The Broke Agent Unfiltered: What Really Works in Real Estate Marketing

🔥 Buckle up, because on this episode of Not Nice, Clever we’re hanging out with none other than Eric Simon—yes, The Broke Agent himself—who went from a struggling real estate agent to the co-founder of BAM Media. And let’s just say... the glow-up is real.

Eric takes us behind the scenes of his wild ride—starting at the Laugh Factory, growing a viral Instagram empire, and learning the hard way what actually works on social media. We’re talking about the highs, the facepalms, and the secret sauce to creating content that’s not just funny but effective.

Whether you're in real estate, content creation, or just trying to make an impact online, this episode is stacked with insights you can actually use. Get ready to level up your social media game—with a few belly laughs along the way. 🚀

Show Notes:

• Follow The Broke Agent On Instagram
• Sign Up for The BAM Network
• Checkout The BAM Podcasts

🏁 Connect With Us On Instagram!

• Not Nice Clever
• Candice Carcioppolo
• Kat Torre

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Find out more HERE.

🎙 Book Kat and Candice to speak at your next event, summit or workshop HERE

Transcript

 I was a struggling, awful real estate agent. 

I was just an anxiety filled 25 year old who needed an outlet to kind of unleash the inner monologue of what I was feeling. And what I was feeling was very uncomfortable. I felt Like I was an actor playing the role of a real estate agent. I'm taking ownership of this. This was 100 percent my fault. I should have done way more market research.

I should have learned the scripts. This is ownership. This is an ownership conversation. I just didn't even know where to find that information. One of the first videos I posted as The Broke Agent was this real estate rap. It was called the intro video. I wiped it off the face of the internet now.  We need to find it.

In 2018, I actually released a book called Commission Impossible Rogue Agent. Which is a comic book. I love it. That sold zero copies. Oh. Okay. I'll send you a copy. Make sure it's signed. That'll make it worth less, I think, actually. I shouldn't even have told this story. It took me 10 years to really figure out what this was.

If you start creating content around,  I don't know, say you're a big golfer. Or a whiskey drinker. Or a whiskey drinker, exactly. Or you're a big alcoholic, whatever you are, exactly. That sort of content is going to resonate with people more. National Hiking Day, you know, show a view of your favorite hiking spot.

And maybe you hate hiking. Hey, it's National Hiking Day. I hate hiking. If I were a hiker, here's where I'd go. You know, if you showed that side of you, I think that would, would really help people relate with your content. In 2024, you hosted the Bammies and it's a. Awards event. Like basically Kat and I want to win one.

How do we make that happen, Eric? It's open source nomination. We wanted to just do straight content awards. What's the best hook? What's the best listing video? What's the best piece of original content? In February, we had the BAM Pro Bowl, and then we had BAM Fest, which originally was BAMcella.  And so the people of Coachella actually reach out to us,  they, yeah, they gave a cease and desist and then also took down one of my Instagram posts about Bamchella.

It's all value wrapped into. We are so excited to introduce to you today's guest on Not Nice Clever. He is somebody who knows how to work a room. His name is Eric Simon, AKA the broke agent. And he got his start at the iconic laugh factory as a marketing assistant and cut to 2015 when he created the Instagram account, the broke agent, creating viral laugh out loud content that has transformed the way real estate agents show up on social media.

You fast forward to today, 2025. He's now the co founding chief of content at BAM broke agent media, where he's also the co host of the over ask podcast and the walkthrough proving that you can both be humorous and provide value. So get ready to go deep with the man behind the scenes, Eric Simon.  So Eric, uh, thank you for making the time in what I'm sure is a very insane schedule to hop on and get to know our Clever Crew here today.

I think, uh, one of the things that we love at Not Nice Clever is to get into origin stories. And so I would love to just kind of hear your perspective, your, your retelling of how The broke agent came to be, um, and you know, how it's kind of evolved like over time to what, what people know it today as. 

Absolutely. Well, first off, thank you so much for having me. Uh, Kat, it was great to meet you at the a thousand watt event. I thought you had one of the best presentations there. So, Oh, wow. To be on the pod and Candace, thanks for coming to band mania.  Absolutely. Loved it. We're in all the places. All the places.

Fantastic. So yeah, the, the broke agent started in 2015.  I was a struggling, awful real estate agent too. Basically describe what was going on. I was 25 years old and Beverly Hills. I got my license because I was the receptionist at a brokerage called Hilton and Highland. Then I became a marketing assistant.

Then I became a buyer's agent where all I did was cold call in the morning from 8 AM to 12, and then door knock those same houses that never picked up the phone right afterwards, drop off expired listing packages. I was praying that people wouldn't pick up when I called them. I was praying people weren't going to answer when I knocked on their doors because I had no idea what I was talking about.

I had abysmal training, just no training whatsoever, um, and I was just kind of an unpaid assistant, if you will. A lot of people kind of become buyer's agents and they get promised, you know, you're going to sit all these amazing open houses. You're going to get leads. By the way, this is my fault. I feel like I'm pinning it on the team leads.

It wasn't at all. This is ownership. This is an ownership conversation. I'm taking ownership of this. This was a hundred percent my fault. I should have done way more.  I should have learned the scripts, but I just didn't even know where to find that information. It wasn't kind of like it is today now where you see these live objection handling stuff, or the stuff we put out on BAM that's, you know, really this front facing content for agents to be able to digest.

