Stand Out in Real Estate: 7 Powerful Tips for Content Creators

Mike Hambright (00:00.935)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. Today I’m here with my buddy, Brad Hulsman, who has an amazing background of creating some of the top real estate investing shows, Duck Dynasty, a bunch of other shows that you know about. I’m gonna let him introduce himself in just a second, but we’re gonna be talking about creating content for you in your life and kind of how to become an authority through content creation. And we’ll probably get off the path a few times talking about a few other things along those lines as well. So Brad, great to have you here.

Brad Holcman (00:25.838)
Thank you, Mike. It’s such a pleasure to talk to you. I really appreciate it. And hopefully something I say hits home for someone else.

Mike Hambright (00:29.981)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (00:34.675)
Yeah, no, you’ve got amazing, amazing experience. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background? I’m sure that my brief intro there did not do you justice. So tell us a little bit more about your background, how you got here.

Brad Holcman (00:45.442)
Yeah, how I got here, I don’t know, but I’ll tell you kind of where I was. 20, yeah, here I am. For 20 plus years, I have been a television executive creating some huge, I think huge television shows. First starting at Fox and worked on Sons of Anarchy and Homeland and Brickleberry and lots of scripted stuff.

Mike Hambright (00:49.267)
But here you are.

Brad Holcman (01:09.194)
I found my way to unscripted in reality, which brought me over to being a executive at A &E, the television network, for over 12 years, creating shows like 60 Days In, being a part of the Duck Dynasty Legacy, and many others. And then it was about four years ago that I was handed all of the home shows on the network and created a brand called Homemade Nation, which brought me into this unbelievable world of real estate investing.

which I knew nothing about. And all of a sudden I go from zero to being in rooms with you, Mike, and so many other incredible investors learning about your world. And when you learn about interesting worlds, at least for me, you can’t help but want to be in that world. So that caused me to take the leap about eight months ago now into the world of entrepreneurship, still creating content independently, but I had to get into this real estate world.

and find a way that I could put my stamp in on it. because really, and I say, what’s the number one reason why you left the industry? Entertainment, as a W2 employee to kind of delve into entrepreneurship, people, it was the people. It was who can I help? How can I help? How can I be around this energy of incredible individuals and really making a difference in this world much more than at least I could versus my W2.

Mike Hambright (02:33.713)
Yeah. One of the amazing things about entrepreneurship, I came out of…

Brad Holcman (02:33.845)
WD background.

Mike Hambright (02:38.097)
I’m a corporate refugee as well, but my launch into my own businesses was 2008. it’s just people that are willing to go all in and kind of risk everything for something bigger and better, know. And bigger and better means different things to different people, right? But just pursuing that life of freedom and being willing to work probably harder than you did in a W-2 job to kind of get it and keep it, know. a lot of, yeah, that’s true.

Brad Holcman (03:03.854)
Well, there’s no, there’s no time off, you know, there’s no weekends, there’s no holidays, but I’ll tell you the one thing that I have at least I’m a, I’m a storyteller. So I visualize a lot of my analogies. I always knew that the only way to figure out this world of entrepreneurship is to jump into the deep end, not knowing how to swim all too often. We take lesson after lesson after lesson after lesson. And then maybe we took it, take it a step into the shallow end zero entry, and then maybe work our way in.

For me, I knew I had to jump into the deep end, not knowing if I could swim. And two things happen. One, you die, because you don’t know how to swim, or you figure it out. And what I didn’t realize really until it happened is that there was all of these lifeguards surrounding me in the deep end that if I did struggle, based on all of the things that I was helping them with over the years, that they would jump in and save me. Luckily I…

Mike Hambright (03:44.531)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (04:01.555)
Yeah.

Brad Holcman (04:02.166)
I haven’t had to really use that, no emergencies or 911s, but for me, that’s how you get things done. A lot of our friends talk about taking imperfect action. Boy, I still every day wake up and I am imperfect, but I know that at the end of the day, I feel better when I’m taking action.

