EP 290 – Different Ways To Market Yourself Using Video And Email with Eric Hyde and Katie Moton

NCS 290 | Market Yourself

NCS 290 | Market Yourself

 

Everybody out there is good at something and they know something that they can share to the world through their network of people. That should be an easy one, but another thought is what you do not know. Think about something that you don’t know, then do the research and learn how to do them. Eric Hyde and Katie Moton talk about different ways you can market yourself. Eric proves his point about how simple making a video is and he discusses the nuts and bolts about how to make a stunning, fun, and outgoing video. Katie, on one hand, teaches about to make your email look professional and visually appropriate.

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Different Ways To Market Yourself Using Video And Email with Eric Hyde and Katie Moton

I’m Eric Hyde in Torrance, California. With me is Katie Moton from Colletta Street Capital. We are coming into our final stretch of cohosting Scott Carson’s podcast. We’ve had to come up with some content, what to talk about. We thought maybe people are sick of talking about notes. Katie and I talked and decided, “What is she good at? What am I good at?” and I came up with this. I’m going to talk about how to make a stunning, fun, outgoing video to help market yourself.

I’m definitely not an expert at MailChimp and I’m not going to be showing you all the stuff on MailChimp and how to use all the gizmos on there. I’m going to be teaching you how to make your email look professional and all the tools within the email itself to make it visually appropriate.

We were talking, coming up with different ideas and we both like CrossFit. We thought about doing something fun with that. When it got down to it, I noticed Katie that your emails are pretty bad ass. You send them out. I’ve often gone into MailChimp to try to replicate the two columns and the colors. You definitely do a phenomenal job on that, which is why you’re going to showcase that.

I’ve already logged into MailChimp. You’re going to want to go to start with templates. Some things before you like send out an email and everything, you’ve got to think about who your audience and what your purpose is for these emails. Are you sending it to your main database? Are you sending it to servicers? Are you sending to asset managers? You’re going to design an email specifically for those people. If you’ve never sent an email out, your first email should be a welcome email and you want to say it as a welcome email. That way anytime you go to a virtual Note CAMP, you get all the emails afterwards. You can send them you’re like, “I’m Katie Moton, I’m with Colletta Street. This is what we do.” If you go to Distressed Mortgage and you get everybody’s emails or use someone else. If you meet new people, you put them into your database, you send them the ‘Welcome to Katie Moton land’ type of email. There are different emails that you want to have saved and different emails that you want to use for different occasions.

I was playing with this and I learned some new stuff as I was playing with it. I’m not a guru in MailChimp. You’re going to want to go to templates and when you go to templates it comes to your main screen. You’re going to create a template. I don’t know to how to code. If you know how to code, you could code your own. There are layouts and themes. I like to go to the newsletter themes. If you go down here and it says there are 30 different ones, keep in mind you can change all the colors and all the pictures on it. You need to think about if you have a logo, you need a logo. If you don’t have a logo, you need to get yourself a logo. What colors are involved in your logos? I know mine are green, I know Eric’s are black and green. You have to think about what your logo is because every time somebody sees your logo, they’re going to associate it with you and your company and you want that visual association with you and your company.

When looking at all of these different templates, you can change the colors. I didn’t think you could change the colors but I played with it and I’ve found how you can change. What you’re looking at is the layout, one column versus two columns, but everything you see can be taken away and added in. I personally am big on the two columns mainly because some of you send these emails and I have no idea who you are until the bottom of that email. You’re writing paragraphs on paragraphs and then you have your picture at the bottom, if you even have it at all. I saw Adam Adams’ email and he had the two columns and I loved it. I came in here and tried to find the two columns. The two columns allow you to put all your contact information, the picture of you, a little bit about you, a little bit about your company on one side. It allows you to have whatever you’re doing in your newsletter.

When I read your newsletter and this is what I like about yours. I’ll get these newsletters that area long paragraph. I don’t know who it is. I scroll to the bottom and if it’s somebody that I know, I’ll read. If I don’t know to you and it’s some long paragraph, delete. What I like about yours is that I don’t have to scroll as far, but you’ve got little bits of information and then I can see who you are.

You want to make sure you have your logo. There are lots of different choices. I can show you some of how far we’ve come in ours. We started basic. Ours looked like someone wrote an email, our original one and then we went to this nature one over here with the bird. This easy reader one is the one I’m using. There are different choices. Look to see how you want yours styled, but also remember that you can change all the colors. I haven’t figured out how to add the two columns in. I don’t think that’s something you can do. You can change your text to two columns, but you can’t add a whole separate.

You’re in the newsletter section. I use MailChimp. I’ve been creating from scratch. I didn’t even know they had a newsletter section.

If you come up to the themes, they have all different kinds of stuff. Notification, stationary, subscriber, those are great one, events, holidays.

For all your emails, do you use the newsletter function? Is this for your newsletter and then you use a different template for different, maybe to share a deal or your preferred investors? How do you do it?

I use the same template for everything. Once you have all that information, you replicate it and then you can change it. The information is different and you can add different photos, you can add more text. Let’s go to this nature one. Once you pick the template, and this is my suggestion to our audience, go and play with MailChimp. Don’t start typing information in right away because you might accidentally delete it or you might not like it. My suggestion is find one you like. You’ll see content and design. Content is where you can literally click and drop in a box text. You’re going to have a box or the regular text. The dividers are your friends and I will show you how to use the divider. You need to use dividers. If you use the image card, make sure you understand that there’s going to be text under there, whether you type it or not.

NCS 290 | Market Yourself

Market Yourself: The first thing you want to always make sure is your logo’s at the top. The first thing they see is your logo at the top and that’s super easy.

