Video Marketing Marvels: Harnessing the Potential of Video with Mike Faraci

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:00:15 to 00:00:40

All right. This is Mike Mills with the Texas Real Estate and Finance Podcast. And today we're going to be talking all things video marketing, creating videos, where to post, how to post the importance of it, and all that kind of stuff and not getting too wrapped up in whether or not you're becoming Internet superstar. We're just trying to reach our customers and that's pretty much it. So I brought on a master for this today, mr.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:00:40 to 00:00:49

Mike Farasi. And I've said that wrong probably four times, Mike. So I apologize if I'm doing that. Thank you for the applause. I was going to give myself applause.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:00:49 to 00:01:04

Over here, but you got see, we all got our little value over here. You got it because you run a few podcasts, so it's always fun to add that piece to it, just so I'm clear because I know we kind of went back and forth. Is it farasi? Is that correct? Feroci.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:01:04 to 00:01:09

Ferossi. Okay. So emphasis on the front side a little bit more than exactly. Gotcha. Gotcha.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:01:09 to 00:01:44

All right, man. Well, I appreciate you coming on and chatting with me for a little know, I've seen you on, uh, seems like there's this little community of people on there. Know I've had Alley on and I think I got Brian coming down the I've actually I've worked with Dan for a couple of years back in a previous life, so I know Dan pretty well, too. So I love what you guys have built as far as the support that you all give each other through the platform and what you guys have done there. But your specialty that you focus on primarily is video marketing.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:01:44 to 00:02:00

And I actually watched I've been watching several of your videos kind of prepare for this. And you were talking to somebody the other day about how if you're looking for the turnkey marketing company that's going to provide you're like, that's not me. I'm going to tell you how to do video. I'm going to help you out to do video. And that's it.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:02:00 to 00:02:11

That's right. Tell me a little bit about I don't want to be everything to everybody. Right. You got your and I think in the mortgage business, a lot of people get caught up in that. Yeah.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:02:11 to 00:02:22

If your target market is everyone, then your target market is no one. You can't make everybody happy. That's right. So start with what you're really good at. And I'm really good at video content for organic reach.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:02:22 to 00:03:01

I'm not going to be the guy who can hop in the background like a ninja and build you a phenomenal paid ad campaign with creative to go along with it and stuff like that. But if you want to brand your startup, your company yourself as a personal brand organically and just get on a consistent posting schedule, be authentic and relatable. That's what I'm really good at, and that's what we focus on. So a unique thing about being in this space is a lot of people that are, let's call it marketing experts, however you want to phrase yourself there. They come from a marketing background, like, that's what they do.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:03:01 to 00:03:11

They were a marketing developer at another company in a different industry. You're unique in this and that. You've been in the real estate and mortgage industry for almost 20 years now, right? Correct. Yeah.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:03:11 to 00:03:39

I'm a mortgage vet. Started back in 2005 with doing retail loans at HSBC, if you remember that. Yes. And then moved over from there to a place called Seabreeze Financial out here in Irvine, California. It was all subprime, and I'll never forget the first day that I was sitting in the training room learning about how a Pay option Arm works.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:03:39 to 00:03:40

Right.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:03:43 to 00:03:53

Should I do this? The first thought in my head was, Nobody's going to do this. That's stupid. Lo and behold. Lo and behold.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:03:53 to 00:04:14

Yeah. And then I hopped into wholesale. I was a wholesale account executive for a few years, and then that company that I was doing wholesale with pulled me into secondary marketing. I guess they figured we need a product manager, and Mike reads his guidelines and can remember some stuff, so let's have him do it. So that's when I got into secondary marketing.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:04:14 to 00:04:52

And that launched the next 15 years of my career just growing in secondary and capital markets for different mortgage banks. I worked for PRMG, Lennox Financial, American Financial Network. I'm still working with American Financial Network on a bunch of projects and stuff over there. But yeah, anything that you can imagine when it comes to capital markets and secondary marketing, that's what I did. And I always had my hand in product development and product onboarding investor, onboarding new relationships with people that we can sell loans to, different things like that.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:04:52 to 00:05:19

The product mix that I was managing at the time that I stopped doing all that was huge. There was a couple of hundred loan programs with 33 plus different aggregators and a dozen warehouse lines. It was a whole thing. And the whole time I figured, nobody's going to use these products from an originator perspective. None of our originators are going to use these products unless they know about them.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:05:20 to 00:06:16

And ten to twelve years ago, I bought my first DSLR camera. Got into photography as a passion, and I kind of lucked into that being right around the time where the prosumer DSLR cameras started coming with a button that said Record or video. I ended up taking all my knowledge in photography and how to make a beautiful static image of something and kind of applied that to video and just started making internal educational content so people would be willing to learn how a new product worked and what it did. I mean, every loan officer has had corporate toss down a new product and give them a twelve to 20 page long underwriting guide and say, Here, use it for what it's good for and not elaborate on that, you know what I mean? And so I tried to fix that internally at AFN, even.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:06:16 to 00:06:45

They have the dreaded product webinar where you have some guy that's representing whatever wholesale groups coming in and providing this particular program, which you may only use once a year. And then you sit there and it's like it's a snooze fest. It's the most boring thing because you're sitting there going, okay, you're barely listening and barely paying attention, and you're just like, I'll just do conventional loans. It's a great person to go have a drink with. Might not be the best person to give a webinar to a few hundred people.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:06:45 to 00:06:46

Correct. Right.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:06:49 to 00:07:05

Just trying to kind of fix that problem. Internal education and things like that. And a man by the name of Dan Green, founder of Homebuyer.com, saw some of the stuff that I was posting on LinkedIn. He said, I have this mortgage startup. We're just for first time home buyers.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:07:05 to 00:07:28

And a big part of what I want to do is organic reach through video content by educating first time homebuyers on what they actually need to do to buy their first house. How long. And I think you're the guy that was beginning of 2021. Okay? So for the next 13 months, I headed up all content and education for Homebuyer.com, and I was the face of the YouTube channel.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:07:28 to 00:07:45

We grew from 100 subscribers to over 3000 by the end of that year. That's great. All the written content for SEO and blog pieces and stuff like that. I managed the creation of all that. I wasn't the one actually writing it, but I managed the creation of all of that stuff.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:07:45 to 00:08:19

I handled all the video. We created a 38 unit first time home buyer curriculum so people could learn every step of the process. And in the beginning of 2021, we were running a few paid Facebook ads and things like that here and there. We were in the ballpark of maybe twelve leads a week. By the end of 2021, with all the content marketing that we were doing, we had dropped all paid ad spend completely, and we're receiving between 20 to 24 leads per day.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:08:19 to 00:08:32

Wow, that's amazing. Yeah. So it was just kind of one of those proof in the pudding things, like you put good stuff out and people are going to want to reach out to you. Yes. So is that what kind of led you give value?

