Grow Your Business with Real Estate Content and Media – Interview with Steven Amaya
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Grow Your Business with Real Estate Content and Media
Social media can be an incredibly valuable tool for growing your real estate business, but most realtors and agent teams fall short by focusing on themselves and posting the same old uninspiring content. To win online, you have to connect with the people in your target market. So, how do you build rapport with the community through social channels? What types of videos build the most engagement? How do you create quality content, even if you can’t afford an in-house media team?
Steven Amaya is the entrepreneur behind Amaya Group Real Estate, one of BombBomb’s Top 10 Real Estate Video Influencers of 2018 and the REAL Trends 12th-ranked team in the state of California. Steven’s team is known for their focus on community ties, and A|G’s social media content makes them the best local guides in Moreno Valley.
Today on the podcast, Steven joins Oliver to share his definition of ‘the human touch’ and explain how A|G uses media to connect with the community. He offers insight around marketing with video, describing the types of footage the team shoots and the advantage to filming client testimonials. Listen in for Steven’s advice on taking advantage of Instagram stories and learn how to grow your business with hyper local social content!
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Here’s how the interview breaks down:
[1:26] Steven’s definition of ‘the human touch’
[3:49] How A|G uses media to connect on another level
[7:26] Steven’s real estate journey
[10:45] Steven’s insight on marketing with video
[13:28] The types of videos A|G shoots
[17:14] How A|G makes it easy for clients to leave reviews
[21:49] Steven’s advice for agents without a media team
[24:01] What content is winning in Instagram Stories
[27:11] Steven’s tips for growing your business with media it’
[28:22] What Steven wishes he’d known when he started
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Listen Here:
Grow Your Business With Real Estate Content and Media [Founders Club Ft. Steven Amaya]
Full Transcript:
Oliver: Out here today in Temecula talking to Steven Amaya about how he has grown his team and his business by leveraging in house media. Looking forward to covering a lot of great topics. Let’s get started.So very exciting to be sitting here downtown at The Public House in downtown Temecula with Steven Amaya, Founder of the Amaya Group. They are the number 12 ranked team in real trends in California. Looking forward to just sitting down and having a great conversation about how you’ve built your team and how you leverage media with all of your clients and recruiting efforts, and applying the human touch to expanding your business.
Steven Amaya: Cheers!
Oliver: Enjoying a couple beers. Cheers!
Steven Amaya: What are you drinking?
Oliver: I’ve got the, what is it, the Mason Jar Strawberry Soaked Gin Blond. Steven’s drinking the Hop Comet … Hold on. This is a hard one, so let me … This is a mouthful. Hop Concept and Comet American Double IPA.
Steven Amaya: Everything I do is super complicated.
Oliver: Yeah, we like to keep it simple on the show. We’ll put links to all that stuff on the page so you can check it out, but just really looking forward to getting down to the nitty gritty, having a great conversation-
Steven Amaya: Let’s do it.
Oliver: -about your story and kind of what you’ve done.
Steven Amaya: Super excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Oliver: Cheers.
Steven Amaya: This is an honor.
Oliver: We had a good conversation before about how you guys are leveraging media, but tell me specifically a little bit more about what you mean by the human touch.
Steven Amaya: The human touch has always to me felt like every real estate company is so corporate, they’re just the big box companies of the world, it’s about everyone. The human touch to me is you need to identify your market and see how you can relate to the people in your market. If you’re in Beverly Hills it’s going to be a different market, a different target person than somebody in my area for example, Riverside, Moreno Valley. You’re not going to show up in a Lambo at a $300,000 listing appointment. To me it’s finding the avatar of the right person that you want to market to, and then just focus everything around that.
Oliver: When you’re looking for this avatar, are you doing that mainly for your real estate buyers and seller prospect-
Steven Amaya: Absolutely.
Oliver: Or is to recruit agents, or is it all the way around?