 

They always are going to have like, “This is where you type in,” and I’ve seen people send out using the image card and forget to change the text that’s there. It has a picture of whatever and then it says, “This is where you,” so know that if you don’t type anything in there, there’s still going to be something unless you go delete it. You need to do your social media buttons, use buttons. The button’s awesome; it’s a big green button or big blue button. You’re going to use the buttons to send them to your website. You don’t want people having to go look and say, “I’m going to go to CollettaStreet.com now and then go over and type in Colletta Street.” You want them to click a button to go to CollettaStreet.com. The video is a big thing too, to put videos, your latest video in there. It links it to your YouTube page or it links it to your Facebook, wherever it links it, you want it to link. It’s super easy.

Katie, how often are you sending out newsletters?

When I first started, it was weekly. That’s important at first to send out weekly. You build up your audience. A lot of people might delete, might unsubscribe you and that’s fine. They might think they’re getting too much from you and that’s fine, but it builds up your audience and they get used to hearing from you weekly. About five or six months, we did weekly, and that was a weekly video and a weekly email. Now, we backed off to monthly just because to be honest, it takes a lot to make a video and to get it going and then to send the email out. On the side, when you see it, all of these colors, these images, everything you can change. The first thing you want to always make sure is your logo’s at the top. The first thing they see is your logo at the top and that’s super easy. There is the edit button. This thing duplicates the block, so if you want two of them in a row so you don’t have to redesign it or you can trash it. You always want to edit. All you have to do hit replace and it’s going to take you to all your pictures. Here’s our logo. I’m going to put my logo in. Our logo’s in there.

Sometimes it’s going to pop up and say, “It’s not the correct size. You need to fix the size.” If it says that, it’s super easy. You hit the edit button and it’s going to take you to resize and then one of them always has to be 800. It can’t be larger than 800. It will tell you that so you don’t have to remember. It has lots of fun if you’re editing things for your pictures if you want to change your editing. You can play with editing, you can add effects, enhance, stickers, layovers, frames, you can crop your pictures, you can change color, sharpness. There’s a whole bunch of fun stuff that you can do with your photos once you put them in. You always want to have your header and you want to have a title. Maybe you don’t even have a title for the whole email, but you have a title per section. This is getting into sections and let me be very specific. Eric was talking about my emails. I never have more than a paragraph in each section. You want to think about how you’re going to divide your email. Think about it not as an email, but think of it as a newsletter. If you think about your emails more as a newsletter, you’ll be able to chunk it. Think about the chunks that you want to change and add into your area.

If you think about chunking it, one chunk would be like, “I just finished,” or “I just got a tape. I’m doing my due diligence,” and put some pictures of the properties you’re doing. That’s all you have to say. At this point you don’t have numbers. You don’t have all the information. You want to do visual as much as possible. The rule that I have is first you have your header up there, your logo. You’re going to want to make sure that you have a title. There are many different places you can put it. I’m going to put my title first. I’m going to drop my title there and notice it says, “This is a text box. You can use it.” If I don’t change the text, it’s going to say that. This is going to be my title. It’s going to be, “Just finished.” I type in, “Just finished.” You want to make sure it’s centered. Always center it. You can change the size. Whatever you do in this right side, it happens in your left side. It’s not always what it looks like on your right side is what it’s going to look on your left. You want to make sure that the lines are in the right places, everything that you want. Your right side doesn’t always match your left. Type it on the right, but look at your left. You can bold it. You can change the color. Play with it. I’m making it my color. I’m making it Colleta Street’s colors.

Do you keep track of the font that you use and the color coding? Do you keep track of those?

I should. What you can do is once I’ve made this title, I can then duplicate it. I can move it and then type something else in. That’s a great way to keep your titles all exactly the same too. I know when I was playing with it that there is a setting. It says “Apply to all existing text blocks.” You can make it so whatever you do in one, it does it to all your other text blocks.

What about from newsletter to newsletter? Do you use an old newsletter? Do you say you use the prior week or the prior month’s newsletter and then swap out the content so everything isn’t the same?

Yes. I only do this thing one time and I can show you on one of mine. You have your title. You always want to have a title. You always want to have an image. Whether you put the image above your title or below your title, it doesn’t matter. You can move them around and play with it. The image we can do something you got off Google Images, let’s say like, “Just finished,” or I can browse and see that same. We were making bids, so I’m going to click on that. We just finished making bids. I have this and this is what I made in Canva and that’s a whole another day. I use the same things I make in Canva. You see this title, “Just finished,” you know I’m going to be talking about this. I have text that I can type in and I could say, “We made bids, waiting to hear back.” I always center mine. I like the way it looks. You can go through, you can make it bold, you can make it bigger. The one thing you do have to do is you have to highlight. I forget to highlight and I forget that a lot. It doesn’t automatically do it for you. You do have to highlight. You can change if you wanted. What’s nice in this and what’s different in Canva is I can change the size of one word in here to make it stand out.

If I want back for whatever reason, and that’s a good strategy to use is to highlight words or if I want to change this one word to a color, I can so it stands out. There are lots of different ways that you can play with this. Now, that I’m done with this section, I’m going to add a divider and that tells my reader that I am done with that section. Dividers need to be used constantly in these emails because it divides what you’re talking about and lets them move on and they can read quickly through your sections. How you change the color because you want your color to match. Notice, I keep talking about how everything matches. You’re using your color codes, whatever your colors are.

