The REAL Podcast with Frazier

E2: Voice in Real Estate

July 11, 2018 Jason Frazier Season 1 Episode 2
The REAL Podcast with Frazier
E2: Voice in Real Estate
Show Notes Transcript
The future is audio & voice. Ben Smith talks voice and entrepreneuring with a wide assortment of digital hustlers, doers, artists, and entrepreneurs. Join Chelsea Peitz, Jason Frazier, and Ben Smith as they talk about how Real Estate & Mortgage professionals can use voice to help market their business.
Frazier:

Okay, alright, so we're broadcasting live in the group and so we'll just, we'll just kick this off. Um, I'll, I'll, uh, get it and really just want to get into it. No one really cares what I have to say, but mostly they came for ben to hear about voice. Um, and Charles has got some awesome questions for you, so just take it off. Hey everyone, thank you for joining. Chelsea and I were very excited about today. As you know, we've been very pro voice over the last couple months as things have tilted that way. Started our flash briefings. We're seeing the trend up. Um, I've been, uh, it's actually funny. I walked to A. Oh actually I wanna give a shout out to social survey. They're allowing me to use their office for this Webinar. They're a great partner. Uh, if you guys don't know about them, check them out@socialsurvey.com. I'm so thankful. Thank you to my gracious hosts. Um, but I was walking to the office today from a house so I live close and I was, I was checking out some of Ben's podcast cause I've only been, Chelsea had brought, you have been um, you know, uh, about a month ago and so I've been catching out some of the recent stuff but I, she told, she told me to go back to the beginning to around I think march or something to check out some of what you're doing. And so I was listening to some of the stats and I haven't been paying attention to a lot of that and it's just, it's crazy. Especially I didn't even think about voice search and Google and, and you mentioned that quite a bit as far as people doing that. Um, so this is just a big trend. It's not going anywhere. I know I consume comment our content a lot more voice wise than I do watching video or the best thing is I upgraded the youtube red so I could hear the videos and minimize it and then don't have to actually watch anything. So, you know, I'm just, I'm super excited to have you here, Ben, and I don't want to go into your bio. I want you to introduce yourself so everyone knows what you do and how you're doing it. So why don't you kick us off and, and let us know a little bit about yourself. Yeah. Jason, thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here and it's so nice that you were listening to the podcast into the voice briefing. Um, yeah. Knowing I'm happy to, to talk today a basically my background, I'm an early Google employee. I started at Google back in the early days when it was under a thousand people. It was a little company, uh, when I started. Sheryl Sandberg was one of my first bosses and a, you know, at the time, no one knew really what it was going to become. It was, I mean it was successful, but it was just very lucky to be at the start of something big. And when video happened to the Internet in 2005 or so, Google looked around and he said, who do we have that knows video? We're having this video revolution. And that was me and a few other people. I had started a video production company in Asia actually before I was at Google, so I knew stuff I guess. And I got in there early as part of our team, we actually acquired youtube. I was one of the first business people at Youtube focused on how was that thing ever going to make some money. And at that time people said, no way, it's dogs

Ben:

farting on skateboards. There is no way this thing is crazy. Right? And it was a small team of us and we said that's their crazy. We're the ones that are going to actually make this thing happen. And of course youtube happened. Now Youtube moved me down to La. I opened up youtube and La in late 2008. I'm pretty entrepreneurial. I left, I started some companies in the video ecosystem. I sold some companies in the video ecosystem. And now here we are in 2018 and we're at the same exact place with voice technology. It's happening all over again. It's happening all over again. The same thing that I did with video, it's the same thing I did was search. We're right here again with voice. And so that's why we're talking today.

Chelsea:

That's awesome. Um, okay. So I'm going to jump right into it. I've got some questions for everyone. You guys definitely drop in a comment here so we can get your questions answered. I'm going to dive right into it. I have some really juicy questions that I want to know, but I'm going to dive into it because I'm all about giving us the goods in the beginning. So tell us like what people need to do in real estate, like why if you're in real estate, which is our industry in our marketplace that we teach and educate too. Why is it so critical? Because a lot of people, and Jason and I are always doing stuff that people like that's never going to work. Like we were like some of the first people doing like snapchat for business, like you will never grow your business. And I was like, okay, watch us, we get it, we're all in on stuff that people just don't get yet because nobody's using it. So I want you to be able to explain to them like even though you've done business so many years is a different way and your referral base and you have your sphere and whatever. Like how could you leverage voice as a real estate professional to get your brand out there to earn business, help them see

