[02:46] So, on the show with me today, we have Jimmy Rex, Jimmy for welcome to the show. Thank you for making some time to be here.

• Yeah, of course. Good to be here, my man.

[02:56] So for the folks who aren’t yet familiar with who you are and what you’ve accomplished, which in the real estate space has been pretty phenomenal. Let’s start off with that. Who are you? And what do you do?

• Yes, I kind of do a lot of different things. But my main thing is real estate because I’ve been a real estate agent for the last 15 years, one of the top agents in my state here in Utah. And over the years, I’ve developed a couple of different things that go along with that, a coaching program. I have a couple books done now. I had a book, a real estate book, it was called The Next Wave of Influence in Real Estate. It was an Amazon bestseller and sold over 7000 copies in its first year. And then this last year, I just came out a couple months ago with a book called You End Up where You’re Heading: to Hidden Dangers of Living a Safe Life. But I’m just an adventure and entrepreneur. I love business, web investing, love real estate. And I have a podcast called The Jimmy Rex Show that—where I interview top entrepreneurs and just influencers different people that are changing the world in different ways all over the place. So I’m a little—do a little bit of everything.

[03:58] Very nice. So you were humble. I want and I want people to understand because they might be thinking, why is Trent having a realtor on his e-commerce show? So first off, what Jimmy did mention was last year, he sold 375 houses, which is a crap ton of houses. And as you’ll hear in our episode, digital marketing, and social media plays a huge role in getting those houses sold. So I thought there would be some really great lessons to share because rather than just interview just eCommerce folks all the time, I like to bring in different perspectives because that’s where some of the greatest learning opportunities can come from. So Jimmy, you started in real estate in what year?

• 2005.

[04:42] And when did digital become such—when did you start using digital? And if it wasn’t around the same time, When did it become the kind of the main thrust of your marketing?

• Yeah, so I’ve actually was pretty far into my business. My first five years I was just pounding phones. That’s how I I got all my business. And then I kind of built up a really good client base, I did a lot of client events, and parties, and charity work, and kind of set up that base of my business as well. But in 2000, about 2015 I’m good friends with a guy by the name of Garrett Gee, one of my close buddies, and he has an Instagram page called The Bucket List Family. And these guys went over millions of views and I was talking with him a lot. And he was teaching me how he was making money through using social media. And it just blew my mind how much money he was making, he was making seven figures, doing traveling the world with his family because of Instagram. 

And then I started, I became friends with a girl by the name of Charly Jordan and she’s an Instagram model as well. And she was dating in my—one of my close buddies, Johnny at the time, and they were living in my house with me. And she, I started talking to her a lot. And that kind of she was making from days upwards of 30 or $40,000, for one day to do an Instagram Live or making $8,000 for a post she was making, and my mind was blown. And I realized that I was missing out on this economy, this entire economy, which was social media marketing. 

And so I really spent a lot of time like Garrett and I, one of the things that he would do with his family is they would travel all over the world. And they would—this Bucket List Family been over 95 countries, they spend a week in each place, but he knows I’m a huge shark lover. I love sharks. I think the most fascinating creature on earth and misunderstood, but, and so he was going to dive in the middle of Atlantic ocean with Tiger sharks and so I wanted to go with him. And so we went together a little group of us. And he was one of the founders of a company that was called, the app was called Scan. And him and his two buddies that founded it got bought out by Snapchat for over 50 million bucks. And so I mean, these guys, he was on the boat with his partner, and I spent four days in the middle of the ocean. We would go between dives with the sharks, just racking these guys’ brains about e-commerce and how they use all these different things and how they set all this up and then having those conversations with Charly all the time. 

And so I decided to put real focus on social media marketing for my business. So starting 2016, 17, 18, 19, I really put a lot of emphasis on my social media, my Instagram, my podcast, my Facebook, all these different things. And now, like you said, last year, I think my team did like 375 homes, and over 40% of those leads came through social media, through marketing through my Instagram, mostly and Facebook. And so yeah, really changed my whole business. Now, I get so much I can put one good tweet out or one good couple stories on my Instagram. And if I do that the right way, I’ll get 15 or 15 leads people that want to buy homes investment properties, as opposed to that would have taken me two, three weeks of calling people to get 20 leads a day.

[07:51]That’s awesome. So when you started did you simultaneously try and get traction on three different channels, podcasts, Facebook and Instagram? Or did you focus exclusively on one channel to begin with?