Steven Amaya: We focus heavily on the client, so we’ll find an exact avatar and as a team we do this to figure out who are we targeting, but I think in the process organically agents are trying to, are wanting to join our team, but we’re very picky about who we choose to be on our team.
Oliver: Okay. Tell me a little bit more about the human touch. What does that mean to you? How are you connecting with these people beyond the regular real estate transaction type of marketing?
Steven Amaya: A lot of it, like once we’re in a transaction it’s group texts with the husband and wife and myself and the TC. It’s a little more modern than just email. That way it’s not like okay I just spoke to this guy, but his wife doesn’t know what’s going on. Everybody’s involved and they can respond when they want, or just at least know what’s in the loop. When we’re in the transaction, that’s the personal touch. Before that, a lot of it has to do with our Instagram stories, especially I mean I’m not that big of a social media guy, but I have a marketing team within my company. They’re on Amaya Group Real Estate and they’re seeing our Instagram stories, or our Facebook posts, or our YouTube channel, and that’s really relatable. Real estate to me is boring. Like home many just listed of a track home can you post on your social media, like it’s super boring. People go on Facebook live, oh I’m at this track home open house. People are going to tune out.
Oliver: A very good observation because I think what you guys have done with media is really interesting because you’re going way above and beyond what the regular real estate professional is doing. Like you were saying, no one cares about 123 Banana Street that you’ve sold or this and that. What they care about is the things that are happening in their community. Like here’s a pothole that we can all ban together and raise money to fix, or here’s the local restaurant and here’s the local businesses right. How are you guys leveraging media to connect with people on a new level?
Steven Amaya: A lot of it was targeted ads, but that’s starting to change. Facebook just changed the rules like yesterday, so we’re trying to figure that out now. We’re an empire, so we go around interviewing local business owners, and everybody wants to know about food. Everybody loves food, whether you’re vegan, or vegetarian, or whatever.
Oliver: It’s common ground for everybody.
Steven Amaya: Exactly. So we try to bring the best of our cities to the public. That’s been a very big ground breaker for us.
Oliver: Tell me more because I really want to kind of explore this concept a little bit. You have IEFoodies, which is-
Steven Amaya: We have IEFoodies.
Oliver: Okay, which is your YouTube channel.
Steven Amaya: It goes on all our social media-
Oliver: All your social media.
Steven Amaya: So it’s YouTube, Facebook, Instagram.
Oliver: Okay, and tell me more about what you’re doing on that and how you’re turning that into business.
Steven Amaya: We don’t ask for business in any of these videos. We’re just the local experts. We know all the cool little new places to go, best food in town. We also have IEScene. That’s like all our farmer’s markets, art walks, all that kind of stuff, if the city puts anything on. They did like a Day of the Dead, we were there. All the local, hyper local community stuff, we’re involved. People know us as okay if we want to know what’s going on we tune into these guys.
Oliver: So the Day of the Dead festival right, like you say you’re there with your crew. What does that mean to you? What happens?
Steven Amaya: For us we hired a booth, or we bought a booth. It was just to give back to the community. We were doing giveaways, raffles, those types of things. We had a face painter. We did that, but we shot everything. I think the best part of the story was there was another booth where they were also doing face painting, but they were trying to build, or earn money for their art department. We had, totally organic met this lady. She was painting our face because our guy sucked and theirs was really good because it was the art department. I just literally washed my face and sat there. I was like this is way better. Honestly, it was just for the film. As she’s painting me she’s telling me her story and she literally drops everything for these kids.
Steven Amaya: What we did was we interviewed her, told the whole story, and I ended up donating. How much was it? Do you remember?
Josh: Like a couple hundred bucks.
Steven Amaya: A couple hundred bucks towards whatever they were trying to do.
Oliver: Very cool.
Steven Amaya: She said that made more than we did all day. It was just a great story, and I always love giving back to the community.