Green is mine. I’m going to play with it until I find the right green. I’m playing with the different greens until I find the green I want. You can change, do you want it dotted or dashed? You can also change the size and the thickness. You want it six, make it six. I also suggest you hit “Apply to every existing divider.” You want all your dividers the same. When you want another divider, what I go up and do is I hit this duplicate block and then you move it to where you want it. Even over here on the side, it will shrink and do everything for you. Whatever you’re dividing boxes, you want to make sure that it matches everything. Let’s recap that. You always want a title, you want an image, you want text, you want a divider in every section you do.

NCS 290 | Market Yourself

Market Yourself: Have fun with these different things. You can’t go wrong.

 

I’ve read some before where they don’t have the dividers and they blend in and I don’t know if it’s the part of the same article or what’s what. Another thing I was going to point out, I liked how you dropped that little four screen picture, you plopped it in. That’s also a Facebook post or an Instagram post or something like that. It gives a preview to your newsletter without having to duplicate your efforts.

I first create them for Instagram. I make mine for Instagram, so the square. I learned the hard way, you can’t put a rectangle into Instagram, it cuts off your images. On this side is where I’m going to put, ‘Get to know to us’, or information about our company. I’m going to put a little picture. I’m going to take 200 on that one and it automatically changes your height. I type in 200, it changed my height. I’m going to apply it. Hopefully, it will take it way down. To me, that’s still way too big for my newsletter. I’m going to go back. I’m going to resize it. You can keep playing with it.

If you notice in Colletta Streets emails, we also have a picture of Chris and I together because we are a team. That’s good if you are a team with other people that you put your team picture in there also because people need to know to that when they get an email from Chris or from I, they know to both of us. It’s not just me. Even though I’m doing the emails, it’s from both of us. You want to make sure you have your group in the know. Another thing I noticed what people do when they do this, you always want to go to your setting and make sure your alignment for your photos are center. Sometimes your picture might take up the whole thing, but when it gets sent out, it moves over to the left because on automatically always has your picture on the left. Always center photos, that’s a big thing that I’ve learned too.

I’m going to take it in and I want to have a little information about us. I’m going to plop it in there. I’m going to write Katie Moton, Managing Director, title. This is about me. I’m going to go back through, make my name bigger. Make it a different color. Make yourself stand out. You want certain words that stand out. Your name, stand out. Social media, big thing on here so you can drop your little box of social media here on the side, how to contact me. This is great because you can come over here on the side so it automatically pops up. All you do is put your Facebook. Don’t leave it here, Facebook.com, your Facebook, your Twitter. If you don’t have Twitter, take it out. I don’t have Twitter, I take it out. Link to your websites and even says your website. You can add more. It says you can add up to ten. You can add your email, RSS. You can change this too. It has all these if you use Flickr, Dribbble, whatever all of these things are. You can change it to yours.

We have a lot, we have Chris’s email and my email. It’s a lot in there. You can change how you want to put it. If there are two of you, you could put all your contact information under your name and then I would have Chris down here with his picture and all his contact information of his or you can have it all together. The style, this is fun. If you go to this style, you can change how you want. You can change the layout. You can change it to big dots like that. Side dots, little ones, big ones sideways like this. Here’s fun too. You can’t change the icons, you can just have them outlined. You can make them dark black. If you’re using a dark background, you could make these so they’re colorful or if you don’t want them colorful. You can play with it. Play with this. This is how you get to know.

You can have text only, so it will say Facebook website. To me that’s not a good one, or you can have both. Our original, we did both so it popped out. You can align it to your right, to your left, center, full width, fit to size. Have fun with these different things. You can’t go wrong. As I said, play with it before you put your links in and play with it before you do a lot of stuff because once you put all the links in and you have to go back to put the links in, then you have to go back to put the links in. The content is where you put your emails. Just copy and paste. Go to your LinkedIn page and yours, whatever pops up in the www on your LinkedIn page, that’s your link. Go to your Facebook, copy and paste. Any questions on the social media aspect? You always want to make sure you have that in there. Buttons, before I put a button in, what do I need to do before I put a button in? I’m going to put a divider. If you noticed, I copied it. I duplicated it. It’s exactly the same. I don’t need to redo the wheel every time. Copy, move.

I probably should have over here also there. You can even put titles in all these sections. Here, let’s do the button. You don’t want to say by now, maybe you want to write website. You need to give them the link. When they click on that button, what’s going to happen? Where are they going to go? Here’s the fun stuff, the style. Change the color. Blue is not your color. Don’t have blue in there. Change it. I learned this, every color has a pound. Once you find your right color, you might want to write that down or memorize it so you know your color. I go to green usually and sit here and play with it sometimes until I find the color, the brightness I want. Once I find that awesome.

You could also play with the sizes, see what it does. I have no borders. That’s not going to change. If you want to give it a border, how thick do you want the border? What color do you want the border? There are many different fun things you can do. Setting, align it, always center and then you can fill it, see how it changed. The button itself changed. You can change the text. If you scroll down here, this is the text style. If you don’t want it to be white, change the white. Do you want to be red? You want it to be black? Whatever color you want it to be, change the color. You want to also change the font. If you want a different font, you can change the size of the text, play with it. If you change the size of the text, your button’s going to get bigger. I know it says website here too, do it again or do your YouTube page. It doesn’t matter. The more buttons they have, the more links they have to get to the places you want them to get to is better.

When I was thinking about trying to add a video in, I talked to Scott about it and he’s like, “Always put your video on the top.” If you notice my video is always on the top in my emails and make sure you change the caption. All I say in mine is, “Check out our latest video,” and it links them to my YouTube page. Whatever I have in here, it links to my YouTube page and that’s all I do. I have that in every single one, the first thing they see. What am I going to do after that? Divider. You have a new section, divider. You can see how quick and easy this is. If you want to show more than one picture, drop in a group picture. You can go up to five images and it automatically changes the size. It automatically changes everything that you put in. Link everything. Something I suggest you do. I would highly suggest an opt in button. Add another button that allows them to opt in to you. Maybe your preferred investors or whatever you want them to opt into.

