How to Get Free Real Estate Leads from YouTube: Karin Carr's Keyword Playbook for Agents

[00:00.01] Mattias Clymer: Welcome back to The REI Agent. Today’s guest is a real estate agent in Savannah, Georgia, who cracked the code on getting leads from YouTube completely for free without ever cold calling. She’s the author of the best Amazon bestselling book, YouTube for Real Estate Agents, the creator of the Video Boss Agent training course, and a YouTube coach helping realtors across the country build a business that works while they sleep. If you’ve ever wondered whether video marketing could work for you, you’re about to find out exactly how. Please welcome to The REI Agent. The REI Agent, Karin Carr. Karin, thanks for joining us.

[00:33.32] Karin Carr: Thank you for having me, Mattias. It’s great to be here. Yeah.

[00:37.30] Mattias Clymer: So I’ve had a couple of people, a couple of YouTube people on the show, and I always really enjoy talking to them. I think often what is most common is somebody who has an area that has a lot of people relocating to. So they’re considering, moving to this area. So they search it up on YouTube. Now, I imagine there’s a lot more that can be, if you’re not living in that kind of area, maybe we should just start with saying, should they start a YouTube channel if they don’t have an area that like a lot of people are flocking to?

[01:15.96] Karin Carr: And I would like to start off by apologizing for that, because I wrote a book called YouTube for Real Estate Agents in 2019. And I said, hey, guys, this is what I did. I made a whole channel about moving to Savannah, and it blew up my business. And then 20,000 people went out and bought that book, and they all did the exact same thing. So I’m sorry. There are plenty of other things you can do. It does not only have to be inbound relocation, although that works really, really well. Because if someone doesn’t live here now, and they’re on Google, and they’re saying, tell me about this area, they don’t already know 97 real estate agents. Whereas if you decide you want to have a channel to attract listings, it’s going to be a little bit more complicated, because they’re not necessarily doing as many of the Google searches, because they already live there. And they already know probably at least five real estate agents, if not more. So you absolutely can do it. But there are other ways to do it. It doesn’t have to only be inbound relocation in, you know, vacation markets.

[02:19.22] Mattias Clymer: I love it. Well, let’s dive into it. But before we get into those weeds, let’s hear about how you got started in real estate in general. I make the joke a lot about, you know, you probably weren’t a five-year-old dreaming of becoming a real estate agent that had a YouTube niche. What led you to this crazy career path?

[02:37.36] Karin Carr: I actually majored in music in college, I wanted to be an opera singer of all things. And I loved doing it. But I am six feet tall. So I am on stage taller than 98% of the men on the stage. And it just did not go so well for me. When you’re playing like, oh, I was Romeo’s mom in Romeo and Juliet. So I was Lady Montague. And the only reason I got that role was because the guy who was going to play Romeo’s dad was six foot four. And so we could stand next to each other and I wouldn’t tower over the guy. So after trying to make a go of being a professional singer for many years, I finally decided it was not in my cards, it was just going to be fun. And then my husband and I moved to Northern California in 2005. And it was insanely expensive. It was before the market crashed. Houses that were a half a million dollars were shacks that needed to be torn down and completely remodeled. And I was like, man, if I get my real estate license, all I have to do is sell one house a month, and we’ll be making bank. So I thought I was going to have all of this time freedom and, you know, work a couple hours a week and be making six figures, all the things that we just don’t know, you think you’re going to get real estate license, and all of a sudden, your phone is going to start ringing off the hook with people saying, I want to buy a house, will you represent me? And so that’s not exactly what happened. And I had to learn. And then of course, the market completely tanked, it seems like it starts on the the coasts of the country and works its way in. So in 2006, was when we saw a huge number of people going into default, I had listings, I absolutely could not sell because the prices were going down so fast, nobody wanted to buy. thinking next month, it’s going to be worth 50,000 less than I paid today. And I was really starting to think that maybe that was a very bad decision to go into real estate. And then I just happened to stumble into REO listings. And that’s what I did for about the next seven years or so. Okay. So if I had not been fortunate enough to get hooked up with listing the bank foreclosures, I probably would not still be in real estate today. And then I moved across the country and the REO boom was over and I had to figure out how to get leads and I didn’t know how to prospect because I, I had not had to prospect in so many years. I literally checked my email in the morning and it said, you have a new listing. Here’s the address. Go get it. And so I started the YouTube channel and craziest thing ever. And wow, what, what an amazing journey that has been.

[05:23.88] Mattias Clymer: How long did that take to take off the YouTube channel?

[05:27.88] Karin Carr: You got it. You got it.

[05:29.19] Mattias Clymer: You had to go there, didn’t you?

