How YouTube Created A MILLION DOLLAR Real Estate Business With Levi Lascsak

Video is the ultimate way to scale your business. All you need is a camera and a YouTube account. If you’re in the real estate business and doing everything on-site, just document what you’re doing. That video of you doing what you love can be edited and cut into many different types of content. You can make shorts, long-form videos, educational videos, or before-and-after videos. With video, your content creation process is endless. This is what Levi Lascsak did. He had no interest in real estate but he found a way to do it without being in the boiler room. The co-founder of The Reel Agents, Levi and his partner created a million-dollar real estate business with the power of video. Remember, in real estate, the best real estate agent doesn’t win, the best marketer wins. Tune in for more!

---

Listen to the podcast here:

How YouTube Created A MILLION DOLLAR Real Estate Business With Levi Lascsak

I stumbled across this guy on Instagram. I went down the rabbit hole of his funnel, and I am fired up that I did because this is epic. As you know, I have been in real estate for many years. I started investing in 2008. I've had a ton of success in the investing arena. A couple of years ago, I started dialing into transactions. This guy has done it right. You could say that he was a complete overnight success, but he has paved the way and put so much sweat, blood, and tears into his former life to get to where he is now. I'm going to read his bio because it is legit on another level. It's short, concise, and to the point but he gets results.

Levi Lascsak released his first YouTube video on December 5, 2020. As a brand new real estate agent, he had not sold a home in 2020 or even the first quarter of 2021. Levi partnered with Travis Plumb, and they closed their first two transactions from their YouTube channel in April 2021. Over the next year, they generated 164 transactions, $90 million in production, and $2.7 million in commissions with $0 ad spend from the channel. They now own the fastest-growing and most viewed real estate YouTube channel in Dallas, Texas, and generate 3 to 5 inbound leads per day. Levi, thank you for jumping on the show. I am excited about this.

Thanks for having me. I’m happy to be here.

Let's get started from the get-go. You didn't get started in real estate all that long ago, and you totally came out of the left field. Tell me, what was that instigator of what made you want to drive in real estate?

It was my good friend, Michael Reese. We have been friends for many years. We sold gym memberships together at Bally Total Fitness before he got into real estate. I remember the weekend he went to the lake and met Jay Kinder, came back to Bally's the next Monday and was like, “I'm getting into real estate.” It’s because of the meeting I had with Jay kinder, and he wanted me to get in back then in 2002. I was like, “I never aspired to be a real estate agent.”

Clearly, I've watched his journey over all these years and gone my own path. We've remained friends, in contact and everything like that. What happened was is I had a financial services business, where I worked with all of the teachers at Dallas ISD on their retirement planning. During 2020, all the schools shut down. That's the business I have been building up over the last few years. It was the third major setback in my life that took me back to zero.

Imagine your business shuts down in the middle of 2020. First of all, I'm not going to get a job because I refuse to get a job, however, who was hiring in 2020? Thirty million layoffs. That wasn't even a backup plan like, “Should I go get a job?” Nobody is looking to invest right at that moment. I couldn't get on campus. I had all my meetings with teachers on campus. Schools are shut down. They are coming to me about how they take money out of their retirement accounts. I was thinking about a pivot, but I thought at the same time, “What do I do?”

I was 41 years old at that time as well. I thought, “How do I start over without starting over?” My biggest fear at that moment was being 41 and thinking, “Did this happen? Am I back to square one again?” I started to ask myself, “How did I get into this position? What led me down this path? Where did I go wrong?” That's what I felt like. I thought I failed significantly because I let something an outside force come in and shut down my business.

During that time, here comes Michael Reese again, and still trying to get me into real estate. He's like, “I'm telling you, now is the best time to get into real estate.” I sat there and watched real estate grow over the summer of 2020. That's what happened. I stepped back over the summer of 2020 to reevaluate my life. I had to ask myself a very tough question, “How did you get yourself into this position? How do you not go down this path ever again? How do you build a business that's bigger than yourself so that I'm not the deciding factor? Where did I go wrong in my life before?”

Out of those three major setbacks, what I realized was that I never scaled myself properly. I was always in that mentality of, “I want it done right. I've got to do it myself. I'm a major driver,” which means I'm Type A. I can run fast. The old saying is, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with the team.” I was always going fast by myself. The thing is, I didn't want to get into real estate but then Michael is like, “It's not the best real estate agent that wins. It's the best marketer.”

“In real estate, it’s not the best real estate agent that wins, it’s the best marketer.”

I knew from that standpoint, “If I do make this transition and make a move, I need a marketing plan. I need to figure out how I am going to generate business.” What he showed me in real estate and being with eXp was that I understood the model. The business model was attractive. To me, it was being a real estate agent that I wasn't. I thought, “If I'm going to take part in the business model and help other agents grow their businesses and bring them into eXp as well, I felt like I needed some credibility and some experience.” It didn't feel right to me to try to turn into a recruiter. It was what it was, and no fault of Michael’s but Michael is like, “You are more than capable of attracting people to the business. You can do that 100%.”

