Episode 6: Content Creation and Real Estate: How to build your brand with Miriam Gilmore
In this week's episode, we sit down with Miriam Gilmore to dive into the world of mortgage marketing through video content creation. Miriam reflects on the difficulties she's faced in incorporating video marketing into her business and the strategies she employs to overcome them. In this episode, you will learn:
Takeaway 01: Navigating the Mortgage Market in Turbulent Times Miriam Gilmore provides insights into the current state of the mortgage market and how recent changes, such as increased rates, have affected business flow.
Takeaway -2: The Art of Balancing Business and Content Creation Miriam shares her experiences in juggling the responsibilities of being a business owner while also managing marketing efforts, especially in the realm of video marketing.
Takeaway 03: Quality Over Quantity: Mastering Mortgage Video Content The episode delves into the crucial aspect of producing high-quality video content for effective marketing, and the concept of "progress versus perfection" in content creation. Don't miss out on the opportunity to harness the power of video marketing in the real estate industry. Enjoy!
TRANSCRIPT
∎ Podcast Intro:
[Stephen Husted] (0:00 - 1:42)
Welcome to The Breakthrough with Stephen Husted, the show that takes you behind the scenes with successful entrepreneurs, real estate investors, and other movers and shakers in the business world. In each episode, we'll sit down with our guests to explore their personal and professional journeys, including the challenges they faced, the breakthrough moments that propelled them to success, and the strategies and the tactics they used to get there. Get inspired by new ideas and strategies and get to know our guests on a deeper level.
Join us for candid conversations, powerful insights, and plenty of breakthrough moments. Please help us grow by subscribing and sharing the podcast, and welcome to the show.
∎ Guest Introduction:
I'm thrilled to introduce today's guest, Miriam Gilmore. She's a mortgage broker with a unique perspective on the evolving real estate landscape. In our interview, Miriam shares her journey in the industry from adapting to market changes and skyrocketing rates to finding her voice in video content creation. She shares the challenges of balancing a boutique business, exploring different marketing avenues, and the struggle to find authentic topics to discuss.
Miriam's insights into the investor market, hot Florida areas, and their experiences with creating video content offer invaluable lessons for both newcomers and veterans in the real estate field. So get ready to dive into the engaging conversation that's sure to inspire and motivate you on your real estate journey.
∎ Podcast Proper:
What's been going on since we met?
[Miriam Gilmore] (1:43 - 3:07)
So much. Yeah, I got married, so that took up a lot of my time. Yeah. I got married, the business changed, rates skyrocketed, all that happened.
So luckily for me, things have been steady as far as business flow. It's a little slower, but I wouldn't want to say slow. It's just different, the way that the loans that are coming in.
But it's been good. But then the whole piece of the marketing and the video and all that, trying to fit that into my world has not been as easy or as much of a smooth process as I thought it would be. I don't know if it's because I've overthought it, if I'm overthinking it, or if it's because it's actually like I'm wearing a lot of hats.
And I do have an assistant. I had her full time when the market changed a little bit. I kind of went a little part time just because it was...
I didn't have as much craziness. So there was a lot of things that I can handle on my own. But then sometimes I'm like, maybe I shouldn't have switched to part time because now that freed up my time.
So all that kind of stuff. And then the quality, I think we all really want that really nice quality so that the whole progress versus perfection, I have to do more of that.
[Stephen Husted] (3:07 - 3:42)
Yeah. I don't know. I kind of got to that point where I was like, I don't care where I'm at.
I'll do it in my car at Chipotle, just shoot content. Because sometimes I just have some interesting thoughts and I just want to get it out there. But I think it is one of those things, it's consistency.
You just got to keep doing it. And I think some people have maybe a little bit more free time to do it. Some don't.
It just really depends. Who are you seeing from the Academy? Who do you follow?
[Miriam Gilmore] (3:43 - 4:43)
I follow that I know he's doing great. Will. Yeah.
He's doing... But he has a different setup. I can tell.
I don't speak to him. I don't have a personal relationship with him. But I can tell he has a different setup.
I know he has... A loan comes in and he gives it off to his team. And I feel like he's just kind of out there getting the business.
And I'm still doing things in the business. You understand? I'm still structuring and talking to clients.
And I'm still doing a lot of that. I'm sure he does that too. But I feel like it's more of a handoff and I'm not there yet.
I don't even know if I will be there because I don't know if I want to... I have a small boutique business. I'm not part of a big company.