[05:29.86] Karin Carr: A year and a half. It took 18 months. So here’s why. I had no idea what I was doing. I had no plan. I had no strategy and I had no consistency. So we had moved from Northern California to just outside of Hilton Head, South Carolina. We were there for a year before my husband got transferred to Atlanta. So when I got to Atlanta, it’s like, Oh my God, I’m starting over in another state, another market where nobody knows me. I’ll start making YouTube videos. And I was just trying anything and everything. I was mimicking what I saw other people doing on social media, just listed, just sold. Everybody look at me. I’m the best agent in the whole world. Why wouldn’t you want to hire me? Needless to say, that does not work and didn’t, nobody called me. And so then I started blogging on my website. And as I learned about SEO and ranking in Google searches, I thought, well, you know, Google owns YouTube. So why don’t I just make videos that would rank in YouTube the same way that my blog posts rank on Google. And then I went to a, um, uh, like a continuing education class that someone gave all about ranking on Google. And he said, Google loves Google. So Google loves YouTube. Google loves custom Google maps. Google loves Google reviews, Google, my business, like anything that Google owns. If you can use all of those things, you’ll be like dominating Google searches. And sure enough, that’s what started to happen. So it took a long time. It took about a year and a half because for that first, probably 15 months, I had no idea what I was doing. But after I started making videos that I wanted to rank in search results, that’s when it started to pick up. So from that moment until I got my first lead was probably about 90 days. It really wasn’t that long. It just took 15 months of experimentation before I figured that out.

[07:33.86] Mattias Clymer: Sure. Now that makes a lot of sense. So you’re blowing my mind here. Are you telling me that people aren’t Googling? Why is Mattias Clymer so awesome?

[07:41.46] Karin Carr: I know it’s shocking, isn’t it? And yes, they are not, they, they do not rush to YouTube to watch my just listed video. I know it’s so hard to believe.

[07:50.63] Mattias Clymer: You know, that is, that is a, um, a pet peeve of mine. I would say, I think, uh, it’s been maybe, uh, even a detriment to some of my marketing efforts is that, uh, I, I, I, try to look at it in the lens of like, what do people actually care about? And I, uh, like, I don’t think people care about, you know, yeah, you just sold a house, whatever. I do think there is a part of that that is helpful to like, you know, establish, uh, credibility and all that kind of stuff. So it’s probably. And, and, you know, just listed posts on Instagram, et cetera, is probably good for, you know, you know, showing that you’re active in the business and people do actually want to buy a house often. So, so there is some interest there.

[08:28.86] Karin Carr: Uh, but I think a lot of people fall in the trap.

[08:30.41] Mattias Clymer: I think a lot of people fall in the trap of like, you know, just kind of bragging about themselves, uh, on, on social media. And, and it’s, it’s really not, I find it off-putting. And I think a lot of people just don’t really care.

[08:42.56] Karin Carr: Um, I agree. I love it when you get an email from a realtor and their signature block is about four inches tall with all of their designations. And I’m a top producer in this market. And it’s like, why don’t you just take out an ad in the newspaper and talk about how great you are?

[08:59.22] Mattias Clymer: Hey, that’s a good idea. Um, no, so there’s, well, you were, you were mentioning, um, you know, the SEO part of, of, um, of this and how that’s a really smart way to go about it, obviously. Um, or maybe not, obviously, if you’re just starting out and you haven’t really done blogging or anything. But, um, one strategy, I think people could use is to have a consistent blog. Um, and then if they have a blog that does better than another blog, they could make a YouTube video off of it. Um, based off of it, um, so that use the same content, you know, that that’s going to perform better. You have a better shot. Cause it’s going to take more effort in theory to do a YouTube video, depending on what type of YouTube video you’re doing and how many edits and, you know, different places you’re going, et cetera. So is that is that a strategy you’ve used?

[09:46.41] Karin Carr: Well, see, I actually started making the videos because I thought it would be easier than blogging. So what I learned in, in trying to do all that stuff was you pretty much wanted to have a blog post. That was a minimum of 2,500 words. You wanted to embed pictures in it. You wanted to embed a video in it. You wanted to have links going off of your site and links going to internal pages on your site. And it would take me a good week to make something like that. And I thought if I already know what I want to say, what if I just turn the camera on and I say it because I know the topic well enough that I don’t need a script. I don’t need to read it from a teleprompter. I just need. Like a bullet outline of don’t forget to say this and don’t forget to talk about this. And I would just turn on the camera and blabber for five minutes and do very, very little editing. And for me, that was so much easier than making this big blog post. But then I thought, well, what if I do both? What if I make the blog post and then I embed the YouTube video in the blog and then, oh my gosh, Google just loves that. So now it’s like you’re getting double the Google juice between the blog post and the video.

[10:57.56] Mattias Clymer: Yeah. And, and you know, there with AI there’s definitely some advantages or some, some ways you can kind of help with that. So if, if you are that way, if you are able to just, you have the gift of gap, you’re able to talk comfortably in front of a camera, which we can talk about how it may be to get there if you’re not right away, but you could have AI transcribe the video and then create a blog post from it. Yes. You know, it’s the back and forth thing. Don’t just blindly trust everything that AI puts out there, but yeah.

[11:30.45] Karin Carr: Yeah. Agreed. If you’ve, if you’ve made the video first and then you just take the transcript, like you can literally go to Google or go to YouTube and show the transcript of the video. And copy the whole thing, dump it into AI and say, turn this into a blog post with H1, H2, H3, blah, blah, blah. Make it sound like me. And I love to upload a whole bunch of videos that I’ve recorded in the past and say, this is what I sound like. This is how I talk. Make my blog posts sound the way I talk. Do not make them sound like AI. Do not use M dashes. Do not use excessive emojis. All of the things that I think just scream, hey, I wrote this. I tell it not to do any of those things so that it seems more real. And then I read what it wrote and I go in and I change a bunch of things and it’s so much faster that way, but it still sounds like a person wrote it and not AI.