So basically I was just an anxiety filled 25 year old who needed an outlet to kind of unleash the inner monologue. Of what I was feeling and what I was feeling was very uncomfortable. I felt like I was an actor playing the role of a real estate agent and that I never actually felt comfortable in my own skin saying, Hey friends, family, I'm an agent, this is what I do.

And this is 100 percent my occupation. And it's not just like this temporary thing that I'm doing to kind of like masquerade, like I have a job right now. And that's really what I felt like I was doing. I think a lot of agents kind of feel like that at the beginning.  So then I just started tweeting out kind of what was going on in my head  at these open houses, at these inspections, before I'd meet with the client, just the inner anxieties, the stress I would feel when a buyer would show up with their entire family or with the dad, or just the conversations I was, Incapable of hand, uh, having, or just uncomfortable having, and it blew up relatively quickly because there was no one else at the time that was posting that sort of content of just, this is the bad side of real estate, the dark side of real estate, the stuff that is not being posted.

Like 2015, keep in mind was hustle culture, grind culture, show your listings, show your, you know, show your sales, show your Lamborghini, show yourself outside of your lease BMW, show the motivational quotes. There wasn't really that authenticity wave that had hit social media yet. So that's kind of the origin story.

I think, first of all, your, your journey is so relatable. I feel like as a, I, I call myself, and I know Candice identifies like a recovering people pleaser. I'm also a recovering agency owner. Like it is a grind when you don't really know what you're doing or what your next step is. And I think. You highlight, like, even though you were showing like the dark side, quote unquote of real estate, you were showing one of the highlights of social and that you were able to really connect.

And I imagine like, start to build a community without even realizing that's what you were doing at the time. Right. Yeah, it, it, the community really started to build as Instagram allowed communities to build in terms of whether it's broadcast channels, comment sections, obviously there was Instagram comments back in 2015, but I don't even know when Instagram story started.

Maybe. 2017, 2018, possibly after Tik Tok, because I feel like it was a game of like trying to copy features. And like there was Snapchat, which was very story esque. And then Tik Tok had it. Yeah, maybe it was Snapchat. When I started Snapchat, I was doing Snapchat stories of myself at open houses or in my car.

And I started to develop these friendships on Snapchat. Those are like the first broke agent. You know, I guess the early adopter, the OGs. There was a guy named Greg Stock, actually, who I met on Snapchat and I met up with him in some house in San Diego and we like partied together. It was one of the dumbest things I've ever done to just meet up with some dude.

He was my age, by the way. Stranger on the internet. Yeah. Yeah. I shouldn't even have told this story. All of my best friends are strangers I met on the internet at this point. Literally. And it's just my excuse to be able to travel, you know, and get to meet new people. Exactly. Well, I would do these like raps in my car.

Like one of the first videos I posted as the brokerage and it was this real estate rap. It was called the intro video. I wiped it off the face of the internet. Now  we need to find it. We need to resurrect it. I would get absolutely canceled for this. It's, it's like, Oh, okay. All right. We're there. This is a 2015 style comedy, I guess.

Um, but I would do these wraps in my car, just, you know, waiting on a client or something or just kind of how I was feeling. And then this guy. Greg would rap back to me and then send me stories or send me his snaps And then we just started communicating and then I met him at some house in san diego We partied for a couple days.

It was  whatever but anyway, yes the community started  What was really good about the way we we built the community or I built the community was I was always engaging With people, whether it's in the direct message or through comments where I kind of saw the people that were consistently Engaging with my content that I would continue to nourish those relationships So I never took for granted the fact that someone would actually interact with my content and very early on I was always commenting back to people responding to people Liking their stories making sure that I would comment on their pages as well to kind of show that reciprocation that I think It's kind of a lost art now on social media.

Yes, we couldn't agree more. So what I'm hearing is, it wasn't about a follower count. It was about creating real relationships with the people who are engaging with you. Well, I didn't really know what I was doing. I think it was about a follower account, honestly. I could come on here and tell you and act like, I mean, obviously the community aspect of it was amazing.

But at the beginning, I was for sure. You know, excited the fact like, Oh my God, I just hit 5, 000 followers. Oh my God, 10, 000 followers. What can I do with this? How can I monetize this? What is the point of all of this? And for basically two or three years, I had absolutely no idea. I was just posting consistent content and developing this community and for sure making people laugh.

And I knew it was kind of like a cool brand that was developing in real estate, but I just, I had no direction with it. It was just make sure I post every day on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to keep growing this following to eventually be able to monetize or provide value for agents. And I did not know what that was until probably 2019, because in 2018, I actually.

Released a book called commission impossible rogue agent, which is a comic book that sold zero copies. I love it. It was a complete waste of time and energy. Oh, okay. Yeah. Thank you, Kat. I'll send you a copy. Beautiful. Yep. I'll send you my address. I have a million of them right now. My, my computer is sitting on two of them.

Make sure it's signed. Okay. That'll make it worth less. She wants the one signed copy.  Um, but that, that was, I was always just trying to figure out like, okay, I have this following. What is the next step? And the fact that my brain went to a comic book, which is a black and white comic book about kind of, you know, it's the struggling the story of a struggling agent.

