One Million Followers Later: Scott Betley’s Social Media Triumph

Summary

Scott Betley from NFM Lending shares his success in building a social media following and generating leads. He discusses the importance of staying on top of social media trends and using tools like green screen videos. Scott also talks about the opportunities in the mortgage business and the programs available for first-time home buyers. He emphasizes the need to provide value and educate consumers through social media content. Scott shares his experience with homesteading and spending quality time with his family. In this conversation, Scott Wayne Betley discusses the impact of having children on his career and the importance of valuing time with family. He also shares mortgage information and market trends, highlighting the potential impact of interest rates on the housing market. The challenges faced by home sellers and the foreclosure and default rates are also discussed. Scott provides his contact information for those interested in connecting with him online or on social media.

Takeaways

- Building a strong social media presence can generate leads and opportunities in the - mortgage business.

- Staying on top of social media trends and using tools like green screen videos can help create engaging content.

- There are opportunities for first-time home buyers and move-up buyers in the current market.

- Providing value and educating consumers through social media content is key to building a successful brand.

- Balancing work and family time is important for personal and professional growth. 

- Having children can ignite a strong drive to succeed in one's career.

- Time with family is valuable and should be prioritized.

- Interest rates play a significant role in the housing market, and potential buyers should consider the impact of fluctuating rates.

- Home sellers may face challenges in a competitive market, and concessions are becoming more common.

- Foreclosure and default rates are not currently a major concern in the housing market.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Scott's Social Media Success
01:13 Building Structure and Strategy for Social Media
02:43 Staying on Top of Social Media Trends
05:03 Using Green Screen Videos and Trends
06:12 Opportunities in the Mortgage Business
08:00 Qualifications and Programs in the Mortgage Market
09:49 NFM Flex Program and Nationwide Coverage
11:37 Personal Experience with Buying and Selling Homes
15:03 First-Time Home Buyers and Move-Up Buyers
16:01 Investment Properties and Financing Options
17:26 Impact of Remote Work on Real Estate Market
19:03 Working with Agents Cross-Country
20:34 Managing High Volume of Leads and Systems
22:27 Partnerships with Agents and Providing Value
25:42 Importance of Following Successful Creators
29:25 Learning from Trial and Error and Personal Experience
31:12 Posting Frequency and Quality of Content
34:20 Providing Value and Educating Consumers
37:30 Transition to Homesteading and Family Time
39:31 Life with Kids and Career Changes
42:31 Valuing Time with Family
43:13 Mortgage Information and Market Trends
44:01 Impact of Interest Rates on the Housing Market
45:09 Challenges for Home Sellers
46:41 Foreclosure and Default Rates
47:38 Contact Information

Josh Tessier
Moveiconic.com
Everyday Icons
10% of All of our Net Commissions generated are donated back to Local Charities.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Scott's Social Media Success
• 1:13 Building Structure and Strategy for Social Media
• 2:48 Staying on Top of Social Media Trends
• 5:03 Using Green Screen Videos and Trends
• 6:12 Opportunities in the Mortgage Business
• 8:00 Qualifications and Programs in the Mortgage Market
• 9:49 NFM Flex Program and Nationwide Coverage
• 11:37 Personal Experience with Buying and Selling Homes
• 15:03 First-Time Home Buyers and Move-Up Buyers
• 16:01 Investment Properties and Financing Options
• 17:26 Impact of Remote Work on Real Estate Market
• 19:03 Working with Agents Cross-Country
• 20:34 Managing High Volume of Leads and Systems
• 22:27 Partnerships with Agents and Providing Value
• 25:42 Importance of Following Successful Creators
• 29:25 Learning from Trial and Error and Personal Experience
• 31:12 Posting Frequency and Quality of Content
• 34:20 Providing Value and Educating Consumers
• 37:30 Transition to Homesteading and Family Time
• 39:31 Life with Kids and Career Changes
• 42:31 Valuing Time with Family
• 43:13 Mortgage Information and Market Trends
• 44:01 Impact of Interest Rates on the Housing Market
• 45:09 Challenges for Home Sellers
• 46:41 Foreclosure and Default Rates

Transcript

Josh Tessier (00:00.934)

All right, welcome back to Everyday Icons everyone. And this morning we have Scott Bentley from NFM Lending. And if you don't know Scott, Scott has generated over a million followers on social media since COVID has started. Over 30,000 leads from that. So Scott, welcome and how's everything going?

Scott Wayne Betley (00:19.417)

Thank you for having me. Yeah, going great. Excited for 2024. Just trying to get through the holiday rush, you know.

Josh Tessier (00:26.13)

Yeah, yeah. So let's jump right in. So you started doing social media right at the beginning of COVID right around there?

Scott Wayne Betley (00:33.953)

Yeah, it was in 2019, December. So I'm a big follower of Gary Vantuchuk, and he was raving about the organic reach on TikTok. And at the time, I got on, started just testing the waters, putting some content out, and it was like my 26th video that got 400,000 views overnight. I got almost 10,000 followers. I had gotten hundreds of inquiries from the one post, and I was like, oh my gosh, this is legitimate.

So after that early 2020, I started to build some structure and systems and just strategy behind the scenes On how to really go at this at scale and be consistent and stay on top of it, you know

Josh Tessier (01:13.958)

Okay. All right. Cool. So right now I feel like we touched on this before. How much time are you putting into your content each week? Is it, Hey, I throw 15 minutes into it and I'm good. Or is it, Hey, I spend a week's worth of time knocking this out.

Scott Wayne Betley (01:28.801)

You know, I sometimes think it's like a second job for me because I spend probably 30 to 40 hours a week on it But I also love it as well And there's a lot of different legs to it as far as what I'm doing from it Like for instance, I have my influencer team with NFM We're called the creator collective. We actually just rebranded a month ago

And we're doing a lot of coaching behind the scenes and workshops and masterminds. You know, we have private WhatsApp threads where I'm pumping a lot of trends into the teams, you know, as far as what's happening on the culture side of Tik Tok and staying on the pulse of that. Cause that's, it's definitely a big component to socials and tapping into the virality of what is performing well right now, you know, so there's a lot of legs to it and it's not necessarily 30, 30 to 40 hours just on creating content.