Ben:

the visual industry. So Chelsea, great question. So in 2018, the first thing we have to say, it just goes without saying is you have to get attention, right? Like attention is everything. And you guys have been amazing at doing that. And I've seen now that I've, I've done my research on you guys. You guys are amazing at that. And so if you're not getting attention in 2018, something is wrong with you because social media, I mean it. I actually need it because in 2018 social media, it's not okay to stay. They'd be a consumer. You need to produce, you need to create content and I don't care. I always was scared of looking stupid and I know not the brightest guy. I'm a hard worker, but I'm not the brightest guy. It doesn't matter. You have to get out of that. So first you have to start with the idea that you are going to be participating in the conversation. Once you're participating in the conversation, then you need to think about these statistics and these are the ones that Jason mentioned. The first one is look in Google estimates by the year 2000, 20, 90 percent of consumed content is going to be video or audio. Nobody has time to read nobody, right? It's not. And, and I have so many friends, you know the smart friends of mine, they said, Ben, you know what? I get that, but I like to read. That's what they say. And I say, look, but do you like to read while you drive a car? And they're like, no, not really. Right? And that's where we are. This voice technology is an explosion because it's creating efficiencies and you know what people say, oh my gosh, I listened to my Alexa and the bathroom. Exactly. It's all of the places where reading the Internet, looking at something, whether if video is great, but you have to. You have to be looking at something. This technology is incredible. The podcast explosion we've seen in the last couple of years is because in certain use cases and circumstances, audio is much more efficient and just better for everybody. So that's the first thing to think about. Now let's, let's talk about another statistic. So already today in 2000, 1830, I think it's almost 35 percent of mobile searches on Google are voice activated today. That means that your phone right now, a shocking number of people that are doing voice searches on their phone, that is a huge deal. And people say, well, who's doing that? Well guess what? It's kids. It's old people. Have you ever seen it kid using Alexa? It's incredible. They just know how to do it. They just talk to it. Yeah, and if you're driving a car, guess what? A voice search is a whole lot better than anything else, so think about that. So that's the first piece, but then to really answer your question in terms of real estate, to meet the best real estate agents, and I know a lot of them, they're thinking about how do they provide, not just answers, okay, I want to, I want to find this particular type of house, this type of Condo in this neighborhood. That's one piece of it, but they also want to have a greater context for what are they doing, where are they buying, where are they living, what does it mean? What are the schools like, like, and as a real estate agent, your job is to tell a story. It's not. It's not simply just to provide a list of locations, it's to tell a story the best, the best storytellers. They cure rate, right? You're not telling the whole story, you're not. You're telling a certain story. And with voice technology you can create personalized, interesting information for people and tell an incredible story. So I would challenge all of you listening out there, start telling better stories, and when you use this voice you can tell the best story at all. It's so pride. People are like, Ben, you're hypnotizing my ear on the podcast. And I'm like, exactly. It's a very personal medium. That's what's possible for you out there.

Chelsea:

That's awesome. All right, so a lot of people that we talked to, first of all have no idea what we're talking about. We talk about Alexa skills. They know they get with podcasts are because you know, in the last three years on past they've had enough time to figure out what that is. But what is the difference between. Is there a difference between a podcast for Alexa or any kind of home speaker, smart speaker, the outcoming facebook smart speaker, whatever it may be, and a flash briefing. And what exactly are they like? Which one should they do? Are very confused because they just don't know what it is and what to do.

Ben:

Sure. So when Amazon debuted the echo and Alexa devices the last couple of years, they created two types of content that we can put onto the devices. The first one is called a voice skill and skill is the word that Amazon uses for APP. They just chose not to use the word APP. So think of it as like an app for your phone, but it's a skill for your Amazon speaker device, right? That's the first kind of content. So if you want to make an APP that's the way to do it. Now there's a second form that Amazon created and that is called a flash briefing and he flash briefing is simply an MP three file and Amazon when they debuted this, they really thought of it as news organizations. If you ask the device, Hey, I, you know, brief me on the news, well it was intended for the New York Times and the CNNS of the world to give a 32nd a minute news update. Again, MP three file. But guys like me and people like me, that bloggers, people like you, we started saying, wait a minute, should it only be news organizations that are using this file format? So I actually created a flash briefing, which is again simply just an MP, three file, just a music file of my spoken word, my voice every single day and mine is called voice entrepreneur and I talked about how to market and make money from this voice technology and this is the format that I see a lot of real estate agents that the, the ones that are experimenting and getting started with this technology, they're, they're creating flash briefings.

Chelsea:

So we've got the skill. I like how to explain that. It's just sort of like an APP, right? I mean you get all this lingo and if anybody. I mean Jason and I have been on the back end of the developer site, which is now a lot easier to manage and look that. But man, I was like, what are these words like how do you figure out like I don't have like the preamble and then like something else. It's like, what do they want us to say here? So the skill is just another word for like an APP almost like live sort of within these smart speakers you can make, um, that that's what they use for it. And then the flash briefing is the short and it's by nature it's supposed to be sort of a daily thing. It's new content and sort of disappearing. So it's almost like if we're talking about social media terms, it's sort of like an instagram story where every single day you have sort of like this new one and it goes away and it's like a daily briefing update. So podcasts a little bit different. You can do a podcast on Alexa that, right, like a full on. Those are two totally different things guys. There's like the flash briefing which is like, I'm just saying in my mind like an instagram story. You've got, you know, the podcast which is like a facebook live or youtube. It's like the full long thing and that you can live on longer. So hopefully that's, hopefully that explains it to the social media thinking people because that's how I'm thinking of it.

