This changes everything

The biggest breakthrough in your business will come down to understanding one word: fluency

Transcript

Understanding Fluency in Business Strategy

00:00:00 Jeff Sarris

The biggest breakthrough in your business will come from understanding just one word: fluency.

00:00:07 Amara Andrew

You don't say. If you're new here, welcome to the Useful Not Famous cult.

Hi, I'm Amara.

00:00:15 Jeff Sarris

And I'm Jeff. You just like didn't hear me.

00:00:19 Amara Andrew

This is going great. So, well first, before we get into fluency, if you are listening to this episode, it tells me two things about you before we even get into anything. The first is that, I guess I should be talking to you and looking at the camera, but the first is that you are a motivated entrepreneur and you don't have a lot of time.

The second thing is that you are ready for change. So, how do you do that?

00:00:47 Jeff Sarris

Well, yeah. So, in this episode, too, or this podcast, for time, I just want to say real quick, it's a 15-minute show. We're here quick, in and out, and to give you the why, a little bit of what, and then how to implement at the end.

00:00:59 Amara Andrew

And if somebody sent you this podcast episode, that also tells me that you have somebody who wants you to succeed and grow in your business and they know that you can do it, you just need the right tools. So, that's what we're here for as tools. We're here to help you as part of the Useful Not Famous cult.

So, you said fluency at the beginning. What the hell does that even mean? What is fluency?

Do you mean fluency in French, fluency in cooking? What is it?

00:01:29 Jeff Sarris

So, it's also funny,

00:01:30 Amara Andrew

Let's set that timer.

00:01:31 Jeff Sarris

I don't have the timer in front of me.

00:01:32 Amara Andrew

Oh my god!

00:01:33 Jeff Sarris

Can you fill the air for like 30 seconds?

00:01:36 Amara Andrew

So, typically in this show, how it's split up is we have three different parts, and we have a trusty timer. So, our cult is falling apart all of a sudden. Our god, the timer, is not here.

So, Jeff's grabbing the timer, but the podcast is split into three separate parts. So, first is the what.

00:01:53 Jeff Sarris

I'm here! I'm here! Here's the timer.

5 minutes.

00:01:56 Amara Andrew

So, it's the what. Then we get into Or, no, the why. No, the first part is

00:02:00 Jeff Sarris

Yeah, why. Why, what, and how. But,

00:02:03 Amara Andrew

Yeah, first part is why. He always introduces this part. The first part is why, the next part is what, meaning what are we up to?

And then the final part is how to actually implement this. So, first, why fluency? Why are we talking about fluency?

Cognitive Fluency Examples in Pop Culture

00:02:14 Jeff Sarris

And we have 5 minutes on the clock, so here we go. Yeah, so fluency. Fluency, when we think about it, we think about language and language fluency.

Like, "I'm fluent in English." What are you fluent in?

00:02:24 Amara Andrew

Lady? I'm semi-fluent in a couple things.

00:02:29 Jeff Sarris

-huh.

Yeah, like English and you have some fluency in like German. Like language fluency makes sense. We think We think about that initially, but when we're actually creating something, we need to think about fluency in terms of how familiar is the thing we're creating so someone feels fluent in it.

00:02:51 Amara Andrew

So, fluency equals familiarity? Like, how familiar you feel with something?

00:02:56 Jeff Sarris

So, it's It's definitely a part of it. I wouldn't say it's the whole kit and caboodle.

00:03:02 Amara Andrew

Meow!

00:03:03 Jeff Sarris

But it's the familiarity. It's the fluency in that I see something and I understand it. I don't need to understand all of it, but I need to understand If I understand it a little bit, I will feel more of a connection to it instantly.

So, let me explain. If you are sort of our era of millennial or

00:03:26 Amara Andrew

Excuse me.

Hey, we're millennials. We're both We're just on different ends of the millennial timeline. We have a 10-year gap between us.

00:03:35 Jeff Sarris

And our teeth.