I agreed with him because I believe I'm capable of doing anything but it was something in my gut that didn't sit well with me to say, “I feel like if I'm going to provide this opportunity to people, I need to be able to help them with their production in some way as well. If I can develop a method to attract business, is there a way to do that?” I love the movie, Boiler Room, but I'm not twenty years old anymore.

The thing is, Michael and I started our sales career at Bally's. We used to make phone calls ten hours a day. The whole goal was to get five appointments for the next day. We worked twelve-hour shifts. We worked 10:00 to 10:00. We couldn't call after 8:00 PM but still, during those first 10 hours of your shift, the whole goal was to make phone calls to get five people to come into the gym the next day. You couldn't stop calling unless you did that. If you booked five appointments the next day, you needed to fill up the day afterward.

It was a never-ending cycle. That's where I draw the line. I could do it but I didn't want to do it. I was like, “I don't want to cold call or door knock. I don't want to shake hands. I don't want to kiss babies.” Plus, in the middle of 2020, shaking hands and kissing babies was still a little taboo. I'm like, “I'm not going to go out and pass out my business cards at networking events and things like that. How do I build a business from scratch where nobody knows me? I'm competing with all the top agents in Dallas, established brands, and established brokers. Where do you even get your foot in the door?”

Those are all the questions that I waited, asked myself and then figured out, “How did I do this before?” I developed a plan and then got into real estate versus getting into real estate and then trying to develop a plan. For me, it was like, “I knew the fastest way to do it would be social media and the least expensive.”

Everyone in 2020 was talking about Facebook, Instagram, and mainly TikTok because every real estate agent was waking up to 10,000 followers on TikTok. Everyone is like, “I woke up this morning. I had 10,000 followers.” I was like, “How much business did that get you?” Everyone was like, “I got 10,000 followers. I never got that anywhere on any other platform.” I was like, “Let me look at those platforms.”

I dig in a little bit more on Facebook and Instagram, but none of them set well in my gut either. It didn't fit my personality. I thought I was unsure about that. From there, I stumbled upon YouTube because I asked myself, “What are the top people?” I looked at eXp and said, “What are the top attractors doing there?”

I noticed the top attractors all had YouTube channels. Not that they are doing everything from there but to me, it was an established brand, opportunity or a place and then whenever I started to dig into YouTube. I figured out it was a search engine, not a social media platform, then I was like, “There might be an opportunity here to create content,” especially on Dallas because the thing is, I didn't know how to be a good real estate agent. I knew zero about being a real estate agent.

That's why the other platforms didn't sit well with me because it was agents on there that have been agents for 5, 10, or 15 years telling their short stories and experiences, giving education on mortgages, title and how to do this. I was like, “I could read what the title process looks like or a VA loan,” but I didn't feel authentic about saying, “Here's the best way to get a VA loan,” even though I had never helped anybody get a VA loan. That's why those other platforms didn't sit well with me.

Whenever I found YouTube, I thought, “I can create content about Dallas, which I've lived in Dallas for many years.” I know Dallas, and I can be the expert on Dallas versus trying to be an expert real estate agent. I thought, “There might be something there. That's something I could do. I could create a video.” I saw video as the opportunity to skill myself to passively prospect because the last thing I wanted to do was actively prospect.

I love sales. I have been in sales for many years but always hated prospecting because I felt like I spent 90% of my time on prospecting, and 10% of my time talking to people about the product or service that I was excited to talk to them. Those were the types of things that I was looking at and attracted that way to do business. I went down a lot of rabbit holes.

Here's the other thing. Over 2020, I spent the most money I've ever spent before on education, horses, mentorships and Masterminds because I was looking for a way not to become a real estate agent. The other part of spinning the time over 2020 is that I went all in. I said, “I'm going all in.” I invested in a couple of Amazon Stores, mentorships courses, and things like that. I was looking at getting into wholesaling. I've done investment. I've done fixes and flips. I've had rentals and Airbnb, all as a part-timer. I do 1 or 2 per year. It’s not a big deal. I had seven rentals, most at a time.

To me, that also seemed like not a route that I wanted to go right then as well. Other than that, it’s developing the plan, then moving into real estate, what it comes down to. Whenever I understood a way that I could attract business possibly, plus whenever I looked on YouTube, there was hardly anybody on YouTube Dallas. That's still the case across the country, no matter what market you are in. It's funny because people look at YouTube and say, “There's an agent on YouTube already. That one agent is going to dominate and do all the thousands of transactions in your marketplace.”

I saw there was a gap in only a couple of agents in Dallas making some videos. Whenever I started to dig into YouTube, I could tell that those agents had not done due diligence on YouTube. The thing is that these platforms can be very powerful. If you understand the platforms from a producer side versus a consumer side, then they are going to take you much further. If you are like me, in that 40-year-old age range and above, we all have this love-hate relationship with social media because we didn't grow up with it. It wasn't there in high school and probably wasn't there in college. Maybe it came around when you got your first job or started your real estate career, and you still didn't like it at that time.

