How to Build Trust with Real Estate Content | Split Screen Media’s Strategy

Aaron M – Split Screen Media (00:00)
But relationships are like bank accounts. You can’t withdraw from a relationship until you deposit. Have found there’s a great way to do that. It’s just to take what I know and take what I’m familiar with and just give it away for free.

Even if you only reach one person who goes like, wow, I really relate to that. Like, I really understand that. Like that’s still one person who now looks at you as somebody who like, I can learn from this guy.

Quentin (01:55)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Investor Fuel podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds and I’m excited. I’m excited today. I’m excited to bring to you guys a content creator for real estate, right? I love it, man. I love his approach because his approach is about building trust with his clientele. And you know, we stand on honesty and integrity, but I love that mindset is that every content creator is not looking to build trust.

And that’s what he’s about, making real connections. So I want to introduce to you guys Mr. Aaron Margrabe. How you doing, sir?

Aaron M – Split Screen Media (02:31)
I’m doing good. How are you?

Quentin (02:33)
Doing good. Did I get that name right? Did I put some respect on your name, I appreciate it, man. Listen, I’m so happy for our audience to get a chance to hear from you, hear from your perspective. I mean, we love just to hear people talk about doing what it is that they do, right? And it’s so many people that listen from different perspectives, different angles, from different walks. Like I said, we have investors, we have some service providers. And so

Aaron M – Split Screen Media (02:36)
You got it, got it, nailed it.

Quentin (03:01)
It’s just good for it to have a place where people can hear maybe something talked about that they wasn’t expected or maybe talked about something like, finally, y’all talk to somebody that do what we do. You know what saying? So, man, I’m excited, brother. I’m excited to hear from you. So let’s just dive in. You know, if people, know, they may not be familiar with your world or what you do, give us a short version of what it is that you do or like what your main focus is these days.

And if you don’t mind telling what market you’re operating in.

Aaron M – Split Screen Media (03:34)
Yeah. Yeah. So basically what I do, ⁓ I think everybody’s probably familiar in some way, shape or form with, you know, digital marketing or, ⁓ social media marketing, all of those things. ⁓ what, what I do is, is I kind of help businesses figure out what is the optimal route per se for them. ⁓ and then create content that again, it builds trust. It’s not just, we, we post it because we feel like we need to, or we throw it up when we have time.

It’s a very intentional way of, know, social media website, all that is kind of like our online billboard. ⁓ I would say in most areas, it matters more than actual billboards or, you know, whatever kind of ads you can run. And so it’s a way of kind of being really intentional and basically saying, like, if you come to our social media page or our website or wherever it is that we’re making the most content, like you’re going to be able to look at what we’ve got and say, like, wow, these people

really know what they’re doing. ⁓ As opposed to, again, just kind of doing what you can when you can and just shooting from the hip, basically. So, and again, as far as content, you know, that can be, you know, images, if you have like a clothing brand or maybe a restaurant, you know, images of food can go really far, know, images of your products can go really far. Honestly, videos, probably the best. So I work a lot with clients on making videos and video content, but.

Quentin (04:42)
Yeah.

Aaron M – Split Screen Media (05:47)
you know, maybe you’re B2B and you need something more like LinkedIn and you need newsletters and you these kinds of things you can send out written content. So it really doesn’t matter what it is. There’s opportunity for all kinds of businesses and all kinds of platforms. So the gist of it is that’s what we help them do.

Quentin (06:03)
Yeah, I love it, man. I love it. And of course, and we know we talked about it you kind of hinted to it. There’s a lot of people out here that’s trying to do what you do, right? And a lot of them are cutting corners. You know, they’re trying to do it, you know, maybe at a cheaper, a cheaper way, with a lower quality. And so I can imagine that within this climate, it’s not always easy with it being saturated and trying to get people to buy in.

So let me ask you man, what keeps your machine running smoothly?

Aaron M – Split Screen Media (06:35)
That’s a good question ⁓

I would say one of the biggest ones is kind of having a partner who can help you. My wife, she owns her own business as well, ⁓ but she, know, yeah, man, they make the world go round, you know? ⁓

Quentin (06:46)
for wives. Listen, don’t

get me over here and talking about my wife. This is your story. I’m sorry, talk about your wife, talk about your partner, my dad and that.

Aaron M – Split Screen Media (06:57)
No.

No, you’re good. ⁓ Yeah.

