The Relentless Rise: Building Leadership, Legacy, and a Life That Matters with Zachary Foust
Key Takeaways
- Consistency and discipline create the foundation for sustainable success in business and life.
- Authenticity and value-driven communication build stronger client trust than flashy marketing.
- Personal growth and self-mastery always precede lasting financial success.
United States Real Estate Investor®
The REI Agent with Zachary Foust
https://youtu.be/cpSjD1JGUng
United States Real Estate Investor®
Value-rich, The REI Agent podcast takes a holistic approach to life through real estate.
Hosted by Mattias Clymer, an agent and investor, alongside his wife Erica Clymer, a licensed therapist, the show features guests who strive to live bold and fulfilled lives through business and real estate investing.
You are personally invited to witness inspiring conversations with agents and investors who share their journeys, strategies, and wisdom.
Ready to level up and build the life you truly want?
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United States Real Estate Investor®
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From Military Mindset to Market Mastery
Zachary Foust didn’t stumble into real estate. He built his path with grit, resilience, and a relentless hunger to grow.
From his early days in the Army National Guard to becoming one of Delaware’s most respected real estate leaders, Zach’s story is one of transformation through discipline and heart.
His appearance on The REI Agent Podcast with host Mattias Clymer offered a masterclass in leadership, consistency, and the art of becoming your best self through business and purpose.
When asked how his military and athletic background shaped his success, Zach explained that structure and accountability were everything.
“The greatest leaders are also the best followers,” he said, a truth that resonates with anyone who’s ever tried to build something meaningful.
The Power of Persistence
Early in his career, Zach closed 24 homes in a single year purely through door knocking and Facebook Lives.
It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t easy. But it worked. He saw opportunity where others saw discomfort.
And that’s the thread running through his story: he acts when others hesitate.
“You can only get out of debt one dollar at a time,” Zach shared, breaking down success into small, consistent actions.
For him, progress is never about overnight wins but about mastering the reps.
Whether it’s social media, leadership, or personal growth, he preaches one thing above all: do the work.
From Mega Team to Meaningful Work
Zach built a thriving mega team, but with growth came chaos. Instead of chasing bigger numbers, he chose something deeper: balance.
“When you’re holding the hand of a child, you can’t walk as fast,” he said, reflecting on the hard lesson that success without peace isn’t success at all.
What followed was transformation.
He trimmed his team down to five powerhouse agents, prioritized culture over quantity, and rediscovered the joy of leadership.
The result?
Fewer headaches, higher profits, and a stronger purpose.
The Content Creator’s Blueprint
When Zach began creating content, he wasn’t a polished speaker or a social media expert.
He was a student. His first videos were raw, awkward, and far from perfect, but he kept going.
“You’re not shadow-banned, your content just isn’t worth 300,000 views yet,” he said with a laugh.
He built an entire YouTube ecosystem designed to attract real, qualified leads through honesty, education, and connection. His “triangle of business,” Google, Facebook, and YouTube, became the cornerstone of his success.
By posting three strategic videos each month, he now closes dozens of deals yearly from clients who already trust him before they ever pick up the phone.
Authenticity Wins Every Time
In a digital world overflowing with polished content and short attention spans, Zach believes authenticity is the ultimate currency.
He encourages agents to stop over-editing and start communicating from the heart.
“You don’t need a fancy setup. You need honesty,” he said.
He teaches that value always beats virality. His videos aren’t designed to entertain—they’re built to educate.
By focusing on real information, deep research, and local expertise, Zach built something far more powerful than a following. He built trust.
The Golden Nugget of Self-Mastery
While most of the conversation focused on marketing and leadership, Zach’s greatest insight came from within.
“The level of your personal growth will seldom ever be exceeded by your level of financial success,” he shared.
For him, journaling, meditation, and prayer are not luxuries; they’re necessities.
He reminded listeners that the true foundation of wealth isn’t money, it’s mindset. When you master yourself, the external success follows naturally.
His message was clear: “Stop throwing masks on everybody else. Put your mask on first.”
The Lesson Every Agent Needs
By the end of the episode, it was clear that Zach Foust’s story isn’t just about real estate. It’s about evolution.
He’s proof that discipline, compassion, and authenticity can build not only an empire but a meaningful life.
He left listeners with a challenge that applies far beyond business: keep showing up, stay consistent, and never lose sight of who you’re becoming in the process.
Because when you learn to lead yourself, everything else falls into place.
Final Thoughts
Mattias Clymer closed the episode in awe of his guest’s journey.
Zach’s story is not about luck; it’s about legacy. It’s about showing up when no one is watching and believing in what you can build before anyone else does.
Through service, struggle, and self-discovery, Zachary Foust embodies the spirit of The REI Agent Podcast: the pursuit of success that doesn’t just fill your bank account but fuels your soul.
For more content and episodes, visit reiagent.com.
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United States Real Estate Investor®
United States Real Estate Investor®
Contact Zachary Foust
United States Real Estate Investor®
Mentioned References
- Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
- Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek
- The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell
- Talk Like TED by Carmine Gallo
- The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy
- You Are a Badass at Making Money by Jen Sincero
- The Buddha and the Badass by Vishen Lakhiani
- Profit First by Mike Michalowicz
- The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod
- The Seven Phase Meditation Process by Vishen Lakhiani
- Tom Ferry
- Gary Vaynerchuk
- Tony Robbins
- Wim Hof
United States Real Estate Investor®
Transcript
Welcome back to the RIAgent. I am here with Zach Faust. Zach, thanks so much for joining us.
Great start. We're off to a roll. Mattis, what's going on, man?
See, we both messed up now. We're even. What's going on, brother?
Not too much, man. I'm not going to lie. I'm on the second day of after not sleeping much.
So if I'm a little groggy, I'm going to let you carry the show because you are energetic. And if you are not watching this right now, Zach has an amazing hat on, right?