Oliver: So you get a community event involved right, support a local business or cause, or something like that-
Steven Amaya: Correct.
Oliver: -and then tell the story of it on video? Is that kind of the …
Steven Amaya: Yeah. I mean everything I do is super random, so nothing is ever planned. I mean if you ask anybody that’s ever worked with me, don’t give me a script, don’t give me anything because it’s not going to work out that way. I am just super random. I have severe ADD. That’s just the way we roll.
Oliver: Alright cool. Before we get too far down the road of how you guys are using media to grow your business, I want to know just kind of like how it started for you. Where did you get into the I want to grow a team phase, and tell me a little bit about the back story?
Steven Amaya: Okay so the backstory is I got my real estate license right out of high school, like 18, 19 years old. Started working for a company and maybe sold three houses my first year. For those of you who are just starting, that’s totally normal, just keep going. Then I kind of got into the flips and wholesaling. I started flipping houses, wholesaling houses until the market took a shit. That’s when I really was like all right so I’ve only done real estate my whole life, I guess I have to sell and deal with normal consumers. Started working for Coldwell Banker in ’07 when the market was the worst and within 12 months became top agent just because I was super hungry. I had lost everything.
Oliver: How did you do that?
Steven Amaya: This is a very unique situation, but it was the REO market. I was working for Lance Martin, who is a big REO broker out in Moreno Valley. Every weekend they would give out these bat phones. There was two cell phones with all the sign calls. I mean he was literally getting hundreds of REOs a year.
Oliver: So the phone rang all the time?
Steven Amaya: All the time and nobody at the company wanted these phones on the weekends. I’m like this is a down market and you guys don’t want to make money, I don’t get it.
Oliver: Yeah, I would take those all day long.
Steven Amaya: I was like I’ll take both. Then I just started, I was kind of like his unofficial buyer’s agent because I don’t even know if I existed back then, but I just started doing a bunch of deals. I think I did like 35 deals my second year.
Oliver: Okay. So you went from three to 35?
Steven Amaya: No, no, no. I went from three from 19 years old when I looked like I was 12 door knocking, nobody trusted me, to I think I did like 12 deals my first year with Lance and then went up to like 30 I think.
Oliver: Okay. Then what transitioned next? What took you from solo agent to wanting to grow a team and do that whole thing?
Steven Amaya: Through that process it was like all my friends were either at the Chargers games or going to the club and I was doing open houses. It was a lot of sacrifice. I knew what I wanted. I was farming every day. Then it just blew up. I think because nobody was putting in that much effort at that time, it just kind of blew up like within a year or two years. Then I was like okay well I can’t … I hired an assistant, which I recommend everybody do if you’re doing at least a deal a month because that will bring you up to two to three deals a month, which is common sense. I’m pretty sure you talk about it in most of your videos. So I hired an assistant and did double my volume. Then the assistant wanted to be my buyer’s agent, which I didn’t even know I needed a buyer’s agent. She’s like we have so many leads coming in organically that we just, I need to take these on so let’s hire another assistant. Then it just kind of grew from there.
Steven Amaya: Now, our culture is really what we thrive on. We have agents just from, literally from our stupid little Instagram stories with little GIFs of somebody dancing and us doing who knows what, playing ping pong at our office, it’s just the culture, people see it and want to come in.
Oliver: Right. You make it attractive.
Steven Amaya: Yeah. It’s totally by accident. We’re just having fun.
Oliver: That’s awesome. I love hearing stuff like that. Circling back to how you guys are using media, because one thing that I really appreciate about Steven and what you guys are doing is how you guys, you guys have an in house media person right?
Steven Amaya: We have two.
Oliver: And that’s rare in real estate. We have that as well and I think it’s super important because real estate agents, they’re out in the streets and they’re out in the field all the time and they need to be community experts so what better way to show that than creating videos of the places they’re already going, the places they’re meeting clients, which is the good restaurants, the coffee shops, the places people want to know about anyways. Talk to me a little bit more about how that came to life for you guys.