“If you understand YouTube from a producer side versus a consumer side, it will take you much further.”

It's people posting their lunch and silly cat videos. Everyone is bragging. It's all the kids bragging, and then we go, “Now we watch the 20 and 30-year-olds start making money.” We are going, “They did that pretty easy. They seemed like they did that a lot easier than me cold calling and door knocking.” The thing is that I understood that, but I was pushed towards Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok because that's what a lot of agents were trying to do, like you said, conversion. I didn't hear or speak with a lot of people doing very high conversions.

I know some people doing business from those platforms but converting at a very high level and looking at the top attractors. I noticed that they had YouTube channels. It made sense that people could go and consume long-form content. People develop relationships once they start consuming a lot of content. From there, it was a cascade of events that led me down that path.

I decided, “YouTube is the platform.” The other aspect was that I wanted to go all in on one platform. I wanted to find the platform because I didn't want to put 20% effort into five different platforms. I don't believe in, “Be everywhere all the time.” I believe in finding one lane and going deep as possible in that one lane.

The cool thing about you is that you have become a complete mogul and icon within the YouTube platform. You have a team that is putting that content in a number of different places, which is that repurposing is everything. You can collect business from a number of different places but you have your one thing. When I got started in real estate, I had been building my platform of Facebook and Instagram for years with my prior business. I had the know, like, trust, and credibility.

I had an awesome conversion from those platforms. The thing that I didn't have going for me, which you do have going for you, is that yours was sustainable long-term. I had seen even on your Instagram saying that you are having even your YouTube shorts pop up randomly, and the content isn't dead. The difference is that it's search engine optimization. It's a platform where people are searching for things, and then they find those things. It's evergreen. If you are looking to leverage your time and work smart, that is the platform all the way, which is genius.

That's the other aspect of your own sanity. As Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are interruption platforms, first of all, which means the last time I checked, nobody said, “It's time to buy a house. Let's go on Facebook and see what's on the market. Let's go to Instagram and see if we can find a cool agent posting market reports. Let’s go on TikTok and see if we can find the best dancing real estate.” People don't necessarily go to those platforms to search for real estate. They may come across a real estate agent on that platform they like but they could not be in the market for the next 24 or 36 months.

Where is the true value in that? You are building a brand and establishing a presence over time. The thing is that people go to YouTube with intention. Our average under contract is 47 days saying which means people are intentional. They are going there searching for that information. It's one of those things where the evergreen content is what scales yourself. It works for you constantly. Even stats, first of all, organic Facebook, if you post anything, they reach less than 5% of your audience, and because we are writing a book, Passive Prospecting, we've done some of this research.

Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, all of that content dies out within 48 hours or less it goes viral. Viral can mean different things to different people. It can be 1,000 views, 10,000, 100,000 or 1 million views. We always consider mini viral 10,000 to 20,000 views or something. Once that dies, it dies off. I've seen this on my own content on those platforms. Here's the thing. We also say real estate agents produce 100 pieces of content a day or maybe more. It's your choice whether you document it or not.

“Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok content dies out within 48 hours unless it goes viral.”

We are filming this with you. This will become probably 50 different Reels for us, and it could be the same for you as well in documenting this aspect. If you look at my calendar, I have 4 partner calls, 1 webinar, and 2 other calls that I will be doing. All of it gets recorded. Everything I do gets recorded because we will use all of that content for Reels. That's what feeds Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn for all the short-form platforms because I don't have to make specific content for those platforms to do enough in my life talking with people, coaching, running calls, having conversations, podcasts and things like that. We document everything.

This is something we talked about at our session when we spoke at eXp con that any agent can do this. You have to find your superpower. Superpower is helping agents with YouTube. If YouTube is not your thing, that's okay. If you are the best cold caller, we will set up a phone right next to you in vertical format and record all your phone calls. You could make calls for 2 or 3 hours a day doesn't mean you are going to use 2 or 3 hours of content. It means that any editor can go in there and chop out 30 and 62nd clips of you making a good point.

You could probably have 50 clips a day of shorts, Reels and TikToks from what you are doing. On top of that, what if after every call, you paused and looked at that camera, made eye contact and said, “Here's what happened on that call,” and if you broke it down and even coached yourself on what you did right, wrong, what you should have said, what you said correctly or next time if somebody says that, “I'm going to say this,” or notice whenever they said that how they pivot.

If you have that phone sitting right next to you vertically, you could do that or have it horizontal as well if you wanted to make long, firm content and take notes. “I made 50 calls. I talked to ten people. Here's what happened in all those conversations. Here are all the concerns, objections, kicks or whatever I got. Here's how I overcame them.” Right there, in one day, you could have not only 50 pieces of content but a long-form video as well.

You could have notes on top of that, start working on a document of closings or overcoming objections, and that stuff that you can pass on to somebody else. If you ever want to build your team, it doesn't have to be with eXp. You can be at any brokerage or any business because our book, Passive Prospecting, is going to be the business concept and how what we've done any small business can do.

