Today's Guest is Levi Lascsak

Levi is the owner of the most popular real estate YouTube channel in Dallas, Texas, which is rapidly growing. Within his first full year in real estate, he closed 64 transactions, equivalent to a volume of 33.5 million dollars, and received 3 to 5 inbound leads daily for the past nine months of 2021. Join Sam and Levi and today's episode.

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[0:00] Intro

[1:01] The 3 questions

[4:04] How to educate yourself

[7:01] How to generate meaningful content

[13:01] How to strategize effectively and timely

[16:47] Expanding the team

[19:45] Closing

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Connect with Levi:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/levilascsak/

Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thereelagents

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PassiveProspecting

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/levil/

Book: https://a.co/d/b2AaCty

Connect with Sam:

I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/

Email me → [email protected]

SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f

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Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:

00:00:00:01 - 00:00:18:23

Levi Lascsak

Well, I think the great thing about YouTube is that you can I mean, the quality of the content is really better than than, you know, the quantity. You know, so it's not like you don't necessarily have to do something daily on YouTube. If you make one good video a week, then that can really build up a good presence for you.

00:00:18:23 - 00:00:29:09

Levi Lascsak

If you do two or three, I think you'll grow a little bit faster. But you don't want, you know, quality to suffer on there. Now, we're not trying to go viral. We're trying to make the phone ring.

00:00:29:09 - 00:00:34:15

Intro

Welcome to the How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Show. Whether you are an active or passive investor. We'll teach you how to scale. Your real estate investing business into something big.

00:00:36:06 - 00:00:57:16

Sam Wilson

Levi Lasek owns the fastest growing and most viewed real estate YouTube channel in Dallas, Texas, and generates 3 to 5 inbound leads per day in the last nine months of 2021, their first full year in real estate, he closed 64 transactions, a total of 33 and a half million dollars in volume.

00:00:57:23 - 00:00:59:05

Sam Wilson

Levi, welcome to the show.

00:01:00:07 - 00:01:01:02

Levi Lascsak

Thanks for having Amazon.

00:01:01:08 - 00:01:09:01

Sam Wilson

Absolutely. The pleasure's mine. LEVI There are three questions I ask every guest who comes on the show in 90 seconds or less. Can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now and how did you get there?

00:01:10:02 - 00:01:13:03

Levi Lascsak

All three in the 90 seconds or 90 seconds for each.

00:01:13:20 - 00:01:14:23

Sam Wilson

90 seconds all three.

00:01:16:08 - 00:01:34:14

Levi Lascsak

And okay. So, I mean, I was in the military. I did that after high school. I grew up in a small town, Stephenville, Texas, not milking cows or I'd bull's not much else to do there. So I had no money and I figured the military would be a great way to get some money for college. The world was at peace in 1999 when I joined, and then two years later, September 11th happened.

00:01:34:24 - 00:02:00:24

Levi Lascsak

I ended up getting deployed, spent a year in Iraq, you know, came back home 2006. And from there I just got in a variation of different sales jobs. So I've been in sales for the last, you know, pretty much 20 years of sales, hated prospecting. But the thing was, is that I had built up over the last five years, up to 2020, a very successful financial services business, my very own business, the firm, you know, I'd always had sales jobs, but I finally started my own business.

00:02:01:11 - 00:02:21:05

Levi Lascsak

And then, of course, April of 2020, the world shuts down. So I was I was I worked with all the teachers in Dallas School District on retirement planning, and I had a teacher scheduled but like five times the teacher's income. So I was traveling the world. I went to 24 countries inside of three years. Well, I worked eight months of the year helping teachers.

00:02:21:05 - 00:02:40:12

Levi Lascsak

It was very noble, I thought, on retirement planning, and then both of those were completely taken away in 2020, whenever the world shut down, right? So I felt like I lost my identity at that time. I'm and I was 41 years old. And so I was sitting there probably like a lot of people during the summer of 2020, asking myself, How do you start over without starting over?

00:02:40:12 - 00:03:12:11

Levi Lascsak

You know, what's the next move? When are schools going to reopen? Would I even be able to go back to my business? Would it be there? And so those are some really tough questions I had to ask myself. And instead of watching Tiger King, I decided to start researching and trying to figure out my next move. And I had a bunch of friends that have always tried to get me into real estate, residential real estate, but I never wanted to be a real estate agent because I pictured them as cold callers, door knockers, handing out business cards, shaking hands, kissing babies and, you know, bugging their friends and family.