So, I don't know if I will get to that point where I'm just going to do a handoff. Because of many things, my setup, my age. I don't know if I want to do all that and have 15 employees again and go through all that.
[Stephen Husted] (4:43 - 4:47)
He's kind of the face of the business in a sense then.
[Miriam Gilmore] (4:47 - 4:48)
Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (4:48 - 4:51)
He's the one that's out there shooting the content, putting that out there.
[Miriam Gilmore] (4:51 - 4:56)
And bringing in the business. So, I do that on top of other things.
[Stephen Husted] (4:57 - 4:57)
Right.
[Miriam Gilmore] (4:57 - 5:01)
So, it's just a little bit more on my plate, I think.
[Stephen Husted] (5:02 - 5:05)
Yeah. Do you have a hard time trying to figure out topics?
[Miriam Gilmore] (5:07 - 5:45)
Yeah. That's the other thing. I don't know if you...
Because most of the things that I see that you post are Airbnb and different... I know you do restaurants and stuff like that, local community stuff. But I have other...
Sometimes I really struggle to not say some of the things that I want. Because I'm in a different stage of my life. I got married at 50.
I turned 50. And I feel like that's such a big part of myself now. And it's just a part of me.
And I feel like, should I talk about that? Maybe I shouldn't. I don't know.
I don't know. I struggle with, should I just keep mortgage, mortgage, mortgage? And I think people get bored of that too.
I don't know.
[Stephen Husted] (5:47 - 7:22)
Yeah. I think that's a... Well, here's a good example.
I follow a lady who's a realtor out in Texas. And she gives tips and talks about the local market. And she does restaurants and things like that.
But she wears really cool Nikes. She's a sneakerhead. And today, she did a video on the unboxing of a new pair that she bought in Vegas.
And people know that she's in the shoes. She's in the sneakers, right? So she posted that.
And that grabs a particular audience as well, because there's a lot of people out there that are sneakerheads as well that love Nikes. And so that grabs to that. So I think that...
I think it's about putting out just content in as much of it as you possibly can about whatever you want to talk about. If you go to a cool restaurant, you should be talking about that restaurant. Because that can gravitate towards somebody and that could potentially be a lead on the road.
Yeah, it's a conversation starter. That's a big part of it. But you're right.
It's hard because you don't want to just talk about mortgage the whole time. And most people are not sitting around trying to get a loan every day. But they want to follow you for what you're doing.
And now that you're married, are you guys traveling? Or what do you do? Do you work out?
Do you go fishing? What do you do? And I think that it's kind of painting that picture to...
At the end of the day, you're doing better than 98% of everybody. If you really want to think of it that way. There's a lot of people that won't get on video.
[Miriam Gilmore] (7:22 - 7:22)
Oh, I know.
[Stephen Husted] (7:23 - 7:34)
And you're doing it. And when you do get on them, you do a great job. Have you been pulling from Neal's...
Do you go to his... Are you in his course? His mastermind?
[Miriam Gilmore] (7:34 - 8:02)
I do the call that he does Tuesdays or whatever for loan officers and realtors. But there's another one that he has that's a level up. And people...
It's coaching and all that, but also live events. Included in there, you get to go to live events. He had one in Vegas.
So the answer is no. I don't know who that is. But I don't know if she's in...
I don't know. Do you do the Tuesday weekly call or you don't do that?
[Stephen Husted] (8:02 - 8:05)
I'm not. No. How is that for you?
Do you like it?
[Miriam Gilmore] (8:05 - 9:00)
It's good because he gives you scripts. And the scripts are really good to bust... When you can't get an idea out or whatever, you can see the script.
And a lot of times, I'll just edit it a little bit and make it more to what I sound like. So it's good in that way. It's just one of those things where you don't even have to think about it.
So to put out... And that's when you're putting out specific mortgage content or mortgage information. But it's very general because a realtor can use it and a mortgage broker can use it.
But again, it's generic and a lot of people are using it. Because even though that's really... If you look at Instagram and how many millions of people are on there, he probably only has, I don't know, 500, 1,000, maybe max 2,000 people on that call.
I don't even think that much. But still, those are the people who are using it. If you have a lot of people in your area who subscribe, then they're maybe doing the same as you.
[Stephen Husted] (9:01 - 9:37)
Yeah. That was the thing too. I struggled with that after getting out of the academy.
I put out those videos that we got through. I mean, that academy was awesome. Yeah, it was great.