• Yeah, when I started out, I was kind of trying to do everything right. I was trying to try to see which ones would be the best for me. Originally got the most traction on Facebook, because I already had a really good following on Facebook. But then I realized Instagram was where the money was at where the easiest way to reach people was. And so that was after really understanding Instagram from Charly, I decided to go after that hard. And so I ended up going in one year from like, 4,000 to 25,000 followers. And then I, about two years ago, I started working with a guy named Dan Fleyshman. A lot of you may be familiar with who he is, but he—this dude is like a social media genius and he started helping me a lot too and taught me how to do some more things. 

So I built that up quite a bit more but now I would say it’s all three of those channels work really well for me the ones that didn’t work, I tried other ones that you know, LinkedIn, I didn’t make it. I still have no idea what I’m doing on LinkedIn, Twitter, I don’t get any leads from but my Instagram specifically in my podcast brings me in several leads a week enough to be a multiple seven figure earner selling real estate.

[09:09]How many downloads of your podcast to get a month?

• It’s over 20,000 per episode. And so I mean, it does really well. I don’t know per month, how many episodes we put off and who they are, like, I have certain episodes that have been over 100,000 I have other ones that you know don’t do as well, but we’ve been able to build it up and get some really cool guests I mean recently had on Grant Cardone and Prince EA and some of these guys that are some of the biggest movers in the entire internet. Prince EA has over 2 billion views on our videos and Grant Cardone everyone knows who that guy is, and just all these different, like, we had the governor race in Utah that just ended and I had three of the four candidates that ran for governor on the podcast, trying to push their platform because mine’s the one that has the people’s voice here in my community. 

And so, I’ve been able to thankfully build that up and just get amazing guests after amazing guests and it’s really cool people that have been able to help me build my own platform. And now it’s kind of fun to have a voice, you’re able to give out messages and every single podcast that I do in some way or another I’m able to pitch real estate without it putting it in people’s faces. I’m providing value through the podcast and the information, but I’m reminding them every day that I’m a real estate agent if they want to buy or sell a house. 

[10:22] How did you get Grant Cardone to be on the show? Do you have—do you use any of the high profile guests as a matter of fact, do you use an agency to solicit them? Do you email them? What does that process look like?

• Yes and No, I actually have done them all myself. I’ve start reaching out to people, like again, I’ve had some really big guests on my show. I mean, I’ve had Robin Sharma I’ve had, I mean, there’s literally if you go to the list there’s probably I think there’s over 150 verified, Instagram verified guests that have been on my show to give you an idea what—there’s people that have a name but the more I was able to get those guests the more and more, more guests wanted to come on my show. So Grant, I’d had Robin Sharma on and I’d had Dave Meltzer, Bradley’s some of these bigger influencer guys and so I just—when I reached out to his team, and I showed them my numbers, I was able to show them who I’ve had on. He wanted to come on the show, which was really cool. 

And so I kind of, as a trickle effect, I started out when I first started the podcast, I took all the most influential friends I have I got buddies that have, you know, I had a buddy that had been the national Player of the Year in called basketball Jimmer Fredette, I had Kyle Van Noy two time Super Bowl champion with the Patriots was good friend of mine, Tim Ballard, the founder of Operation Underground Railroad. Sean Reyes is the Attorney General of Utah, all these different people, Garrett and Charly, like all these influencers, and I put them all at the beginning. And because of that, because I had 15-20 good guests in a row. As I reached out to more guests, I was able to use them as the example ad and so it really grew very fast. So it was really cool. 

My original goal was to eventually get over 10,000 listeners per episode. And I hit that on Garrett episode with The Bucket List Family because he shared it on his Instagram, and we were 100,000 on his episode on like, Episode 13, which was kind of amazing. But yeah, it’s getting in with a couple of those people. And then honestly, putting a lot of work into I just reach out to a lot of people and let them know, like, “Hey, I want to do this,” like I had Jordan Harbinger, Jordan Harbinger, recently, on the podcast, he gets over 6 million downloads every month on his podcast, I think it’s, he’s got to be one, two, or three biggest ones in the entire podcasting community. And I talked to him a little bit about it. And same thing, he just reaches out to a lot of people, he just—he provides a lot of value. And because of that people want to come on his show.

