Michael Baker 18:39
Thank you, for everybody who’s joining. We have an awesome webinar conversation today that I’m really kind of shocked. Actually, I threw I shot my shot as they say, I reached out to an acquaintance, family friend, longtime family friend of my wife, but he is in my eyes. He’s a superstar of marketing. He is the Vice President of Marketing at movement mortgage, which is one of the largest privately held mortgage lenders in the United States. And it you should be familiar with it. Because if you’re in this area, you’ve probably driven by the motherships that they have. That is their headquarters here. And so we’ve got Jake failing on on with us today. And Jake is kind of a renaissance man. He and his wife Paige have a podcast, they are published authors. They have three kids. So they are they are crushing it in multiple areas in life. And so this isn’t a This isn’t a webinar today about fatherhood and and all of the, you know, being a working professional. This is really focused on marketing and, and Jake before I turn it over to you, one of the things just for everyone that’s jumping on or there’s going to watch this that really prompted this conversation is last year was in my view, a kind of an inflection point for a lot of small businesses. We’ve known about the internet We’ve known about online marketing and having a start, everyone was starting to have, I believe, a working vocabulary of what things like SEO were and, and multiple different avenues to market online. But COVID really changed that in the fact that it made online marketing, almost essential for businesses to you know, try to keep themselves up and running when people couldn’t actually drive by your signage, they couldn’t go into your storefronts. Word of mouth, was really difficult when you weren’t around other people. So people were for a large period of time at home, on the internet, on their mobile devices, and still trying to have somewhat of keep life going. And so I just thought about the implications of that, and how many small business owners were not prepared for that. And then now that everyone’s doing it, how can we make that you know, an integral part of business moving forward? So just love to hear a little bit of your thoughts of what how was last year, like for you guys, from a marketing standpoint? What What lessons or big takeaways Did you guys have coming, you know, out of going into and then coming out of the pandemic?
Jake Fehling 21:13 Well, first of all, Michael, thanks for having me on. It’s great to reconnect and join your audience here. So in mortgage, it was real simple. You just dropped the rates, and you do more business. Right? done right there. There is a I looked really good last year, because we had record month after record month. But, you know, I say that jokingly, because I know that the rest of the world was not so fortunate, you know, we said in 2008, the collapse was our fault. And then, you know, to be on the other side of that, when the economy was going through the roller coaster that I went through last year, was definitely an interesting experience. And we were able to have some perspective there. You know, we’re still obviously in a extremely low rate environment. And look that that’s helpful for business. And I just tried to stay out of the way. But you know, as it relates to small business, you’re absolutely right. And so, you know, you had people like me, and other marketers out there that were screaming for the last, you know, 567 years, you know, you’ve got to nail down your digital real estate, that’s what we call it. And whether that’s, you know, the just the fundamental sort of the, under the hood of that, which is like your Google business page, and so on, then there’s also the the personal brand aspect of that as well. And, you know, so for example, I’ve got a neighbor here, a close family friend, who switched businesses right before COVID. And he got into, I guess, you’d call it like, you know, heavy machinery, mulching type of thing. And he was asking, he’s like, hey, how do I set things up online? Like, how do I like, how do I grab this digital real estate that I keep hearing you talk to your loan officers about? And so it’s really fun to like, put it into practice, live with someone who’s not in a low rate environment where businesses like refires are falling, you know, out of the sky in their laps. And you know, so he set up we together we set up his Google My Business Page, and it’s crazy. They’re still sending postcards, Michael, like, it’s still the old school, like, what is your address, they send the postcard. The postcards got a code on it, it’s wild, but they still do that. He sets it up. And you know, Instagram is a bear. He’s like, Man, I’m going from zero to 60, on Instagram, all these places making content. I know, I need to do it, but it’s so hard. But what I said was like, what makes your business special? Like we’re different in terms of engagement online? And he’s like, well, I got big trucks. Like who loves big trucks? Michael, you got kids? Right? Right. Oh, my son, kids love truck. And so he said, it seems like, I can’t believe I’m doing this. But I’m setting up a YouTube page. And so we set up a YouTube page, and without even really posting it and doing minimal SEO. He’s got like 800 followers on on his page. And there, you know, people are commenting all the time. My kids love all this stuff, your trucks like that. His reviews, he’s got people leaving reviews. Now he’s got this whole, like, post mulching process where he asks for the review, he asked for referrals. It’s working, and it’s so fun to see. And it just goes to show you and it’s like it’s never too late. You know, like, even to your point like, Yes, there are. Everybody’s eyeballs are online. Now. They’ve been that way for forever. You can prop up a brand new business online grabbing that digital real estate so easily so quickly, and it reaps dividends just as quickly as well. That’s awesome. And so yeah, that that is a great way to start the conversation as far as digital real estate because one