Josh Tessier (02:04.526)

Okay.

Josh Tessier (02:14.253)

Okay.

Scott Wayne Betley (02:20.153)

I'm also consuming content, watching other creators, trying to stay on top of new styles and new video content that's emerging, whether it's a new angle or an effect or just a new style in general. It's important to stay on top of that because the evolution of socials and what we've seen with TikTok and what was on there two years ago compared to what we're seeing now is completely different.

Josh Tessier (02:43.37)

Okay, what do you think are like the big things that are changing constantly that people should keep an eye on like you said, like the The trends in the sounds are people using hashtags. Is that still does it do a whole lot? I keep hearing mix things on that. What's your take?

Scott Wayne Betley (02:56.449)

Yeah, hashtags, I don't use a lot of hashtags outside of for Instagram and for YouTube. So YouTube has tags, you know, for shorts where you can add tags into it about your niche and just various things. That's the only platform that I've found it has been helpful with the tags. And I've noticed a difference in regards to like when I don't have the tags and when I do and what the performance of that video looks like. But for Instagram,

Excuse me, I have this cold that is just lingering. But for Instagram, I just use the that mortgage guy hashtag. That way, when you click that, it pulls up in a thread to all of my videos that I've ever posted. And I've kind of stayed consistent with that over the last few years, just to try to have everything in one place where if somebody clicks that hashtag, I'm there. But that's really the extent of the hashtags, I would say. And then as far as the styles are concerned, you have the trends that are

Josh Tessier (03:25.887)

You're good.

Josh Tessier (03:44.994)

Okay.

Scott Wayne Betley (03:54.249)

everywhere all over TikTok, which are maybe tied to like trending sounds or, you know, pop culture and like hits that are on the top 100s list right now, like little baby and, you know, Cardi B and some of these people where you'll have all different types of sounds that are tied to specific trends where you have thousands of people creating a similar video to a sound, but just spinning it in different directions as far as the topic and what they're talking.

So that's one piece of it and being able to tap into that. But then you also have things like green screen videos and stitches and things that are performing well right now that weren't necessarily as prevalent, I would say a year ago, it wasn't something that you saw as much on TikTok and it's just performing well now. But that evolution and the growth as far as what's next, it's just, it's been nonstop over the last two years with TikTok. Like you look back two years.

Two years ago, and what I posted two years ago, it was a lot of videos of me just pointing to text bubbles on beat with a song, and it was very basic. Whereas now it's completely different.

Josh Tessier (05:03.69)

Yeah, I see you do a lot of the green screen where you're kind of going through, you know, maybe a news article or something like that. So is that what you mean by like plugging some of those things in?

Scott Wayne Betley (05:12.961)

Yeah, so with the green screen, you know, what's so cool about that is you don't need to have a studio. You don't have to have a green screen room. You know, on TikTok, they have that green screen effect where you can click it, have a still that you've downloaded to your photos, you know, on your iPhone, and you can drop that still into TikTok and click that effect. And it just populates the still image behind you. It picks up, it has like some sort of facial recognition software built within TikTok. So it just overlays you over that image.

Josh Tessier (05:43.196)

Hmm

Scott Wayne Betley (05:43.593)

But they have that for both a still image and for like a green screen video. So if you've got, you know, like a CNN snippet, that's 45 seconds long, where you want to have it playing behind you and green screen behind you, and then you give your take on it, different things like that.

Josh Tessier (05:58.594)

Okay. Now with the, how is the mortgage business as a whole right now? I know that people are here and mix things. A lot of people are, you know, fearful of what the market looks like and are the rates ever going to come down and they're just going to keep going up.

Scott Wayne Betley (06:12.885)

Honestly, I look at it like there's a lot of opportunity, especially with what's going on with the NAR lawsuit and just interest rates as a whole and volume. There's a lot of people that are getting out of the industry, so I feel like there's a big opportunity to capture some serious market share. And I've been through moments in time. I've been in the business close to 12 years now, and there's been many instances where the rates were down in the threes. They came up to the...

five's, you know, back in, I want to say like 2014, 2015. And we saw these ebbs and flows, you know, it does happen, but, you know, what I've really tried to make sure of with this dip is just capitalizing as much as I can on building additional relationships, enhancing my client experience, doubling down on my systems and my processes to make sure everything is iron clad, you know, and it's just one of those things where like

we now have to perform stronger. We have to sell, we have to service people better, we have to educate them. And I think it just, from what we saw over the last two years and how plentiful deals were, it's just a different world. And I think we all need to hone in on that and focus on just enhancing every part of the experience. You know what I mean?

Josh Tessier (07:30.262)

Yeah, yeah, you had, I mean, just from an agent standpoint, I mean, pre-COVID, there was about 1.2 million agents in the United States during COVID. It went to 1.6 since obviously dropped drastically since then. I'm sure they don't have updated numbers on it, but I can only imagine with mortgages again, it's just like, you know, take a pen, write it down and let's go. You know, still heavy on the, are you guys still pretty heavy with like the qualifications? I know some people are like, oh, how is it comparable to 2007, eight, nine, you know, when the market was crashing and you know, they had these

Ninja loans, no income, no job verification, just go, right?

Scott Wayne Betley (08:04.717)

Yeah, I mean the loan market is definitely different. What I can say is there's still a lot of leniency though around credit scores. Like for instance, we lend out to a 500 credit score on FHA Financing.

And we've had several borrowers this year who have fallen into that category, whether it's divorce, you know, and their, their previous spouse messed their credit up or they were just in a rough situation, but so many people are equity heavy right now where those situations where they owned a house, they likely have a hundred to $200,000 in equity and have the ability to put more down. So, you know, the caveat with FHA financing, if you're between a 500 and a 579 score, you have to put 10% down, but.