You can do this as an agent. If you are an entrepreneur or investor, it doesn't matter. If you are an investor, you are at the biggest advantage because investment reaches a whole broader audience than a real estate agent does. If you are out on site every day, looking, sourcing, researching or rehabbing homes, document it. Take us how easy it is if you are working on 2 or 3 projects to take a selfie stick and your iPhone out there and say, “I'm on this project.”

What you do is you can document that daily. Once you complete that flip over 30 or 60 days, then you have a before and after the video. It’s because you've documented everything up to that point, the footage is already there to power to complete the before and after video, which will probably get the most amount of views from a standpoint of you to look on YouTube and post a rehab video. Think about it. Why does HGTV come out with 1,000 rehab shows every year? It’s because people love that. They love the before and after, the struggle and the story. Investors are at the biggest advantage in content creation. They already have. It’s your choice whether you want to document it or not.

Let's say you are talking to a real estate agent that is brand new, and they want to dial into the investing space and social media, what would be your first couple of steps? How do they find someone to put all those things together for social media or do they try to tackle that themselves?

If they want to be on YouTube, I would say buy our course.

Shout out to Levi and Travis because I jumped on their webinar in the ins and outs. You do break it down, and that's great because a lot of times, as a newbie in real estate, you are already overwhelmed by all the crazy, let alone trying to put together content and optimize it on YouTube. It's a lot. How do you break it down to get to your end goal?

Let me give you two formulas for success. These have served me across four different industries, which is who's at the top? What are they doing? How did they get there? How can you model that? How can you adjust it to fit your personality? How can you do better than them? That's number one. However, before you do that, you got to take the step before that, which is to determine, “Are you a people person? Are you a phone call person? Are you a reader and a writer or a video person?”

The thing is that a lot of people look at what we do on YouTube, and they are like, “I want to do that but I hate video. I can't get on camera.” You got two choices. Either you force yourself and hate life, and maybe you get over it, which I believe you can do or you say, “Maybe video is not for me.” I did this survey in our breakout room there at the conference. We had 300 people in the room. I got about a 30/30/30/10 split, which I was like, “Who's a people person?”

Thirty percent were like, “I’m a people person.” Thirty percent were like, “I'm a phone call person.” Thirty percent were like, “I’m a video.” Ten percent were like, “I'm a reader and a writer,” because I was like, “If you are a reader and a writer type of person, you just love to write. Maybe you write the best email campaigns for your sphere of influence and start building your email list. That's how you market and sell people by taking time sitting down and writing out a series of events of emails. Email marketing is very powerful. maybe you come up with the best postcard campaign ever on the planet.”

“If you are a people person, maybe you become the best open house person because you want to hang out and let people come in the door. You get to talk to them, interact with them and shake their hands. Maybe video is not your thing. You need to determine what style can you deal with people.” Some people are like, “I never want to meet people but I could call them all day long.” That people person is like, “I would die if I had to be on the phone.” Don't force yourself down this path unless you have an end goal of like, “I want to do video.”

I believe video is the ultimate way to scale yourself. In those videos, I could pull up my app and show you how many people are watching the channel right this second. What I love is that anytime I do this, on average, it's 150 people. My channel is prospecting to 150 people while I'm doing this show. When we were at the conference, we were getting all those 150 per hour. We've got almost 6,000 people viewing the channel.

“Video is the ultimate way to scale yourself.”

They viewed it on their terms. At 9:54 in the morning, it has 108 people. When everyone else is going, “Is it too early to call? Should I call? Nobody is home. I can't knock on doors.” They are questioning. I'm like, “People are going to our channel and watching videos on their terms on their timeline.” There are 108 people at this time in the morning that are researching real estate. We are reaching them. I'm doing something completely different. That you can't do. The phone call is one-to-one. You can only talk to one person at one time. You can only talk to many people in one hour. You do that for three hours. The second you stop, your lead generation stops.

That's why I believe video is the best thing you can do for your business, yourself, and your relationships, especially your family, spouse, and everything else because why do agents get accused of never being present and not having a good time? When they are on vacation, spending time with the family or off on the weekends, they are worried about not generating business. They are like, “I should be working. I should be doing something. I don't have the closings I want to have this month, so I should be out doing something. I need to be busy.” They feel bad about it. Yet I woke up, and there were 1,000 people watching our channel overnight. I prospected to 1,000 people while I was asleep.

That's people in the UK. We tell people to move from Japan to people from Australia, South Africa, the UK, Canada, and everywhere from out of state. Why? It’s because our channel is global as well. When it's 2:00 AM here, it's 5:00 PM in Japan. That's when somebody is off there, even a soldier, and if you live anywhere near a military base, you absolutely should be on YouTube because they get transferred all over the world. You live in Kentucky, and you live near the base because soldiers get transferred there every single month. They've never lived there and never been there. They are in their 20s and 30s. Where do you think they start researching?

