Replace Paid Leads with Your Own YouTube Leads | Jackson Wilkey

Justin Stoddart
Welcome back to The Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I am fired up about today's episode. We're going to tell you everything you're doing wrong with YouTube, which may be the fact that you don't see how big the opportunity is. Today's guest is phenomenal. I can't wait to introduce him to you hold tight. He's coming right up.

Justin Stoddart
Today's guest Jackson Wilkie. He's been in real estate for two years. He's already out of production. Yet you heard me say that right? Two years. And he's already out of production. How in the world did he do that? I'll tell you this. It wasn't by buying leads from Zillow. It was by creating his own lead source from YouTube. Jackson Wilkie, thanks for coming on the show today.

Jackson Wilkey
Thanks, man. pumped to do this again. You know, when I first started, it was just getting going on this now. It's it's a full revolution of things working for me.

Justin Stoddart
Yeah, yeah. I can't wait to hear. Let's let's dive right in. Right. I think first and foremost, I want to help agents to see the opportunity. I've been, you know, working with agents and I, they tell me that that Zillow used to be a really great opportunity. Like the leads were were were strong, they were good, the conversion rate was pretty high. I haven't met anybody, in all my conversations that says that they're as good as it used to be. And there continues to be a kind of a downward trend of the quality of leads and how much Zillow is charging, and even the demands that they're putting on you. In certain environments that require you to call back even before these leads are vetted. It's a total waste of time, in a lot of respects, definitely not a place where you can go to really build a long term career with strong margins, it's going to allow you to serve your clients at the highest level. You're a big proponent Jackson of the fact that people can own their own lead source, as EMI right, the upstream model was was really designed around this concept of getting to the customer before big tech portals. You guys are doing that through a beautiful way through YouTube. Talk to us about how you stumbled upon this idea or how you really uncovered the fact that you could create your own Zillow, right? You could cut out all of the big boys, you could become your own Big Boy, I talked to us about that.

Jackson Wilkey
When we talk about you know, funnel systems. When you think about the Zillow, the Redfins of the world, these people are already shopping at home. And so what what YouTube and the way that we've uncovered, you know, lead generation for us is, first of all, it's 100% conversion rate these people are calling us but secondly, we're so far above Zillow and Redfin because before anybody searches for a home, they're searching for where to live. And so we've unearthed that where to live. And so they are going through and watching these videos, and I'm talking, you know, I don't shoot videos under 20 minutes anymore 20-30 minute videos, and they will just go through all of my videos and they'll watch it and then they reach out and call so what happened was, it's all pain points.

Jackson Wilkey
When I got in I was brand new, I was your job right title rep for escrow. And I came from North Idaho as a, just a just blue blue collar worker, journeyman lineman, and then I'm thrown into escrow sales. So now I really don't know anything about real estate or escrow sales, but I just had a knack to get in front of people and then within 1011 months, I'm like, I'm going to jump into real estate. So here I am in a brand new market, brand new job. I don't know anybody except for realtors. And so I start doing what every real estate agent and what every Digital Marketer like Gary Vee says, hey, go do it via digital mayor because I knew I was going to do video right? Go be a digital mayor and shoot all these restaurant shop interviews because you'll just dominate the market. So I did I'm gonna go get her so me and my business partner Jesse doubt we started shooting these videos. I couldn't cold call I couldn't do I even landed one appointment. Justin cold calling. And for listing like I actually with the scripts, which sucks, landed and I didn't get the listing because I was that bad. So I started doing these videos like crazy because I was like, this is going to be the way I'm going to get business and man, I have the Beaverton Police Department. I had this schools, I was shooting videos for schools. I mean, I would walk around people like oh my gosh, you the video guy thought it was working to this day, basically two years, I still haven't received one deal from that. So I

Justin Stoddart
Here real quick, because I think that's where a lot of agents make the mistake. They say, Okay, I need to put out content. And I need to go highlight all the business owners in my community. And what you're saying is, Hey, guys, heads up. We tried that. It didn't work. It doesn't produce leads. It might make you like locally famous you might be the digital mayor, but it's not actually putting you in contact with people that are buying and selling. Is that accurate?

Unknown Speaker
So it's 100% accurate and it's painful because I hear it every day like in the Clubhouse and all these all these agents talking. Yeah, you need to go shoot these and then I go look and they don't even they don't do it. Or be they don't even have a real estate YouTube channel and I'm like, why is everybody teaching this when It's not the truth. And I've done the pain. So I like telling people right up when they start doing it, don't because honestly, here's the thing, and this is not rude to say, but what happened during COVID like the service industries got hammered restaurant owners. I mean, basically they're shutting their doors. So helping them I and that's the thing you hand out your cards all the time and it feels good and they Thank you up and down and I love the feelers you know the feeler so it felt good, but you don't get business from it. Maybe you get a onesie twosie but is that like we're building teams, massive teams is that scalable and global, you know, if you can only get one or two reach out. I didn't get any and I was doing it at a high level and I put it to YouTubes and Facebook's and Instagrams and everywhere. And it just was not something but that's what turned me into I actually found this gal over on the East Coast Karen Carr. She's a boss I call her the OG she she was doing this YouTube stuff, but also the pain point was she wasn't doing it the way I would, you know, escrow process and inspections. But she she unearthed the SEO aspects. So I started getting crazy and SEO and then started going to YouTube and doing these videos. But you know, the thing that happened was all the videos we were told to do restaurant interviews escrow, you think about it just if I do an inspection video or an escrow video, that person's already in escrow, or already closing on a home, so their realtor, it didn't make sense to me. So I started doing this keyword research basically using tools like TubeBuddy, you know, and I realized and in your market, obviously I moved from there. I live wherever I want now because of this. Beaverton, Oregon was searched 31,000 times a month in Google, it was search 375,000 times a month and YouTube and I'm like, Oh my God. I started looking at Milwaukee, Oregon Tualatin, Oregon, Hillsboro, they're just 10 times 15 times more a month in YouTube than Google. And that's where nobody in the world was teaching actual YouTube for real estate wasn't being done. So I called up Jesse, my business part. I'm like, dude, I got it, man. It's this vlog, we got to go out into the cities. People want to see this. They don't want to read about it anymore. So he and I, again, I'm in a new market. So I don't know anything. They I'm like, Jesse, why i...