You know, a lot of people think you need perfect credit, a large down payment, and that just is not the case. However, the one thing that's changed is the income qualifications and taking a look at qualifying income and their ability to actually afford that payment.

Josh Tessier (08:59.978)

Okay, and they can get that 10% as a gift? Do they have to have it themselves?

Scott Wayne Betley (09:04.909)

No, the 10% can be a gift. Yeah, it doesn't have to be.

Josh Tessier (09:07.818)

So you may see some family members or parents or, you know, maybe purchasing the house with them or giving them a gift of funds to try to buy instead of renting and throwing the money away. Yeah. You know, the rents have just obviously gone through the roof and they're going to continue to rise. I know they were on almost an 8% increase year over year for a while there and who knows what we're looking at now, but they're not stopping the building of apartments. So I don't foresee a homeownership not being a good investment.

Scott Wayne Betley (09:18.261)

Exactly. Yeah.

Josh Tessier (09:37.134)

through that timeline. But so what are some other programs so people can go down to 500? Like what are some other big things right now for you guys that people should be mindful of if maybe they are looking to move?

Scott Wayne Betley (09:49.045)

Yeah, I mean, there's some creative programs, you know, like the 321 and the 2-1 buy down program, which are helpful in this market, especially with the higher rates. You know, you have people that are very sensitive to that. And the reality is a lot of these experts and these economists are saying that the rates are going to come down to the fives, maybe 6% range within the next year to two years.

And so we've had many clients looking at that and weighing that out because it's also, you know, there's a cost associated with that and buying down the interest rate and whether or not you're going to recoup that cost through the monthly savings and whether or not it actually will make sense.

So there's some programs there that can definitely help on the interest rate front, which is a sensitive subject right now with how high rates have been. But one other thing that we rolled out this year is our NFM Flex program. It's a hundred percent program, no money down. It's tied to an FHA loan, but they don't have income caps. You don't have to be a first time home buyer and they go down to a 600 credit score. So it's a really flexible program. Like you look at the standard DPA programs.

of them require a 620 to a 640 plus score, some are even higher than that. Most of them have income requirements where you can't make over a certain threshold and some of them have the first time homebuyer requirement.

That program has been great. It's just, and we offer that nationwide. So we've had people in California who have come to us, you know, in Silicon Valley purchasing an eight, $900,000 home, and they're able to get upwards of $30,000, you know, so it's, it makes a real difference for some.

Josh Tessier (11:23.766)

Wow. That's crazy. Okay. So now that kind of leads me into you guys cover what 49 states. So a few of them is there you know, you said not necessarily New York, but pretty much everywhere else.

Scott Wayne Betley (11:37.805)

Yeah, everywhere else except for New York. That's right.

Josh Tessier (11:42.187)

Now you guys had recently moved a couple times too, right? Are you using mortgages in those instances where people may say, oh, well, he's a lender. He's not going to worry about the rates or maybe he's getting a discount or whatever the thing is that they can make an excuse for.

Scott Wayne Betley (11:54.478)

Yeah.

Scott Wayne Betley (11:57.881)

Yeah, I mean the discount that we get is extremely small. It doesn't make much of a difference, unfortunately, but every little bit helps, you know? But yeah, we bought three months ago at a 7.625% interest rate. We purchased in a state on the eastern shore of Maryland. And what's funny is I have so many people that come into my comment section on my socials and they're like, of course he's gonna tell you to buy a home. He's in mortgages. It's the worst time to buy a house, blah, blah.

And I firmly believe that it's a really great time to buy a house. Buyers have a lot of leverage right now. Granted, the interest rates are a little bit higher, but when these rates come down, competition is going to explode, prices are going to explode. I think we're gonna be in the vicinity of 10% to 15%, maybe even more in certain markets, depending upon how low the rates go.

But I would much rather face paying a little bit more a month and be able to refinance in the next one to two years when those rates come down, as opposed to facing a market where I've got to waive my home inspection, waive my appraisal, offer 50 to 100 grand over list price. And the home we just bought, it had close to $70,000 in inspection repairs, almost $35,000 just in mold remediation.

If we had been in that type of market where we didn't have the luxury of having home inspection, we could have been walking into something that, you know, we had no clue of, you know. And so, you know, that that's my stance on it. And part of the reason why I put out a lot of content about that just because I believe it myself. We just did it. And luckily, we own another property. We have another home in Bel Air. We purchased a condo in Ocean City, which we recently flipped and sold.

Josh Tessier (13:23.01)

Yeah.

Scott Wayne Betley (13:42.733)

But the property in Bel Air, to your point, you know, with the rents and what's happened over the last two years, I have so many clients that come to me and they're like, you know, we have our first home, but rates are so much more now. We have all this equity. I don't know if I should sell it or what I should do. And I tell them a little bit about my situation and we literally bought our home in the middle of the pandemic back in 2020. I want to say it was in November or October timeframe.

And we're at a two and a half percent rate, which a lot of people are, who bought over the last five to six years, they have extremely low rates. And in the meantime, rents have exploded. So our mortgage payment on that property is 2,600 a month, and we have it rented out for 4,800 or $4,900 a month. So we're cash flowing 2,200 a month, and that helps offset the cost of the higher interest rate on our new home.

And when we're able to refinance our current primary and drop it to hopefully the 5% range, we'll be in an even better position and we can avoid all that competition and craziness.

Josh Tessier (14:46.834)

Yeah, that's pretty solid. So what are you generally seeing the most? Are you seeing a lot of people coming in that are first-time home buyers more so than anything? Are you seeing a lot of the move-ups, even selling the house and taking the equity? Or is it kind of a mix?