His name is Ben Ackerman, which is, you know, the broke agent. And it was just about how he got his license, how he went to his first real estate conferences. It's a fun story, but. But you know, that's not how you make money.  You know, from an outsider's perspective, because Candice and I are personal brands consultants and speakers, like I have seen and noticed the shift from Brogue Agent, which you could argue is like kind of a personal brand.

It was built around you and you know, your own experiences. And then now you have BAM Media, which is very much a company, more corporate esque brand. I won't, I won't accuse you of being corporate. I would, I would never do that to you. But. When, when was that kind of like light bulb moment or inflection point when you made that shift, um, and you decided not to become a comic book writer?

Could you imagine if that's what I was still trying to do? Just pushing comic books? Maybe it'd be something more, I don't know. But we do want to see the comic book, so I don't know. I totally do, yeah. Can we make that into some Instagram slides or something? Is there a story time, a live story time?

Something, yeah. Yeah, well I'll send you guys the copies.  The shift really happened. There was kind of a light bulb moment that I have in 2019 and I want to credit someone named actually agents who actually runs a rival real estate meme account, who's now a friend of mine, but he runs a meme account. And he started posting, I think in 2018, 2019, and he posted.

An ebook. I remember it was in hashtags ebook, how to grow your Instagram account on hashtags. And I was like, that's genius. Like I know how to do all this stuff. I've been growing an Instagram account for years and I've been teaching agents, whether it was in my office at Gibson international, which is now a compass or just all the side conversations I've had.

I was helping other  agents grow their Instagram accounts. Or other companies too. I worked for a cryptocurrency where I was growing their Instagram account. Uh, Bop It, the Bop It founder, I was helping him grow his account. So I was always kind of doing these Bop It like the game? Bop It the, yeah, Bop It, twist it, pull it.

Oh my gosh!  The Bop It inventor, Dan Klitzner. I was his social media, uh, Sherpa, if you will. And now he's like enormous on TikTok. I think he's got a bigger, I think he's got a bigger following than I do now. How dare he? I know it pisses me off. Well, he has like a toy shed in his back and everybody knows about Bop It.

So anyway, actually agents posted this hashtag. Ebook and that like lit the light bulb for me where it's like I need humor plus value. This humor is fantastic, but 2015 2016 I thought, okay, this is going to college humor out where this is going. Remember like collegehumor. com? Oh yeah. Yeah. Funny or Die, like all those videos.

Exactly. Where like skit based content was kind of like the end goal. Or I thought it was gonna be a blog, you know, kind of barstool sports, which we're kind of trying to become now, like the barstool sports or real estate, but I just didn't really know what direction to take it. Like, what value do I provide right now?

Besides daily laughs, which certainly is value, but  it wasn't helping agents sell more real estate. It was helping agents kind of escape from the day to day hell that they were experiencing. Um, so then, um, I reached out to him. I said, let's write an Instagram growth ebook. He ended up not doing it with me, but that was kind of my first step into value plus humor where I taught agents how to grow on Instagram, whether it was.

hashtags, the follow on follow technique, which is frowned upon now, but you know how to comment on other people's pages, what sort of content to post. And I just started building my email list and building these other, other assets. Here we go. And that was really Oh, email is the number one thing I care about.

We could get into that. So after The, the hashtag ebook, I came out with multiple ebooks and just kept building that list. I started writing for a blog called the clothes. com. Then I started doing my own blogs on the brokeagent. com, which was always a website I had in the background, but was kind of doing more buzzfeed style, you know, five things to do while you're bored in an open house.

But it was all humor based. It was never. Anything tactical  and then 2020 pandemic hit all my clients, you know, the, the two or three that I had basically were not operating anymore, or we're not reaching out for what I would hope they would have, whether it was, you know, people that wanted to list their house or, or buy a house.

So I was like, it is time to go absolutely all in on this brand, because this is what my passion is. How can I actually turn this into something more? So I started the over ass podcast with Matt Leonetti. Where we hosted agents and marketers and top producers, and basically started building out the assets of a media company without knowing that it was completely going in that direction.

So many amazing things that we're learning about you today, Eric, and thank you for being so open with sharing your story and your journey, because. A lot of our clever crew are in a place right now where they feel like because they don't have the end goal, or there's not clarity on exactly where they're going that they're afraid to start.

And it sounds like. You just took the next right step at each interval, or you weren't even sure if it was the right step, but you just took the next step and it unveiled to you whether it was the right step or not. That takes courage, and it's really cool that you are sharing that with so many people who are in a space where, you know, maybe they don't feel  good enough to do that. 

Well, Yeah, I mean, it's,  it's all trial and error. Like, you know, when you spend six months writing a comic book that goes nowhere, that's a huge error. That's a huge problem. Or when you start a YouTube channel where you're kind of doing skits that I was doing in my car and I saw that was also going nowhere, you really got to kind of get a feel for what you're good at and what you're not and kind of what the audience likes to receive and what they don't.

And the only way you're going to do that is actually producing. The content and putting it out there. I, you know, a lot of this was guessing. I created so many different accounts, whether it's bad real estate picks. I had a real estate news account back in the day. I had a marketing course that I came out with in 2021, but never sold anything.

Like I had all these different. You know, plans and ideas. And it was really just, okay, let's see how the audience likes this. If they don't like it, let's pull back on this. If they're really love these eBooks, that's information I want to keep pushing. Agents were thirsty, especially in 2020 through 2022, like prime pandemic, how to grow your content. 