[12:27.24] Mattias Clymer: Well, and it’s coming from, yeah, it’s coming from you’re the source, right? You’re the one that is creating that content to for it to write off of. But we should maybe talk about getting started. Like, you know, I think there’s a lot of barriers for people that, you know, equipment, editing, there’s, you know, being comfortable in front of a camera. What are your tips for somebody who is considering this but feels overwhelmed with all those barriers?

[12:54.45] Karin Carr: Yeah. When we are first starting, we are all terrible. And anybody that you watch on YouTube that you think is amazing, they’ve probably been doing it for five or 10 years. They did not start out that way. So if you want to make yourself feel better, go to a channel that you really, really like, go to the videos and then sort them oldest to newest and watch what their first videos look like. You’ll feel so much better about yourself because we all get there. We all start there. Nobody is amazing on camera. Even me with all of my stage experience, I didn’t know anything about filming. I didn’t know anything about lighting. I didn’t know, like how to write an outline or a script. I was just comfortable being in front of the camera because I’m kind of a ham. That was the only thing that I brought to the table. The only way that we get better is by doing it over and over and over again. I always use this analogy. If I decided I wanted to learn how to, I don’t know, play ice hockey and I don’t even ice skate right now. Am I really going to expect that I’m going to put on skates and get out on the ice rink and start skating all over the place? No, you’re going to fall all over the place. And it’s going to take a long time before you feel like you don’t absolutely suck at this. And that’s okay, because that’s what every single one of us had to do. So I have never had anyone say, you know, I almost hired you, but I decided not to because you’re old. Or you have gray hair, or you could really stand to lose 10 pounds, or you could, you know, push away from the donut table lady. Like nobody says stuff like that. So everything that we are insecure about, no, nobody cares. Nobody, nobody cares. If they watch your video, and they don’t really like your personality, they’ll click away and go watch something else. But they don’t call you to say I would like to personally reject you to like that doesn’t happen. So if they keep watching you, and they get to know you, and they like your personality, by the time they call you, I mean, every single phone call goes the same way. They say, Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe I’m talking to you. You’re a celebrity. You’re famous. Like, this is crazy. I cannot believe that I’m talking to you right now. It’s really weird. And we have a great conversation. I laugh it off. And then when I meet them in person for the first time, it’s the same thing of like, I can’t believe this is the first time we’re actually meeting because I feel like I’ve spoken to you a bazillion times. And it’s great because they’ve pretty much already decided to use me as their agent by the time they pick up the phone and call me. I don’t have to twist their arm. I don’t have to have that big, awkward conversation about this is what I charge. And this is why I’m worth it. And this is why you shouldn’t try to haggle with me. And I’m not going to reduce my fees. And like, it rarely ever comes up. I just say, I would love I would love to work with you. This is what I charge. And they go, OK. Send me the agreement. I’ll sign it.

[15:52.36] Mattias Clymer: If that’s not a sales pitch to start, I don’t know what else it is. I think, you know, obviously, you know, we some people are cut out for doing the cold stuff, you know, doing door knocking and, and, you know, having that like, you know, I’m going to get a hundred no’s before I get one yes. Yeah. Kind of reality. Some people are cut out for that and don’t mind. I think I personally much rather work with somebody who wants to work with me. That is, that can be like a warm referral from somebody who’s worked with me in the past a repeat client. All those are lovely, you know, to work with those people, because again, yeah, you’re not having to sell yourself like that. But this is obviously another great way. Going back to the repetition and kind of getting some of the practice, you know, people may, I can see somebody having this like fear where they’re, where they’re trying to set up something to be perfect. They’re going to hit record and then they’re going to, you know, do it 700 times before they maybe just give up and stop. One of the things that I’ve suggested in the past is, you know, give yourself a 30 day challenge of, you know, don’t overcomplicate it, just use your phone. And, and just, and you could probably use AI to give you a list of some of things to talk about. And if you use AI a lot, if you have one platform that you use a lot, they probably know you and they probably know what you can kind of wrap ramble on about. So, you know, today’s topic is X and then just get on the phone and just talk about it and get used to seeing yourself that way and just get used to talking in front of the camera and, and give yourself the permission to like, I’m not going to use any of this. This is just a practice of talking from the camera. And I think after that 30 day challenges up, you might have content that you actually want to use. But if you remove that, like, I have to post this. This could be for social media. This could be for YouTube videos, etc. I think that will help get that those reps in without the all the pressure to make everything perfect and polished.

[17:49.36] Karin Carr: I think that’s a great idea, because the more you see yourself on camera and you hear yourself. That’s another thing people always say. I hate the sound of my voice. I’m like, has anyone ever told you that they couldn’t work with you because they hated the way that your voice sounds. It’s such a weird thing for people to be upset about. But I hear it a lot. So I know it’s a thing. The more you sit down to edit your video, and I’m not talking about like transitions and music and like titles on the screen, all kinds of stuff. I’m talking to just taking out the mistakes, taking out when the dog barked, because the Amazon guy rang the doorbell in the middle of your recording. Just I stumbled over my words. I had to back up and start over again. We’re just going to remove the mistakes. The first several times that you watch yourself on camera, you are going to just cringe and say, I can’t even believe that this is what I look like. And this is what I sound like. Oh, my God. Like, how am I allowed out in society this? I should be locked in my house with a paper bag over my head. And after you do 10 or 20 videos, you’re like, I don’t care. Publish like you. You just kind of get desensitized to everything that you perceive to be your personal faults and you realize like nobody else. Nobody else judges us nearly as harshly as we judge ourselves. So if you decide I’m going to make all of these videos and I’m not going to upload any of them, I love that by the time you get to the 30 days, you’ll probably have a few that you’re like, OK, I could publish this and I wouldn’t be mortified to show it to the world. Yeah, yeah.