Scott Wayne Betley (15:03.669)

It's kind of a mix, you know, partially because I have a big direct to consumer brand and it's on TikTok and Instagram. So a lot of that demo is millennials and Gen Z's. You know, I might get a little bit of the older demos here and there, but for the most part, it's the younger demographic where their first time home buyers, they don't own a property. Of course, there's one office where there's some younger people who bought in their early twenties who already have a home, but we have that. And then I also have my personal.

book of business that I've been building for the last 12 years, which I've had, you know, hundreds of home buyers who have bought, who are now coming back, you know, and looking at renting out the first or selling it and buying the next home because their family's grown or, you know, something has changed or something of the sort. So it's a mixed bag.

Josh Tessier (15:49.126)

Okay. Are you guys seeing a lot of people financing through normal, you know, financing options, you know, investment properties in different areas or not so much?

Scott Wayne Betley (16:01.741)

Yeah, we're seeing, I think on the investor side, we've definitely seen it slow a little bit, especially with the higher rates and that pinching margins. Unless you have a really great deal, it's tough for the most part with a lot of these investors. Like I had to quote an investment property rate a week and a half ago at 8.625%. And compared to the three and 4% range, that higher mortgage payment really cuts into the potential profits and what they.

Josh Tessier (16:32.774)

Right, right. So I mean, I guess it works out. Okay. So it works out pretty good for the homeowner in that instance. And it would work out for, I guess some of the regular traditional buyers because they're not competing against the investors that are going to buy the house as is no inspections. I pay all the transfer taxes, yada, yada.

Scott Wayne Betley (16:33.89)

we're still seeing it.

Scott Wayne Betley (16:48.853)

Right, outside of these institutional investors that are coming in with cash and, you know, just swallowing up single families, but yeah, I feel like we've definitely seen that slow, you know, with the higher rates, the condition is down.

Josh Tessier (17:02.374)

Now with some of the agents you guys work with cross-country, are you seeing similarly that everyone's struggling for inventory? They're dealing with the same thing where buyers are worried about the rates? Is there some areas where it's not as prevalent or is it, you know, I feel like a lot of people are just unsure if they, you know, we have people working from home more than ever, so a lot of them want to move, they want to relocate, they can take their job wherever, kind of similarly with what you guys did. You know, they have the freedom to move.

Scott Wayne Betley (17:26.082)

Yeah.

Josh Tessier (17:28.56)

Is that impacting a lot of them in different scenarios or is it pretty general across the board?

Scott Wayne Betley (17:34.857)

I think so. You know, I also think that there's a little bit of a hesitation just around, you know, how long that's going to last. You know, you look at some of these big corporations and a lot of them are pushing for in office because productivity has gone down so much. Whereas back in 2020, it was really great, you know, for people working from home. But

it hasn't lasted from the data that I've seen and you know what I'm what I'm seeing out on the street, but I think it's definitely a component. That's why my wife and I bought here on the eastern shore and bought a homestead on the water or you know almost three hours away from my office where I was about 45 minutes away from it previously, but I've only gone in there.

maybe five or six times over the last two and a half years. So there really isn't a need for it. And for our team, we're a national team. So we have LOs in Colorado, Texas, California, Georgia, all over the US, and we all work somewhat virtual. There are some that have satellite locations where they prefer that. I myself don't mind working from home. I'm kind of anal about my business and how hard I go at it. So that's never really been an issue for me.

Josh Tessier (18:47.742)

Okay. Now with the other loan officers in the other area, if someone's reaching out and they want to buy a home in Florida, are they working with you? Are they working with your team? Are they working with the agent specifically or the lender specifically out that way? How is that working for you guys?

Scott Wayne Betley (19:03.173)

Yeah, that's a good question. So we built a complete sales funnel. And the way that we structured it is we have a call center staff. We have an admin team that is doing a lot of filtering on the front end and just combing through the leads, making sure that when that borrower gets to the loan officer, that it's somebody that has a shot, you know, because we have a lot of things built out on our back end where we have a lot of people that come in from socials that have a lower credit score and they need credit help or they need a little direction, you know, on their income.

or maybe their employment history or whatever the case may be. So we definitely get a mixed bag there, but basically the way that it works is that the lead comes into our system, it gets routed to a loan officer in that state, and once they get plugged in, they reach out to the borrower, they run with the deal, and it goes right into the system. But we've kind of built it out where it's a complete sales funnel. We have automation, we have bots built into it, just to try to...

make it as simple and scalable as we can. But it's been laying brick by brick over the last two years. There's been a lot of things that we've had to do and pivot just because we've, we're kind of chartering unchartered territory in regards to social media and having this massive direct to consumer brand. Because our team, I mean, we've generated just under 60,000 leads through TikTok, Facebook, Instagram as a group over the last 28 months.

Josh Tessier (20:05.335)

Okay.

Scott Wayne Betley (20:29.809)

Um, so there's, there's certain days where it's like a fire trying to drink from a fire hose, where we will have a thousand inquiries over 24 hours. And if you don't have those systems in place, there's so much that falls through the cracks and it's hard to disseminate what's a good lead versus what isn't. So there was a lot of infrastructure we had to build there.

Josh Tessier (20:34.294)

Yeah.

Josh Tessier (20:50.026)

So do you guys worry when people hear those numbers, like do you get anyone saying like, oh, I don't wanna fall through the cracks, they're too busy, they have too many people.

Scott Wayne Betley (20:59.337)

Not anymore. I would say a year and a half ago, we definitely had some growing pains and it was a process, but we're to a point where now we have a really awesome executive team. We brought in some big hitters from some other larger banks who are really huge on conversions and systems and processes and just refining everything down just to make sure we're doing the best that we possibly can. Our conversions have almost doubled over the last...

six months since we brought on a few of these bigger executive team leaders. So I'm excited about that. I think it's only going to get better. We just started a new CRM system that has a lot more integration and just video drips and things that we can do to be able to nurture our database and then do different things. But we're in a position now where we need more leads. So please, if you're looking to buy, we would love to help.

Josh Tessier (21:50.668)

Okay.