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:08:32 to 00:09:03

Is that what led you into getting into your own thing now? Because starting a company on your own is a big step, you know what I mean? Especially in this environment we're in right now where the leads aren't as plentiful, the deals aren't as plentiful. It's a struggle for agents and for lenders out there to get the same type of volume, because we just came from literally the hottest market that we've ever experienced in real estate, you might as well have fallen off the Grand Canyon Cliff to what we moved into. Now, this may be more normal, right.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:09:04 to 00:09:27

But it just was a massive drop off. So a lot of people have really struggled with and now you're offering cursory or peripheral products to people to help them grow their business. So how has that transition been for you? What's that been like? Yeah, so, as a lot of seemingly great things, red Button Media is still new.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:09:27 to 00:09:48

I launched this in February. So we are in our infancy. Even though it seems to me like I've been doing this for decades, it's been about 2 seconds since I went live, you know what I mean? So it's one of those things and a lot of wonderful things are born out of necessity. Not necessarily just necessity in the market, but necessity to a human.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:09:48 to 00:10:08

So, at risk of oversharing, I've never let that stop me before, so why should I now? That's right. Left homebuyer.com, went to a different mortgage company, went back to AFN for a little more stability. I have a ten year old daughter and one year old son. Kids will make stability be it's one of those things.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:10:09 to 00:10:36

Shortly after our son was born, my wife resigned from her job so she could stay home and take care of him, so we didn't have to rely on anybody else because it made sense at the time. And unfortunately, I love the startup life, but the family need a little bit more stability. So I went back to American Financial Network and things were great. Started building some stuff over there for them. Towards the end of 2022, everybody in the mortgage business know what happened to the mortgage business.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:10:37 to 00:10:52

I was a casualty of that as well. I didn't lose my job completely, but the responsibilities and my capacity was cut basically in half. Everybody goes cutting cost mode. That's what happens. We did the same.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:10:52 to 00:11:02

Absolutely. I don't fault them for it. It is what it is. I thank them for giving me the option, you know what I mean? They said, do you want to be laid off or do you want to be cut in half?

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:11:02 to 00:11:22

What's better for you? And ran the numbers and half was more than what unemployment was going to pay me, but it still wasn't enough to pay the bills. So I'm sitting there running the numbers, figuring out how to put food on table and diapers on. Yep. And I started looking for ways to deliver Uber eats or do dog walking.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:11:23 to 00:11:58

Do what you got to do, you know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. And then I had a call with again, thanks to Dan Green over@homebuyer.com, had a call with him and he said, Mike, I appreciate your hustle and I know where your priorities are and they're right, but you got to stop selling yourself short on what you do in video. And that was kind of the little verbal slap in the face that I needed to reassess some things and figure out how I could fill a gap in the market and simultaneously create a safety net for my family so we could be in a position to know where no one company could ever pull the rug out from.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:12:02 to 00:12:50

Because in that research, I found, unfortunately, that when you reach out to a traditional agency and say the word Video, they might want a couple of $1,000 just to talk to you, first off. Second off, all they know how to do is send a full on camera crew out to your place and give you this big production that ends up looking like a shiny, polished, television ready commercial. And I'm like, Dude, the mortgage business is in a tough place. Solo originators, mom and pop shops, small broker shops, smaller branches at their respective companies, or up and coming mortgage and real estate companies of their own are completely priced out of this market. Yes, as completely inaccessible to them.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:12:50 to 00:13:21

So I set out to launch Red Button Media as, quote, professional grade video content for budgets of all sizes. And as of a month ago, I feel like I accomplished that. We have offerings for budgets of all sizes. So if you're a company looking to build a brand and you just want your content served up on a silver platter without having to find somebody to be in front of camera, buy all the gear, set up the studio, do all the stuff, we can do that. We have full brand advocacy services that we can offer.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:13:21 to 00:14:13

If you do want somebody to bring the gear to your office, if you're local in Southern California, we'll do that for you also, and get you something that looks and sounds a little bit more leveled up. If you're somebody who's working with a budget of a $1,000 or less a month and you don't have any gear and you don't want to edit your videos because you just don't have the time to do it, then we have guided content creation where we can do recordings like this over the air. And I'll guide you through making your short form content. And within an hour we'll put together eight to twelve pieces for you and then you get to hang up and just go back to your day job. We'll take the recording, we edited everything up, make sure it's nice and vertical, captions, company branding, all the stuff that you need to have good, solid, short form content to get you on a more regular posting schedule.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:14:14 to 00:14:47

And if later we'll give that to you so you can schedule it out throughout the next month. So you get a month worth of that video content in about an hour of your time. Right? And then if you have no budget for that stuff, but you just want to learn how to do it yourself, I recently launched Videomarketingmarbles.com, and that is my online course that has a discord community and then weekly live coaching with me for $49 a month. That's very affordable, you know what I mean?

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:14:47 to 00:14:51

It's the most accessible thing that I could figure out to offer.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:14:56 to 00:15:28

It's a place for me to brain dump in a way that helps the vast majority of salespeople, specifically in almost any industry. Because this isn't a course that's going to teach you again how to monetize your YouTube channel or become an influencer. This is going to teach you how to make video to promote the industry that you're actually in. This is going to teach you how to get the video that you need without having to become a content creator because you already have a full time job. You don't have time for that stuff.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:15:28 to 00:15:29

Yes.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:15:34 to 00:16:02

I think it's important, especially there's two schools of thought, right? If you want to get into video or you want to get into this type of marketing, either you pay someone to do it or you do it yourself. And I think there is a middle ground there because like me personally, I started doing all this on my own journey of just like, I'm just going to figure it out because I believe personally that the more I do it, whether it's good or bad is irrelevant. I'm trying to learn. My whole goal is I'm trying to figure out what works, what doesn't work, what can I do, where can I fit my time?