You always want to give them a way to sign up for you. How can they sign up to be on one of your list? I give the specifics on how to do it, you do it through a button. You always want to have an opt in on your website so that people can opt in. On your website you should have an opt in that goes into MailChimp also into your list. If you don’t, you need to figure that out so people can sign up and it automatically takes their information and puts it into your MailChimp. You have that information into a list. Allow people to opt in. Let’s say that green isn’t your color and this is what you picked. This is what I learned because I always thought whatever you pick, your template, that’s how it has to stay.

NCS 290 | Market Yourself

Market Yourself: You always want to have an opt-in on your website so that people can opt in

 

You can change your background color. Pick your colors. Even if blue’s not my color, maybe that’s what I want to stand out to make my green pop. You have all different kinds of stuff. You can play with that. You can have a border, no border, email border and one that has a solid one. If you want to give it a dotted, I don’t know to where that is, but when you change it, you suddenly see it change and your picture and you’re like, “That’s where it is,” and maybe you might not see it. This is where Eric, you were saying you can pick your color of all your headings and stuff. This is where if you want all your headings to be the exact same, this is where you can change them. All your headings will be the same, but I might’ve taken the headings out.

I’ve been using MailChimp for a while too. Even now, you’ve shown things to me that I’m like, “I had no idea.” For those of you who have not done this before, I know Katie is breezing through stuff like it’s nothing because it’s easy. She’s been doing this awhile. The first few times, like she said, “Go through it, check things out, click on this, play around with it. You will get more proficient with it.”

Get it to what you want. If you want a serious email, then you need to make sure that the pieces that you’re putting in are serious. If you want it simplified, you want to make it look simple. You want to think about what style matches your logo, what style matches your personality. I have a different personality than Eric. What Eric’s emails are going to look different than mine? Don’t go and try to recreate whatever I’m doing here, my emails. Take the aspects you like of it and make your own based on that. There are many great columns and everything like that you can do over here. You can play with them.

One thing about the text I did learn too, if you go into whatever text you have, you can go over here to setting also and you can change the columns. I changed that text under my name, two different columns and you can change the other three different aspects of that. That might not be great on a little side, but if you have a bigger side where you have a larger text, if you wanted to put it big, go back to content and then I’m going to put a text block in down here. I have a big text block. Down here, I can go to setting and change the column if I want it to be two columns or one column. This might be great if you’re breaking down two different assets. You can go in and do the image ahead of it. I have two images and you see how they’re laid out. Everything in one block can talk about this image and everything in the other block can talk about this image.

If you purchased two notes and you want to break down the deals, put a picture, break down your numbers, put a picture, break it down. There are lots of different options and all depends what you’re doing. You also want to have this footer, because you want to give them the option too. Change this information in current year, your company, your address. Make sure you add your information in the bottom in the footer so it’s not this generic. Play with it. Think about the colors. If your colors are purple, stick with purple. If your colors are blue, stick with blue. Make it pop.

Our color’s green. Every time I want to make something pop, I use green. Another thing when I’m doing my text, if I want that to guarantee be by itself, hit enter to make sure it’s by itself. If I want bids to be by itself and I want bids to stand out because that’s an important word, we’re making bids. We want people to know we’re making bids. I’m going to make it nice and big and I want it by itself. I’m going to make sure that I make it by itself. Enter so it’s by itself. You want words that stand out, think about it almost like a blog too. In blogs they make headers, they make things stand out. That’s the gist of a lot of it.

Once you put all your links in, you want to test it. Send yourself a test email and test out all those links. Go and test out all your links. You don’t have to do that every time, but if you add a new link in. Every time I go and test my video link because I put a new video link in. I just make sure it links to the place. The first time you’re doing it, you want to make sure that all of these go take you to the location you want them to. You can’t test it in here, so you have to do the tests. Always save your title. This is going to be my welcome letter. Nobody sees your title. I wanted to show you what our emails look like. This was my last one I sent so you can see what I’m talking about with the layouts. I choose to do a dark and I’ve gotten emails from several people saying they don’t like it and I say, “What don’t you like?” and then they never respond. That’s one person in general. I have my top. “Who are we?” I say. I give a little blurb about Chris and I. Our information, a little bit about me, a little bit about Chris and then “If you want to know more, here’s all our tabs.”

On this side, notice I have dividers and everything. If you want to click one to see this video, you click and it takes you to the video. If you want to see here as Eric and I, we’re doing it right now. If you miss the latest podcast, here it is. Here’s my latest video here. If you want to subscribe to my YouTube, it’s here. You click on it. Here’s a link to Scott Carson’s episode 180 on his Note Closers Show we did, he interviewed me. That’s always on there. If you’ve been in and always leave it on every email. Here’s the check out our webpage.

If you’re interested in joint venture, how you do it, this is the button you click on. That’s one of my latest ones. Let me tell you how we started, just so you know where we’ve come. With our first email, we have no idea what we’re doing. We were learning, I put a picture. I put some information, examples. Here’s our information. No pictures of us, no color. This was the attempt of our first one. I don’t think we sent this one, but this was our attempt. Very simple, very basic. There are no links. We didn’t add anything. That’s what a lot of your emails look like, people out there. I’m telling, you that’s what a lot.