Mike Hambright (04:21.809)
Yeah, one of things I realized, because I probably am cut from this vein too of in corporate America, it was more analytical. mean, I’m a recovering finance guy. So like you just tend to be analytical if you have the analytical mind like that. And coming out of corporate America, there’s a lot more people that are analytical, I think, that kind of like are just used to following the rules and stuff. And that’s why a lot of entrepreneurs don’t fall, are like rule breakers, right? But what I realized is like, what I realized early on is, you know,

Brad Holcman (04:31.627)
You

Mike Hambright (04:51.643)
Sometimes you just have to make a decision. It’s like it’s a gut decision, but your gut becomes smarter and smarter over time. And so if people, if I get hit with a problem right now that I’ve never dealt with in my life, like if I go back 15 years, I may have spent a lot of time thinking about what should I do? What should I do? And now I’m just like, boom, do this, do that, do that. And it might not be the right answer, but it is an answer and we can like move forward, you know? And so it’s kind of like when you were younger and you read those books, like choose your own ending. Like you don’t know whenever you start an entrepreneur,

You don’t know how it’s going to end yet, but there’s going to be lots of forks in the road ultimately.

Brad Holcman (05:27.17)
Well, for yeah, I mean, as long as you sort of know your destination, there’s so many ways to get there. And the destination can be as broad as I just want to control my own day. I want financial freedom. want, know, it could be broad at first. But if you’re not walking, you’re not moving forward, you know, you’re not taking a step in the right direction. And by the way, sometimes you’re going to take the wrong turn. I did it last night with my wife. You know, I took the wrong term of something that I’ve been forever. And sometimes that happens. But guess what? Your GPS reroutes you.

Mike Hambright (05:56.701)
That’s right.

Brad Holcman (05:56.908)
you know, and your friends and your colleagues and the world will do that. But I wouldn’t be on my way to the destination if I was sitting at my home, you know, crossing my thumbs.

Mike Hambright (06:09.541)
Absolutely. So let’s talk about, I know one of things that you talk a lot about and I love it is, you know, just…

differentiating yourself because in this sea of everybody kind of being the same and it’s easy a lot of us are you know like I don’t know there’s there’s obviously when I started my first podcast the flippin podcast there were six or seven podcasts like period and now there’s hundreds or thousands and for the most part on social media and podcasts and things a lot of people are following a few trendsetters so everybody it’s real easy for everybody to look the same

But we all know people that stand out. There’s a guy named Ryan Jackson here in Dallas who will be on the podcast here at some point soon. And he drives around in a stretch like 1980 caddy and he wears a big cowboy hat and all this. really kind of stands out. He’s a character, right? And so when he’s in the room, you know it because he just looks different and talks different than everybody else. And not that you have to go to that extreme, but let’s just talk about how to stand out in your business with a sea of kind of competition that’s out there.

Brad Holcman (07:08.194)
Yeah, first of all, think something that I have done for my entire television career is be authentic, 100 % authentic. An audience can see you faking from a mile away. They maybe not in the first few seconds, but we’re in the relationship business. We’re not in a transactional business. And the only way to succeed is to be our authentic self, at least for the long run. Everybody can be fake and act for a short term, but you’re not doing it. So for me, it’s authenticity.

how to find your distinct and true self is really to look at yourself and what separates yourself. So I give an analogy of money and you look at money. So you’ve got these bills, you’ve got a dollar bill, you got $5, you got 10, you got 20. They’re all essentially the same thing. As you go higher, maybe you remember that Benjamin or that $50 bill. You certainly don’t remember that dollar bill, but I will challenge.

each and every one of you, you remember when somebody gave you a $2 bill. You remember it because it’s not going to be at your local store that just hands you change, by the way, I have a $2 bill. It’s going to be something special. In our household, it was the tooth fairy. It was something memorable. And our kids still talk about that. And why I gave the $2 bill analogy is it’s still money. It’s still, when you go to any store, it’s still cashes as a $2 bill.

but there’s a, there’s likely a story behind it. There’s memory behind it. You’re just, you’re distinct and different when you are that $2 bill. So take that analogy into your own world. So I’m not asking you to recreate the wheel. So for example, if you’re flipping homes, how different can you be flipping a home? Not that different, but your brand can be, your message can be, your audience can be, your limo can be that cowboy hat can be whatever it is that red shoes.

something that you wear every day, S statement at the end, your tagline, something that separates yourself. And, you know, one thing that we spoke about earlier, Mike is, is people don’t do that in real estate, but people do it all the time in every other industry. Think about cars, Tesla, Tesla has four wheels. It drives from a to Z. You buy it like any other car.

