278 Mail-Right Show Special Guest Loida Velasquez

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Main Topic of Interview: How to Start a YouTube Channel in 2021 for Real Estate Agents

My name is Loida Velasquez and chances are you ran into me on one of the many social media platforms. I’m sure you’ve guessed by now that my passion is in real estate so if you’re looking to buy, sell, or invest, then you came to the right place! Not only do you get me, but you also get my amazing team!

My background is in marketing management, and combining my expertise in that field along with my passion for real estate has allowed me to become very successful in the short period I have been in the business. I hope that through my social media platforms you find tips, advice, and motivation that will help you in different aspects of life!

Interview Show Notes

Robert Newman: Welcome back to the Mail-Right Show, today’s episode is number 277, no, I had to mess it up, it’s number 278. And we’re here with the amazing Loida Velasquez.

Loida Velasquez: Yes.

Robert Newman: Loida is a world-class real estate YouTuber; she has an amazing channel, which is how we found her. She has tons and tons of what one might call viral content, many videos with thousands upon thousands of views. She’s a speaker, she has almost 70,000 subscribers on her channel and I can go on and on, but why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself to our audience?

Loida Velasquez: Yes, thank you. First of all, I’m really excited to be chatting with you guys today. I have been in the business for six years before that I worked in marketing and advertising, and I did that for about eight, nine years. I was traveling a hundred percent of the time with the last company that I was working at, and I just did not see myself living out of a suitcase from hotel to hotel. And that’s kind of when I transitioned to real estate, when I first started, all I did, in the beginning, was door knocking and cold calling specifically for sale by owners and expireds.

That’s also when I started to post videos and kind of document my journey on YouTube; I realized that as I was brand new in the business, I would go on YouTube to see other agents’ perspectives, and I didn’t really see a lot of real estate agents posting any type of content. And more specifically, there weren’t really any women talking about real estate and what day-to-day life looked like. So, I saw that as an opportunity for me to start creating videos, I did that consistently every single week and here we are now.

The videos that I do post and the content that I create is more targeted to real estate agents so that they can see what it’s like to be a realtor, cold calling, door knocking, things that I have learned, things you should and should not do in the business. Everything has been organic, my growth on YouTube, on Facebook, on Instagram has never paid for any type of advertising, as of right now, I still focus on my real estate business. I still make phone calls, I still cold call expires for sale by owners, SoCal prospects. So, that’s kind of where we are now.

Robert Newman: And that is unbelievable and I have tons and tons of stuff that’s come up for me, but before we get into that, I want to introduce my amazing co-host and let him say a little bit about himself. This is Jonathan Denwood ladies and gentlemen, for those of you who are tuning in for the first time; John is a technologist of many decades. He has another company in the WordPress technology space and he has started his own real estate-specific technology service meant to generate leads, and he is in the last stages of beta on that service.

And I’m super excited about it and I know he is too John why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself directly to the new listeners and viewers?

Jonathan Denwood: Oh, thanks, Robert, that was really a great intro, thank you so much. Yeah, Mail-Right, we’re moving on we’re getting some great results for our real estate agents since we introduced a new pricing structure for our service. So, go to the mail-right.com website, and have a look at what we have to offer, and book a demo, and we’d love you to become a member of the Mail-Right tribe back over to you, Robert.

Robert Newman: Cool, and then on Robert Newman, I am an inbound marketer and a real estate SEO expert that’s been in the industry for 14 years, many, if not, most of you already know who I am. So, I am going to leave it at that, I will, however, say though, I am constantly publishing awesome things on inboundrem.com, they’re all free. None of them are sales, they’re all meant to educate you on systems and lead generation and inbound marketing; go there and beef up your knowledge about how to make a better living for yourself.

So, John, I know that you personally went out and found Loida and that you’re very excited about asking her a couple of different questions. Why don’t you kick us off?

Jonathan Denwood: Yes, thanks. So Loida, I just thought that you’re doing such a fantastic job on your YouTube channel and I have about five or six that I watched. I saw the one where you were saying that you thought it was really important in 2021, that agents have their own YouTube channel. Maybe you can give us a quick synopsis on why you think that’s important and some of the benefits a local real estate agent would get by doing that.

Loida Velasquez: Yes, definitely. So, just like you guys know, I have been doing videos for about six years now, that’s what it feels like. And I can tell you that doing video and being on YouTube has really made me stand out, especially with clients because they know that I bring a social media presence that an average agent that doesn’t have that can provide to them. So, specifically one of the reasons that I feel it’s really important for real estate agents who start creating videos and being on YouTube is because YouTube is a search engine, just like Google.