But

00:03:37 Amara Andrew

That's what all dentists and orthodontists say.

00:03:40 Jeff Sarris

So millennials and others know the band Paramore, for example. So, they have a song called "Misery Business." It did really well, very popular.

00:03:51 Amara Andrew

Side note, I always wanted Hayley Williams' hair.

00:03:54 Jeff Sarris

Sounds like a problem. Sound Sounds like you wanted to just like go and cut her hair off and take it.

00:03:59 Amara Andrew

Yeah, I wanted to keep it in a plastic bag under my bed. Anyway, carry on.

00:04:03 Jeff Sarris

So, Paramore had a song called "Misery Business." Very, very successful at the time, at the time. But that's not the song that we're talking about. We're talking about a song that used the fluency of "Misery Business" to sell itself and the artist.

I don't even know what year I should have looked, but a few years ago, maybe 5 years ago or so, Olivia Rodrigo made a song called "Good 4 U." And immediately it basically went viral everywhere because all of the millennials, all everyone who grew up on Paramore felt compelled to be like, "This is just 'Misery Business' with different words."

00:04:42 Amara Andrew

Yeah, TikTok was brutal.

00:04:45 Jeff Sarris

But this is the thing, though. It became very successful and arguably put that artist on the map. Like, she may have had stuff before, but that's the song.

00:04:55 Amara Andrew

And also there's a more current version of that, which is "Anxiety" by Coopex, and it's a like an exact replica of "Somebody That I Used to Know" by Gotye.

And it's the same exact beats and everything, but like a little bit more like I shouldn't have done that with my body, that was gross. Sorry if you saw that. But it's a little more it's just more modern.

It's like it's it's more upbeat, I guess, whereas, obviously, that song is very downer.

00:05:25 Jeff Sarris

The catch, though, that So, "Good 4 U" is not a cover, is the one you're saying a cover? So, they're not covers at all.

00:05:30 Amara Andrew

No, no.

But it's the same exact sound and you recognize it immediately, but you're like, "Whoa, this is different." So, is that part of fluency then?

00:05:39 Jeff Sarris

So, that's what I wanted to say is our fluency in that song instantly gives us the inclination to like it if we liked the original or even if we didn't like it, and it's just like, "I swear I know this song." There was a Green Day album back in the day, like maybe I think it was American Idiot, it might have been a different one, that the first time I listened, I remember thinking, "I feel like I've heard like half of these songs before." But they went back to other familiar historical sort of sound, say, and pulled just little bits that make it feel make you feel something.

And that's what we want to do, is we want to make people feel something. Ideally, the feeling we're going for could be could be anger, but ideally what we want is happiness or fulfillment or satisfaction, whatever it is. So, using fluency to create something, whether it's art, whether it's social media, whether it's a podcast like this, whether it's something that you want a positive outcome from, no matter what it is, if you think in fluency, like how fluent is someone going to be in this, you're going to be much better off.

And I just have one more example I wanted to say real quick was Edge of Tomorrow.

00:06:54 Amara Andrew

Time!

Defining Disfluency and Unfamiliar Brand Names

00:06:57 Jeff Sarris

There is a Tom Cruise movie called Edge of Tomorrow that I think is his greatest movie of all time. And it now It does have like a cult following and everything to it. It is a really good movie, but it completely flopped when it came out because the phrasing, the titling of it, "Edge of Tomorrow," doesn't have any familiarity, it doesn't connect with the story really in any way whatsoever.

So, there isn't like a fluency in being able to talk about it. Like if I If at the time if someone said, "Did you see Edge of Tomorrow?" I'd be like, "I don't think so," because it there was zero connection. And what you would look at is when they were trying to push the movie, when they were struggling, they took the phrase "Live Die Repeat," which was just sort of the tagline, and they gave it top billing.

They put it huge on the poster. They did things to try to be like, "We messed up. We went with the wrong title, but this is something people are saying and understand." But it was already too late.