This is actually, it's in disguise. You can't quite tell, but this is my tinfoil hat. This is my tinfoil hat of choice.
It's made out of straw.
There's a tinfoil lining, right?
Tinfoil lining. Yes. Dude, can I tell you, sleep kills.
Last week was the first week in my adult life where I didn't sleep well. I've never had an issue with sleeping. It's like two REM cycles, three hours and 15 each, wake up in the middle to go to the bathroom.
And then I'm weird. I love going to sleep. So like that middle of the night, go back to sleep.
So nice. Last week it was all jacked up and I was just the meanest version of myself.
It's terrible. It is terrible. I get it, dude.
Your energy is right there with me though. So I'm excited for this conversation. And anyone listening, you got a great host.
Oh, thanks, Zach.
Tell us a little bit, give us a bird's eye view of kind of what you do and who you are.
Sure, man. I'll start back from getting into the business. So before getting in, I was served in the US Army National Guard, did about six years full time with them, went overseas to Afghanistan, came back, joined the prison system, not in the prison system, joined as a correctional officer.
And that's where I got approached about, yeah, the right side of the bars. I got approached about real estate by an industry friend of mine who said, you got a little bit more personality than to be a prison guard. Why don't you think about being a realtor?
And just like any good opportunity, I slammed the door in its face three times until she actually signed me up for the course. Didn't pay for it. She left that part out.
Signed me up for it, got involved. Oh man, that was September, January. Yeah, September, 2016.
And then January, 2017, officially got my license. I got rookie of the year at Keller Williams that year. I sold 24 homes purely from door knocking and Facebook lives.
From there, next year opened into Instagram and doubled in about 36, started a small team, ballooned to about 18 agents until 2022 hit. And I decided to switch gears. Went from wanting a mega team to creating the round table as we call it, King Arthur's table.
Everybody at our team is a killer. No better system as far as I can find between mortgages, lawyer team, set up for the listing getting produced and ready to launch. I mean, we just have a great system to the point where I, as the leader, get to sit in my best position, which is marketing.
I love marketing. I love connecting. I love psychology.
I love learning about it and I love executing on it and testing and tweaking to see what works. So we have a five person media team that assists me with that from videographer and editors to a brand consultant. And I've just been learning and learning and learning as much as I can because I feel if you know how to brand, you know how to communicate, whether it's real estate or getting your kid to go to bed on time, you're probably going to be a little better at it.
I love it. Oh man, there's so much to unpack there. Um, yeah, I mean, so I definitely thank you for your service by the way.
And I, you know, I've definitely seen, uh, or had mild regrets for never joining like a organized sport, um, in high school or doing something like the military where I feel like, uh, yeah, you would have that discipline kind of just kind of ingrained in you a little bit more. And that's a hard lesson to learn on your own. So, I mean, how much of your success do you attribute to that?
Um, you mentioned high school sports from 12 on, that was all I did as well. Um, so I, I definitely point back to not necessarily even the sport itself. I remember coaches moments.
They'd pull me to the side and say something or, or something they do in practice, whether it was getting all riled up or just those moments of, of soft leadership and going back to it. Like you didn't see it as leadership at the time. You're just like, Oh, that's cool.
Where that worked. But later on in life, starting to connect those dots to real life situations, I agree. Organized sports is great military.
It was kind of a little bit of an opposite effect as far as leadership goes. I got blessed with some awful leaders, but at the same time, I then got to see the other side of the coin. And so then when I delved into real estate entrepreneurship and I started picking up, you know, the first creator I followed back in 2016 was Gary Vaynerchuk and Tony Robbins.
Gary was a little bit smaller. He's still big at the time. He's just God at this point in social media.
But leaders like him, John Maxwell, Napoleon Hill, Simon Sinek, you know, getting to form what a leader looks like and to get to the baseline understanding of the greatest leaders are also the best followers. It usually is, has just gotten me to the point where I feel that I can lead a team to a more successful life. And that's all I'm looking to do.
I want them to make more money, be happier when they're off, be better people. And I think we've accomplished that. And I hope to grow that.
Yeah, that's amazing. But I think like with all that you're talking about, like organized sports leadership, as you just described it, you know, the more practice you get, the more that you study, that you exercise, all that kind of stuff will then translate into, you know, being good at it. And I think that that's something that's also not easily learned.
I mean, like, you know, you get out what you put in, you know, and I think that's what you just described is that you had to go through the process of really learning how to be a leader.
Yeah. The only way you can eventually learn to lift 300 pounds is if you start by lifting 50 pounds or the only way you can run a marathon is if you know how to walk around your block. You know, you can only get out of debt $1 at a time.
It's just a little steps at a time. And it seems grueling, but that the J curve effect is so true of you start and you're excited and you're like, yes. And then you're like, oh, this is really hard.
I hate this. And then right here is when a lot of people quit. But that plateau and then that hockey stick is right around the corner usually with consistency.
And it's tough because you're like, is this going to work? You don't know, but it usually does.
Yeah. Yeah. And how does that translate?
I mean, did you experience that with your social media attempts? I mean, I would imagine you weren't naturally amazing in front of the camera the first time you jumped on a Facebook Live, you said, right?
Yeah. Facebook Live was where it was at. And it's funny.
It's a funny story about that because in my first year in real estate, I went to Keller Williams because they're the training brokerage. There were a lot of agents want to get started because they have so much like a boot camp type environment and the agents typically go into this office. So I remember there's two different instances.
I walked around the whole office finding everybody I could experience in season. How can I get business? And they all said the same thing.
Leverage who, you know, leverage your sphere, leverage your ecosystem, past clients. I'm like, I don't have any past clients. All of my sphere barely got out of high school.
I need to do something a little different. And none of them were using Facebook. And it happened to be that Facebook was free.
So I just started doing it. I closed two or three deals from it. And that was enough for me to say, like, hey, I've been doing this for six months.