Videos and the photos. I mean, the stuff just keeps... I keep using the photos for different marketing collateral or whatever.
My newsletter, I'm using the photos now on the newsletter. So, I mean, that thing was worth every penny of it for me. But I couldn't see myself doing the type of videos that were generic for me.
[Miriam Gilmore] (9:38 - 10:19)
And they're great for Neil. I mean, for a lot of them. But I feel like they're the originators of it.
And again, I'm doing them. But I don't know. I struggle with that a little bit.
I'm like, do I sound authentic? And I don't really think that there's many people in my market who are in Neil's academy. So it's kind of unique for me.
So I can probably get away with it. But I know there's a lot of people in California who've gone and stuff like that. So I don't know.
I don't really know. But I do like to put out other types of content. But I got to be honest with you.
I've a little lazy when it comes to really sitting down and thinking this thing through of what I want to talk about.
[Stephen Husted] (10:20 - 10:35)
So I just go with it because it's easy. You should start a list and start jotting down a bunch of topics and things. Have you used ChatGPT?
Have you heard of it?
[Miriam Gilmore] (10:35 - 10:46)
I went into that. I'm like, this is crazy. It's pretty amazing.
But I haven't sat down to actually make it work for me. I kind of just played around with it and tested it. And I'm like, oh, this is crazy.
[Stephen Husted] (10:46 - 10:49)
Yeah. Yeah. The ChatGPT is crazy.
[Miriam Gilmore] (10:50 - 10:53)
It is. It's a game changer. But I don't know.
That's when I go with that.
[Stephen Husted] (10:53 - 11:49)
Oh, man. It's so crazy. I went and shot a couple of videos on different security cameras and door locks for like Airbnbs or long-term rentals and took the brands.
So I went and shot the footage at Home Depot, did an intro outside, went inside, did all the footage, came back to my media room. And then I was like, okay, I got to research this product now. Or I have to Google something and get all this information.
Now I've got to write. And I'm not a good writer at all. And so I was like, wait.
All right. So I went into ChatGPT and I said, write me a minute script on this product. I gave it the name and it just busted it out real quick.
So then I took the information and I got my microphone and I just read it, just read it word for word and then stuck it into the video in the background. Nice. Yeah, yeah.
It just saved me so much time.
[Miriam Gilmore] (11:49 - 11:50)
It was crazy.
[Stephen Husted] (11:50 - 11:51)
Yeah.
[Miriam Gilmore] (11:51 - 12:00)
I plan to embark on that journey. It seems pretty... I don't know.
I feel like it's going to change a lot of things for a lot of people.
[Stephen Husted] (12:01 - 12:43)
Yeah, absolutely. I used it on my website too to rewrite part of my website. I used it on my listing out in Smokies for the cabin.
So we kind of slowed down on bookings. And so I went and I rearranged all the photos, changed the title and then changed some of the description. And then within 24 hours, we had just tons of bookings.
Just, I mean, a lot of it was about, there was a lot of things that went about it, but it lowered the price a little bit. But it saved me. I did everything in less than 20 minutes.
I mean, I would have been sitting there trying to figure out how to write something. I'm just not a good writer.
[Miriam Gilmore] (12:44 - 12:52)
I have a place in the Keys. I should do that. We have an Airbnb in the Keys.
I should definitely try that out because my husband did it, but I doubt he put too much thought into it.
[Stephen Husted] (12:52 - 13:14)
Yeah. And then ask it to write something that's SEO friendly. It just doesn't.
It's so crazy. So what has been going on now that the rates went up? Are you doing more arm products right now?
How did you pivot and what are the type of clients that are coming to you? What are they looking for?
[Miriam Gilmore] (13:14 - 14:09)
You know what? I'm not doing, I mean, I've done a couple of arms, but not conventional arms. I've done arms as a wholesale broker with a bank, because they're much more attractive.
Fanny arms are just not attractive. I've done a couple of the buy-downs where you buy down the rate for a couple of years. Those are popular, people like that.
So we've been able to do a few of those. But I've done a lot of investor loans as well. And those are typically higher rates anyway.
So people aren't that scared off with it because they were expecting a higher rate anyways. So I've done a lot of investor loans lately. So I feel like that's why it's been kind of easy because it hasn't been a hard sell.
Investors, they're not so rate oriented. They just want to get the deal.
[Stephen Husted] (14:09 - 14:11)
Right. They want to get it closed.
