Matt Mckeever - RPDRS

Alfonso: Who's ready for this afternoon? I am super stoked for our next presenter. I'm really happy to call Matt a friend. We talk about many different things, social media, one of them. But again, you guys know him. You guys love him. Put your hands together, get really loud, make him feel loved. Ladies and gentlemen, Matt Mckeever.

Matt: Thank you everyone, I really appreciate you guys investing in your real estate future by committing a whole Saturday to just learning from people that are real people taking real action, getting real results, doing real shit. What I'm going to talk to you guys about today is social media and the value of attention. Before we even get into my backstory or the value in social media, do we all understand the value and attention? Do you guys understand why so many successful people would take the Saturday off to learn as well as to come up on stage and talk about what they do, why they do it, how they do it.

For me, when I was originally starting out I didn't necessarily understand the value and attention. In fact, I was really focused on staying below the radar before I started my YouTube journey. In fact, I didn't really exist on social media. I was on the accounting team in university though, so we did win a competition. That's a photo of me at the accounting competition. But beyond that was like the only photo I had on my Facebook page. In fact, after university I deactivated it. Thinking there wasn't really any value to social media and not understanding that one to many conversations is in fact extremely powerful and very time-saving as well.

In 2016, I ended up quitting the corporate world. I was a CPA, a chartered accountant by trade, built up a small real estate portfolio and then transitioned into just becoming a full-time real estate investor, which I suspect a lot of the people in this room aspire to at some point hit that tipping point in your real estate investing journey. Even if you don't want to quit your job, it's extremely important. You understand that your job could quit you. Essentially once I quit my job, I found myself a little aimless. I was trying to convince my friends and family to get into real estate investing so that they could get control of their financial future. It just seemed like a no-brainer to me.

I would just write these really long emails like 5,000 to 10,000 word long emails. Based on laughter, you guys can guess what happened, not a single person responded to those emails. I doubt a single person read it. Certainly not a single person took action. It was really frustrating for me at the time, because I didn't understand, I was like, man I quit my day job at 31 as a real estate investor. In fact, after that, I kept investing in real estate, building up a portfolio now of over 70 units, over a hundred tenants. I've also co-founded all kinds of different real estate networking events. Because again, I'm a huge believer that your network is your net worth. You are the sum of your inputs.

I constantly surround myself with great high performing people, because those are my inputs to me. This is just software and its inputs and outputs. If I'm not having great input, I'm not surrounding myself with real killers, with real people that are out there taking action, getting real results. I can't expect to achieve that myself either. Finally, just in case you're not familiar with my YouTube channel or my social media presence. Right now we just reached 50,000 subscribers on YouTube, which is a big milestone for me.

To put that into context, that means every single day, 5,000 to 10,000 people are watching my YouTube channel. That's really powerful because I'm willing to dedicate a whole Saturday just to get up here for 20 minutes to talk to 150 people about real estate investing. The fact that I can actually tell 5,000 or 10,000 people a day. It's just so powerful. I could literally never do that. There's not enough hours in the day for me to be able to talk one-on-one with each individual person, even with Instagram at the same time. I have a much smaller following on Instagram, but every day, there's 500 to 700 people that watch every one of my stories on Instagram.

I just like to think of that as well. If I could have an email list we're 500 to 700 people open that email list every single day, how valuable would that be? I'm pretty sure the answer is extremely valid. Here's just a quick little shot of my YouTube channel. Now, I only got 20 minutes, I'm going to go really fast guys. There's a lot of information here. Feel free to have your cell phone out and just take screenshots of any of the slides that we go over.

Essentially this is how we need to look at things. We need to understand that social media is the new TV. Essentially, the printing press was the original thing that revolutionized communications for human deans. After that came radio and telecommunications, then TV and cable. Now, we're finally at the tipping point of social media on the internet. It's extremely important. We don't get romantic about the medium that we're using to talk to people with. It's really the message that matters. If tomorrow, everyone decided the internet was uncool and stopped using the end. I wouldn't be on social media, but the fact is the attention there.

I know that there's value in that attention. I'm going to make sure I stake out that claim. In fact, in Canada, it shocks me how few of us are willing to really invest in our social media brand, invest a little bit of time and effort in order to stick out right now. I just see it as a giant land rush and personally, I feel like I'm miles ahead. I'm looking back and wondering why no one's chasing me. Because it's so common in the US to see all kinds of real estate investors, all kinds of mentors, all kinds of coaches, gurus, whatever it is.