of the things that I had put down and that I think can be confusing for a lot of People is that now there are so many places to go. There are so many places that you could potentially, you know, put your stake in the ground. You know, we’ve got the social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook and then you got YouTube. And now we have tik tok. There’s people like trying to launch podcasts, there’s so many different avenues to go down. And so how, how might someone go about trying to figure out where’s the best place for them to begin? Or how should they think about these different platforms from a marketing perspective as it relates to, you know, the maybe the specific, unique aspects of their business? Yeah, I would say break it down into a couple things this sort of tie it back to my world. Imagine you’re trying to sell your house, which right now, you’re in a great market to sell your house, you just have to try right now. I mean, you don’t even have to try. It’s like, Hey, you know, I’m thinking about selling. And then there’s three offers in your mailbox. Exactly. I mean, people I know people that are moving, who had every intention of making that home, their forever home. I mean, it’s just bananas. And so if you’re selling your house, and let’s just say, there were no stairs in it. So you had an you had ground floor and you had an upstairs, but there were no stairs in it. How would you get to the second floor? You probably fix that? First, you probably want to put the stairs in before you sell like to me like putting the stairs it. That’s the like setting up your Google business page. Okay, that is putting the foundation in around social around social media by putting the stake in the ground on your Facebook business page, like go claim these pages, right the locations, so people can find you when they’re on Facebook marketplace. Gotcha. Right. So that’s the building of the stairs, well, then, you know, people are, you know, they want to put pictures of your home on Zillow or whatever it is. So you want to make the outside of your house pretty, right you want to you want to pay job, you want to work on landscaping, that all that stuff to me, that’s the personal branding part. That’s okay, put your flair, your spin on things. And so you know, whether that your social media, whether that’s really pushing reviews, and managing your online reputation, when it comes to social media, what I tell people is the lowest barrier to entry, if you’re freaking out about where do I start? is where do you hang out? Like, where do you spend the most time when you’re lurking or whatever, whatever the term is, when you’re trolling the web, you know, or what it used to be, we used to say surfing the web, but right, you know, trolling might be better now, you know, yelling about dropping in on various platforms and seeing? Well, look, I encourage you to lurk adult troll, right? That’s a whole other conversation. Correct. But when you’re when you’re online, and you’re like, so for me, like this is crazy, because I put most of my content out on Instagram, I probably spend the most time on Twitter, because that’s where I get all my information. I just love Twitter, like it’s like, information immediately. So for example, who was me, then that would be a platform like I understand it, I know the audience. I’m going to start with Twitter, because I think I can make the most penetration the quickest. You know, for example, our CEO who, you know, Casey Crawford, and movement, you know, we talk all the time about like, what is our social strategy going to be for Casey, his personal brand. And we’re like, we post right now we post all his content in multiple different places, you know, all the big ones. But when, you know, there’s engagement on his page on Facebook engagement on his page on Instagram, things like that, um, I’m not going to, I won’t be so bold to tell you, I’ll just, let’s just say meet my team and I are involved in those responses. Gotcha. Okay. It’s LinkedIn is LinkedIn. That’s him. Okay. LinkedIn is where he spends most of his time, because he’s looking at other loan officers. He’s looking at other mortgage companies, he’s looking at influencers in the financial services space, he hangs out on LinkedIn. And so that’s an area where we said, You know what, that’s where we’re gonna put the most content. That’s where we’re going to engage the most. And he does most of the engagement actually, because the barrier to entry is so low, right? I don’t want to fight them on like, hey, let’s post more reels. Let’s post more here and like LinkedIn is where he hangs out. So I would just tell people start there where it’s going to be easiest and most intuitive.
Michael Baker 29:43 Gotcha. So and that’s one of the things that you know, I think about as far as you know, a lot of this stuff, if you if you get over that first step of your own, maybe self consciousness about getting started and you start you realize it if not that Hard to learn I think they’re getting better and better with making some of the platforms you know more intuitive once you’ve started to use it a little bit you figure it out I think pretty quickly. One of the things though that I wanted to ask you about specifically and I think movement you guys have have it correct me if I’m wrong, but it feels like you guys have been very intentional about the branding of your business. You’re I think wearing movement swag right now you’ve got the hat on you get the T shirt you’ve made that brand part of the culture of the business where people are there you know, your employees are they are wearing movement gear you got you guys have gear drops, you know all these cool things that is kind of what we would see with other brands like brands like Nike, or you know or Jordan, you guys are doing that, you know, internally is that how does that play into you know, not just your personality as a business but also allowing your employees to go out into the community and kind of be like raving fans for your business and and in a way they’re doing their your marketing for you.