I got two or three deals from it. And a lot of that had to do with nobody was there. Very different environment from today.
But to answer your question cleanly, yes, putting in reps, rewatching those reps to analyze and becoming more seasoned, becoming less filler worded, getting a better tonality, a better pacing, understanding the difference between talking on a stage versus talking to a camera and bridging those gaps. Because let's be frank, Matt, we're both sitting in a room alone talking to a piece of fluff and metal and staring at a piece of glass. There's no one here right now.
We're crazy, but people are listening to it and they're here and we're in this own little digital community. And it's a hard skill to gather because it's not like we're talking at Target. Everybody, if you saw your friend at Target, someone came up to say, oh, Mary, you know, how's the real estate market?
You're not going to say pause and then rush to the bathroom and check your hair and check your makeup. Make sure your clothes aren't wrinkly and you got your big smile on. You're not going to do that.
You're going to talk and you're going to be you and you're going to be normal. And if we could just learn to do that in front of a camera, I feel everybody listening to this could close a few more deals and bridge a few more relationships. Yeah.
And it comes from reps, which is the hardest part because you're putting yourself out there and nobody enjoys hearing themselves talk.
Nobody.
And dude, anytime I'm nine years in on creating content consistently, consistently, and I do watch, especially my longer clips at two X speed and I'm taking notes, filler word count. Oh, you said this again. Oh, you keep saying so then maybe I should substitute that or, or, or baselining it against other things.
Like I'm, I'm, I'm currently finishing a, a news journalism course. I want to get better at this, communicating a story to a camera and taking that knowledge and backing it up against what I'm doing or taking the storyboarding element. I'm getting from talk like Ted, a book that I'm reading right now and moving it in.
Like, how can I adjust? How can I better outline this? And you only dig deeper as you dig deeper.
Everyone wants to get to the bottom of the hole immediately. And, and some people are blessed enough to do that. I am not one of those people.
Yeah. Yeah, definitely not either. Um, but yeah, that continued pursuit, the, the consistency, the just, you know, not getting lost in the day-to-day actions, but seeing maybe the big picture and just kind of keep working towards it.
And the continuing education, like you just talked about, I mean, that's so key and refining you yourself as you go. So, um, how did you take those principles into your real estate practice itself? I mean, so you, you started getting some momentum with the Facebook live to close some deals.
Uh, how long until you started the team again?
Started the team in 2019. So it was about two and a half years in my career that started to have enough business to toss around.
And we had three people. And, and yeah, so it was just a capacity thing that, that made you do that or, or what was. Yeah.
Which to anybody listening, that's, that's a big question. When do I start a team? When you can't do all the business, when you can't do it all.
Um, the only time we started to expand to a mega team and I dropped out of production was when we brought on a transaction coordinator and I closed 63 deals in one year. And I was like, I'm not doing this again. Uh, let's bring on two more agents.
Let's bring, bring the splits together to make it make sense that I can do my highest and best use activity, which isn't showing homes. I'm not really good as an agent, to be honest with you. Sometimes people say things I'm like, what?
Like, Oh, the outlets look a little funny. I'm like, shut up. Like, what are you talking about?
I, I, I lack, um, sometimes I lack logistical empathy sometimes. Uh, so regardless, I'm, I'm a much better communicator to the soldiers than being a physical soldier myself. I, I, I'm too, I'm too big picture-y honestly.
And sometimes that's good because a lot of my younger clients struggle to, you know, look big picture wise when it comes to investments and equity and long-term growth. So it's a balance, but I definitely like my position better.
Sure. Okay. So, uh, you didn't start with like an admin or transaction coordinator.
You started with two agents to help with the amount of deals you had coming in.
Yeah, the rhythm went, uh, agent came on and partnered as a buyer's agent. We brought on an admin. We ended up cycling through admins four times before we landed on one that we kept and now still my admin today.
Um, so yeah, we got up to having three without a real structured admin. We had one, but it wasn't our best. Then we got the TC and then we moved on to expanding the team agent wise as we did that.
And we got us rockstar admin in the middle of that.
Nice. So were you then focusing or shifting your focus to the listing side? Um, at this point when you're bringing the buyer agent, uh, in a buyer agents.
Yeah. At that point, listings were my focus of the anywhere between, like I said, 36 to 65 deals that were closed by me personally. It was a good half and half mixture in Delaware.
We have a lot of internal buyers where people would, or at least then not so much now in this market, but a lot of people who would, you know, sell in middle of Delaware and they want to get closer down to the beaches and Southern Delaware or, you know, they were working for the military at the Air Force base and now they're out and they want to get to Magnolia. So a lot of internal transactions. And that was my marketing strategy because my brain was like, it's a listing.
So I get to market it. I get to do a cool listing tour and I get a buy.
It doesn't, why wouldn't I do this? Right. Yeah, that makes sense.
Um, yeah, no, I think it's interesting. You talked about going to a mega team and then kind of scaling that back. Um, and I wonder if that's a common progression for a lot of people.
I think, um, quality over quantity comes to mind. Is that, is that kind of the reason for it? Um, I know that having a lot of people under you can be a stress and, and you know, if it's not necessarily fruitful, if you get, you know, 80% of the deals getting closed by 20% of the people, that kind of math, um, is, is that kind of what led you to make that transition?
Well, you know, when you're high, when you're holding the hand of a child, you can't walk as fast. You damn sure can't run. And we had a lot of young agents on the team, uh, both young and just their skillset and physical age.
But you're right. There was about 80% of our business that was being done by a fifth of our agents. And for me, it made no sense to continue.
Again, I lack that tiny empathy. Like, Oh, I didn't make my calls. I'm like, this is the third time we've talked about this.
Do you want to make your calls or not? I'm not your cheerleader. I want you to succeed.
I'm giving you the tools to succeed. But then you grab the hammer. You're like, I don't want to swing it.