Brad Holcman (09:27.566)
But it’s just different. There’s something about it. Yes, it’s electric, which others are kind of catching up, but there’s a different experience with the Tesla than any other car. It’s not the most expensive car either. You know, in fact, it’s, relatively mid priced, but Tesla separates itself from Ford, from Chevrolet, from all of the others. So I encourage everybody in your market, in your business, when people ask what separates you from anybody else, what’s that answer?

and then just roll with it. It may feel repetitive. It may feel like, I’m waking up every day. But when you think about distinct and different brands, there’s probably one little thing that separates themselves from everyone else. So that $2 bill analogy, think in everything that you do, who you are as a friend, as a parent, as a spouse, as a colleague, just be different. You stick out and people will come to you over time if you separate yourself from the pack.

Mike Hambright (10:22.577)
Yeah, that’s awesome. And I think one of the things that happens a lot these days, especially with social media, is people are, like there’s some known characters out there that everybody knows in their industry or your circle of friends or your town or whatever, right? But I think a lot of times, if your business is local, let’s talk a little bit about.

Like, you don’t need to be differentiated out, like who cares what happens outside of your market. I think on social media, a lot of people, because of metrics, really vanity metrics, people are hung up on how many views I got or whatever in a worldwide audience when all that really matters is your small ecosystem, right? So maybe share a little bit about like the importance of standing out just locally and being known to be that person that can solve that problem or provide that service or whatever and forgetting about the whole rest of the world.

Brad Holcman (11:10.274)
Yeah, it’s hard to forget because social media is worldwide. When you look at your metrics, like on LinkedIn, I will get a message from somebody that is likely in a foreign country every day. Their intent is not a follower or to do business with me. It is probably for their own metrics or something to sell me something. But my business isn’t run on that. My business is run on

at least in my flipping business and I have a relatively new but exciting flipping business. It’s lead generation. It’s contractors. It is people buying the home. It’s people selling the home. It’s the agents. It’s the entire real estate community in Charlotte. Somebody in Phoenix, Arizona, maybe they know who I am and what I am, but in terms of my day-to-day business,

I don’t need to be distinct and different from somebody in Phoenix, what I do need in Charlotte. So from a content perspective, really know your market, know who you are, know where you’re sit. And by the way, know who the other influences are and see if they’re doing. And if you can’t name them, there’s a huge opportunity. If you look from a national perspective, very few people stand out. And if they do, they’re likely national people because that’s the journey that they’re on. Their journey is to be

Mike Hambright (12:22.952)
Yeah.

Brad Holcman (12:35.634)
a educator or guru nationally. But when you look at your market, there’s probably a few names that come out, but there’s so much fish in the sea in real estate that you yourself can put your stamp on it. So I think the biggest thing is, and this is difficult, ask people around you that you do not have to tell you don’t have to give your resume. They know who you are and ask them one simple question. What makes you different? Or on your end, if you’re after that or while you’re doing that,

What do most people come to you for for advice? What do you keep getting at? What are people interested in? What stories do you continually get asked about in you tell? So you’ve now got that data. So that is exactly who you are and what you are. And the secret to all of this is you do not have to be that different. Again, going to a $2 bill, not different. It’s only double that $1 bill. It’s less than a $5 bill. You really have to just be that, I would say 10 % better.

or 10 % unique in whatever you do. And then what you have to do is relentlessly attack every day how you’re distinct. Because if you give a speech or a conversation one time, it’s not gonna matter. But if it’s the same, if somebody in your audience was repeating the words that you’re saying because you’ve just done it at Nausium, you’re doing something right. So you’ve got to show up every day and keep doing it. From a metrics perspective,

You’re like, well, is this working? Is this resonating? In theory, metrics are not going to give you the answer. there’s not a whole lot of people in your market that are going to be watching that YouTube video, that Instagram post every day, but you’ve got to measure it by the success of people knocking on your door, phone calls, meetings on your books, people asking about your business. That’s really the measurement of success. And the only reason you should look at any metrics out there is if you are building some sort of national program. And if you’re not,

Don’t even look at it. Who cares? As long as somebody is either reaching out to you asking for your business, it takes one relationship, one conversation to change your life. does not require millions. So I firmly believe who cares about any metric. It doesn’t matter. And by the way, it is really hard. It is really, really hard not to think.