Jake Fehling 31:15 Yeah, absolutely. So the the the gear and the branding, I gotta say I was in full swing when I took the job so I’m not going to claim that it was ever my idea. Sure, what I’ve tried to do is turn it more into what the demographic that is far younger than I am now. That’s sort of taken over the culture which is you know, sneaker drops, which is limited gear drops. You see Supreme, the brand Supreme, partnering with every company under the sun now, and making like the wildest brand collabs imaginable are cool. I saw somebody the other day wearing online like Stouffer is macaroni and cheese, sweatpants with like, giant screenprint magga logo, covered nose like just cheese. It was it was actual macaroni and cheese, that those were the pants, they were hidden, hideously wonderful. Oh, and, you know, you go on to websites like stock x and resellers shirt, and the price is through the moon. And so you know, that that’s the spin that I and the team have really tried to bring. And, you know, fortunately, it’s caught on you know, you mentioned your jobs, you do it four times a year that stuff sells out. And this is mortgage company gear, right? This is crazy. But you’re right, I mean, it is a you know, all of our loan officers and ops teammates are walking billboards. And then you know who else likes free gear that looks cool. Real estate agents. And so agents love the gear borrowers love the gear that it you know, you see it you know, I’m in Charlotte, which is where you know, we are sharing a big footprint. And I see movement gear all the time. I saw movement gear recently, I guess this is a good thing. But I saw it at a goodwill the other day, all like all, like totally worn, you can see they’ve been worn for like, that’s good. That’s like circle life. It’s good to get back. But of course we can hear at some point. So yeah, I mean, the brand is is a is a big thing. For us and movement. It’s it’s a big part of everything we do. We are serious about it. But we aren’t so serious that we make our loan officers feel locked down, right. And so what my hope is that we’re setting an example of how we treat the corporate brand, to our 1500 loan officers who are their own CEOs, so that they take their personal brand, whatcha behavior on social media, or whether that’s they’ve made their own logo on Fiverr, or, you know, on Canva, or something like that, and they feel super proud, because they want to put it on a shirt. We hope that that carries through to them as well.
Michael Baker 33:56 Yeah, that can’t mean so I, you know, there you’re showing kind of the model of, Hey, this is the mothership, this is the corporate brand and the messaging, but we also are encouraging, you know, those that work with you guys as loan officers and to develop their own personal brand, you know, and so talk to me a little bit about that, because one of the things that I am seeing more and more of happening, and I don’t know where I, I kind of made this switch in my head. I think I’ve kind of stutter step to my way through it the last few years, but I finally come down on one side of it. You know, there’s the brand of your business and then there’s like personal branding, you know, and being known, you know, as an expert in a community and or an expert amongst your peers and networks and how relevant Do you think that’s going to be for a lot of businesses moving forward, coming from the standpoint have like, you know, now we have you know, I look at this is like this is everyone’s like personal assistant now like if I need, not only does she listen to everything we say so that we can get, you know, the the ad drops and the retargeting in there. But when we go in and are, you know, that’s most people’s first instinct now is to pick up their smartphone and do a Google search, or, you know, start you know, take a, you know, some type of search engine, or like you were saying, wherever they go and hang out, go and ask those people or, you know, those those influences there? So, how important do you think that that is for people across the board should be looking to develop some type of personal branding or, you know, that type of to coincide with maybe their business? And, you know, even if you’re, let’s say you’re an hva see company, right, and, you know, your marketing out there, and your business is about service, and, you know, speed and reliability and trust? Do you think, you know, they should be also looking at developing, you know, some type of personal branding, so people feel a kind of a connection with, you know, the ownership or the the technicians, or what do you think?
Jake Fehling 36:11 yeah, I mean, that’s who they they’re going to do business with, right? And so, you know, it’s, I guess, you could say, in your line of work, they want to do business with you, like they are doing business with you, because they like you, Michael, they’ve seen your content, they’ve gotten to know you, they are working with you, I think in hvac company, that example, might be a little different, because they might not know, the technicians that work for the company. Right? What if that company is smart, and this is what I try to do for movement, because people might not know our loan officers, but they’ll know the goofy 40 year old dad dancing and all the mortgage videos like right doing, um, we need to see what we need to see a new dancing video to It’s been a while since I’ve seen one of those. Yeah, the camera sorry, the cameras going out of. Yeah, so um, and then hopefully, that company is what we call giving, giving their hvac technicians, the air cover of the personal brand for them. And so like, you might have somebody show up to work on your, your unit and could care less about social like, frankly, probably hate social. But it doesn’t matter to that, like if they find out that they were called to the house, because the person saw commercial love the commercial and resonated with them. Like, they don’t really care one way or another. The point is they got the job they got they got the work. And that’s what, in many cases increasingly landed that job. For us, you know, it’s a fine line, right? It’s like we want, we tell loan officers every day us movement, again, as your air cover us the gear, the shirts, the hats, the branding, like we’ve got it all out there for you. But then also, keep in mind, what I just said is like people want to do business with you. So we see these loan officers sort of put up their own brand, and I love it. But what it also does, and this is where it gets a little uncomfortable is it means that they could pick up and go to another mortgage company like that. Because their brand is not tied to movement, then they might have some red and some white and of course they were our shirts and things like that. But the really good ones is Jake failing lendon powered by movement mortgage. And so like as much as I love that it also keeps me up at night because it’s like, Alright, well there’s other ways we get to tether these guys to move in. And that’s through technology and, and other things, operations that we could provide them, but it’s definitely a slippery slope in our industry. Yeah, no,
Michael Baker 38:48 I get that, you know, you like hey, establish yourself be independent. But, you know, don’t don’t fly too far away, stay, you know, stay with us, right? Yeah. Well, I get that note. So I’m gonna I’m gonna go change course, a little bit here. Because one of the things that that I would be very interested to hear your perspective on, is, let’s assume that, you know, someone has taken the leap and they and they’re actively trying, trying to, you know, put put themselves out there establish their digital real estate, what are some of the mistakes in your view that, you know, that you’ve made that you think, Hey, you know, I’ve learned from this, I would tell everyone don’t do this, or do you see or observe a lot of people doing because, you know, one of the things is, is you know, it, I see a lot of people that like are they get excited and they and they get going, but that’s also when you can, you know, be prone to making mistakes like right out of the gate and not even realizing it because of a lack of experience or just a lack of knowledge.