Scott Wayne Betley (21:58.166)

Absolutely.

Josh Tessier (21:59.126)

Okay. Now, and I know you guys are partnering up with a lot of agents cross country. So I know people that are going to hear this aren't necessarily in Maryland. So should they just reach out to you guys and just say, Hey, like this, we'd love to partner up. We'd love to maybe have you, I know you do some speaking on social media and do some trainings around that for some of their teams to help, you know, generate the business all around. Is that something they would just maybe message you or is there a specific place someone should go to get in, you know, to that information?

Scott Wayne Betley (22:27.053)

Yeah, if they want to DM me on Instagram, I'm not as heavy on TikTok with checking the messages. I have some admin teams that help me with that, but message me on Instagram. That's the best way to get me. I still manage that. But yeah, we're doing a lot behind the scenes just to try to create a lot of value for the realtor side, just because, you know, socials and the average age in our industry, it's really such an untapped tool, you know, in terms of marketing and lead gen and building your business.

And majority of people in our industry just don't understand it. They don't want to. They haven't really wrapped their head around it. And that's why I think there's so much opportunity in the space. Like you look at, you know, the top creators in real estate mortgage, I can think of maybe 20 offhand that are really doing it at scale consistently who have had success and there's, there's new creators that are emerging left and right. You know, so there's the boat hasn't left, you know, there's still opportunity.

And as an example, if you guys check out Freddie Smith, he's one of the creators on our team as a real estate agent down in Florida, he has started posting over the last eight months, he's gone from no followers to over a million followers between Instagram and Tik Tok. And his content's great, but it's nothing, you know, that's too out of the ordinary or something that nobody could come up with on their own. So it just goes to show that, you know, there's still opportunity in the space. And.

It's the boat has not left. That's for sure.

Josh Tessier (23:55.938)

Right. And it's probably not going to take off anytime soon. And unless people at least stay on some of these trends, like you were talking about, Gary Vee was watching something the other day and I keep hearing it is, you know, LinkedIn. A lot of people just aren't understanding that LinkedIn is more than just a, you know, Hey, throw my resume up. It's now a social platform. And a lot of these business professionals are, are on there that can afford houses. So, you know, to your point of, you know, Freddie and all that, that's awesome.

And I think a lot of people are afraid to start or they start and then they stop right before, like you said, maybe if you would have did 27 videos and been like, ah, F it, I'm done. That 27th one wouldn't have taken off to 400,000 to give you that extra bump of like, hey, I should, this actually works. Like it's not bullshit.

Scott Wayne Betley (24:41.861)

It's so true. Yeah, and we're just in a game of like, staying on top of where that organic attention is. And right now, to your point, LinkedIn, there's so much organic reach. Like you can go on there with little to no connections and post a post and get, you know, half million views on it just because a lot of these platforms have now pivoted to mimic TikTok and you know, the effect of like,

the attractiveness of the platform and the upside and the virality. Because you look at Facebook and Instagram and what it was, you were somewhat limited to your sphere. And this is why TikTok has exploded because the average Joe can go on there, post their first video, go viral, build a brand, and it's just different from what we've seen previously. So you're right, like LinkedIn, my team, we just had a Mastermind last week on LinkedIn and we're.

trying to build out our content strategy there for 2024 because that is definitely something you have to focus on.

Josh Tessier (25:40.079)

Yeah, do you follow Alex or Mozi at all?

Scott Wayne Betley (25:42.961)

I've heard of him. I don't follow him closely. I've seen some of his stuff on TikTok, but I, I know of him for sure.

Josh Tessier (25:49.41)

Yeah, I think they're putting out three to 400 pieces of content a week just for him. Just in general, through their social platforms in general. But he was always before anti-brand, just get leads, get sales. And he built a company to his eggs, well, his partial exit, I guess, was $40 million during COVID. And now all they do is buy and invest in companies that are $3 million plus.

Scott Wayne Betley (25:54.997)

on LinkedIn.

Josh Tessier (26:16.458)

you know, younger guy, close to our age. But again, it's just like, you gotta keep going. You gotta keep going. You gotta keep trying. If you try and something's not working, maybe tweak the strategy. So did you have to, at some point, as you're going through, like maybe had 400,000 on one and you had two on the next, and then was it, hey, I did something different. I should change up the strategy. I need to, you know, like you said, do some research on what some of these other people are doing and really just rip off and duplicate within reason of.

like not rip it off. This is where a lot of people go wrong. Is they just do the same thing versus putting their spin on it and their personality in it. Um, what are your thoughts on that?

Scott Wayne Betley (26:56.173)

Yeah, I mean, it's staying on the pulse of TikTok and socials is definitely a big component to the game. I probably spend 10 to 15 hours a week just consuming content so that I can stay on that. And there's been many instances over my creator career, I would say, where I've had, you know.

where it's been a month or two where I've been stuck at a certain follower base or maybe my followers even went down by a few thousand followers and I was like struggling to figure out what new style of content or what was next because so much of what I was putting out was so played out and like saturated to some extent where everyone was doing it and it wasn't necessarily fresh anymore

But there's been many instances and I think, you know, when it comes to that, you just, you've got to stay on the pulse of what's performing well. And it comes down to consuming content and seeing what else is out there, you know, what new styles are emerging, what other creators are doing. So I've been very intentional, you know, with my followers who I, like who I actually follow on social so that I can stay on top of, like these great creators who are doing this at scale. Because there's...

there's things that emerge every week. You know, there's like new things on the culture side, like Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift, like all these things that like, you could start tapping into to some extent and like framing your content around it, or maybe using a snippet from it or touching on it, to be able to tap in the virality of that, but still be able to talk about your niche. So it's a lot of work, but you know, obviously the upside is huge.

So it's just, it's one of those things and it's a long-term play for sure.