I mean, again, I think this is true for any business, no matter what you’re doing. ⁓ You know, having a partner behind the scenes who helps you stay sane and helps you keep your life going. Obviously that’s huge. ⁓ But I would say outside of that, ⁓ the biggest thing that makes my world go round probably is the knowledge aspect and keeping, you know, just like, you know, mean, anybody in real estate knows you got to keep up with ⁓

you know, types of loans and different types of, you know, how the insurance market’s doing, you know, like all of these things you got to keep clients aware of when you’re trying to sell a home and things like that. So it’s the exact same thing. You know, staying up to date on what’s going on, you know, cause you know, if, you look at somebody like me and I’ve got, you know, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Tik TOK, Twitter threads, all these platforms, you know, they change their terms of service all the time. So right there, there’s eight things you got to worry about. um,

I mean, I could go on and on. So I’d say the biggest thing is knowledge and making sure that when I’m working with clients, we know what the best route to take and what the best action to take when you’re trying to do this well is.

Quentin (08:13)
I love it, man. I love it. So of course, you know, sometimes one client is not like the next, right? So each situation is not like the next. So of course there are moments when things get real. Maybe like a deal goes sideways or a time you had to pivot fast. Aaron, you mind sharing one of those stories with us? A time where maybe you had to pivot fast?

Aaron M – Split Screen Media (08:19)
Yeah.

Yeah. Let me think time where I had to pivot fast. Yeah. So, you know, I could think of a time where, where I had a client who, and this was something I learned early on getting started, you know, being my own business owners that, you know, sometimes you’re the expectations you set is what matters more than, than anything else. Right. Like if I, obviously I can promise really, really high expectations, but if I don’t reach those goals, then

it doesn’t really matter, you know, they’re going to be upset, right? But, you know, sometimes you can, you can oversell yourself, you can undersell yourself. And in both of those cases, you can kind of, you know, kick yourself in the butt a little bit. And so I can very, very clearly remember, you know, a client I worked with where when I was first getting started that I kind of, I undersold what was going to happen. And I kind of oversold

what we could make happen. And I remember I had to just kind of like eat my own words. And I was like, you know, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do for them what, what they were thinking was going to happen because I didn’t sell the expectations correctly. And I just, you know, I had to do some, some free work and do some work to basically like say like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna protect my reputation because that’s what I care about more than the money and anything else. So, so yeah.

Quentin (10:35)
I love that man. Thank you, man. Thank you for your gift of vulnerability. Thank you for your integrity, right? ⁓ You know, a lot of, I’m not gonna say a lot, but we know there are people out there that doesn’t do things the integral way that would not have went the extra mile to say, hey, you know, I’m gonna make sure I go ahead and deliver. So not only did I keep my reputation in place, which is important, our character, but that shows your character that, yeah, I wanna keep my reputation in place, but I also wanna make sure I deliver.

on something that your client would like and that the client would be satisfied for. And so I thank you for that vulnerability. And honestly, would, you know, to me, that shows that I can see you going to be in business for the long term. You know, that’s, that’s the difference between people just dabble and people that’s in it in the long term is building that character. And like you said, at the beginning of show, building that trust, right. And making that real connection. So I love that man. So let me ask you this. What are you focused on next? Like,

Are you looking to scale up? Like what’s your next real goal?

Aaron M – Split Screen Media (11:35)
Yeah, I’m actually in the process of scaling up. Most of what I do right now is very local and I’m happy to work with local people. mean, that’s my passion, but ⁓ I know there’s also local people in other locals. ⁓ So I’m in the process right now of kind of scaling up, adding members to the team, ⁓ adding other members to the team and kind of refining our offer and what we work with clients on. ⁓

You know, because again, the biggest thing I think I really sell for almost everybody I work with, it’s not, you know, cool videos or like cool graphics. None of that really matters. What it comes down to is do people trust you enough to buy? If they don’t trust you enough to buy or work with you, how do you gain that trust? And again, I think, ⁓ you know, if you look at the numbers, 98 % of the world is on social media. ⁓

whether it’s Facebook, whether it’s Instagram, whether it’s TikTok, almost everybody you talk to is on one of them. ⁓ And if you look at the numbers, we’re all on our phones too much. We all probably do stuff. We do scroll, we do a lot of that stuff a lot. And not that I’m advocating that we should do more of that. I really don’t think we should. But what I am advocating is that we need more people who offer value ⁓ and offer connection.