[Miriam Gilmore] (14:12 - 14:18)
Yeah. They want to close and then they'll figure that out later, which is really at this point, the way to go in my opinion.
[Stephen Husted] (14:18 - 14:23)
Where are these investors finding you and how did you get to working with investors?
[Miriam Gilmore] (14:25 - 14:47)
Referrals, just because I've been in the business for a long time. So I have realtors who I do business with and friends. I've been in the same community for my whole life.
Really, I was born and raised here. So I have all the same connections and it's been such a long time that people know that this is what I do.
[Stephen Husted] (14:48 - 14:52)
Where are your investors buying? All over? Sorry?
Where are your investors buying?
[Miriam Gilmore] (14:53 - 15:09)
Yeah, all over. I have someone who's buying up central Florida, but the Brickell area, a lot of people come, a lot of especially foreigners come to buy in Brickell and Midtown in that area.
[Stephen Husted] (15:10 - 15:26)
What markets are really hot right now in Florida? If you had to go invest in, let's say a long-term or let's say a midterm rental, you know about midterm rentals for traveling nurses and people like that? Where would you go in Florida?
What markets do you see?
[Miriam Gilmore] (15:27 - 15:52)
Orlando is always a hot market because there's always so many people coming in there, especially in a concentrated area, right? Not the entire area of Orlando, but the area that's close to Disney World and all the theme parks, that's hot. Brickell here in Miami, Brickell is just that, I don't see.
What's that place? Sorry?
[Stephen Husted] (15:52 - 15:54)
What is that place? Tell me about it.
[Miriam Gilmore] (15:54 - 16:56)
Brickell is the little mini New York of Miami. Everybody from New York City has moved to Brickell. They're all there.
That's why the rents went up astronomically because they got to Brickell and they're like, I can get all this for how much? Because it was half whatever it was in New York City. Then you got the beach, 10 minutes away and you have all the bars and all the beautiful restaurants.
It's where all like Bad Bunny, I think has a restaurant there. There's these beautiful, beautiful, beautiful restaurants that are just coming out of everywhere in this place. Yeah.
There's a place called Gecko and I think that's, maybe that's Bad Bunny. Gecko? There's one called Sexy Fish and it is spectacular.
I haven't even gone in because to get a reservation is like crazy. I haven't really made my way down there, but it's super, super cool. Very trendy.
My daughter lives over there, so every now and then I'll go visit my daughter and we go.
[Stephen Husted] (16:56 - 17:06)
Yeah. What's the price point? What are you getting for your money?
[Miriam Gilmore] (17:07 - 17:41)
Over there, I would say $800,000 and up, all the condos, which to me, even though it sounds affordable, the associations are pretty pricey and still what you're getting for, in my opinion, because I'm not into the condo, I've never really been a condo person, but what you get for your $800,000 or $900,000 to me is very small, but people love it. Here we go, New York City, everybody's apartments are tiny, so it's probably bigger than what it is in New York City, honestly.
[Stephen Husted] (17:41 - 17:53)
Yeah. Well, they're going for the location, the experience of what they're going to do outside the condo more so, right? The restaurants, the beach, and the shopping is more the bigger drivers for them and the weather.
[Miriam Gilmore] (17:54 - 17:55)
Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (17:55 - 17:56)
And the taxes.
[Miriam Gilmore] (17:57 - 18:22)
Yeah, and the taxes, yes. All that good stuff. Tell me, from all the videos that you're doing and all the content that you have been putting out, is it driving business to you?
Are you having more conversations? What's it doing for you?
[Stephen Husted] (18:26 - 21:10)
Definitely a lot of awareness, for sure. A lot of people reaching out randomly on all different platforms, which is pretty interesting. I think before the March, the Ford Academy, my very first couple of videos got me a big listing, a $3 million listing.
And so that really started off. And so what I told myself was like, okay, I'm going to take this hundred grand and I'm going to put it towards this. I'm going to create a team and I'm going to spend this whole chunk of money, no matter where it goes.
Either I'm going to make it or I'm not going to make it. And that's what I set myself up for. Put a team together and obviously learning as we go on putting out content.
I think we got into it in a kind of a weird time period as well. It's not the wild, wild west of growing on Instagram like it was if we would have been in there like 2019 or 20. But I don't know if that really matters.
I think that the minute you get on video, you instantly have more credibility. And I think more people are going to see you, whether it is on Instagram or it's Facebook, it doesn't matter how big your following is. I think people just gravitate towards video.