[12:34] Did you start off—so for anyone that’s listening, I want to have them take away an actionable strategy for guests recruitment. So here’s what comes to mind for me when I hear what you’re explaining. So, okay, so I got to start my show, I’m going to go with my first circle of influence people that I know who are credible. And then maybe, maybe I’m going to build this dream 100 List of my ultimate guests, and I’m going to stack them from those with the largest following at the top of the list and those with the smaller following to the bottom, and I’m literally going to treat it like a ladder and just try and work my way up until I get it. Would that be a reasonably good strategy to follow?

• Yeah, I mean, that’s a good, like, I had that list. I had 25 people that was like my dream list and I’ve interviewed two of them. I had Grant Cardone, and I had Dean Graziosi, who have both been on my show are two huge guys in the internet space, real estate space and so I had both on my show. But yeah, and it’s really setting up for personal relationships, and providing value for them. So for example, I wanted to get Mitt Romney on the show. He’s a big deal in Utah. He’s our senator, he ran for president and all that. 

And so I called his team and I said, “Hey, what would it take to get Mitt Romney on the show?” They’re like, “Well, he’s not really doing podcasts for just anybody.” I said, “I know, what would it take to get him on the show?” And they said, “Well, we need 4000 signatures to get him on the ballot.” Or they needed 25,000. “Like if you could get us like 4000 signatures to get on the ballot that we’d happily do it.” Well, I had helped a kid taught him how to throw parties and events and things back in the day. And he was throwing a huge party here in Utah, and I said, “Hey, you know how you’ve always said if I ever need a favor to call you” He goes, “Yeah, anything. What do you need?” I said, “I need—I think I needed like, no, maybe it was like 800 signatures.” I don’t remember. It was a lot. It was like there’s no way I was gonna get these other ones. That’s like “Dude, at your next party, what do you have in your next party? set up a booth I just need to get a signatures for people get Mitt Romney on the ballot.” 

So I end up getting this dude, like, don’t get me wrong, yeah, I think I need to get 800 and get my 1,200 signatures to help get them on the ballot by providing value. Of course, he took 30 minutes out of his day to sit down with me and do the podcast. So like, it’s getting creative, like everybody needs something, figure out what that is and provide it and they will like do the show for you, right? Like people, these celebrities are these people that have these big things. They have something they’re trying to push, they have something they’re trying to do. And so I just figured out a way to provide value for that. 

Now my podcast itself is the value, right? Like, it’s big enough now that it’s worth it for people to come on because they can just share their message or whatever. But like Prince EA, for example, I mean, that guy is one of the biggest influencers in the world, 2 billion views on his Facebook videos. And I did a video with him, I hired him to help me do a video that me and him did together. I want to do that anyway. So because obviously, we started that relationship, he was happy to come on the podcast. And you do that with a few big guests. Now, if I email any random person, I say, “Hey, here’s who I’ve had on my podcast.” And they see the numbers of my podcast, like they’re dying to come on, and they’re very anxious actually, to come be a part of it.

[15:37] When you do an interview with a guest, do you do a one call like, do you do a pre-interview like you and I did? And then you do an interview later? Or do you find that these folks that they’re so pressed for time that you’re lucky to even get one call and an hour out of them?

• Yeah, with these guys, you’re usually not going to have enough time to get that pre-call or anything like that. So what I do is I will—once I get it set up, I’ll send them an email and say, “Hey, if there’s anything particularly you can send me that will help me study for the interview. That would be great.” But I actually do the studying myself. So I’ll spend three-four hours usually per guest studying them to figure out what’s going on with them. So, for example, I had a—who did I have on recently that was so excited about it? That they were like “Wow, man, you’ve really done your research and they were super impressive.” It was a—I had Glenn Sanford, he’s the founder of EXP realty is the fastest growing real estate company in the world, actually. I had Tarek El Moussa on, who’s the star reality show “Flip or Flop.” 

And I studied them for three, four hours each before the interview. And so by the time I get on the phone, I know so much about those guys. And they’re just like, they’re like, they actually say it almost every time on the podcast like, “Wow, you really prepared for this,” or afterwards, they’ll thank me for being prepared for it. Because the last thing they want to do is get on the phone and I don’t know what I’m talking about, or I don’t have much to say or whatever. I just study them. Whatever, if they’ve been on other podcasts, or if they have books, I’ll read it, like, Robin Sharma, when I got the interview with him. I mean, 5 am Club, that was one of my top 10 favorite books already. I’d already read it, but I, like, revisited it and make sure that when we got a podcast interview, we could really dive into those details.