Then don't leave. Like I'll hand it to someone who wants to swing three hammers. And we have those people because once you swing the hammer, you're like, Oh, this works.
Like give me more hammers. Give me a drill. Let's build something bigger.
I love those people. I want to build with like-minded people and yeah, a little selfishly. I also wanted to have less stress going into every weekly team meeting and setting up every class, setting up every webinar, bringing in guests to talk to them, setting up lenders and lawyers.
Like it's a lot when the system is really simple. We have a good one and it works and I don't have to walk into a single home this year and we're going to close 112 of them with five agents. Those are really good numbers and stress is lower.
Happiness is up. Chemistry is up. And most importantly for every single person listening, deciding, do I want a big team, small team, solopreneur, just get a TC, go in the path of the most profitability mixed with your life.
If you're a single man, single woman, no kids, no spouse, like go all out, do it. But you may want to have your weekends in your family or at least your evenings, like find the balance and figure out where's the best path to achieve that. Because I promise you a mega team isn't it.
And I promise you solopreneur probably also isn't it. So it's somewhere probably in that mixture of small team that is ready to go. You're a stronghold or, and by the way, women are so good at that.
The all women's teams like five just so good. Love those teams. They always kill it.
Or you're a surgeon and you get all the assistance and all the payroll around you so that you can go in and do the surgery and then get out. Someone puts on your gloves, someone sets up the person, someone gets them knocked out, someone gets the tape over them. Someone sets up, brings them back to the room.
There's a nurse taking care of them, right? The surgeon walks in and does the surgery. That might be you, but you also might be the RN.
You got to know your role and then put yourself in it.
I like that metaphor. Um, if you could go back and start the team journey over again, what would you tell yourself? Like, or what would you kind of, uh, focus on?
Have you brought in any kind of, uh, analysis or, uh, personality assessments, that kind of stuff into the mix. And are you still looking for, like, would you take out on anybody new at this point?
So I'll answer the questions backwards. Yes, we will take on someone new in 2026, probably two agents. And that's mainly just because of we're getting more business and there's only a certain amount of bodies.
The thing I would change, or if I could go back and restructure, um, I probably would've taken one more year to grind it out myself and not gone mega, but that's only if I had hindsight of 2020 in the market shifting. Um, 2020 to 2022, anybody we brought in brought in profit because it was easy to close a deal and we had lots of handoff. So I, I probably the only major change I would have made, and this is good advice for anybody, whether you've been in for a year or 20 years, document the process like document.
I'm talking to make a vlog, but you could just start by, and you can go on my tick tock or Instagram at Zachary loft right now. And you'll see so many of these videos where it's just, I take the camera, the phone, I put it on my steering wheel. I press record and I start and talk.
I don't know what to say. What would you say to a client? What's going through your head?
What's your, what's your current beef with what's going on right now? What are you happy about? What are you grateful for?
What's the story of a client you just had last week? What's a closing you just had? And you're like, Oh my goodness.
All right. So I got a story real quick. So yesterday was nuts.
I'll get to that. But right now, just get you up to speed. I have six total clients, three are buyers, three are listers, but one of them actually closed yesterday and that's a store and then lay it out.
People are interested in that. And if you have no clients and you're just getting started even better, I wish I picked up a camera and said, this is day zero of me starting my real estate career. I don't know where this is going to go, but I'm going to learn.
I'm going to document it and I'm going to bring you along for the journey. If you know somebody awesome, but that's not why I'm doing it. I want to just be very open and honest.
I'm not the smartest. I'm not the most, not, or I'm not the most experienced and I for daggone sure don't have all the knowhow yet, but I want you to watch with a clear view of how I'm going to develop that. Talk about the books you're reading, talk about the seminar you're going to talk about your clients, talk about the leads you got and slowly but surely you're just going to get better at talking and communicating and that makes you better at listing appointments.
It makes you better at closing a lead over the phone. It makes you better at the closing table. When things get a little irate, it helps everywhere and I'll double down with one more thing.
If I did that sooner, it would have forced me to do more of what I'm doing now than which is when you're in the position of teacher, you have to learn more than the student. You oftentimes have to learn not just what you're talking about, but the rebuttals to maybe what you're talking about and seeing if there's any legitimacy to the rebuttals and how you would answer that and you need to look into have other people already tackled these things. What's going on in this market?
Is this a micro market issue? Is this a macro market issue? And I'm an economy nerd, okay?
So I love looking at graphs and documents. Maybe the person listening to this isn't, but taking something and communicating about it and documenting your lifestyle and journey in real estate and separating this thought process of, oh, I need to be a professional. No, be you as a professional.
It's not this, oh, 80, I've heard the 80-20 rule. It's BS, like 80% of your content professional, 20% relational or whatever. No, 100% of your content is you doing your thing.
Just you doing your thing openly, honestly, and which was some reality because so many people do not find reality in realty. Realty is just about commission breath to the consumer. You're just trying to get a sale.
If you break that wall and make them realize, oh, wait, this person actually cares about me. They care so much. They're doing research into the market.
They looked into the minutes of the local town hall meeting about that 212 unit development that's coming up and they're telling me the three things I can look out for. They're telling me the seasonality in my specific market and how me as an investor can know, oh, this is the time to shoot. I'm making a video tomorrow for Delawareans to understand, people that relocate to Delaware and we can talk on the YouTube funnel.
I think that's very important, having a YouTube funnel. We're making a video telling people the prime time to buy statistically is coming up. November 17th to December 30th is the best time to potentially buy a home.
You have a surplus in market. You have a decrease in buyer demand and you have an opportunity. If you bring that to them with no, hey, you got to work with me.
I always say, work with your professional of trust. Guess what? If you keep doing it, I'm going to be the real estate agent of trust.
People are getting to know you through this content, which is a good segue. Let's just go ahead and get into your YouTube niche and any suggestions you have for people listening about how they could model what you're doing.