Steven Amaya: I knew video was coming, I just needed to figure out how we were going to get there. I suck in front of the camera. This is very rare for me. I have most of my team that gets behind the camera. They’re the ones who do the interviews and they’re the ones who are doing the market updates. I’ll get in there once in a while, but I’ve already built the brand. It’s literally like I built this thing and I’m just giving it to them. My company, if you ever dissect our company, you’ll never see me. I even take my name out of it. It’s just AG now. If you look at any of our whole team photos, I’m not in the middle. I’m all the way on the left. I hate being the center of attention.
Oliver: What’s the strategy behind that?
Steven Amaya: There is no strategy behind it. I just don’t want it to be all about me. Every agent I know makes everything about them, and I just hate that shit. I’m the complete opposite. I want to be behind the scenes as much as I can.
Oliver: You’re more of an operator.
Steven Amaya: Ah not an operator because I’m fucking crazy. I’m a crazy artist and I hired my operations manager to be the operator. They call me the seagull because I come in and I shit good ideas and then I leave.
Oliver: I like that. That’s good. I’m going to remember that. I might call you that one day. One concept when people get started going down the road of making videos and using media is they’re worried about being on camera and they’re worried about their content sucking. I think that that’s a big fear that people have. Can you speak to that a little bit and what your thoughts are on that?
Steven Amaya: I mean just do it, literally. Like I said, I rarely do it, but I built something for my team so that they have all the tools to do it. But if you’re a solo agent and you’re out there trying to do it on your own, get behind the camera, put yourself out there. I mean most of the Google searches are all in video now. Especially if there’s nobody else in your community doing it, you need to be on top. There’s just no other way. If you want to be the local expert, you have to do it.
Oliver: Okay so tell me more about what videos you’re shooting that are ranking. You mentioned that they’re on Google, so what are those types of videos that are doing well.
Steven Amaya: We’re doing real estate tips, which like I said nobody really gives a shit about real estate, so those are probably are lower ones.
Josh: Our biggest ones are the community highlights and the IEFoodies.
Steven Amaya: I have Josh in the background. I don’t know if you guys want to edit that out or not.
Oliver: Josh, why don’t you come on and tell a little bit more about what we’re talking about.
Josh: Seriously?
Oliver: Yeah, come on over.
Steven Amaya: He loves this shit.
Oliver: All right. Well we got the guy. He loves it, so let’s talk to him.
Josh: All right.
Oliver: You want to speak into my puff?
Josh: Mic check. Is this thing on? Our biggest things that we’re doing right now are the community highlights and the IEFoodies. When we highlight local neighborhoods, like Sunnymead Ranch and there’s a few spots in Riverside, and we do what’s awesome about Riverside, why move to Riverside, those kind of things. People are kind of naturally organically looking for that kind of stuff, things to do in their areas. When we’re doing our IEFoodies and our IEScenes, they kind of come up organically and people just want to know what’s going on, and we have the coverage for that. Then it’s under our branding, Amaya Group, so that’s what kind of brings that to light. Then with our community highlights, people want to know where they’re going to move to or why they should move to a certain place. When we highlight these neighborhoods and show what’s cool about them and just letting people know that they’re out there in general, people really connect with that.
Oliver: Okay. Tell me about, I have two questions. What type of videos are you shooting, and how are you converting that to business?
Josh: Okay. Can I pull up a seat?
Oliver: Yeah, pull up a seat.
Josh: It’s a taller seat.
Oliver: Let me see if I can pull my puff out a little bit.