They weren't giving us the ability to be fluent in it. So, we want to give people the fluency, the ability to share and understand to a degree with some questions at the end. Like, "I understand this much, but I want to know more." That's a really important thing that can be leveraged.

00:08:20 Amara Andrew

And really quickly, I just wanted to ask, what's the opposite then of fluency? Just super briefly, what would be an example then of the exact opposite, which I would assume is called disfluency?

00:08:32 Jeff Sarris

-huh.

00:08:33 Amara Andrew

Okay.

00:08:33 Jeff Sarris

I would assume is called Just using context clues.

No, no, no, yeah. It would be disfluency. Let me think if I have like a good

00:08:40 Amara Andrew

So, disfluency would be the opposite, which is not familiarity. So, it's something very foreign and different and like so almost bizarrely different, and not as a negative, but just purely like, "What is this?"

00:08:55 Jeff Sarris

I think a good example is actually someone who you meet who's from another country who has a name that you can't really you don't even know exactly how to pronounce it from seeing it. You don't have a fluency in that person's sort of identity, and it makes it so much harder to be like, "Oh, did you meet" And it's almost like, "Did you meet Sally's friend?" Because you can't even You don't know the person's name.

You don't You don't have a connection for it, and a lot of like everything that we do is connection. So, there's a disfluency with in the person's name. That's very unfortunate because like we all want to have our identity.

But think in terms of a brand. If

00:09:39 Amara Andrew

My name! Like, it's

00:09:41 Jeff Sarris

What's your name again?

00:09:42 Amara Andrew

My name is familiar enough where So, it's Amara. People always think it's Amanda, which, unfortunately, that is my least favorite name out there, so I'm sorry if your name is Amanda. Nothing personal.

But people have always thought my name is Amanda because you see the first part, A-M-A, and then the natural progression in the English language then is N-D-A. So, that So, I have a fluent a fluent name in a way, where it's familiar, but there's also disfluency in it because then it's like, "Oh, wait. R-A?

You ended in R-A, not N-D-A?"

00:10:23 Jeff Sarris

And how does Lady Gaga say it?

00:10:24 Amara Andrew

Rah!

00:10:28 Jeff Sarris

So yeah. So, that So, we want to be fluent. We want to create things that create that give a sense of fluency to people.

Oh, and I wanted to say with the name, sorry, I forgot that. In terms of a brand, for example, like a if your brand is hard to understand, like the brand name, like Nike, Coke, Pepsi, these are like easy, like we understand that. But if you have some letters next to each other that in the English language don't really compute for the English market, you're going to struggle to because they won't be able to actually convey that brand name.

00:11:05 Amara Andrew

100%. Okay, so now we'll move on to our what. What, what?

Developing Software Systems for Content Creation

00:11:08 Jeff Sarris

Our what. So, we put 5 on the clock. So, what is the what section?

00:11:12 Amara Andrew

The what is what have we been up to and what are we doing on this planet?

00:11:16 Jeff Sarris

Yeah, and we follow this with the why, so stick around to the end.

00:11:19 Amara Andrew

Yes. So, actually something that we're

00:11:21 Jeff Sarris

Or the how, I'm sorry.

00:11:22 Amara Andrew

Close enough. We're a little rusty. We had last week off because unplanned, honestly, to be fully honest.

It's just life will catch up to you and something that we talk about with people always is consistency, and we personally do struggle with that because it is very difficult. This podcast we film fresh every single week, which we could batch ahead of time, but we like to have topics in the moment where we've been reading something or digesting something because we're so much more passionate in the moment about what it is that we just learned, read, or we've just been thinking about.

So,

00:12:01 Jeff Sarris

And I just wanted to add one more thing that this is also us practicing. So, like this show, if we were to batch

00:12:08 Amara Andrew

That's why it's a little discordant at times!

00:12:11 Jeff Sarris

Discordant?

00:12:11 Amara Andrew

Discordant.