And you never know what video it's going to be. I got a new listing and it was on a video about how to vet your property manager, how to understand when they're going to hire a contractor to do a repair at a property, that you make sure you get different quotes. And that particular video was put onto Instagram, then it was put onto Facebook.
And on Facebook, a girl that I grew up with who lives in Arizona saw it, reached out to me and said, her mom had passed away. They had a house and it was rented out and they were having problems with the property management, just things they had to repair. And then she's like, I don't know if this is a good idea to keep this property.
It's only paying me like $3,400 a month, but it's worth 1.4 and it's paid off. And she's like, what would you do? And I'm like, well, I can say that if my parents passed away, I'm going to sell the house and I'm going to take that money and I'm going to invest it and hopefully invest it wisely so that my daughter can have that money and she can just keep passing it through.
And so that's what she's going to do. I got her a financial advisor and she put some of the money into the markets and then we're going to sell that house and then she's going to buy investment properties. And that came from one minute video on Instagram over property management.
[Miriam Gilmore] (21:11 - 21:14)
Yeah, I agree. You just never know where it's going to hit.
[Stephen Husted] (21:15 - 21:53)
Yeah, you never know. I've had several other people reach out that wanted to buy, want to sell. Mostly it's just awareness.
And I think that if I would have went down the rabbit hole with Neal's content and kept into more that casting a wide net type content, probably could have grown faster. But I don't even know what that really means. What does growing faster mean?
Is it a credibility play when you have 10,000 followers compared to a thousand followers? I don't know. I don't know either.
[Miriam Gilmore] (21:54 - 22:13)
I saw Neal or I saw Will. Will went from 6,000 followers to 20,000. I'm like, that's a lot.
I mean, that's great. For me, it's taken forever. And then I see these guys that they've deleted their accounts and started over.
I'm like, should I do that? I don't know.
[Stephen Husted] (22:14 - 22:14)
Really?
[Miriam Gilmore] (22:15 - 22:22)
Neal deleted his account and started over and was back at 40,000 pretty quickly.
[Stephen Husted] (22:23 - 22:25)
I didn't know that. He did that? He deleted his account?
[Miriam Gilmore] (22:25 - 22:38)
At one time he did. Probably a while back ago, maybe even before we went to the event. But he did delete it.
I don't know why. I don't know if he had, I don't know why he did that. And then he restarted it again.
[Stephen Husted] (22:38 - 22:49)
Yeah. I heard that story. I think that he bought followers or something and he just got the wrong followers and he didn't like it.
And he just said, screw it and started from scratch and went for it.
[Miriam Gilmore] (22:49 - 22:50)
Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (22:50 - 24:57)
That's interesting. I think that what I'm just trying to do is just, I'm trying everything. I test everything in stories.
I try to stay on top of that and I'm trying to do different types of content. I don't want to just talk about real estate or real estate investing or Airbnbs. I'm going to start putting out more content on biking, like racing and that kind of side of things into reels, not just stories.
I think more of it creating a brand where people can go, I'm going to follow him because I'm into biking. I race too. I like mountain bikes.
And so if that comes to a buyer or seller down the road, then great. I do think that creating content is going another direction as well. I just had my first consultation with another lady that reached out who wants to buy investment properties.
She lives in California. They want to do an equity line on their house. They want to pull out a hundred grand and they want to go buy investment properties out of state.
So I had a consultation. I charged for the consultation and I'm going to charge to consult them to buy their first investment property out of state. I'm going to do a consulting thing.
These are all things that I really want to do. I love consulting. Now it's just like, well, I'm going to get paid to do what I like to do.
And I put all this time in, you know what I mean? And would I have gotten that if I didn't make content? No, absolutely not.
I don't even knew before. You just talked about all those restaurants. You just did what you should be doing right then.
You told me about these restaurants. I go, oh, and I know now, like you told me. So I know to go there.
These are the restaurants. Gecko. Gecko?
You said Gecko, right? So I think you should just be sprinkling all kinds of stuff in.
[Miriam Gilmore] (24:57 - 25:45)
Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because I watch a lot of TikTok.
And it's funny because, you know, on TikTok, I do more stuff. And on TikTok, I don't know what it is about TikTok. I'm just more free.
I don't care. I just talk about whatever I want to talk about. And I have more interactions on TikTok, which is weird.