They start researching on YouTube. They are like, “I'm about to get shipped off to Kentucky. I have never been there. What's there? I don't know.” What do they do? They go on YouTube. They start searching. They don't say, “Let's find the best real estate agent in Kentucky.” That's nobody's first thought. They are like, “Let's start researching Kentucky and what's around Fort Campbell. How does this work? How do I move from Japan for a camp?” Those are all video topics. Those are all opportunities.

If you are anywhere in the Southeast that's conservative and people are moving to your state, you got a huge opportunity right there as well. What I love about the out-of-state clients is that we don't compete with other agents. They don't know another agent. If you are marketing in your own backyard, everybody knows ten real estate agents, and half of them are your family members.

I've experienced the same thing. I don't compete because I'm in the Airbnb arena. A lot of my people know their people. It's all through social media. They are not looking for the best Airbnb expert because it's social media. They know that person. The way that you've built, it is so smart. When you look at like a crowd, even at eXp con, and those four different demographics like, “You've got the writers. You've got people persons and those different people.” I would even encourage them, even if it isn't maybe your zone of genius, because we all have our zone of genius.

We can all lean into that and skyrocket. I would even encourage some of those people that are maybe those people person but maybe don't feel comfortable on video, “What do you ultimately want to do long-term? Do you want to keep trading the one-on-one type of inexperience? I'm naturally introverted. I remember my dad taught me, “I want you to put yourself out there.” As much as I didn't want to, he said, “You can be shy and poor or you can be outgoing and wealthy.” I was like, “Let's try that.” I have become more extroverted. I always joke like, “I'm an extroverted introvert.” I've put myself out there.

Am I comfortable in a video? Not necessarily, but I do it because I know the end game. I know that I can make a difference in many more people's lives because I put myself out there. Keep that in mind for those people that maybe aren't feeling comfortable on video. It’s bigger than you. Think about what your ultimate vision is and the lives that you can change and get out of your own way because we can be good on video. It's going to take some time. Way to get out of your own way. I don't know. Did you feel super comfortable on camera from the get-go?

I did.

That is not the majority of the population.

Here's the deal. If you are an introvert, you should absolutely be on video. I've only sold one house. I got out of production after one house. Going back to that credibility standpoint, even though I only sold one house myself and what's funny about that is that person emailed or sent me a text message and said, “Can you get this house under contract?” It is a brand-new construction. It might be the exact address. It was the first deal from the channel that we got under contract.

They sent me a text message with this specific address. It was a brand-new build. All I did was reached out to the builder. They sent them the contract. I didn't even write the contract. After that, Travis took over. The thing is, I don't interact with the client at all. I create the videos. They come in. Half of the time, they say, “I want to speak to Levi.” Whoever answers the phone says, “Levi is out filming. How can we help you?” They then start talking about things we've never had a single issue with it. Nobody's ever said, “I will not work with you because I can't work with Levi's.”

You set that intention from the get-go because even when I was on the way to hitting the icon, a lot of times, what I would say is, “My executive assistant, this is how it works. I will set you up on a three-way text.” She will set up the search. She will bring you to the showings and say, “If you need anything, I'm here to help. I will definitely help you from a negotiation standpoint.” It was like, “This is the way that it is.” As long as you said that from the get-go, it's amazing how that works.

That wasn't the plan. I don't want people to think that although my intention was never to be a part of the transactions or get into real estate. I was looking for a partner from the beginning. Travis happened to come along with divine intervention and perfect timing. In that first transaction, we started to work together that time. That's why I was prepared to do the transactions.

Not that wasn't didn't want to but I got that first one. Whenever the second one came in, we happened to be hanging out together. He's like, “Let me take it. I will take it and handle it. I thought, “Give it to him, 50/50 split,” which he was cool with. I was like, “Let's see how this works.” What he said to me was, “I want to sell 100 homes.” He wanted to do the transaction side. He didn't want to do any marketing. He hates the camera.

Figure out what you are amazing at and find those partners around you that can complement who you are.

That's why in videos, I always mentioned Travis by name. I mentioned the team as well because we position the video, so people know that when they hear me say that in every single video, they know I've got a partner and a team. I’m happy to be working with the team. I find so much value in the videos that they feel like they are working with the team. We did our second client appreciation event. The first client appreciation event we did in the spring, we were coming back from Vegas from a conference, and our flight got canceled, and then we were leaving at 8:00 in the morning. The event was at 5:00 PM night. We were like, “No problem.”

The flight got canceled. We couldn't get on a flight until 4:00 PM. We missed our first client appreciation. The team was there. They pinch-hit for us. We had our second event. Finally, our first event where we showed up. It's funny because everybody came up to me, and they were like, “It’s great to finally meet you. Your team members took such great care of us.” It was nothing but positive feedback. I never intended for this but you are in an authority position. People look up to that even a little bit more than seeing your ad in a magazine.

I don't know of a lot of agents that have told me that they said they got a call and somebody says, “I have to work with you,” because of your magazine ads unless they are some bizarre from the ordinary type of magazine ads but you don't typically see that. It's the same agent in the suit and tie or the button-up pantsuit. There they are standing there with, “Call us to buy, sell or invest.” With the videos, we give them a different look. We provide the value. It's all 100% value driven.