00:12:12 Jeff Sarris

But we're practicing this, this dialogue together and educating together because it's not something we've done. So, if we did batch a month at a time, we would basically get 12 at-bats. Now we get 52 or 50 if we miss a couple weeks, but 52 at-bats every year now to improve this and figure out how this works on mic.

00:12:35 Amara Andrew

So, the reason why we didn't record last week, so we the last episode we had was in Miami, then we went 24 hours later to LA to film with our top banana, Kevin. Then we left LA 24 hours later, we went to an old mining town just outside Chicago, cuz we live in Chicago. Super cute.

We went there for your parents' 50th wedding anniversary, wanning! Can't talk. Which was adorable.

It was the cutest little town. So, I've totally lost my train of Oh, but what we are working on, though, ties into this perfectly. Do you want to elaborate a little bit more on our project?

00:13:15 Jeff Sarris

I'll let you go on, because I'm not exactly sure what you're queuing up or how you're queuing it up.

00:13:18 Amara Andrew

Buzz, buzz!

00:13:20 Jeff Sarris

No, I know that.

00:13:21 Amara Andrew

Well, something that we're working on is a product for people. So, we Don't say the name. Hyway.

00:13:29 Jeff Sarris

Vampira.

00:13:29 Amara Andrew

Just makes me think of Twilight. "Say my name." Anyway, such a bad movie. Anyway, carry on.

00:13:36 Jeff Sarris

Debatable.

00:13:38 Amara Andrew

Bad movie, bad book, and she lived in my area in Arizona, which is weird. In Miami! But we are working on a product called Hyway.

It is a very complex product. What we started with versus what it is now. However,

00:13:54 Jeff Sarris

It's evolved.

00:13:56 Amara Andrew

Tremendously. Complex for us, easy for you.

Yes, so easy for the user, which is why it's even more complex for us because it's essentially step-by-step, no step skipped, of a variety of content creation because we fly all over the country to work with small businesses and realtors in their market and we have learned so incredibly much. Like, we already knew a decent amount and then it's just like further pushed to the envelope to the nth degree what we've actually learned.

So, there are so many different types of content that you can make, and it's very difficult and stressful to try to make it on your own. So, we're trying to make it even better for people. And something about that, which is what we're talking about this week, is familiarity.

Making the product feel so familiar to people that it doesn't feel scary. It doesn't feel like, "What is this?" Cuz for me, using like For example, for using Notion, which is I still don't even know what the hell it is. It's a note-taking app like super reductively.

00:14:58 Jeff Sarris

But people love it.

00:15:00 Amara Andrew

I can't stand it. It's so different. There are way too many options and like I love tech.

Like, I find it really fascinating and I can learn things like immediately. That is so overwhelming to me I don't even want to touch it. Like, I have 80 other things that I'll use instead of it.

So, that's something that we're working on for Hyway.

00:15:16 Jeff Sarris

Well, and it's too And just I said people love Notion because there is a there's a cult of Notion basically.

00:15:21 Amara Andrew

Which I fully admire, respect.

00:15:24 Jeff Sarris

Yeah, there's there's also a podcast that we have a friend who really likes it, and the podcast is their tagline is "Give it a year" because people aren't fluent in it instantly, but like eventually you are, and then you're part of the little cult, blah. Same thing with Notion. Notion takes a big It takes an investment, and then people really like it.

But that is the anomaly. That's not That's the That's the exception, not the rule. You want If we want to do things and not have an uphill battle with everything we do, we want it to be familiar.

So, what Hyway is, and it's myhyway.com, what Hyway is in terms of familiarity on our end, like you just said, is like we want it to feel familiar when you use it, but then on the flip side, the product that we're helping you create,

00:16:11 Amara Andrew

Time!

00:16:14 Jeff Sarris

And on the flip side, the product we're helping you create, your hyper-local, organic content, we're giving you all the tactics that are working and packaging them up so it's familiar to the people you're creating for.