[19:22.42] Mattias Clymer: And it’s I think, you know, it’s just that repetition for sure. And so, yeah, definitely something to consider if you’re wanting to get into this, but are deathly afraid of the camera. And, you know, I was definitely not I’m still not amazing at talking in front of the camera. I still stumble with what I say all the time, but I’m just comfortable with it now and it’s not something that I, you know, dwell on. And if you think about it, it is kind of like a narcissistic thought to think that everybody cares so much about you. You know what I mean? Like obviously we do care more about, you know, what we appear, how we appear, how, what we sound like than anybody else does. They’re all used to it if they’ve talked to you. What, what about like equipment? Like, do you, you know, do people feel like they have to get something fancy to do this? Is your phone fine? What kind of like starting points to people should people start with if they want to do this?

[20:20.63] Karin Carr: The phone I have on my iPhone 14, like that’s the most recent iPhone that I have is a bazillion times better than the Canon rebel camera that I bought for many, many hundreds of dollars. So if you just want to use your phone, it’s great. It’s not only okay, it’s probably better than a lot of stuff. What I’m using right now is a webcam that was $100, $125 that I bought on Amazon. And I just stick it on top of my computer screen. And when I’m recording, I just look at the webcam like you don’t need expensive stuff at all. If you are in a room where you’ve got lots of natural light, you can face the window. That would probably look great. This is a spare bedroom in my house that has really bad lighting. So I have room darkening curtains on all of the windows to make it as pitch black as I can. And then I have a light here and I have a light here and that’s it. And it’s fine. So I mean, you could probably if you already are going to use your phone and you have a you get a couple of lights and an inexpensive microphone. We’re talking like 100 bucks, 150 bucks, maybe if you want to go hog wild and buy all of the things. $300 maybe it doesn’t have to be expensive. And if you use nothing except your AirPods, that will be your microphone and your phone, which we’re going to hold this way when we make YouTube videos. Please don’t if this is for social media shorts, right? If we’re going to make a 10 minute long video, we’re going to hold the phone this way. And then you just use your your AirPods or your earbuds. Yeah. Film outside in the natural sun. It’s going to be terrific. Yeah, no, absolutely.

[22:09.63] Mattias Clymer: And I think some some things that’s considered as well as like and don’t get too in the weeds with this and overanalyze stuff. But you know, any any kind of wide angle lens is going to be a little bit more unflattering than something that’s a little bit more zoomed in. So like if you if you have your camera right here, if your phone right here, it might your face might be a little distorted. So the more centered you are in the camera and a little bit further back, the better. But again, don’t I wouldn’t go too far into that. Audio can often be make something seem a lot more clean and professional than even like a higher quality camera might like, you know, you could be in 1080p instead of 4k or 8k or whatever crazy stuff people are doing. But if your audio is terrible, that’s probably a more important thing to think about. Would you agree with that? I do.

[23:01.67] Karin Carr: You know, I find that people are very forgiving of not blurry, but not the sharpest video quality. But the times that I get torn apart in the comments is when my audio is terrible. So people will forgive you if it doesn’t look that great. If they can’t hear you clearly, it’s very, very annoying and they will let you know about it. So there was one time I’d like 10 years ago. Do you remember that thing? It looked like a horseshoe that hung around your neck and it had the little dangly earbuds and you would stick them in. I use that and I forgot to turn it on and I was outside. So there was a guy with a leaf blower and all you could hear is the leaf blower. And every single person in the comments was like, I can’t hear anything. This is so bad. So, yes, you just want to make sure that your audio is decent and that the lighting and the video quality are good enough. But again, people know that we are real estate agents and that we are talking about the area where we live or we’re showing them a house or we’re teaching them like what’s happening with interest rates right now. How does that affect me if I’m trying to sell? How does that affect me if I’m trying to buy? We’re teaching them stuff like that. They don’t expect you to be Steven Spielberg. They just don’t expect it.

[24:20.86] Mattias Clymer: And you can see it as, you know, A progress, a progression. Like if it’s something that really takes off and it’s really worthwhile, you might want to invest in the next thing. But don’t feel like you have to start with like, you know, yeah, the studio set up by any means.

[24:38.86] Karin Carr: That’s kind of what I did. Like I invested in nothing at the very beginning until I got my first closing. And then I was like, oh, I’m going to go buy those cool little blue lights that I can put on my bookcase behind me because they look cool. They’re two for $30. Woo. I bought four of them like big spender. And every time you get a new client and you have a new transaction, if you want to treat yourself and say, I’m going to buy myself a nice big podcasting microphone. That’s a couple hundred bucks. Okay. But you don’t have to buy them all to start. Yeah. And it’s ridiculous that the videos that bring me the most leads to this day are the ones where I had almost no equipment, no editing, like nothing fancy about them at all.