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:16:02 to 00:16:16

How can I make it all stick together? Now, one of the things that I wish I may have had in the beginning was a little bit more guidance on a few things only because you're going to make more mistakes and do things wrong before you do them. Right now. That's part of learning. That's the way it goes.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:16:16 to 00:16:42

Absolutely. You got to fall off the bike a few times, right? Yeah. You got to struggle some to do it, but you got to go through that process, I think of actually posting something, of actually typing out your description, of actually coming up with keywords, of actually figuring out how to insert captions and needing to edit them sometimes, all that stuff. I feel like you have to do that because that way you really get an appreciation for the effort and time that goes into it.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:16:42 to 00:17:10

So then if you get to a point where you are ready to say compensate or pay somebody to do some of the things that you don't want to do anymore, you know what it takes, you know what's involved with it and so therefore you can assign value to it much better. There you go. And that's exactly right. It's assigning via this conversation with somebody. Just yesterday they were talking to me about helping with their podcast and I explained the whole process about how we could help them record their podcast and we'd make sure that everything was posted and everything like that for them.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:17:10 to 00:17:30

It was a little custom thing. I know that there's no one size fits all option, so we do custom packages for people all the time. And they started asking me, okay, well, how much time are you going to spend in the edit and how much time is that? And I said, Listen, if that's who you're looking to hire, you need to be on fiver. Yeah.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:17:30 to 00:17:38

You know what I mean? There's plenty of people out there like that. You're not hiring my time. You're hiring my expertise. Yes.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:17:38 to 00:18:10

You're hiring the last ten years that I spent researching and developing these processes that are going to afford you all the convenience that you're looking for. So the question isn't how much are you paying me for my time? The question is how much are you willing to pay to get your time back? Correct. And once you can answer that question because you have done it all before, just like you were saying, then you'll know how much you're willing to pay for such and such quality of whatever service that you're looking to hire.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:18:10 to 00:18:18

Well, I use the example of the plumber, right? I've changed out toilets. I've changed out faucets. I've done all that stuff, right? Yeah.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:18:18 to 00:18:35

And I've also had to go to Home Depot 60 times. I've had to buy a different tool for something. I cracked a tub one time because I bought the wrong tool to take. So it's kind of one of those things where when I hire a plumber or an electrician, like you said, he. Might always come away with bandaids.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:18:35 to 00:18:45

Yes. He might walk in the door and get the job done in 30 minutes. Right. And then he's like, here's a $300 charge, or whatever. And I'm like this $300 per $600 an hour.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:18:45 to 00:19:06

That seems insane. No, that's not what you're paying for. You're paying for the seven and a half hours that it was going to take you to do the same job with five different trips to the hardware store, two and a half hours on Google or, excuse me, on YouTube, because you're trying to look up how to fix it. He's got 20 years of experience, and so he's coming in and taking care of it in 30 minutes. And now you don't have to worry about it.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:19:06 to 00:19:16

Just like you said, you're paying for your time that you get to keep. Not the vast majority of things. I'm just not a fan of billing hourly. I hate it. I hate it, like billing by project.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:19:16 to 00:19:27

Because at the end of the day, you're paying for an end result. Yes. How long it takes you to get that end result doesn't change the value of it. If you're paying me for a video, you're paying for a marketing asset. Right.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:19:27 to 00:19:47

The value of that marketing asset is the value of the marketing asset. Now, if I bill you hourly, it incentivizes me to take longer to give it to you that doesn't make sense for anybody. Oh, no. You know what I mean? I think there's a fundamental change that can be made in a lot of people's brains when it comes to stuff like that.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:19:48 to 00:20:06

That would help a lot of people. And it's starting. Sure, it's starting to happen. Well, that's why I say that's important, to do some of it yourself, because and again, I'll tell you my own personal experience when it comes to recording the video, right. It's funny because you and I actually do very similar types of videos.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:20:06 to 00:20:14

A lot of time. You walking and talking, man. Walking and talking. I have a folder on my thing that's walk and talk. So we kind of do the same thing.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:20:14 to 00:20:32

Well, when I do that recording, it like the actual act of recording it, I don't know, ten minutes. You know what I mean? It's really easy because I use a teleprompter and I write out my script a little bit ahead of time. So I've got a little bit of it set together. So that piece of it simple, easy, not difficult.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:20:33 to 00:20:51

Now, that being said, it's because I've done 150 of them, or whatever it is. The first ten times it took a little longer, but now I've got it down to a bit of a science. What takes the time for me is the editing. Part of it is coming up with, I'll tell you. So I had CapCut.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:20:51 to 00:21:00

You familiar with CapCut, I'm sure. Very familiar. Software on your phone you can use. It also has a desktop, but the phone software is much more robust, I think. Or you can do more with it's easier.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:21:01 to 00:21:09

Fair enough. Yeah. But then I have a Mac and I have Final Cut Pro on my. Mac Pro and Imovie. Yes.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:21:09 to 00:21:30

So when I was editing my walk and talks, I would switch the camera one side to the other. I would say something, then I would say something, then I would say something. Right, okay. And so I was using the Caption feature to cut down my time on each one of those, because the actual video might be three or four minutes, but I'm trying to get it down to 90 seconds because I want to post it as a reel or whatever. Yes.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:21:30 to 00:22:01

And so when I'm going through Cap Cut and I know there's video quality and lags and all this stuff, well, I got to a point with CapCut where every time I would do that, it was taking me I mean, it would take me 45 minutes. Not because I didn't know how to do it, but because the software was lagging and having issues or whatever. So then I switched over to Final Cut Pro, and I can do the same thing, but I can do it in half the time, a fourth of the time, like, it's so much faster. I got a hack for you. This might be a good tip for anybody who's into editing look into a program called Descript.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:22:01 to 00:22:27

I think I've heard of that before, but I've never looked at Descript. Okay, so Descript, as soon as you drag and drop a video file into Descript into a new project, it automatically transcribes it for you. Okay. And then it allows you to edit a video just like you're editing a Word document. So if you say such and such, I want to talk about this.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:22:27 to 00:22:35

That was no good. Take two. Such and such, I want to talk about this. Then you find that line that you split. Such and such, I want to talk about this.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:22:35 to 00:22:47

That was no good. Take two. Highlight it all delete, and it's gone from the video. Wow. Also, there's a little magic button up in the top corner that says shorten word gaps.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:22:47 to 00:23:07

So when I go to edit my. Shorts, I'm writing this down, by the way. I click shorten word gaps and then specify a word gap length of a half a second. Okay. Descript immediately identifies all word gaps that are a half a second or longer.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:23:07 to 00:23:24

I click apply to all, and my videos cut together. See, this is how you learn literal three clicks of a button. There's a free version that you can try. I think the plan that I'm on is, like, 20 or $30 a month. Well, all of these software are really simple.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:23:24 to 00:23:31

Yeah. They're not very expensive. And if you can just CapCut free. If you don't mind doing some of that stuff. CapCut free.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:23:31 to 00:23:47

Your Imovie on your Mac is way more capable than you think it is, and that's on there for free. I also have final cut pro. I use Imovie a lot of the times, just talking head stuff where I don't have to do anything fancy. It's just so quick and simple. I love it.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:23:47 to 00:23:48

Yeah.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:23:50 to 00:24:12

I think part of this journey, too, is you're trying this software and you're trying that software. And the great thing about a lot of these now is the market is such where there are no contracts anymore. Everything is month to month. So if you pay your $25 and you try every bell and whistle on that particular software, and then you move on to the next one because you didn't like it, or you try a different one, you're not spending all of this money and tied into stuff. You're not bound to anything.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:24:12 to 00:24:21

So you can kind of oh, man. I remember the first time I bought premiere pro from Adobe. You had to save up to buy that? Yes. Yeah.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:24:21 to 00:24:29