Josh Tessier (28:39.094)

Now, did you learn a lot of this stuff just from trial and error or were you physically Googling YouTube University, like all the things on like how to run? Like I mean, it's, I mean, my own ignorance too, when I started putting stuff up a couple of years ago, I was talking to my marketing guy and I'm like, how do I put this background in? He's like the green screen. I was like, yeah, like how, like how the hell do I do this? Like I've just messed with it for 30 minutes and I'm going to chuck my phone out the window. And he's like, oh, here, click, click done. I was like,

Scott Wayne Betley (29:05.23)

Yeah.

Josh Tessier (29:08.482)

All right, I guess I could have done that. So I think, you know, a lot of people similarly, they just don't know how to use the stuff. And I, you know, I was talking to my wife about this the other day. Like I just found out that there's some tool on Instagram where it's like, hey, there's training and this is because they want you to use it. They want you to make content for people to consume. Is there any really good places or people that you follow that other people should try to follow in mirror?

Scott Wayne Betley (29:25.283)

Yeah.

Scott Wayne Betley (29:36.013)

You know, I've never really attended any formal trainings. I will say that I've had a lot of experience with brands and video content just over my whole life. Like when I was a teenager, I was heavily into music and I played guitar, played piano, played drums. I used to sing a lot. And I literally had my own recording studio and I would take songs and rewrite them and make them like acoustic songs, like pop songs. And I did like several music videos where that was like...

my tinkering phase, I would say, where I really started to get acclimated to the systems and post-production and all the nuances of that. It just became one of those things where I got good at technology and electronics and using these systems, and it just became second nature. Then I had another company that I had started a few years back that I built the brand on that exploded, was doing very well. I've had a lot of experience in the brand world.

And it all stems from Gary Vanderchuck, honestly. I've been following him and his personal brand for the better part of 12 years ever since I got the mortgage and he's been, you know, shouting it from the rooftops for I don't know how long, but he's the reason why I doubled down on it. I've seen his success and he's just crushed it.

Josh Tessier (30:54.97)

Yeah, that's where he was talking a lot about the LinkedIn and people need to get on that train. He's like, right now may not seem crazy, but in a year you're gonna wish you would have done it. How often do you post a day, would you say, on each platform? And is it the same thing you're posting or different?

Scott Wayne Betley (31:04.257)

Yeah.

Scott Wayne Betley (31:12.129)

Yeah, that's a good question. So I post, I would say normally one to two times a day on Instagram and TikTok. I'm trying to get back to two a day consistently. And then I also have like my story post on Instagram where I'll put out five to eight videos a day or still photos of family life and different things like that where it's a little bit of a look into my life versus just all business. It's kind of a blend. But...

Honestly, if you are new to being a creator and you're trying to break through and, you know, create some success for yourself, I would start trying to post three to five videos a day. I know that sounds like a lot, but if you can create some structure around like how you're actually doing it, you know, when you're filming time blocking it into your schedule, preparing for that session, you know, and having homework and ideas ready so that way when you reach that time block moment.

You can sit down and pound out three to five videos, but you look at, I hate to say it again, but Freddie Smith, he posts five to seven videos a day and he's done that for the last eight months. And that's part of the reason why he's exploded. He was literally on Good Morning America, like eight weeks ago. He was on Fox, like I wanna say six weeks ago, and it's all because of TikTok. So, you know, there's definitely a recipe and a blueprint there, but it takes a little bit of work, you know.

Josh Tessier (32:38.442)

Yeah. Now with regards to Freddie and all these things, I mean, I'm assuming people aren't doing crazy high production. They're just grabbing their phone and going, right? I think that's where a lot of people get bogged down and what webcam do I need? What this do I need? I don't have a video crew. I don't have X, Y, and Z. My hair doesn't look good. But it's like a lot of those more organic videos seem to get better traction than some of the higher quality.

Scott Wayne Betley (32:39.033)

structure.

Josh Tessier (33:07.743)

stuff. Is that right?

Scott Wayne Betley (33:08.877)

Yeah, 100%. When you look at just the evolution of content and YouTube and Facebook, and then Instagram introduced Instagram TV and Vine became a thing. And it's just been this evolution of, 10 years ago, all these brands and businesses like in the real estate business, were putting out high-end post-produce videos that were likely done in a studio.

And I feel like consumers have become very perceptive to the fact that like we're trying to sell them something. And when we're putting out content as a team, like you've got to focus on education. Like you can't be selfish every post going out asking for business. Like you've got to be educating them, pouring value into them 80 to 90% of the time and then 10% of the time asking for the business or highlighting a situation that might turn into a lead, you know? And that's, I think, where a lot of creators mess up is...

being somewhat selfish with the content that they put out and not reverse engineering it to some extent and providing value to the consumer and trying to figure out what it is that they have questions on and topics and what direction to go in.

Josh Tessier (34:20.322)

Yeah, I think there's a lot of misinformation and a lot of people out there that, um, are all the experts on something, but have never done it. And they're selling a course for this or that, or telling someone something and they kind of get that bad rep. So I think, you know, to the point of like the Gary V or the Alex or Mosi, it's like put, give people your best stuff for free. And then if you're going to want to sell something from it at that point, then, you know, give, ask.

Scott Wayne Betley (34:42.809)

Yeah.

Josh Tessier (34:49.986)

Or you know, I think Gary V had the was it jab, right hook something book. Yeah. Have you read that?

Scott Wayne Betley (34:54.021)

Jab, jab, right. That's it, yep.

Scott Wayne Betley (34:59.025)

I haven't, but I have read snippets from it. And I think I've listened to like part of the audio version. I just, I'm terrible with books. I need to get better at that.

Josh Tessier (35:01.489)

Okay.

Okay.