Ben:

I love that because I've never heard that analogy to the instagram story, Chelsea. That is such a good analogy, right? Which is once a day you're creating something. It's brief, it's short, but it's voice and when you're in someone's ear, I'm telling all of you out there. It is so powerful. This is, I, I'm pretty sure this is how people become president. I'm pretty sure this is how these types of things, where it is, when you have that voice in your ear, they're really listening. And so for any real estate agent out there, you're going to have incredible loyalty if you develop that relationship. That's where the loyalty is, um, that, that to me is, is what I'm driving at. Because when people come into, like, for instance, my voice entrepreneur world, I don't mind if they come to my website or if they check out an image or two and Instagram, but when, uh, when they're on my podcast or they're on my flash briefing, I know I have. And I don't mean that in a bad sense, I just mean like I know they're in my world now, if, if that makes sense.

Chelsea:

Yeah, totally makes sense. Okay. So, um, let's also get to the next most asked question is what's the equipment? How do I do it? Now, Jason and I have sort of like a very simplified, here's how you do it. You don't have to get into detail, but a lot of people just want to know, like, do they have to buy a lot of stuff to do this? Do they have to know how to edit? Like are there any like apps that you like or technologies that you're using that make it easier?

Ben:

Yeah. So the answer is we can keep this as simple as you want or as complicated as you like to go. Now, if you want to keep it simple. When I got started, I did not buy a single thing. All I did was I just recorded on my laptop speaker. Now, it wasn't the best experience because it wasn't the highest sound quality, but that was fine. In fact, when people can simply just understand you, it's, it's okay. It's totally okay. So if you have an and if you have a phone, guess what? You can do the same thing. You can record your voice and put it up. It's that simple. You don't need anything else. Now, if you want to get a little bit more complicated, there are services out there that can help you. There's a great service called storyline. Story line allows you to create free Alexa skills and, and flash briefings. It's free, it does not require money and it's fantastic. It's very simple. And that's how I got started as well. I just started playing with it. So again, that's called storyline. Now, if you decide that you want to go the podcast route or something a little bit more complicated, you will need someone to what they call host the podcast, which simply means you just have to upload it to a website for them to distribute to itunes and other places. And there's places where you can do that. Lipson, um, I use a site called[inaudible] dot io, but don't worry about that for now. The most important thing is simply to record. I would use, if you have an iphone or an android, I would simply just record using your voice and then, um, you know, simply upload to Amazon Alexa and you're, you're going to get there. That's the way to start. Don't get intimidated. Please do not get intimidated

Chelsea:

just to get started.

Ben:

Just get started. Yeah.

Frazier:

Let me just jump in here real quick. So to, to, to, to go off of what Ben just said. I, I, for example, when I first started, when I did my first flash briefing, I use my, I use the mic that I have my blue Yeti. I use that. I recorded into garageband. I exported the MP three and then upload. Are you sound up, sound up for my hosting. And um, and that's how I did it. But I've also done numerous flash briefings just using my iphone when I was mobile, I got had a thought and I'm like, you know, I'm going to do this as a briefing and then I just use every quarter I use my voice memo to do that. And yes, just like Ben said, the sound quality isn't there. But you know what, I haven't heard anyone say, oh well that sound quality is terrible. And I'd add and even on someone that I've listened to you, because I want to make sure that Mike, I'm wondering if other people are doing that as well. I think they're just doing it right. Just kinda like what Ben said, just just do it. Just get it out there because the voice is the voice, right? It doesn't really matter. I mean obviously if you can't hear them then that's an issue. But. But I've used, I've used numerous apps on my phone. I've used, I've had gone the professional route with garageband and, and, and an actual mic. Um, but, but it, it, you couldn't be more right on is just, you just need to start doing it right. And the quality, just like with video, right? You could you start just to be on video and just doing live and who cares? And then if you want to up your game a little bit then you have your gate up your game a little bit and get some equipment. But I think the biggest part is don't, don't worry about, don't worry about the equipment. You have it on your phone. You have a mini studio with your iphone the last three years. It's getting better and better. So utilize the equipment that you, that you already have.

Ben:

I would just, I would just tell everyone the feeling you have when someone comes up to you and says, you know what? I listened to you. It's an incredible feeling and that that's going to get you through that first week or two when you're recording on your phone and feeling sort of stupid and, and it's, it's going to be a magical feeling. So just, just do it.