Mike Hambright (14:33.597)
Yeah.

Brad Holcman (14:58.264)
When you see that YouTube video get zero views and you pour all of your effort into and it doesn’t hit, that’s okay. Cause guess what? In 10 years from now that could five years, one year or the next one just keep showing up. Also, by the way, all of this rewards consistency. So it’s not about one, it’s not about two. It’s about 50 and a hundred. If you do this for 90 days, a hundred days straight, things are going to be very different after than before. You just got to show up and do it.

Mike Hambright (15:15.249)
Yeah, absolutely.

Mike Hambright (15:27.699)
Yeah, and I think, you know, I use this phrase a lot, the long game. Like you gotta play the long game, right? We talked about this briefly before we started recording today is just thinking like a farmer where you’re planting seeds everywhere and you don’t know when the harvest will come, but I can tell you if you plant enough seeds and you stick with it long enough and you fertilize those seeds, if you will, like they come back around. I mean, it’s crazy to me now having done the podcasting, for example, for 13 years.

how many people I meet that I didn’t know before that are like, I’ve been watching your podcast for five years or something like that, right? you know, a lot of times, it depends on the business you’re in. Real estate, the transactions are few, but the value of them is really high. So it’s different if I’m selling tacos or pizzas or somewhere, you might see more like faster results because…

people might use you every day or come there every day or once a week or whatever. If it’s big ticket items like real estate or even, you know, most home services things that are like replacing a roof or HVAC systems or whatever, you’re not gonna get immediate gratification. you have to just start planting those seeds. it’s like, you know, a friend of mine mentioned this analogy once and I’ve kind of stolen it now, is it’s like a brick wall. Like I look at content as like a brick wall.

you’re gonna eventually you’re gonna have the Great Wall of China right but it starts with one brick and you’re gonna put up a row of one brick and anybody can step right over it and you’re gonna feel like I did a ton of work I built the foundation and then we put down this one row of all these bricks it’s a mile long but everybody’s just stepping over it and most people don’t even know they’re stepping over it they’re just stepping and it’s not tall enough to stop them but eventually you start to build this thing up and your wall if you will your brand and your reputation is

is unavoidable. People have to go through you or around you, I guess. So it’s a long game. Yeah.

Brad Holcman (17:20.568)
It’s the hockey stick. It’s a little bit of a hockey stick analogy, you know, where for a while you’re just kind of going, and then at some point it is going to hit, you know, and the home analogy is perfect. How long does it take, you know, for you to build the foundation? But how quickly do you see a house get put up? Like, my God, I didn’t realize that house was, put up overnight. It wasn’t, there was a lot of time that took before it got to, you know, the walls going up. I will say something about content because a lot of the questions that I get,

is where do I start, how do I start? And the biggest thing with content is you’ve just got to start what’s on your mind, write it down, add some coherent thoughts, take in perfect action. But in terms of a setup, usually what comes in our inbox or in our feeds are creators that have views, maybe have paid marketing behind it. That means they’re spending some production money. I myself,

have spent my entire career making millions of dollars of shows. Every one of my show cost a million dollars. There were seven figure businesses. Success was not weighed on how much my show was paid for or how much it cost. It was not at all whatsoever. There was no direct correlation. It was what was, and I know this is so dumb, what was the best show and what show hit and connected with the biggest of audiences or the audience that was looking for that.

Mike Hambright (18:45.319)
right?