00:03:12:11 - 00:03:32:10

Levi Lascsak

So I was like, that's not me. But finally, when I didn't really feel like I had any other options, I said, Okay, if I'm going to become a real estate agent, then then what I'm going to do is I'm going to try to figure out a way to attract business versus going into pursuit mode. And so that's what led me down the path of researching everything I possibly could.

00:03:32:16 - 00:03:42:08

Levi Lascsak

I stumbled upon YouTube and I thought, maybe there's an avenue that I could, you know, create content on YouTube and attract clients. And that's exactly what happened to me.

00:03:42:10 - 00:04:09:03

Sam Wilson

And that's really cool. I not really cool to the loss of kind of your other business and income streams and all those things. I'll get a really good thing going that you had built there and that's always painful, that transition period. What were some things though you said, okay, I want to go down this rabbit hole, but I'm not going to do it in the traditional sense of, like you said, going out and kissing babies and, you know, filling out thousands of forms because that that's that does that stuff is mind numbing.

00:04:09:12 - 00:04:19:14

Sam Wilson

But what do you do to educate yourself on building the platform that you have? Like what were the things that said, hey, there are some success clues here that I can both replicate and do better?

00:04:20:14 - 00:04:46:00

Levi Lascsak

Well, I believe you can hyper learn any subject in 60 days. And in this day and age, no matter what you want to do, I don't care if you want to be a multifamily investor, if you want to be a residential real estate agent, if you want to be a postcard marketer, if you want to be a plumber, even a plumber, I mean, I think if the information is out there, you could hyper learn in 60 days enough to make yourself more dangerous than almost 99% of the people in that field.

00:04:46:06 - 00:05:05:08

Levi Lascsak

And so that was just something that I did with the with blogs, with YouTube, with, you know, books, everything, whatever it is you want to do the information is there, but you have to sit down, I believe, and completely focus on. And so that's what I did. I actually went down the path of the other social platforms because that's what everybody was telling me to do.

00:05:05:11 - 00:05:23:23

Levi Lascsak

But they didn't fit with my personality. So I was kind of like, I'm not really sure if I want to be a dancing real estate agent on Tik-Tok, you know? And so I thought YouTube was really the last choice. So I was I was then, but then I learned YouTube is a search engine, not a social platform. And so that made a lot more sense to me.

00:05:24:03 - 00:05:46:11

Levi Lascsak

And I was like, well, shoot, if I've been in Dallas for 20 years, I know Dallas. I don't know how to be a real estate agent, but I know Dallas. And if I make videos about Dallas, think about what your consumer, what your client is actually searching for. They're searching for answers on neighborhoods, suburbs, you know, schools, safety, things to do, jobs, those types of things they're not searching for.

00:05:46:17 - 00:06:01:11

Levi Lascsak

They don't care if you know how to write a contract. They assume you know how to write a contract. So I didn't have to make a video about, hey, here's how I write a contract. You know, here's how I'm such a great real estate agent. I just started making videos about Dallas, which I knew. I knew the areas, I knew the suburbs.

00:06:01:11 - 00:06:17:10

Levi Lascsak

I'd done everything in Dallas. I've been all over the place and I have friends that live in every area. So I can, you know, I've had discussions with them, so I was like, I'm just going to educate people on Dallas. And so that started to make sense for me. That was something I saw myself doing, and this can apply to any industry.

00:06:17:10 - 00:06:40:00

Levi Lascsak

I mean, that's why we wrote the book. You know, passive prospecting was, for that matter, is that it doesn't matter if you're a plumber electrician investor, you know, you can have your clients, your next client will be at your fingertips if you're creating content and let and letting that content prospect for you constantly, it doesn't mean you you need something right this second, but whenever it's time, they'll be there at you, at your disposal.

00:06:40:13 - 00:07:01:20

Sam Wilson

I like that. That that's that was one of my key questions for you was I think a lot of people struggle because I mean, content, yes. You have to be creating content. I think in today's environment, if you're not creating content, you're you're just you're playing 20 years behind the rules. But been even so, a lot of people struggle, myself included, even with a daily podcast or almost daily.

00:07:01:20 - 00:07:19:24

Sam Wilson

It was daily for several years and now it's 3 to 4 times a week. But even so, I still struggle with that idea of like, what do I talk about? What do we do? What do we post? What do we how do you how do you establish and continue to generate meaningful content that people want to engage with?

00:07:21:09 - 00:07:40:08

Levi Lascsak

Well, I think the great thing about YouTube is that you can I mean, the quality of the content is really better than than the quantity, you know, so it's not like you don't necessarily have to do something daily on YouTube. If you make one good video a week, then that can really build up a good presence for you.