[17:19] Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. All right. Now I want to transition actually, in a moment, we’re going to transition our conversation to your use of Instagram, because you mentioned that that’s where the money is, it’s been highly effective for you. Before we do that, I do want to just bring our final sponsor message, so stay with us for that and we’ll be right back. Thought came to mind as I was listening to my own ad there. Jimmy, Do you run—do you take sponsors for your show? Do you run ads in your show?

• I do an ad, I have two sponsors, one that I do an ad, like, right when it starts, and then one at the very end, that set up during the episode I don’t—I would—I just to be honest, I’ve kind of been lazy about getting ads and stuff. I try not to overdo it. But at the same time, I think it’s a totally normal thing for podcasts, I just—I make enough selling real estate, I’ve never tried to monetize it more than enough to pay for itself and then a little bit extra. I wanted to just more, so I put the effort into getting the guests as opposed to getting a sponsor. 

[18:52] Fair enough. For the sponsors, if you get enough downloads, you don’t have to look for the sponsors, they can find you. All the sponsors I’ve had in my show, I’ve never once solicited them every single time they’ve come to me, I just send them to my sponsor page and it says pick silver, pick gold, whatever, and send me the money. And that’s what they do.

• Yes. They also reach out to me, same thing.

[19:11] Okay. So now let’s talk about Instagram. Because I suck at Instagram, I put no effort into it at all. I literally do nothing with Instagram. And every time I interview somebody who’s having success with Instagram, I grit my teeth because I think, why am I not doing more with Instagram? Maybe I need to make it a priority and so forth. So in your case, there was a time when you had no followers and didn’t know what you were doing. What—you mentioned, I think that you learned some from Dan Fleyshman? Is that right? Like how did you get started? And now how do you manage your Instagram to get an ROI on the time that you would put into it?

• Yeah, no, I mean it is one of those questions you got to ask yourself because it is a lot of work, like, I’ll start with that, right? Like, you wouldn’t be mad at yourself that you’re not good at swimming if you go swimming very few times or something or what you know pick your whatever you think you might be good at. Instagram it is, like, it does require a lot of effort to get it built up. I’m at the point now where I actually don’t spend much time on it. I did the entire month of September, I went off social media, I didn’t spend any time on my Instagram, it was actually really nice. I posted a few things through my team. But I built it up so that I had a following. I wanted to have a platform so I could make a difference or do things I wanted to do. And like today, we just had the election last night, I know, I’m freaking out. And so I just put up a picture of myself and I said, “This is the winner for me last night, me” because I get to decide how I’m going to live my life and just—I just basically said, “Doesn’t matter who the President is, I’m going to go live my life the way I want.” And it’s a message I had a lot of people over 25 people have reached out to me from that today and be like, “Man, need to hear that or whatever.” And so I did want to build that platform up. 

So I had a voice and can make a difference. And also so I could make money through it, selling real estate. But it really is just the consistency. Like you have to understand how Instagram works. Like you have to study from somebody. That’s what I spent those four days racking the brains of Garrett and his partner from Snapchat, and then also with Charly, I had a lot of time I got to spend and talk with her. And so I really understood how to do that and why. But, and then it’s just the consistency of doing it like it’s putting out great thing after great thing, I travel a lot, so that helped me kind of build a following up. Because I was traveling all over the world, I went to 60 countries in a three and a half year span of it. So I had a lot of cool photos to post. Doing the podcast was very helpful because I was able to post a lot of cool content from these cool guests that I was meeting with and interviewing. And so but it is that constant you’re putting out there. 

But one thing that—one of the best advices I ever got is, what are five things that make you interesting? And focus on those five things like, what are five things that people will follow you for? So for me, I started picking the five things like real estate, travel, my podcast, or just people that I’m hanging out with, right? And I started going through all these different things that the undercover work that I do and a server posting these five things. And people got consistency for me they’re like okay, this is positive messages. They like following me. This dude’s bring a lot of good material out there. And so they want to follow and they want to share your stuff. But then you do have to learn how to like, partner with other people. 

