Welcome to the High Performance Agent Podcast. I'm your host, Tina Beliveau, and I'm an expert in real estate marketing, social media, technology, and systems. I'm here to teach you how to build a sustainable and consistent business that supports your dream life.
Through my repeat referral and relationship-driven systems, I've built a team that's sold nearly 2,000 homes over my 20 years in the industry. In this podcast, I keep it real and share exactly what I do, and more importantly, how you can do it too. If you're ready to scale faster, work smarter, and generate more leads from your sphere, please check out High Performance Agent Academy, my 12-month course packed with plug-and-play systems, done-for-you marketing, and step-by-step strategies.
You get my entire business in a box, plus coaching and personalized support from me every step of the way. Get all the details at tinabeliveau.com slash academy. Welcome back to the High Performance Agent Podcast.
I'm your host, Tina Beliveau, and I am excited to be back. I cannot recall exactly how long, but I think it's been about a year since I recorded an episode for this podcast. I've been on a hiatus working on a lot of other projects related to the academy and these email templates I came out with, and a whole lot more.
I just decided to let this podcast sit a little bit while I work on some other creative projects. However, when something inspires me enough, I will always change courses. We are coming back today because I have a special guest that I'm going to interview, and she's going to share how she has built a thriving, high-quality Instagram account that has caused her to become the go-to for people first moving to her town.
Even now, I think I won't speak for her because she's about to say everything, but becoming even more of a listing agent, presence in her town, a luxury presence. This mystery guest I'm now going to announce is Val Weber. Welcome, Val.
I'm glad you're here. Hey, Tina. I'm excited to talk to take us off of Boxer.
I have to make a long form call. Yeah, it's funny because Val and I voice memo a lot in Boxer. I don't know when.
What year did you launch your account, by the way? My Charleston home account? Yeah. 2018. Okay.
I wasn't even one of your early followers. We'll have to look at it someday. Someone I worked with turned me onto your account because she loves Charleston.
I love Charleston. The funny thing about me and Val is I was a long-time follower and admirer of her content. Then I saw her start to pivot into a little bit more to close to a year ago.
Then I did this thing I do once in a while where I'm a bit of a stalker, but I was basically, I think we should be friends. I forced you to be my friend, thank you. Yeah, it's been a wonderful friendship.
Thank you. I'm glad. I love how we've been able to bounce off of each other and learn from each other.
It's been awesome. Yeah, you're an inspiration. Oh, thank you.
Well, the love is mutual. That's for sure. Val is a low-key Instagram genius.
I said this to her in our momentary prep before we pushed the record button. She's not someone who went viral 10 seconds ago and is now trying to sell her wares, which is fine. I get it.
We all want to maximize our opportunities, but she's been doing this for a long time. That's what? Seven years. I had to do the math before we started.
Your ballpark is that you've created about $500,000 in gross commission income purely from your geographically focused Instagram account, which is huge. We're going to talk about why you did it, how you did it, and give people as much wisdom and ideas along the way as possible. If you want to pause and find her on Instagram, the account is at thecharlestonhome.
Val, can you start by describing a bit of your backstory, how you got into the business, anything relevant about what you did before that informed you on your Instagram journey? Give us a bit of your story. Yeah. I sold in Naples.
I sold here. I worked for a builder here. I moved to Southwest Florida, sold there for a year.
I have a bit of that going on there. Then I moved back to Charleston in 2017 and was all gung-ho about Instagram and having an Instagram account there. Actually, you know who I spoke with? I feel I talked to you about this.
Gogo? Oh, I don't know if I knew that part. Yeah. I spoke with her on the phone, I remember, right after I moved back here.
I don't even know why. I don't remember when I asked her something about a business account or something like that. We have a 20-minute phone call.
She was kind to speak with me. Anyway, I ended up making an Instagram account separate from my personal one called, and it was theproudcharlestonrealtor. I made a Gmail, and that was my thing.
That was my little tagline for myself, proudcharlestonrealtor, because I love it here. I love my job. I'm proud to do what I do.
I did that for a while. I guess, actually, not terribly long. A bit over a year, maybe, a year-ish.
Eventually, I was like, I'm kind of sick of A, running two accounts, B, talking about real estate all the time on this one account, because I felt like it's just a lot to keep up with real estate content all the time. I felt like it was kind of a hamster wheel in coming up with pretty good stuff and interesting stuff. I felt it was kind of boring.
It was kind of boring for me. As much as I love my job, I felt like it was a bit boring for me and boring for people. I just felt like I wasn't getting much traction on that.
At the same time, I launched our blog. We bought a house. We're still here.
It was a fixer-upper. I wanted to create content about that. I was like, okay, what if I just combine it all and kind of just evolve this entirely into what I actually want to be talking about and just combine it into two? I ended up making the Charleston Home blog, and then I changed my handle to the Charleston Home, and I stopped using my personal account.