00:07:40:08 - 00:07:59:11

Levi Lascsak

If you do two or three, I think you'll grow a little bit faster. But you don't want, you know, quality to suffer on there. You could I mean, you look at everyone talks about Mr. Beast right now, which clearly he's gained a lot of momentum. But he said, you know, he makes he tries to make the best video again once a month, you know, and clearly, whatever he puts out is going to attract.

00:07:59:11 - 00:08:19:22

Levi Lascsak

Now, we're not trying to go viral. We're trying to make the phone ring. So I think it's those types of things. You know, for me in residential real estate, I mean, I've got a ton of suburbs in Dallas and those suburbs break into neighborhoods and those neighborhoods break into, you know, you know, things to do. I mean, so if you just start kind of like breaking it all down, actually build a plan.

00:08:20:03 - 00:08:36:21

Levi Lascsak

If you treat these platforms, especially YouTube, like a hobby, they'll pay you like a hobby. If you treat them like a business, they can pay you like a business. And so that means actually say, okay, what? How could I write down a hundred content ideas? And you probably could if you actually sit down and just thought about it.

00:08:36:24 - 00:08:53:19

Levi Lascsak

Well, first of all, it's easy for me. It's, you know, every suburb and then every neighborhood in every suburb and then every county, you know, I mean, you could break it things and I would have tons of content. If you're in multifamily investing, it could be, you know, how do you find a deal? How do you structure a deal?

00:08:53:19 - 00:09:12:01

Levi Lascsak

What do you do? You know, how do you find the capital? You know, it could be how, how, how, you know, you could there's a website like called also ask or ask also I think also ask. And so you could type in anything. You just type in multifamily in there and it'll give you a hundred questions that are very commonly asked whenever it comes to multifamily.

00:09:12:06 - 00:09:33:15

Levi Lascsak

And so that could be your first 100 videos right there. You could go on several websites, you know, ask the public the same kind of the same concept. You could go look at other channels and the other channels are very simple, look at some, find some very popular channels, sort their videos, buy most popular and see which topics are really, you know, getting a ton of views.

00:09:33:15 - 00:09:57:15

Levi Lascsak

I'm not saying copy them, but it should provide you some inspiration to say, okay, well, this person made a video about this suburb or, you know, how to structure multifamily deal that's very popular. So maybe the first video I'm going to make is how to structure deal, you know, or when you're actually going out searching around. We just we just did a new construction walkthrough the other day and we filmed that like a blue tape walk through, right?

00:09:57:15 - 00:10:19:01

Levi Lascsak

So we were walking through putting blue tape, pointing out all the things. So to somebody who's thinking about buying new construction, they may have never done that before. They and they may not know what to look for. And maybe they contracted directly with the builder. And so they don't know what to expect. But now that they see our video we're actually going through, they're putting blue tape on every little nook and cranny.

00:10:19:01 - 00:10:39:02

Levi Lascsak

And mark and scuff and chip and and we're being very, very tedious about it. But we walk them through that, the whole process. And you know what to look for on appliances, what to look for in the furnace, in the attic. So even just doing something like that in your daily routine can be documented. And that's another thing you can do is you can document over create.

00:10:39:02 - 00:10:58:01

Levi Lascsak

And if you document, that's a real simple way to do that. So every single day, if you're intentional about this and you and you and you turn on the thinking light bulb in your head, you can say, okay, what am I going to do today? And what could I document that could be educational or help somebody else in this journey and how do I capture that?

00:10:58:01 - 00:11:17:00

Levi Lascsak

And so I think I tell agents this all the time, you're making 100 pieces of content every single day. It's just a matter of whether you decide if you want to document it or not. So a lot of agents will go to an open house. They hate to do open houses because they're like, I sit there for 2 hours and nobody shows up and it's a waste of time.

00:11:17:00 - 00:11:36:09

Levi Lascsak

But it's like, Yeah, but while you're in the open house, number one, you could do a property tour on video, then you could go to the kitchen and make two or three videos just about the kitchen, like, you know, what is this? What is that? How does this work? What you should look out for? You could go to the bathroom, you could go to the bedroom, you could go to every little section of the house and think about things.

00:11:36:11 - 00:11:57:14

Levi Lascsak

Or if you find something that, Oh, this home is for sale, but I would never buy it because of this, you know, I mean, or I would buy this house just because of this feature. I mean, so there's there's ways to do that. And inside that two hour window, if nobody does show up to your open house, which means you didn't market it effectively in the first place, but if nobody shows up, at least you're there making content.