Chelsea:

That's awesome. Okay. So, um, let's see. I'm curious about, since you are in your podcast, you talked a lot about how sort of your background and like you just mentioned in, in youtube and Google and I found it fascinating that just like regular everyday small business owners, they didn't really know what the heck they were doing and it just sort of just, they had no idea that video gaming like my kid watches and I'm like, oh, why would you ever watch this? Like it's like a dollar industry, right? So, um, if you do know, and I don't know if you do, but what do you think Amazon isn't telling us right now about this whole thing that's going to be happening with voice? So do you think they even know what is coming?

Ben:

Like I, like you just mentioned at Youtube we were surprised over and over again. I mean, I like, let me give you one example. In around 2000, end of 2009, we looked and we said, this is so weird. Thirty five percent of people are watching youtube on their phone. Why would they do that? And we were upset. We did not want people to watch on that. We said it's a bad experience. It's a very little screen. We want them to have a big screen. Well, that was a mistake, right? Hello? I'm like you said with video games, we tried to get rid of the video games for about a year and a half. We were like, God, we need to get rid of this stuff. This is garbage. How do we get it off of one of the biggest, one of the two biggest categories on the site now. Um, so look, I think that what Amazon is not telling us is that they don't know a damn thing. And I have a lot of friends at Amazon. I have a lot of friends at Google. All these places, they don't know a damn thing. They especially don't know how to sell products and create product discovery on this platform yet. And they're waiting for us. People like you and me and Jason, all of us, we are. It's our duty to figure out how someone's going to learn about a new house or a condo and then ended up making a purchase. They're waiting on us to figure it out similarly, um, they don't know even how to sell products on Amazon right now. And so that's one of the things I'm focused on. How do we do that? Because if we can create interesting advertising systems on these platforms, it's going to open up so much opportunity and I think everyone's going to be so excited over the next few years as money just rushes into this space.

Chelsea:

Yeah, I totally agree. And I think it's interesting because, you know, Jason and I are always trying to look at the non obvious things that, you know, are kind of involved with all this innovation and disruption and I think it's interesting and I don't remember where I heard this and he might've even been the one to say it, but it's interesting to me because when you think about in terms of like how we're so used to looking at like Google and a screen and our phones and search, like it's very interesting to me that sort of like. And I keep come back to snapchat, but it was just. I was just one of those things that people didn't get right, and now everybody's doing vertical video and all of that. But um, you know, it's, it's like they, it, when you go on Google, you see other people's stuff still, right. It's not like you're searching for one thing and you just get that one thing and the whole rest of the screen is white and black and white ads and stuff like that. But it's interesting with boys, at least for now, at least right now. And somebody will of course ruin it and it'll be a marketer that figures it out, but like there's nothing else. It's you and that voice or that flash or that, you know, podcasts you're not seeing. You're not inundated with all these other things where you might accidentally click on something or you might get distracted. You might click on somebody else's ad. And I think that's so interesting that when you talk about attention and people didn't even realize that there's so much attention there because we're not even thinking about or like used to like search as here's all this stuff. But when you're going into this environment, there isn't all this stuff, it's just that thing. So you, you do have sort of this really intimate attention filled moment with those people and I think that's where a lot of the power can be because we're so used to eating like distracted by everything else. So I'm interested to see how that evolves. You'll probably figure out a way to start advertising and marketing flashed a flashlight.

Ben:

Podcasts are the same way. I think that's why we've had this podcast explosion. You know, I think that when we, when we've all been reading articles over the last few years, they feel click Baity, they feel like fake news and podcasts right now to me are the best content in the world starts as a podcast now because like you said, it's, it's a clean space. It's intimate and the person who's speaking has to take ownership of their thoughts. And so you have a really interesting development with podcasts. I believe that podcast is this beginning of the voice technology, this revolution. So if anyone is out there that's interested in this, first of all, if you're not listening to podcasts, where are you first? And then second of all, you need to start your own. You need to start talking. The best thing that ever happened was when I, I, I'm an introvert. You're not going to believe that, but I'm an introvert. Get out there and start talking. Yeah,

Chelsea:

I know. It's not as scary as it sounds like once you get all over the excuses and you're like, okay, well I figured it out because you will figure it out. I mean all of us. I mean, let's be real. Just Google. It gives you a million youtube videos. We can figure it out if you don't know, ask Jason. Okay. So tell us about the mistakes that you're seeing people making with their flashes and like their, their skills, like what are mistakes that we should look out for? I mean, we don't know what we're doing. So you've probably learned a few things. So let us know.