I used to call them Newsletter Eight even when I sent them out, and Scott Carson was like, “Katie, stop calling them newsletters.” Here you can see this was our old image, we put in an article for people to read. If you like finding articles for your people to read, put those in there. Here are all our following, see. It says, “Follow Katie on LinkedIn, email Chris, email Katie.” We put our picture in, we put one of our videos in. Notice, I’m not using any of the dividers yet. Notice how I did my texts. This is on purpose. If you see my text, every word, every sentence is specifically the way it is. I want it to end with one sentence on a line. I want it to end with one question on a line. I don’t want a big paragraph. I want separated. Probably I should’ve put exit strategy in mine. This is driving me crazy. Exit strategy is not a one line together. I probably would have bolded things a little bit more. See how far our emails have come. They’ve come far to what we do now. Start small and you can always change it.

NCS 290 | Market Yourself

Market Yourself: Start small and you can always change it.

 

One last thing I do want to show you how to do that opt in because it took me awhile to figure that out. Maybe some people, they figured out fast. You have to create a list first, not with people in it, but you have to create a list first. Title it and it says, “Look, you have no contacts. Create a signup form.” I’m going to create a signup form because I have no contacts. Did you all see what I did? I went to list. I created a list, give it a title. Open it, create a signup form, and you’re in the form builder. Here’s the form builder.

There’s a link, once you fill out, you decide what you want them to fill out, you play with it. Build it, design it, translate it. We’re going to copy and paste the link into your opt-in button. Remember that opt in button we made? The link that you are going to copy and paste in there so that when people click on that, it’s going to take them to that form, they’re going to fill out the information and their information goes to your list. This little URL link is what you put into your opt-in.

I’m probably using MailChimp for six months or so and you touched on many things that I didn’t know to about. That was very valuable, very good stuff.

It takes time to play with it. I still title my newsletters in but I do not. Here’s our last newsletter, official newsletter that went out that wasn’t promoting the videos or anything. We have our video at the top. We’re honored to guest host and I put those links we had guest hosted. Here’s the new title, bids accepted, here’s our bid accepted. What are we going to do now? Quick information. Notice, I separate ideas with even in myself. I’m going to write a lot of text. I make sure that I separate it and I changed the colors of certain things. If you are going to put a lot of text, separate your thoughts, separate them, how you want them to say, what you want them to do, bold the things that you want to stand out.

Here’s my making bids, put that picture in. We have eight bids that are waiting to be accepted. I’ll keep you posted, and then I put a divider. All these things have dividers in them. That’s our last email that went out. Visually, it’s a lot. There are a lot of information but it doesn’t feel overwhelming because it’s separated. I won’t read you that every single time. You create a template and then you create the campaign from the template. If you’ve never sent out an email, you create it in the templates and then you come over to this little click and you create the campaign. This is what I do every single time, I replicate it.

No reason to remake that email every single time. It says copy at the top and this one I always go in. I’m going to take out my URL because I’m going to have a different one for my next video. It’s blank, but I always leave that check out our latest video. I usually don’t ever touch the right side, but I change the left side. You can take out pictures and you can take out sections and you can move things. Go and play with it. Think about your colors. They do visually affect people. You need to think about your emails more as a newsletter or a pamphlet even than just an email.

I’m going to add one more thing to that, Katie. I do the same thing where I’ve got that newsletter style with color. I have a separate one depending on who my audience is. Let’s say it’s my preferred investor list or if I’ve got one point I want to get across, it’s laser-focused. I’m going to call it an email, but it’s still through MailChimp, where my most recent one was a paragraph of this is what the video is and then it was a video. It was my ROI versus yield video, so people can see what it is. They can either read the paragraph and walk away or they can click the video and be done with it. The laser-focused one and then the one that’s a little broader spectrum.

I have one specifically only for a welcome. This is us as, who we are. It does have my video on the bottom, but it doesn’t have all that other stuff. We have one that we send to servicers, we have one that doesn’t give all that other stuff. It always has our videos. It always has our links to our website if they want to check out who we are. You always want to give people directions to see you, who you are. Whatever you do, you want to be able to link people to all those different things. You don’t want to overwhelm them, but you do want to make sure you’re linking people, whether their servicers, asset managers, because they want to check out you, but they don’t want to have to go into LinkedIn and type your name and look the spelling of it and go back. They want to be able to click and see who you are.

What I’m going to do, I’m going to prove my point about how simple and easy making a video is. I’m not going to dive too deep, but I’m going to give you the nuts and bolts. I’m going to touch on a little bit of content, some inspiration. My short presentation is going to be basically on how to make a simple and easy fun video using your iPhone. If you don’t have an iPhone, I’m sorry, this might not apply to you, but whatever phone you have, I’m sure there’s something that’s similar. I use my iPhone for all my videos.

When I make a video, there are basically three components that go into making a badass video. When I say badass video, to be badass for different reasons depending on who you are and what you’re trying to accomplish. I look at the content, I’m going to go over the equipment that I use and then I go into some technicals. The first thing is content. Before you make a video, it’s important to find out what is your message with this video? Am I marketing a deal? Am I trying to get JV partners? Am I trying to get likes and subscribes? Am I putting out free content? What’s your message?

It was about four or five months ago, there was a guy I work with, he has his own business as well and we were talking about how important making videos are. About getting yourself out there and that brand recognition, the face recognition. He and I had a challenge that we had to make a video and put it out to our social medias. It had to be a video of your face. No hiding behind a logo, no hiding behind some screen, whatever and where you’re just talking. It’s camera, talk, post it. Whoever didn’t do it had to buy the other lunch. Come that following, we both had done it. We both had gotten some good reviews. What was most important is that we got us over that barrier, that barrier of like, “What if somebody sees me?” That’s the point that people are going to see you.