00:11:57:14 - 00:12:24:12

Levi Lascsak

Right? And you could make probably 20, 30 videos, at least short form, and then you could even make one entire long form video around the whole, you know, and then you could be good for another week or two on your content just from that one little two hour window. So you have to think about if you go walk a property, if you're going to walk in a seven unit apartment complex, I mean, film, that whole thing, walk yourself through it, take a little selfie stick, talk to the camera as if you've got your your business partner or your investor right next to you.

00:12:24:18 - 00:12:40:20

Levi Lascsak

And you're explaining to them, oh, this is look at this this guardrail. I mean, it looks like it's attached. But whenever you touch it, you know, it's not. So there's just every little thing that you are thinking about how you do your your business and your process, you know, could turn into content.

00:12:41:10 - 00:13:04:00

Sam Wilson

Right? No, I think that's that's really great. And I like that that mindset shift of document versus create. I think that's I think this for a lot of people, you know, I'm not a very creative I just don't have that that bent but I can document I can tell you what I'm doing. That's that's a lot easier than going, gosh, like I may be super creative these these strategies.

00:13:04:13 - 00:13:30:01

Sam Wilson

I would I would I would argue are the long game and it seems like it seems like you though have found a way to kind of crack the code and truncate that long game into some I mean, in order in order to go in and do what you did in 2021 and transaction volume, using this as your primary marketing method took some took some real kind of insight into how to crack that in compressed time frames.

00:13:30:01 - 00:13:31:21

Sam Wilson

How did you do that or timelines, I guess I should say.

00:13:32:22 - 00:13:57:10

Levi Lascsak

While I researched the platform for 60 days before I got started, I filmed for another 30 days before I ever published. So I filmed a month's worth of content ten before I ever published the first video. So I would be scheduled a month ahead on my content. What that does is that relieves pressure. And then also if something were to come up, which of course any time you start something, life happens, health happens, family happens, you know, real estate happens.

00:13:57:10 - 00:14:16:10

Levi Lascsak

And then and then you start making excuses. Well, I can't film this week because I'm busy or this came up as I can't. Well, I didn't worry about that because I was already a month ahead. And then that month I was head I started filming the next month's worth of content. So that way if any little, you know, pebble got in my shoe and maybe I did miss a week or a day.

00:14:16:17 - 00:14:35:16

Levi Lascsak

I wasn't scrambling, trying to produce the next content. The other thing was, is I noticed in my market there were a couple of agents on YouTube, but they were only doing one video a week. So I thought, well, if I'm ever going to catch them or even pass them up, I'm going to triple their effort. So I also committed to myself to do three videos a week.

00:14:35:22 - 00:14:55:23

Levi Lascsak

And so with with zero subscribers, zero views, I just fell to it. I just felt the more content I'd put out there, the faster I hopefully I'll grow. And that's really kind of what happened. So I started to outpace those other channels and now I've passed them all up and now I've got almost a 7000 subscriber lead on that channel.

00:14:56:01 - 00:15:24:07

Levi Lascsak

When I started that, one channel had 7000 subscribers. Now I've got a 7000 subscriber lead on them. So they they steadily grew, but I blew way past them. And now I'm just I'm continually compounding by the continued content, keeping up the pace, keeping the consistency. And so that's what kind of helped me. But also I met my business partner kind of at the right time and he started to handle the transactional side of it, which allowed me to continue to focus on the content side.

00:15:24:12 - 00:15:45:00

Levi Lascsak

So we teamed up to where I would just start creating all the videos, the content, as soon as that client reached out, he would take over from there, take them out, show them homes, get them under contract. So he didn't have to prospect or make content. I didn't have to go out and show homes. So that helped me scale very quickly as well because I wasn't battling between two worlds.

00:15:45:06 - 00:16:13:05

Levi Lascsak

So you do have some things, some logistical items. Plus, I started to hire people very quickly to start to outsource, you know, our administration task and things like that. So, you know, that is something very key. You will scale as fast as you want to based on your content production and based on your your team growth. So if you just try to be that solo person making all your content, doing all the deals, doing all the admin, you're going to get stuck.

00:16:13:05 - 00:16:23:12

Levi Lascsak

You know you're going to get stuck in a rut for, for a while. So you've got to outsource everything as much as possible and focus on what you know will really move the needle for you the most.