00:16:29 Amara Andrew

Exactly, just to make it as easy as possible not only for you as the person using the software, but also for the people who are partaking in your content. And it's been a lot of trial and error, too, with my own personal content being like, "Okay, how does this exactly function?" Cuz our whole philosophy, too, is you can't exactly It's more helpful if you make the type of content or do something if you're trying to help with it or teach it.

So, I've been trying to do these all these different types of content.

00:17:06 Jeff Sarris

Can you say that one more time?

00:17:07 Amara Andrew

No, cuz I don't even know what I said.

00:17:09 Jeff Sarris

But it's It's like it's eating your own dog food. It's doing the exact thing that you're trying to teach people to do, and that's something that we've done forever, historically. But making the types of content that we are going to be instructing people to do and how to do it even better, because you need to have a finer grasp of what it is that you're doing.

A fluency. Oh!

00:17:34 Amara Andrew

Oh! That was a disfluency.

00:17:37 Jeff Sarris

But a fluency in what you're creating because you have the experience of doing it. So, we're trying to condense our experience and hand it off in a way that feels familiar and also helps you be familiar to others.

00:17:52 Amara Andrew

And because we are systems people through and through, so we love not only developing systems, but finding new systems, finding the best way to do something, constantly, constantly, constantly improving things. So, I don't know, that's just what something we've been working on, and it's interesting then, because we're trying to make Hyway feel so familiar, just like you immediately know how to use it, like an iPhone.

Any Apple product, you immediately know how to use it. That's why it's so successful and that's why it feels good, and that's why so many people model their websites after like Apple, and like they have the whole three thing because it's like with Starbucks, like you have your three options to choose from. Well, you're going to choose the middle one.

So anyway, so that's just something that we've been working on and I'm very excited for it and the whole evolution, instead of revolution.

00:18:41 Jeff Sarris

Evolution.

But yeah, "More until more is too much, less until less is too little." That's that's what balance is. Actually, if you look, if you're watching, look over Amara's left shoulder, you'll see a fun new thing that I love that I'm going to do a video on soon, but it's all literal balance, but I want to use it as sort of a metaphor for balance.

00:19:02 Amara Andrew

And if you're listening, it is a basically, snowboard-sized board, and it has a slack line down the middle. Yeah.

00:19:12 Jeff Sarris

So, it's So, it's called a Gibbon Board. It's a Gibbon Board, and Gibbon makes slacklines, and this is a slackline board, so it's portable.

00:19:19 Amara Andrew

So, it's literally a board with a slackline mounted on top of it, and it is very fun.

00:19:23 Jeff Sarris

Yeah. We'll make a video on it soon. But let's cue up this last 5 minutes.

We are on to the how. So, how can someone listening create and be a more fluent product? I don't want to call a person a product, but sort of as a realtor, for example, they sort of are the product.

They're selling themselves. They're not selling a house. They're selling why I'm the best person to buy or sell a house with.

Personality Driven Storytelling and Marketing Tactics

00:19:54 Amara Andrew

So, there are a few different ways you can go about this. One of the ways that we historically have used is doing personality-based content. So, what does that mean?

It's basically doing content to tell people about yourself. Granted, you do want to try to have a what's in it for them in your content whenever you can. Granted, it's a little harder when it's supposed to be about yourself.

However, make a story. Don't put you as the punchline, but make it maybe funny. And well, cuz like I always like putting myself as the punchline in stories because that's just that's my thing.

And I was going to say that, but I was like, "Well, no. Not everybody wants to be the punchline in their stories."

00:20:39 Jeff Sarris

I was just thinking though, the punchline is literally just your name. Like, just the word "Amara" and it's like, "How's that always the punchline?" Like, a literal word punchline.

00:20:47 Amara Andrew

Your stories are terrible and also, Amara. But if you can make more personality-driven content, that is a great way to have people be more familiar with you, specifically in a storytelling aspect. So, we all know stories.