Jake Fehling 39:52 Great question. That point you just made is I pushed back against it with every ounce of my energy, you can’t mess up. You can’t like push, make the content, just press record. I had the, where I see people make mistakes, and I’m making them everyday like I’m actively making them right is I’m inch deep, mile wide. So I have an account on every single social channel. And you know what that means is I’m not consistent. And I don’t have the volume necessary anywhere. And so like I said, I probably post them most of my Instagram stories. And you know, I’ve got decent traction there, but I don’t post my feed nearly enough. I don’t post to reels right now nearly enough, which is being throttled up with engagement because Instagrams trying to go against tik tok. And so I just, I don’t know, if it’s, I’ve got like, add as a marketer, or I just don’t have enough time, which I know is a huge cop out. But I don’t have a ton of time. But those are the biggest mistakes. And so if you are a small business owner, you’re trying to get started social media, this ties back to the first question you asked me is like, go to where you hang out. And let’s just say it’s Instagram, and post, you know, some experts to tell you post multiple times a day, I know, that’s not necessarily realistic, but try to post their star three times a week. And then one story a day, like, pick a spot, and go really deep. That would be my advice for someone starting out the mistakes that I just mentioned, I’m making them every single day, and I got to get better at it. That’s great advice. And what I’m hearing you say is like that consistency is, is huge. You know, it’s not just that, that you’ve got three or four platforms, but you know, how, how consistently Are you showing up there? Because, you know, obviously, if we’re looking to establish some type of, you know, relationship with those that are following us, your followers, right. But your, your you show up once a month, like how, how often are they going to see your see your content, or be able to engage with content, and, you know, I look at that from a standpoint of, you know, just being top of mind for somebody, or just being like, who someone connects you too, like, so your guy that you told a story about earlier was his big trucks, like, so I mean, he’s working to that connection of like, you know, the big trucks, and all of these different, you know, households are people that watch that YouTube channel, they’re gonna know about his business, and he will make that connection, naturally over time. Where do you think, you know, just now, I mean, we were talking before we hopped on here with the group. And by the way, folks, if if you have a question that you would like Jake to answer, feel free to throw that up in the q&a? Or in the chat? And we’ll we’ll do our best to look at it. But why don’t you give us your thoughts? Where do you see marketing going? You know, in, in the in the years ahead, do you do you think will kind of come? where it’ll get so noisy that the simple direct mail may start start working again, just because it’s different or unique? Or do you feel like it’s gonna be completely, you know, people making out their digital real estate and certain platforms and creating this ecosystem within these platforms. And that’s going to be like the wave of the future. Yeah.
Michael Baker 43:41 So first, Nicholas, I saw your question we will get to in a sec. I love and I hope that Kim Laurie Nicholas, like, let’s take advantage of the time, if you guys have real life examples, Michael and I absolutely, we will, we’ll dive in deep. So we’ll answer that here in a second. For sure. Um, it’s so funny. You mentioned direct mail. Absolutely. We’re already seeing it, like people are already getting back into direct mail, from a loan officer perspective. And now with technology, being able to really hyper focus on a zip code, or an area where they’re seeing, you know, some opportunities and things like that. You got to be careful around some compliance and things but we’re seeing success in that way.