Josh: We’re shooting quite a few types of videos because we want to hit on all fronts. Our general marketing strategy is we have a funnel, and we have our top of line general brand down to closing the sale. We have videos that Steven and the other people put out on their emails to clients that we’re already working with, so we’re walking them through the process of what’s going on when selling the home the steps that they need to take to sell their home and get it sold, but then we have our general brand awareness videos, which are like the IEScenes and IEFoodies. Then everything in between is kind of like the community highlights. We have client reviews, and client reviews are really important to have on video because more often than not in our industry the way you’re going to convince someone to work with you is seeing others who have worked with you and who trust you and know you.
Steven Amaya: I think the client testimonial videos are better than … Most people think reviews are fake anyway no matter where you go, Zillow, even though it’s almost impossible to do a fake Zillow review or a fake Yelp review. If they see a video of your client, especially if we just candidly … Especially if you don’t have a media company, if you just shoot a video with your client in front of the property and say hey look here’s your keys, we just closed this escrow, how was the experience, that type of just simple get people to watch your shit, not hey I’m at this three bedroom two bath with tile countertops-
Oliver: At nobody cares street.
Steven Amaya: Nobody gives a fuck.
Josh: That was the biggest thing too. That was one of his things was he wanted to have those video testimonials so that we can actually have the stories and tell the stories, bring that human element into it because they went through the process already. That was one of the biggest parts of the entire human element in general.
Steven Amaya: And they’re excited at that time. They want to tell the story, so let them do the work for you. You work for them for-
Oliver: So what’s your process on getting people to do those testimonials for you?
Steven Amaya: Just ask.
Josh: Yeah. The biggest thing, so we setup email campaigns that have all the links. We’re making it as easy as possible for them. We use Bomb Bomb with the video and it talks about video reviews. Then there’s a link to each Zillow, Yelp and Google, which we think are the biggest places to get reviews. We leave the link there so when they click it it opens up right to where they can write the review. It doesn’t lead them to the website. It’s not linking generally there. We’re going directly to the point right where they’re actually typing. We tell them to copy and paste. We just ask, like you said. We just ask-
Steven Amaya: If you did a good job, they’re not going to hesitate.
Josh: Yeah.
Steven Amaya: Someone might be hesitating to go on camera, but if you’re doing a good job they’ll leave you that review.
Josh: Exactly.
Steven Amaya: I mean we’re highly focused on customer service.
Oliver: Not only that, I think the way you guys are doing it is really the critical piece, which is you’re making it easier for them. They’re not going to on their own go to Yelp and go to Google and go to Zillow and leave you a review, but if you can send them an email which takes them right to the page, it makes it super easy. I’ve even talked to other people who will provide bullet points of the transaction that they can mention in there, or different keywords that they want people to mention.
Steven Amaya: Yelp has their algorithms so we’ll even share that with them. Like to help us out this is what you have to do for our review to even show. Because our reviews are real, there’s no faking it. Everyone in the real estate industry knows that. We kind of try to coach them through it before they go do it because they’ll fuck it up and then we lost that review. What the fuck is so funny?
Josh: Another thing … No it’s true, it’s totally true. We have that happen all the time. With our video reviews though, the biggest thing is that we tell the clients how easy and how simple it is and we give them the time. We’re like it’s going to be a 10 minute shoot, it’s not going to take a lot of time, you don’t have to prepare any questions, there’s no right or wrong answers. I think that’s the biggest thing is saying there’s no right or wrong answers, we just want to get your feedback and kind of laying out the foundation beforehand.
Oliver: Do they come to you guys?
Josh: Yeah. They come to our office, but we’ve also had some people where like maybe it’s inconvenient for them, so we’ll go to them and we’ll shoot it.
Steven Amaya: We’ve done one in a car before. It looked like the Kardashians, like he was sitting in the back. Obviously it wasn’t as cool because you could totally see him, but …
Josh: But yeah so one of the recent reviews that we did we wanted to get them grabbing the keys for the very first time in the review and then leave the testimony until afterwards.