It's crazy. And not anymore. Just a few bucks a month. Give it a shot. Try it for a doing.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:24:29 to 00:24:41

And if you're not using it enough in a month, then you're not doing enough video to justify buying it. So just cancel anyway. Yeah, absolutely right. All right, so let's talk to the people that aren't doing video. Okay.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:24:42 to 00:24:52

We got a little of the weeds in there on some of the stuff. That we yeah, sorry, man. It's easy to get inside baseball with this stuff. Don't get me started on gear. You don't want to get inside baseball out of this stuff.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:24:52 to 00:25:05

Don't get me started on gear, either. No, I love it. I love it. But the point of some of this is I want people that aren't doing video right now, number one, to understand the importance of it. A right.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:25:05 to 00:25:21

I want them to understand when you haven't started, when you haven't done anything, where do you start? I want you to tell everybody. Number one is, why is video so important? Number one? And then number two is you've done none.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:25:21 to 00:25:34

What's the starting point? How do I start? All right, so it's funny because I founded the company under the pretense that I will never try to talk anybody into making video. Yeah. Okay, so I'm going to start with that.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:25:34 to 00:25:40

I don't want to talk anybody into making video. Sure. That's not what I'm going to do. If you're skeptical, go be skeptical. You're the minority.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:25:40 to 00:26:05

87% of companies on the planet, they're making video. 96% of consumers watch a video to learn more about a product or a service before they make a purchase decision. So if you're not sold on video, fine. Go market yourself to the 4%. There's plenty left for the rest of us.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:26:05 to 00:26:17

Right? You know what I mean? Those are the two stats. Those are real numbers, not made up. Off top of my head, even though 67% of statistics are made up on the spot, those two were actually real.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:26:17 to 00:26:26

Yeah. You know what I mean? And so it's just one of those things. Also, think about AI. I know this is a direction.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:26:26 to 00:26:38

Not a lot of people take it, but think about AI. It's all the rage. And everybody's talking about chat GPT, because, oh, it spits out all this text, and you can use it to write blogs, and you can use it to write posts. And you're right. You can.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:26:41 to 00:27:07

Now, how do you know who the hell is writing what you're reading? And how do you know it was fact checked? How do you know it's coming from a human? We're in a position now to where within a year or two, we're going to have absolutely no clue who's writing our written text unless it comes from a very close, trusted source. So video, until AI gets to the place, to where it can deep fake all of us based on two selfies on our camera roll.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:27:07 to 00:27:29

So maybe five to ten years from now until then, it's the most authentic way to communicate with anyone, because it's the way to guarantee that the information is coming straight from the horse's mouth. Well, what's the hierarchy of communication? It's something like the bottom is, like, I think, like email, maybe, and then text, and then a voice. Unless you want to toss snail. Mail in there.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:27:30 to 00:27:50

Yeah, snail mail in there. And then the number one is face to face communication. And if you can't be in a room with someone face to face, the second best thing is what's going on right now. That's right. And a very close third to Alive would be a recorded video that you made for somebody.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:27:50 to 00:28:13

Yeah. So it's just more authentic and more relatable. And if you're looking to get exposure for your business and for what you do, the best thing that you can do is just hit the red button. Hit the red button, make a video. Don't worry about what you're talking about so much.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:28:13 to 00:28:41

Just be yourself. Because that's what it is. It's all about being yourself. If you're posting video for Organic Reach, if you're not putting paid ad spend behind this stuff, you're posting for Organic Reach, which means you're posting to LinkedIn or Facebook, TikTok, Twitter Threads, Snapchat, the list goes on and on. You might be putting some video on your website as a video component to a blog or something like that.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:28:42 to 00:28:58

You got to be yourself because people aren't on those platforms to watch commercials, right? Actually, they're on the platforms to avoid commercials. They all hate them. Think about your viewing habits on any social media platform. Reddit you can toss in.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:28:58 to 00:29:17

There also any platform, when you see a commercial, as soon as that Skip ad button is available, you're pressing it. We all do. So don't make things that look like ads. Make things that look like you. You are a beautifully imperfect human being.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:29:17 to 00:29:46

You just got to own it. And guess what? Everybody is beautifully imperfect. And if you stumble over some words, if there's some hymns and ha's and some uz and some that's just going to make you more relatable, don't shy away from that stuff because human beings love to relate to other human beings. So the key to video is just getting on there and being yourself.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:29:46 to 00:30:13

And if you're having trouble figuring out what to talk about, just start by talking about what you do for a living. That's fine. That's what you expert in all day, every day. It's going to be a company and you'll be able to branch out. You'll talk about, oh, your kids or your grandkids did this, or you tried that new restaurant down the road, or you tried a new coffee house, or oh, I just had this thought about this thing.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:30:13 to 00:30:40

The key is to let people know who you are. Let them get to know you, and then every once in a while, remind them what you do for a living and why you're there. Well, and it's especially important, I think, too, in our business in mortgage and real estate, because it is such a personal transaction, highly emotional too, right? Absolutely. So the human that's buying the house or that's refinancing their home or that's looking to list their home or whatever the case may be that human wants to deal with another human.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:30:40 to 00:31:01

They don't want to deal with some polished talking head that they've seen on there because it just makes you feel uncomfortable and icky. It's like, well, the you that I'm seeing isn't the real you. So I don't feel comfortable that you're going to be giving me the real story. But if I see you, I think you and I, again, are similar on this. I'm a T shirt guy.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:31:01 to 00:31:15

I don't wear ties and collars. I hate it. And so when I do my videos, that's not how I look. Now, if I'm going to go stand at a title office and talk to, it's a different environment. So I'm not necessarily showing up in flip flops today.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:31:15 to 00:31:23

Oh, see, that's where we differ. I don't care. I'm hoping to get there one day. I'm just not there yet. But I'm also not dressed.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:31:24 to 00:31:35

I'm wearing pants. Let's just put it that way. I got pants. Fair enough. But outside of that, you have to be who you are because people buy I work for a company, it's called Verity Mortgage.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:31:35 to 00:31:41

Nobody buys from Verity Mortgage. They buy from Mike Mills. Right? Absolutely. My wife.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:31:41 to 00:32:00

That's the power of a personal brand. Because if you're a loan officer and you think that your brand is connected to the corporate entity that you work for, you are so wrong. And you're going about it all the wrong way. Because that corporate entity might not exist forever or you might find a better opportunity somewhere else. Absolutely.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:32:01 to 00:32:40

Wouldn't you want the brand to be you and to be something that moves with you throughout your career? Because it's very rare to find somebody who lands somewhere and just stays there forever anymore. You know what I mean? Would you say that going through social media yourself? Because one of the things when I talk to agents about doing this type of stuff and even I won't mention the name, but there's a blog, video blog that I watch all the time who recently did a post about how everybody's focused on social media, but no leads come from social media, and they come from the organic get in front of people talk the old school way of doing things.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:32:42 to 00:33:16

