Episode #25: Building a Modern Media Empire with Eric Simon

[00:00:00] We had a knowledge brokers panel where they did objection handling and got questions from the audience. It's way more interactive, and the speakers feel tangible because after the events we interact with everybody.

[00:00:12] It's not like we go behind some green screen or not green screen but the back room and then never see them again and then we take our private jets in the work right? It's like we interact with them.

[00:00:22] Flip in the bird as you leave with a glass of champagne and your other hand, right? Exactly. It's been 30 minutes on authenticity. We give people what they're looking for and we just want to separate ourselves. So like our content's different, our events are going to be different.

[00:00:43] Welcome to the podcast dedicated to real estate insurance and everything in between. Join us as we take you along our own brokerage building journeys with additional wisdom from our network of business experts. Welcome to Bricks and Risk. Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Bricks and Risk.

[00:01:09] I'm Tim Gardy. And I'm Sean Mooney. Today, Sean, we have an incredible guest on today. We have Eric Simon, founder of the Broke Agent and co-founder of Bam. What's up, man? What's up fellas? Thanks for having me. And we're all awesome.

[00:01:25] Days of great day in Bam World. They'll tell you that. Oh, no problems going on. No, no, no. I'm short-sizeing clean like our days, too. So yeah, we're going to jump into that.

[00:01:34] So a little background on Eric. So he is the founder of the Broke Agent, which he started himself and became a co-founder of Bam, which is Broke Agent Media. And he's also the chief of content.

[00:01:48] Some of the background that I found on Eric was that he graduated from USC in 2012. Communications and entrepreneurship major. Do I have that correct? Bam, you did your digging. Yeah, it's two very difficult, a very difficult major communications. That's just one of the-

[00:02:02] Like can easyology, right? I don't remember my- It's my- My com, my com friends and college were like, yeah, and we'll tell you we watched the movie. I was like, oh, sounds good. Communications basically, how can I just get through college?

[00:02:15] I had a great GP and a GP and everything but how do I just keep arguing, basically? That's in still take classes and go to campus and be in classes with a bunch of attractive women. Right? That's why I took communications. I love it.

[00:02:29] Land the Kai, Alpha fraternity, do I have that correct as well? Way back. Yeah, we're fraternity boys too. We were five-gamma Delta, which they call Fiji on most campuses. Nice. Yeah. And then also you were the staff of the Daily Trojan, which I read is like a hundred-year-old

[00:02:43] independent student newspaper, which I think is going to kind of play into some of our stuff today too, which is pretty cool. When did you pull up my 2013 resume? How did you go into that?

[00:02:51] Yeah. I'm like, what can I pull from? That's at least 10 years old so that I am in as incorrect as possible. I don't know if you've done anything in the last year or two?

[00:03:01] But the exact, but Daily Trojan, I put that on my resumes to get jobs after college. I think I maybe had one article on the Daily Trojan. Right, I love it. It was even published. I think they probably rejected. The guest article. I love the exact thing.

[00:03:15] Used to be an agent in Beverly Hills and your big sports guy. Big sports guy. Yeah. Awesome. So, all right. So first question. First question. So for my perspective, you are building what I would like to call a community of real estate agents, experts,

[00:03:31] speakers and leaders. And the first year of broke agent was that like your ultimate goal? Like fast forward to today. You know, I think you'd be doing this like almost 10 years. If fast forward

[00:03:41] to today, like did you kind of envision that when you first started, did it kind of morph into that? It evolved really naturally. I got my license in 2014 and I'll just give you a brief background to

[00:03:55] show how the broke agent came to be. And then kind of what my thoughts were when I started, but I got my license because I was the receptionist at a brokerage in Beverly Hills.

[00:04:03] A temporary reception because I did it because I was basically just making vines and posting snapshots. I was in between jobs. I worked at the LaFactory Comedy Club. I was doing social media.

[00:04:13] And basically this girl hit me up and said, hey, I see you're losing your mind. You should probably get a job and come work at this brokerage. I didn't know those residential commercial.

[00:04:22] I didn't know anything about real estate. So I became the receptionist. I hired as a marketing assistant. Then became a buyer's agent. As I was a buyer's agent, that's when I was doing all the

[00:04:32] code calling the door knocking, the sitting the dead open houses. I was basically an unpaid intern. You know, it was like every buyer I brought in, I would get 40% every listing I brought in. I would

[00:04:42] get 30% but I was bringing in absolutely nothing. So it's basically just driving around Los Angeles, spending money on gas and sushi and do this. One of the most unproactive six months of my life,

[00:04:53] but it birthed the broker agent because I couldn't believe how successful all these other agents were on social media or in my brokerage. Like all I would see on social media when I was sitting these dead open houses was the grind culture, the hustle culture, the motivational quotes,

[00:05:07] the just sold, the just listed. And it really bothered me because I'd read that staff that everyone repeats a Nazium, the 87% of agents fail in their first five years. I'm like, where the hell are these

[00:05:17] agents? I mentioned that all the time. Sorry about that. Look, everyone does. Yeah, it's the only thing I know is the only stat that I know besides every baseball stat, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

[00:05:24] kind of world series. I'll give you the winner. Pick a world series from 1980 to 2024. John's more the sports history do you know? If you guys want to know the answer, how about this? Filly, there you go,

[00:05:35] 2008. Oh, good. Over the race. I got only 2008 over the race. Yeah. So you was good. Is good at receptionine as you are with the baseball stats? I was horrible. It's actually name. And I haven't been in 2024 year old postgrad,

[00:05:53] frat guy basically answering this like, you'd be like, good afternoon, Hilton and I remember I always had to work on my inflection voice. Good afternoon, Hilton and Highland. One moment please. One moment please. You have a meeting friend of you.

[00:06:06] To make sure you were smiling. I said that. I should have. It was actually really intense. Hilton and Highland's a great broker. It just where the Altman brothers came from. Very, very, very, very C.O. came from there as well. Corracio came from there exactly. So he had

[00:06:20] started the agency. I think the year I got there. So he had just left his name was still on the phone. I remember looking at it. He was like Voldemort there. He must have been named when he left.