I want to start this with everybody listening to this is going to be excited about the opportunity at the end of the rainbow, but I promise about 2% are actually going to do it. I've talked to a lot of people about these exact strategies. I have forums.
I have webinars I've done. It's just a simple fact of there is a little bit of work. There is a little bit of time, but there's nothing that will set you in with a more concrete, legitimate lead generating source longterm than YouTube.
Reason being is YouTube is owned by Google. YouTube is the second most used search platform on the planet next to Google and YouTube from short videos to long videos are the storefront of advertising. Let me explain why it's important.
I'm going to explain to you exactly what we do. Matt, cut me off at any moment if I breeze over something that I should go deeper into. YouTube is like a storefront and Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Reddit, whatever you want to use Twitter X are billboards.
When you're scrolling, you are seeing whatever you see in a pattern. Algorithm is going to try to favor one thing over another, but it's almost like Salvation Army or Goodwill. You don't know what you're going to walk into.
You don't know what you're going to see. YouTube and Google are a little different. They're like a storefront because somebody is only going to make it to your content, not via some random scroll, but by typing and they're going to say, I want to know more about X Delaware housing market summer.
When's the market going to crash? When to get a good rate, how to get a good more like they're seeking out knowledge and you're going to be at the end of the knowledge funnel. With YouTube, we are very strategic and you can look up our YouTube channel.
It's called Living in Southern Delaware. It's not my name. My name is our national channel, two different YouTubes.
I have a national funnel, which we are not going to talk about today. I want to talk about the relocation funnel. The relocation funnel, the YouTube funnel is built on three main components.
If you want to take a note down, take this down as a note, Facebook, Google, and YouTube presence. That is our triangle of business. If you have a Google business profile and a Google local service ad profile, those are the two that need to be set up a Google business profile.
That is your public source that holds your reviews, shows your name. We'll pop you up with a phone next to it so they can call you or get directions. So important.
You don't have that. That's step number one. Step number two, especially if you already have that's Google local service ads.
These are the ads that pop up. A lot of people don't know this. If you type in best realtor in my area, the first thing that pops up is a local service ad.
If you look up, sell my home. If you look up realtor to list my home, probably a local service that's going to come up. And Matt, when people are looking to buy homes, Tom Ferry told me this once.
I was like, oh yeah. When people are looking to buy homes, they search for homes. When people are looking to sell homes, they search for realtors.
So these local service ads, a lot of times end up in listings a lot of times and they're cheap. So that's Google Facebook. The reason I say Facebook is also because this is one of the main SEOs that's going to show up your Facebook business page.
So when someone's typing your name in to see what's this guy all about, is he active? Is this girl's team active? They're going to find these main core three, especially the YouTube, if you make it properly, which we'll talk about.
So having your Facebook business profile updated regular posts. And when I say regular, at least weekly, you don't have to go daily. And remember, this is just proof of business.
You don't have to do anything exciting or amazing. It's just proof of business. That's all they're looking for.
A couple of reviews and proof that you're doing what they want you to do with them. Now YouTube. So Google is just getting it set up, getting local service ads running.
Facebook, just getting it set up, having a business page. That's what I'm talking about. Not a physical profile.
You can have a profile and that's where you can make reels and do whatever you want to do. But the business page is what's important. YouTube.
Now this is the most important part because this is what's going to bring people to Google. You, if you're the person that informs them and they start digging deeper into you, they can't find nothing. They cannot find nothing.
They have to find a Zillow profile with reviews. They have to find Google. They have to find something that proves to them.
You are the person they want you to be, not just some random guy or girl on the internet. So on YouTube, here's what we do. We post three times a month.
That's it. Three times a month, a piece of content that focuses on one of three categories. Relocating, how to's and best ofs.
Moving to, uh, moving to how to and best of. So best of is the five best restaurants in Southern Delaware. The five best places to go on vacation in Southern Delaware.
The five best beaches tourists will disagree. Like, you know, those types of titles. Okay.
Those are like top of funnel type. They get you involved. The next are the how to's, how to get a great deal in Delaware, how to invest in Felton, Delaware, how to, uh, retire to the beaches, how to pick the right home in Delaware.
How did you, these are the type of topics, how to's do so well all the time. And these are the videos where honestly you have permission to talk and talk and talk. Because if someone's looking to get information about for us, relocation and retirement, how many pieces of information do they want from the hospitals to the golf courses, to the things to do, to the restaurants, to what's it going to be like in 10 years?
What's going to be the value of my home then? Is it going to be better? It's going to be worse.
Am I picking the right town? Am I picking the right area? Is this even the right state and breaking down the tax benefits, the updates, the minutes, the literal information you've dug up for them and the deeper you go, the more they can be like, wow, this person isn't just saying by with me because I'm the best.
They're proving it. And you have this opportunity again at the end of a learning funnel, they have want to learn. Now you're teaching them and you're teaching them at a much higher level.
I've said this before that that's a simple formula of you need to have your highest and best client, your ideal avatar. And if you plus in a solid USP for them, a unique selling proposition for them, some call a UVP, a unique value proposition. It's going to equal your ideal business.
Just take the person, know them backwards and forwards, create content that solves their problems 17 different ways. And you're going to get their business. For example, my avatars, Tina and Tom, Tina and Tom are between the ages of 53 and 57.
They live in Northeast America. They've owned a home for more than 10 years and they want to retire to Delaware. I know their problems.
I know what they're worried about. I know what their pillow talk is about. I want to answer their questions before they even think they have them.
And when we accomplish that, they look into our assets like our moving guide. We have a full PDF of every neighborhood that's actively being built with the builder rating them, reviewing them, what's good, what's bad. We have further videos, five part courses on exactly how to move to Delaware.
We have funnels set up so that they can receive updates on homes that are hitting the market in a few months that we already know are about to be listed. We're giving real value to these people. And so when we're giving that real value, the law of reciprocity jumps in.