Quentin (12:45)
Yeah

Aaron M – Split Screen Media (12:59)
⁓ And again, I think that’s the thing people gravitate to and that’s the thing that’s going to lead people to trust you is is, you know, coming across a post, it’s like, hey, you know, we we sell real estate, but we also care about our community. ⁓ And maybe, you know, that’s showing off some of the stuff you do in the community. So ⁓ I guess all of that to say, ⁓ again, that’s that’s what we help people do. And and I think ⁓ I think in terms of scaling. ⁓

And in terms of trying to grow my own business, like I just want to help people do that and help people figure out how to do that for themselves.

Quentin (13:36)
Yeah, absolutely, Now I love that. And of course, you you can have, you you get your things and your systems in place. But I love the fact that you have systems in place, but you’re like, hey, the next move is also helping other people to bring on different people to build a team around you. And that’s amazing. And you you’ve been in business, man, you know that the next move, can either compound things or create chaos depending on how you play it. so, man, listen, you know,

kudos to you for, okay, I’m not going to say stagnant. I’m going keep pushing this thing forward, scaling and reaching the goal of making sure that I bring in ⁓ a good team and building a good team that going to come alongside me to build trust for the clients. Right. And so, and I’m glad you talked about, you know, building teams, you know, of course we have people, like I said, they listening and some may be early in their business journey, you know, some may be even still trying to figure out, you know, what their niche is, what they’re trying to do.

And so you mentioned building teams. And so I would love to know when it comes to building relationships, what’s made the biggest difference for you when it comes to building relationships and what you do.

Aaron M – Split Screen Media (14:50)
Yeah. So I think this is true, whether it’s a business relationship or a personal relationship. I say all the time and I can’t remember where I heard it the first time,

but relationships are like bank accounts. You can’t withdraw from a relationship until you deposit.

And so what that, you know, what that means to me is in a personal relationship, right? Like I can’t ask you to help me move if we just met three weeks ago, right? That’s just not.

I mean, there’s probably some friends that I’ve had in the past that would have done that, but that’s also not something I would do. And the same thing with a business relationship. think if, you know, I would say for most people, nothing, ⁓ nothing is probably a bigger turnoff than getting an email or getting a text that’s just like, hey, buy my thing. And you’re like, hey, I haven’t talked to you in six months, but sure, this is how we’ll talk for the first time. ⁓

And so I think the biggest thing for me when it comes to kind of building relationships and building a network has always been this idea of of trying to make that deposit first. And again, when it comes to like what I do, I think a great way to make that deposit first is, you know, if you and let’s just be clear here, like you don’t have to be like a master video editor or anything to be successful at this. I think there’s a lot of people out there who if they just took their thoughts.

posted them on their page or posted them on their business page. And they said like, hey, here’s something I’ve learned over the last five years or whatever. Even if you only meet,

even if you only reach one person who goes like, wow, I really relate to that. Like, I really understand that. Like that’s still one person who now looks at you as somebody who like, I can learn from this guy.

And if you do that 5,000 times, like how many people have a network influence of 5,000 people, right? ⁓ Not many, not many. So, ⁓ so for me, like that’s something that I’ve

tried to do and tried to help people with. But

have found there’s a great way to do that. It’s just to take what I know and take what I’m familiar with and just give it away for free.

As just a show of like, hey, like, you know, I’m just trying to make that deposit metaphorically. ⁓ So maybe hopefully one day I can make a withdrawal.

Quentin (17:01)
Man, I absolutely love that. I love that analogy. You can’t make it with Joe if you haven’t made a deposit. And I love that. And that’s why a lot of people have these negative relationships, pun intended. they’re there, you know? And so I absolutely like that. And like you said, that goes for personal and that goes for business, right? Like you want to make sure that you are serving the client, making a deposit with real connection, with real trust.

Aaron M – Split Screen Media (17:08)
Right.

Yeah.

Quentin (17:30)
maybe with a giveaway, maybe with something, right? To make sure that they know, listen, I’m in this with you, right? Yes, you know, there’s right supposity, we understand. There’s, you know, there’s buyers and sellers, we get all of that. But also, I do want to make a real connection with you and service you the best way that I can and make that connection. So you’re right, man. Relationships are everything in this business. And so I really, you know, we’re coming towards the end. I just actually want to give you space. there anything else?

Aaron M – Split Screen Media (17:34)
Yeah.

Quentin (18:00)
that you feel like you want us to know about you, ⁓ about your business? Is there even maybe some inspiration or encouragement you want to give to business owners? I just want to open the floor up for now for you to have that kind of last word.