[00:06:31] What was that going with us? So I started the broke agent with a friend of mine actually because we became partners. Once I dropped the buyer's agent, Roles had just formed a team and become partners where we basically did the same thing that we were doing

[00:06:44] when we were a buyer's agents. And just created content that was the intermonologue of the struggling real estate agents, someone who had a ton of anxiety, someone who was not crushing it.

[00:06:53] And the stuff that just wasn't being said online because if you're an agent, why would you post all of the insecurities that you're having? Why would you post all of the losses going on?

[00:07:02] And it really caught fire very quickly because there was nothing else like that out there. So to answer your question, sorry for being so long-winded. I appreciate it. I didn't have the vision of, oh, this is going to become a media company. It basically started like, let's start

[00:07:18] these social channels. Let's see what the attractions like. And then my initial instinct was to go blog. So we started the broke agent.com and I would kind of write Buzzfeed style blogs that were

[00:07:27] like five things to do while you're bored in an open house. But it was never like this grand thing like this is going to become a media company with YouTube, but we did start YouTube channel. So I kind

[00:07:37] of did all of this at the very beginning and again, like early on as you were kind of like progressive. Yeah, but it was all humor stuff. It wasn't any value stuff because I had nothing

[00:07:45] a value to offer yet. It was basically just the grievances, you know, is the pain points. It wasn't the social media chops that I have now because I had no idea what I was doing on social

[00:07:53] media, which is posting shit. But it speaks to a lot of the agents. I mean, there's probably a lot more agents out there that are struggling, you know, especially right now than the agents

[00:08:02] they're like, I just did $20 million this year or whatever it may be is blogging is very near and dear to my heart. That's kind of I said too. I mean, I didn't turn into this massive, you know,

[00:08:15] media company, but it's really how I build my careers as a solo agent here in Philly. I mean, I grew up here in my whole life, you know, grew up in the birds living the city for like over 20

[00:08:23] years between college and after college. And I started a personal brand called Philly Urban Living and the reason I started that is because I broke into the business when I was 30 because I got

[00:08:32] laid off and I'm like, how am I supposed to compete with like the Tom Tools of the world that have been crushing it for like 10 years? So I did it through content marketing. That's kind of how I got

[00:08:41] started as well. Yeah, blogging was kind of the vision, right? Like in 2014, 2015, Barstool Sports was just popping off like Bleacher Report, all these sports blogs that I was reading. And I thought that was the North Star of let's build the social media channels to then have a big

[00:08:56] website because yeah, that was kind of the thing it's like, you know, it was to go on the Chive.com. I want, uh, well, we're so much. There was Kurt. You know, you had Kurt for real estate,

[00:09:07] you had Eater for food, you had all these like, big humor.com. Yeah. Like there were all these kind of funny websites and I thought like, all right, this is going to go down the funny real estate

[00:09:18] comedy sketch angle. Let's do long form funny YouTube videos and let's try to wrap advertiser. I mean, I really had no monetization game or vision. Yeah. As I was building this until now.

[00:09:31] Well, that's awesome. It brings us to our next question. So we kind of look at you and again, I don't want to like say this literally, but like almost like the Barstool of real estate.

[00:09:38] And thank you. Finally. Yeah. He's someone someone sees it. Yeah. Absolutely. And so kind of tough hard work. Nobody. Yeah. I mean, it's like you look at Barstool and where they started and where they've gone into like a multifaceted just beast of like content and, you know, brand

[00:09:57] and, you know, doing the whole thing. But so tell us about that business model. You know, I mentioned that in the hit home with you. What is that hit home? Well, that's basically what Byron and

[00:10:06] I talked about when we first had these conversations is how do we make a different media company that speaks to the agent today, the agents of change? How do we create a media company that is unfiltered

[00:10:16] that has personalities that has humor that has edge that isn't behind a paywall. That's actually producing content the way people consume it today. We looked at the legacy media companies and existence when we first started having these conversations in, you know, 2021. We saw paywalls,

[00:10:32] we saw blogs. We didn't see these social clips and we didn't see any, you know, personalities that seemed relatable to the average agent. And it's not to take anything away from those media companies.

[00:10:44] I just mean like how do I want to consume content? I consume content through clips and tweets and, you know, blogs and it's not this, you know, open email and this is really read a long

[00:10:55] form blog and not understand who the person is that's even writing it. So, was your question about the business model behind it? I think from a time he's standpoint too, what you're talking about

[00:11:06] what you're like, oh, this is the way it should be. It's like, social media now, it's like a real, a 30 second clip which people are consuming the most. Right? So if you can capture that 30 second clip

[00:11:20] and get their attention, easy to build a following just on that. Yeah, and I think we saw like how multifaceted barstyl is where they went super heavy, heavy on pods and shows. I'm podcasting shows.

[00:11:33] And we looked at real estate industry. There's a bunch of podcasts but they seem to be all affiliated with their own unique brands. It wasn't like an all-in-composing. Yeah, that's a

[00:11:42] band podcast. Like barstyl did such a good job at picking up talent and then bringing that into their network where it's like, hey, we will provide distribution and thumbnails and editing and, you know,

[00:11:53] access to our email list and collab posts and help you with the clips and everything. And that's really how this naturally started as we had the overass podcast, Byron had the real word podcast,

[00:12:03] Byron had the Byron Lizzine interview show that he would do and we kind of combine these things, put them under the umbrella of them and then looked for talent like how barstyl does where they see

[00:12:14] these creators that are doing something that's completely unique or different voices in the industry. Let's bring them all under one roof. We could help them grow. They help with our brand and vice versa.

[00:12:23] So that was the goal and it's working. And your saying before is like it was more like Joe Smith agency would have a podcast or something and it wouldn't be kind of carve out and separate.

[00:12:34] It would just be more to promote that business where you're saying like a barstyl or like what you're doing is now you have the entity here, the brand and then like bringing people in to like,

[00:12:45] like an niche podcast under the brand that fit different audiences and like different different personality segments of the market kind of is that kind of exactly like we brought in the massive agent podcast. I was a podcast that I would go on you know when I first start.