I was like, I'm just going to combine everything. I want to be more of... I mean, back then, I kind of wanted to be more of an influencer. I was like, why can't I also be an influencer that sells real estate? Why can't I be both?
Can I just say, there's multiple things to unpack in what you said. I want to get to the influencing part, maybe as this conversation evolves, but one of the questions I get from all the time is having separate Instagram presences and the pros and cons. I think you and I are similar in that it's very hard to have multiple accounts in the launch phase. I typically recommend that people do it all in one, you have.
Then later, when you've achieved huge success, you have with, again, half a million dollars in commission income just from that one platform and lead generation resource. You have since launched a second profile, but first, you knocked one main profile out of the park. I find most people trying to have multiple profiles, it's hard to keep it all up, you were describing.
Anyone listening, I just want to give you permission if you've been struggling with that and you resonate with what Val is saying, I think we could both say two thumbs up to just roll it together and give yourself a lot more dimensions of content that you could be posting about. Yeah, it's less to keep up with. It feels more fun to talk about all of it.
I think having something else to talk about, and I know that there are lots of agents who do it and do it well, and it's fine if folks want to do that, but I just think that you can attract more people when you're talking about more than just real estate, and you can relate to people, and people can relate to you on things more than just real estate. That's what I ended up doing. I was like, I just want to talk about more things.
That's not the only thing that I am, and I just didn't find it very fun for me, and I just felt people didn't necessarily want to follow along, except for my friends and family. It just wasn't relevant content for people. It's all real estate.
It's not relevant for most people. Most periods in their life, that blip of time when you're buying yourself a home is a pretty small blip, and I felt like it was hard to catch people at that blip, me at that. I don't want to interject too much, but that's the thing I've tried to work on with my marketing and when I teach to agents.
It's why I launched a podcast for my client audience called All Things Home, because it is boring to just hear about buy-sell content or get emails from your agent being, come to my open house. When you're not house shopping, it's a price point and area you would never be interested in. No disrespect to anyone for their marketing tactics.
I feel we're all doing the best we can with the knowledge and resources and time that we have, but I've been obsessed with how do I make it relevant no matter what part of the life cycle you're in? You have nailed that, and it's why I've been around you for a long time. I like to make the real estate secondary. My goal is to attract and reach people based on everything else I have to offer, which to me, actually, it used to be a microfile.
It used to just be, well, there's another line or two, but it was All Things Charleston. I know that's not super-duper niching down, so there's obviously something to be said about niching down, but to me, it was, it is All Things Charleston. That's what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about my life in Charleston, and that was my whole thing was I just want to share about Charleston. I think that it's important to cast a wider net so that people can follow you for you, and whatever other value you have, most of us have much more value and entertainment to offer and resources to offer. I prefer the real estate to be secondary to cast a wider net so that people want to follow me.
I'm not saying that the follower number is first and foremost, because it's not. It is about the right people. To me, I find that the people, and I think this is just, for real estate in general, a lot of people want to transact and hire with somebody that they feel gets them, understands them, maybe are in a similar season of life, and just get it.
A lot of my clients now are families either about to have children or have young kids, and to them, they're, you just get it. You get it. That's the other things that I share in mind.
That's what I choose to share. Not everybody wants to share their kids and their family and stuff, but I do, and it's my life in Charleston. I'm going out, and I like to share the content that's that people are going to want to come to.
I love when they come to me for real estate, of course, but I think 9.9 times out of 10, people are finding me based on my other content, and then staying for that. Then somewhere along the line, they're buying or selling a house, and they're already following me, and we already have some kind of cool relationship. Yeah, just what I provide, and then I'm on top of mind.
Yeah, I'm just sitting here nodding my head. There's a couple of directions I want to go, but I want to touch on the follower count thing for a minute. You're knocking on the door of 10,000 followers, which is huge. It's a threshold most accounts never get to. At the same time, I feel there can be this, and you can correct me if you feel differently, but I feel there's this allure in Instagram of hoping that overnight you get 100,000 followers, and everything will work out. It's the quick, magical thinking, or wanting the easy button for business or anything in life, and you're a testament to 9,000 followers is a lot, but it's also doable, and then still look at the results.
It's what you said about the right people. I'm curious if there's anything with your mindset around your follower count that you can share that has helped you figure out what works for you, what makes sense with growth, what really matters, because I think it's this whole conversation of vanity metrics, numbers that look big, but maybe don't do anything in your business. Do you have any comment on that? I want to tell a side story about that.
I know that, especially in my membership when I'm teaching stuff about Instagram, I know that, and I don't have a massive amount of followers, but I would say I probably have a bit more than the average person, I'm afraid people see, oh, you have over 9,000 followers. It's easy for you to say, but I have to remind people that I was selling homes, meeting clients through Instagram when I had a fraction of that number, and also—How many? Do you remember your starting line besides zero, but where were you kind of stuck in the beginning?