So, if you start posting content regarding the buying or selling process or what it’s like to live in New Hampshire or wherever it is the moment that people start seeing your videos. It can create more opportunities for you to get clients and at the same time whenever you are setting appointments with potential buyers or sellers, chances are that they’re probably going to Google you and look you up. And if there is some type of content out there in the form of video where they can actually see you, then it almost gives a sense of credibility to you and what you do in your business.

Jonathan Denwood: Just a quick follow-through question before I through it back to Robert. I get a lot of agents asking me, but Jonathan, what should I be posting on YouTube or Facebook? Can you give some quick tips, insights about some of the most useful content to publish?

Loida Velasquez: Yeah. So, some ideas for the type of videos that you can be creating are videos for consumers, videos for buyers and sellers, what the process looks like, what it’s like to purchase a home, what you need to get the process started for home buying, working with a lender. So, you can go that route, targeting consumers, if you want, you can also talk about your journey in real estate.

You can talk about day-to-day life, have yourself a film, kind of like a vlog, something that a lot of agents tell me is that they think that they need some expensive equipment and lighting and cameras before they even start a YouTube channel. And I tell them right now, all you need is your cell phone, especially because the cameras have such high-quality resolution that you don’t need to be spending thousands of dollars on a camera.

So, using your cell phone to your advantage and just start filming videos of your day-to-day, if you’re at the office, making calls, you can record yourself, if you’re out doing showings or at a property, you can film a little piece of that and put it all together, so that’s another great idea. If you want to do educational videos for consumers or even agents, the possibilities are endless; I tell everyone the whole point is for you to just get started and you’re going to see what type of videos you like to do and what gets a good response.

So, for me, the type of videos that I have been creating obviously have been mostly to help real estate agents. And what I have seen is that the videos that do well on my channel are videos where I record myself cold calling because everyone kind of wants to find out what’s going to happen next. So, those are the type of videos that I do, I know other agents that focus more on consumers, they do videos on their cities; they do videos where they list, for example, the top 10 reasons why you should move to Los Angeles or five reasons I don’t like living in Los Angeles.

Things like that are also very good ideas for types of content to create. And one more thing before I continue, even if you have any listings that you currently have; creating videos featuring those listings is another great way for you to leverage that and also expose that to social media.

Jonathan Denwood: That’s fantastic, over to you, Robert.

Robert Newman: So first of all, for our listeners and people who are here, you can find Loida on YouTube by just searching her name. So, please look up the title of this particular episode and then search her on YouTube and you’ll get her channel. Now, once you’re on her channel, she’s got a couple of shows that she’s already done that says starting on YouTube, social media, dealing with, so there’s a lot of stuff that will step you into using some of these tools and tactics.

And I always like meeting you tubers, who are talking about how they transitioned from one marketing philosophy to another. Now it seems to me by taking a quick look at your channel and understanding the real estate ecosphere pretty well, myself, that you’re aiming a lot of your focus at teaching and training agents or recruiting agents because you’re with EXP. Is that correct?

Loida Velasquez: Yes, that’s correct. Most of my videos, even before I joined EXP it was more training type of videos because what I quickly realized being in this business, is that there are unfortunately a lot of incompetent agents that don’t know what they’re doing, they don’t even know how to negotiate, how to communicate. So, that’s why I started to do videos just to kind of put it out there, like, if you’re an agent, this is kind of what you should be doing.

Robert Newman: Okay. So, I’m going to break this into two categories, I have the first category. So, you’ve done a lot of videos though and you have a huge subscriber base to your channel. Have you pulled leads because you’re talking about three separate types of marketing; you’re talking about YouTube marketing, you’re talking about cold calling and you’re actually talking about teaching and training other agents, which can technically lead into referral marketing, which is where I’ve seen a lot of real estate influencers pull down a surprising amount of business.

In other words, realtors come to you and they say, I live in Florida, but I know that you’re in whatever place that you’re in, and I love your videos so I think you’ll take great care of my client and they hand off a transaction to you. So, that’s something that can come from being an influencer, number one for you as an influencer, has that ever happened, the referrals? And number two, I’m curious to know if you’ve actually sold real estate off of YouTube video.

