Doug: Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug show. I’m talking to my new buddy. We met like. Two minutes ago called Sam Newman and the, the idea for this show is just me talking to YouTubers. And I was like, why not chat with folks that are sort of local in the area and talk about things that I want to talk about.
And we’ll kind of back into it a little bit, but we’re going to talk about getting started on YouTube, the challenges we’re going to talk some of the tech stuff, cause I actually really enjoy the equipment and some of the challenges. That well, at this point I’ve solved a lot of them, but it’s cool to hear what other challenges people are running into and how they solve them.
And then how Sam is using YouTube to help his business and earn money. And I think everything will sort of come together and we’re just going to have a fun time. I think we have a lot of common interests. So Sam, how’s it going today?
Sam: It’s going great, man. Thanks for having me on. I love talking about this type of stuff.
So, uh, I’m really stoked to, to talk to you. I love what you’re doing on the channel and kind of that long form really getting into the the minutia and just like the really important stuff about kind of building a channel and video marketing
Doug: right on. Thank you. I’m, I’m pumped to get into the details.
Like I said, I think both of us really enjoy the medium and I’m, so for the people that don’t know you, can you just give a little intro about who you are and what you do, and then we’ll kind of dig into some of the YouTube stuff here.
Sam: Yeah, sure. My name is Sam Newman. I’m a, so I’m a residential real estate agent.
That’s what I do by day. night and weekend. But I’m, you know, I’ve been in that field for about, I’m in my fifth year. So not super long, but long enough to see a lot of, um, people ask how the market is. And I’m, I typically say weird. I just, I don’t think I’ve seen every, every little market I’ve been in, in, in real estate every year has been a weird market in a different way.
It’s a lot. Differently weird now than it was in say 2021, but it’s been awesome. But anyway, I have been, I have a YouTube channel called Denver living with Sam Newman. Denver is where I’m located. And I started that sort of as a vehicle for the real estate business. When I got into real estate, my, my previous gig, I was a full time video editor.
Producer. So people were telling me the brokerage I started out, they were like video, video, that’s the thing to do video. And I was like, uh, okay, well, I know I can do that. I don’t know about the rest of this stuff, but you know, we’ll figure that out. And so it was a very slow start, especially on YouTube for real estate for building kind of a local.
Real estate channel, which is what I’ve done. Like I, I, we can talk about it, but it was just crickets for the first six months at least, and kind of even beyond that. And but I was in it for the long haul and I kind of saw the, the power of it long form video and local content. for real estate.
And so I committed to it and, and now it has completely changed my business. I don’t think I’d still be doing real estate if it weren’t for YouTube and for video. And that’s the stuff that really, really gets me going. And it’s just been fantastic, man. So I love it.
Doug: That’s super cool. And I didn’t even know, but you know, the quality rises to the top and for a video medium.
Like YouTube or really, I mean, there’s video on other social media, but like knowing lighting and editing and like the sort of the technical aspect highlights. One of the things I talk about often is like you had an unfair advantage, right? So it’s like other people may be like, Oh yeah, Sam did this YouTube channel obviously put in.
Your reps, you put in a lot of time, you dealt with the first six months, which is really tough when no one’s really paying attention, but you also had a lot of skills in the video area. Can you give us a little bit more detail about that? Like how long did you work in video and all those kinds of things?
Sam: Yeah, absolutely. I was, uh, so I worked in video probably since college. So I’m 38 now. And like I said, five years in real estate, so a good decade plus of doing video in one way or another. Mostly in sports video. I worked with a lot of, I worked up at the University of Colorado. That’s how I ended up out, out here.
And so live production and then editing. I worked for a regional sports network, TV network for about six years before getting into real estate. And so, yeah, it was an unfair advantage in that way. And I was, I was comfortable with the tools. Knew that I liked doing video and it was always really comfortable for me.
I only stopped that job because COVID and, you know, I was my, I was a contractor at the time. So the work dried up and I had a lot of time to sit and think and go on walks and figure out what I wanted to do. And being a full time editor is great. I still love the job, but. When that’s all you’re doing, you are sitting in a room by yourself for eight, 10 hours a day that can get a little monotonous, you know, and I was, I guess, looking for a little more human connection, but you know, like I said, so I, I came with those skills and those interests even more than the skills that I think that’s the big thing because it was It was a benefit to me, but I actually don’t think it’s as necessary the editing part knowing that was helpful because I didn’t have to hire an editor right now.
Right now I do have an editor to handle some of the stuff, just some of the workload, but I still do some of it myself. But honestly, I think I’m very lucky that I didn’t have a training in like television news. You know, I was always behind the camera rather than in front of the camera, and I didn’t pick up.
I think you can yeah. You can pick up some habits doing on camera stuff the old school way that don’t necessarily translate to YouTube or to the best way to connect with people right now. I find that people want you know, I’m sure you do too, something more authentic for the most part and actually less polished.