I'm like, maybe I need to bring this over to IG because I'm like, just like whatever. I'm talking about my elderly mother and how hard it is to take care of her. Or I'm talking about divorce or getting married later in life and what that's like and, you know, dividing finances, like, you know, prenups, you know, all this stuff.
And I have a lot of people reaching, you know, when I when I do a lot of people making comments, the few times I work out, I put it on there. And I just I feel more free there. It's bizarre.
[Stephen Husted] (25:46 - 25:59)
Yeah, it's such a platform. So much different. You can just do whatever you want.
And I think probably because you don't maybe you don't have the same followers, you know, so you can kind of just do what you want to do when you want to do it.
[Miriam Gilmore] (26:00 - 26:12)
Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. And it's funny because I do like some of my past clients have found me on there and they'll send me a message like, hey, I saw that video about whatever.
And I'm like, oh, did you?
[Stephen Husted] (26:13 - 26:20)
Well, what else did you see? That's great. So has what are people saying about you putting out videos?
[Miriam Gilmore] (26:21 - 27:51)
You know, I always get wonderful responses every time I go to like a big event, like where a bunch of my friends, like a party that friends of mine are at or whatever. I always get positive responses. They're like, hey, oh, my God, that's so great.
I wish I could do it. That's I don't know how you do that. You know, so people are very positive about it.
And, you know, like they're there. So so they are tuning in. Even if somebody doesn't like like your video or whatever, they are watching.
And I have gotten business from it. I closed a loan last year from a video that I put out on Facebook and a realtor who I had done business with probably almost 10 years ago reached out to me from the video and sent me a client. So, you know, I mean, and I have I you know, I did get very good response when I started doing video.
And this is probably like longer than now. But on LinkedIn, on LinkedIn, I got I got about two or three loans from LinkedIn from people I didn't even know. They weren't even people.
I don't know how they found me on LinkedIn and they reached out for a loan. So I you know, and I just I've been I don't think I've kept up enough as as I should have, because like my assistant who puts my my schedules, my social media, for some reason she wasn't she was putting it on my business page versus my personal page on LinkedIn. And we just had a meeting about that the other day.
I'm like, you're everything's going on my on my business page and I get more interaction on the personal page. So I just need to be better about putting stuff out there.
[Stephen Husted] (27:52 - 28:24)
Yeah, yeah, I think it's just getting that rhythm together. And that, you know, go on days where you record a bunch of stuff, like batch it, you know, like, put as much just record a bunch of different things. Those days when you really feel like you're on a roll like those for me with when I have a day where I'm like, okay, I'm putting out this I'm doing this.
I just create a bunch. And then I just save it. You know, now I think I have about close to a month worth of content.
I could I could just stop for a month if I wanted to. And yeah, not have to worry about it. Right now.
[Miriam Gilmore] (28:24 - 28:49)
Yeah, that's definitely the way to do it. I feel like I get at least for me, if I'm not feeling you know, that feeling that you have to have to like be you know, like I force myself sometimes. And that I need to make me force myself more often, I think because I don't always feel like, hey, what's going on?
Like, sometimes I'm not feeling it. And then it'll be for days sometimes, and I won't do anything. And then I'm like, shit, I didn't do anything.
[Stephen Husted] (28:51 - 29:04)
Or in those days, you know, you can do other types of content, you know, there's carousels where you could put like little information or you can do videos where it's, you know, just you working on the computer, but you know, you put captions together and something.
[Miriam Gilmore] (29:05 - 29:19)
Yeah, no, not even I mean, like now people, you know how they have the video playing, and then anything, it could be me, like not even pointing at me, like, as I'm walking pointing at the street. And yeah, you could just type with music in the back type, whatever you're thinking, or whatever you want to say.
[Stephen Husted] (29:19 - 30:17)
Totally. Yeah, yeah, I do those. I like doing those.
But there's they're easy. You know, yeah, and people like them. Totally.
Because it's visual. It's visual. I mean, yeah, I was, this was, I think, early 2021.
I had a listing and there was a the lender for this buyer was out of state in Oregon. And every Friday, he would send a video, not the greatest video, just him like, hey, just want to tell you what we got going on. Hey, got the appraisal ordered.
You know, they're in underwriting, needed some docs, everything's going good. Just wanted to give you the heads up. Have a great weekend done.
I remember every Friday came, I knew I was gonna need a video from this guy. Like, he's etched in my brain. And he wasn't like he was some amazing, you know, guy on camera.
Like, it's insane. I think people miss that. I think it's easy for us to get in our own heads.