My response to that, I didn't agree only in the sense of and you and I talked about this a little bit coming on beforehand is if you're doing videos because you think your phone's going to ring, then you're doing it for the wrong reason. Okay? Because at least in the beginning, right? At least in the beginning, you can get to a point where you get specialized and get to a place where you can do it yourself, and maybe you can make that happen. But my opinion on it has always been, and I think you agree with me on this, is that my job when I make a video is to stay in front of the people that a I already know that already.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:33:16 to 00:33:28

Trust me that it's just a top of mind. I am in front of you as often as I can be. So when you're ready to refinance or buy or sell your house, I'm in your brain. Somewhere in their brain, I'm there. Right.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:33:28 to 00:33:51

I'm not trying to get the person necessarily that I've never met before that lives 4 hours away from me, that knows nothing about me. I'm just trying to stay in front of people as often as I can. Would you agree with that statement? Yeah. Here's the issue because you get a lot of detractors, you get a lot of people say, oh, leads don't come from social media, they come from meeting people face to face.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:33:51 to 00:34:15

Well, there's two things that have happened. If somebody legitimately believes that the first thing that's happened is that they didn't post consistently enough and they quit because they were lazy, because they were looking at posting on social media as a sales effort, not a marketing effort, those two things are very different. Right. Sales is for immediate results. We should be selling.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:34:15 to 00:34:38

But marketing brand building is a mid to long term play. So if you post a video a week for two months and nothing comes of it and you quit, that's not the platform's fault that's you so sorry you're a quitter and that's what you believe. But that's just completely untrue. The second thing that could have happened is that they have absolutely no clue how to attribute leads properly. Right?

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:34:38 to 00:35:15

And attribution in marketing is a huge thing. You're not just trying to attribute leads so you can give credit to the right person or the right place. You need to attribute leads so you can observe and adjust your marketing efforts properly. And if we all as mortgage loan originators, right, if we all think of ourselves like we should be doing as little miniature companies of our own, then you can start to hone in on marketing as a business building activity and then really think about this stuff. Take some notes, create a spreadsheet, make sure you're attributing things the right way.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:35:15 to 00:35:36

Because if you post on social media for a few months and a real estate agent reaches out to you and they're like, hey, I love what you're doing on social, can you help me out with some things? They say, yeah, when's your next open house? I'll meet you there. We'll do a video together or something like that. And then you guys hit it off and you go have some coffee and you go have some dinner.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:35:36 to 00:35:47

And from there on out, you have the text messages, you have each other's phone numbers, you're always meeting in person. They're referring you business left and right. Well, this is a realtor that I met in person. Right? Right.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:35:47 to 00:36:25

No. If you don't make note that that initial contact came from social media, then you're falsely attributing every referral that they give you to in person old school methods when that relationship was actually developed and sparked through social media posts. So every one of those referrals should be attributed to social media marketing efforts. You really got to pay attention to this type of stuff, even if it's somebody you meet in person. Say you meet somebody in person at a home buying seminar or some sort of a real estate mixer or some sort of an event or whatever it is.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:36:25 to 00:36:45

If somebody comes up to you and shakes your hand, reaches out, maybe it's in the second or third conversation you guys have together down the road. But they say, you know what? I had to come say hi to you that day, because I saw you on social media a few months ago, and I really liked what you were doing. You have to attribute those relationships to where they're actually coming from. You know what I mean?

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:36:45 to 00:37:31

The exposure that you gained through your posting online is what created that initial introduction. And you might not learn that right away, but once you do learn it, you got to let that switch be flipped in your head so you can say, oh yeah, you know what? This is really doing some stuff to drive business. It might not be the beginning and end of every lead. It might not be the beginning and end of every referral source, but if it leads you to more introductions and to build more relationships with people that you then are able to cultivate in person, you got to realize that those at bats have come because of your online exposure that you've been getting.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:37:31 to 00:38:15

Well, and specifically, again, in mortgage and real estate both because I think they're very similar in how they develop contacts and whatnot is just as a manner of process. So when I start a loan, obviously I've got my agent that I'm involved with, I've got the listing agent that I'm involved with, I've got the title company, and I've got the buyer. Now, I don't sell a little waiver on that a little bit, but those four people are immediately I'm going on to Facebook, LinkedIn, whatever Instagram, whatever platform, and I'm searching for that person's name, and I'm trying to connect with that person on social media right away. That's one of the this is a big connection for a lot of mortgage people. I love where you're going with this, because you just listed five people.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:38:15 to 00:38:22

Yes. And all of them are your, what. Potential clients or referral partners? Customers. They're all your customers.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:38:22 to 00:38:40

You're serving all of them in a transaction? Absolutely. Just because a transaction has one end user doesn't mean there's not many more. Customers that you're well, people forget about title companies all the time because you got to realize, especially for mortgage people, they're marketing to Realtors as well. Right.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:38:40 to 00:39:15

They're trying to market to agents to give them their listings. Well, if you're a lender and you're marketing to agents also. You team up with companies all the time to do trainings, to do presentations, whatever it is that you can do. So those relationships are just as important as it is with the agent because it's a contact within the industry and when somebody sits down at closing and they're signing paperwork and hopefully you can be there as a lender sometimes we can't always be there, but hopefully you can. But if you're not and the title agent and the listing agent and the buyer's agent are all like, man, your loan officer was awesome.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:39:15 to 00:39:28

I saw this. And what the social media piece of it is, is that I've connected with those people. They know who I am. So I can't remember the last time someone didn't if I found them, they didn't accept my friend request. Like they're always going to accept it, right?

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:39:28 to 00:39:51

And then now I have one more person in my audience, whether they see all my content or not. I have one additional person in my audience that I can have the potential to reach every single time I put out a video and put something there. And again, it's all because like you said, it's a marketing mindset. It's top of mind. I got to be top of mind to those people whenever a situation rises.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:39:51 to 00:40:05

And if I made out of mind. Man, out of sight, out of mind. If I made that video on property taxes and someone has a property tax conversation at the office one day, and they're like, oh, you should call so and so, because he just said something about this the other day. You need to talk to him. And that's what it is.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:40:05 to 00:40:18

Yes, it's huge and it doesn't just stop at the people that are directly related to that purchase or drive decision making. We should really be focusing on all tangential industries.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:40:20 to 00:41:13

Try to make videos that cater to or try to network with divorce attorneys, tax preparers, home warranty professionals, not just title Escrow, real estate agents, general contractors, you know what I mean, people who handle plumbers and electricians. There are big expensive things that need to happen to houses because of plumbing and electrical problems and these people don't know where to get the funds, but they're sitting on equity that they haven't tapped into. Right? And every one of those tangential industries is a possible referral source and a customer that you should be serving, somebody you should be actively talking to on a pretty regular basis and posting on social media. Obviously, I don't want to limit this conversation to video.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:41:14 to 00:41:30

I know I'm a video guy and we're both bought into video. That doesn't mean everybody is. But even if you're just recording some audio, even if you're just typing something up, if you're posting a static image, whatever it is, have a target. Everybody has target clients. Everybody kind of knows who they want to be working with.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:41:30 to 00:41:55

They know who they'd like to be talking to. Every one of those target clients is a target viewer for your content also. Yeah. So keep your target viewer in mind because when you know who you're talking to through a piece of content that's just going to bring more clarity to your content, it's going to end up helping you produce a better piece of it. What would you say to somebody who was looking at doing any type of social media, whether it be video or anything else?