Ben:

I would say, uh, the first thing is just be yourself. It's going to be the same as with all platforms, be yourself, don't, don't, don't try to be remembered, so it's a personal medium, right? Like when I'm doing mine, I am trying to be as friendly as possible because it's a personal medium. I want it to feel more like a friend than a show, if that makes sense. I'm your friend Ben. I'm not broadcasting to. You were hanging out together and I think that that's what this technology, that's where think it's going over the next year or two, which is it's going to be short, frequent interactions with my friend Jason, my friend Chelsea. Instead of thinking of it as Tim ferriss broadcasting down to me, if that makes sense. So I would just. I would just remember that that it's a personal medium to. I would be very, very careful. I just because you're doing voice doesn't mean that you shouldn't also be doing instagram and video and images like it doesn't suddenly mean that you're just this voice in the sky. And I've seen people, it sounds silly, but I've seen this mistake over and over again. People create their voice skills and they're like, how come people are checking this out? Well, guess what? It's part of the package. It's not the only thing you do and people need to see you and feel you. Um, and again, I don't care. I've noticed that people, some people come to my website, they only read the headline, they don't read the article, they don't listen to the podcast. All they want to do is read the title and that's their thing for the day. That's the world we live in. So don't forget that. And then third, I would say keep it simple and consistent. If, if, if you're not consistent, then this is a waste of time. Um, because people rely on you. I have so many new friends from this. I mean, that's one of the best parts is you get to know people and they're like, hey man, you're sort of part of my day. You can't, you need to be there for people. So don't, don't screw that up if, if at all possible. Exactly. Okay. I want to make sure I didn't miss any questions.

Frazier:

Yeah. Ricky, ricky had a question and I think it will, it will tie into the next question. We'll ask about what agents can do, but um, so rick is asking about, um, as an agent being hyper focused on his local market, keeping, keeping us customers and future customers engage. What I will say is that in fact, Ben just touched on a little bit, is that um, if you're blogging right, and I did this actually doing with a few linkedin articles, but if you're blogging and people are going to your website for whatever doesn't mean they're going to read your blog. Right? So if you're actually looking for content to do it, why not do a flash briefing based on your blog content and just, and just read that, record it and then put that on his flash briefing. I know for me, you know, as, as people that have been following me, knowing that I'm moving to Salt Lake Salt Lake area and I'm creating another brand called built in Salt Lake, which is gonna, you know, talk about companies that are built in Salt Lake, all the new energy and startups and stuff like that. So I'm actually gonna just read the news and do those in my flash briefings for built in Salt Lake. And so ricky, my, my suggestion and ben jump in from down here, but my suggestion to you, rick, is that I could guarantee you in your area and nobody's doing any type of flash briefings on local news and stuff like that. They may not watch the news because you know everyone has a bad view of the media and news being negative, but you could do the positive stuff and talk about stuff that's happening in your local market. Also, dovetailing on what Ben was talking about, people not having time to read and so people will come to your flash briefing getting the content because you're going to get it invoiced form, right? So they can listen to during their car, listen to where they're working out, no one else is doing in your market. So right now as a chance, as at least in my view, is to capitalize on all of that and give that content in, you know, record it and, and, and, and not have it available for them to or that so they don't have to read it, but have that content that you're already creating and just, and just record it and then put it out there because nobody else is doing it.

Ben:

Jason, I love that advice, man. I mean you say that so well and that is the recipe. That's definitely the rest of me of my. So my real estate agent, I'm here in Los Angeles. His name is Josh Smith. We're not related, but Josh, Josh is an incredible facebook talents. I mean the funniest guy in the world. He creates content every single day on the platform. He only talks about real estate. I'd say only about 10 to 15 percent of the time, but I love his perspective. He's an expert on Los Angeles, just in general. He knows what's going on, he knows culturally what's going on. He talks about neighborhoods, it's in relation to like what we actually want to talk about and again, it's only 10 percent of the time about real estate, but man is he smart and manistee successful and I think the same thing is true here. I think you have this golden opportunity. I'm it. This is a new platform. You have less competition. Go out there and do the same thing. You're going to pick up people so quickly. I want to hear like if, and by the way, if I was in Salt Lake City, what would I want to listen to you? I want to listen to, to, to exactly what Jason's doing right now.

Chelsea:

We've recorded ourselves. We've gotten over like this feeling that we can't do it. We were buying. We sort of know what we're going to say, so how do we market it? How do we get people to find us? Because it's just not. Nobody really knows about. The average public doesn't really know to use Alexa for that. Some people do like us, but how do you market it? How do you feel like you're not just like doing all this content and like it's just getting sucked into this like vacuum? Nothing.