I think I was pretty stuck around somewhere between 3,500 and 5,500 maybe. I did have two videos go viral that have absolutely nothing to do with anything I ever share on my Instagram. I remember one, the golfing with your dad, right?
I had one go viral that I made of my dad, just a silly video of him picking out his outfits before his boy's golf trip. That went viral, and then around last Christmas, I had another video that I made teasing my husband for flipping the stamps on the Christmas cards the wrong way, and that went viral, too, and truthfully, that's where probably another 3,000 of mine came from. Yes, I did have these things go viral. However, they truly have had nothing to do with my real estate business, and some of those are probably come and gone, they didn't help my business at all.
I just grew my number, but well before that. I mean, that video, one of them was two years ago, and half of my business has been coming from Instagram for about seven years now, the first five years of that, growing from zero to wherever I was, maybe around 5,000 or something at that time, I was building relationships from zero to then without this bigger number. I think you don't want the big numbers anyway, because it really is true. You want the right people.
You want the right people. Quality is better than quantity. I want the people who can resonate with me and connect with me and my content and want to stay and want to engage, and that's more important to me than more fluff.
More followers have to be more fluff sometimes, and it's still been a long road. I mean, even with those two videos, non-related videos, going viral, I mean, I've been growing this for seven years. Once I changed the name, yeah, six and a half, almost seven years, I mean, it's been, it's not overnight at all.
It's still effort. I don't think many of us will ever go viral. It's a process. It's not an overnight thing, but I'm pretty happy with what I've done over the last seven years from being essentially, I mean, I don't want to call myself an influencer, really, but a micro-account, a micro-influencer, so to speak, so yeah.
Absolutely micro-influencer, for sure, and I think there's just such a powerful lesson too for anyone. I think it's easy to look at people's followers and wonder all kinds of things, and I think what I'm hearing is it might be really half of your follower count that is driving this huge revenue, so if you're at 1,000 right now, that could still equate to $100,000 a year in revenue from Instagram, right?
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. They're in there. It's really about being strategic and serving those people because they're there getting this. That's what I aim to do with my Instagram is I want people to find the value.
Sometimes it's simply entertainment. Sometimes that's what it is, and sometimes that's what people are there for, but I also want to be getting value, and I think that's really important for agents to be getting, yes, the real estate-related value, but other value to cast a wider net for more people to want to follow you. And that's really the meat of what I want to talk about.
Again, I was drawn to you because you have a multidimensional presence, and there's a lot of things that we have in common, and then there's also, I said to you, there's this thing about Charleston. It's a place people love. It's a place you visit and want to go back to, and you really, I think, have leveraged that well. Six and a half years is a long time to build an account.
I'm sure you've tested a zillion different things of what works for you to post, and then what also works for engagement and growth, and I think you've stuck really well to selling to people the way you like to be sold to, which is basically very lucky. You just said, getting an aggregate and being a hub. You're not just people to go to for real estate questions.
I know people ask you a zillion other things for local intel of all kinds, and I really cultivated that on Facebook. I'm a little older than you. I think that's maybe the number one driver, I'm a Facebook OG, and that was really what built my business, but I think if you were to start to try and unpack for people listening to this what you figured out with your content, whether it's your reels, your stories, just can you walk us through how you get value today, and maybe even how that's evolved, if there's things you've learned that are really important that maybe didn't work, and why? Just download for us, please.
Okay, I'll start with one thing, and that is the ratio of business and personal. I think that is really important on having an appropriate ratio where you're not shoving real estate down people's throats all the time. They can get to know you as a real person, and they can just see into your life and kind of behind the scenes and stuff like that, but you're still giving value.
I'll just give you generally my rule of thumb is I do about 50-50 on my stories, and then in my feed it's more like 30% business, 70% personal, and then also thinking about content pillars. Obviously real estate is going to be one of them, but then what else are you giving your people? Again, some of this can be entertainment. To me, my pillars are essentially, and these have changed over the years.
When we bought this house as a fixer-upper, it was very much home-related, and that's why I named it the Charleston Home, because that's kind of what my blog was about. It was a lot more home projects and fixer-uppers and stuff like that. But my pillars now are real estate, life with my kids and my family and kid-friendly things, and being a mom, and just generally my life in Charleston and things that I do around Charleston, things that are happening in Charleston.
I still, even though it's not my tagline in my profile, I still feel like I'm just very all things Charleston, but also kind of in the lens of moms at this point, because that's my life. Anyway, I think that's my main advice for Instagram-related content at least. Again, you're not making the hard sell, but it's just woven into everything you do.
You were talking about the ratio of business to personal, and you were talking about your content pillars. The question is for people who are, yes, I get that I should have, you listed three great pillars: real estate, kid/mom, and then life in Charleston overall. I think the question is, what can you say to people who kind of want to get going? Give some examples and some advice, please.