Michael Baker 44:24
You know, you ask that it’s gonna get loud. It’s already loud. And it’s only going to get louder. You know, things we’ve seen like clubhouse that have popped up. For those that aren’t familiar with clubhouse, I say it’s almost like a live podcast recording, where you’re able to join audio only listen to people who you would normally have to pay 1000s of dollars to go here to conference, sit, you know, in the audience virtually and then raise your hand and they’ll call you up. I’m using air quotes here. They’ll call you on stage to ask a question and you never would ever be able to ask, in many cases, these people questions ever it’s it’s amazing. Well, that came during COVID. And we’ve seen Twitter, we’ve seen Facebook as of last week, Instagram, everybody has their own version of clubhouse that’s coming. So again, getting louder, getting more crowded. And so that’s why, you know, when I tell people I go back to this, when they start is, you know, find that niche. And to find it takes testing, right takes, you know, consistency around some posting here, some posting there, you know, this, this webinar series that you got, Michael, I think, is really cool, because, you know, they call pillar content, right, you could film this, you could record this, you could rip the audio, if you wanted to use it as a podcast, you can make little mini pieces of content afterwards. You I’ve seen a lot of people doing that to try to go wide. But if that’s exhausting, you don’t have the time you don’t have the resources, pick one, and just be an expert at it. And that could be like, I’m going to be the reviews guy. I’m going to spend all my time and energy, gathering reviews, after a job sending people to my Google page, my Facebook page and have them leave reviews and just lead that hour and let the machine work. I’m telling you seeing it happening right now with my neighbor, right? They’ll try to figure out social media, the reviews, and leveraging these platforms they want you on they want you on the platform, it works. No, that’s, that’s great. And one of the things that I learned. And you know, it’s one of the I think the downfalls of being spread possibly too thin, is you mentioned these algorithms. And so we don’t, you know, for everyone’s out here, you know, I marketed this webinar through LinkedIn, and through Facebook, I did not put it up on Instagram, and then I market it through like my newsletter. And it’s interesting, because most of these platforms, they don’t want you to take people off platform, they want you to be on the platform. And so, to your point of you know, picking a platform, it’s like, you know, are you using, I’m thinking like, what you’re saying is is are you using all the features that it allows, like, you know, Twitter started posting fleets, I think, which is just bizarre, but it’s kind of like Instagram stories and so like they’re they’re wanting people to you know, use that and they had periscope for a while but Instagrams got the reels now, like you said to compete with tik tok, they’ve got their own the Instagram feed, and then they’ve got stories like, are you? Are you doing all of those? Are you putting those up there, and I’ve seen people getting traction on reels that don’t really have a large Instagram following, but they’re getting boosted because Instagram is trying to boost reels. And so I think that there’s some strategic thinking that goes behind that as well. One thing that, you know, Nicholas, I think you were sharing. Nicholas was asking, like, you know, how do you? And we’ve talked about this a little bit, but how do you determine which platforms and strategies for each and order? And I think, Jake, what you’re saying is like, that’s gonna take a little bit of trial and error, you know, right, just kind of see, like, where you’re at, like, where do you hang out? You know, and where do people that you want to be? Where do they hang out? And, you know, and trying to see what gathers engagement? Is that a fair, you know, take on that, or do you have something that you would you would suggest otherwise? No, it’s absolutely, that’s the case. And I think, Nicolas, the key to your question, which I love is strategy. And so there are strategies around how do I post? When do I post? But if I think the key is the second part of your question, which is see, don’t spread yourself too thin, right? That’s where I get back to the pillar content thing. And so, and I’d love to know, sort of like more specifics on what you do, Nicholas. So what I would say is, you know, let’s just say you’re at Michaels. Again, you just use it a lot. And so, I see the little icon up in the upper left hand corner, it says that the zoom is recorded. And so he’s getting video right now of me talking of him talking, he can chop this up however he wants, he can take the audio and put it in a podcast. There are all kinds of free apps that let you then create content, like I said earlier to then post on Instagram from the podcast. And so that way, you’re not constantly chasing your tail, and you’ve got to think of like the best inspirational quote, or I got to go find the best picture, right? Do yourself a favor and find that pillar, the top of the pillar piece of content that allows you to break it up and put it in multiple places if you need to. Otherwise, you could say, hey, like my neighbor, apologize, I’m not trying to like only recognize his business but I tried to bring value and not just like stay up in the clouds all the stuff I’m just trying to tell you like, again, seeing it live small business is like he got his digital, real Real Estate house in order, you know, he got the the the Google business page. And then he said, I’m gonna really focus on YouTube. And then guess what talks to each other YouTube and Google, right? Go figure. And so that machine just works all day long. And every day, he’s getting at least one review added to his Google page, which Google sees like, Okay, this guy’s active, like he’s actively working, he’s actively engaging in his people are posting a review, and then going to another one of our platforms where they’re getting targeted. And then they get followed all around the internet, which is super creepy, but sorry, if that was the way it goes. Yeah. And yeah, and so that’s, he’s not everywhere, right? He’s not posting on Twitter. He’s not posting on tik tok is that post all these replaces? He’s like, I’m gonna double down triple down in these areas. And Gosh, and