Ben:

Yeah, I mean that's the question. I think that just like any other platform, you have to find your angle and when you find your angle at worse. Like for me, let's be honest, this voice technology and how to, how to make it a business. That's my angle and not a lot of people were doing when I started, I looked at it and it was like there are a lot of people talking about cool features on the Alexa device. There are people talking about how to program the Alexa but not a single person was talking to you about how to make money from this, how to market, how to be an entrepreneur. Not One person was doing what I was doing and I said, my God, I need to have this conversation. That's my angle. And so I went out there and they started talking about it. Now, that doesn't mean I can't talk about other stuff like with voice entrepreneur, with my podcast, 50 percent voice technology, 50 percent entrepreneurial marketing in the hustle, right? It's both and I love both, but it allows me, it gives me, once you have that angle, than anything is possible, so I would encourage everybody to find that really precise, narrow, niche angle that allows you to become an expert or are are the best, ideally the best in the world at something or one of the best in the world at something. It can be the more niche, the better. If you're the best guy to talk about microwave popcorn in the western United States, then guess what? You're. I'm listening to you and then before you know it, I'm going to. You're going to be telling me about wine and popcorn and then you're going to be telling me about wine, popcorn, and movies. That's the. That's the way it. It snowballs, right? And then secondly, you have to hit all these different platforms. The standard entrepreneurial advice hit. You have to be on all of these platforms. If you're not on instagram ads, you're a damn fool. I. Instagram is still, I think Gary v says this, it is so massively undervalued. I am getting it is. I'm spending pennies right now on instagram. I can't believe in 2018, so I would be, I would just get really smart about that. I'm driving people from instagram to my podcast right now and it's working very, very well. I've been able to grow very quickly, so I would encourage you take the time just learning some instagram ads. It's not that complicated. It's really not. And then you're off and running. That's awesome. I know Eric has a question. Says are class reviews? It'd be searchable like a google search and as your flash briefing become a channel. Um, but someone likes your message today and concert other briefings. Eric, a great question. So flash briefings are very quickly going to be searchable. In fact, so google in the last, I would say six months has become very, very interested in the podcast space and the voice space. And so a lot of their internal efforts, and I know a lot of people there, everything is about how do you search can, can they start searching podcast, the history of podcasts for a certain sentence, a certain topic, so it's not just flash briefings. Anything we've ever said is going to be searchable in the next couple of years. That's why it's so important to start now because this content is going to be searchable any day now through google. That's such an advantage. It's so much easier to talk content than to type content for most people. So that's a huge opportunity. Thank you for asking that piece. Um, your second question, does your flash briefing become a channel? Being honest, I'm a little bit disappointed. I don't think that Amazon has moved nearly as quickly as I thought they would on realizing that people like us wanting to use the platform for communication. These companies, they're so stupid. I have to say that like these big giant companies, every time they think it's about the technology and it's always about the people in the. Absolutely. There was a reason why youtube, when, when, when we started video, there were over 30 different companies trying to become youtube, youtube one, because look at the name of the company, they realized it was called Youtube. It was about people talking to one and it wasn't about video codec rates, it wasn't about, you know, the technology and buffering. It was about people talking to one another around the world. They get, they get it wrong every time, so give them a year and all these things are going to be there.

Chelsea:

And what about cross platforms? Is this going to be like a war? Like, you know, am I going to be able to cross platform my google home to my facebook, whatever they're going to call it to my Alexa or do I have to go to each

Ben:

one and do it there? Yeah, I mean people always make the joke like, is Alexa going to be talking to Siri? Is Siri going to be talking to Alexa? Like how does that work? Or are these friends? Are they friends? I think that they will all speak to each other. Right now. We have workarounds to do that. Um, there are tech services out there that can start to have them talk to each other over time. I think they'll talk to each other. Of course, apple, every incentive is for apple to key people in Siri universe. So it will always work a little bit better if, because they're trying to create platform lock in. So if you're an apple person, then guess what, you're going to probably be sticking around with Siri and Siri talk to you or Mac book pro and, and so forth. But the ability to talk cross platform, uh, should be here any, any day now. Now, if it's a question that, you know, that we were planning on asking you in that, and it's come up recently is, um, so we get it all the time from agents and loan officers and, and it's very valid as they go, oh, well I got to do content on instagram and facebook and youtube and they're doing all that stuff. They're picking, they're picking their poison on what they want to do. Now they have voice and that voice has, okay, am I going to do content for Alexa, am I going to do content for Google, am I going to do? And everything else that pops out and facebook's new thing that's going to be coming out later on this year. Um, if someone's gonna start at will. Well, let me ask two questions. One is what, what is your platform of choice? And then two, is there a, a distributor to where you could just do one and then it will hit every single voice service? Yeah. Um, so when I started, I really, I almost didn't want to use the word podcast. I really wanted just to be a voice briefing on, on Amazon, and I really wanted to explore what was possible in that medium. And what I found was that Amazon just is not moving fast enough for me. Like I said, I wanted to turn it into, I want to be a friend. I don't want to be a show. I think shows are stupid. That's me. But over time it had to accept the fact that I needed to broadcast across every platform. So I found a service, I use a service called PIPPA PIP PPA.io, Pipa.io makes it extremely simple. I send my, my content across. I think now it's something like 14 different platforms straight from pippa.io and I think it's around, I think I spent around$20 a month to do so. Uh, but to me that's worth it. It saves an incredible amount of time. I can go everywhere from Youtube, soundcloud, itunes to stitcher and so forth. And they make it so easy. Like even, I mean anybody can use. I've never seen someone say this was too complicated on flippa.io put it that way.