Loida Velasquez: Okay. So yes, I get a lot of referrals from the agents that do watch my videos, now because I have been on YouTube for so many years; it has gotten to the point that maybe two or three referrals come every single month just from social media. Now, in terms of actually selling a property through YouTube, we have actually gotten clients, buyers interested in our properties that we have created special videos for. So, we have also been able to do that, so yeah, it has worked for us.

Robert Newman: So, of all of these videos that you’ve done for yourself, so they’re a lot of people that listen to our show that that are EXP agents. I have a guy who’s pretty high up in the food chain who’s been relentlessly pursuing me, trying to get me to talk more about EXP on my blog, which is a fairly high traffic blog. And I’m curious to know which one of these videos has generated you the most, if you had to just kind of sit there and scratch your chin and say which one of these videos did more people either directly contact me off of, or comment on.

What generated the largest amount of conversation for you either directly, digitally, or directly?

Loida Velasquez: Well, I have done a few videos where I do talk about EXP. So, I have had a lot of engagement and people reaching out to me to learn more about my company through those. Now I know that there are a lot of agents that are actively recruiting and trying to get other agents to know more about EXP, with me and my platform that is not something that I do. I have put my experience out there, if somebody likes it and sees it as a benefit, then great they can reach out to me, but it’s not something that I’m actively, always doing if that makes sense.

But probably those videos have been the ones that bring the most people to either reach out to me through message, through DM, or even email.

Robert Newman: Which is a footnote that tells me that you’re a truly intuitive and gifted inbound marketer because the objective for those of you who are listening if you’re going to do inbound, which is what Loida is doing and what I do. The objective should always be simple to accomplish the lesson of giving something somebody values and not asking anything in return, when you achieve that people intuitively trust you.

And you’d be shocked because tactics that don’t work with other kinds of marketing, such as simply having somebody fill out a contact form without you asking them to, it still works in terms of truly offering something of value for free. Would you agree with me Loida or do you disagree?

Loida Velasquez: No, I agree. A hundred percent, that’s exactly how all of this has happened. I think that even recently, for the first quarter over on the West Side EXP did list all of the agents that have sponsored quite a few agents into the company. And I think I was number six on this side of town and I have never spent any effort on doing it actively, it’s more like my videos are there, if you see any value in our company, great, I’ll tell you more about it.

If you don’t like it, that’s fine too, it doesn’t matter to me because I’m still working, I’m still prospecting and doing my job as a real estate agent, those videos are there just to give value to those that need it.

Robert Newman: That’s amazing, John, over to you.

Jonathan Denwood: Yeah, I think we should go for our break actually, Robert.

Robert Newman: Okay. All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen for those of you listening, we really appreciate you listening before we go to break; I’m going to ask a small favor from all of you. John and I just noticed that we don’t have any recent reviews on our iTunes channel and we think our show is pretty awesome. We’d love it, if you think so too, to go ahead and drop us a review and help us get a little bit more current activity on our iTunes channel. And with that, we’ll be back in a moment with more amazing tips and information from Loida.

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Robert Newman: Welcome back to the Mail-Right Show, we are on episode number 278. We’re here with Loida Velasquez, sorry, my bad. And Loida has been talking to us about her journey with YouTube, which she has a channel, which I’m just going to guess here has what about a million views? Maybe somewhere in that neighborhood?

Loida Velasquez: I think it’s almost 3 million now. So, quite a lot.

Robert Newman: Yeah, 3 million views, and what she’s doing on that channel is my favorite kind of inbound marketing, which is basically giving away everything for free. She’s showing you how she’s cold calling, she’s giving you tours of her podcast life, she’s telling you how she started her YouTube channel and almost all of this there doesn’t seem to be any, hey, do business with me, do this, do that. It’s all literally there for your appreciation and enjoyment, which is probably why she has 67, almost 68,000 subscribers on her channel, amazing by the way, amazing job.

So, we were handing the questions over to John because I have dominated the stage for an unseemly amount of time. So John, why don’t you go ahead and queue up something for Loida?

Jonathan Denwood: Yeah, sure. As I was saying in our pre-show chat with Loida what I admire about you is that you combine social media online lead generation with more traditional. So, I know the Southern California market is just on fire, has it been the more traditional methods, I’m getting a lot of agents saying to me, I just can’t get any, there’re no properties out there to sell, I can literally sell anything in my local market but there’re no properties out there. So, has it been the more traditional methods that have been able to get you people that are looking to sell?