[00:12:59] I'm a star. I'm a star. I'll just do some broom. Yeah, Dustin. Yeah, to be he was one of our first sign-ons. You know, we've tried other different podcasts. We have knowledge brokers. Yeah, we have the hot sheet show. We have the overass podcast which is coming back.

[00:13:14] We have the walkthrough podcast, which is real state marketing where we have different guests is hosted by myself and Dan O'Neill that's like a marketing specific one. So we're trying to cover different angles. And we've tried some that have worked, some that haven't. And it's kind of

[00:13:27] fun figuring out how much does the real state audience actually want? Right? Like how much real state content can an average agent actually consume because if it's too much, we want to pull back. We're

[00:13:38] not going to push 10, 15 podcasts in your business. That might be a lie. Hey, these are all band podcast if you're an agent. You're probably listening to one a week maybe. It's interesting. So we're

[00:13:48] big podcasts guys, which kind of brought this together and you know, we both run businesses. So we're like, hey, what do we want to get out of this thing? We want to grow our businesses. That was number one.

[00:13:58] We want to make more connections, have more relationships. And to be honest, we just want to learn like through podcasting. I got to be honest, you really improved someone had said it before. Like your articulation. You get a little bit better about speaking, about communicating, about learning,

[00:14:14] and I got to say, we've been having so much fun. Like in the beginning, we were only like 20 semepisodes deep in the beginning where kind of like stiff and like, you know, awkward. Now for yourself.

[00:14:23] Now, Moni's showing up here with a freaking mustache and like a Hawaiian shirt. I'm like what the hell's going on over here, bro? It's a good look. Yeah, I like it. This is actually this is him,

[00:14:31] which is which is amazing and it only took 20 semepisodes to come out. But um, so here's another one for you. I think this one, uh, this one I find interesting. So I'm in real estate as you just learned

[00:14:42] and I belong to the National Association for Realtors. So you have said before on a podcast that you're interested in destroying NAR, which I think is absolutely hilarious. There's a good idea.

[00:14:53] I did hear that once and again if that was a little too much, three March 15, no, I think that was fairly a money but on your podcast with Luke. Talk about the NAR stuff. Because again,

[00:15:04] I know you guys like to play the the other side of the fence. It's like, hey, there's an opinion out there. This whole NAR lawsuit thing, like some people are like, I'm never going to

[00:15:14] pay a commissioning. It's like, yeah, not true. And you got other people like the agents that have been around for like 34 years are like, we're in the best. Like don't screw the bar. Like you can't

[00:15:22] all these different opinions. Like you're an agent. What's your opinion of NAR and everything that's going on right now? If I would give you my opinion, I would literally just be regurgitating the opinions

[00:15:31] of other people that we've had on our shows. So I'll tell you my personal experience with this NAR NAR lawsuit from like a media company perspective. From the media company perspective, news is

[00:15:44] extremely interesting. And like this is a big story that every agent wants to get information from. And it's been really cool to see who is actually like producing the content that is helpful,

[00:15:57] who is just doing it for clicks, who is doing it for fear mongering and we're trying to find our lane as a media company. It's how we want to produce this content. We want to do live streams

[00:16:07] and webinars with it. Not just clicks, I have a course in this. The best thing that's ever happened to a media company. True. And then we find it. Right exactly. But you know, you saw when

[00:16:20] it came out, it was just like, okay, you got to be first to news. So you saw all these agents kind of green screening and talking about it. Like this is the end of the world. You saw all of the news

[00:16:29] headlines about how 6% commissions are done. Bires agent commissions are done. These are agents rebudding those and saying, oh, you know, nothing's actually changing. It's just about the way you advertise in the MLS. So this is kind of a non-answer answered dear question because it's all just

[00:16:45] from how I'm publishing the content. But I think it's been really cool to see the first for this knowledge from agents where they really are turning to the Tom Faris, the Byron Lizzines, the Tom tools. And

[00:16:58] then you see a bunch of kind of grifting people as well who are just saying, like, oh, I'm doing an our settlement webinar. But then you watch the webinar and they have absolutely no idea what they're talking

[00:17:06] about. I would have no idea what I'm talking about if I were to talk about the nurse settlement. And I know what it's like to produce content around an our settlement and put people in place

[00:17:15] that really know what they're talking about. Does that make sense? That really makes sense. Like, I haven't been an active agent since 2020. I've been doing the social media content, the blog content, and basically publishing, finding creators. So I'm not going to give you a great opinion on where

[00:17:31] I think the nurse settlement is going to take the industry. I could give you the opinions on how we produce content around it and who I think like the right leaders are to execute that message. But speaking from immediate company, it has to be good for business.

[00:17:44] It's good. I mean, it definitely like we saw our website views explode during this. Well, I don't know. I think there's a lot of exhaustion, a lot of exhaustion around the topic as well.

[00:17:54] So it's kind of about like walking a thin line of how many, you know, a new settlement happens and all these copycat settlements. How many news headlines do we actually want to post around this?

[00:18:04] Because when I publish all the Instagram content, I see a lot of agent feedback about I'm sick of hearing about this. This is not helpful information. Oh, it's another settlement. Oh, you know, home service. Like enough is enough at some point.

[00:18:16] Yeah. So we're just trying to position the content where it's like here are the scripts on how to handle these objections. Let's put, you know, Tom Tool, Lisa Schneiding and Byron on the podcast,

[00:18:25] have them do a panel about what sort of, you know, conversations are they having with their clients? Because they're actually in the field with it, right? I'm not. I'm sitting behind a computer publishing the clips that they are talking about. Yeah. No, super interesting.