That was like the golden age.  For agents, for content creation, where TikTok was popular, Instagram Reels just came out in the summer of 2020. So it's like every agent knew that they could really take social media and prospecting seriously. Um, you know, in comparison to door knocking, cold calling, everything, we're like, this is actually a great way to generate leads.

Kind of taking this in a little bit of a different direction, Eric. So we recently learned that  you were once at the Laugh Factory, like you started your career maybe there? Yes. And we know that all of our experiences shape us, like I used to be a middle school history teacher, Kat was a nursing school dropout, like, and all of those things impact how we show up today in the work that we do.

So what are some of the lessons that maybe you learned at the Laugh Factory that are still serving you today? Well, I didn't do stand up comedy at the Laugh Factory. I was there, I was their marketing assistant. I knew I didn't want to do stand up comedy. After watching all the comics at the laugh factory because you get paid basically minimum way or not even minimum wage, like less than that to do open mic.

I did not have the guts to do standup. And also all the standup comedians that I watched were so much funnier than me. I was like, this is a completely different league. It's one thing to be funny kind of on social media. Or within conversation or to react with people. Like I'm always funny while I'm talking to people, but to actually sit up there and perform, it seemed absolutely horrifying.

So I was a marketing assistant there where it was all about publishing content. And what I took away from that  is how to publish content, how to get, you know, how to write copy and how to get people's attention online. So I would basically schedule content for their Facebook, their Twitter. And I think it was actually before their Instagram at the time.

So that's kind of where I got my social media chops is from. Working at the lab factory  got it. And that's how you ended up applying that to real estate in the future Yes, exactly Just how to format a post how to write a caption how to get people's attention because my entire job was that there was to Try to get people to go to the sick shows which were tuesdays wednesdays  and mondays the shows where people wouldn't show up The slow days.

So it was about how do I come up with a contest? How do I tag the comedians in the right way? How do I use emojis in the caption to actually, you know, draw the eye to what I want them to do? What actually works from a contest perspective? Is it giving away tickets? Is it saying to comment something specifically?

Like all of that stuff I used the second I started working on The Brocage on Instagram and Facebook was copywriting, which I think I'm pretty good at in a way to Get people to further engage with the post. It's funny because that is like when people ask me who I am or what I am or what I do, I still identify as saying I'm a copywriter because I'm, I'm a writer.

You know, that's how I started out through the written word until I built up my confidence to be on camera and on stage. So, and, and words are powerful, right? They get people to do stuff. They get people to show up, they get people to react. Um, One, one kind of trap that we see a lot of our, our community fall into is, uh, trying to go viral or trying to nail that like signature series or that perfect post.

And I'd be curious, um, amongst all the content that you've put out, has there ever been something where it took off, but you were literally like, just creating it off the cuff. Like you didn't really even think that it was going to take off and it did and it surprised you. Yeah, I think most posts that have taken off from you have been the most low effort pieces of content.

I know like everybody says that, but it is kind of true because the audience feels that organic nature of what's happening in the content when, when you're either trying to be too funny, or you're trying to come up with the perfect hook, or you have the perfect camera and lighting  and editing that sometimes.

The inorganic nature of that makes people kind of turned off with the post in itself, but my most viral pieces of content always come within a trend jack, whether it was when COVID first started or it's a Super Bowl meme or it's content based off of rates dropping or something like that. Anytime I could create content that's in the moment of something happening, whether it's in pop culture, the real estate market, housing news, politics, whatever it is.

That's something that really, you know, lights a fire under your content. So for anybody listening to this, if you're not focused on creating timely content, and  you're just posting and you're not thinking about Thanksgiving or the holidays or the fact that we are in this kind of post election world, like there's so much,  you know, content to create around that, that if you're just creating it in a vacuum, people don't engage with it because you want to feel like you're in the moment with people.

Right? Like if you're watching a Monday night game and Taylor Swift is on and I could hammer a Taylor Swift meme right as people are watching that on Monday night football, and she's trending on Twitter. It's absolute rocket fuel for your content.  So trying to go viral is just,  it's not even that effective anymore because. 

Then you develop this audience that followed you for that one viral post, and then if your other content doesn't relate to that viral post, then they're going to start to tune out with your other content, and your engagement rate's actually going to drop, and it's actually going to kill your account eventually.

Obviously, if you could kind of capitalize off that virality and continue to create content like that, it's great, but I think people that are, you know, frustrated if you're kind of stuck in 5, view jail, It's not a bad thing, you know, it's, it's not at all. It's if you get something that pops for 2 million, fantastic.

But then if you go back to, Oh, here's some listing photos. Then that audience that you develop from that might not necessarily Engage with your other content if that makes sense completely does absolutely so a lot of our clever crew. They have a fear of messing up or maybe getting canceled like they're afraid of making any content because it might mean that people just like I don't know.

Hate them, refuse to work with them, or maybe see them as unprofessional because they're being themselves. Have you navigated  that? Yeah. I mean, I've definitely posted stuff that goes over the line. Um, again, 2015 was a completely different time than  now, than 2024, then was a different time than 2019 and 2020.