Now, if someone answers the phone, it goes to a team member. The team member takes over 100%. I'm not involved in the transaction at all except whenever the commission disbursement comes. I'm on there. That's a business. The thing is that I don't have to be present. I've even proven that we can have team members make videos on the channel, and the videos are as successful as the ones that I do. We've implemented that, and that was all part of a test. I modeled that off of the Think Media YouTube channel founded by Sean Cannell.

Sean Cannell and Benji Travis wrote YouTube Secrets. I looked at Think Media and its channel. He puts out a video every day but he has 4 or 5 team members that put out a video. That's only one video per week per team member but you have 5, 6 or 7 pieces of content going out every single week. I thought, “What a great concept. What a great idea.” It doesn't matter. We've already had two team members leave that were in those videos. Nobody calls in for asking for them specifically. I'm not worried about that.

The fact is those videos, and then AJ, who's on our team, has been the most consistent. Some of his videos have done extremely well. He gets reached out. It's a great benefit for him too, because it tap into an established channel and brand, and, therefore, people do reach out and say, “I would love to talk to AJ.” That's the cool thing. There are those opportunities there. Built business is what we did. What I made sure of this time was the fact that I didn't get tied into it.

Going back to what you asked earlier, was I comfortable on camera? The thing was that I’d done sales for a long time, and I loved that. What I had to get used to was selling to an inanimate object, which is what you are doing. Video is communication and sales at scale. The thing is that as an agent, here's what happens. You live and die with every day. You take somebody out. If I went to your neighborhood, “Could you show me around? Tell me a little bit about the neighborhood.” You would say, “Sure.”

“Video is simply communication and sales at scale.”

You don't need a script, notes or anything like that. You could take me out. Show me around. Tell me everything I needed to know about the neighborhood but when we parted ways that day, that conversation was dead. It goes nowhere after that. It's done. Have that same conversation on camera, and now you are giving 100, 1,000 or 10,000 people the opportunity to see that. For me, it was an adjustment because I was used to reading people's facial expressions and reading body language, them interrupting me, asking questions, overcoming concerns, objects, and all that. That's what I was used to.

Whenever you are talking to a camera, and it's staring right back at you, “Where can I get a smile?” It’s a little bit of adjustment but that comes with time. I wasn't nervous or concerned about it. I had to adapt to how to have a one-sided conversation and see somebody sitting on the other side of the camera. As we are doing now is what I have to picture that somebody is right there across the table with me. I'm having that but I also know how to transition.

If I need to stop, take a break, pause, look at, or think about the next point, I can do that. I know all that's going to come together in the editing process. I also understand that aspect as well. When you first do that, you don't understand all of those components, which makes it a little awkward as well. What it comes down to is, “Do you want to do it or not?” If you want to do it, then you will do it again through all.

I'm going to go through my lightning round with Lady Boss. I never gave you a heads-up on this. You need to answer these questions in a sentence or less, and then we will wrap it up. If you wouldn't have got started in real estate, what else would you have done?

Here's the thing. Remember, I said I spent the summer trying to get it. I invested in two Amazon Stores that cost me about $150,000. To this day, I have lost more money. I probably lost another $50,000. That overall investment cost me about $200,000. I thought I was going to go into Amazon Stores. That bombed out. Second of all, I invested in wholesaling, courses, software and all that stuff. What I realized was, “I've got to be in the Boiler Room.” That's what it comes down to. You got to hustle, make phone calls, do this and that.

I was like, “That's super cool, but not something I wanted to do at this moment.” Here's my backup plan. If I wouldn't get into real estate and all those spills, I was going to move to Belize and live my best life because I have enough to get by in the Caribbean, frankly, for a very long time. I could probably sell tacos and beer on the beach and make a good living. I have a property in Belize. You can do real estate in Belize.

I had a plan for that as well because I thought, “If I'm going to get into real estate, why not do it in a cool spot?” That was the backup plan. I still went into real estate reluctantly. I told myself I was going to give it one year. I was like, “I'm going to do this YouTube thing. I'm going to give it one year, no matter what. Buckle down, focus on it, and move forward on that.” I gave myself one year but had the backup plan of going to the Caribbean.

People would be surprised that you spend much time doing what?

People would be surprised that the least amount of time I spend on video. I believe video is the true four-hour workweek if you want to break it down because if you look at how much video I sit down to actively produce is probably less than two hours a week but it's built this entire business for us. One of the top questions people always ask me is, “How much time do you spend making videos?” They look at it like it's a 40-hour job or workweek.

I'm sitting there ten hours a day in front of a camera, trying to make videos. I'm like, “No, it's not.” I make a video. I'm at a proficiency level now where I share in one take. If I want to sit down and make a 15-minute video, I can do that in about 20 minutes with a little bit of rumbling around at the beginning and at the end, and then once I record that, I record it. It's a done deal. I would flip that and say the least amount of time I spend my time on is video.