[00:18:39] I did say to Tim the one time, I found a very interesting, funny. There was one meme and it was the guy with the stick. It was like at the blob with the stick and he's like poking it and there's

[00:18:50] like laying on the ground and it was Naur. And I was like, are you the way right there? Right there. I mean, I think agents are obviously frustrated with the representation and they see

[00:19:00] I mean, Byron just did a great one from the interview with the president Kevin Sears. Oh, yeah. I saw that just the other day by Emma chance to watch ya. I think that's really

[00:19:08] a really good one. It was a great conversation. You really hear it from the Naur perspective. It was not at all like a got you interview. Byron definitely asked some hard-hitting questions about

[00:19:19] all the money they spend with, you know, Hobbis marketing group and the politics of Naur and the way they hired the new CEO and her role and everything. So it's a really interesting conversation

[00:19:31] but I think it was great. I actually listened to it. Did you? Did you listen? I thought it was like, well, in the beginning, too, he's like, the president was like, I'm going to answer what I can

[00:19:39] answer, but if I can't answer, I'm not going to answer. I can't you listen to real estate stuff now. It's like I haven't even listened to it yet. Now it's really good because the perspective was

[00:19:49] from like it was good because he was unafraid to ask questions. I think yeah, that was really good. Yeah, he went very good. The mindset of like, hey man, this is an opportunity and he took it

[00:20:01] apart himself. Like, I'm actually representing Reorders and their voice and really, you know, made them answer those questions about the branding and the spending of the money and, you know, one point he was like, well, they did a poll on people of like asking random people.

[00:20:22] Do you know what the difference between a real estate agent and a realtor and like nobody knew? Yeah, that's a good question. Where is this 50 million dollars going? Yeah, so the effectiveness of the bats who we are campaigned.

[00:20:33] Yeah, all very interesting. I think people think a lot of aspects of the real estate industry are a racket which they are right. Like their licensing courses to continuing add to the knower itself, you know what, what are our dues actually going to? Everyone just kind of

[00:20:48] feels frustrated by the way this industry represents them and that's obviously why we created ban. So I was probably kidding when I said I want to destroy knower but, you know, some kind of different representation or just different media outlet that people could tune to where it's

[00:21:02] voices they trust. It's actually active real estate agents and practitioners is not just a bunch of you know, quantificating journalists kind of saying things where it's like, like the information I get from Tom Tom to environments incredible because they run the number one teams in

[00:21:16] their respective areas. Like these are people that are actually doing I listen to the brokage and with marketing because that's what he's doing all day. It's not people that are just kind of regurgitating talking points from other people that's why I didn't give a straight answer on

[00:21:28] the Narcettlement because my opinion is just being formed from all these other talking headed opinions in our network and because I'm not an active agent I don't want to like misrepresent

[00:21:38] or just say something to say something. Yeah, that looks like sense. You don't want to poke the bear. I mean, Narcettlement is a pretty big bear. Here's what's interesting it's like mooney we did an

[00:21:45] episode couple ago and he was just asked me questions because he doesn't you know, he's bought house just through me, he sold real estate and he's like what's a buyer agent? Like how does that

[00:21:56] work like why is the commission, why is the commission in jeopardy, like why is the buyer going to get hurt, why is the seller winning? Like was asking these questions and to be honest, no one

[00:22:04] would ever know the answers. The main reason I give Eric is you buy and sell real estate every five 15 50 years like think about it. You buy you might buy at least a car every three to five,

[00:22:15] seven years and you still don't remember how the hell you did it the last time you did it. Like is that what the terms were? Is that what a cost? Like is that how this works? Like you

[00:22:23] don't know. Imagine with real estate an investment like 10 or 50 times as expensive as your car and you've like almost never done it. So when you jump into it, unfortunately you get a lot of people

[00:22:34] that are relatively new in this industry and they're good at sales and they come in and they make you know, they over-promise and they under deliver and when I first got in this business the one thing

[00:22:43] I used to tell people, I'm like, I am under-promise and over-deliver all day long. That's how I roll because for me I'm a relationship guy. It's like you and I even talk in a because we know

[00:22:53] someone of the same network and when you build the relationships in real estate you actually get really amazing like undying loyalty of service from your agent because they get crushed. They're taking calls at 10 o'clock at night on a Saturday. There's spending money on their own pocket on your

[00:23:11] closing gift, you know, something goes wrong with the mortgage company or like the use in occupancy. They just they just drop their credit card down and like I'm never even going to tell my client about it

[00:23:19] because I don't want to stress them out. They're pregnant. They're getting married. They're moving across the country like this is what good real estate agents do. So when knowledge brokers is fantastic, I would recommend that to anyone listening to this today if you're in real estate

[00:23:32] listen to knowledge brokers because they really give it to you straight. Those guys, and girl are all practicing agents. They run massive teams as you know. They're like crushing it with a unit count. Like they have systems, processes, brands like that's who you want to learn from.

[00:23:48] Like you go, you see stuff that's who we are. I look at the ad on TV. I'm like what the hell does that even mean? I don't even know what that I'm a realtor. I've been a realtor 15 years. I don't even

[00:23:58] know what that means and that's where we're spending our money on. Let alone the public has no idea what they're talking about and that's kind of like any of us getting whacked in the face right now

[00:24:09] because they've been kicking their feet up for a very, very long time. Largest trade organization the US, largest lobbying organization in the US and they're just collecting checks. And now they realize that like there's people who really care about clients in this business, some of the people

[00:24:24] we just named, and they're like, yeah, we're going to lose them as members if we don't step up our game and figure this out because right now it's tired. They're going to have families. They're going to

[00:24:34] move to the bank. I think. Right exactly. A bam trade organization. Jason Haber and Maricio started a new organization as well. There's a lot of people that are trying to go a different angle

[00:24:46] with it. But like I said, I think agents are just very unhappy with the representation and any time you mentioned in content you see the visceral in the comments. Well, I think it's probably

[00:24:56] a disconnect too is like, you know, if you pull agents they don't want, they don't want that on a commercial, you know, they don't want it. It makes no sense. This entity doing PR for the agents.

[00:25:10] Yeah, whole the agency. What they want and and distribute something that's going to impact them on a one to one basis rather than guy said it on the podcast. He's like, oh yeah, I think we

[00:25:22] started that campaign five years ago. What? It's like given websites support, given social media support, give them entrepreneurial business training, give them like accounting lessons, like tell them how to treat people like, you know, like customer service, like unfortunately it's just so old.

[00:25:40] And I got in this business while I was 30. I was in the mortgage business for like eight years like in corporate America and everyone is Uber professional like corporate America. Oh,

[00:25:47] good morning. Hey, doing today. You know, it's like I get a real like arc of the reception desk. Sure. You could have to know, he'll do an island. How's it going Mr. Gary?