For those of you who haven’t done a video, it’s not to say you have to, but if you’re looking to market yourself, your business, that’s a great way to do it. What’s your message? What’s your goal? In thinking of content, what things inspire you? For me, I like to work out in the gym and that’s when my flow, my thought comes through. Sometimes I’ll do a video on specific note content. If you go to my Instagram, you’ll see some videos on money and numbers, the rule of 72.

Think about what inspires you. A couple of good things if you’re trying to think about content, what do you know? What are you good at? Everybody out there is good at something and they know to something that they can share to the world through their network. That should be an easy one. Another thought is what do you not know? Think about something that you don’t know, then do the research and share with us your information.

Research something you don’t know. I’ll give you an example. Kentucky, everybody seems to not like Kentucky. I don’t know why. It might be freaking easy. I’m guessing there might be other people in the same boat. Maybe I should do some research on why Kentucky is not a favorable State for some people. Put some content, make a video and blast it out. It’s the idea that you’re putting out content that other people can feed off of.

The last thing that I do, and I know to Scott talks about this. There’s the picture of my son on the bottom is related to something, baseball, sports, fitness, whatever it is. Scott talks about the base hits of note investing. You buy a non-performer and you reach out and they make that $300 payment. That’s a base hit and then another base hit. The next thing you know you’ve got grand slams happening left and right. Relate it to something. It makes it easier to put your content together.

NCS 290 | Market Yourself

Market Yourself: Make a silly video, play with it. You learn how things work and function.

 

I’m going to dive into the equipment that I use. My iPhone, I have one of those, the lighting. I never use it because I’m usually outside. This thing is $15. You can see the microphone there. I did a video once when my friend told me, “Great video but there was a little bit of wind in the background,” and he recommended one of these. It is a simple microphone that costs me $13. I ordered it on Amazon. It’s huge. The reason why I’m not using it now is because I’m using one of these things. I see these videos that people put out on Instagram or whatever. It’s hard because you’ve got wind in the background and you have a microphone that really brings that audio into one focus.

Especially if you want to do videos outside, you want to make sure you have something like that.

Indoors is not critical, but for $13, you might as well.

You might as well buy the whole package.

This little tripod, I used to do some of these in my backyard where I’d set this on the hot tub and I would talk into it and that worked fine. I got into the habit. People like to see normal, natural, nothing staged. Oftentimes, I’ll do this and I talk and I go. If you’re trying to attract investors, they want to know to the real you, who you are as a person. Not some staged. This is my opinion.

A lot of people do the car ones now. They’re in their car. It’s the new natural.

I’ve done one of those, I have to admit. When I had done the car video, I’ve done one. It’s because the thought came to me. I’d just gotten off the phone. It was a deal that was working out and I thought, “I want to share this.” I called it The Human Side Of Notes. It was how I was able to help the borrower stay in the home and work with her. I wanted to share it to everybody. I did it from the car. It was right then and there, it wasn’t planned. For me, that’s why I did it in the car. Equipment, $36. You’ve got the tripod, the lighting, the microphone, and then obviously your phone. I didn’t include the cost of the phone because everybody has a phone. The number one piece of equipment I find is the microphone.

How to make a video? The first thing you do once you, once you figure out your content, what you want to do. Let’s say, you’re going to market a deal. Pick the location you want to film this. Think about the lighting. I choose my backyard a lot because my wife’s in the house with the kid. That’s honestly how it got started. Wife’s inside the house with the kids. I needed quiet. I needed to go in the backyard and it’s become my thing, “How you doing? Eric Hyde, AW Notes from the backyard in Torrance.” Mood, what kind of mood do you want for this video? I’ve done some where I’ve got this and I’m talking about ROI and yield. It’s a little more business type of a mood, and then I’ve done some that are fun, music in the background. Decide what your mood is, but the number one thing I’m going to say is that you’ve got to be you and act normal.

A lot of people get nervous, but it’s you and your phone. Unless it’s live, it’s you and your phone. You’re in the back yard or in the house by yourself. You can edit it. You don’t have to post it out so there’s no need to be nervous. Be you. Be normal and highlight your strengths. If you’re a comedian, then highlight that. If you’re serious and you’re good with words, be very eloquent in how you speak and present yourself the way you are. That’s got to be the most important. People will see through if you try to be somebody you’re not. You don’t have to do it all in one long video or one, two-minute video. You can do it in chunks. I had done one for Note CAMP, the last one, Note CAMP Six and I had done thirteen different videos and I put them all together and made for something fun. You can blend these; it doesn’t have to be one long video.

Getting into it, I’m going to go through the steps and I’ll show you technically how I do it on the phone. I use iMovie on my iPhone because it’s free and it’s already on the phone. The first step is to record your video. Record the video, then you drop it into your iMovie, you’re going to edit it, cut it, add music, add text and then I use Canva for intro slides, outro slides, and you’re done. That was really very simple. It’s like the newsletter you’re talking about. When you go into MailChimp for the first time, it’s like, “There are all these options.” Once you do it, literally a couple times, you’ll find it super easy. Katie, do you have an iPhone or do you have something different?

I have an iPhone.

Perfect. It might already be on your phone, but it’s purple with the star with the camera in the middle. That is the iMovie. Click on it. The next thing that’s going to come up on a movie of the slide two is that plus sign. You click add. Bottom left number three, movie. You click on movie. There’s another option, it’s trailer. You can do that, that’s fun, but I’m going to keep it simple now. You click the icon, you click the plus because you’re going to add a project, you click movie because that’s what you’re going to make, and then you can pick moments. Now, it’s inside your phone. Do you want photos, video, song? Start with a video that you recorded. You did a video in the backyard. You’re going to click video and now this is what it’s going to look like.