Chipotle or Chick-fil-A?

Chipotle.

What is your favorite way to spend downtime, which doesn't sound like you have a lot of it?

It was funny as I was watching football and doing some research. I was like, “I'm going to read a couple of blogs and get some information.” I think football season is probably where I get sucked in but otherwise, I like to travel. I was on a travel tear until COVID hit. I went to 24 countries in 3 years. I was on a very good path. I don't know if I will get back to that. That’s a lot. If I could like every quarter, that's always something cool to do. We have been traveling so much with conferences. We had a conference in Cabo. One was somewhere else nice. In 2023, we've got a Cabo and a Hawaii conference. Stay the weekend and have a good time.

What are you absolutely addicted to?

The gym. It's more of a routine. It's something that grounds my day, as far as it's something I have to start off with. If I don't do it in the morning, it's not going to get done but at the same time, it grounds the day.

It’s the best stress reducer. What are you reading now?

I finished up Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday.

What do you think?

I like Ryan Holiday. He's introduced me to a lot of books through his email list. He might be on a tenth book now. He always had a reading list. It seems like he reads 20 or 30 books a month. He always puts out this monthly reading list and does not always find it. He wrote the Perennial Seller, which is the infinite game. Since we are about to release the book, I was going through that because he talks about creating something.

The Perennial Seller is evergreen content because of what it comes down to, which is what we talked about on YouTube as well. It’s creating content that lives forever that is relevant whenever somebody finds it on their own timeline. He talks about basically creating works of art, books, videos, and a case. Maybe he gives a lot of different examples of people that have done that.

Best piece of advice you've ever received.

One would be, “It's not the best agent that wins. It is the best marketer. Some will. Some won't. So what? Who cares? Those hurt people, hurt people.”

“Healed people, heal people.”

I'm healed from several different, and anytime I share that openly. I always try to help people with other aspects of life as well. It's the one-liners that speak out sometimes. In 2020, I had a choice. The reason the Caribbean was my backup plan was that I thought about giving up. I thought about being 41 and saying, “What's the point?” Every five years, I had this huge reset back to zero. I was like, “What's the point? Why did I keep putting myself through this building something up only to see it in after five years?” What I realized was that I'm only in the first 3rd of my life. It was too soon to give up, even at 41.

Most embarrassing moment. These are leftfield questions but sometimes throw people off. It's fun to know some of the stories they maybe don't always share.

I don't get embarrassed by a lot. I have always been, “It is what it is.” I didn't even care. Now that I think about it, I'm trying to think of the most embarrassing time. In fourth grade, I got food poisoning at school. I walked into the principal's office. They were back there talking. I wouldn't say anything. Once you have food poisoning, you can come out of both ends. I literally threw up over the desk on the countertop in the admin offices but at the same time also went in my pants.

It was this a double-ended and double-decker. What I remember from that was that they called my mom. They are opening up all the office doors and the school and everything because when you combine the two, the smell is not that great. At the time, when I think about it, I don't think I even cared. I felt crappy. I was like, “Get me out of here.” Luckily, I do remember this. We had a van, so I was able to stand up on the way home.

Coffee or chocolate?

Coffee.

What is your definition of a boss?

A prick.

Let me backtrack and ask you this instead. If someone met you and said, “I want to become the boss of my own life and call the shots. What's my first step?”

No excuses. The thing is that victimhood is getting louder with social media. At the event where I was speaking at the conference, I opened it up at the end. We had a session with 300 people in the room and opened up at the end for Q&A. This person rushed up to the front of the room to ask a question. It was a complete hijack question. They wanted to come after me, saying that we didn't earn what we had done.

“Victimhood is getting louder with social media, so try to make no excuses. ”

It was funny because I sat there and they said, “You are copying other YouTubers,” and things like that. I was like, “The last time I checked, YouTube is not exclusive to any one person. If they are real estate agents, does that not allow you to be a real estate agent? As soon as somebody becomes a real estate agent or if somebody learned cold calling, it's locked down now. You can't do it? From my standpoint, we learned from a lot of people.”

The thing is that nobody more successful than you will come to break you down. People want to look at the people that are up there and cry wolf or, “I have this reason. This is what's holding me back.” The thing is that all the information is out there, whatever it is you want to do. “Has somebody done it? What did I say at the beginning? Who is at the top? What are they doing? How did they get there? How can you model it and not copy them? Can you adjust it to fit your personality?” There's one thing, “If I take your script, and I read it word for word, or I found somebody that was copying or downloading my YouTube videos and posting them on their own channel, that's a straight copy.”

If you want to watch my YouTube video and get ideas from it or copy my pros and cons and then give your pros and cons, maybe you pick the same topics but give your opinion. That’s not copying. That is gaining inspiration from something we have done. I cannot stop you from making a Dallas pros and cons video but don't copy my word for word, don't download my video and post it on your channel, which we got them to take it all down.