[Miriam Gilmore] (30:18 - 30:18)
I agree.
[Stephen Husted] (30:19 - 30:19)
That's what I'm saying. I agree.
[Miriam Gilmore] (30:19 - 30:22)
And I think sometimes the raw stuff is even better.
[Stephen Husted] (30:23 - 30:25)
Absolutely. Yeah.
[Miriam Gilmore] (30:25 - 30:28)
Like you have to have the polished stuff to sprinkle it in with the raw stuff.
[Stephen Husted] (30:28 - 30:45)
That's kind of, yes, I'm 100% with you on that. And I think too, doing these like podcast type content, this will give you, you know, weeks of content. It's crazy.
That's what's so cool.
[Miriam Gilmore] (30:45 - 30:49)
Yeah, it's a good idea. It is a good idea. I've never used Riverside.
It's called Riverside?
[Stephen Husted] (30:50 - 31:11)
Yeah. It records better quality. It separates the file.
It separates the audio as well. Where Zoom, if you make Zoom videos, Instagram doesn't like them. It's not pretty enough.
It's not the same quality either. So yeah, Riverside, it's about the same price.
[Miriam Gilmore] (31:13 - 31:14)
Well, cool. I'm gonna check it out for real.
[Stephen Husted] (31:15 - 31:15)
Yeah.
[Miriam Gilmore] (31:15 - 31:30)
You know that you said about consulting, I always want to have multiple streams of income, right? So I've been thinking and I even took a course. Are you familiar with Marie Forleo?
[Stephen Husted] (31:31 - 31:31)
No.
[Miriam Gilmore] (31:31 - 32:57)
What's that? She's an online guru. She's like a Tony Robbins.
Not really Tony Robbins, but just like an online guru lady, whatever. You might not know who she is, but she's super popular. And she just kind of walks you through a course to create a course kind of thing, which honestly, I paid, I want to say I paid $2,000 for it.
And my God honest answer was, I didn't think it was worth the money. I just think that it was worth the community, like the Facebook, like the group, the page where everybody was on there. And I made some really nice connections there, but I'm like, wow, I paid $2,000 for this.
And I didn't think it was that great. But the point was, is that it's about creating an online course or a membership or something like that. And, um, and listening to you that you said that, you know, you're able to lean a little bit into consulting.
That's like a great thing. Like I've even thought like, you know, to create a video, like a video workshop class or something like that, where I can like, cause even though I feel like, and we're having this conversation and I feel that there's people who are so way ahead of me, like Neil and these guys. Um, but if you just look at where we are, like you said, we're doing more than 98% of the people.
So even though sometimes we feel like we're not there, like we're just so far ahead of people who haven't even been on camera one time.
[Stephen Husted] (32:57 - 32:58)
Right.
[Miriam Gilmore] (32:58 - 33:28)
If you really think about it, it's so new in, in, in business in general, people, you know, especially like older people, like people in Argentina, like the younger kids, they're doing it. They're, they're good. But people like my age, they're not, they're new to this.
They're like, I don't know if I want to do this. Like I've been successful for 50 years without it. I don't know if I want to do this.
So, you know, maybe I could do something like that. I don't know. I just kind of like, I always like to do different things where I'm always thinking of creative things to do to bring in money also, you know?
[Stephen Husted] (33:29 - 34:42)
Right. Yeah. And it's, I think the whole investor consultation type stuff is interesting to me because, you know, I put all that time in and I've, you know, I've been buying properties and I'm, you know, it's more of a like, let's, let me try to get you in the right direction so you don't make the mistakes I made.
And that's really what it's all about. And, and it's, and it so happens that we're in a time period where people are connecting with you online through these different platforms, but, you know, they want that guidance because they see, they see you and they trust you and then they want to get a part of that. And I think that's great.
I mean, it's just, and it's good. It's a good feeling too. You know, it's not like you're selling snake oil, you know, or being super sales.
You're just like, Hey, this is what I do. You know, I can help you the best I possibly can. Right.
But yeah, it's going to be interesting year to see where some of this goes. And I think that, um, the, you know, the best thing I can say is that, you know, we just stopped the lean into doing more, just do more, you know, cause you're good at what you do. You know, I see your videos.
I watch them. You're, you're, you're very good on camera. What kind of camera are you using?
Are you using your iPhone? Are you using a professional?
[Miriam Gilmore] (34:42 - 34:52)
So sometimes, so I use my iPhone for like regular like videos, but I, for the ones that are like the ones that are the clean, like really, um, professional ones.