Steven Amaya: They were talking about how excited they were that they just closed this deal. On the car on the way there-
Josh: And I was in there, and that’s why it looked-
Steven Amaya: He was filming the whole thing. Then I think the agent had their iPhone there, so we were kind of getting footage of both. They get there, we experience giving them the keys, they’re opening the door. This is a winter time, so one of our agents Jeremy, shout out to Jeremy Medina, said guys if you guys buy this out I will jump in the pool in the freezing cold. And freezing cold for California is like 75 degrees.
Josh: It was like 50 degrees outside.
Steven Amaya: It happened to be like a cold … We shot the whole thing. He ended up coming through with his promise, jumped in the pool. They had their dog, their dog jumped in the pool after him.
Josh: Yeah.
Steven Amaya: If you guys want to see it, go to our YouTube channel.
Josh: It was awesome.
Oliver: Where can they find that?
Josh: That’s at Amaya Group Real Estate on YouTube.
Oliver: Cool.
Steven Amaya: For me, just the generic stuff is boring. I want the bloopers. I want everything. I want those experiences because that’s what people can relate to.
Oliver: The authenticity.
Steven Amaya: Exactly.
Oliver: I think that’s a critical point too and that’s why-
Steven Amaya: Thank you.
Josh: Yup.
Oliver: the media team is so important is because it’s catching those moments that aren’t necessarily meant to be caught right. It’s those organic moments, those authentic moments. Maybe you’re having a bad day and you’re venting. Maybe you’re having a great day and you’re celebrating. It’s those different moments that by having an in house media team allows you to capture those moments.
Steven Amaya: That, but I mean-
Josh: The iPhone.
Steven Amaya: Yeah, iPhone is everything. Even though he doesn’t have one for some reason.
Josh: I’ve got Galaxy.
Steven Amaya: Anything else you want to ask him before we …
Oliver: No, appreciate it man. It’s been awesome.
Josh: Yeah. We’re good.
Steven Amaya: Nice to meet you.
Josh: Yup. Nice to meet you too.
Steven Amaya: How many real estate teams or companies have a media department. It’s super rare. I think what we need to speak out to are the people who don’t have that, because I think you have it, we have it, but I don’t know, [inaudible] has it, like I don’t know that many-
Oliver: Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about what to do if you don’t have that and how you can do similar things.
Josh: I’ve just got to grab my beer.
Oliver: Yeah, hey get the beer.
Steven Amaya: Grab me another one while you’re at it.
Oliver: How someone can do it because to be honest when we started we were pocket producing. The phone in my pocket was the critical element to every video we shot. I shot it on the phone, editing it on the free software on my computer-
Steven Amaya: Exactly. There’s so much shit for free out there right now. Don’t spend, spend the least amount of money you can. I spent a ridiculous amount of money, but I have a team. If you’re a solo agent and you’re just trying to get into the media aspect of it, there’s so much stuff out there. Canva is probably one of the best things you can use. Just go out there and do the video, edit them on iMovie or whatever Android has.
Oliver: Canva and also Smove. Is that what it’s called?
Steven Amaya: Yeah Smove is the new one for Instagram.
Oliver: So Smove just helps you record videos without it being shaky, makes it a little bit easier.
Steven Amaya: But I really feel like the future is all about Instagram stories right now. When I’m on Instagram I don’t even look, I don’t even scroll down, I just scroll sideways to look at the stories.
Oliver: Yeah, so tell me about that because that’s a little bit newer of a medium. Tell me about how you guys are leveraging Instagram stories for business.
Steven Amaya: I have a media company within the company, so it’s a little different for me, but it’s actually better if you don’t because they’re in the office all day. They’re just catching the stuff that we’re doing in the office, or something that we just brought out, or random stuff that they can only do from the office. People want to see the day in the life of a realtor. If you’re able to go out there and say hey I’m showing today, or hey you guys got to try this sandwich. You don’t need a whole media company for that. You don’t need a whole series for that. People want the local stuff and just tag that because people are going to see what’s been tagged there. Like I said, even if you’re having a great sandwich, just story that, story everything.