Yeah, yeah. Okay, what I would recommend is pretty much just think about your lead pillars and what are you doing in your day-to-day business and life already, and just share your day-in-the-life, literally your day-in-the-life. Some people I know get a lot of time, and some people are just a bit overwhelmed by posting there anyway.
What I like to recommend is just take some photos and videos on your phone while you're out in your day-in-the-life, while you're getting your coffee or your breakfast, or this appointment, your inspection, you're showing, whatever's going on in your work life, business life, snap those videos, photos while you're out there, and then just batch share them that night, or when you're sitting in your car in between appointments, and then just batch share them. I know some people just don't know, I literally just say day-in-the-life. I feel that's the premise also of what I do on Instagram is just literally day-in-the-life, and with real estate stuff, when I didn't have a lot of business going on, it was, okay, I'm doing open houses, I'm taking a class at my board, I'm taking a picture of the class that I'm taking at my realtor board, and I'm sharing all the content about open houses, and just that day-in-the-life, it's the little reminders of reminding people without explicitly reminding them that you sell real estate, and it's content as well, it's staying on top of mind and putting out content as well, and what are you doing already in your life?
To me, I love iced lattes, that's my thing, I share about coffee shops a lot, I go for a lot of walks, I share that kind of day-in-the-life stuff, sometimes I've done posts about my favorite coffee shops, or the holiday specials, I did a little pumpkin spice latte review in the fall where I tried a bunch of local coffee shops, and then for real estate stuff, I'm always thinking about how can I stand out from the crowd, how can I share what other agents are not sharing?
To me, I'm not usually doing the market updates, and that's great, and that's fine, and there are plenty of other agents doing that, and people are getting that content already, I'm trying to share the lesser-known things, which are not necessarily lesser-known, but I guess maybe lesser-shared, I will say.
You did something recently about your homestead exemption, right?
Yeah, honestly, it might have been inspired, I've shared that before, but you and I do some similar things, and I might have seen yours first, but my story went viral, for a while, for my stories is when I get tons of DMs, thank you, oh my gosh, I have people expressing regret at not using you as their agent, and I just took time to explain something that's a bit more high-level than, did you know FHA down payments are only 3.5%?
Exactly, yes, oh my god, you totally get it, Tina, this is my friend, yes, and to me, it's okay, you reach people who didn't use you, but now, you just made a real impression on them, they're literally expressing their regret for not hiring you, and either will hire you next time, or they're probably going to refer you. I don't think we always need to be necessarily reaching somebody who is going to be our client, we can also be reaching people who can refer us.
That’s where it's, just give valuable stuff. I have a whole campaign on essentially that, that you did. Here in Charleston, if you are a primary resident, you get this primary resident tax break. It's what we call 4%. If you own a second home or investment property, it's 6%, but you have to apply for that 4%. Otherwise, when tax time comes, they start charging you the 6%. They’ll put you in as 4% right off the bat, assuming that you're going to prove it, and if you don't prove it to them and go through the application process, they'll whack you with a 6%. You have to go through a retroactive process to fix that, which is fixable, but just a pain in the butt.
What I do is, our tax bills go out here early October, so August, I'll email, of course, first and foremost, all my past clients that bought that year. It pretty much is the fall of the year prior, and that actual year. I'll send it to them in personal emails, and I'll send it to my email list, and I'll put it on my social medias. I'm, hey, FYI, if you bought a house in the Charleston area, that's your primary residence, sometime between October 2024 and today, don't forget to fill out and apply for your 4% tax rate. I do a whole campaign on that. I remind people, I send multiple emails to my email list, I make a reel, I put it in my Instagram stories, and I'm, hey, heads up.
I have a part two essentially of that that happens at the end of September, early October, that says, hey, heads up, tax bills are coming out. Don’t be alarmed. What we do is, maybe they do this everywhere, but they send us an actual bill in the mail, even though most people who have a mortgage escrow their taxes and it's already paid in their escrow. But we get that bill, and everyone's heart skips a beat, and they freak out, wait, what is this, thousands of dollars bill? What do you mean? What do you mean? People start to panic.
I do a kind of part two campaign on that. I’ve had people message me saying, thank you for the reminder, I freaked out last year, and I didn't this year because I saw all your posts about it. And then I try to say, it's funny, even sometimes the clients who you're, they're not going to forget, they're the world's most organized person, they also respond saying, thank you so much, I almost forgot, thank you for the reminder. It's just helpful. I always put a little call to action, share this with a friend who bought a house in the last year, try to get it out there even more.