They start researching us. Then they find us on all the other platforms like, wow, these guys are legit. And then we get the business.
And that is our triangle. Google, Facebook, and YouTube, three posts a month on YouTube. I think you could do two.
The beauty of YouTube is a video is going to be there for years. So my only knock on people that use YouTube is they use it for daily updates and listings. Those things die.
The day after your daily update, not a valuable update anymore. Week after your weekly update, not valuable anymore. So create perma content or at least things that are going to last for six plus months is my best advice.
And anybody listening to this that hears this and like, wow, I have a lot of questions. Just DM me on Instagram at Zachary Loft. I'm happy to answer any questions and give you the full book on what we're doing.
Wow. Well, last year we closed 58 deals from YouTube alone. And as a team leader, when you can provide the lead, you make a better split a for the team and B these people come in ready to go.
They're not dancing around. They're sending us three paragraph emails, having hour long phone calls because they trust us. They trust our recommendations.
They trust what we're saying and what we're saying is accurate, but it's hard to get that trust in a sales position. And that comes from on, uh, on sale, contingent value. They don't feel like they have to use you, but they're getting mass value.
They're going to trust you.
I love it. When you're deciding about what to film about, are you using any kind of SEO type tools? What are people searching for that kind of thing to determine what the best next video would be?
I know you mentioned earlier that you have like a team that helps kind of with the production overall, right?
Yeah. And it's a growing process. Um, the SEO research I think is good, but I think also you can get lost in the sauce.
Like I'm a real tacky guy. There's only about 10,000 people a month that search for moving to Delaware a month. So it, there's not like this sub niche that I could really attack.
Like if there were a hundred thousand, like maybe you're in Manhattan, probably a sub niche you could attack. You're in Miami, probably a sub niche you could attack. But for Delaware as a whole, we attack Southern Delaware.
So the SEO isn't large enough that I'm worried about it. I'm also in an area where like, if you're in Austin, Texas, and you're against my boy Jeremy Knight, or you're in Orlando, Florida, and you're against my boy Ken Pozek, that's gonna be tough. But the beauty of it is there's still room because people get so big, right?
People get turned off sometimes by that. People get turned off by the giant team. Sometimes people like to know that they're gonna call you who only has 300 views, 300 storefront views, by the way, 300 storefront visits, people walking through and exploring your products and services, not just 300 views of a billboard.
Very different, very different. I will take a 300 view video on my relocation YouTube, over a 300,000 view on my TikTok every day and Sunday. Not even close.
I would sacrifice all 1.8 million of my followers on TikTok for 50,000 people that just wanted to move to Delaware. It's not about the number, it's about the value you're giving to that specific sect. So know your specific audience and then create value for them.
And to better answer your question, are we using SEO now? Not a ton. We're using a lot of client conversations, questions we get on the phone, questions we get in the email.
And you start building up that database when you're serving Tina and Tom for so long and you're like, you know, I'm worried about this area because there's only two hospitals and one only has senior care. Oh yeah, that's a hole. We need to address this.
And that, that brings value and it builds on itself. But if you start from a foundation of really wanting to help people and you're not just like, how can I make the most money possible? Like slow down.
How can you bring the most value possible? The other side of the rainbow is money, but we need to start with value. And if you start there, it'll build, it'll build.
You'll learn and learn and learn. You'll get comments, you'll get a client conversations and you'll slowly learn, oh, this is what my people want.
Yeah, that makes sense. And I think when you, you mentioned kind of getting lost in the sauce, I think that can also be difficult for people when they think about the logistics of actually filming and editing. So, I mean, I imagine you wouldn't say that somebody needs to start off with, you know, a very fancy camera, you know, a huge editing production team, et cetera.
Like what, how could somebody just kind of start taking action on this idea?
So I would pick your place and I would make that your place for a month. And what I mean by pick your place, I have a place that is the Planet Fitness and Aldi parking lot where I put my phone up on my steering wheel and that's where I'm shooting a lot of my longer form vertical content. And that does go out on the TikToks and Instagrams.
We do post it on the national YouTube, but they don't do nearly as well because it's not the right format for the horizontal. All you got to do is do the same exact thing. Horizontal video, turn your camera sideways, use the back facing you.
So the screen is facing away. So you're using your best camera and you can do something as simple as being in a condensed, well-insulated of sound room or just getting one of those little lapel mics. Easy.
You don't have to have one of these. You don't have to have a DSLR camera. You don't have to have studio lighting.
You don't have to have a DSLR camera. You can get just as much business rolling your way by shooting a video horizontally with your phone. Decent lighting could be in front of a window and posting it.
Now, when it comes to editing, that's always a big hump. It depends on what you're shooting. And I can tell you, we are moving toward a world where less editing wins.
Why do I say that? I think people are over inundated with dopamine led content, meaning it's cut, cut, sound, sound, go, go, go. People are getting a little overwhelmed with it and are appreciating raw eloquency.
When I can see that you're actually just speaking to your tune and speaking professionally about your thing. And you don't have to have a huge amount of edits or pictures or video or anything like that. We do have some videos that go out maybe about once a month that are a lot of clips or graphs, but it's usually only showing headlines that we're referencing or a graph that we're talking about.
It's not in depth. And I do have an editor. I highly suggest a VA editor.
If you need a VA editor, DM me. I'll get you my source on who I go through. I'm helping a brokerage right now build out their suite of 50 editors.
I've helped a few different teams and companies do that because there are specific instructions you can give that editor. But if you're a point where you can't edit, let me tell you right now, even better, even better, because it's going to force you to think with your brain as to how to talk to this camera efficiently. And it's also going to teach you the basics of editing basics.
Like the video shouldn't start silent. Cut it to the very first moment. Your lips start moving.
You can cut out your pauses. You can cut out your arms. Ah, so then what's.