00:16:24:02 - 00:16:47:23

Sam Wilson

Yeah, that was me. My question was, how did you kind of balance those two worlds? And I think I think you answered that, which I think is that's that's a that's a very common I think I think thing in Alaska and a lot of real estate in a larger lot of real estate teams and or partnerships where there is one person that's handling either the outreach, the investor outreach, the whatever you want to call it.

00:16:47:23 - 00:17:08:18

Sam Wilson

And then the other person that's handling more the business actually doing of what it is that the business was set up to do. I think that's not an uncommon path. Forward consulting on my question, like how did you how did you have all time for time for both? So I like that. At what point in time did you bring on people that were doing all your own video editing and posting all this stuff?

00:17:08:18 - 00:17:20:13

Sam Wilson

I mean, again, you know, that's another just kind of task heavy just there's just not very much return on anything in that side of handling what you're doing. So how long did it take you before you're able to bring somebody on in that role?

00:17:21:20 - 00:17:48:05

Levi Lascsak

I knew that from the beginning, and I've never, ever edited a video. So the cool thing is, is that you mentioned we did 64 transactions in 2021, which we did in 2022, 154 transactions just from the channel in 2022. So it compounded. But here's what stayed the same was my ad spend. My ad spend was zero. That was all organic and that was because people watched the channel and called us so.

00:17:49:05 - 00:18:11:01

Levi Lascsak

So I never had a marketing budget whenever I started, but I had an editing budget because I needed number one, I'm not interested in editing. Number two, I know it's extremely time consuming. And and so therefore, if I would have spent all my time trying to learn how to edit, I would have gotten frustrated and I probably would have quit after the first video because I only didn't like to edit a video on my iPhone.

00:18:11:10 - 00:18:33:00

Levi Lascsak

It's, it's that is just not my wheelhouse. And I but I understood that from the beginning. So it was something like, okay, I didn't want to spend a ton of money on postcards. Right? I didn't want to spend yeah. I didn't want to try to market myself on billboards or magazine ads, but I was like, if I'm going to do this video thing, that's one thing I know for sure is I'm not going to learn editing because the interest is not there either.

00:18:33:00 - 00:18:48:09

Levi Lascsak

And if you're not interested in something, it's going to be very difficult to struggle through that, you know, or you will struggle through it. You can force yourself to do it, but it'll be a struggle. So I didn't want to hate my life either. So I was like, I'm just going to bite the bullet and hire an editor from the beginning.

00:18:48:09 - 00:19:10:05

Levi Lascsak

Now, luckily it took only took about 90 days before I got the first deal under contract. So that made it all worth it. And clearly we compounded way past that now. So I would recommend if something's not your strong suit, you don't know how to do it. I would highly, highly recommend looking at your budget and trying to make the money to make that happen.

00:19:10:05 - 00:19:21:06

Levi Lascsak

But. But video is so powerful you can build that out organically. But I think the best way to do that is having an editing team and not worried about, you know, trying to pay ads to to promote it.

00:19:21:12 - 00:19:44:00

Sam Wilson

Yeah. No, absolutely. Absolutely couldn't I couldn't agree more. I have gosh, we're approaching 800 episodes. So, you know, a lot like you. And I think I messed with audio on a part of one episode one time and I'm like, this is awful. I got so yeah, I hear you man. Let's get people that are good. It's the who not how idea get people that are good at what they do in the right seats.

00:19:44:07 - 00:19:50:03

Sam Wilson

Handling that side of things for us. Levi This has been a blast. Where do we get a copy of your book, Passive Prospecting.

00:19:51:09 - 00:19:52:09

Levi Lascsak

Amazon.com?

00:19:53:08 - 00:20:04:23

Sam Wilson

Fantastic. Look that up there on Amazon.com. Passive prospecting will put a show or put a link to that there in the show notes. Levi If our listeners want to get in touch with you, learn more about you, what is the best way to do that?

00:20:04:23 - 00:20:12:12

Levi Lascsak

Yeah, passive prospect income. We got a lot of great information on there and then you can have me up on Instagram if you want as well. Levi Classic.

00:20:13:00 - 00:20:34:16

Sam Wilson

Levi Last year will make sure, but the spelling there of Levi, his last name there in the show notes. And Levi, thank you again for coming on the day. I certainly appreciate it. Thank you. Hey, thanks for listening to the how to Scale Commercial Real Estate Podcast. If you can do me a favor and subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, whatever platform it is you use to listen.

00:20:35:02 - 00:20:46:23

Sam Wilson

If you can do that for us, that would be a fantastic help to the show. It helps us both attract new listeners as well as rank higher on those directories. So appreciate you listening. Thanks so much and hope to catch you on the next episode.