[25:21.86] Mattias Clymer: And speaking of editing, I think that’s something that can also feel daunting. There are some really simple applications out there that you can use. Descript is one that is popular right now. I use that for a little bit where it actually transcribes everything you’re saying and then you can edit it like you would a Word document. So if you do have a blunder of what you said something wrong, you can go in there and delete it and it’ll just cut that part of the video out. But there’s this landscape is changing fast. I just heard about there’s a more open source type of video editor called DaVinci Resolve, I think. And I just learned that they have an actual MCP server connection to like ChatGPT or AI where you can actually have your AI designated platform edit through that platform. And so there’s just a million different ways. Obviously, you can pay somebody. You can go on Fiverr and pay somebody to to edit for you. CapCut is another, you know, application is pretty simple. Do you have any other recommendations on on the editing side of things?

[26:25.54] Karin Carr: Yeah, DaVinci is great CapCut is great. Descript is great. I use Veed.io, which is very similar to CapCut and Descript and ChatGPT. Oh, my gosh, has edited the last three videos that I’ve made and it’s frickin blowing my mind. So I go into Veed.io because it’s a it’s a web browser and I record my video directly into Veed. And then I go over to the you have to use the desktop version for ChatGPT. I don’t know why. So you have to like download the app that’s on your computer so it can act as an agent. And I say I recorded a video I want you to go through. I want you to take out all of the mistakes. I want you to take out big breaths. I want you to take out any time I coughed or cleared my throat. If I have a restart, which is where I started to say something and then I like, ah, that was terrible. Let’s do that again, and I start over again and that still wasn’t any better. Okay, I’m going to start over again. Okay, that was the right one. Anytime I do that multiple times go with the last one. That was obviously the best one, which is why I didn’t have to do it again a fourth time and just do it. And then I go downstairs and get a cup of coffee and some seven minutes later, my video is completely edited. It is crazy and that when you sit there and you watch it, you see your mouse going over and it’s clicking and it’s doing this and it’s cutting up the timeline and it’s deleting stuff and moving. And you’re just sitting there drinking your cup of coffee, watching the whole thing. Like I do not have to pay somebody $100 in a video ever again. Like chat GPT is doing this for 20 bucks a month. It’s insane.

[28:00.35] Mattias Clymer: It’s wild. It’s so wild. So there’s another barrier taken away. Now let’s, let’s get into some content. What are some ideas? So, I mean, let’s, we can do the relocation as well, because that is something that is applicable for a lot of people and obviously really powerful. But yeah, tell us some, some content ideas for people if they want to get started.

[28:20.65] Karin Carr: Yeah, I have a coaching student who is in Australia and she decided her channel was going on. But her channel was going to be for senior sellers who are downsizing. So her avatar is her ideal viewer is someone who has adult children that have moved out of the house there. They’re grown. They have families of their own and these people still own the house that they’ve had for like 30 years. It’s 4000 square feet. It’s way too big. It’s got stairs. These people are now in their 60s. They don’t want to go up and down stairs anymore. They got bad knees. So they’re going to downsize to a smaller house. And they start looking online for the 55 and over communities that they’re going to go to. Like who are the builders that have single story homes, stuff like that. And then when she gets that lead, she ends up not only helping them buy their home, but she helps them sell the one that they live in now. So she gets multiple transactions from these people. And so because she knows this is the person I’m trying to reach. She’s not going to make a video called moving to Perth, Australia. I forget what city she lives in. It’s going to be something like what’s the name of the 55 and over community? What is the name of the builder? What is the name of the floor plan? Benefits of a single story house. They’re Googling things like that. And then her video shows up in the search results and they click, they watch, they like her, they watch more. She starts getting listings. It’s really, really great. So step number one is you have to know who am I talking to? I am not talking to every single buyer and every single seller and every single investor and every single renter. You have to pick one. It doesn’t mean that you don’t work with anybody else. It just means that I have a specialty. I have an area of expertise and that’s what this channel is about. So my channel was first time buyers who are in the military who are relocating to Savannah. They’re going to be stationed at Hunter Army Airfield. They’ve always lived in base housing. And I’m saying, hey, it’s really cheap here. You don’t have to live in base housing. You could buy a house with your VA loan with zero down and your base allowance for housing. Your BAH would cover your mortgage payment. So you basically get to buy a house for free and live there for free. And then when you sell it, you get to take all of the proceeds. Why would anybody not do that? That was the premise of my entire channel. And the very first lead I got was a seller who is not in the military. So even though I was talking to the military first time buyers, my first lead was a listing. My second lead was a listing. He was in the military, but it was still a listing lead. And he was moving to Virginia. So I wasn’t going to get the buy side from him. I did get a referral fee, though. Thank you very much. So we think that if we narrow down, we’re going to alienate everybody else. It does not work that way. It does not work that way. You will find all of the people that are interested in the content you’re making, but you’ll also find other people as well. So if you decide you want to go after sellers, that’s great. Come up with an angle. Why are they selling? Where are they going? Like, I don’t know. I’ll just use California as an example. Where you live in California are a lot of people leaving the state. Okay, could you have a whole channel about leaving California? I’m going to sell my house. Where am I going to go? Am I going to go to Texas? Am I going to go to Arizona? Am I going to go to Florida? Where am I going? Why am I going there? Am I trying to escape high costs, high property taxes, high cost of living? Do I want better weather? What is the reason? And then you try to figure out if this person wanted to move, what are they searching for online? And that’s another great use for Claude, Chat, GPT, Gemini. You say, this is my ideal client avatar. What are the questions that they have? And it will give you a list of 100 questions. And you make a video about each and every one of them.