Loida Velasquez: Yes, definitely. The traditional methods, like cold calling and door knocking, would be the route that we are taking right now to try and find motivated sellers. Because if you’re kind of just sitting back and waiting and looking on the MLS, anything that does go on the market, if it’s priced right, it’s getting multiple offers. So, what we do is that we think outside of the box, we are going after the for sale by owners, the expired, the canceled, we’re going after absentee owners because a lot of these individuals still do want to sell.

We have a lot of buyers that we’re working with, we’re cold calling the neighborhoods where they’re looking in to see if we can potentially find a homeowner that’s thinking about selling. So, we can put the deals together, off-market where my buyers don’t have to compete with other people, and that’s kind of what you have to do right now. Otherwise, right now I have been working with a buyer, every place that we have submitted offers on she’s been getting outbid, so it’s more of me trying to find something that’s not even on the market for her to even get a chance of getting it.

Robert Newman: Wow.

Jonathan Denwood: But I’m not surprised you’re saying that because it’s such a hot market in your own Pacific area. Now, obviously excluding this very hot period, we’re going through, how important your marketing, your website, and your social media presence been to you? How key do you see your website and your social media activity in promoting your business?

Loida Velasquez: Well, it has definitely helped. As I mentioned earlier, nowadays, anyone that needs you, as soon as you leave, let’s say if I was drawn out here, as soon as we hang up, I send them my info. Many of them are just looking me up on Google and I tell them, you know what? If you’re kind of hesitant, whether or not you should use me or another agent, just look me up because I know that if they look up another agent, they’re probably not going to find anything.

But if you put my name on Google, there’re seven pages of information about me so then that gives credibility to me and what I do. So, on my website, on my social media, all of the following that I have gotten all organically because I just started posting on YouTube. All of this is information and numbers that I can bring back to, for example, a seller to share with them. You know what? When you hire me, you hire me and my ability to expose your property to every single person in my network.

And that’s a promotion that unless you hire the guys from million dollar listing, another agent is probably not going to be able to give you that type of exposure. So, these are all things that I use to my benefit, and a lot of clients also see it as a great way for them to be able to work with me.

Jonathan Denwood: I think you’re a much more effective and down-to-earth type of individual that I could work with than let’s say some celebrity agents out there. Over to you, Robert.

Robert Newman: So, we’ve talked a lot about John and I’s favorite subject, which is YouTube because we’re both big believers, I’ve actually been a big believer in YouTube for well over a decade and advising my clients to use it as a lead generation source for literally that many years. Well, in the last couple of years, it’s kind of catching on fire, you can see that it’s finally becoming an accepted strategy in real estate, but let’s talk about a tool that you also leverage that we haven’t mentioned yet.

Tell me a little bit about how you feel about Instagram, you have 21,000 followers there, you have some posts there, you’re doing images, showing stuff where you’re working in your car, a Porsche, by the way, so well done. And so, share your feelings about Instagram.

Loida Velasquez: Yeah. Instagram has been another great platform where I have been able to generate leads. And just like you mentioned, a lot of the posts that I do on my Instagram page, vary, it can be pictures of me working, it can be me and my dogs, it could be at the gym. And I strategically post different types of content because I want whoever is creeping or looking at my Instagram to see that I’m a regular person, I’m not a cookie-cutter realtor, but you can kind of see what my life is like.

And many times people reach out to me randomly because they connect with me through something that’s not even real estate-related. So, I love to always be posting whether it’s stories or even my posts, whether it’s like a small video, but it’s definitely another great tool for you to use and leverage to get leads.

Robert Newman: So, you’re not alone in that thought. I was a little suspicious of Instagram, to be Frank with you about four years ago, five years ago when it was a newer platform right around the time that Facebook bought it. And then I saw one of my former clients, somebody that I really respect who you as a Southern California, you probably already know who this is, but Joyce Rey and I know Joyce I’ve known her for a lot of years, or at least I’ve interacted with her team a lot more than I’ve interacted with her directly.

But the brief interactions I’ve had with her, let me know that she would not be investing her time in a waste of time strategy. And then I saw that she had an Instagram channel that she was just actively hammering away on, and I know her mind, her style, she was doing some of it herself, she has three assistants. So, for her to get onto something and do it herself, ever, is a testament to she must be generating high-value leads or conversations from the platform.

There must’ve been something for her where her clients were saying I’m on Instagram, and she’s like, well, I better be on Instagram too, and then once she was on it, there must be activity there. I don’t think she’d spend all the time and effort maintaining the platform, so I realized, ah shit I have to pay attention to this.