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:41:55 to 00:42:18

And when you say, well, why haven't you done it in the past or why aren't you doing it? They would say, well, there's so many people that do it already. I just get lost in the shuffle and nobody's going to see me, so it's just not worth my time because I can't do it as well as so and so. So I shouldn't even bother. Yeah, you just need to stop comparing yourself to other people and start thinking so.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:42:18 to 00:42:28

Especially in mortgage. If you're a mortgage loan originator, you have a target market, right? Where do you do business, Mike? What city or what area? What area?

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:42:29 to 00:42:53

What's your target area that you love to do business in the most? So I live in Mansfield, Texas, which is a suburb of Dallas and Fort Worth, and I've been coaching kids and I have families that I've worked with over the years because my kids are getting older now. But that's been a big target is I love sports, I've coached, I've been running leagues. It's very something that I'm very involved with. So even on my podcast I've had coaches before talking.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:42:53 to 00:43:18

We talk sport, youth sports and stuff all the time. So that's definitely what my passion is. And I try to stay in my area and I try to stay with families. I enjoy working with families specifically. So would it make sense to compare the type, quality and view and engagement numbers of your content with somebody who has been doing it for five years longer than you, who markets to a national audience?

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:43:18 to 00:43:29

No, not at all. Exactly. So that's the thing. We need to stop comparing yourself to people that you're never going to measure up to by design. Yeah.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:43:29 to 00:43:44

You don't even want to market to a national audience because you're not approved to do business nationally. You're licensed where you're at and you want to keep it at home. There's plenty of business for you there. So why would you try to expand hugely like that with your content? It doesn't make any sense.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:43:44 to 00:44:02

Well, you're trying to reach a certain customer too, because you want to work with people. I think we all want to work with people like us. Right. Everybody wants to work with someone that's similar to that. And that's the other beauty of content, is that if you're being yourself on camera, you're naturally going to attract people with commonalities, you know what I mean?

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:44:02 to 00:44:10

People with common threads. They like the same things as you. They talk the same as you. They relate to you for whatever reason. Oh, I have kids that age.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:44:10 to 00:44:33

I like that sport, I like that area, I like that type of food. I'm going to pay attention to this person. And then when it comes to transaction time, once they give you a shot to win the business, this is not about them saying, I'm doing business with you, though. That's commonly going to happen. It's more about getting to the plate, getting the at bat, getting to the table.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:44:33 to 00:44:57

And you're going to have an unfair advantage because they're already going to have a relationship with you through your content that you don't even realize it or not. They're going to feel like they already know you because they kind of already do know you at some level. Absolutely. So you're going to have less barriers to break down. Building that brand is going to allow you to take on transactions without necessitating a sell.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:45:00 to 00:45:07

That's really all we really want to do. We don't want to go out there and sell ourselves. We want to go out there and serve our clients. Yeah, absolutely. And provide value.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:45:08 to 00:45:25

So if you can pick up some more clients to serve without having to sell them, why would you not do that? Why would you not lean in? But back to your original question, like the people who are, oh, I'm not going to be able to do this, I'm not going to be able to do that. Fine, don't. But do you?

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:45:26 to 00:45:43

Because there are people out there who are going to like you. I mean, if you don't believe that, there's a whole different conversation about mental health. But you know, you're a likable person. Maybe not all the time and a lot of you a very little bit of the time, but hey, that's okay. Sometimes you're likable.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:45:44 to 00:46:00

Just turn the camera on when you're feeling good. It's one of those things. You are going to resonate with somebody. Your job as a loan originator is not to serve everyone. I can't drive that home enough.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:46:01 to 00:46:27

So many mortgage professionals fail because they think their target market is everyone who needs a mortgage, right? That's not what this is. You need to drill it down to the specific one person that you want to serve. How old are you? Do you want to be like the Uncle Mike persona who helps the young people into their first homes?

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:46:27 to 00:46:54

Do you want to be the person that helps older, more tenured investors because you might remind them of their kid or whatever it is? You know what I mean? Really drill down to one target client, because there's always going to be more than one person who picks up on your message. There's always going to be more than one person who resonates. But if you can narrow it down to the one person who you really want to maybe it's your ideal client.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:46:55 to 00:47:22

Get super detailed. Like super detailed. I want to work with first time home buyers between the age of 25 and 32, who have college degrees, who have full time jobs that get paid w two that make between 60 and $80,000 a year, who are looking for a starter home in the $200 to $250,000 range in this city, in this town, on this block of streets. Because then you're going to have a laser focused message that's actually going to have a chance to resonate with some people. Right.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:47:22 to 00:47:33

But if you flip on the camera and just say, hey, I do mortgages. If you need a mortgage, I'm your guy. Nobody's calling you. Yeah. Because you're not serving anybody at that point.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:47:33 to 00:47:43

You're just kind of letting everybody know that you're one of a million. You have a net with big holes and all the fish are swimming through. That's exactly right. Great analogy. I like that a lot.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:47:43 to 00:48:05

So don't worry about the reach, don't worry about the view numbers. Don't worry about any of that. Just worry about getting your message out to the people who you really want to hear it. And then don't just post your stuff on Social and let it die. Every video that you make is a marketing asset, so treat it like one.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:48:07 to 00:48:26

Who's in your database? Who's in your email list? Oh, I just made a video talking about how you don't need 20% down to buy a house because we just got hooked up with this down payment assistance program. I know that these five people are working on their credit, trying to get mortgage ready, and they've been having trouble saving some down payment. So send them a personal email.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:48:27 to 00:48:40

Yeah, it's a great excuse for email outrage. It's not a drip campaign. You're providing value. It's something that they might actually open and read instead of you just spamming them. Shoot them an email, shoot them a text.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:48:40 to 00:48:46

Hey, I just made this video. I put it up on Social. It made me think of you, how you been? Yeah. Here's a link to the video.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:48:46 to 00:49:00

Might help you out with your down payment once your credit is in a better place or whatever it is. By the way, how's that going? Is there any way I can help? You know what I mean? It's like use that stuff in other ways.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:49:00 to 00:49:26