I clicked on the video. It’s going to drop it automatically into the phone and it’s going to look like this. You can see at the top, my video is a minute and eleven seconds. There are some buttons there I’ll go through in a second. There’s the video slide bar, mid page. That’s where you can start to edit. Basic, simple steps. Upper left, that plus button means you can add video music or photos. That’s where you’re going to add or drop in whatever it is that you want your video. Once you drop your video, you can drop in music behind it. I know to that it’s going to be hard in a few minutes on a podcast. It will be enough to get you started. Once you dropped the video, you press the actual video itself and it highlights yellow when it’s ready to be edited. From there you’ll edit the video or photos.

If you’ve got a five minute take and you want to make it a one-minute video, you can shrink it, move the dumb stuff in the beginning, the stuff at the end, however you want to do it. Bottom left, there’s the little scissors. This is where you can splice different segments of your video. You have a two-minute video and you can splice it every twelve seconds, every 30 seconds or where you want it. The reason for doing that is because each segment, you might have a different song, you might have different words that pop up, you might have something different. That’s the reason to splice the video. The T at the bottom is so you can add text or emoji. I’m going to click the next page. When you press the T, that means you’re going to add emojis or words. On the top where it says title, “Text here.” That’s where you’re going to start typing in what you want. That’s where it might say, “Eric Hyde. AW Notes or Katie Moton, Colletta Street Capital.”

You could decide where the text goes within the video?

On this page, you’ll see the bottom, you see the scissors again. Just above it you see center and lower. The PowerPoint is not dynamic right now, if you click lower, it will go to the lower right or the lower left. Which is good because sometimes you don’t want to cover your face or what’s in the center, maybe the lighting is bad on the bottom right hand side of the page. You’ll play around with it. Above the center in the lower, you’ll pick the type of screen that it will be, line or title? There’s one that’s expand, focus, pop up and that’s how it’s presented onto the page. You’ll have to play around with it. Type in the text and then you can click on those different ones and it will show you where it’s going to go on the page.

The theme I’m hearing is play with it. Have fun with it and play with it. Don’t go do a serious video and then try to play with it and destroy it. Make a silly video, play with it. You learn how things work and function.

NCS 290 | Market Yourself

Market Yourself: Photos, videos, colors catch people’s attention more than just a white email type thing.

 

The first day, I’ve shown people this at work and I will show them in 30 seconds or less how to make a video. It’s not going to be the best, but I’ll go to the video, drop it in, I add a song. The music playlist comes from your phone, wherever it is. If there’s a particular song you like, you can go to iTunes, buy it and it drops it in. The recent one I did and my next slide is a sample one that I did. It was a Top Gun video. I found the theme song, the Top Gun.

I’m going to do one coming up the theme song the Rocky and I’m going to post something that people will like, they can relate to. It’s fun. It’s short, it’s brief. Super easy. I’m going to go back to this first slide here. Basically, you’re going to record video wherever it is. You’re going to drop it into the iMovie. Then you start editing and play around with it. You’ll drop in your video and then from there when you add music, the green, that actually represents the songs. You can see I spliced songs, it says, “Add your friend,” that’s the name of the song. It will play continuous and then you see the different shades of green that’s because I’ve have faded in and out.

You can have music going and you can control the volume of the video of you and then the volume of the song. Maybe it’s quiet music in the background while I’m getting my message out and then while I’m in a transition to photos of a deal, it’s quiet on me and then it’s louder music. That’s where you’ll transition that and that’ll be the sound of the very bottom, there’s a picture of a speaker. That’s where you will play around with that. Seriously, super easy, so fun. Sometimes I’ve gotten to the point where I think I’m having more fun with the videos and I’m like, “What’s my goal?”

I feel we should challenge people here, Eric. To go make a video and to go make an email and send it to us.

Let’s put the challenge out there. For those that make a video, should we have them post it or email it to us?

They should post it but tag us in it or something.

Make a video. Tag either me or Katie or put it on the WCN. What do you think? You and I will vote on the best one? I have a book. I won’t disclose what the book is. It’s a cool book as it relates to marketing. Whoever does the best one, I’ll mail them a copy of the book. Make a video. Post it, tag me and Katie and you and I will vote, we’ll comment or whatever, and then the best video gets this book. If it’s the only video, if there’s only one person that does it, then they get the book. Does that sound like a plan? I’m going to show you a video that I did a couple months ago of how I put it all together. This very first slide is from Canva. This is how you drop in Canva. You make a slide. You can be my wingman anytime, then I’m going to hit play and we’ll go into it.

These are all transitions. All this was on my phone. I don’t do this on the computer. On my phone. Now to build in to what city is it? Where is this asset? There’s an Air Force Base. Dayton, Ohio. AW Notes. The music is quieter in the background. I’m doing a stupid video of me in the in the backyard so you can hear my voice a little bit. There’s music still going in the background but it’s a little softer.

“Torrance California, you’d be right. This video is not about Torrance, California or my backyard. This one is a contract for deed nonperforming. We’re looking for joint venture funding partner. It’s in Dayton, Ohio. Here’s what we like about it. It’s occupied. It’s in a great neighborhood. The borrower wants to stay. How do I know to this? They’ve already made eight payments in the last twelve months. I call this one Top Gun, and we’re looking for a wing man. If you think you have what it takes and you’re interested, shoot me an email at Eric@AWNotes.com. Watch the rest of this video. We’ll talk to you soon. Take care.”

I remember you doing this video. I’ve seen it on the computer or an email or Facebook or something. I was like, “That’s awesome.”

It’s a little shaky in the backyard and it’s imperfect, but that’s what I like about it. It’s just me in the backyard. You see the numbers on the deal, the music makes it fun.