And also it's teaching you that you're doing it and you can get better at taking them out. So the more that you're editing your own mistakes and you're in the seat with CapCut or InShot or one of those internal editors, you're going to see for yourself and you may be like, I stink. No, you don't post it, edit it what you need, and then take what you've learned and go into the next one.
I can't for the life of me believe that Steph Curry made his first NBA three. I can't I for the life of me when he was eight, 10, 12, 14, and whenever he took his first one, I'd like to believe he missed probably the first few, right? The man has taken, someone did the math on this over 1.8 million three point shots because it is 300 a day over his career, 300 a day in practice. He's practiced three point shooting 1.8 million times all to make 3,400 in the game. Wow. So we have to get used to grinding out the imperfections.
We have to get used to that. And every single person listening to this, especially if you've been an agent for three, five, eight, 10 plus years, you know you've only gotten better with reps. Every listing appointment, you've gotten better.
Every showing you've gotten better. Heck, you probably had a showing where you said something that you've never said before and you're like, oh, that was quippy. I'm going to use that every time now.
Or a doc, you present the documents and a CIS says, this is a fiduciary relationship. That doesn't mean I'm a douche. Here's what it means.
You could have your cute little lines or whatever, but you're only going to discover those through repetition, right? Bring it to go ahead. I said, that's a good one.
Bringing it into the gym. You're only getting it better at bench pressing from doing it so often. And then you get to the point of doing it so often your brain is calculating things differently.
And now you're like, okay, should my elbows be here or here to generate the most power? Should I put my thumbs like this or like this? Should I bring it down to my chest or do I need to get my elbows parallel to the ground?
You start researching and start looking like, okay, what's the optimal amount of reps? Eight. Okay.
I need to do this for hypertrophy. What's hypertrophy and what's caloric deficit? What is that surplus?
And you're going to start learning and learning and learning and learning because you're doing the thing in the gym and you want to learn it. And then you're going to be like, well, how do I eat better to be able to maximize my results? And what days should I be going?
How many days should I be going? And you're going to learn, but everyone wants to know everything walking into it. And Steph Curry just didn't make his first three.
So I don't understand it. You got to do the thing to learn the thing.
No, that's, that's great. Another thing that I, I see a lot of, and I often wonder, and I want to get your opinion on this is you see a lot of what's popular on the, you know, like you said, like the, the, the scrolling feed that you get fed a real estate feed and you see a lot of funny, trendy kind of content where, you know, I don't know the guy's name, but he likes speed runs through the house.
Oh yeah. The guy out in a DC area. Yeah.
I love him.
And there's a lot of fun stuff. There's some hilarious people. And you had talked earlier about like 80, 20, like not buying into that, like, you know, being professional, you know, et cetera.
But what do you think it, how do you think that stuff translates here? Like, should people be looking for a, their angle of a trendy thing or just focus on, like you were talking about earlier too, like the, just answering kind of questions and, and trying to help, help people with common things that they might be looking for.
Well, I think there's a, there's a multitude of ways to approach this. There's no one answer, right? Um, my, my advice for anybody who hasn't gotten started in anything, social media is to focus on that triangle first, Google, Facebook, and anybody who is doing social media that isn't seeing the success from it, especially those scrolling platforms to, to possibly refocus on that triangle.
If someone is having marginal success on social media, I'm not saying to stop. I have closed deals, plenty of deals over my career, probably over a hundred now that have based from TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, something to do with short form. But, but it is becoming a denser field of people.
It is becoming a more talented field of creators day by day. And I gotta say, I do see AI as being something that's going to make it harder and harder for new faces to make it. Cause I honestly, I think within a year you'll see a new face hit, uh, that you've never seen before.
And you're going to wonder, is this AI you're going to wonder. Yeah. So I think right now is the time to attack, especially if you have a social platform already to grow, to have a face within your niche, because I think that could be an issue in the future regardless of that.
Um, I think reps are important. Yeah. I think there's no better place than an Instagram story to practice communication.
60 second hits, 30 second hits. It's gone in 24 hours. What's the worry.
I think those places are great for learning without any biased, how good you are at your content. Because if you're like, I only get 300 views every single time. Do you know how many people, 300 people is, that's a lot.
And B no, you're not shadow banned. Your content just isn't worth 30,300,000 yet. And I gotta be real.
I've had videos I've posted, uh, you know, 10,000 views and that's a lot. And I'll post that same video with a little tweak a month later, 1.2, 1.2 million. So sometimes it's just the algorithm at the time.
It's not you always. One point of your question was, should I focus on a niche trend? Um, that guy that you brought up, I don't necessarily love that as a long-term branding play being the quick tour guy.
Yeah. Ultimately there's no unique value to that because you're not going to speed through the home with me when they're there. You're, you're comically presenting the listing.
And I think it could result in some, some Gen Z relational listings, but let's be honest, how many Gen Zs are listing homes they've bought? Very few even own a home. So I think you also have to focus on the market.
You know, our relocation market, Tom and Tina, I don't necessarily love Tom and Tina. Tom and Tina are just opportune. We have a lot of people moving into Delaware out of state that have money and they have a home and they have liquid assets that can move around.
If your focus is first time home buyers, if your focus is young military, if your focus is Gen Z, that's a decision for you to make, but I'd advise against it personally. Yeah. The niche side is tough.
My opinion would be that a loft in those that are so out there that they're getting a lot of eyeballs on their content because it's really funny or whatever, like, like that speed tour person. Yeah. Probably wouldn't be getting a ton of people wanting to actually work with them, but they might be able to sell their, you know, I'll, I'll promo your, your listing for you with this.
It's going to get a lot of eyeballs, that kind of thing, but I'm not sure about getting actual clients. I feel like it might be, you know, I think there is a level of professionalism too, that people would actually want to make this, you know, big decision. And if, if the content isn't necessarily professional, I feel like there's a bit, I don't know, it seems like a strategy that's not really going to be best for getting clients.