So  you only get a feel for that stuff if you actually publish the content because the audience reacts to it. Right. So you never know. So I would encourage people to post whatever. That is because you may hit a note with an audience that really improves the relationship you have with them. If you're being overly authentic about something you're passionate about, whether it's religion, politics, you know, something edgy, a joke that you want to try out,  I'd say it's more worth it than to do it.

I mean, I created my entire brand around that,  but you only know it once you get the feedback, right? And then you start to kind of develop that muscle memory. Of this is something that will work and hit with this audience, or this is something that's a little too edgy and might insult this, you know, specific group of people.

Or if I post about this candidate, then, you know, I don't want to alienate half of my audience. Like, you do have to kind of consider and weigh all these things, but the only way you get good at that is if you've done it a couple times in the past. You could always test content. If your main audience is on Instagram, and that's a community you might not want to turn off or offend, you could always start to test things on different platforms.

So I always did that with the broke agent where I would first tweet something out because I developed an audience simultaneously on all these platforms to make sure that in case one of them goes away or I get blocked or banned on one of them, that you still have, you know, this diversification of platforms when you publish content.

Um, so I would test something on Twitter. If that got good engagement on Twitter, then I would share it to Facebook and then test it on Facebook. And then if that was great, then kind of Instagram was like the final platform of this idea is funny. This idea works. I mean, you can always change the platform or the way you post the content.

So if maybe the idea is something edgy, is it a tweet? Is it a video? Is it a green screen? Is it a meme? Like you could always kind of switch up the way you're going to produce this content to see how the audience engages with it.  Excellent advice. Yeah. No, we, we love diversifying, you know, so that you mitigate your risk, you are able to experiment.

And, um, so I, that actually kind of leads me to want to hear about your approach to email. Um, because I,  And, and Candace too, we preach like, yes, produce content on social, build that community, build an engaged audience, but don't remember what like an end goal is in order to be able to connect with that person and not be at the mercy of an algorithm at the end of the day, that's exactly how I say it, the mercy of the algorithm.

Oh, cool. Yeah. So I don't know if we got that from each other or that's just, that's out there. Yeah, exactly. Um, but that's exactly what I preach because you are at the mercy of an algorithm. Less than 10 percent of your audience actually sees these posts and the AI recommendations now on Instagram, are so advanced that if you produce something that the algorithm does not feel that your initial audience is going to engage with it, no one's even going to see these posts anymore.

So your email database, you actually own, you own that data. Our entire Um, you know,  our entire like growth model for BAM media is get as many emails as possible because that's the agent data and that's what actually drives clicks. Very rarely do you actually convert that much through Instagram and Facebook because that's a pattern interrupt platform where you only want to scroll,  right?

Like how often, like when I get on Instagram, I just want to scroll. I just want to watch stories, see something funny, see a sports score, go on Instagram stories. Very rarely am I actually clicking a link, going off platform, reading something, doing something. So, I guess our philosophy with email is collect as many as possible through the social channels.

So use Instagram to drive email growth and use email to drive Instagram growth as well.  Actually got that from Jimmy Mackin who just said that on our walkthrough podcast. Where it's, you know, embed your Instagram posts, your content into your emails. So that drives more followers to your social posts.

And then you don't have to create more content, right? You're repurposing and you're keeping them on like the carousel, right? So they go from one to the next. Yes. It's like an endless loop of more of you. And then they start saying, well, I see Eric everywhere. I see. You broke agent everywhere, but you're literally repurposing all of your content across many platforms in different formats, different, yeah, different ways.

If you do a 30 second housing market update or a 30 second, you know, post about your, your listing or whatever it is, you can turn that into a blog post. You can embed that blog post into your email. Like there's just so many different ways to reformat your content. That's what we're really good at is you film a podcast, you break that podcast down into five or six clips.

That podcast becomes a blog. Then you send that podcast out in emails, then you send the clips out in emails. Like there's just so many different pieces of content. You could get out of one pot, as you guys know, obviously. Yeah. That's what you do. No, I, I experienced this for the first time before I was like quite like not quite ready for it.

I mean, ready with heavy air quotes, you know, for those of you guys not watching on YouTube, but, um, when I was on, uh, Dustin Brom's. Podcast. And I, it was the first podcast I'd ever like guest spotted on. And then he's like, yeah, it's going to go live in a couple of weeks. Like this is the date I'll send you some assets, but I'm going to publish a few things to a few things.

He, he published it. And I remember he, like, I think he invited broke agent as a collaborator, maybe it was BAM media or whatnot, but, um, seeing all the different clips, like that was my, like a really kind of early, um, introduction to how much content you can get out of one. Piece of content. And it really kind of changed how I, how I was like retooling my deployment strategy, not the content strategy overall, but it was, it was really cool to see that like in action.

Yeah. Massive agents are part of our band media network. So that's why we collab in those, those picks. I remember watching that episode. That was a great episode. So those, yeah, the, the podcast, you just, you just get so much content out of, so anybody watching this, it's kind of about how do I create content that has.

The least amount of friction. So if you hate doing talking head style reels, where you have a camera in front of you and you're trying to read a script, like that's really hard, you know, that's, that's difficult content. You feel like it's an out of body experience, but if you're better in conversations like this, then you could kind of get clips organically of you talking about something and what's really good with podcasts too.

And my partner, Byron Lazine taught me this is in an interview like this. You, you almost have to think about the clips beforehand because some of the clips are going to get more exposure than the actual podcast itself. So if you're asking a question, then sometimes like I would fumble around a question.