Loida Velasquez: And you know what? One of the things that I have noticed is that whenever I post on Instagram, anything that is related to me being with a client or holding a sold sign or a testimonial, those do very well. I tell a lot of agents and everyone in general, there’re a lot of people that are not going to follow you, they’re not going to like your stuff, they’re not going to comment, but they’re always watching and they’re always reading.

So, the moment they have a real estate need, they’ll just randomly reach out to you, and you’re going to be like, wait, who is this person? But they’ll tell you, oh, you know what? I’ve seen that you sold this house in this area, and I’m thinking about moving there. Can you help me? You seem like the best agent to work with. And I’ve gotten those messages from people that don’t even follow me, but they know exactly how I work.

Robert Newman: Amazing. So, you have a, hold on a second here. I’m sorry, let me, I should’ve had that thing off. I’m going to give you a chance and I’m just going to hope that John does not mind that I’ve done this, but you seem to be, I’ve now been on all your social channels and it’s a pretty consistent theme that someplace in the channel, at some point, you’re working with various women’s groups, probably trying to promote women in business and be a supportive voice in that arena.

So, I want to give you a moment because our show is growing rapidly, we have a lot of listeners inside the real estate space. And why don’t you go ahead and plug one of your favorites women’s business groups that you’ve had a chance to work with?

Loida Velasquez: Yeah. One of the ones that we actually created last year was Not Just a Pretty Face – Women In Business. This was a group that was created with me, Stephanie Peters, who is also in the real estate space, and also Nicole Espinosa, who does a lot of short sales. And the reason that we created this Facebook group is that we have seen that in this business, especially women, is sometimes people see you and they think that you don’t know what you’re doing, that you have no knowledge or experience in real estate, but we’re not just a pretty face.

We’ll go to a listing appointment and, we’ll help a buyer, we negotiate, we know how to do our jobs to the best of our ability, if not better than the next person. So, it’s all about empowering other women, again, in sales, a lot of women feel that you don’t want to sound salesy or be aggressive, but there’s also certain confidence and certainty that you have to bring as a woman in this business to be taken seriously, whether you’re dealing with a $200,000 home or a $20 million property.

Robert Newman: John?

Jonathan Denwood: Yeah. I think you put that so well. And I’m really being honest here, what I liked about your videos and the way that you present yourself, is that you still obviously are a lady and you have your femininity but you’re also confident without it coming over as being aggressive. And in some ways that can be difficult for female real estate agents, sometimes they can come across as a bit aggressive. But I never got that from your videos and the way you present yourself, you come across as confident but approachable.

We need to wrap it up, Robert for the podcast part of the show. Loida, are you okay with staying with us for about 10 minutes for some bonus content, are you okay with that?

Loida Velasquez: Yes, definitely.

Jonathan Denwood: All right, that’s great. And you’ll be able to see that on the Mail-Right Youtube channel, over to you, Robert.

Robert Newman: All right, ladies and gentlemen, as John said, we’re going to wrap up. I am probably going to ask a couple more questions about Not Just a Pretty Face and give our women listeners a chance to decide whether or not they want to visit that Facebook page and potentially participate in that Facebook group. So, without any further ado, one more time for those of you who are just listening and are not going to tune in to us on our YouTube channel. Loida what would be your favorite way for people to look you up or perhaps reach out to you?

Loida Velasquez: You can reach out to me on Instagram, it’s LoidaVelas or on YouTube, I’m on Facebook, I’m pretty much everywhere. Or you can just also email me at loida@teambcsoul.com.

Robert Newman: All right. John, if somebody wanted to reach out to you, if they were crazy and feeling like they wanted to take their life into their own hands, how would they do that?

Jonathan Denwood: It’s going to be an interesting ride if you join the Mail-Right tribe. Well, just go to the Mail-right.com website, see all the fantastic interviews and content and sign up for a demo. You’re going to be blown away by what we have to offer you. Over to you, Robert?

Robert Newman: And for those of you who are followers of mine, John’s service is great for those agents who are years one through three and who are looking at the bevy of products out there that are just so, so very high in terms of a starter price. He’s slightly more reasonable, and since he’s in beta, he’ll give you a lot of personal attention, I personally have sent over two or three referrals in the last week or two alone. And that’s basically the best testament that I can say to how I feel about what he’s doing.

So having said all that, if you want to find out a little bit more about me, you’re the fearless captain of this particular ship go ahead and go to inboundrem.com, and for those of you who are going to tune in to the last 10 minutes, find us on YouTube.