[32:29.63] Mattias Clymer: Hmm. And I would imagine you could then also use A.I. or other tools to see how many searches there are for that topic or to see if your idea has wheels. Is that a good step as well? You are speaking my love language right there.

[32:47.41] Karin Carr: It is called keyword research. So there are not many tools to do it for free anymore. The one that I like is $7 a month. So it’s really, really cheap. It’s called keywords everywhere. But there’s a million of them. So just Google keyword research tool or keyword research software. And the way that it works is you pay your $7 a month or whatever it costs. And then you go to Google and you act as though you are the viewer. So in my case, I was trying to find first time military buyers relocating to Savannah. So I typed in off base housing, Hunter Army Airfield. PCSing to Savannah. PCS to Hunter Army Airfield. PCS to Fort Stewart. And I would look at how many people every single month are typing that exact phrase verbatim into the search bar. And how competitive is it? Because there are certain like sell my house fast. Oh, it gets a lot of searches. And the competition is like 90, 90 out of 100, because you’re up against Redfin and like everybody that wants to do a Google pay-per-click ad. There’s a lot of competition. But if you Google off base housing Hunter, they might say 300 people a month are searching for that and the competition is three. Like I’m just pulling those numbers off the top of my head, but it was not very competitive. And 300 people a month may not sound like a huge search volume. That’s 300 people that are looking for a place to live in the area where you sell real estate. Those are really, really good, high intent people. So you say, okay, the phrase I’m going to go for is off base housing Hunter Army Airfield. I’m going to make a video and that’s what I’m going to talk about. Did you know that off base housing can cost you about the same as on base housing? Only you make money doing it because when you move out, you don’t just get your security deposit back. You actually make hopefully many, many, many thousands of dollars, which you use to buy your next house or you turn this one into an investment property. You refinance it, you take your VA entitlement, you go buy your next house to live in, but you keep this one, turn it into a rental. Like there’s so many different things that you could talk about in a video like that. And you just have to come up with a title that is interesting enough that somebody would want to click on it. Like I don’t think anybody would click on off base housing Hunter. But if your title was something like, can you afford off base housing at Hunter Army Airfield? Or is off base housing at Hunter cheaper than living on base? You just try to come up with a title that’s a little bit more exciting and they’ll click on it. I love it.

[35:42.86] Mattias Clymer: I, you know, I, I was just thinking about, uh, I saw, I got fed a real or a YouTube video once from Alex from Ozi, who was talking about how, um, oftentimes people, uh, get their ads kind of backwards. And, and what he does, well, first of all, he puts out like so much content constantly that it’s, it’s so crazy. Hard to even imagine. Uh, but, but he basically does like, you know, organic content. He puts out content onto social media platforms and looks at what is, uh, performing the best. Uh, what, what, uh, organically is performing the best. And then he knows he has something that he might want to turn into an ad later. So my thought process here is like, if you, if you do this keyword search and you, and you find some things that do start performing decently, you could turn that YouTube video into an ad then as well.

[36:29.42] Karin Carr: Right? Yes, you totally could. Here’s what I always tell people. Do not throw money at a video that’s not already performing well, because if it’s not doing well organically, just putting money behind it is not going to help you. So if you have a video that’s doing very well, meaning it’s getting a lot of views. It has a good click through rate. It has a good audience, uh, duration of like, how long are they sticking around to watch it? It’s all doing very well and you think, okay, I’m going to basically it’s the equivalent of boosting a post on Facebook. You put a little bit of money behind it. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, maybe, I don’t know, 50 bucks, 25 bucks, put a little bit of money behind it, and then you get to do some targeting. So I’m doing this right now. I normally never run ads to my YouTube videos, but I wanted to do this as an experiment just to see if it would work. So I did a video, we have a brand new 55 plus community here in Savannah. And after I was targeting all of these first time military buyers, I started getting a ton of calls from seniors who want to retire down here and they just don’t ever want to shovel snow again. And they don’t want to have high property taxes. So the age demographic of my inbound relocation buyers kind of crept up over time. And now I find that I’m working with a lot of people my own age. And so I said, oh, we’ve got this brand new 55 and over community here in town. I’m going to go do a video all about the community and what the model homes look like and how much does it cost and what are the HOA fees and what’s the HOA include and where is it and all the things. And then I said, let’s put like 100 bucks behind it for a week. I want you to only show it to people that are over the age of 55 that have an interest in moving in the near future to Georgia. And so a lot of those that targeting you’re not only able to do it on meta anymore, but you’re still allowed to do it on YouTube. So if I was able to like in on meta, I’d only say we’ll show it in a 15 mile radius of this community. But on YouTube, I could say show it to people that are over 55.

[38:40.22] Mattias Clymer: Yeah, I love that. That’s a it makes a ton of sense. It makes a ton of sense. Yeah. Especially like you said, like if you are taking the approach of, you know, something that has already performed well in the content itself. Are you then always having like a call to action like in it? Like, is there is there stuff that you need to make sure you have in there to to encourage, you know, the next steps to reach out or whatever? But what do you suggest there?