I had a friend of a friend who bought a house when she first moved here, didn’t use me, that's fine, we didn’t even know each other. She reached out to me and said, hey, here's my bill, I saw you talk about this, and I feel this isn't right. What happened? Her agent never told her. I don't know how that, agent didn't tell her, she forgot, I don't know, but she didn't apply to the 4%, so they had to retroactively fix it. The 6% is double to triple, your mortgage payment goes up significantly. This was a million-dollar, $1.2 million house, so the taxes were pretty high.
She messaged me asking for help. She didn't even ask her agent. She bought her house a year and a half ago. She may be staying in the house for several years and might not have the opportunity to hire me in the near future, but she may refer me. Now she remembers me. I was the helpful one that saved the day when she overpaid or helped her fix it after the fact. I don't know if she missed the part one of my content where I told her to apply, but I guess she didn't know to apply.
I get a lot of feedback on that, and that can go far, and wide, and deep with just that one, or I guess two concepts, two tips for people. It's not about sharing things one time. I’ll put that in my stories, send a couple different emails.
Some other things, there's this one credit union, local credit union, that has this jumbo loan program. Right now, I can't remember, I think it's a five-year ARM, and the rate is about 6%. Obviously it's not 30-year conventional, it's a different program, but they can get a much lower interest rate, and they can save all this money. If they decide that that is something that they want to do, they can get this lower interest rate, save the money on it.
I'll put that in my stories and I'll send emails about that. It's information, of course, I also want to hopefully get leads in the jumbo loan buyer pool. I am willingly giving that information. I'm not holding it back. I do ask people to DM me, but I put that out there for information because there's only one bank. A lot of people don't know that.
If you can find these special, unique programs or special tips, or where's Airbnb allowed, I've done a couple things about it. It's a little bit tricky, where STRs, Airbnbs are allowed around here. I'll do stuff about that. It’s finding these little hidden, lesser-talked-about things that are still valuable.
Of course, I still share stuff that everybody's talking about. Not every single thing is a hidden gem or secret, but I try to find those things that other people aren't talking about.
If you just got to start somewhere, start somewhere with something. I even do first-time homebuyer programs. I don't talk about them a whole lot anymore, but I do just kind of like to get hand-raisers, so I'll email about that, and I'll talk about that, and PMI.
If you just sit down and think about what's helpful—and it doesn’t have to be somebody... I feel a lot of agents are trying to always get the new clients, but it's, how can you just serve people, period?
If they're following me, to me, I'm, your sphere of influence—that is everybody. That can also be, obviously, your social media. It's a giant spider web that can go to everybody. Everybody knows other people, and you never know who can refer you.
I just want to be, and I think all of us agents, as just people in our community, aim to be helpful, and memorable, and valuable.
You just gave a mountain of gold, I'm, where do I even begin? No, I love it. There’s two questions I wrote down while you were talking. The first, the question you said you ask yourself was, how can I stand out from the crowd? Your content ideas around that are absolutely stellar, and I draw inspiration from following you all the time. But then you said, how can I just serve people, period? I think that is what separates someone like you, who is a true community connector and trusted person that people rely on, from the agent looking for just the immediate sale.
It's easy to just look for the immediate sale when you're new, when you're desperate, when you're feeling the pinch. It's valid to feel that way, and I think it's important to surround yourself with people, thought leaders, Instagram accounts that show this other way of doing it. I always say, your database, and whether your database is just in a CRM or all over social media, where you've kind of really got both covered—if you take care of your database, they will take care of you and your business for the rest of your life.
What you started to say and kind of stopped short of—serving people online creates so many opportunities aside from real estate. Early on in this episode, you mentioned that you've always had an interest in being an influencer. I have too. I want to unpack that for a moment.
I think about how I've built my team because of my social media connections. I rent my Airbnb out several times a year directly, which, by the way, is a higher profit margin than paying Airbnb fees. People rent my house because of my social media.
There are so many things that have happened in my life because of my social media presence. It's almost unquantifiable beyond just huge opportunity with real estate transactions and referrals and commissions and all that. There are so many other opportunities, whether they're very tactical—like I love that I rent my house out—to the softer stuff of, when you do have a presence, it opens doors.
Having a decent follower count can definitely benefit you in various scenarios. I've made affiliate income off of various things. I come from that place too—I want to help people, I want to protect them from that terrible tax bill, I don't want them to pay PMI when they could have applied to get it removed, just the way you do. That is the heart of it, and that's what people really connect to. But then there's all the benefits that come from it too. If you want to speak to that, I'm curious what your thoughts and experiences are surrounding that.
Yeah, I guess I'll just talk about numbers-wise, the impact and spider web effect that your social media can have. Let's just say you have 2,000 followers. Those 2,000 followers know how many people, right? I love to talk about Instagram Stories as a place to “sell” because you use links, and I get pretty good engagement on my stories.