[00:25:56] And then I got into real estate when I was 30 and I'm from this area and I'm like, practicing the city. I'm like, you know, everyone is rude at shit. Like what that why is everyone so in professional? Like no one's returning emails, no one's returning calls. Like they're

[00:26:08] only looking out for their commission. You know, it's a while west and when you're in the wild west and you have this dream of becoming a real estate agent, you're like, I just want to do well

[00:26:17] and these people are just treating like absolute shit. Like you need someone like no or your local organization be like, yeah, this is common. Like it's common to be treated this way. Like it's

[00:26:25] common for people to be like this. Here's what I can do to help you. That's what I would love this I think a lot of agents will use this as a scapegoat though for their, you know, business

[00:26:35] prowess basically. Like, you know, everyone's saying this. So again, I'm just regard to taking my people. So yeah agree with it that the cream will rise to the top here. If that's the

[00:26:45] the right term in the sense that the agents that know how to articulate their value proposition compared to the agent that got licensed in 2021 and started doing TikTok dances and posting captions and basically, you know, opening doors as I almost was as a buyer's agent. Like,

[00:27:01] I would be nervous if I was a buyer's agent because I'd be like, well what is it that you do? Be careful schedule on showing time. You know how to write your own paperwork? Right exactly.

[00:27:11] So I think it's going to weed out some agents. So I think ultimately this will be a good thing and will be a good thing for bam as well because then it's just, it's all the agents who really

[00:27:21] want to consume the knowledge because that's what we're giving them. If you're an agent that sees this and just get scared and reads a headline, thinks oh, so buyers agents are done. So what am I

[00:27:29] doing now? They're not even consuming our content. It's the people that are doubling down and want to consume this content and get that knowledge and scripting an objection handling. Well looking for value.

[00:27:38] Right like how do we improve? How do we level up and it's like, all right, ultimately you're going to have maybe less listeners but more devout listeners that are going to spend more time on your

[00:27:50] website at your events, listening to your podcast. It's the more ideal real estate agent I think. It's cool to see in this industry how hungry people are for knowledge. Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot of

[00:28:01] people talk shit about real estate agents and you know the public perception of real estate agents is extremely extremely low-blow car salesmen, right? But all the agents in our community and the Tom ferry community, these people are hungry for knowledge like they're attending these

[00:28:15] webinars. They're taking time out of their day to go to our events or consume our VAMX content, or read our blogs, or watch our podcasts like these aren't that entertaining right? It's real estate

[00:28:24] podcasts so you're not doing it's not politics, it's not sports, it's not you know, it's your culture gossip. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's real estate which is an exciting topic but yeah,

[00:28:35] it's just it's fun to see how much agents really care. Hey everyone this is Tim your favorite bricks and risk co-hosts but don't tell Sean. I hope you're enjoying this episode and I'll get right back

[00:28:48] to it in a moment. Our audience grows through word of mouth so if you would please take a moment of your time and give us a review on the platform you're on that would be fantastic. Please

[00:28:59] also help spread the B&R word by sharing your favorite episode with a friend. We greatly appreciate your time and trust now back to the show. Yeah, let's all right so let's dive into that so this

[00:29:16] is a really good segue. So you started with the broke agent, let me assume you were kind of like a team with one and then you organically grew. Then you started BAM, broke agent media which is what we've

[00:29:26] been talking about. Talk about BAMX because I'm a member just so you know and I think it's valuable for a lot of different reasons but I'd love to hear your take on like how BAMX came to be and like

[00:29:37] why that's valuable for like productive agents. Yeah, so we're actually not broke agent media any more. We change the name. So broke agent media when we first started were like, all right that

[00:29:47] it makes sense to use the broke agent brand because the broke agent brand was well known but people don't want to share a URL that says broke agent media. We don't want to be affiliated

[00:29:56] with being broke agent. Rechagion.com is great. So now it's you know business and media, business and marketing big agent media. Like we're kind of figuring that out because basically business is

[00:30:07] marketing agents for change is what we're going with. So BAM is really more of the spam. Yeah, yeah it's now BAM.com and business and marketing for agents of change is our slogan.

[00:30:20] I think if you get a spokesperson, I don't know if he's still alive but remember that wrestler BAM BAM Bigula. Oh dude, I don't remember. He's not only sport that's the only sport that I can't just

[00:30:31] actually argue back to the worst of the guys on. Oh yeah, he's probably. We're all guys. But this guy who's crazy. He was like the bald head. He was all fat. He was like King Kong Bundy.

[00:30:43] Yeah, it's a big umbrella. Oh yeah. So jumping that jump in the BAM extra like how that come to be and like where's that going? Yeah, kind of how I mentioned at the beginning where just real estate education in general is awful. Continuing at teachers you nothing,

[00:30:57] pre-licensing teaches you nothing. You get education from so many different spots where you get coaching education, you take a course for someone who sold two homes and somehow dupe you into pay $1,000 to take their real estate training course. You take a YouTube course over here.

[00:31:13] You get templates from this platform like you want to be an all-encompassing education platform in community and it started with just a couple courses but basically it's a new training every single month from Instagram to YouTube to mini chat to objection handling with Tom Toul to

[00:31:29] Canva marketing with Hayley and Graham to buy our own agent tactic courses where we're consistently teaching you content and teaching you agent tactics and and marketing with stuff that is actually happening now, right? Because all this stuff evolves like Instagram from when we started BAM

[00:31:45] X has already completely shifted so we're updating all those trainings and courses. And we have bi-weekly masterminds with our community so anytime they have questions about these courses or trainings or they want to brainstorm content ideas or we bring in guest speakers

[00:31:59] to go over the listing presentation we have a live virtual interactive mastermind every two weeks and now we just started giving them actual content because we realize that the people want stuff given to them, right? Like it's one thing to do passive training and courses but doesn't necessarily

[00:32:14] get people excited. You're going to probably look on BAM X which is now we have such a massive bank of content you could almost look on BAM X and find what skill do I need to improve

[00:32:25] and watch a training on that but now we're giving you three social media templates a week, two videoscripts a week and one email script a week. On top of these massive data PDFs of our