So when I got the interview with Garrett, for example, he put it on his Instagram story is like one of the bubbles that stays on your Instagram page for like a month. And I went from 4,000 to like 11,000 users. And then Charly posted it on hers for a couple months and I went from 11,000 to 17,000. And then I started partnering with all these other people. I’d post my stuff and there’s like Sean Whalen and everyone or some of these guys I’m close friends with that had good followings. I got all of them to post me well. And that was part of what was cool about the podcast is it gives you a reason to go spend time with these people and have material that you can then post. And so I was just combining all that like the podcast one of the biggest things about the podcast is it gave me a platform to have these conversations, to meet these cool people, to be able to have cool content to share on my Instagram. And so it kind of helped—they kind of built each other together.

[23:14] So when you say the bubbles along the top—so I’m looking at your Instagram profile right now, you handsome devil, you, and you’ve got under your pictures there’s a bubble for YouTube, a bubble for podcast, a bubble for blog, author. Are these the bubbles that you’re talking about where they would stick you?

• Yep, so those are the bubbles, and I got each of them to post like one of those bubbles was, like, interview on Jimmy Rex show. And so for a month or two, they had it up there. So anybody that went to their—I mean, they have millions of followers and so you have a couple thousand when somebody does that, but like, I just would ask them like, “Hey, would you mind keeping this up there share it for a while” or “Hey, do you mind sharing it on your story a few times,” but it’s a consistency and it’s fine. There’s not like any one thing that’s gonna boost your thing. I mean, I’m 240 episodes in a podcast, literally, half of those people are household names. And I’ve been posting all their material, all their things, and it’s still, like, just slowly builds, but you gain a hundred followers here, a thousand here, like I went on the Bradley show. And I don’t know if you’ve seen his podcast dropping bombs at the top 10 business podcast, but I mean, I think I gained three or four thousand followers from that just because he has such a big following. And so getting on other podcasts, having people on your podcast, these are the ways you kind of get that thing going.

[24:27]Yeah, no kidding. Did you ever have to pay for any of the bubbles? Have you ever done any paid shoutouts with other instagramers?

• Yeah, I did one paid programming thing with Dan Fleyshman. It was a shoutout on Dan Bilzerian page who has 26 million followers, but to be honest, like, I don’t recommend it, like it did give me a few followers for a little bit but they all dropped off anyway. They weren’t the kind of followers that I was trying to attract. So for me, I get the one time and it is funny because it shot me upward, like a hundred thousand followers. And then I dropped right back down to where I was. So it was like, kind of point to do it. That’s why I don’t recommend doing that.

[25:08] So in looking at your recent posts, they’re all photos, they don’t have captions that are on them. If I click into what looks like the houseboating photo, do you write much? Let’s see “Hey sad day.” So there’s little comments, but it doesn’t really—you’re not overtly trying to sell stuff. You’re basically just giving people a window into your day to day experiences, is that enough?.

• Yeah, big problem people have with trying to build their pages, they try to sell people all the time. And mine is more I’m trying to track people, instead of sell them. I want to track you to my page, I do use my stories to sell sometimes like to sell real estate or try to get leads and things like that. But my page is much more like, this is what I’m about. I’m a sports guy, I’m a family guy, I have a lot of fun, I travel, I have a life that’s interesting, I do real estate, I work out like these are the things that I want. I’m trying to attract a specific type of person. And so all I post about is the stuff that again, that’s just me, and then I, as you attract the right people to you, you can then sell them otherwise. But I don’t know, for me, I never want to do this to try to just sell, sell, sell. For me it was about, I want to build a platform big enough to have a voice to make a difference. And so I’ve tried to keep it authentic. You know who I am. 

[26:26] Do you plan your content? And first of all, also is your profile, personal profile or business profile? Because I’m looking at mine unused as it is. There’s no bubbles on the top of mine. 

• You have to add those. 

[26:40] Okay. 

• Yeah, I think I don’t even have my personal business, I think his business? How do you even know?

[26:48] How do you plan your content? or is literally you’re just out there with your phone in your pocket, you’re like, “Oh, this would be a cool photo, and you pull your phone out and take a picture and you upload it.”