Think of it this way: if you get 100 views on your Instagram Stories, that is 100 people that you just touched, that you reached, with all of your content—that you couldn't have otherwise. Yes, you could send an email, but you couldn't make that many calls, you can't send that many texts, you can't send them postcards, whatever it may be. It's a more personal thing. Many of us, I know you do, I do, I get my face on my stories, and I talk in there a bit. People get to know us on a personal level.
It's a more personal touch, and engaging touch, than even sometimes email—even though I love, love, love email.
The reach can be significant, specifically on social media. I’ll say on a similar note, I started a moms group from Instagram at a time that my son was two, and my daughter was about six months, and it was hard to get out—being a working mom with two young kids. I just wanted to meet more mom friends. I didn't have that many friends that were moms at the time. It was lonely. Being an entrepreneur can be lonely, because we don't have co-workers.
I wanted to meet more people. I started this mom group, it's been going on for two and a half years. I made a bunch of friends. What I love—I remembered we did this party bus for a night to go to different holiday parties in December—and one of the girls was, I forgot how she said it, something like, I call it the two degrees of Val, or something like that. She’s, I always know somebody that somehow knows Val. I love that so much.
This was not real estate-related at all. It was just a bit of social media and just from this moms group that started from Instagram. I love that. I think that's just—I love community. Maybe it's since I've become a mom and an entrepreneur, and a combination of what can be lonely there, the community has been a big thing. Connecting people, again, not even real estate-related, just in general, has been something I’ve loved.
Another story—I had a past client who was from South Africa, and had a current client at this time from South Africa. There was a big game—I think it was a soccer game, a big championship game that was happening—and I ended up, somehow, I can’t even remember, but I connected the two of them. I guess there’s a very small South African community here in Charleston. I connected them, and the current client went to the party that my past client was at and met all these other South Africans in the Charleston area that he didn’t know.
I love that. Then you know more people, and more people know you. That’s how it kind of trickles down into real estate, because it's a people business. You need to know people to sell houses to people. The more people that you know, and the more people that know you, is crucial, really.
Yeah, I feel one of the threads in what you said that I also resonate with is, you really purposefully use Instagram to hang out in real life and take it off Instagram—not with everybody. You need social media to reach the masses. One story can be seen by thousands of people. But then there's also this small batch side of things—having a couple tight relationships can also do so much in our businesses.
I've seen you launch your working moms group. You walk around Charleston a lot—at least when it’s not the dead of winter—and you invite people to walk with you. You invite people to raise their hand and connect with you, and that's probably part of why I raised my hand. Same thing. It's crazy how the internet can facilitate that. But if you take that to the next level and become a builder of community or an inclusive, inviting presence, people respond to that.
Yeah, yeah. And as a real estate agent, not the always, “Let’s chat, let’s chat, let’s chat” kind of thing. Not that I never say that, but it always feels a bit more like a salesy invitation. Not everything I do on Instagram is for real estate, of course, but yeah, I like community. I like connecting people. I like getting out there, being involved.
Which is funny, because I don’t consider myself a very outgoing person, which probably sounds insane. But I think it’s also been a mom thing—it’s a mom-entrepreneur combination of things. But yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and it’s funny. I don’t know, I’m such a nerd, but I always look for themes in what people are doing that other people could replicate. There’s so much you do with your account, but I was processing as we were walking through—it’s connection and community, the things we’re talking about. Actually hanging out with people, but also being willing to share yourself. Putting your face on stories. And again, if you don’t want to talk on video, that’s fine. You can just take videos—there are ways to do it. But the point is, you’ve got this connection/community pillar.
This isn’t your content pillars, it’s more your content methods that I see. So there’s that piece. There’s the credibility and loyalty that comes from the value you give—the advice, the resources, saving people from mistakes or money lost. Then there’s your lead capture. There are calls to action, they're just fewer and further between. It’s seeing that short ad in the middle of the video versus feeling like, oh my gosh, it’s just too much.
The fourth thing that you do is you’re really good with showcasing beautiful homes. You’re in such an aesthetic place, so you can showcase the beauty of where you live and the homes within it.
I just wanted to say—we’ll wrap this up after this last question—you’ve done a lot of great things with reels, with featuring homes. Even the way you’ll scroll interesting houses and screen record that and put that on your stories. Are there any actionable one or two tips that you could give people on how to stand out from the crowd in the way you share beautiful house content that might resonate better than a “just listed” Canva graphic, as an example?
Yeah. Specifically when I am marketing and advertising—you’ll have to correct me if I’m going the wrong way with this—but when I’m showcasing beautiful homes, sometimes they’re just beautiful homes because they’re either brand new and a million dollars, and what comes with that is a beautiful home, or they’re beautifully staged. Sometimes it's purely for aesthetics.
But when I’m marketing other homes in my Instagram stories—and occasionally in a reel to capture leads—I’m not just... I’m making sure that I’m sharing something. What is special about that house? Instead of just saying, here’s your run-of-the-mill house, kind of looks like everything else, here’s the town, here’s the price... What’s special about it? What’s going to pique somebody’s interest?