Oliver: One thing that-
Steven Amaya: Everything else is going to be dead. I think everything is towards story. If you look at Snapchat now, I saw, my views used to be huge on Snapchat, now it’s like 10. I’m like what the hell happened. Everybody’s on Instagram stories. I’m not saying get off Snapchat, but focus on Instagram stories.
Oliver: What sort of content are you posting on there that you’re seeing that’s winning?
Steven Amaya: This is going to sound crazy, but just like the dumb little things that sometimes aren’t even real estate related. We’re getting comments on that stuff, like somebody playing ping pong at the office, or open house with some funny little GIF, just little things like that. We’re getting more views on that than anything else. The silly stuff is getting more attention than anything else.
Oliver: That’s actually, that’s funny because it’s the same thing for us. One of the videos we shot we were just kind of joking around with one of our office admins and we like to joke around with her and we’ll get confetti shooters and shoot them in the office and all sorts of stuff. One of the videos we got of her just running after us basically talking trash because we were messing with her got like 60,000 views in a week.
Steven Amaya: Exactly.
Oliver: It was like whoa.
Steven Amaya: Because nobody gives a shit about real estate.
Oliver: Right. Exactly. I think it’s really about showing your business without necessarily talking about the real estate.
Steven Amaya: And you don’t want to talk about yourself. Talk about the experiences, talk about the clients. Agents, I’ll just say it, 90% of agents, even if they’re closing 10 deals a year, they’re cocky. Everything is about them. I don’t see it that way. I always say us, or our company. I never say anything me or I.
Oliver: Right.
Steven Amaya: It’s always us. But I have a team so it’s a little different. I wouldn’t be where I am without my team.
Oliver: I think to a certain extent everybody’s got a team though whether you’re on the team, or you’re the head of the team.
Steven Amaya: Yeah because you have your lender, you have your escrow rep.
Oliver: Right, exactly.
Steven Amaya: Real estate’s a team.
Oliver: Real estate is a team sport.
Steven Amaya: Yeah, go out and interview your title rep, like what is title. Nobody knows what the fuck title is. I don’t even, I still to this day don’t even know what title is. Go out and ask your escrow rep, what are the highlights of, like what should you prepare for when you’re opening escrow. Go to your lender and say hey what are the top three things you should not do before you buy a house. Simple things like that. Just do a … That’s a good Facebook Instagram live, not hey guys I’m at this track home like everyone else in the fucking real estate industry.
Oliver: I think you just gave a really good tip there. Everybody is out there filming the houses, filming the house they just sold, the listing they just took, and this and that.
Steven Amaya: Who gives a shit.
Oliver: I think there’s a place for that, but I think it’s a smaller percentage in terms of-
Steven Amaya: Do a mailer for that.
Oliver: Right.
Steven Amaya: That’s social proof. Put that on Zillow. Do some sort of social proof piece for that. Nobody gives a shit on social media about that. It’s boring. Every agent you know is doing that.
Oliver: Yeah. People go on social media to be entertained, to have a good time, and not necessarily to hear about your business.
Steven Amaya: Speaking of social media, yo grab this for the gram.
Oliver: Let’s see what we got. We’re storying our live action as we speak.
Steven Amaya: This is how we do it.
Oliver: Give me something right now that’s really crushing for you guys.
Steven Amaya: The stories are really crushing it for us. Just the community highlight videos are huge. Literally, anything. It could be an art store, it could be-
Oliver: Tell me what, like translate that to business. Tell me how that happened.
Steven Amaya: Very Gary V. Never ask for the business. Give them a bunch of free shit and the business will come, not real estate related. My biggest tip, my biggest meat and potatoes, is don’t make it real estate related.
Oliver: On that note, are you suggesting, it sounds like what I’m hearing you say is-
Steven Amaya: Be different.