Sometimes I would fumble around these answers where I'm just getting, taking a little too long to get to the actual point. I would just reframe the question and say, so tell me again, what is the number one mistake agents are making on Instagram, right? After I've kind of asked that question again, but I want to get it for the clip because that's the hook for the video. 

But maybe that's a psychotic way to think, I don't know. Yeah, it's a very inception minded way to think, but we try to keep that in mind too, right Candice? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of my, one of my good friends, she's an amazing content creator and speaker, and before she goes on a stage, before she goes on a podcast, like, I've been with her many times when she's prepping to do these things and she's thinking about the soundbite  because that one soundbite is the thing that's going to take it from the 300 people who are in that room to the hundreds of thousands of people that are going to see it online.

And she's always thinking in those terms. Every time she's on, yeah, it's kind of writing the hooks beforehand and sometimes for interviews we would write the thumbnail and the episode title beforehand to, to kind of direct the conversation, but it just really helped kind of frame the entire episode.

Like, do you guys know what this episode will be called? Yeah, we do. We do? No, we don't. Let me check. We don't. Corinne knows though. Corinne. Shout out to Corinne, our producer here. Corinne is the genius behind that. We have our walkthrough episode, but I just, I see a very, the walkthroughs are marketing podcasts on our NowBearing YouTube channel, but I see a very big difference in the episodes where I'm scrambling at the end to kind of come up with a title and a thumbnail and the episodes where I've kind of already, you know, honed in on the guests and know exactly.

This is the thumbnail. This is the title, obviously tweak it based off of what is said. If it has nothing to do with it, you're not going to do it, but you know how this agent got from 500 followers to 25, 000 followers. With this posting strategy, then it's like,  there it is, you know, how this L. A. based rapper and comic book writer, how this L.

A. psychopath sold zero copies of commission impossible. Anytime you could use numbers, numbers in your content, it always clicks better for me. Yeah. Yeah. Pay attention. It's concrete. It's, it's, it's, uh, as objective as you can get. I feel like. Yes. So as you mentioned earlier in the episode, Eric, I was at BAM mania in Las Vegas at circa.

It was an incredible event. I. It just felt like I was in a room with my people and I really appreciated being there. It felt like community. It was comfortable. I got to see some of the coolest names in real estate all in one space. So props to you for putting that together. And it's definitely on my calendar for next year.

So keep me posted on when that is because I am saving the date. In addition to that, when I was there, I learned about your BAM membership that I didn't know about previously. Can you talk to our audience a little bit about what that is? Yes. That means I'm doing a horrendous job posting about it. So thank you for letting me know that actually.

That's good to know. This episode's doing wonders for your self esteem, Eric. Exactly.  Well, thank you again for coming to BAM Mania. That was our first big event. We will be having another one in mid October next year. We're in the process of planning and solidifying dates on that. Um, so just like a little background on the BAM membership.

So the Broke agent has now turned into BAM Media. So it was broke Agent Media, bam. And then we realized that anyone sharing a URL broke agent media.com, no one would do that, especially because we're giving real, real estate news and marketing tips. So in order for this to become a legitimate media company, we dropped Broke Agent Media, but it was necessary kind of at the beginning for that.

Brand correlation. Now we have  daily podcasts, four to five blogs per day, a daily news article, uh, or sorry, uh, daily email, um, emails gets six times a week, you know, webinars, digital events. We are basically the barstool sports of real estate and our growing real estate media company is how I would put it.

But then we have our, our, our paywall, which is our BAMX membership. None of our content is behind a paywall. It's all free. That we do have courses, trainings, and then we have weekly social media templates. So every week our BAMx members get three social media templates, two video scripts, one blog, and, uh, one email script to send to their database.

And it's all based off of housing market data and kind of what's trending. So just how I talked about trend jacking kind of earlier in this episode, I think a lot of agents struggle with the idea of posting content that is timely and relevant. And, you know, consuming data that is timely and relevant for them to be able to have those conversations.

So that's what our BAMx membership is, is it kind of marries the content plus the  actual training of how to post this stuff, because you could give someone a video script or give someone a template, but they might not have to post it. How do you actually come up with the caption? How do you film a green screen?

How do you start a YouTube channel? How do you create these thumbnails? It's basically a one stop shop for. I have this problem with content creation, how can I solve it? And then we also have our bi weekly office hours, and it's our community, so I'd say a large percentage of the people there that were at BAMania are in our BAMx community.

And you can feel that. You can feel that when you're in the room. Like, you know that those people care for one another and know each other's stories are there each other's cheerleaders. And I think that's a difference that I felt when I went to your conferences, like Kat and I are at conferences all the time.

And when I was at your conference, I could feel the connection in the room that felt very different than some of the more sterile conferences that I've been to that feel like you're just taking my money. Yeah. But I've been to so many of these too. And that's what, that's how we wanted to craft ours is you, is you go there and you walk away with, Oh, I could actually do this stuff tomorrow.

And I'm actually learning from people who are doing this thing, right? You're, you know, active agents, not panel pontificators, as we talk, talk about where it's like you get on a social media panel and it's someone who bought 10, 000 Instagram followers. And they're just telling you to get on video. It's like, we all know that at this point, we all know to be authentic or say these things, but it's, you know, give me the exact strategies.