Yesterday I shared one—it’s a 15-minute bike ride, golf cart ride to the beach, and everything is brand new. That’s the thing about that house. I just shared another one a little bit ago—it has no HOA. When I’m sharing that kind of content to stand out, I want that listing to stand out. Why is this important? Why is this a great house? Why is this special? Why is this rare? Why is this unique? Why should you care about this one?
Instead of just your everyday million-dollar house or your everyday $800,000 house in Mount Pleasant—what’s great about it? People are just going to keep scrolling by. You’ve got to tell them why this is important, why they should pay attention to it. That’s why I don’t—except for the ones that are truly just beautiful and people are going to want to look at them just for nosy reasons—I don’t do just “look at this pretty thing.” I always ask: what is special about it?
Whether it’s 15 minutes to the beach, or 15 minutes from the city, or zoned for this elementary school that is desirable, or—for me—the no HOA, that’s pretty hard to come by. Or this one neighborhood that has this water slide at the neighborhood pool. I’ve never seen it in any other neighborhood. I was like, “You want this. You’ve got kids that want to live at this water slide. Swipe this…” swipe this thing, whatever you call that thing…
The swipey thing.
Yeah, the swipey thing. “Swipe the swipey thing if you want to see all the homes for sale in this neighborhood with this really sweet water slide.”
That was about that neighborhood. If you have kids, maybe you would be like, I want to live in this neighborhood. My kids would love that water slide. Just—how does that listing stand out? What’s important about it? What’s special about it? Otherwise, it’s just kind of falling on deaf ears and deaf eyes, so to speak.
Or I’ll do something like, “This is the lowest-priced three-bedroom home in this town,” or “The lowest-priced four-bedroom home in this neighborhood,” so that it stands out, for whatever reason. Because I see a lot of agents just sharing this and that and what’s new and what’s new and what’s new… What’s cool about this one? I need to know that I should know.
I need to know that I should know. I feel you shared—no, you nailed it, because it’s not... There are so many crucial things we've talked about. I think to boil it down, where you just landed here is, you really have figured out how to give people what they really want. I just encourage anyone listening to take note—hook someone with a beautiful house, but then take one extra minute to find the angle, to find the nugget.
I've seen you be, “This is one of the few homes in such-and-such part that’s Airbnb...” It's interesting how much of your content covers and checks a lot of these boxes. I think anyone who wants to improve their Instagram game—you probably weren’t nailing it six years ago, but because of a lot of practice, a lot of testing, and building the muscle—getting better at it, getting more comfortable, being less afraid to go on video, being less afraid to try something and be totally okay if it flops. I think there’s so much that time can do.
I would encourage anyone listening to just try and up your game a bit, whether it's the digital hook, the tips you give—yep, wrap that up for me. But that’s where I think it really is for people.
I was just going to say, just keep trying and keep creating. If you're somebody—if you're an agent who wants to lean into Instagram—I'm not going to tell you it's easy, but it's easier than a lot of the other things that are just not my jam, the kind of traditional stuff. To me, it's easier, and I enjoy it already. It does take some time and effort and testing and tweaking. But the ROI can be really amazing. It's worth the time and strategy and consistency.
I'm proof that it is. You just have to keep trying it and testing it out and figure out what your people like, and what kind of towns and neighborhoods and content your people want. You'll start to learn a little bit more, but it really is just about putting content out there and trying it.
The old “done is better than perfect”—just get it out there, do it. This is slightly off-topic, but some people don’t like to get on camera. I don’t care necessarily—I talk on camera when I don’t have makeup on—but sometimes when I’m like, I don’t have any makeup on, I don’t want to talk, I’ll sit in my car and have my sunglasses on. If you’re not comfortable talking on camera, I totally understand. You don’t have to be doing that all the time.
But if you want to make yourself more comfortable: A, practice. B, maybe put sunglasses on. Maybe just get on there and say your 10 seconds, and you made your appearance, and then that’s it. Say what else you want to say in text.
It doesn’t have to be intentional, it doesn’t have to be consistent—but getting out there, putting stuff out there, and always having in the back of your mind, “How can I make this valuable? How can I be valuable? How can I be memorable? How can I be a little bit different?”—that is my whole philosophy in everything I do. It's been great for me, and it's valuable, and it's good for the consumer.
Yeah. And it’s funny, just the example of putting your sunglasses on—it’s just having the will to find a way versus, “Oh, I don’t love how I look today.” We all feel that way maybe 50 percent of the time. If I only went on video when I felt my max togetherness—especially as a mom—it’s not happening. What’s the method? What’s the hack? What’s the thing I can do?