Brad Holcman (18:47.182)
And I think that’s where people get held up. They’re like, Oh, I see all of this fancy stuff. Now with the advent of AI, it makes it really easy to make your content a bit sexier. But I give an analogy. Um, the Kardashians keeping with the Kardashian show when it came out, it was the worst looking show. was awful. It was terrible. Despite the fact that they were beautiful and gorgeous, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter.

because it was the words out of their mouth and the universe or the world that you were seeing. So for me, all you have to do is have words come out of your mouth that connect with an audience and maybe some sort of sounds that people listen to it. But by the way, most people aren’t even listening to your content. They have words on screen. They use it sound off, you know, so you need at least to have some sort of subtitling or captions on screen.

Mike Hambright (19:16.562)
Hmm.

Brad Holcman (19:42.776)
But that’s the most important thing. a television executive at the highest level, I have a less than $100 camera, less than $100 microphone, and I just write my stuff every day and I think about it and I use AI to help me. I use AI as my assistant to help craft, but it doesn’t take much. The great thing about this world is it’s really free or very low cost to produce content nowadays.

Mike Hambright (20:11.708)
Right.

Brad Holcman (20:11.962)
You just got to do it. who cares about any setup whatsoever? As long as you have good words and somebody can hear you or at least captions on screen, you can start doing it. There should be no barrier of entry whatsoever.

Mike Hambright (20:25.223)
Yeah. So let’s talk about kind of mediums, because that’s been…

liberated right over the past. mean, you’ve been a TV executive for a long time and now we’re on a podcast that’s going to be on YouTube and my website and syndicated all over the place. Right. And, of course a lot of people are, you know, are consuming way more social media content than I haven’t had network television in. I don’t even know how long I cut the cord 10 years ago and use a bunch of streaming services, which it’s kind of funny by the way. Now all these streaming services are now showing ads, like network TV did before it’s come full

Brad Holcman (20:49.134)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (20:58.903)
circle but my point is is anybody can be a content creator now right and of course there’s people that do it for ego reasons or whatever there’s a lot we’re probably more in the line of talking to people that do it for business reasons like to build your business build your brand generate leads things like that so maybe just talk about the the kind of liberation of content and content distribution and where you think that’s gonna go over the next few years

Brad Holcman (21:22.594)
Yeah, so I think it’s only going to become more of a creator economy. so right now the number one place where people consume content is YouTube more so than anything. Number two is the Disney owned and operated channels. And that includes everything that Disney owns. So ESPN, ABC, Disney, plus all of that YouTube is your number one place. And that is creator led. Why going back to the authenticity people crave authenticity in mass numbers.

people crave answers to their problems. People crave entertainment in a way that would never be able to go through the various channels that it takes to get on a network television show. People crave variety, of use, on demand anytime you want. And that’s where it’s at. So what that has done is, one of the reasons I took the leap was, yes.

Mike Hambright (22:05.319)
Yeah.

Brad Holcman (22:20.382)
I, for my entire career, I was the hot girl in the room. You know, I was the one that could make your dreams come true by putting someone on a television screen. And I held that very deeply and closely and I was very grateful for it. As my years progressed, that became less and less important. And when you have kids, your kids tell you where the future is. My kids, one, they’re watching old television.

My 13 year old is watching full house every day because she wants that content and I think that’s great. But really she’s on YouTube all day. You know, she’s she’s on CapCut reels and and and she’s watching creator led content because that’s the entertainment she’s getting and that’s the information. Also, people want information very easily with television shows. If I want to flip a house, I can absolutely watch one of my former shows or a show that I’m working on. No doubt.

but there’s no search engine to how to do it. And more and more what we’re searching for is the how, not just to be passively what we have. We do so many things in our lives that just to passively watch, check your brain at the door is not something that’s productive anymore. What you wanna be doing is feel like you’re progressing forward, even if you’re watching something. And what YouTube allows you to do is it’s a search engine. If I wanna do X, then I go on YouTube and I find it.

Mike Hambright (23:18.322)
Hmm.