Chelsea:

Awesome. Let's see. Do we have any. Oh right. Yeah. No, I mean I think as parents of younger kids do, he just asks. He doesn't like that whole like means of like when we were kids and they're like, are there were like why, why, why? Like my kid doesn't ask me anything. He goes a lot about disruption, innovation. And so I was preparing for this presentation and he heard me talking about it and he goes, Alexa, what is disruption? And that's ironic right there, but yeah, and like all the kids that are like 11 to 15, I just noticed I was on a trip with a friend of ours who has a son that's in that age range. Facetime, that's it. They do not call people. It is facetime and my kid, it's all voice and it's the weirdest thing ever. And people are like, oh, that's so far away. Why would we design for that? It's, it's actually really not because, you know, the grandparents figure out how to use facebook to connect with their grandkids. It's just, it's totally happening. So rick completely agree on that. So, uh, it, it's, it is weird. I mean, it's weird that Jason and I met on Snapchat as most of the people in this chat right now. Eric, I've never even met you in person, but we've talked for three years. So weird stuff. I get it. That's awesome. Jason, do you have any more questions that you can think of and if you guys have any questions, let us know. Drop them in there.

Frazier:

Yeah. One question, and I know you're going to just, you know, you talk about it like you don't want to be a show, you don't want to, you don't want, you just want to be a friend, you want to be someone that people talk to, but I'm just wondering as you're talking with other people that are doing this, as you're hearing feedback from your audience or whatnot, what would you say a good sweet spot is for doing as far as length? Because I know personally and again I know there's, I don't like to put stuff in buckets and silos saying well just like when everyone said, oh your video has to be two minutes or less. It's like well people are crushing it with eight minute videos or you know, 32nd videos, whatever it is, who cares? But my thing is with, with the voice, I know personally like I hate long podcasts. Once I get past like 10 minutes, unless I'm really engaged in the subject. Once they get past like 10 or 11 minutes, it's like I'm. It's too much other stuff going on. I know flash briefings will go up to 10 minutes. I tried to keep my 90 seconds or less. What are the sweet spots that you've seen at least as far as engagement, people being happy with the content? One for podcast. I know we're talking about Alexa,

Ben:

one for podcasts and then two for flash briefings. What would you say the sweet spots as you noticed from your community? If you're doing a weekly podcast, then I think you were playing with the long form 45 to 60 minutes a range. If you're doing a daily podcast. I would have actually seen work incredibly well is roughly, and this is purely podcast, 25 minutes is a sweet spot from what? From everyone I've heard in the industry got. If you, if you, if you hit 25 minutes, it's sort of perfect. It's like just enough to go really deep, but it's enough. Like you don't really piss people off. Yep. Um, I'm messing around with 10 minutes myself and I really believe that the future. I'm so glad you're saying that, Jason, because I hate. I hate long podcasts. I don't understand how people do this all the time, so I really think the future is 10 minutes and that's part of my youtube heritage, which is like youtube videos or three to five minutes. I figure with audio you probably need a little more. So you're like, alright, that five to 10 minute range is perfect. So that's what I've been hammering on mine. I think for if you're doing purely a flash briefing, I think 90 seconds is ideal. I'm 60 to 90 seconds, right. And nail 60 to 90 seconds. Um, yeah and, and I think that's working but I would say short, frequent is winning and I, it hasn't always been. This is a new development, right? If you had asked us a year ago, I would say you know what, you need to do the 45 to 60, but I think we're on the forefront. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome.

Chelsea:

Okay. Rick says the routine. Yeah, for sure. I mean we've got 10 minutes to listen to anything and same thing. I mean, my phone, I don't know how many things I've actually broken, like, like that I've had that my phone's like sitting on because I'm getting ready and I'm just like listening to it or like listening to someone and so yeah, totally agree with you. I mean now it's getting a little crazy people or the shower with they're waterproof Alexis, whatever. Because you know, what else you going to do with the shower and God forbid we have two minutes or we're just by ourselves not thinking of anything. So yeah. See, there you go. That's awesome. Well cool. Well Jason, if you have any more questions, I think that was awesome. I definitely got everything covered. I wanted to get covered and I'm definitely want people to know where they can find you, where they can connect with you. I Love Ben's podcasts. Is there like five minutes, seven minutes? I think I've been just like on an. I'm always on an airplane and I don't know how I found you, but I thought I was on an airplane and literally listened to like 37 of them or whatever you had. And I was like, oh, this is awesome. And they were five minutes, so unless you're going to talk about a serial killer, our pod, not you, you're, you've done it, you're professional. But, and as like we've shown to like Jason and I started with 92nd videos and now we do eight, nine, 10 minute videos and they have good watch times but we know what to do and how to do excel for starting out. You're right, it's so much better to go shorter and you know, build up from there. But yeah, it's really interesting. So