That’s where I want to lead people. There's only so much we can unpack in an episode. Val started a membership last year for real estate agents who want to learn how she is doing this at a much deeper level—templates, the ins and outs. She has two Instagram profiles I want to refer you all to.
Her main one is @thecharlestonhome, and all of this will be linked in the show notes. Her profile for agents, where you can learn more about her membership, is @the.inspiresociety. Did you want to say anything about that?
Yeah. I, for some reason, don’t talk about where the name came from a whole lot—and it’s actually the whole premise of everything I do. If this kind of thing—if somebody’s listening to this—resonates with you, I highly recommend a book called Sell with Soul. I read that early in my journey, thankfully. Her whole philosophy was serving and not selling. Instead of asking for business and asking for referrals and stuff—that was not her cup of tea. It’s also not mine.
She would rather inspire people to hire her. I don’t actually know if she used the word “inspire” to be honest with you, but I’ve always said that. That’s how I always remembered it. But she said she wants to attract business to her instead—more of a pull method instead of a push method.
I think I read that within my first year in the business after trying a lot more traditional stuff—the door knocking and the calling expireds and expensive postcards. That was not resonating, it was not aligned with me or my personality at all. I started leaning into the social media and the sphere of influence and more organic growth. I’ve loved it. I’ve done very well with it.
I’ve learned that there are a lot of other agents like me who want to run a business more like that. I would love to change the business a bit into more of that—where we’re ingrained in our communities. I would love for us to be a bit more like that.
I want to shake the negative perception that some—not all—people have about real estate agents. I think a lot of that comes from the more traditional methods that can feel a bit intrusive to some people.
I think a lot of that comes from the more traditional methods that can feel a bit intrusive to some people.
I love the more organic lead generation strategies, and that’s pretty much what I’m teaching in the membership. It’s a lot of Instagram, sphere of influence, email marketing—just teaching all those strategies. The stuff that I literally have done and still do in my business right now that has earned me that $500,000 in commissions from Instagram alone.
Instagram is about half of my business every year. The other half is a combination of repeat clients and referrals, which I feel like most of us real estate agents—that’s kind of the dream business. It was when I first started, and I was a little astray in the beginning, but thankfully came home to what really was aligned to me.
It is beautiful. Yes, this is eight years in the making, but even pretty early on, business was coming to me. Yes, there is work—we do have to do work—but it’s the kind of work that is aligned to my personality. There are, obviously—I’ve had this membership since the summer now—and I have several members that align with that. That resonates a lot more with them.
That’s what my membership is all about, and I love it. I’m teaching all the stuff that I do, that I’ve had success with. I don’t gatekeep anything. I want everybody to do all of this stuff. It’s a lot more fun for people like us. I love it, and I’m loving the membership and teaching everybody.
I feel like I’m very much a teacher and community builder at heart, and it’s pulling out all of my strengths in one place, which is really fun.
Yeah, I was about to jump in and say—your love for it comes across. It's very apparent. I would just say thank you, first of all, for sharing your wisdom, your tricks, your lessons over the years of doing this.
Anyone listening—check out @thecharlestonhome for inspiration on what to do. Check out @the.inspiresociety for how to do it. We'll link up the membership as well.
Keep that in mind if you have any Charleston-area referrals. I intend to come back with a couple of episodes here and there for the podcast. I don’t think I’ll be releasing every single week, but if you haven’t subscribed or followed, make sure to do that. I have a bit more up my sleeve.
If you haven’t checked out High Performance Agent Academy recently, I’ve made a lot of upgrades and changes. It’s my flagship program for helping agents implement systems of their own in their business. Check that out.
And thank you again, Val. I really appreciate you taking this time. And yeah.
This was fun. I know that we could just talk the entire afternoon about this.
Oh my gosh, I know. You probably need to go. Let me ask you this—I always ask for a parting shot in interviews. If you were to give everyone listening a quick tip to up your Instagram game today—something doable, something simple—what would you say as some marching orders?
Oh, okay. I’m going to tell you to take “Realtor” out of your Instagram profile.
Oh—ending with an unpopular opinion. Controversial—not unpopular. Yeah.
Just because, if this resonates with you—with the ratios, and kind of leaning into the lifestyle and stuff—I just find I don’t want anybody to ever not follow me, or follow you, or anybody else, because of that. Because it’s not relevant to them right now.
But if you want to create all this other local content, that’s what you should be leaning into, because that’s going to be the majority of what you’re sharing. You want people to come to you and stay for that stuff instead.
I love that. That’s a great one to end on. If you want to unpack that more, you’ve got to follow Val.
We’ll end it there—because we could keep going forever and ever.
Thank you all for listening, and keep your eye out for the next episode.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of the High Performance Agent Podcast. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss the next one. And check the show notes for links to all of my resources, including my course, High Performance Agent Academy.
And please come say hi on Instagram. You can find me at Tina Belleveau. Talk to you soon.