[39:07.43] Karin Carr: The majority of time I want them to watch another video because YouTube’s algorithm is a lot like Netflix in that they just want you to stay there and binge watch over and over and over again. And the more somebody does that, the more you are rewarded because you brought them to YouTube and you kept them there for a very long time. So most of the time it’s now that you’ve looked at the 55 and over community. Do you know what the tax implications are like? You know, watch this video next. And then that one pops up and I want them to watch that one. But occasionally it is go to my website and download this free resource or schedule a free relocation strategy call with me. And then I put the link and they go right there and they opt in. So and that’s been a really good funnel for me. So I will say thinking about moving to Savannah, go to my website, download the relocation guide. It goes to a landing page, it says, get the ultimate Savannah relocation guide. They put in their name, email, phone number, and then the thank you page. There’s a video of me and it says, I’m so excited that you’re thinking about moving here. Go check your inbox that relocation guide is on its way. Just so you know, like relocation buyers are very time consuming. And so I can only handle a couple of clients at a time. So if you’re serious about doing this and you’re thinking you’re going to be doing this in the near future, That you grab a spot on my calendar and we’ll do a zoom call and we can talk and you can tell me about your your time frame and what’s bringing you to town. And I’m basically trying to say I’m so busy and important that you need to fight for my time. And it works so well. They grab a spot on my calendar. We have a zoom call. I give them my whole buyer presentation. They sign the buyer presentation and then they start working with me and we close business. It’s like a really, really great, super effective funnel. And it all just came from a video about hey, you should move to Savannah because it’s cool here.

[41:03.38] Mattias Clymer: I love that. So okay. So you talked about really niching down. Yeah. So if if somebody had, you know, two ideas, for example, let’s say they wanted to niche with the downsizers, but they also wanted to have like kind of like a current events what’s happening in the area, like new businesses coming into town podcast type thing. Would that be two different channels or could you have both on the same?

[41:32.58] Karin Carr: My personal philosophy is that what’s new in town, like new restaurants, new businesses, nobody is looking for that on YouTube. That’s not what they want. I say put that on social media probably kills it on Instagram. Those videos get no views on YouTube at all, at least not on my channel, anything that is not real estate related. It might get views, but it doesn’t ever bring leads like I did a video one time shrimp and grits is a big local dish. And when I first moved here, I was like grits. Okay, shrimp. Okay, shrimp and grits. That is so weird. People actually eat that and then I tried it and it was amazing. So I did a video about the five best places in Savannah to get shrimp and grits. Who watches that video? Tourists, not people that have any intention of buying real estate. So it gets a lot of views, but it does not ever lead to business. So now my philosophy is I only make videos that are relevant to the niche I’m trying to attract. And if it’s not really real estate related, can I somehow make it real estate related? And if not, I just don’t make that video for YouTube. I’ll put it on social instead. Okay. That’s good.

[42:45.48] Mattias Clymer: And, but does it, does it hurt to have like the, like, I know I’m talking like about something you said not to do, but like if you, if you were trying to target two niches, for example. I think it does hurt.

[42:59.41] Karin Carr: I think it does hurt because then the algorithm is like, I don’t know who I should be putting this video in front of because I’m getting a lot of. Positive feedback from people. I don’t know. Let’s so the shrimp and grits video. Let’s say they’re showing that to people that live in Germany that are going to come here on vacation. Right. They have no interest in buying real estate though. And then my core demographic is, you know, people over the age of 50 that want to retire here. And they think shrimp and grits is gross. So they would never watch that video in a million years because it does sound kind of gross to someone who doesn’t live here. And then YouTube’s algorithm is like. Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I would rather say my ideal client avatar is Jill. She is 57 years old. She’s moving here from Philadelphia. She’s not quite retired. She’s going to work from home, but she’s working toward it. She wants to live in a 55 and over community where she doesn’t have to mow the lawn because she’s single. And then like YouTube is really good at going out and finding the people that will want to watch that video. Because what I’m saying in the video speaking directly to Jill, my ideal client avatar, and somehow it just all works so beautifully. But if you’re constantly giving it mixed signals, then it just says like, I don’t know. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

[44:24.47] Mattias Clymer: That makes a lot of sense. Well, you’ve given us a million golden nuggets, but I do have to ask, do you have some golden nuggets for our listeners today?