[Stephen Husted] (34:53 - 34:53)
Yeah.
[Miriam Gilmore] (34:53 - 35:24)
Those, I had a, um, a videographer who was coming over and, you know, he would sit and come back like 10 or 12 videos, uh, in one day. And it was awesome because we use the technique of like the reading the script. And I'm in that, to me, that's like everything I got out of that, uh, that weekend in Reno or whatever.
I'm like, that was like the takeaway that was for me. Amazing. Um, so his camera is, I don't know which one is, but now I got my own camera and it's a Nikon.
Uh, I don't even know which one it is, but it's, it's one of those nice ones.
[Stephen Husted] (35:24 - 35:25)
Okay.
[Miriam Gilmore] (35:25 - 35:32)
But it's, I'm like, really, I just got it for Christmas. I'm figuring it out. And it's still very, very new.
It's a novelty.
[Stephen Husted] (35:33 - 35:44)
That's good. Yeah. I, I've, I use my iPhone most of the time, but I've now learned how to like my biggest challenge for the last few weeks.
And I want to say that it took me a few weeks to do this was to do a green screen video.
[Miriam Gilmore] (35:45 - 35:46)
Oh my God. Okay.
[Stephen Husted] (35:46 - 35:47)
Holy crap.
[Miriam Gilmore] (35:47 - 35:50)
On, on your phone, like the one on IgE or on?
[Stephen Husted] (35:50 - 35:53)
Um, no, I got the professional screen in this media room.
[Miriam Gilmore] (35:53 - 35:54)
Oh, oh, nice.
[Stephen Husted] (35:54 - 36:51)
So I got that. Uh, I got the light up and I used my camera, right. And shot it, sent it to my editor.
And he's like, your lighting's off or there's a shadow behind you. And so we went back and forth. I finally shot it again, uh, sent it up, you know, put it into drive.
He looked at it. He's like, okay, this looks good. Makes the video.
And it's like a full, like I'm sitting, I'm sitting in a chair and I'm like, look, I just need it from the top up. And he did the whole, the whole body shot. And it was like in blue and with the captions.
And I'm like, no, this ain't the right way. So I sent him a video of Gary V and I said, okay, like this. And then within two hours he had the video done.
Like, he's like, here we go. I'm like, all right, we've moved on, you know, like, but it took me a couple of weeks of going, just grinding through these hard. I'm not a technical guy.
I don't know how to use cameras and I'm not, that's not me. It's just not, but I'm getting forced into it now.
[Miriam Gilmore] (36:52 - 37:43)
Yeah. Yeah, we are. I mean, I had this, so this camera is my husband's camera that he used for his travels and all this.
And I'm like, well, I go, I really don't want to spend $2,500 on a camera. I go, let me see his camera. So I started to play with it like during the holidays.
And then I'm like, okay, I went in with the camera. I went to a camera shop here, a local like small camera shop. And I paid for an hour of a lady's time who works at the store.
I'm like, this is the camera. What do I do? How do I make this look that I like?
How do I make that happen with this thing? And she told me, I explained it to me. I needed a new lens.
I ordered a new lens for Christmas. I got that. And then now I have it here, but you know, it's, you know, linking the mics, like the lapel mic, the wireless mic.
And how do I do it? So it's just like, there's a learning curve to this stuff. So it's not just like, oh, you get it out of the box and you put it there and you record.
It's just like, okay, how do I do this? It's.
[Stephen Husted] (37:43 - 37:45)
There is, is a lot.
[Miriam Gilmore] (37:46 - 38:32)
It's a lot. And then that's why sometimes I'm like, just use my phone. I'm like doing all this stuff.
But you know, I think the reason my, my major reason for this camera was because when I do a podcast, I, you know, and I usually don't do, um, I don't have guests on a lot of times, which I think I'm going to maybe have more guests on, but I just, um, and I didn't do it because of the fact of the audio and it's always off. And I've had podcasts where we do this whole thing and I can't hear the person or they did, they did it. There there's a big echo, but this is nice.
I think this is, this might be like this one. Um, yeah. So yeah.
So the camera was more for when I do my podcasts, I can edit that and then put that in that quality on YouTube and you know, all the multiple things.
[Stephen Husted] (38:32 - 38:35)
Right. A lot of stuff.
[Miriam Gilmore] (38:36 - 38:36)
It's a lot.