Tony, it’s really benefits. One. We got another question here. And I think this is a this is a great question. And it’s specific, that Laurie asked, but I think it can be applied across multiple different businesses. And, you know, she’s saying, you know, we have over 100 competitors in our county, you know, how do you set yourself apart, you know, everyone claims, best service most reliable, fastest. And, you know, I think that could be applied, you know, uniformly across, you know, lots of different industries, in my industry, because we are so regulated with what you can and can’t say what you can and can’t put in print, a lot of times, you end up sounding the same in your in your general advertising. So I think this comes back to you like, how do you set yourself apart? You know, and that maybe is that personal branding? Or is that telling your story in a different way? You know, what are your thoughts on that? So I think it’s both so two examples that I want to use. And I was just googling because I want to be sure I got it. Right. And so if you’re in the Charlotte area, you may have seen this recently, there is a brewery called Devil’s logic. Now, if you know me at all, you know that I’m into very fancy beer. I do not go to devils logic. Like, I’m the reviews. The ratings aren’t that great. I’m just, I’m just a snob. But I am dying to go to Devil’s logic, because if you’ve been following, they are crushing Tick tock, and they just sent a beer to outer space. Oh, wow. No, I didn’t know that. See? See how you just reacted to that. Right? Wait, what? So they took a beer. And let me just tell you is like, I think their beer is fine. But if you go look at their ratings and all the nerd beer, you’re like, it it that’s where it belongs in outer space. I’m glad they got it, right. But they got one of those giant like, like, what are those big white I think they’re called weather balloons. And they hook the beer to and and a bunch of GoPros and it goes up, up up above the thing, pops and then a parachute. And then the beer comes down. They’ve got it all on a GoPro. I think it’s up to now like 300,000 likes on Tick Tock Oh, wow. And it’s been at all like local media has covered it. And so you whether you’re in a beer or not, whether you’re in Charlotte or not, whether you’re one of 100 other brewery competitors or not, I guarantee you Noda resident calls, or all these other breweries are paying attention like Whoa, this isn’t about the taste. Like what’s beer, this isn’t about, like the brewery is the ambience of the brewery great. This is about you just said Michael telling the story differently. And so they told their story differently, and now have hundreds of 1000s of eyeballs around the world watching it. And now here I am the snob just of the snobs for beer, and I’m like, I’m going to go to the logic, like they’ve earned it. They have earned my business, right. And then the other part of it is look at movement. loans are commodity like we’re all selling their every cell in the same loan. And not only are we competing our loan officers are competing with you know, other mortgage companies out there. in Charlotte they’re competing is 100 other move and loan officers. So it’s like we’re competing against ourselves, right? Because we’re a retail only we’re not like a DTC shop like a you know, like a rocket that’s picking up the phone over and over and over again, our loan officers are out there. And so they’re all saying the same thing. And so personal branding is absolutely how they stand out. And whether that’s through Tick Tock is Ram, whatever it is, more and more people that are on those platforms are now buying a house for the first time and unfortunate they’re getting like overbid. First time homebuyers getting crushed right now. But in a normal environment. Yeah. You know that that demo is looking for a house. They’re on social media and they’re seeing like, I don’t know, Michael at all. But this dude is hilarious on his zoom show. He’s seems that he’s got a personal he seems like he knows what he’s talking about. Look at his fancy shirt. He’s got he’s got headphones. Like, I’m gonna. I’m gonna reach out to him. Sure. No, I love it. I love that take. And you know, one of the things that that I wrote down and I told you, I was gonna pull up some some Seth Godin, because if you if you’re into marketing at all, Seth Godin is like one of the great like marketing minds, and I’m pretty sure you’re, you’re a big fan, right? You say, how, who’s the purple cow? Like, how do you stand out? Exactly. So one of the things that, that he put out, and, and it just kind of resonated with me is I think that we can sometimes I know, I’m this way, so I won’t project on anyone, but I’m this way, like, I, the minute I step into the batter’s box or batter’s box, I think, Okay, I need to hit a homerun, like, I need to, I need a triple, I need a homerun, because that’s just how my brain works. And I think that it can be sometimes foreign for us to get used to just hitting singles. And one of the things that he says Seth says, you think about like, your minimum viable audience. And, like, take care of them. Like what so whatever it is, and so I don’t know what that would be like, for you know, like, you know, Nicholas, Nicholas is, you know, he owns forte, the goddess, you might know, Nick, right? So coffee business, you know, with the HV AC company, if you’re, you know, I think I saw Kelan hair construction company, but like, Who is that minimum viable audience for you, that you want to market to? And like start curating and crafting, like all of your messaging to them. And slowly start building that out, you know, over time, because those will be your you know, your fans that will tell other people like you like you just told me the story about the about the brewery, like, that’s not you’ve not even been there, but like, they’re doing cool stuff. Like, you know, you’re a fan. You know, you may not like their beer, but you’re like, Hey, I just you just told me and everyone that’s gonna watch this video, they did something really cool online. And there’ll probably be at least one or two people that watch this, that go and Google that and try to find that video. Yeah, no, I mean, look, the home run, is I’m going to send a beer to the moon. That’s like maybe you are, use this or you’re shooting your shot that you’re going for a homerun. But you know, what has more views on Tick Tock for them. Now I’m going like all in on Devil’s logic is crazy. But