I just don't be that old man. That's just yelling about how social media is ruining the future generation. It's here to stay, like way back when the printing press came out, they said that it was going to destroy knowledge because people wouldn't remember things because they could just write them down and. I think we can all agree that's not actually the case. Let's just really focus on the value of attention.

Grant Cardone got a great saying, if they don't know you, they can't follow you. In the very beginning of any relationship, we need to create general awareness or attention. For me again, social media is such a faster way to create that initial awareness or attention again, like how long would it take for me in front of groups of 150 people to talk to five or 10,000 people. It would take a lot of days. In fact, I could probably spend an entire year going to small meetup groups, trying to have those conversations, whereas just one day on social media with my YouTube channel, I can achieve the same thing.

I've just thrown up a couple of little photos here of Glen, Gary, Glen Ross, just showing that it really does come down to a tension interest rather than a decision. Then they finally take action and invest in you, invest in your business, buy your course, whatever it is that you're looking to do, everything is a funnel. If this is a new idea that you guys paid attention to or funnels are important, I really recommend you look into Russell Brunson, he's the founder of ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels is a fickle mistress. It's not a perfect website. It's not a perfect platform, but the concept is fantastic. In fact, I highly recommend you guys check out his book expert secrets. It really breaks down for you, how you can build essentially the perfect webinar and beyond.

I put a little red arrow there, just so you guys could see, but like Robert Kiyosaki, probably someone, a lot of us are familiar with the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. In fact, I did the introduction to Russell Brunson's book. It all just comes down to crafting that initial attention or awareness in order to get them to go down our funnel. The way I like to look at it, If we don't have that initial attention or awareness, we can never then escalate or proceed the relationship further down the funnel.

If you guys are already familiar with Russell Bronson, then I highly recommend you dig deeper into Ryan Deiss from digital marketer. We don't have time to go through the content life cycle, but at the top of the funnel. That to me is my social media. That's where I'm creating general awareness. It's where I'm developing a relationship with you guys and with my audience in general. I can move further down the funnel in order to escalate the relationship.

Let's get specific to real estate investing. Essentially, everything is a funnel. Whether you're looking to attract, motivated sellers, whether we're looking to find JV partners, whether we're looking for hard money, if people don't know us, they don't trust us. The very first thing is we need to create that awareness. We need to create that attention in order to escalate the relationship. Once they trust us, then they'll do business with us. And another way I like to think of it is that people only like to do business with people they like.

If they don't know you, they can't possibly like that. You're just a stranger danger right there. If they don't know who you are, if you don't have their attention, if you've never created any general awareness about what you're trying to do. And then finally, like for social media, it's just the scalability of these conversations. Again, being able to talk to 150 of you is fantastic. But knowing that I released a video earlier today with Mike Rosehart, and it's already got 900 views on it. Just think about the power of that.

There's a lot of different mediums we can use, but again, let's just put this into context, 10,000 views on a good day. The average view duration, six to nine minutes on my YouTube channel. That means the average daily minutes is over 40,000 minutes spent just watching me or my guests talk about real estate. Talk about the value of social media, all that stuff. It's over a million minutes a month. And that starts to really boggle the mind, in my opinion. In fact, me and my team have started really viewing my YouTube channel as in fact. We're HGTV, Canada on the internet. And back in the day, there were so many gatekeepers that would keep you from getting a TV show or being able to share your message or tell your story.

Now, literally all you need is an internet connection. A cell phone I'm actually live streaming in my slides right now, again, because there'll be another 20 people, 30 people watching on Instagram live at the moment. And then beyond that, there's going to be another hundred people, view it over the next 24 hours. I'm able to double my audience today, but just having my cell phone up, having the data connection and sharing the story. The platforms I want to talk to you guys about real quick. These are the five. Ones that I want you guys to focus on. They're not all created equally, but like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Tiktok now each one has its own purpose and its own value.

We're going to try and dive into it very lightly today. If this is all brand new territory to you, one I'd love it if you follow me, but probably even more importantly, you should be following Gary. It'll literally just carry the fantastic guy that constantly talks about the value of social media. And right now he's harping on LinkedIn and Tiktok. Gary 's number one tip, and my number one tip too, provides value. It's really about documenting, not creating.

When we get super fancy, it's really easy to want to take 20 different shots of a video and make sure the lighting's perfect that my voice is perfect, but that's not really what's important if someone was going to dislike, unsub because simply the lighting wasn't perfect or my audio wasn't perfect. They weren't actually interested in my message. They weren't the right type of attention or awareness that I wanted. It's just really about telling your story and it's actually really easy to tell your story because it's really easy to keep that story straight because it's your story and way too many people try and be something on social media, they're not.