[00:32:35] hot sheet show notes and then we have the Facebook community where people could ask questions and basically interact with other BAM X members so it's really community courses trainings and templates all done for you and then also we actually show you what to do so on these

[00:32:50] courses and trainings I'm in my phone showing exactly how I post an Instagram story where I put the link, what sort of language I use, how to get more engagement. I think that actually

[00:32:59] wants that one really good yeah it was like there's like step by step which is highly valuable and it's extremely affordable compared to like one of these courses we could sell for $800 right? Just so it's the brokage and Instagram course we could do that but we wanted to

[00:33:14] separate ourselves from all these other kind of course in training platforms which is one course you get a course every single month yeah it's a course on something that's relevant and we

[00:33:24] listen to our feedback from our community and say what is it that you guys want? You want a course on lead magnets here's how to plug a lead magnet a 45 minute training that I just did that could be worth

[00:33:34] $800 again. That's great and it's growing on stop but you know we're working on the platform and constantly evolving and figuring out what people want. Yeah what's great about that so I lead a team agent here in Philly and you know I'm constantly looking for ways to train them

[00:33:50] in different ways. I get stuff off in men and I get stuff off all different blogs I get stuff off podcasts and I think your stuff is great because it's not necessarily like okay let me take

[00:34:02] this and just like completely regurgitate it but you're saying like it's almost like me going into Bammax giving it a try and being like this is what I did and this is what happened from it

[00:34:11] because that's the kind of stuff I was talking about before the NAR like no one teaches you that like your brokerage doesn't teach you that you're not going to get that through a local

[00:34:19] realtor association which is really NAR is like whatever like NAR no relationship for me PAR barely any relationship which is Pennsylvania Association of Realtors. But try County suburban realtors is the local boots on the ground realtor association like 9,000 members so it's a monster

[00:34:36] and they give you more things you can apply to your business but they don't teach you this stuff a lot of what they teach is like okay how to not get in trouble like no your paperwork like

[00:34:47] understand this like time management you know and you know all that stuff is great like working with buyers working with sellers it's it's helpful but I think one of the hardest things about

[00:34:57] staying in the business in real estate because again you were an agent so I know you can relate to this is how do I get enough sales to stay alive because your only as good as your next sale you

[00:35:09] could have the biggest sale of your life and it was an amazing transaction you made like 50 grand like you gave a bottle of champagne they move in they're giving online review they're like

[00:35:18] oh Eric we love you you're the greatest buyer agent ever and that's like okay like what's next like if you don't have a flow or a marketing plan or a strategy which is where I think that's

[00:35:29] why I want to mention BMX because I'm very slowly digesting the information but as I am I'm starting to realize that like for you guys from where you started and where you've come it's very

[00:35:40] highly valuable to agents who are productive because even someone like me has been doing this for 15 years and leads agents these are things I don't teach and it's a different way for the one who's more

[00:35:50] social media minded not everyone is but the agent who is will will learn from that be like I'm going to take down I'm going to try and build my business a little bit better it's an actual business

[00:35:59] building you know teaching session if you want video which is also what's great about YouTube too and we have a lead follow-up course of least a cronati like again the people that are teaching these

[00:36:10] courses Tom's story has an entire course on his listing presentation he has a light scamma leads course which is all about YouTube marketing and video marketing how he comes with this up his ideas and positions his content like there and we have all of our webinars we have

[00:36:25] our private webinars we have private trainings it's what you get out of it what you put into it with the MX when you actually see all the content it could almost be overwhelming and we're going

[00:36:34] to get to a point where we can customize the experience for you we say I just want to know about YouTube here's all the courses here's all the webinars you could rewatch here's the thumbnail

[00:36:43] course that we have like here's your step-by-step guide on basically how to start a hyper local YouTube channel okay that's where we want to get to to a point where you could just go and type

[00:36:52] him I need help with objection handling and cool calling well here your courses right here here your scripts right here here here's all that handed to you so we're getting there again in cyclopity of Britannica yeah for real stated I think that's I think that's that life

[00:37:08] and people before I think I think you've got out of what it is like the videos in cyclopity of Britannica that's true 10 years it's not too bad I think one of the things that differentiates you guys just

[00:37:20] in the way you talk about it is that you're required to put out good content yeah that's educational because if you don't people aren't going to follow and people aren't going to pay you and listen

[00:37:33] not to be a member anymore where as like anybody else is like an hour or who whoever else fill in the blank is they take your money and you know it's almost assumed that they're going to

[00:37:45] pay them and they may or may not have great information but with you guys it's almost like a requirement you have to continue to drive the content the content that's going to help agents and be

[00:37:57] applicable to the daily business of real estate yeah so it's a huge pain in the ass exactly we could just take a completely do's for no reason it's a nice way of saying that to an animal

[00:38:08] fee right yeah to be clear you know all of our other content is free ban max is just for our members that's the private trainings and everything but you know all of our blog content we have

[00:38:17] nothing behind the pay wall over podcasts are free all of our emails are free so we have a great funnel of free content that agents can get incredible information from if they don't want to

[00:38:27] become a member of ban max but I think eventually everyone's going to see the value and enjoying being a max for one reason or the other whether it's the templates or the trainings yeah absolutely I would agree with that all right so here's here's another question so

[00:38:39] if talked about all those platforms now want to talk about events still tell us about ban mania what's going on with that we'd love to hear about it we are in the very beginning phases

[00:38:48] but October 18th we're going to throw a 500% event at ban mania we have the event location it's incredible it's one of the newer hotels of hotel built in 2020 so there's a little hint there

[00:39:00] already have five incredible speakers booked yeah it's got it's got the sports book with the pool so you could do your research on it but it's not going to be an incredible event you know this is

[00:39:12] again the very preliminary stages of it we throw in one event and one in person event it was bam camp 2023 and I'm gonna say September okay of last year in Naples we had 120 people there completely

[00:39:26] sold it out and it was really fun to see the community in person because this is something again that you know I've been building since 2015 that bire and I have been building together since

[00:39:37] really the end of 2021 beginning of 2022 and to see that people actually bought tickets flew out to an event had a blast learned to shut down like it was it was like one of the best feelings