but this is what happens because I went to their page and I went through all their content. They have a slow mo video of sliding a beer in a plastic cup across their bar. Okay? No, beer spills is ridiculous. We’re talking about beer on your podcast. But look, hey, I’m, I am in Lyon, right? Um, it’s got 400,000 likes 400,000. That’s a single, you slide a beer across the table like that is a single you are taking video of an everyday thing. At the brewery, you’re posting the video and it hit the algorithm and it’s got 400,000 likes. So sending a beer The moon is a homerun. You’re going for it at that point. If it works, it works. If it does it it does I I don’t know if I would necessarily recommend that to someone. But every day posting a picture like you’re sliding a beer across the thing is slow mo that’s a single and that single turn into a Grand Slam. Right? And so absolutely, it is all about especially if you’re just getting started. It is all about singles. Find something that you can replicate. I mean, if you let me talk for just a little bit more on this my wife’s an example that she works in morning television here in Charlotte. And you know her stations constantly Hey Paige, you do a good job with social media we need you out there more post more post more post. She’s like, Oh my gosh, like I’m on live TV every day I’m so the last thing I want to do is like, talk to more people. And so she and I was like I talked to my loan officers all day we’re talking to this career. She and I just like sat outside. We’re like, well, what could be something to Nicholas’s point that’s not going to spread you too thin. That’s gonna, that’s gonna like let you post but not completely wear you out. And so she came up with this thing six at six. So at 6am she posts a minute long story, or minute long post on our Instagram where she gets to the top six headlines of the day in Charlotte. So if you’re not in Charlotte, not really your thing. But in Charlotte, I’m telling you Michael everywhere we went love it says six days, longer six and six pages like oh my gosh took off. And you know what those are? Those are like not just singles. Those are like bunk sacrifice. Right? You know, that is the most basic thing everyday, pick up the phone and six, give six headlines, put it down. And you become fans, right? I’m a fan of the consistency. They love it. And they like you said like to do something like that. You have to be consistent because that’s what builds over time and people like they come to expect it like if she were to stop doing that people like oh Like, wherever there’s raps Yes, she’s like I’m trapped. I’m like, sorry, I’m sorry. You’re so famous, their local celebrity but tough, tough. Well, we’ll wrap up here. But this this one question came in from Canada. This is a good one. It’s good, solid fundamentals. Yeah, she asked, you know, if starting a business Yeah, where do you start? First you start like with a website or social media, and I think you were that plays right back into what you were saying earlier, as far as you know, finding your digital real estate. Yeah. So, you know, combat. We talked a little bit about this at the beginning, locking down your digital real estate, I use the weird metaphor about having a two storey house and those stairs, trust me, it’ll make sense when you go back and watch it. What I have run into, you know, I’m guilty of this. And I see a lot of loan officers do it too, is you get caught up in the fancy stuff. And so now I’m on my now like, third podcast, and let’s just say a podcast is like a business trying to correlate these two. But when I got started, oh, man, I had the best notes. I had the best whiteboard on it. I went on Fiverr. And I had somebody design me a podcast logo. I have all the artwork, my youtube banner, I had a system that was connecting everything and everything. You know what, I didn’t have an actual episode. I had no episodes of my podcast. And so I was the guy at the party. And we all hate this guy at the party. And I know now like, Oh, I must have sounded like an idiot. For like, a year. I was like, Oh, so I’m starting a podcast. Yeah, yeah, this podcast is gonna be great. I’m gonna bring on some, you know, local influencers, Michael, and you’re just gonna talk shop and, and then it’s gonna be amazing. Yeah, we’ve got the logo right now, finishing touches on it, you should see look at garbage. And it was all like, eventually got to start it. But the point is, do the boring stuff. First, you know, came up, give me example of my neighbor here who just started a small business. And I encouraged him to do the boring stuff first, which is, you know, locked down his locations on the big social media platforms, Yelp, Facebook, Google, get those locations down, turn on reviews for the big ones, Facebook and Google, and then drive your traffic there. And then yes, a website for sure. That’s part of the digital real estate, sort of like starter kit. And you can do that yourself in square, or WordPress, just watch a couple YouTube videos, you can get started, I promise. I know, I sound like that guy that’s like high level. And I’m just gonna start it really is that easy. It just takes a little bit time. I think you know that that’s a great way to sum everything up. And one of the things you just I think told an invaluable story for everyone that is on on the webinar, anyone that’s going to watch it is I think that’s what we’re a lot of times we we get excited about being excited in our intention. And then we don’t actually like put anything out there into the universe, you know, we’re getting ready to get ready. And I think we have to understand like coming out of the gates. It’s not to say that you you can’t, you can’t possibly hit a home run right out of the gate. But it’s going to take, you know, consistent effort over and over and over again, to you know, to build out that, like you said, and you know, an inch deep, mile wide. And you’re saying, Well, if we want to go, you know, an inch wide mile deep, like that’s going to take consistent effort chipping away, chipping away. But you can’t start that until you actually begin, you start putting you know, you record that first podcast episode and then record the second, you know, and you keep building on that. And that’s one of the things that you know, that I’ve taken away from, you know, watching folks like you on social media that I think are great at it, and just is like, I want to be good at it too. But there’s no way