• So when I was building my platform, it was very planned out, I posted once a day between 10am and 4pm. I always made sure I had something to post every day. And every fifth photo usually was that different kind of category that I was trying to post about. I actually went on a lot of vacation to get pictures and photos. I mean, obviously I want to go anyway. But I was like I needed content. Every time I did a cool podcast I made sure I got content when I was doing cool stuff with my friends, I made sure to get content. So the answer to that is, yes. I don’t do that anymore. Now if you notice, I post a lot less regularly than when I was building it up. And again, if I get super motivated to build it again, I know how to do that. And you do have to post more regularly. But currently, I’m not trying to grow it. I’m just trying to provide value for my followers at this point. And so again, I’m at like 60,000 followers, which is fine like for, I got verified, which is one thing I wanted to do to help just to have a platform to be able to talk about stuff that matters to me. So now I’m not so determined to post something as it is like I’ll post every four or five days. It feels like something I want to talk about a post.

[28:03] And how would Instagram TV versus Instagram posts when you’re—when you were in the growth phase. Where you—because I see you only have just a just a couple of posts for Instagram TV, so it doesn’t look like you release it that much.

• Not a lot, like, I put a video out there today about the election that I think went over 17,000 views on my Instagram TV. And it’s just if you want to do something longer, yeah, I mean, I could use it more. I again, I don’t know I don’t think people go to Instagram for long form video as much as they go to YouTube. So I focus on YouTube for that stuff.

[28:39] And this fellow then-

• The platforms are all very different. I think that people misconstrue, like, Facebook, you should post very different than Instagram. Instagram very different than Twitter and very different than YouTube, like, they all have their purpose. Like my YouTube page is completely different looking than my Instagram, my Instagram is more who I am, I’m trying to attract people to my authentic self. My YouTube is more a teaching page, I’m doing a lot of videos about like how to do real estate, how to make your life and all these different kinds of things like that, but I don’t share everything across all platforms. 

[29:09] Alright, so before we finish up, that was a great segue back to real estate. I want to ask you, because I’m—there’s probably a couple of realtors that listen to my show or people that listen to my show who are maybe married to a realtor or they have a friend who’s a realtor. What are some of the biggest mistakes that you see real estate agents making with respect to their use of social media?

• Yeah, realtors are horrible at social media. That’s why I don’t have to be that good stand out. Like I get asked to speak like a Keller Williams family reunion last year. That’s the biggest training event in the country, 30,000 agents, so they have me speak about Instagram, and how I use social media and it’s so funny because like it’s stuff it’s so basic in the regular world that realtors are so bad at it. It’s because they can’t get out their own way. So the biggest mistake they make, they trying to sell all the time like so here’s the one question you have to ask yourself before you post something, because remember, Instagram is basically a room full of all your friends. 

So the question I asked myself is, if I was walking into a room of my friends, is this something I would share with them. And if it’s not, then don’t post it. So like, if you’re going to post something cool about your trip, that’s something you talk about in a room of your friends. If you talk about your new listing, you would never walk into a room of eight or nine of your random friends that, you guys, I just, listen, this new house over on Sunshine street, it’s $375,000, it’s 2,600 square feet, they’d be like, the hell’s wrong with you? Get out of the room. And so think of your social media the same way, like if you wouldn’t walk into a room of your friends and share that don’t share on your social media. It’s okay to every now and then toggle stuff on your stories. But like nobody wants—they get you’re trying to attract people to your page. 

So if you’re always turning people off, because you’re posting about something that doesn’t affect them, like if you have followers that are living in one part of the community, and you’re posting photos from I don’t know, just like houses from all over the place, like, nobody cares about that. So I always ask myself, like, will this make people more attracted to wanting to meet with me or talk to me, or am I pushing them away by doing this, and so that would be the first thing that I would say. And then the second thing that I would say is they’re just not very consistent, like, I’ll take crummy photos, or they don’t put up often enough, you know, like, I put a lot of attention into my post, or what I’m putting together, like, I put a video on my Instagram to the day that I paid $3,500. And it took me a full day to film, like, to make and but I wanted to make a really impactful video which and so what makes a difference, like, I really take it serious. I think that’s one mistake people make is they want to be big in social media, but they don’t take it serious. They don’t spend the time to take a better photo or to put the right thing together. But yet, they don’t understand why nobody’s attracted to their page. So I think it’s just taking it serious, being consistent. And just that rule of what I share this in a room of my friend.

[31:48] Yeah, I pretty much broke all those rules. I’m not consistent, and I haven’t put any dedicated effort into it whatsoever. And I think I need to probably change how I do things.

• Yeah, and not surprisingly, you haven’t had the tracking that you work, right? 