Storytelling has been around forever. It's why Disney was so successful, it's why you watch movies, it's why you watch TV shows, it's why you listen to anything and everything because we all want to know more stories. Like, that's what we learn best from.

That's why mythology has existed and religions and everything. I'm not even going to go I'm not even going to touch that.

00:21:24 Jeff Sarris

We want to know what happens next. That's sort of I felt like that was the next little

00:21:27 Amara Andrew

Yeah. It's It's your It's your way to live your life and it's like, "Okay, well, now I want to know like, well, what did you learn from this?" Like, that's why there are so many moralistic stories and things like that. Anyway, that's a whole other topic for another day, for another podcast.

But having more personality-related content because then, specifically talking for realtors or small business owners, whoever, because then people already feel like they know you. They know a little thing about you. So, for example, something that I would always ask people are "Would You Rathers?" Like, "Would you rather live in a tent or live in a Subway?" The restaurant, not an actual subway.

Or, oh, whatever, an actual subway. But that was never one that I would do, but it's like, "Well, which would you rather?" Now you're sort of making a story, because then you go through the hypothetical, "Well, every day, I would probably rather live in a tent because then I can live in the woods and I love camping, and I love hiking with my family." You just introduced two or three different things that people now will know about you, and the person who you're going to be working with closely as their realtor, your client wants to know more about you before they even get to know you because you are sharing who you are, and then one of the most difficult things when you meet somebody for the first time is, "I know nothing about this person.

Do I like them or do you I hate them," essentially. Like you, that's kind of the human thing. It's like a survivalist instinct.

You run through those different things. Exactly.

00:22:52 Jeff Sarris

You trust or not.

00:22:53 Amara Andrew

So, you're getting rid of that question in their head immediately because it's like, "Oh, they love coffee. I love coffee." I always go to the coffee thing because I personally love coffee. It's like one of my favorite food groups.

So, that would be one thing that I would recommend.

00:23:09 Jeff Sarris

And I would say it's a tactic.

00:23:12 Amara Andrew

Yes. So, what's what's a tactic versus what's the other option?

00:23:16 Jeff Sarris

A strategy. You waited for a second. You're like, "Oh." So, a strategy is a collection of tactics.

Like our strategy for MAVEN, our strategy for Useful Not Famous and Hyway is the culmination of everything we're doing. Like, our strategy actually encompasses all three of those, this podcast, MAVEN, and Hyway. How we're approaching them is the strategy, but individual things that we're doing, such as personality content or Scoops, which we'll explain Scoops on a different episode, or we do out and abouts, we do all these different things.

Those are all tactics. So, the fluency in a tactic also helps. So, doing the "Would You Rather?" or "Underrated, Overrated," these are things that people see.

They're not We're not reinventing the wheel. We're taking the wheel and polishing it up a little bit to make it our own. Like, we're just We're adjusting that wheel because we want people to be fluent in the topic.

So, I wanted to say one real quick, when it's

00:24:17 Amara Andrew

Time!

Utilizing Viral Audio Trends and Formats

00:24:18 Jeff Sarris

Okay, bye. See you next week. No.

Thanks for listening to the cult. Bye. When it's something like "the 5 best coffee shops in Miami," if you've spent any time on TikTok, you probably have an idea of what that video looks like already, just me saying that, because it'll be either a still image or a little B-roll, like a little moving image, that says "5 best coffee shops in Miami." And then it goes to a different image with the name of it, a different image.

This is familiar. There's a fluency. People know what to expect, and it's storytelling, like you're saying, because it's It's a very, very loose story, but it is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

It is a list of five things, but if I want to know whether or not this person is right or prove them wrong, I need to get all the way to the end of that story, that fifth item, so then I can be like, "You're wrong," or, "Exactly. Like, I love number 4. That's where I go."

00:25:21 Amara Andrew

Exactly. That's a very good point.

00:25:24 Jeff Sarris

So yeah, so it's just the tactics, and this is what we're delivering in Hyway, is a collection of tactics that are working, that we know are working from making 4,000 videos last year, and delivering it so you can be fluent to the people that you're trying to reach, or they can be fluent of what you're making.