How do you actually, you know, convert Instagram into leads, show me the actual post, react to the actual post and describe how you came up with that post. So  it was a great, great conference where we're gonna do it again. In 2024, you hosted the Bammys. And it's a awards event. Tell us a little bit about like, basically Kat and I want to win one.

Like, let's just be honest. So that's on the 20, 25 vision, right? How do we make that happen? So how do we make that happen? How did this come about?  It's open source nomination. You know, we didn't want a top agent awards or you see these other kind of media companies. Where it's a pay to pay to play sort of thing, and we wanted to just do straight content awards.

What's the best hook? What's the best listing video? What's the best piece of original content? What's the best music video parody? Because all these agents spend so much time creating this content. Let's actually give them a nod, show the videos to people, inspire people to create this content in the future.

So it's completely, uh, you know, open nominations. We started the Bammys with some suggestions too, so they could say, Oh, I just saw Matt Leonetti's listing video. I want to submit this one. And then we did live voting during the show and it was amazing. I love it.  We also wanted to make our virtual events different from anybody else in the space.

So we do so many webinars, whether it's your marketing plan or, um, you know, objection handling webinars or script writing, whatever it is, we have, you know, probably two webinars per month, but we have four main pillar virtual events. So  last year in February, we had the BAM Pro Bowl, which is the week. Oh, I love that.

Before the Superbowl. Yeah. Where we had Ryan Serhant, we had Jimmy Mackin, we had like an amazing lineup of speakers where it's just like bring in the pros from all these different kind of sectors of real estate. And then in between we had funny commercials. So whether it was our sponsor commercials or we wrote commercials for BAMX, so it was kind of like you're watching the Superbowl of real estate.

And then we had.  What was it, BAMFest? We had BAMFest, which originally was BAMCELLA, and so the people of Coachella actually reached out to us.  They gave you a cease and desist? Really? They, yeah, they gave a cease and desist and then also took down one of my Instagram posts about BAMCELLA, so I had to switch it to BAMFest.

Then we had music videos and parodies, we had a DJ beforehand, but it's all value wrapped in humor, wrapped in entertainment, so it's, you know, value plus entertainment. And ways to get people's email addresses. Well, that's of course the main reason we do it. I'm not doing it for fun, I'll tell you that much, because it certainly isn't.

It's stressful, I'm sure. Well, the thing about virtual events is there's no cost, really. Obviously, like, we paid for a virtual DJ, but a lot of the other speakers, too, whether they have something to sell or they just want more, you know, notoriety is just a good platform, um, so it's not like a in person event.

And there are best conversion, uh, events by far for BandMax. Because then you just do a one time code, you have a few thousand people watching live. Anybody watching this webinars, live streams are by far the best way to actually convert very rarely to someone listening to a podcast, then go check out band max and then subscribe to it's it's.

Let me show you the platform live. And then we had something called  the BAM, the, uh, BAM barbecue, which happened in July. And that was kind of similar, like music, you know, kickback. We were drinking high noons during it and same thing where we had, yes, we had a bunch of great speakers and it was just a barbecue style and then the BAMies.

So those are four.  I will drop all of the links in the show notes. So if you want to access any of those, you can access them there. And now for the moment I've been waiting for my favorite part of our show in 2025 is this new segment called not nice advice,  and it's really. All about you clever crew and the questions that you share with us.

So I'm going to ask you this question, Eric, that one of our clever crew members shared with us, and you get to give them not nice advice. All right. I've been committed to building my presence on Instagram for about six months now. And while I've been pouring hours into creating content and I've stayed consistent, it feels like I'm shouting into the void. 

I'm not getting engagement even when I ask questions in the captions. And I'm starting to wonder if I'm just wasting my time. How do I create content that actually connects with my audience? All right. So. The first problem I hear there is that it's been six months and that seems like a lot of time, but it took me 10 years to really figure out what this was.

Obviously, you know, real estate memes, that's kind of a funny hack and it's not as easy for, you know, real estate agents or I'm sure some of your other audience members because humor is kind of like rocket fuel for content. But six months is not a big enough sample space to determine whether or not your content is reaching the right people.

Second, I would consume a lot of content from accounts that you enjoy and get inspiration from other accounts because  If you're just kind of  posting into the void or you're just publishing content and not seeing the way other people are posting the content. So obviously, you know, styles change, posting styles, variety.

Are you doing carousels? Are you doing reels? Are you just hammering the same sort of piece of content every single time and then getting no results? So I would definitely get inspiration from other accounts and I would also do a self audit.  And look at your pieces of content, look at your insights, choose the top five or six and see how you could kind of replicate that.

Because if you're not looking at your insights, you're not seeing,  you know, why did this piece of content get ten shares? This piece of content got two shares. Oh, the piece of content that got ten shares, maybe I could just re share that piece of content. Or I could have a different hook in front of it.

Or I could turn that piece of content into a screenshot or a carousel, right? It's how do I Keep publishing the stuff that's working and throw away the stuff that isn't.  And then in terms of connecting with your audience, you got to make sure you're creating content that you're passionate about. Because if you're just kind of reading,  you know, I just keep relating everything to real estate.

I know your audience isn't all real estate agents. A lot of them are, but a lot of them. Okay, good. Yeah. So if you're, you know, it looks like you're in a hostage video and you're reading a housing market update and you don't care about the inventory levels. Or you, you should care, but you don't care about what you're saying that just comes through.