[44:34.47] Karin Carr: Yes. Okay. I wrote them down because I wanted to make sure that because I can go off about this for hours and hours and hours, but answer the questions that your your clients are already Googling. If you don’t know what they’re Googling, then you don’t know your client avatar yet. So decide who you want it to be. Is it a buyer? Is it an investor? Is it a seller? Is it a renter who’s going to be a first time buyer? Decide who it will be. And then think of everything that you could possibly imagine about what their circumstances are that are prompting them to want to do a transaction. And then figure get some keyword research software, do some research, decide what they are doing. Like I was I was talking to a woman earlier in Orange County, California. She is a probate specialist. And she was saying, I just don’t know what to talk about. And I said, well, let’s go do some keyword research. So I typed in Orange County probate and it was like 800 searches a month with no competition done make videos about Orange County probate. So answer the questions that they are already Googling. And then remember that consistency beats production quality. You can start with your camera, your phone camera. You don’t need fancy lighting. You don’t need a big, expensive microphone. You just need to show up. I would say once a week, once a week, a video that’s four, five, eight, 10 minutes long is plenty. Doesn’t need a lot of fancy editing. Doesn’t need a lot of, you know, flash and pomp and circumstance. Just take out the mistakes so that it keeps moving along as smoothly as possible. And good enough is good enough. Like if it’s a B, even a B minus, publish it anyway. It doesn’t have to be an A plus every single time. And then the video really pre-qualifies your leads for you. Like I said, when they call me and say, oh, my gosh, I can’t believe I’m talking to you. I never lose that sale. It’s not because I’m the greatest agent in the world. It’s because they feel like I’ve been talking to them for the last six months and they know me so well that when I say, oh, my gosh, I’m so excited to talk to you. They feel like I’m doing them this huge favor by agreeing to take them on as a client. It’s so ridiculous. I can’t explain it. But that’s how it works. They feel I don’t know. Imagine if you called up George Clooney and you said, hey, I hear you’re selling real estate now. And he says, I would love for you to be my client. You would feel like, oh, my gosh, George Clooney is my client. You feel so special that he agreed to work with you. And it’s ridiculous that we have a YouTube channel and that’s how people treat us, but that’s how people treat us. So when you are making all of these videos, you are basically repelling all of the people who would never hire you in a million years because they do not like my sense of humor and they don’t think I’m funny at all. My kids tell me all the time, like, you’re not nearly as funny as you seem to think you are, mom. So if that’s how they feel, they will never, ever call me. And that’s fine. The people who do call me are the ones that are like, yo, after we close, I’m buying a house at the pool. You’re coming over. We’re having margaritas. It’s going to be so much fun. Bring the kids. We’ll have a big pool party. And they become great friends forevermore after the closing because their personality was so much like yours. Just the fact that you make the video will attract people who like you and who have a very similar personality as you. And you don’t have to try. You don’t have to dress up and be fancy. You don’t have to wear a suit. You don’t have to rent a purple Lamborghini to film your listing video so everyone sees how important you are. You don’t have to do any of that stuff. You can literally wear a sundress and flip flops or board shorts or cargo shorts and ride. What is that thing it’s called a one wheel or a skateboard and like just be you. And that’s why people call you. That’s why they hire you because they like that about you. They don’t they don’t work with you in spite of those things. They like that about you, which is why they call you.

[48:35.54] Mattias Clymer: Yeah, I mean, that takes away the whole, you know, I think learning to fire people is is a really tough lesson. And I’m sure that could still happen, but it does it makes sense why that would weed a lot of the people that you just aren’t going to vibe with out from the beginning. Yeah. I love that. What about a favorite book, one that you think that’s fundamental that everybody should read or just one that you’re currently enjoying.

[48:59.46] Karin Carr: So I was thinking long and hard about this because I’m a reader and I’ve read so many books. I was going to say hundred million dollar offers by Alex Hormozzi, but that’s probably very cliche at this point. Although he said in that book, don’t make me niche slap you. And so that’s why I say niche instead of niche because he said, don’t make me niche slap you. I think I’m going to go with building a story brand by Donald Miller. It was a whole book about how to tell your story, your brand, your brand’s story in a way that resonates with the audience. And so he had this whole idea in the book of you want to you want to do a customer testimonial. How how do you make this video? And so I followed that formula and I had a first time buyer, a couple military. He was a hundred percent disabled. They bought their first house ever. He was so cute. He cried at the closing table because he was like, I never I never even thought that this was possible for me. And now here we are buying a house. And so I said, I want to do a client testimonial with you. And I filmed the video following that format. It’s not the biggest video on my channel. But like every time I watched I cry because it’s like this is the best story ever. And I just want to tell the whole world how they had such a great experience and their success. And it’s not all about me. It’s not like I’m a CRS and I’m a GRI and I’m a top producer like I’m hardly in the video at all. It’s all about them and what they were struggling with and what they achieved in the end. And it’s like the video that I’m probably the most proud of. And I filmed it with two iPhones. I love that.

[50:40.47] Mattias Clymer: If people are interested in you have a you have a coaching platform as well. I do. So what website, social media, et cetera, where can they find you?

[50:49.54] Karin Carr: Okay, so if you search my name on YouTube, Karin Carr, and it’s K-A-R-I-N. Thank you, mom. I have a whole channel for agents that want to learn about video. My website is VideoBossAgent.com, VideoBossAgent.com. My book, I don’t know if you can see it on my shelf back there. YouTube for Real Estate Agents is on Amazon. I think the Kindle version is 99 cents. If you want a paperback, it’s like 9.99. But I just I love to teach agents about how you can make video that is actually a lead generation tool. It’s not just branding. It’s not just name recognition. It’s not just building your reputation in your market. It’s getting your phone to ring with people that say, I would like you to list my house, please. I love that.

[51:37.43] Mattias Clymer: We could all use more of that.

[51:39.35] Karin Carr: So, Karin, thank you so much for being on the show.

[51:41.36] Mattias Clymer: This has been really insightful. I’m sure people will love this episode and get tons of information from it. Go to REIAgent.com and there will be a blog about this, maybe partly AI created like I mentioned in this episode. But you know, it has great capabilities if you’re more of a reader or if you want to have like that note form. Also subscribe to our newsletter so you can get this as a newsletter and another future guests summarize every week. So Karin, thank you so much again for being on the show. Thank you so much.

[52:16.25] Karin Carr: It was my pleasure.