I'm a numbers nerd. I'm an accountant, I'm a CPA. That's what I share with my audience. It turns out that it resonates with a lot of people and is the same with every single person in this room. There are people that would map onto the avatar of just who you are, like you're not that unique. It's really important to understand that a lot of people resonate with your story and you just need to go out there and start telling it. Did you get a little bit more into the practical for you guys? Let's think about money partners. I would recommend Facebook and LinkedIn and to a lesser extent Instagram.

The reason for that is let's think about who spends their time on Facebook and LinkedIn. It's a lot of middle aged people. In fact, when we're looking at LinkedIn, it's middle-aged people that are trying to climb the corporate ladder. You know what they have? They have money. You know what they don't have? They don't have time. And because they don't have time, but they have money. It probably means that they're a great partner for a lot of us because you guys have the time to invest in your education. You have the time to become an expert in your field. And with that, you can then take their money. Bring it together and really start crushing it and just attracting a lot more money to you.

For personal branding and say, you're getting into coaching or an event business, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn is what I'd recommend again, because the duration of the relationship's going to be a lot longer. Instagram is fantastic and the stories, but it still is a relatively superficial touch where YouTube, I can go super deep on YouTube. I can post like a two hour video if I want. I may not be the best for the algorithm, but I can put it up there and people can consume that information. If you're looking for a personal brand, really you're just trying to create that lifestyle brand, personal brand. I like to call it lifestyle porn, essentially.

That's where you want Instagram, Tiktok, YouTube, and to a lesser extent, Facebook. And then it's really important. A lot of people misunderstand the types of reach for real estate platforms. Give it perspective essentially. What I like to think of is there's paid reach. This is where we can pay money and we can absolutely target and get the type of attention we want. Ty Lopez is, YouTube ads, probably everyone here has seen a Ty Lopez, YouTube ad, or you've seen Billy Jean marketing or something to that effect. And that's because they're able to really target YouTube on Facebook and on LinkedIn to that specific niche.

What I like to think of is there's organic reach. This is the ability to reach the people that already like your stuff. For me, that's going to be Instagram stories, that's Facebook stories, that's YouTube and then finally there's organic discovery. This is the ability to reach new audiences where you can really go viral. A lot of people get really focused on going viral. There is value in doing it. If you have the right business model behind it.

If you're trying to go viral, I think Tik Tok is the place to be, again, it may not be in the core demographic you want today. Tiktok is very young right now, but they're going to get older. Plus us old people are going to keep piling into Tik Tok and make it uncool. But once it's uncooled, our core demographic of money partners are likely going to be there again. What content goes by essentially any content that's going to keep a user on that platform longer is the type of content that's going to go viral. It's just a business.

The longer I keep someone on YouTube, the more YouTube wants to show my shit. It's very simple. It's very basic. I'm going to keep going a little bit faster here guys, but so the levels of social media marketing, essentially, if you're on zero platforms, you're as that grumpy old man yelling about how the internet is ruining kids, it's ruining people's memories, all that stuff.

The bare minimum for me, if you're a real estate agent, it's Facebook. It's really simple. You probably already have an account anyways. Start posting about your real estate journey on Facebook. Don't worry if people chirp you, they're absolutely going to be chirpy. They're going to, oh, you think you're a big shot now posting on social media, talking about real estate? You invest, whatever those people are just jealous. They're insecure. They're projecting on you. It's not actually about you. It's about them. They've got their own inner demons and limiting beliefs. Then if you're going to start becoming a social butterfly, that's where I'm thinking two to three.

Ideally you're doing regular Facebook lives. You're producing regular content on YouTube or LinkedIn. Again, it's very targeted at those three platforms. And then finally, like Gary V you're going all out years on every single platform you're constantly creating content. You probably have the Hungarian experiment living in your basement, doing mushrooms as your full-time cameraman and all that good. Now, I do want to warn you guys. There are a lot of people in my opinion, that are doing social media and real estate investing wrong.

It's really important that we understand, like technically we can't solicit from the general public and a lot of people you probably follow on social media are directly soliciting from the general public. I'm not throwing shade at them, but for understanding's sake, essentially, we can only seek investment from friends and family and accredited investors unless you're really curating your Facebook feed or your Instagram stories, and you have private settings on it, you're probably doing it wrong.

A lot of you are clever people. You're coming up with clever workarounds. Right now, I did two where I was like, I'm just going to turn my HQ, my head office into a personal house. And then everyone that comes over as a friend, because clearly they've been to my house and this, that, and the other and then I talked to my lawyer and she said, what was your intentions? And that's where it actually all comes down to is what are our intentions as a posting on this social media? One, I strongly recommend you guys actually reach out, get legal advice or really study the laws so you can make sure you're on the right side of the laws. Now, realistically, this is all complaint driven.