Aaron M – Split Screen Media (18:15)
Yeah, yeah. So I mean, ⁓ I’ll start with the encouragement first, because I feel like ⁓ that’s probably more important. ⁓ I would say the biggest thing, like I said, you don’t have to be an expert to be successful at what I help people deal with. Really, my biggest thing is I help people save time and I help people strategize is really the biggest thing. And again, I wholeheartedly believe if you’re consistent.

in a year, six months, a year, depending on how much content you’re putting out, it will increase your bottom line, no doubt in my mind. ⁓ But the biggest thing I help people with is time and strategy. so ⁓ if this is something you’ve ever wanted to try or you’ve wanted to be more intentional about and you’ve just not been very successful, I can tell you the biggest thing is just be yourself, be authentic and ⁓ be consistent.

You know, again, you don’t have to have a million dollar video set up to make good videos. A lot of times it’s the content that matters. It’s not the way the camera set up or things like that. ⁓ So if you can, if you can be authentic, you can be yourself and you can offer value and you know, value is subjective, right? Value can be education, value can be entertainment or value can be just emotional, right? ⁓ And so if you’re able to offer any of those things.

in any kind of format, whether it’s video or text or newsletters or whatever, like people, people will listen. It may take some time. You know, it’s not going to happen overnight, but people will listen. And again, it’s a matter of working on making those deposits, making those deposits, not knowing if you’ll ever even get the withdrawal, but making those deposits and ⁓ you keep at it. You’ll be successful. You know, every every platform these days is going algorithmic. So they’re showing people what they think people want to see. ⁓

So if you shoot from the hip a couple of times and you’re not very successful, like that’s not an indicator of the potential that you can have when it comes to reaching more people. ⁓ And again, I think I wholeheartedly believe most people, if you’re just your authentic self, like you’ll find your people and you’ll grow that kind of realm of influence around you. ⁓ And then ⁓ as far as a call to action. So again, I work with

Quentin (20:26)
love it,

Aaron M – Split Screen Media (20:33)
many kind of businesses, but I do have real estate companies that I’ve worked with and continue to work with. So I guess the biggest thing would probably just be, you know, reaching out to us. I’m on pretty much every social media platform in some way, shape or form, ⁓ you know, website. I don’t know, Quinton, when you post this, you post like links or anything like that with like…

Quentin (20:57)
It’s funny to be honest with my admin normally handles that. I would have to literally go look. I’ve never looked in those show notes to see if we post links on you. That’s a great question. I actually need to find that out. I’m gonna be honest with you. I do not know. I ain’t gonna even lie to you right now, man. So that’s a great question. Appreciate it.

Aaron M – Split Screen Media (21:10)
Okay. Okay. No worries. No worries. If, if so, I’ll make sure you guys get all the links. If not, if you look us up online,

split screen media is the name. The logo looks just like this. This is like the, the condensed logo. So it, but it looks pretty similar to that. So you can find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Tik TOK. ⁓ and then we’ve of course got a website and everything else. So, ⁓ I would say if, if you have any interest in kind of, you know, creating again, that foundation, ⁓ for,

building that trust and building that level of influence. ⁓ The sooner you start, the more exponential that kind of influence becomes. ⁓ Because if you’ve only got one piece of content that you’ve ever posted, that’s all people have the opportunity to see. But if people can look at your social or they can look at your website and see they’re like, wow, this guy stays really busy and he gives out a lot of info, your credibility in their mind just shoots straight up.

If that’s anything that you’re interested in, please feel free to reach out. Even if you just want an idea, again, it may not be something you feel like you can afford to hire me for. Like that’s fine. I’m happy to just talk and give you some advice. But ⁓ if you want to save the time and energy and you want some pretty cool stuff made for you, like shoot me a message and reach out and I’ll be happy to work together.

Quentin (22:31)
Absolutely, there he is y’all, Mr. Margrabe, split screen media. Y’all can see in his close remarks, he’s real about building his trust and making connections, man. So y’all reach out to him, listen, Aaron, I thank you, sir. I thank you for your time, for your story, your perspective. We definitely need people like you, man, that’s doing things with integrity, honesty, and building his trust. So again, thank you so much, man.

Aaron M – Split Screen Media (22:55)
Yeah, I appreciate it. Appreciate the opportunity.

Quentin (22:57)
Absolutely. And for those tuning in, you know, I like to say this very slowly. If you got value from this, make sure you are subscribed. We want that little alert going off. We want the messages popping up. Say, hey, they just dropped another episode because I do not want you to miss out on valuable conversations, just like I had with my friend here, Aaron, today. So thank you all so much and we will see you on the next episode.