[31:59] Yeah, it’s just never been these micro content channels. It doesn’t come naturally to me to share my life on social media outside of and I don’t even have Facebook on my phone anymore after watching The Social Dilemma, but I would share with my family. But it doesn’t—I’m more of a long form content kind of guy, the podcasts, some videos on YouTube, but just the little micro pieces, it never occurs to me at the moment that I should be sharing that with my audience. And maybe I should’ve, maybe I shouldn’t. So if…

• It’s not for everybody. If it doesn’t come naturally, like it does come naturally for me, I enjoy doing it. And so I do it, if it didn’t, I wouldn’t do it either, like, LinkedIn is one that doesn’t come naturally to me, it just feels so businesslike to me that I don’t enjoy it. So I don’t really put much effort towards it. So like, I would say, if it doesn’t come naturally, you don’t want it, there’s a million other ways to make money and get leads. So I wouldn’t worry about it if it’s not something you really enjoy doing. If you don’t enjoy doing it, don’t do it because you won’t stay consistent if you go.

[33:06] It’s not that it’s painful for me, it just I haven’t bothered to work it into my weekly routine for folks who’ve been listening to my show or know me and follow me they know that I’m a super process oriented guy, I don’t do anything just like off the cuff. So if I don’t haven’t developed a process for it, and scheduled it into my routine, it simply doesn’t happen. And so maybe, maybe this is something that I need to set in my routine.

• Pick five things you’re passionate about, pick up a system where you post once a day for 60 days, those five different categories, like switching every day. 

[33:40] Yeah. 

• And you’ll actually get—it’s really fun. Because you see, it’s pretty effective. Like I get 15-20 messages a day from people that really, I mean, whether it’s it doesn’t have a giant impact. I’m not naive, but like, they tell me, “Man, thank you, I need to hear that today.” Like, “Oh, that’s a cool message, or Hey, thanks for sharing, or they’ll share your stuff,” or like, “Man, everyone needs to hear this,” you start to get a little bit of that feedback. Like, this is cool. I’m making the world a little bit better place, I’m making Instagram a little better place or Twitter or whatever it might be. And so I just—I tell people to try for 60 days, like, really commit for 60 days. If you start getting traction, you enjoy it and you keep doing if not, at least you know it’s not your thing.

[34:15] So that actually begs another question that I want to ask before we finish up is so I know I have a Facebook group with a few thousand people in it. 3,000 something like that. And so there’s lots of Facebook bells constantly going off and I feel bad. Like it’s an extra burden on my time because I got to pay attention to it. And I feel bad if I don’t reply to people. So as you’re following on Instagram grows, I mean, you’re getting all these comments and so forth. That’s yet another thing that you’ve got to manage and devote time or do not worry about replying to all the comments? How do you keep on top of it?

• Comments, it depends on what they comment. I try to at least like it to acknowledge the person, like, if you’re not going to comment back, you’re not really setting up any kind of relationship there. So it is important actually to respond to people. If people send me a direct message, and it’s like a real message, I always respond, I won’t open it and tell them, I won’t respond to it, because I appreciate that they reached out. Comments if some comments I’ll respond, to other ones I won’t. But I think it’s important you have to spend the time like it’s a real thing. Like that’s why I say like, if it doesn’t, if you don’t enjoy it, don’t do it. Because it takes effort, like, you’re looking at 20 minutes, 30 minutes a day on social media, of building it, but doing it intentionally to actually get some traction. So, you know, a lot of people were like, I don’t know, don’t like being on social media more than I have to then I would say stay off like, that month I went off in September was actually really nice. Like I just stayed off for a full month. And here’s the funny part is like nobody missed me. It’s not like I’m that important, like they have a million other people to follow. But at the end of the day, if it’s benefiting your life, if you enjoy doing it if you feel like you’re getting traction with people then do it. If not, I wouldn’t worry about it. Because it is work. 

[35:56] Indeed it is. Alright Jimmy, it has been a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you for making some time to come and share your wisdom with the Bright Ideas audience. If there’s anyone here who wants to get in touch with you, what is the one easiest way for them to reach out to you?

• Instagram, Mr. Jimmy Rex, that’s the one that I respond to the best so reach out to me on Instagram, Mr. Jimmy Rex, leave me a message and happy to help anything I can answer for you or do anything send me a real message, like I said I respond to you. So that’s the best way to follow me.