Hey, I mean, and if a lot of people don't understand, like, I mean, again, like through Alex Hormo's, you can go to acquisition.com. He's got tons of training on there that he did live. It's all free. I mean, he just had over half a million people on his book launch that signed up for his book launch. And he spent a million dollars on some of the advertising, but most of it was all organic. And he literally wrote this book on like, Hey, this is how you get, it's called a hundred million dollar leads. This is how you get leads.

through social media or asking people. And he's like, you know, you start with your email list. So everybody's got an email list or you start, you know, go through when we would hire agents. It's like, start with the A's in your phone, go through Z. Just call people, let them know about your stuff. And if your stuff sucks, then you're not gonna get anything. And you know, Gary V again, to the point of a video I was watching the other day where he was talking about the LinkedIn. He's like,

Scott Wayne Betley (35:53.87)

Yeah.

Josh Tessier (36:00.75)

You're not getting blacklisted on YouTube. You're not getting on Instagram and this and that and the other. They're not hiding your stuff. He's like, it just sucks. It's like make better shit.

Scott Wayne Betley (36:07.649)

Yeah, you're not showing your content just sucks.

Josh Tessier (36:11.154)

Right? Yeah, you're just giving shitty stuff away and nobody wants it. And yeah, it's getting buried in versus you give whatever you think your gold is away and know that that's the key is giving all that information. I can't tell you how many people are Hey, how are you getting paid? How are you getting paid? I'm like, I'm not getting paid for this. Like, you want me to charge you $300 an hour to go through this? No, like, it's, this is this is for you. This is for us to help you get better.

And I think that's kind of a lost thing. Everyone's out for themselves, especially anymore with, well, within reason, um, times are tough, you know, money goes nowhere anymore. And I saw someone talking about inflation at Costco last year to this year. And it's like a picture of the food. He literally took the same picture of the same thing. And he's like, it's twice the, twice the money. He's like, they're saying inflation is six and a half to, you know, 8%. And this is more than double the price of what it was, you know, six months ago. Uh,

Scott Wayne Betley (37:07.405)

Yeah. When's the last time you've been in the subway?

Josh Tessier (37:11.593)

It was like $15 for a foot long sub.

Scott Wayne Betley (37:13.921)

It's $5 foot longs are no longer a thing. It's like, no chips, no drink. Like that's just, it's long. It's nuts.

Josh Tessier (37:17.147)

No, it's $15 foot long.

No. Right. You can't go anywhere to eat. It's, you know, hey, you get a pizza delivered. It's like, do you want to leave a 20 or 30 or 50% tip? And it's like, not 50. Right. So how's the homesteading? Like, what's that? What's that been like for you guys with the kids? Because I know you're big with the family.

Scott Wayne Betley (37:30.753)

Right. They slide the 10. $100?

Scott Wayne Betley (37:45.045)

It's been an adjustment for sure. You know, we've, we've been like city people for so, and not like heavy city people, like living in Baltimore city, but obviously like in town, like in Bel Air, you know, where we're in the mix of everything, like the grocery store is less than a mile from our house.

Whereas now it takes us 30 minutes to go to the grocery store and we don't have anything around us and we have like all sorts of wildlife and snakes and it has been an adjustment for sure. We have, we built the chicken coop. We have nine chickens, six ducks. So I built a 24 foot by seven foot chicken run that's seven feet tall. And then we're getting ready to, we're looking at getting some milk cows and

My wife really wants a donkey and some other stuff too, but I really only want to get like animals that are going to produce like something for us, not just like other pets because we have dogs and kids. I kind of need more, you know, things like that or relationships like that right now. So

Josh Tessier (38:39.403)

Yeah.

Josh Tessier (38:47.11)

Yeah, yeah, I feel that. Yeah, we have two dogs and they, you know, one had an ACL surgery. So I was carrying him around the house at 100 pounds to get him out the door. So that was cool. I don't have, you know, all the kids and the dogs and everything else. But now you spend a ton of time with your boys, right? You have two boys.

Scott Wayne Betley (38:55.674)

Yeah.

Scott Wayne Betley (39:06.721)

Yeah, I have two boys. We spent a lot of time fishing and just being outside together. Yeah, they're definitely like my why. You talk about like why we do things and why I would love to build this business up and be able to retire in the next 15 years. It's all because of them. I want to create opportunities for them that I didn't have. And.

They're just, they're awesome. You know, we have our third boy coming in March and my wife homeschools the kids. So we're always home together. I'm working, you know, from home nine times at a 10. And it's really great. You know, we love it. And we're just family people. Like we're home bodies. We don't really go anywhere. And so now that we have 30 acres and the river out back and everything like right here, we feel like we don't really have to go anywhere. So it's been awesome.

Josh Tessier (39:59.51)

Yeah, that's great. So how did life change for you when the kids came about? Cause that's about from what we were talking, I think right when you started basically a new career in the same business, new company, new everything starting over.

Scott Wayne Betley (40:12.533)

Yeah, I mean, for me, it lights a really big fire under my ass. I don't know why or what it is, but I launched my first company the day my first son was born. And so, and I've had this really weird anxiety and not guilt, but I know my son's coming in March.

And I've been working like 90 to 100 hour weeks. I don't know why it happens like this every single time. I don't know if it's like, you know, they have like that nesting thing that they say people go through, like when you're getting ready and it's just like a natural thing that like everyone does. I don't know if like it's that that's my form of that or what, but, um, it just lights a huge fire under my ass. Like I've been, I've been really working hard and just doubled down on all fronts over the last couple of months. And I think that's part of the reason why.

Josh Tessier (41:04.738)

It's like that going on vacation preparation, like everyone crams in all the stuff they've been waiting to do until that day before they leave and magically get it all done in the time they needed. But you know, you feel the pressure coming of like, hey, I'm probably not gonna be able to work as much as I am. I gotta like, I gotta throw down right now.

Scott Wayne Betley (41:09.506)

Yeah.

Scott Wayne Betley (41:17.09)

Right.

Scott Wayne Betley (41:25.153)

Right, yeah. Yeah, I don't think with this one, at least we're all home. I don't have to go anywhere to work. So I don't think my paternity leave has to be too long, maybe a couple days. And we're all gonna be here anyway together. So when does it really matter?