We’re sitting here talking about marketing and how to make an email and how to make videos. How long did it take to fund this? Do you think the video had anything to do with how fast it got funded?

What’s interesting is I emailed this deal out to my preferred investor list on an evening before I went to dinner. I remember this night. I was like, “I’m going to send this email out really quick then we’re going to go to dinner.” I emailed it out. On the way to dinner, I’ve got four emails of people wanting to JV. Fortunately, one of those I knew this person. I built a relationship, knew them, knew what they wanted. I knew they were serious. It was done immediately. I hadn’t even put this out. I had already made the video. It was fun. I put it out to my preferred investor list, it was spoken for that night and funded it a couple of days later after we did the paperwork.

I still put the video out and when I put it on, I said, “Sorry, this one’s been spoken for, but this is still something to talk about. This is what I’m doing. This is a current deal we’ve got going on.” If the numbers are good, the numbers are good. Even without the video, this still would have been a good deal. The video was fun, but more importantly they see my face, my logo, my name. It gives you some relevance in this community. That’s the whole idea behind videos. I did some free content of just different videos on how to do this, how to do that, and it’s create a following to keep me relevant that way when I have that next deal, “Yes, Eric Hyde,” as opposed to the guy who’s there once every six months you hear from him.

This is important too, whatever you choose, however often you make videos or emails, you need to be consistent with that. If it’s going to be weekly, if it’s going to be biweekly, monthly, whatever, you need to make sure you stick with it. With the video though, it catches people’s attention because if you were to send this information in a plain email, I might not have read it as much as I watch. I remember watching this video and thinking, “That was awesome video.” We have to remember that videos and visual things catch people’s attention. Photos, videos, colors catch people’s attention more than just a white email type thing.

In this day and age too and I don’t remember the statistic, but something like 80% of all content will be internet content or social media content will be a video. It goes with the idea that for me to sit down and read the newspaper or to read something, I have to take the time, sit down, read it. If it’s in a video form, I can blow through it in a minute or two on the way to work, sitting at home or whatever the case is. That’s the idea for me behind the video. It showcases, for me, my strength. I like to talk to people. I don’t need to hide behind anything. Here I am, this is what I do. I’m quirky and silly and you either like it or you don’t. If you don’t, so be it. They’ll go to someone else, not a big deal.

We have a question, “Any microphone or one brand better? The brand you use for the microphone?”

NCS 290 | Market Yourself

Market Yourself: Visuals are very strong for people and they say a lot.

 

I have a friend who does a podcast locally here and he recommended this little thing. I don’t know the name of it to be honest with you. I don’t know the answer to that, but I can tell you this one that I’m using works awesome. I clip it to my shirt, whether people see it or not, who cares? I go through more of the asset. I go through the numbers. Change the song, the same ideas.

I like that you title all your assets different things too. You have names for every single asset right now.

I called one Paying in Dayton because it was a non-performer, but I look at the pay history, I’m like, “This is paying.” Paying in Dayton, I had fun with it.

Both of the marketing that we shared with you takes you to your investors, takes you to JV partners, takes you to asset managers. They see what you’re doing on a constant basis. If they get your emails monthly or whatever, they might not have something at that point but further down the line they’d be like, “I’ve got that email from that person every month. Let me go find it or I’ve seen that video from that person,” and they go find it. They might not know your name, they might be like, “It’s that four-leaf clover, three-leaf clover type.” Visuals are very strong for people and they say a lot. You need to figure out how to make your company visual, whether it’s through pictures, emails and your logo. Even with Eric right now, he has AW Notes in the background. It’s very visual this whole entire time. You’re not going to forget that Eric is with AW Notes. It’s behind him. It’s visual.

I add that my email and on my Instagram, it has the little clover thing. Sometimes I’ll do an Instagram post and I’ll do the little emoji with that. It’s the color. It’s the logo, it’s my face, it’s the name, it’s your branding, everything.

Anything you post for your company, you should be putting your logo on it. If you use Canva, you can put your logo in the bottom or something, but you should be, if you can, be branding yourself in that way every single time you use visuals. Put that AW Notes on there. That’s in their face. They don’t question who you are or what you’re with or what you’re doing. Thanks for sticking with us, people. This is great. If you have any questions for Eric, if you’re trying to get through MailChimp and trying to figure out and you’re like, “Katie said something,” send me an email, text me, just reach out and I can try to walk you through. Remember, there are people who do MailChimp much better than I but for visuals, if you need any help, I’m here for you.

Good talk, good times.

 

Important Links

About Eric Hyde

NCS 290 | Market YourselfFirst and foremost, I am a DAD to my beautiful boys, Aidan and Liam, and husband to my wife, Lily. Day to day I am a police sergeant for the City of Gardena and have done so for the last 15 years. Life has many opportunities and most do not come walking through the front door. I believe opportunity is created which is why I created AW Notes, LLC, which is my note investing company.

I purchase non performing, first lien residential mortgage notes and because they are non performing I am able to purchase these at a steep discount. This allows me, through my attorneys and loan servicing companies, to work with borrowers to keep them in their homes, if they wish. This is always our # 1 exit strategy. However, there are many more exits. But I will not get into that here.

If you are interested in learning a bit more, please visit my website at www.awnotes.com. Click ‘videos’ for educational videos.

About Katie Moton

NCS 290 | Market YourselfKatie has been a real estate investor since 2013. Previous to Colletta Street Capital she was an elementary school teacher for 15 years specializing in Kindergarten through 6th grade. She holds a B.S. in Elementary Education from Graceland University in Iowa.  She has attended Scott Carson’s WeCloseNotes FastTrack program.

 

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