You got to treat your videos like they are marketing assets. I mean, every company has a library of 3000 marketing flyers that nobody reads and you're printing those out and handing them out to people so they can throw them in the trash. You may as well execute your video strategy like you would that and not let them go to waste. Yeah, so that's what I would say. The people who are looking to start, the people who are looking to be hesitant.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:49:26 to 00:49:55

And I'll give the example that I gave you just before we hit the red button and started going live on here. Last year I was doing content, leaned into short form. As a passionate photographer, I avoided turning the camera vertical like the plague for as long as I could. But last year I was like, fine, I got to do the short form content stuff. So I really leaned into it and I started doing stuff for a mortgage brand.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:49:57 to 00:50:09

But I didn't do it in a way that most people would have expected. I created an instagram. I created a TikTok, facebook Pages, all that stuff. I created them all on my own. And I didn't tell anybody about them.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:50:09 to 00:50:27

I didn't promote them. I didn't ask people to follow, no friends, no family, no nothing. I just wanted to see if in late 2022, if you set up brand new accounts and just start posting reels and short form videos to them, what could happen? What could happen? So I set up these new accounts.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:50:27 to 00:50:43

The first video I posted across all five platforms got 104 views. 104 views. Oh man, that's terrible, right? These people get 20,000, 30,000 views on every post. 104 views.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:50:44 to 00:51:08

I came away from that day feeling as victorious as ever. Because if I had to go out and spread that message to 104 different people I had never met, what would that have taken me? What would I have had to do to make that happen? And how long would it have taken me? Would I have had to do put a sign together and go to the freeway off ramp and holler at people?

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:51:08 to 00:51:51

Would I have had to go to the local Starbucks and just try to spout my message and talk as fast as I could as people walked out with their lates? I don't know what I would have had to done to get that message to 104 people on a day where I just woke up and said, I want to say this to people, but through video, it gives you the audience to do that. And that was 104 brand new people that have never seen my face, never heard my messaging, had no idea what I did, no idea who I was. From a brand new account that was created that day, 104 people watched it. So I just try to picture myself in a room on a stage talking to 104 people.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:51:55 to 00:52:29

Maybe you have super uncreative the lunch and learn gets a good turnout, but what's a good turnout for you if you had 104 people packed in a room for a lunch and learn so you could hop on stage and say what you're saying, you're probably going to be pretty happy about that. Oh yeah, absolutely. And video lets you do that without buying 104 people lunch. So don't get caught up in the views. Don't get caught up in those type of metrics.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:52:29 to 00:53:02

They are vanity metrics. Every successful creator will tell you that for the most part, views are vanity metrics for organic. Obviously, if you're running paid ads, then you got click through rates, you have CAC, and you have all this other stuff that you're tracking. It's a lot easier to track, but when it's organic, a lot of the times all you can go off of is the likes, the comments, the views, and the number of those that you're getting. Just picture that many people in front of you while you're on a stage than you otherwise would think.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:53:03 to 00:53:37

Yeah, you said something a little earlier about which I love this message and I want you to elaborate on is get in details on the consistency factor, because I think that that gets lost in translation a lot of times on how important it is, not just for your message, but also for the success of your videos, for the algorithms. I mean, there's so many things that come into play when you are consistent about making content. Can you speak a little bit to the importance of that? So consistency is the only foolproof hack that you can employ to actually gain more audience.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:53:39 to 00:54:00

And we're going to get into some talk about posting daily here because that is a powerful thing. But I just want to lead off by saying anybody who's thinking about posting daily who has just started, or maybe they're starting, it like one post a week. Don't get overwhelmed. Don't think you have to jump straight into posting daily. There are these things called baby steps.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:54:00 to 00:54:08

Yeah. Do what you right. There is a natural progression. It doesn't mean you have to start at zero and start posting daily. It's okay to work up to this stuff.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:54:08 to 00:54:24

You've never worked out in a year, and then you go to the gym five days in a row. You're going to have a hard time. Yeah. You have a hard time getting up the next day. So daily posting is the ultimate hack, and it's because you're giving the platforms what they want.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:54:24 to 00:54:47

If you want to grow your audience, then that means if you want to grow your audience with no ad spend right. Then you need to give the platforms what they want. Because unless you cooperate with them, they're not going to show you to new people. And giving the platforms what they want is giving them something that they can monetize. Because Facebook doesn't charge you to be a member.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:54:47 to 00:55:00

Neither does Instagram. Neither does LinkedIn or YouTube or TikTok. You can sign up, be a member for free. You can make content post on there for free. Well, where do they get their money?

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:55:00 to 00:55:14

They get their money from ads, companies that advertise on the platforms. So your eyeballs will see it and also the eyeballs of your viewers. Yeah. We're the product to the social media platform. Yeah, that's right.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:55:14 to 00:55:22

Our attention 100%, right? Yes. Very much like the Matrix. If you're not the customer, you're the product. Yeah.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:55:24 to 00:55:50

So when it comes to. The social media and all the algorithms they're in, they're ultra advanced and they're always looking at things and stuff that they can monetize because at the end of the day, that's their job, to squeeze the most money out of the companies. They have advertising with them as possible. So they're looking for content that they can put advertisements on. But how are they going to put advertisements on your content when they don't know you're going to show up?

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:55:51 to 00:56:27

So the metric is 28 days, 28 days in a row. If you can put something out on social 28 days in a row, then those algorithms, especially when it comes to like Facebook and Instagram, they're going to recognize, okay, this person's showing up on a consistent basis. We can start slapping some ads on their stuff. They might not start doing that right away, but they are going to start showing you to more people to see what kind of content you're posting, to see if new people will start to look at you and follow you and engage with your content. And if that starts happening, they might start putting some ads on your stuff.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:56:27 to 00:57:10

Maybe some YouTube pre roll or Facebook pre roll advertisements in the sidebar, different things like that. Those are good things. If you can get videos and content that the platform puts an ad on, that's a good thing because they're going to try to show that to more people. The good thing about Facebook right now is that they're pushing Reels as heavily as ever, trying to catch up to places like TikTok, a little bit of Instagram Reels, maybe some internal competition there in Meta. But Facebook Reels are getting as much exposure right now as a paid advertisement that you would actually pay for.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:57:11 to 00:57:40

So if you're not posting Reels on Facebook, you need to because that's underpriced attention at the moment. But the consistency piece with all the social media platforms for that matter, is really important. And then if you miss a day or two, you're going to start from scratch. Yeah, you'll take a couple of days off and then you got to start that 28 days all over again until they can trust that you're going to show up consistently all the time. And if you do, they can advertise on your stuff.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:57:40 to 00:57:53

They can start showing you to a larger audience. And it's all about the money, honey. That's what it is. You've got to give the platforms what they want. What the platforms want is consistent content that they can monetize.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:57:53 to 00:58:18