But if you start creating content around,  I don't see you're a big golfer or something like that, or whiskey drinker, exactly. You're a big alcoholic, whatever you are. Exactly.  You can start creating more content around that. I know this is very simplistic, but it is true. Like I am passionate about humor.

I'm passionate about sports. Whenever I write about. humor, sports or marketing, that piece of content is 10, 000 times better than when I'm publishing something just  just to publish it, right? Or just because I think I have to create a piece of content. So if your audience is not engaging with it, it's because you're just kind of publishing to post and that just doesn't work anymore, especially again with these algorithms that are recommending people exactly what they want to see.

If you're just saying like, Oh, it's Thanksgiving, here's a Remax branded turkey, you know, that says Happy Thanksgiving or Hey, Happy New Year. And you're just kind of like going with this templated flow  or just posting  based off of holidays and trends. I mean, I know I said trends are important, but you do have to care about what you're posting about.

So, right. Unless you care about national hot dog day specifically, then no, but Eric is definitely posting about national whiskey day. Cause that makes sense. Exactly. You know what? I think I've.  I think I've played into this alcohol thing a little too much. I'm actually a very responsible drinker, but for instance, Candace national glizzy day, we call hot dogs glizzies.

Now. I didn't know that. Is that a Gen Z thing? Candace? You're supposed to keep me updated on what's happening on tick tock. I don't. Missed all of this. Glizzy. It is a gen z thing, but you know what you could do on national hot, you know, it's a great thing. A content hack. You could look at these stupid little holidays like national glizzy day or national sandwich day or whatever it is and create content around that where you don't just say, Hey, happy national hot dog day.

You say, these are my three favorite hot dogs in Los Angeles or it's sandwich day. This is my favorite place to grab. a sandwich in insert market here. Like I think the community driven content, those hyper local posts, everybody's kind of passionate about where they live. So if you're the hype man or hype woman of where you're posting, then that sort of content is going to resonate with people more where it's national hiking day, you know, show a view of your favorite hiking spot.

And why it's your favorite hiking spot. And I guarantee you there's going to be someone else out there following your content. It's going to relate with that on a more personal level than, Hey, happy National Hiking Day. What are you going to do? Say that to your friend. And maybe you hate hiking and you're just like, I personally, maybe you're like, I personally hate hiking, but in honor of National Hiking Day, if I were a hiker, here's where I'd go.

That's it. Like, at least you're giving them the true authentic you. Exactly. Hey, it's National Hiking Day. I hate hiking. You know, like that, that is a funnier post or that's just because a lot of people relate with that. I hate when people talk about how much they love, you know, my wife always wants to go on hikes and I never want to go on hikes and it's a big, you know,  problem. 

No, it's not a big problem, but it's just, you know, if you showed that side of you, I think that would, would really help people relate with your content. Yeah. More. Well, thanks for sharing. Yeah. Great. Great segment on that nice advice. This is definitely becoming one of my favorites too, Candice. I'm glad that we're, we're leading with it into the new year here.

So are these email submissions from your audience or are they comments or how do you get in these? Or they could be DMs sometimes. I like it. Anytime you could get the audience engagement and work it into the episode.  Very smart move. Crowdsource your content. Crowdsource. Oh, by the way, one more final piece of content, crowdsource your own content is I get so much content from my comment section because a lot of my followers are just as funny, if not funnier than I am when I say,  you know, how else would you mean this or whatever the case may be like, there's comments that are really funny and I screenshot all those comments and then turn those comments into tweets down the road.

Always credit the person. But if you're an agent and you get a lot of questions, you're Similar questions. Those are questions that you could turn into content where it's like, well, eight people asked me this question. That's a great hook for a video right there.  That is our, our full episodes where we, um, don't have guests on it.

It's just Candace and I were, when we sit down to plan, we're like, what are we hearing in client sessions? What questions are we getting asked at events? Like let's give the people what they want and answer them. You know, exactly.  Great way to crowdsource the content. Is there anything that we didn't cover that you would like to talk? 

Just go,  go check out bam. You know, go on now bam. com. If you're a real estate agent listening to this and you've been looking for that content source that speaks to you, I think BAM is it in terms of you need help with marketing. You watch the walkthrough podcast every Thursday, you read the broke agent blogs, you want agent tactics.

We have an entire list of creators that are helping with objection handling and script writing. If you want housing market news and update on everything that's happening in real estate, you got Byron and Lizzy on the hot sheet show every single day, Monday through Thursday live. Plus our knowledge brokers podcast and it's gone now, bam.

com. Check out everything we have to offer. And I think it is the media company that I wish I had in 2015 through 2020. And if I had this media company, I feel like I would have been a better agent as opposed to kind of trying to find these resources. Behind all these unlimited paywalls and go to all these conferences that are charging you 2, 500 bucks a ticket to hear a bunch of people pontificate on a panel.

And now we have a new resource for you. So go check it out. 

Thanks for joining us on Not Nice, Clever. Remember to follow Not Nice, Clever, wherever you listen to audio. And if you haven't already, drop that five star review. Share your takeaways. Tell us your story. We love to hear it. Signing off, you're not so nice, but oh so clever. Besties that mean business. See you soon.