolutely Okay.
So quick recap here.
If you're not building your brand,get started.
You just have to start somewhere.
So invest either the time or the
money and get the ball rollingthere.
Once you start doing that, you'llbe able to leverage it to new
(16:14):
opportunities and it will justcontinue to scale and grow.
And it will inspire you to pourmore gas on that fire, but you do
need to start first.
If you've built an established
brand and you're listening tothis, share some tips and tricks
that you've done becauseultimately at the end of the day,
Commission Breath is an incubatorto help us all grow and scale
beautiful, amazing, awesomemortgage businesses.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.