Hey Mike! Can you briefly introduce yourself and your business?

‍My name is Mike Sherard with eXp Realty. I have a YouTube channel of 84,000 subscribers. I teach real estate agents how to scale their business the modern way by leveraging social media.When did you first start it out with the whole social media thing like YouTube, etc.I started out in briefly in 2017, but started taking it seriously in 2019. And that's when I started putting out two videos a week. And I've been doing that ever since. And it's been able to help me build the multiple seven-figure business.

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Wow, that's amazing. Why do you create videos?

‍Creating leverage. So in real estate, these days it's all about who knows you. But most agents do it the old school way of cultivating one-to-one relationship. It is not scalable. When you look at things like YouTube, which can be properly optimized, it's one to many. It creates conversations at scale and essentially would be prospecting for you 24/7, 365 days. So the nature of evergreen content allows you to build your brand, rank organically, and build a scalable business through leverage.

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"Short videos have definitely helped in terms of broadening the audience spectrum where you have to meet people where they're at."

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When did you start to make short videos?

‍I started taking short form seriously early last year. I should have done it earlier, but it's one of those things that, again, starting now is better than never. So it's been really good for building your personal brand and amplifying it, agin, going back to leverage. If you're going to create long form and you have an opportunity to easily get short form content from that, you're doing a disservice to your business and your brand by not capitalizing on that opportunity.

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Why do you make short videos?

‍Shorts is essentially allowing people to have bite size pieces of your content that is a little bit more consumable. If you approach it properly, it allows people to get to know you on a different level. Long form content is one perspective, but when you can chop it down and also show maybe more personal sides of your business, bloopers, things like that through short form, it really connects with people and creates that intimacy and that feeling of the known trust factor.

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Since you started to take shorts more seriously, has it brought any benefits to you?

‍Short videos have definitely helped in terms of broadening the audience spectrum where you have to meet people where they're at. Some people like to consume long form, while others like to consume short form. Previously I was leveraging pictures and then long form. But with the introduction of short form, it has really allowed me to create more content. It also allows me to be more consistent and stay top of mind. And again, it allows me to get a little bit more creative because with short form content, the essence of it is people aren't as picky in terms of quality. And I think that's a really important aspect of understanding it - it allows you to be a little bit more playful and show different sides of you.

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How is the performance of your short videos?

‍My short form content performs better on TikTok and Instagram. On YouTube, people know me for long form, some long form far outperforms short. But it doesn't hurt. 10% of my views are from shorts and that again is 10% of millions. So it still adds up and it gives people the opportunity to explore different avenues of content that I don't don't post typically on YouTube.

"The biggest value of Opus Clip is time and it's the most precious commodity out there, because you can't buy it back."

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How are you as a realtor leveraging AI to help with your social presence and business?

‍It's really interesting. So I personally don't use it as much as my team does. And I think that's why it's really important because for me in the beginning, I had to do everything manually and I had to do it without the help of AI. So if I had the opportunity to use AI back when I got started in 2017, my business would be night and day different to where it is right now. So it's a blessing for people that are getting started on leveraging video, doing it themselves, but have these tools like Opus Clip to shorten the time it takes in order to create. Now my team is leveraging it, which is really great because they're able to be more efficient, more effective, and scale more content.

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How did you first come to know Opus Clip?

‍Honestly, it's just relentless research. I think it's important as a real estate agent, if you want to thrive and succeed, you need to always stay ahead of the curve and be very mindful of what's coming up, what's disrupting the industry and how you could stay ahead of your competition. So when we look at AI, we know that this is kind of like social media 10 years ago, it's only going to continue to grow and become more powerful. So it's your job as an entrepreneur to be able to capitalize on opportunities early, and be able to introduce them into your business to become familiar with how to use them. So for me, I just kind of went down the rabbit hole, watch YouTube videos, went on Google and did what I think a lot of people need to do, which is be curious and inquisitive and find new solutions that will help you save time and create leveraging your business.

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What do you think is the biggest value Opus Clip has brought to you?

‍The biggest value of Opus Clip is time and it's the most precious commodity out there, because you can't buy it back. When you look at previously, if you didn't have a team, it would take you exhaustive amounts of time in order to take your long form and repurpose it for short form. And when you start looking at most entrepreneurs, if they want to make over six figures a year, they're valuing themselves at 50 to 100 dollars an hour. Well, it takes them a few hours to do that. That's hundreds of dollars every single week that they could have been putting back into their business. But now when you have platforms like Opus Clip, it allows you to do shorts within minutes and it allows you to take that time, reallocate it back to more important business to make significantly more, from five figures to even six figures more per year. When you can condense the time it takes to get an activity done by leveraging efficient platforms like Opus clip, and reinvest that time into creating more content, it's inevitable that you're going to scale much quicker.

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"If you're going to be starting on social media and leveraging things like YouTube, extend the time horizon for which you're expecting tangible results and there's no way that you can't win."

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How long have you been using Opus Clip?

‍I've been using it for about four months.

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Oh wow, you're one of the earliest adopters. That's amazing. Do you see Opus Clip bringing any positive impact to you aside from time saved?

‍Of course. It gives an opportunity to educate other people on how to scale their business using AI. For me, I am always passionate about training people on new resources to always stay ahead of that curve. And I think the bigger concept aside from time is innovation, and being able to introduce this into other agents businesses, allows them to be innovative and have that strong presence.

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Last question - Do you have any advice for realtors who also want to utilize social media and video content to scale their business?

‍I have three pieces of advice. The first is to stay hyper consistent. If you're consistent for long enough, it's inevitable that you're going to succeed.

Second is that, you need to be intentional. It's not just what you do. It's how you do it. You could put out videos for the rest of your life and never grow if you're not consciously always trying to improve, get better, learn, be a student, leverage AI in different platforms in order to scale and always be ahead of the curve in terms of the competition.

And the last thing is delayed gratification. I always tell people that a lot of agents, unfortunately, ask me the question "How long will it take to get a client?" And if I tell them three months and they don't get clients in three months, they get disappointed. If I told them it would take a year, well, after three months, they're not that disappointed. If I told them to do it for 10 years, three months wouldn't even bother them. If you're going to be starting on social media and leveraging things like YouTube, extend the time horizon for which you're expecting tangible results and there's no way that you can't win.

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