Brad Holcman (23:45.294)
So I’m looking for those people that want help or that believe that they have a message in the world and likely have already done it. And by the way, the secret for me in television was if you do want to be on the big screen, and by the way, I can help you with that and I love doing that, you’ve got to put yourself out there every single day. You’ve got to because you being in front of a camera and being very comfortable with

your voice, how you look and knowing what works and doesn’t work because you’ve been doing this for many, many moons and many, many years is if you have the dreams to be on television and film, you’re practicing right then and there. So for me, YouTube is only going to get bigger. The regular television universe, the Netflix is the ABCs, the NBCs. It will still be there, but it’s going to be less and less of fiction is going to become bigger.

because fiction is harder on YouTube. So when you think about the Game of Thrones and you think of Stranger Things and you think those bigger shows, those will still be around forever. But if you want real authentic people, worlds, and entertainment, you want that creator-led economy. You want to be close to that creator and know that, one, we’re not so far off from you. I am very far off from a Brad Pitt, but…

you know, Bob in Ohio that has something that’s going on and he’s got millions of followers. I’m not so far from him and you connect, you want to connect with those types of people.

Mike Hambright (25:21.703)
Yeah, that’s fantastic. one thing, one last thing that I’ll say that amazes me is, I think, you know, a few years ago we bought a bunch of land in East Texas and we built out a ranch and kind of a family compound. And I found myself starting to, because for me it’s like city slickers out there. Like I don’t, I have all these tractors and I just got a skid steer and all this equipment.

and I don’t really know what I’m doing, right? So I usually will search for something on YouTube and it’s amazing to me like these niche down, like how to use this thing on a Kubota tractor or something. This has like 200,000 views, like just some of the views are crazy and they’re so nichey. And so I think sometimes, you know, for content creators, they’re worried about.

being like all encompassing and I’m gonna be really broad in the real estate space especially. But the more you can niche down into a topic, you’re just gonna, it’s kind of the, they kind of call it the long tail, it’s a long tail search. Like there’s not a lot of people that are looking for that, but you’re gonna get a lot of views because the relatively small number that are are only gonna find you because you’re the only one that’s talking about that thing.

Brad Holcman (26:23.98)
Yeah, it’s, okay to be the authority in something small, because that will be big. And the way that all of, these platforms monetize and that’s also the way that general advertisers monetize is they know exactly who they’re talking about. So if your, your niche is, is this type of tractor, there’s probably a lot of people that are not going to find you, but you don’t need them. What you need is the person that’s going to go, wait, I want that person.

Mike Hambright (26:26.759)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Mike Hambright (26:49.511)
Right.

Brad Holcman (26:53.762)
that loves Tractor. So that’s when the advertiser dollars come in. That’s when somebody is willing to invest in you because you’re doing exactly what they want to be doing. And that’s where the money is. You’re not a broad company that needs to be in every target across the country, meeting all these different geographies. And that’s, the beauty of YouTube. it’s going back to most people work in a W-2 job, and it’s a transactional environment. We grew up with that.

You grew up with that in school, you you, you, you, you learn, you have a test and the reaction is the grade on your test. And then you move on, you move on. but the way that really the universe works is I do something now and every day we’ll get a little bit bigger, a little bit, a little bit bigger, it’s just like watching grass grow. If you watch grass grow, it’s not really growing, you know, is as fast as you think it is. But if you watch grass grow and then.

a week later, my God, all of a sudden, you that’s where you just need to be patient. You know, you can’t be looking at your metrics every single day. You can’t judge. It’s got to be over the long run. And over the long run, it does succeed. And in fact, as we’re having this conversation in my head, you know, I keep doing that battle. Do I go broad with what I’m good at? Or do I meet a specific audience that is far less than the broad audience, but

I know and could be more beneficial and there’s a need to it. The answer is easy. It’s go small, go, go niche. And you’re, you’re going to win if you’re that authority in that niche market versus not. Again, look at your search engine. When you are searching for something, you are not looking for something very broad. Generally it’s an item number. It’s a UPC code. It’s a color. It’s a, it’s, it’s a, a brand. It’s something very specific. You’re not looking for all of the cars you’re looking for Ford.

You’re not looking for all of the color. You’re looking for blue. so be that person that when somebody does need you, you are the one and that will pay off in dividends.

Mike Hambright (28:57.427)
That’s fantastic. Well, Brad, thanks for joining us on the show today. The niches are in the riches and play the long game. Awesome. Everybody, thanks for joining us. We’ll see you on the next show.

Brad Holcman (29:00.62)
Of thank you.

Brad Holcman (29:04.706)
Yes, absolutely.

Thank you.