It's not like you need to go out and immediately start panicking. It really depends on what your long-term goals and vision is, but I just want you guys to understand when you're breaking the rules. If you decide to break the rules, that's on you, but it's really important that you understand exactly how to go about doing this. And then finally just understand the nature of social media, so certain types of social media posts. We are going to last a lot longer.

Something like a YouTube video is very easy to download the moment it's out there in the ether or something like an Instagram story or an Instagram live will disappear. Now, people can still screenshot it. They can still record it, but it's going to take a lot more effort and kind of premeditation on their behalf in order to execute that. One more thing, there are dragons out there. There are dangers beyond just running afoul of security regulators. Social media is a tool. And like any tool, it can be used to our betterment or our detriment. And what I mean by that is, there are people that are going to hate us because we're posting our successes on social media because we're showing ourselves investing in real estate.

In fact, Mike Rosehart went through that with the CBC which is the video we just posted today. Disgruntled tenants will watch your social media. People hating just successful or rich people will watch your social media. The CRA is starting to watch your social media, building inspectors will soon start to watch your social media and even your disgruntled contractors or tradespeople will also be watching your social media.

I think it's really important that you understand the consequences of posting all this stuff on social media. I strongly recommend that you never share your address. That you don't mention your legal entities that you actually operate in. I'd much rather talk about myself as Matt McKeever, the real estate investor, the name, my different numbered corps, or my named corps. It's just gonna make life a lot easier. If it's a little bit harder for people to find you just create a tiny mode and most people won't go to the effort to try and take you down.

In summary, social media is the future platform of attention. It just is, if you feel strongly against it, fighting reality. It just is like those of you that aren't listening to my talk right now that are zoning out. It's probably because you're on social media. It's really important you understand that even if you don't like the idea of social media, it's here to stay. Then beyond that attention awareness is needed in order to do business, regardless of your goals, attention is currency.

That's why I'm going crazy. Every penny I make, I just re-invest into a crane, a bigger, larger digital footprint because long-term the stuff's going to last forever. This talk today disappears with you guys. My talks on YouTube, as long as YouTube the platform exists, it lives indefinitely. I think Google is going to keep YouTube around for a while. I think Facebook will be around for a while too. I think Zuckerberg knows what he's doing. Social media is the most scalable way for us to have one to many conversations.

1 to 150 is fantastic, but on YouTube 5,000 to 10,000, again, I'm still a really small fish in the big scale of things. When it comes to YouTube, my buddy Graham Stephan he's regularly doing like 500,000 million views a day. Thinking about how powerful that conversation is. He started his YouTube channel after me. He liked my YouTube channel and reached out to me and I should have worked harder on YouTube. That's the lesson there. And then finally don't create, just document, just tell your story. Be open and honest.

People are going to resonate with you. And then that way, when they meet you in real life, they're actually going to like the person they meet. If you pretend to be someone you're not on social media, long-term, that's going to catch up to you. Maybe then in the past, you used to be able to burn bridges and then just move to the next city over. That doesn't happen anymore. This shit's going to follow us around. Really be cognizant of what you're talking about, what you're posting and just make sure it aligns with your brands and your long-term goals.

In my opinion, quantity will always be quality when it comes to social media. I need to take this advice more often myself. I get way too romantic about making sure that we have the best video or hoping that it goes viral. But it's much more important that I just have conversations with you guys. Every video I don't post is a missed conversation with people in this room. Every time I post a video. There's the chance that it goes viral. And then finally, if we're seeking investment or investors, please know the law, I highly recommend you talk to a security lawyer. Even if someone else has been doing it on social media and they didn't get in trouble, that doesn't make it legal. It just means that they haven't got caught.

Realistically, most of the stuff is complaint-driven. Most people aren't going to get in trouble when it comes to social media posting or soliciting, but some people and when that happens, all of a sudden there's going to be a witch hunt for everyone that's ever been posting on social media. And so listening from the general public. And finally, this is just a little plug.

Follow me on Instagram, check out my YouTube channel. If you guys want, I put together a free landlord starter kit, which has nothing to do with this conversation, but has to do with my software company, control your property. Essentially, what that starter kit, if you go to mattmckeever.com will do for you. It's just a free half hour course where I share with you five of our favorite clauses to include in your Ontario standard lease form, as well as talking about the importance of things like having a separate parking lease agreement. I really appreciate your attention guys because I really do value it. Thank you.