So if you're giving them that, then your message is going to get out to more people. Also, when you're posting to places like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, and not necessarily YouTube, but Facebook, when you're posting those reels, all those editing tools that they give you, try to use one or two of them. Yeah, I've heard that using the captions that they provide on the platform is better than inserting your own captions if you can. That can help. It can help.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:58:18 to 00:58:35

I don't I've tested that with my own content. Haven't seen a huge pickup either way. Okay. And for me, it's easier to edit the captions in because I post to five different platforms every day, right. So it takes less time captions in every editing tool.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:58:35 to 00:58:53

But I do make sure to use at least one editing tool every time I'm uploading to a platform. So I'll pick the background music separately in Instagram and in TikTok and in Facebook. It's different background music. I mean, there's different permissions and rights, copyright stuff when it comes to that. So it's safer to do that anyway.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:58:54 to 00:59:32

I'll type the copy in each of them because you're kind of just showing the platform that you're not a robot. I'm a human who's making intelligent decisions. And if you want to play around with filters, like if one of the, oh, hey, there's a new filter, because you'll see that sometimes when you're posting, oh, we added this new filter, that's the platform screaming out, we want you to use this because we want to see how content that uses this filter does. Yeah, they're testing it, so if you help them test it, they'll probably show your posts to more people. If you pay attention, the platforms are telling you what they want.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 00:59:32 to 00:59:44

If you give it to them and you cooperate, then they're going to reward you for it. Yeah, well, we are almost at an hour, man. We blew right through it. It's not long enough. We can go for I know.

Mike Mills (Host) | 00:59:45 to 01:00:18

I do want you to just kind of give just a little summary of, obviously what you guys do, but then also to speak to, again, just the importance of the video content, the importance of putting stuff out there. The importance of making sure that if you're starting down your video road, don't get too wrapped up in like you've obviously said multiple times, the views and the likes. What's the old saying, right? How do you eat a whale? One bite at a time.

Mike Mills (Host) | 01:00:19 to 01:00:41

Everything's a little step, everything moves you in the right direction, but you have to constantly be headed that way or otherwise the success that you're looking for isn't going to take shape. And just because you try something for a short amount of time doesn't mean it's going to work. So I don't want to plug me anymore. I went over a little summary of our offerings. In the beginning, if you picked up on that, great.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 01:00:42 to 01:00:46

If you didn't pick up on that, head over to Hitherdbutton.com. All the info is there, perfect.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 01:00:49 to 01:01:34

If you want to take a look at the course with the members only community and the weekly live coaching and stuff like that, head over to videomarketingmarvels.com and sign up. We'd love to see you over there, but to give everybody some value to kind of leave you with, here the importance of video. It's hard to overstate because as a human who wants to do business with other humans, you need to get yourself out there, and video is a way that you can do that with little lift, and then it works for you. 24/7. You don't actually have to be present to be in front of people.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 01:01:36 to 01:01:47

It's one of the most valuable things going. What do they say? Time, it's the most democratic thing in the world. We all get 24 hours. And it's how you use that time and reach as many people as you can that makes the difference.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 01:01:47 to 01:02:07

That's exactly right. And you're not just reaching people to try to sell them. You want to reach people to try to connect with them, try to help them give free value. Talk about the foundational information that you learned in your first couple of weeks of the industry. Do you know 50% of the country still thinks you need 20% down to buy a house?

Mike Mills (Host) | 01:02:07 to 01:02:31

Yes, I know. The level of myth and disinformation out there about mortgage is astounding it is. A post I recently put out on LinkedIn said, what do you wish that you learned in high school that would have prepared you better? That's the question you need to ask yourself the next time you're having trouble thinking up a content idea. Yeah.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 01:02:31 to 01:02:35

You know what I mean? That's it. That's great. Absolutely awesome. Yeah, absolutely.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 01:02:35 to 01:02:54

Just answer that question and then make a piece of go, oh, man, I wish I would have learned that. Well, you know what? There's a bunch of younger people out there who still can, and you can be the one that teaches it to them. Yeah. Providing that level of value can be the difference between getting a referral or not getting a deal or not.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 01:02:54 to 01:03:30

I recently saw a conversation online where somebody wanted to be a contrarian. To this point, everybody loves a contrarian, right? So they ran a broker shop of their own, and they said, in my opinion, loan officers need to be worrying about their social media outreach less and less and doing everything that they can to fund two more loans next month. Because funding two more loans or less loans in any given quarter right now could be the difference in having a job or not having a job in our industry. I was like, okay, fair point.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 01:03:30 to 01:03:42

Yeah. But posting content to social and increasing your reach ain't a full time job. It's just not. And the more you do it, the quicker you get. Yes.

Mike Mills (Host) | 01:03:43 to 01:04:20

Much more efficient. So while we do need to be focused on how to fund two more loans next month, which is a sales activity for immediate growth and immediate business generation, you also need to have a marketing and brand building strategy in play, because that might help you fund two more loans in August of 2025. Right. It might help you fund six more loans in August of 2025. Posting video and increasing your organic reach is for mid to long term success.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 01:04:20 to 01:04:31

Expect to do this for six to eight months and get nothing from it. Expect that, yes. That's probably what's going to happen. What do they say? It only takes ten years to become an overnight success.

Mike Mills (Host) | 01:04:31 to 01:04:44

Right. So expect to get nothing out of it in the meantime. And it's because it's not sales. Yeah, that's a big differentiator for a lot of people to make you're marketing. You're not selling.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 01:04:44 to 01:04:59

This is not for two months from now. This is for two years from now. If you keep your eyes on that, then it'll be a lot easier to stick with the plan. I think that's awesome, man. I think the consistency and the long term views or long term goals, that's what we're all aiming for.

Mike Mills (Host) | 01:04:59 to 01:05:15

And it's hard to do sometimes when you're maybe struggling to meet the numbers you hit before. But you got to keep your eyes forward, because if you don't, then the business won't be there in the future, and you'll be doing the same thing over and over again. Well, Mike, I really appreciate your time, man. This was awesome. Thank you, Mike.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 01:05:15 to 01:05:21

Anytime. Happy to come on again. If you're ever in need of a guest. The MIC's got to stick together. That's right.

Mike Mills (Host) | 01:05:21 to 01:05:28

The walk and talking. We'll? Well, you're in California. I'd say maybe we'll make one. We'll do at one or something at some point.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 01:05:28 to 01:05:35

Yeah. All right, brother. Well, have a great afternoon. Hope you enjoy the weather out there. It's 100,000 degrees here.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 01:05:35 to 01:05:43

It's inching up to that over here. But I think we're going to be okay for sure. Well, take care. Have a great weekend, and we'll see everybody next week. Thanks, everybody.

Mike Faraci (Guest) | 01:05:43 to 01:05:46

Take care, Mike. All right, man. Bye.