If you want to use my exact list of pros and cons but give your experience and stories, go for that. I can't stop you from doing that. I'm not going to complain. All I know that I'm going to do is I'm going to outwork you. If you want to come after me, that's fine. The thing is that it's very easy to get sucked up into a victim mentality. It's those people that don't refuse. In 2020, I was in that position in my own head because you talked about a bad partnership. What I don't tell the story on because of time and everything else. It wasn't just COVID.

I also had a partner in that business that completely scrutiny. That's a whole other long story but that's what crushed me emotionally for a minute and made me think about giving up and, “What's the point?” As soon as I started to say, “This person, that person or because of them,” what I realized was that, “If I did quit and give up, then they would win.” Part of my fuel and motivation at that time was that I had a chip on my shoulder.

I was like, “I'm not even going to try to beat them in their own industry. I'm going to completely pivot, become the best and even better in something else.” Success is the best revenge. I thought about all these things I wanted to do, say or everything like that. You get to a point whenever you are like, “Who cares? I don't care anymore,” but it did fuel me for a long time.

Now I'm fueled by the net. I’m coming at you and saying, “Hey.” The thing is, no one's ever come to me directly. It's always been someone else who comes and says, “This person is saying this or that.” I'm like, “Okay, whatever.” I'm not going to engage or get involved. I'm going to continue on my own path and go down that route.

You have given us much wisdom. Any last words of wisdom before you share how people can connect with you and how people can follow you?

I believe you can hyper-learn any subject in 60 days. Figure out what type of person you are. Are you a people person? Are you a phone call person? Are you a reader and writer or a video person? Once you figure that out, if you are a phone call person, do you want to cold call to call your sphere? Do you want to call your friends or your family? Do you want to call FSBO or expired in the real estate space? Pick one of those lanes.

If you want to learn how to be the best-expired listing collar person out there, there's a course out there. Somebody has a course. There are YouTube videos, books, and blogs on it. If you take the next 60 days, you can become the best expired listing phone call person on the planet because if you study it for 60 days, I believe you will be 99.9% more proficient than any agent out there. You can do that. We did it with YouTube. Do you want to be the best postcard marketer on the planet? Trust me, there are books out there, postcard campaigns and agents that have their postcard campaigns posted for free somewhere.

It doesn't have to be real estate. You can be a wholesaler or a financial adviser. The thing about you can hyper-learn any subject in this day and age in 60 days. What I mean by hyper-learn is that you go all in. Watch Netflix. Any spare moment you have, I'm not saying completely ditch the family, but any spare moment you have, there is no downtime. You have to be on some mission. You have to be motivated to achieve something. If you put in that work now, I believe that's what's going to allow you to relax.

If you work weekends for two years, you gain a whole year. Would you rather have facet through the next 3 years or would you rather buckled down for 2 years, and then your third year is a lot more relaxed? Those are the things you got to ask yourself, “Do you want to slowly get to where you want to go or do you want to get there super fast and make the sacrifice up front?” When you look at a lot of successful people, they are in maintenance mode like in the gyms. Once you get into shape, it's a lot easier to maintain than it is to get there.

On that note, thank you from the bottom of my heart. This was amazing. Why don't you share with my audience where they can find you and your course because that is legit?

Go to PassiveProspecting.com. It has everything on there. They can sign up whenever. They will be notified when they released the book. That's pretty cool. They can book a call on there too if they want to join our live call. I always recommend people join our live call first because that's where I do break down our story, the journey, why YouTube is important, what that means for you and your business, the results, how we got there, and how they can do that as well.

I will teach them a few things that they can take away from it. You can learn all this stuff. You can go through it on YouTube. You can do exactly what we did, but you are going to have to piece it together. It's going to take a lot. A lot of people think the information is the most important thing, but I also believe it's the time that it saves you.

Success loves speed, so why not pay for it? I'm telling my team all the time, “Get good at what you do and go all in. Your life will never be the same.” Guys, thank you so much for tuning in to the Boss Life. As I always tell you in the end, “It is time for you to fire your fear, build your faith, and become the boss of your own life.” Let's get after it.

Important Links

About Levi Lascsak

Levi Lascsak released his first YouTube video on December 5th, 2020 as a brand new real estate agent. He had not sold a home in 2020 or the first quarter of 2021. Levi partnered with Travis Plumb and they closed their first 2 transactions from the channel in April 2021. Over the next year, they generated 164 transactions, $90M in production, and $2.7M in commissions with zero ad spend from the channel. They now own the fastest growing and most viewed real estate YouTube channel in Dallas Texas and generate 3-5 inbound leads per day.

PodcastStefanie PetersJanuary 5, 2023Real Estate Marketing, YouTube, Social Media, Evergreen Content, Video Content, Real Estate Video

How YouTube Created A MILLION DOLLAR Real Estate Business With Levi Lascsak

Listen to the podcast here:

How YouTube Created A MILLION DOLLAR Real Estate Business With Levi Lascsak

Important Links

About Levi Lascsak

Are you a real estate agent looking to get inspired?