Frazier:

for me it was a visual, like when you, when you know, you sent me a link to Ben's podcast and I looked at it and I saw like four minutes, five minutes. I'm like, yes, thank you. It's not 60 minutes, 45 and it's not that they're not engaging in their content is good. It's just me, you know, I got add and I'm looking at it and so visually I'm like already like, okay, am I really going to be engaged because to me it's like I don't have 60 minutes because I'm always wanting to do something and, but I do have a lot of times where I can just be listening to something and working on something else and just have that passive listening. And I think a lot of us are doing that. It's, I mean, we've been doing it as a culture since they, they put radios in the car, right? You know, and news and, and satellite and everything else is that you're always passive listening and you're still catching those little nuggets and it's easy to go back. Um, but, um, one thing that I will say is, because a lot of people, you know, obviously in our, we're in the industry, so, you know, real estate mortgage. One thing that I would say that to you as an audience is that just get started with this. It's just one of those things that when I started and I, and I'll tell you, I'm one of those people that when snapchat was first coming out, I'm like, Eh, that's not gonna be anything that we're, it's going to help me do anything. And I was totally wrong on that and voice even with the voice assistant, I didn't really have one for the longest time, but when I got an echo, um, when I was setting up our house in Utah and I was just doing music, the flash briefing and stuff, and I'm like, you know what? I just, I would just, I wasn't even thinking about it. I was like, Alexa, do this. And I was like, oh wait Alexis, not, I'm. It was down in the basement. I wasn't even around the whole deal. And the more that everything gets integrated with smart home technology, right? So as an agent, as a loan officer, if you guys, if you're looking for content, you're looking to be an expert on something. Look at the technology of smart homes mixed with voice commands on Alexa and just seeing how that stuff works together because then you could start doing content based off of that, right, and you can be the local expert on that. What I'm seeing is because there is not a lot of competition in this space yet, yet I think all of us can agree that it's going to be the future and is already starting to trend that way. If you look at some of the stats that ben has already talked about, that you have a tremendous opportunity. It's like going back, if you could start on facebook and build an audience and reach back then would you? Of course you would. Now this has that same opportunity. Now you have it to do it, so don't just don't wait and overthink it and that's generally what a lot of us do is we overthink the execution on a lot of this stuff to just get started. And, and, and I think if you, if you guys haven't been listening to Ben's podcast, go back. Like I did. Start at the beginning and listened to as it gradually and he talks about different things. I'm just see how it's progressed just since I started listening, going back to march to now. Right, and we're only talking about four months now and what I've seen other people doing, you guys have the ability to do this and become like Gary v talks about being the digital mayor of your town. Now you have this on the voice side. You know, going back to what ricky was trying to do and just be that person and just talk and market it out there and people will just enter, hear your voice and then they maybe they hear your voice at a get together or a function or something. And like Ben said, Hey, I know your voice like you. I listened to you. I, I hear you. And it's just, it's just amazing. And so I, I implore all of you that are watching us joining us live and then those that are going to give you, catching us on the replay. Don't wait for this stuff before you're comfortable. Just get in and start doing it. Who Cares? And the more you do it, the more you'll be comfortable, but don't miss. Um, and I think Ben and Chelsea will agree with me. Don't miss the opportunity that you have. Yeah. Awesome. So Ben, how can give us, give us all the places that they could find you and listen to your voice.

Ben:

Yeah. Thank you guys. Thank you for, for all of your time and attention and for talking. I love it. So, I mean, first of all I would say if, if you have questions and, and I just encourage people to go for it. Ask me. My email address is b Smith and Gmail.com. It's as simple as possible. Um, if you want to check out what I'm doing, search for voice entrepreneur on itunes or stitcher or anywhere like I said, and I have a website but you know, I can be found. So, um, but just get going and if you have questions, I'm here to help. That's, that's I, I'm not making money from this. I just liked doing it. So that's all it's been smooth dot TV, right? That's your website? Yeah. Www Dot Benn Smith dot TV. Okay, perfect. Yeah, one day I hopefully there'll be one of them. That slag Ben Smith Dot podcast or pot or voice breezy.

Chelsea:

That voice, that voice, that voice. Yeah. Perfect. All right. One more thing to add to my list to start doing my a flash briefings. I need to do that.

Ben:

Yes. Yes. And let me know when you do Chelsea. I want to listen to every single day.

Chelsea:

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. Cause I've got a full list. We're going to do it.

Ben:

Thank you so much everybody.

Frazier:

Oh Ben, thank you for joining us. And again, everyone that that logged in. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Thank you to our host social survey for allowing us to do the Webinar. I'm just, again, really appreciate all of you guys and uh, again, uh, www dot benn smith dot TV. Check out his podcast, check out everything that he's doing and I know I've learned a ton and Ben, thank you for, for being such a great contributor and adding value to everybody.

Ben:

Cool. Thank you. All right, take care guys. Bye. Bye.