[00:39:48] in the world to actually see these you know digital people in person that I've had so many interactions really cool is it speakers is it is it classes is it learning like what when you visit everything when you

[00:39:58] fly is it partying it's definitely partying yeah but it's great speakers but it's it's actionable digestible stuff that you could take away it's not the panel pontification that you go to a conference

[00:40:11] and you sit there and you see four people on social media that are completely unbelievable saying he just got to get on video you just got to get on video it's like we've heard that 10,000

[00:40:20] you got to be on you got to be on video is where to start Instagram stories are for authenticity it's like we want to break through that noise we don't want to give people the conference event

[00:40:30] experience where you sit there and you know it's good information but you're not going to implement it the next day that's how I felt going to conferences because I would go to these as an agent

[00:40:39] I would prefer the TS conferences which are great but I would go to the M in conferences and I would see an agent talk about how they did 200 million in GCI and they're up there with their

[00:40:49] custom suit and I was like this is so unrelatable I'm not going to do anything that person is doing I think the best insurance conference that I went to was actually one where they got you had to

[00:40:59] bring your laptop plug in and we are going to walk with the help of plug in that thing it I don't know but it was like all right open it up all right get your profile this is how you're going to do it

[00:41:09] I mean it was like step by step by step by step and everybody walked out of there after two days like blown away that it was like holy holy you know learn so much and then you're already set up when

[00:41:21] you leave that leave it to work at the last spam camp we had Tom story talk about how to create a hyper local youtube channel and everybody walked away saying okay now I know the exact steps to do

[00:41:31] yeah yeah we had a knowledge brokers panel where they they did objection handling and you know got questions from the audience it's way more interactive and the speakers feel tangible because after

[00:41:44] the events we interact with everybody it's not like we go behind some green screen or not green screen but the you know the back room and then never see them again and then we take our private jets in the

[00:41:54] right right it's like we interrupt the bird as you leave with a with a glass of champagne in your other hand right exactly to have 30 minutes on authenticity you know we give people what they're looking for

[00:42:06] and we just want to separate ourselves like our contents different our events are going to be different again this is the really very early phases of it but we're excited for camp camp well you do

[00:42:16] really get more information but again it's it's early you deliver that type of value that 150 goes to 350 goes to six I mean the word gets around and it's organically just like how they grew yeah

[00:42:28] and then you have an event that's a thousand hey you got to start somewhere you got to test some things you guys see what people like what they don't like but if you don't give the value

[00:42:36] absolutely you're not coming back yep you can't throw a bad event that's just the one thing if you throw a bad event those people will never be customers of you ever again it's true one

[00:42:46] thing we're really focused on right now that's crushing is the virtual events so I don't know if you guys tapped into the band pro ball which we threw a week before the Super Bowl or band fast

[00:42:57] I did the one I think I went in virtually to the one you just yeah to the one you just had oh yeah we just did band fast a couple weeks ago yep these are you know we got the first

[00:43:08] only at Ryan's sir ham this only at Jordan Cohen the number of me max agent the world we basically had over six five or six speakers in between each speaker there's something funny it's either a

[00:43:16] funny commercial for a sponsor it's a music video it's some fun interaction it's different in your average webinars right it's like a fun experience we had a DJ at this last one because

[00:43:27] it was supposed to be a song yeah it was awesome man it was good it was a DJ spending for 30 minutes been so close had had a national anthem the star spangled banner before so we just want to

[00:43:37] make everything different and fun and throw the events the basically I would want to go to it's always fun you know absolutely all right so we asked you a couple questions before we

[00:43:49] scheduled this so one of them we just asked any of our guests what do you love most about business and you said the wins talk about that a little bit so again we're reaching people in real

[00:43:59] people who's like someone said people in insurance and we also reach out to like you know more entrepreneurs again agents and people in insurance they're entrepreneurial just like you are so what is it about the wins that that makes you a successful entrepreneur well you know how

[00:44:13] I was just using the Gary V. talk about how much he loves losing and loves the losses I don't like that stuff yeah I don't love the losses I don't like having to you know post

[00:44:23] content that sucks or is the contrary in the room let's be honest I'm the actual contrary by saying I don't like that stuff honestly because it's people that are I love Gary V

[00:44:32] he's not full of shit but someone could just say oh I just love the grind and the fact that you know when people give me bad feedback that I could transition off that I'm not like that I want

[00:44:41] to get feedback but what would I say wins for me a win on like a good day at BAM is we collected emails from a piece of content that we publish where I put a mini chat where I

[00:44:57] said you know comment the word BAM and they opened a knee book and we collected four or five hundred emails and it grew the company in some way because it's one thing to it's one thing to post on

[00:45:07] Instagram and get engagement and pick up some followers but where's the actual conversion coming from because we give out so much free content it's very frustrating when you just sit here day by day publishing content publishing blogs writing captions doing cover photos sending emails but then

[00:45:24] like we're not a museum this is what Bionou is says we're not a museum of content this is all going somewhere so are we getting their contact information are we actually having some sort of meaningful transactions

[00:45:33] so I love it when we post a piece of content that converts does it get YouTube subscribers does it get people into BAM max does it get good feedback that to me is a win when I have a day like yesterday

[00:45:45] for example where we posted I think four or five times on Instagram five blog posts and then I look at the the open rate I think we were at like 42% but our click-through rate was down like

[00:45:55] these are just all little little little losses of a day where it's like what did we actually do today besides just feed a bunch of content to people is that makes sense? I totally make sense yeah and I

[00:46:07] I'm with you on the email thing too like what a win that could be because you're actually connecting with people anyone can look at something and like it in comment and scroll and that's

[00:46:16] what people do all day every day we do it you know again we're doing trying to build this podcast audience what are we doing we're putting content out there we're seeing if people are sharing it if people are

[00:46:23] looking at if people are asking questions but being in like from a content marketing stamp standpoint a strategy which is kind of how you start you have a blocking background so that kind of plays to that building a brand what builds a brand when people actually say here

[00:46:42] they're vulnerable here's my information I see value in this I'd like to learn more and that's so cool about how you've grown organically too because as you have like again BMX formed through necessity and as the more agents you made meet like the more agents that are successful