Oliver: Is be different, don’t necessarily make it about real estate.
Steven Amaya: Don’t make it about you. Don’t make it about real estate.
Oliver: Don’t make it about you.
Steven Amaya: Make it about the client experience and what’s going on in the community.
Oliver: I love that. What do you think the biggest challenge is for someone looking to get into that, into the whole media thing?
Steven Amaya: Don’t overthink it, just fucking do it.
Oliver: Yeah. That’s one thing that we say all the time as well is you don’t need to be Gary V., you just need to be you and you need to be authentic.
Steven Amaya: Just do what I do. You don’t even have to be in the camera. I’m so much like it’s not about me they’re like here, you go out, you interview this guy, put it on my shit, and we got a bunch of viewers because it’s not about AG, or it’s not about Steven Amaya. It’s about what’s going on right now.
Oliver: It’s about the community. So make it about the community, add the human touch, make yourself likable, approachable. That gives you trust, credibility, all of those different things. To kind of wrap it up let me ask you what’s one thing that you wish you knew when you started?
Steven Amaya: Wow, that’s a good one. Having people around you that are super successful, people that you want to emulate. If you need to drop friends, drop them all. If they’re holding you back, or even family. If family’s holding you back from doing what you really want to do, if you have a goal, I mean it’s … Literally if I can do it, anybody can do it. I have really bad ADD. I drink a lot of beer, but I love who I work with, I love my mentors, and I just … I don’t know. I know what I wanted. I knew I had to do it differently. Be yourself 1000%. That’s the best advice I have.
Oliver: I think that’s a great piece of advice. I think the authenticity is very important. I think that’s one thing that you guys are doing really well that’s helping you win. Props on that. Is there anything you want to plug before we wrap it up?
Steven Amaya: For sure. Follow, what are we? Amaya Group or AG, what are we? I don’t even know what we are anymore.
Josh: Amaya Group.
Steven Amaya: So Amaya Group on Instagram for sure if you guys want to see our stories because there’s something every day. Our IEFoodies, IEScene on YouTube, and our Facebook. Is it AG yet, or is it still Amaya Group?
Josh: It’s AG.
Steven Amaya: So Facebook … I hate that it’s so many things, so follow Amaya Group on Instagram, AG on Facebook, and it will lead you to our YouTube page.
Oliver: So check him out. He’s a great guy to study. He’s doing really big things, very successful. Has a team that’s growing leaps and bounds. You guys are really making some moves out here. It’s very awesome watching you guys’ journey. The way that you guys are leveraging media is really cool. I think that it’s something that everybody out there can study and learn from, so I encourage you guys to follow Steven. Look forward to seeing you soon. Now you’re in the know.
Steven Amaya: Cheers.
Oliver: Cheers.
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Pullout Quotes
“Identify your market and see how you can relate to the people in your market.”
“Every agent I know makes everything about them, and I just hate that shit.”
“They call me The Seagull because I come in, and I shit good ideas, and then I leave.”
“If you want to be a local expert, you have to do .”
“The future is all about Instagram stories.”
“People want to see a day in the life of a realtor.”
“Story everything.”
“Be different.”
“Don’t make it about you. Don’t make it about real estate. Make it about the client experience and what’s going on in the community.”
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Social media can be an incredibly valuable tool for growing your real estate business, but most agents and teams fall short by focusing on themselves and posting the same old uninspiring video content. Today, Steven Amaya joins Oliver to offer insight on growing your business with media that will engage the community!
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Connect with Steven
Connect with Oliver
Oliver on LinkedIn
Resources
A|G’s Pushed in the Pool Video
Other episodes:
Mike Ferry – How to Crash Proof Your Real Estate Business
Billy Gene – How to Create Videos That Sell $hit
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Thank you for watching!
If you’d like to see more episodes go to: www.OliverGraf.tv/FoundersClub
If you have any questions, comments, or ideas contact me here.