I can be good at anything unless I consistently put an effort, you know, and the only other alternative is is you outsource it right? So you hire somebody like a Jake failing to come in and say, Hey, I’m never going to be the marketing whiz. I’m a technician. This is my field of expertise, but I want to hire. So that’ll be my last question for you. Okay, so when should someone when should a business in your mind, start thinking like, Hey, I don’t need to be them. I need to outsource my marketing. I need to outsource and hire someone to run my website, I need to outsource and have someone run my digital advertising my social, how does someone come to that conclusion over doing it themselves? So I would treat it the same way as you would like your QuickBooks. You know, in that example, so if you have hired someone to help you with your accounting, or let’s say you are hbic person, and you have hired someone to help drive another truck, or maybe you bought a Second truck to do to expand your business and you’re investing in all these other places. The oftentimes, where people spend the least amount of time is that social media is the branding. That’s such a critical part of the business, that I think in many cases, it should be as much a part of that, like, pay for it, to get done to scale yourself, as it would be to say, hiring someone to do your books, hiring someone to, you know, actually do the the practice of mulching of, you know, fixing AC units, yourself, I firmly believe that we see with our loan officers every day, there are some who are just really into it. And they learn the tricks of the trade, they learn how to pose, they literally find scheduling tools, they find they figure out Fiverr, which you’ve heard me mentioned a few times, they love YouTube videos to learn all these things, they do it themselves, most of my loan officers have no interest. And it just frankly, just ends up making them mad. So we’ve received some that hire their own marketing person share a marketing person across the market. And it’s been because worked wonders on their business, not from a social not just from a social media perspective, but also like work in their database, which, as you know, that’s where all the gold is. Yeah, absolutely. And, and you did mention that one of the things that that I’ve seen pick up significantly in the last few years, and maybe you could touch on it slightly, you meant you I heard you say the word database. Like, I think it’s critical for a lot of businesses to find ways to build, like a newsletter or a database of people that you know, that have that have raised their hand in some way and said, Hey, I’d like your business, hey, I want to know what’s going on. So that you can either directly market to them certain things, or just continue that connection with like a personalized newsletter, you know, and I think the question Laurie mentioned earlier, you know, 100 competitors, you know, everyone’s saying the same thing. But what if, you know, how many of them are providing like a personalized newsletter to talk about other factors of you know, that might be related to whatever that business is just, that could be something that begins the process of setting you apart, not only as an additional value add, but also like, they’re getting, they’re getting touched by you, you know, just not my mica, they’re getting touched by you like in a consistent way. So that when they do have that problem, where they do need you, who’s who are they going to think about first? I mean, you feel I mean, do you feel like that that’s kind of a key thing that we people need to consider too, is like, how do you capture information on people that are coming to your site or checking you out? Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s what I was saying. That’s Yeah. There’s all the times like it’s sitting right there in your database. These are your raving fans, you mentioned raving fans, like literally,
I mean, we’re ridiculous, right?
Jake Fehling 1:07:57 We made raving fan bobbleheads movement, it’s okay. Your shirt. We’re a huge believer of the raving fan mantra at movement. And so, you know, give those people what they want, which is you, you know, don’t abuse it, you know, don’t flood them with content. But you know, in your world, Michael might be, you know, before tax season or something like that. It’s like, hey, reach out for free, like wealth checkup. And if you you’ve got to click on this email, you got to respond. And I’ll jump on the phone with you for 15 minutes just to make sure that you’re still pleased with investments, you’re still pleased. And those types like hang a carrot out there. keeps them engaged, and makes them want to refer you right then people want to talk about the rainy days like this guy has reached out on his own and offered me a free wealth checkup. And I wasn’t even thinking about that. Like he’s he’s covered my back. He’s got my back in this whole thing, and that person is probably gonna brag about you to someone else. Awesome. Jake, man. so grateful for you to just be Yes, awesome, generous with your time, I know, you’ve got probably a stacked calendar. And please tell your team thank you as well for you know, carving this space out for us and allowing you to, to make time to talk with us about marketing would love to, you know, have you back for a marketing 2.0 at some point in the future, but I think this is great. I hope everyone that is on here, anyone that’s going to watch this, it gets tons of value, because I’ve enjoyed the conversation. And I think that, you know, this is part of the future for us as small business owners that we’ve got to not we’ve got to know like, how to market our business. And we also need to know when it’s like, Alright, I need to not do this anymore. I need to delegate it, because it is that important, right? Yep, for sure. Kim, Laurie, Nicholas, thank you so much for sticking around this whole time. Hopefully you came away with a little something hit me up on LinkedIn would love to connect with Yeah, tell him tell him you’re telling me your contact info and where can everyone find you? Yes. So my last name is failing. Great for that you can imagine how much fun I have with that as a last name growing up a f e h Li n g, and it’s at Jake failing pretty much everywhere. Awesome. Hey, buddy. I know you got to get back to it. Thank you so much. And thank you all for attending and we will get this up and have a replay for you soon. Thanks, Michael.