[00:47:00] the Tom Tools of the world that say hey I can add something to this platform and we can we can win together as well as the audience can win because they're looking for things like

[00:47:09] it's because this is what I do if I'm boots on the ground where are the things I would want and you're almost trying to relate to that person and I think doing that content strategy in

[00:47:19] order to build relationships like build community keep our looking this this is a piece of my business like how do I learn from BM how do I learn from Eric how they have done some things to

[00:47:29] make their business successful because it's not that different from real estate it really isn't because you're just trying to form connections you're trying to build trust no like and trust you know if people trust you you're gonna be the first call the first email when they're like hey

[00:47:41] I got a million dollar house I got a sell I've been here for 30 years you know Tim I trust you can you come by and tell me what it's worth because I want to sell it and you're doing something

[00:47:50] similar that's that's really cool I love it well I mean everyone's kind of creating their own little real estate media company right whether it's your email list it's your YouTube channel it's your

[00:47:59] Instagram so you're kind of creating little mini-bams and that's what we want to teach people is how do you convert those Instagram followers to email subscribers how do you convert those email subscribers into clients what sort of information are you feeding these people

[00:48:09] then how do you do it in a way that isn't too sailsy and is consistent enough to stay to stay top of mind but you know there's so many days where I guess for example we film a podcast walk

[00:48:20] through podcasts we get two guests you know we come up with the topics we have all the links plugged in we edit the episode the thumbnail you know it's basically probably three and a half four hours of work

[00:48:32] for one episode the episode sucked right and it wasn't necessarily it wasn't because of the guess it was just like the flow is off the topic for some reason didn't hit the copy of

[00:48:43] is TikTok getting banned bad for real estate marketing no one cared about that topic so we learn from that but it sucks because you put so much effort you know it's four hours of the night before I'm

[00:48:55] writing the script for the intro and we're coming up with these topics and we're scheduling with the other people do they show up on time do we have our mics do we have our

[00:49:04] Wi-Fi you film an episode like this if this episode sucked it's a waste for both of our times right so hopefully this one doesn't suck I'm trying to do not suck man you're you've been great

[00:49:13] well your quote I think spoken like a true business man because it's like number one you have to look at the data look at the information and make the changes right your quote that you gave us

[00:49:26] was a adapter die like you know yeah make the necessary changes and grow from that and I think that's a lot what you're saying is and we've experienced it too we had to show that I thought was

[00:49:39] going to be banana I thought everybody in the world was going to be like check this out and it was like fell flatter than flat yeah yeah and I'm like what what do we do what are we doing and I guess

[00:49:52] it's just you're going to have those moments and it's not like you live or die by those moments it's take that moment I just did see what worked what didn't work and how to improve them

[00:50:06] that's like the main thing that's one of the pillars of Brandon that I always talk about is audit your content every three months at bam like quarterly basically we we have a content on it

[00:50:16] where we look at our YouTube channel we say what's working these titles work okay anything with the word script in it that crushes and emails how can we just use the word script for four things

[00:50:26] right yeah how to produce more content around that oh we realize very early on the metaverse because when we started bam crypto and the metaverse for popping up and people were talking about digital

[00:50:36] real estate we realized immediately no one gave a crap about that it was our worst performing content every single time we did anything or so we stopped doing that so you have to look at your

[00:50:47] insights on instagram on email on YouTube and see when are you know what's the retention like did people drop off at 10 seconds in this video why okay so how do we change this editing

[00:50:57] it's very time consuming one of the ones that I saw sorry didn't wrap but it was YouTube and it was one of the metrics that you can watch her is they tell you how many people go from a short to

[00:51:11] your video like drop in your video oh yeah yeah you are the analytics do so so you can actually then go back to your short to see okay what did I do in this short that was pulling people over and

[00:51:25] you can pull like let's just say you pulled your top five shorts that were converting over and just kind of try to replicate that yeah um it's awesome we're doing it yeah the the adapter

[00:51:38] die thing I'm glad I said that quote actually but I got that from money ball have you guys seen money right yeah you know Billy being he's in he's in the room with all those scouts and they're trying

[00:51:47] to replace G on B he's now we just got to replace the the on-base percentage of G on B with three cheaper players and everyone saying like what are we doing this is how we used to do it the old way

[00:51:57] we're very like one of our core values is adapt like we have to evolve if an app evolves we're evolving with it we're not going to just keep posting blogs behind a paywall and put up still images

[00:52:08] because that doesn't mean anything anymore right like how do we how do we even change our clips if our clips aren't doing well so I'm not trying to say if something doesn't work to

[00:52:19] to stop doing it immediately because you still have to give things to try yep like we know can see podcasts and shows and blogs and seen like all right I tried this 10 times

[00:52:28] clearly it's not hitting now it's time to move on yep absolutely man very stuff air really really appreciate your time today we know you're a busy guy um i want you to tell the audience you know

[00:52:39] where people can kind of learn a little bit more about you and bam and what you got going on yes send them out my college resume again yeah yeah yeah i'm like you know we'll put that on the

[00:52:47] website you want to learn how to write an article one article for a hundred year old newspaper and college like talked air the daily trodde you want to learn how to write literally one article

[00:52:57] and put it on your resume can you give us that phone uh one again that you did three section yeah it's an in-hilton in highland mom and please oh awesome that you're doing it on the side

[00:53:08] at now bam that's our instagram nowbam.com check out our youtube channel at nowbam i'm we have so much content we have the knowledge brokers podcast we have the hot sheet show if you're interested in

[00:53:18] and daily market updates and housing insights from biren every monday at nine thirty eastern basically just going now bam dot com and then you could find everything air awesome awesome it we

[00:53:29] appreciate your time thank you so much sir that's all we have for this episode folks so thank you for tuning in again to another episode of bricks and risk see you soon thank you for joining us on

[00:53:41] another episode of bricks and risk our goals that you walk away with one or two valuable nuggets and we greatly appreciate you sharing your time with us today you can find all be in our episodes

[00:53:54] on Spotify apple music youtube and anywhere else you get your podcast content until next time keep learning and keep growing