00:25:42 Amara Andrew

And I That was close to

00:25:43 Jeff Sarris

That was a weird sentence.

00:25:44 Amara Andrew

That was almost English. It was reminiscent, but it wasn't quite there. It was familiar enough.

00:25:51 Jeff Sarris

Did you ever see that video where it's what

00:25:55 Amara Andrew

-huh.

00:25:56 Jeff Sarris

English music sounds like to foreign English sounds like to foreign people who don't speak it. It was so weird. You got to you got to look that up.

00:26:03 Amara Andrew

But I was like, yeah, I can kind of hear what it is.

00:26:05 Jeff Sarris

-huh, but there were no words.

00:26:06 Amara Andrew

There's There's a trend on TikTok, too. Oh, real quick, it was the sounds. So, it was a song and people dancing, but it was literally no English words, just English sounds.

-huh. Well, yeah, it's like, "Hassa sassa wissa sus," or whatever. Like, it No.

You know how we all sound when we talk? Maybe you don't, but I do. There was anyway, fuck it.

Okay. So, there was that. And then right now, there's a trend on TikTok where it's a sound and it's like "Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.

Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun." And it sounds like a person speaking into that oh, what the fuck is it, the T-Pain machine.

00:26:49 Jeff Sarris

A kazoo?

00:26:50 Amara Andrew

Oh, oh, autotune.

00:26:51 Jeff Sarris

Yeah.

00:26:51 Amara Andrew

Where it a T-Pain machine? You need to patent that.

00:26:54 Jeff Sarris

So But see, that's something.

00:26:57 Amara Andrew

-huh.

00:26:58 Jeff Sarris

Autotune has been around since modern digitally produced music,

But it wasn't until T-Pain took it and made that his identity that everyone became fluent in that object and he is the fluency that they relate it to.

00:27:14 Amara Andrew

See, there you go. Another example. But there's a trend and it's just this sound, like it's just a synth, but it sounds like somebody is speaking into the machine and so people are doing voiceover things like, I don't I can't even think of an example, but it's it's like a moralistic thing where it's like, "Don't fucking do that," is like the gist of it for like whatever it is.

So, it's a strong stance on something, but it sounds like words. Anyway, that just made me think of it. Long rabbit hole.

So, before you stop listening to this episode, or before you are sending this to your friend who needs your business help, I have one more thing to recommend to you, and then you can go on your merry little way. But don't hit send just yet. Another thing you can do What?!

00:28:00 Jeff Sarris

I was just picturing I just get up and walk away. You're like, "Don't go yet!"

00:28:03 Amara Andrew

Wouldn't be the first time.

00:28:05 Jeff Sarris

No.

Real Estate Content Strategy and Consistency

00:28:06 Amara Andrew

I'm just kidding, it would be the first time. I'd be like, "What the hell?!" I'd be so caught off guard. Another thing you can do is, okay, so again, specifically talking to real estate professionals just because that's who we work with, real estate agents, go find, using hashtags, go find three people on any platform of your choosing, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, whatever.

Find using the real estate hashtags

00:28:35 Jeff Sarris

Which one? Which one? Which of those platforms?

Which would you Cuz, which would you do?

00:28:39 Amara Andrew

I mean, I'm biased. I would do TikTok, cuz that's always trendy. Instagram, to me, is, no shade, but it's so far behind, and it's such a different platform.

If you want to find in-the-moment things, like in-the-moment tactics, always go to TikTok. TikTok is a thousand years ahead of any other platforms, by far. So, use TikTok.

Go to TikTok, look for specific hashtags, so do real estate, realtor, realtors of TikTok, and maybe a local one for wherever you live, whether your city, state, whatever. Look at what people in your area are doing. Cuz a lot of times, if you see that there's a video that's quote, unquote viral, not that's the best metric.