I'll break this down simpler for someone that's looking to do this. All right. I think there's three routes you can go on, on the short form platforms.
And this does apply to YouTube a little bit. Now I'll connect what applies to YouTube on the short form platforms. I believe there's three routes you can go to our localized and one is national.
Now the national side, I think there's a lot of value to be very in depth in the knowledge of what's going on in our national economy. This is something that I lean into pretty heavily, federal reserve, what's going on with rates, what's going on with housing supply, political promises versus results. I think it's really important.
So I think there's a lot of value in being able to bring somebody information that maybe they're trying to form an opinion on, but don't quite understand. Maybe the Gen Z doesn't quite understand why housing is unaffordable and maybe boomers don't quite understand how this isn't just a, you know, a cycle that affordability is not just coming back. You know, maybe there's a things seem to be really expensive.
Maybe it's valuable for me to break down year by year, how that actually is the case. Maybe it's been even underreported. I think that's important.
And by doing that, you are going to grow in a national following that opens up the door for a larger funnel into your local. You can also use this as a leverage to gain referrals across the nation, which I do often. So there is value to that, but a lot of people want to focus on the local.
Now here's the thing on the local. I think there's only two ways you can do this. A, you have to be super niche, super niche.
And that niche-ness either needs to be about location or education. Location is, I'll point out a guy who's one of the first to do it, like Kyle Whistle out in California, where it was the restaurants. It was the opportunities for fun.
It was the events. It was the farmer's markets. It was the beach marathon.
It was the big music festival. He's always bringing up and being at the locations. He's reviewing the food.
He's talking about the areas, which street versus that street. He's giving you that in-depth local knowledge that only a local can give you. Only a local professional can give you, really.
There's a lot of value to that. Two, and by the way, option two and three are just going to have less views, but they're going to be the views that you want. Because if someone's sticking around for that, more interested.
The other is educational. I'll shout out Rachel Pearson. She's up in Massachusetts.
She does this really, really well. She's even connected now with the governor of Massachusetts, the mayor of Boston, because she creates content about the local market, her local 15,000-person town. She's reading through the minutes that are being released from the committee meeting around the new stop sign.
She's walking through the debate that happened at the latest legislation meeting at the local town hall with some concerned neighbors with the congresswoman. She's digging into the logistics of the area. I say either one of these work, but her option is going to lead toward more listings.
Here's why. She is giving information that locals really want to hear, while the locational stuff is usually what out-of-staters and people relocating in want to hear. You can pick your poison there.
Again, both those are going to lead to less views, but they're more pungent views. That's where, again, on the YouTube side, you can do either one of those too. Education, location.
You could be doing the tours. You could be doing like we did a walking tour. I got a camera, pinned it to my chest, and did a walk on the six-mile trail the whole time.
I'm working right now. It's just crazy. It's just a walking tour with some music.
People moving in like watching those, like seeing what the walk is like, like interviews with the builders, like interviews with the deans of the schools and the principals and the firefighters. People love that. Those would be really the three pools I think you can most optimally operate.
I love it. I need to ask you about a golden nugget. I feel like everything you've said so far has been a golden nugget.
Oh, dude. Thank you. Do you have anything specific in mind for that question?
Is it okay to get out of just the commission finance side of it and something that will lead to it? I think most all of us would benefit more from understanding ourselves. I would challenge every single individual here to journal and meditate.
That might sound very altruistic and woo-woo. It's a lonely world constantly peddling for sales and commissions every three to four-month cycle. You got to keep the lead funnel moving.
You got to keep the clients happy. You got to keep things moving. Oftentimes, we leave ourselves behind in that effort.
Meditation, which by the way, I'm a devout Christian, is not satanistic or weird if you're a Christian. Meditation is prayer. It's the same thing.
Meditating in silence, allowing your body to reset, eating well, intermittent fasting, working out, waking up early, having a type of routine that you can lean on is so huge. I think in a world especially where every 24 hours can be different, every week could be filled or empty depending on what's going on, especially by the way for the team leaders listening right now, the stress levels of management, you need to be able to put your mask on first on the airplane. Whenever the plane's going down, they say, you got to put your mask on first.
Stop throwing masks on everybody else because you're going to run out of oxygen. That hurts long-term everything, especially if you're a team leader. It can be poisonous.
Take care of yourself. Breathing exercises. Look up to people like the Wim Hofs of the world.
Look up to people like the Sash Patels. Look up these books. I know you wanted me to suggest a book.
Get The Compound Effect. Get The Badass and The Buddha. Get Think and Grow Rich.
Get The Seven Phase Meditation Process. Get Prophet First. Get Miracle Morning.
Get some of these books that start tuning you. The level of your personal growth will seldom ever be exceeded by your level of financial success. I love it.
You got to focus on you. We can always go to another seminar. We can always go to another pump-up sales event.
We can always listen to another guru. You're the guru of your life. If you don't know why you operate with the trauma you operate with, you don't heal that inner child or you don't get past what your dad said to you when you're 20 or whatever it is, you're not going to be your optimal self for everyone else around you.
It's probably not the answer you were hoping for, but that would be my golden opportunity.
That's fantastic. Thank you. You just covered a bunch of books.
That's perfect as well. If people are wanting to follow you for more, where can they find you?
I would point you in the direction of our show. It's called The Zach Faust Show. We're growing.
We just had our 30th episode. For those listening, I would point you to episode 29. We interviewed Tom Ferry.
He's been a friend of mine for a bit. We have very opposing views on the current status of this housing market. I think it's a thick conversation for those that are in the profession because we talk about a lot of apparent issues.
I love it. Zach, this has been amazing. Such a great episode.
Thank you to anybody that's listened to the whole thing. I'm sure once you started talking, people weren't ready to turn it off because this has been gold nuggets throughout. Zach, thanks so much again for being on the show.
Matt, and thank you for being your great host. You got a great setup. Anybody that's listening to you is only going to be better off for it.
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