Josh Tessier (41:27.607)

Uhhh...

Josh Tessier (41:42.43)

Yeah. No, I mean, when you, when you enjoy what you do, I mean, I had my son, I mean, at seven o'clock in the morning, I was on a zoom call that morning with him in my arms, like showing everybody, you know, and then back at work four days later, five days later, um, and then, you know, kind of relaunched everything here this last year, but definitely changes things up. I, I wasn't someone that I figured I'd have kids, but I didn't think I'd be. Not to sound like an asshole. I didn't think I'd be interested in having.

a lot to do with the kids just from, you know, like you said, you try to do things differently, give them different opportunities. So it's, it's definitely a cool experience that, you know, I always like to hear everyone's take on how they go through it and everyone's kind of got the same problems within reason. It's just how they navigate them.

Scott Wayne Betley (42:31.681)

Yeah, it's definitely give me a different perspective when it comes to like my time, you know, and it's just how valuable that is. Like that's now I'm in a position of just trying to create as much time as I possibly can for my family because like what do we have? My older toddler is almost six. I mean, we have like 12 years left with him before he's gone, like out into the world. So you know, I'm trying to soak it up as much as I can.

Josh Tessier (42:58.538)

Yeah, it flies by. Is there anything you wanna share with anyone before we kinda hop off today? Is there any big mortgage information you see coming down the pike that they should be mindful of or prepping for?

Scott Wayne Betley (43:13.309)

No, I mean, you know, outside of these interest rates and the market, you know, we have seen inflation cool off over the last couple of weeks, which has been a good sign. I'm hoping that continues. But outside of that, you know, just the rate environment and what a lot of these experts are saying, you know, majority of them are showing that we should see rates drop to the fives, the mid 5% range within the next one to two years. And, you know, so many people are fearful of this higher rate environment, but

The reality is when these rates come down, it's going to flip this industry upside down compared to where we're at right now. I urge people to think long and hard about that because it's going to make a real difference in regards to how much you're spending, what the home price is, and the competition that's going to come with it.

Josh Tessier (44:01.514)

Right. Yeah. The competition is going to be through the roof. Like you said, we saw offers, hundred grand plus, I mean, still waving contingencies, still waving appraisals, still waving this and that versus like right now we just, you know, I had a client not long ago, even kind of during the pandemic. Like you said, you had $70,000 worth of repairs on your house. They had to do the same thing with the one they were buying. And I did everything to talk them out of buying this house, but they still wanted it. And we ended up getting 36 grand back from the seller, uh, towards their.

Scott Wayne Betley (44:22.009)

Yeah.

Josh Tessier (44:30.838)

down payment and all that stuff so they could make repairs after the fact and we had another one two weeks ago where they got almost three grand. So people are giving. They're struggling.

Scott Wayne Betley (44:40.121)

They are. I don't know if you saw the data last week came out that over 35% of home sellers are giving some sort of seller assistance or concession right now. A lot of people are motivated to sell and the demand has definitely been impacted.

Josh Tessier (44:51.479)

Right?

Josh Tessier (44:55.41)

Yeah. And the prices are still high. And, you know, as far as that goes over the last couple of years, I think people are just worried that from the seller side, I'm not going to get 800,000. Well, no, two years ago, your house was worth five. You know, I think if you got 650 or seven, that's probably a good thing. And they're like, oh, I got to get eight. The market says I got to get eight. And then they throw it on and it doesn't sit. You're starting to see these expires. And I think what's your thought on some of these?

Scott Wayne Betley (45:09.953)

Right.

Josh Tessier (45:24.214)

deferred mortgages that people are doing where I had one where she didn't disclose that it was deferred until we're going through the process and they went from making $65,000 or so to bringing roughly $30,000 to the table.

Scott Wayne Betley (45:40.953)

So when you say deferred, are you talking about like a student loan or?

Josh Tessier (45:44.435)

So the deferments that they did through COVID were they're tacking basically their mortgage onto the back end, not making the payments.

Scott Wayne Betley (45:49.997)

Yeah, yeah. Now we haven't been running into that as much recently. You know, we saw a lot of that, you know, with homeowners that had went into forbearance, you know, and we're trying to refinance because the rates had come down and they had more equity and they were like, Oh, like, I didn't know that this would impact me from being able to refinance. And that's just something that they didn't tell many people. So that was a learning.

for many and just educating them and what comes with that. But we had many clients that were in the position where they could afford it, but they just took advantage of it because like, why not? If I can save three to six months worth of mortgage payments like everyone else and not be impacted by it, great. But unfortunately, these servicers did not break down what that looks like if you wanted to refinance in the future, so.

Josh Tessier (46:39.85)

Yeah. Okay. Do you think you'll see a lot of foreclosures coming in the coming years?

Scott Wayne Betley (46:41.869)

Yeah, we're not seeing...

Scott Wayne Betley (46:48.545)

I don't think so. I mean, there was some data that I saw yesterday about VA foreclosures and VA defaults just being up right now across the board, but I think the VA just extended and they gave like a six month grace period for veterans that are in that position to give them a little bit more time to catch up. So outside of that, I haven't seen much data around foreclosure numbers being up. I think they're actually down.

what they were in previous years.

Josh Tessier (47:20.49)

Yep. Yeah, that's one of those things. I know everyone's always looming of they hear something on the news and it's like, just stop watching. Stop watching the news. It's not, it's not doing you any favors right now. Awesome. Well, if there's nothing else, how can everyone reach you online or social media?

Scott Wayne Betley (47:38.009)

Yeah, if you guys search that mortgage guy on Google, you'll find all my pages. If you wanna connect with me directly, DM me on Instagram. I would love to chat. So yeah, try that. Or if you guys wanna hop on TikTok, I'm always on TikTok as well.

Josh Tessier (47:51.594)

Okay, cool. Well, that's it for today, guys. And you know, keep an eye out for next week.