Actually, no. Scrap that. Changing my mind in the moment.

Find videos in your area of real estate agents doing really great videos. It might not have the most views, it might not have the most engagement, but if it's something that makes you stop and be like, "Fuck, that's a really good idea," do it. Do your own version.

That's the beauty of, especially TikTok, is do the same exact thing, and it's going to work. Like, it doesn't even make sense. And like I've been on TikTok for 5+ years, and I did my own original content, but now I'm seeing you don't need to do original things.

You can do the same thing that other people are doing because you have the fluency, the familiarity of the trend, but then your own little funny bent to it, and that's why these trends succeed so well. So, yeah, fuck all the other social media. Go to TikTok.

Find I've talked my way through this. Go to TikTok, find your hashtags, remake one of the videos. Exactly.

And again, it doesn't have to be the most viewed, it doesn't have to be the most shared, but something that you're just like, "Fuck, that's funny," or, "Fuck, I love that," do it.

00:30:33 Jeff Sarris

And I want to do one insider baseball thing to someone in the real estate space who almost does all skits. And we participated in one because he needed help and little pull back the curtain, he had a skit that wasn't real estate and he would look at a scene and be like, "Okay, I want to do this scene. I want to do that scene," because it worked, and then it worked for him.

00:30:57 Amara Andrew

Yeah.

00:30:58 Jeff Sarris

And that's how this works and we all are creative in our own different ways,

00:31:02 Amara Andrew

And we need to point out, that person is targeting real estate agents.

00:31:06 Jeff Sarris

For sure.

00:31:06 Amara Andrew

So, there is a specific There's so much to think about with this.

00:31:12 Jeff Sarris

Well, it depends, yeah, what tactics you're using for what for whom, which we talked about on here a lot.

00:31:16 Amara Andrew

Exactly.

00:31:17 Jeff Sarris

But I just wanted to say like we are we're all very creative in our own ways. But we can, especially the two of us, we can get caught up in the we want to reinvent and create everything fully original because that's what's most satisfying. But we also know that this fluency matters and when things are tested and proven, there's a reason that it's working.

There's a reason that Olivia Rodrigo could instantly have a song that people not only are talking about, but a lot of people just loved. And that's what we want, and that's how we're we're actually, because this is how did I start this, that this is the biggest breakthrough in your business. This is a shift for us that we're making as we speak.

There's a little pivot in things, not dramatic, but we're looking at it differently. We're We're actually considering fluency now in a way where before we sort of spoke about it differently, but the word "fluency" has unlocked things in our minds and that's why we wanted to share it with you when it is fresh, when it means the most to us.

00:32:25 Amara Andrew

And one final note,

00:32:27 Jeff Sarris

Also

00:32:29 Amara Andrew

All right, on that note! Literally. One final note about this is when you find the video that you want to try to make, try to stick with that type of content for a while because then you're telling people what to expect on your profile, which, again, is a form of fluency.

So many people don't stick with one thing long enough and that's kind of the problem is, well, if you're kind of going everywhere, people aren't going to know what to expect on your profile, which is something that I struggle with personally because I love history, my whole background's in history, I have degrees in history, I've taught history, like I love history.

History, history, history. But now I have a new love of making really great content with people and for people and teaching them how to make their own content and feel confident in it. So, I'm trying to blend the two together and it's a weird fucking profile, I'm not going to lie, cuz it's like, "Oh, well, you have all these history dorks and then you also have these social media nerds," and it's like, "Okay, wait.

What is going on here?" So, trying to parse that down and figure out what goes where is something, too, that we've been working on, so and I am a self-proclaimed history dork and social media nerd, so that's why I can call my people what I want to call them. So, it's just something that it's just interesting. So, just trying to make your profile as familiar as possible, and that's something that we've been talking about with our friend, Tori, is figuring things out.

So, anyway, that's all I got for this episode.

00:33:59 Jeff Sarris

The end.

Bye.

00:34:01 Amara Andrew

Final note.