And so You know, not having that. And of course, like everybody else, once I started being on camera, I started with the Hello, I’m Sam Newman with Keller Williams real estate and, you know, sort of this stilted approach and over time was able to strip that away a little bit and try to be a little more genuine.
I think being Yourself on camera is kind of a a constant battle. You know, it’s, it’s, for some reason, the hardest thing to do is just to be natural, but because you have to, you have to show up with a certain energy too, but I’ve done it. So anyway, it’s, it’s just been a very interesting journey of tinkering with things and I love a good high production shoot and I have the contacts and I have the background to be able to do that sort of thing.
But what’s been really interesting the last year or so is I’ve been experimenting with. with lower production, more raw, more come along with me type of almost behind the scenes type content and seeing how that does. And really that has been some of my best performing video. And so that’s been really interesting to see and sort of I don’t think I’m at the end of drawing any conclusions on the right or wrong way to go about anything.
But I do think there’s a, there’s a path forward for anybody there who, even if you don’t have the background, it. in it. That’s not necessarily a detriment. And in some ways that might actually be an advantage.
Doug: Great points there. And, you know, I, I didn’t have any skills. I took some photos when I was, I dunno, probably since like high school, I had an interest in cameras and stuff.
It’s a good parallel, but I didn’t have any like professional experience. So yeah. People, y’all can figure it out if, if you need to. And the thing is, there’s editors out there because I, I don’t edit my stuff, right? Like I actually, to your point of low production value. That, that’s my wheelhouse, but my stuff looks pretty
Sam: good though.
Doug: Thank you. Yeah. Like it’s it’s a mess around here, but it’s good enough for what we’re doing. But yeah, like in the early days, it was just like bad lighting on my webcam or whatever. And it’s like, just, you know, get the content out there. So let’s shift gears just a little bit here. So I found you, like I said, I was like, ah, I want to.
Talk to people like around here, people that live in, are you from Colorado originally? Or
Sam: no, not originally. I grew up in Minnesota, but I’ve been here 14 years.
Doug: Okay. Got it. Yeah. So cool people that move away from their home state, they come to Colorado and we like outdoor stuff for mountains and other like people.
We have a lot of stuff in common that relocate to this area or the mountain West in general, or wherever you live. Like, uh, some people like the beach. So the beach people. Can hang out with other beach people. Yeah.
Sam: They find each other and we find a like minded folks.
Doug: I searched for like Denver food.
Cause I love the food network. Like I think it was getting big like in the late. Nineties or so when I was getting old enough to like I, I was in college basically. So late nineties really loved the food network watched, you know, so many hours of that stuff and diners drive ins and dives. I think it came out in like 2007, but a guy is awesome.
Now on YouTube, like there’s just like clip after clip, like you could basically watch it 24 hours a day. He has like 30 seasons of this stuff. And I love that style. And, and, you know, maybe in a few years, like, I feel like I want to produce a show where I like go around and hit some local spots and try to copy him.
But anyway, you had some food videos. So what. Drove you to that. Cause like people hear you’re into real estate and it seems like, Oh, you should just talk about real estate, but you have a pretty decent amount of food and other local type content. So talk about food with me a little bit here and like why you started doing those type of videos.
Sam: Yeah, sure. Um, so one of the things when I got into real estate, when, when I said kind of everybody was saying do video, do video, do video, people would say that. And then they didn’t really have a next step. It was like, what do we do? And nobody really knew. A lot of it is like what people would just naturally do was like real estate content.
Right. And really kind of educational and very boring content. And that’s what I did too. What is title insurance? Well, how do you get pre approved for a loan? Valuable topics, but yeah. Extremely boring. And also my video, my channel, especially at that time is never going to rank for those videos. No one’s ever going to see them, you know, on YouTube, except for my friends and family, if I’m pushing them out to them.
Right. But the other idea was this, I think it’s a Gary V idea of being the digital mayor of your town. And that’s another thing people would say. And then there was sort of no real next step. What does that mean? So people would say, Oh, you know, go talk to business owners and interview them about their business.
And that way you’re getting integrated in the community and you’re showing your community. And things like that, which I did a lot of that too. And that’s. I think great. In a way it’s great to meet people. It’s not always the most engaging content either. It’s, it’s not quite there, I feel like. And so for me, it’s just been a journey of learning about what can I actually put out that makes sense.
And of course, the whole plan for me is for this to be a driver of business to the real estate business. What I found is, and I’m not the first person to find this, but Really just stuff for anybody thinking of moving to your town. So for me, moving to Denver, what are they searching? And if you can start there and use YouTube as the search engine that it is that’s when I started having some success.
And so that’s where the food stuff came where I want to know if I’m moving to a town or visiting a town. What are the best Places to eat pizza, you know, what are the best breweries? Where’s the best happy hours? And so I kind of just started doing stuff like that because I thought it was helpful. And the other thing too, it’s just, it aligns with my interests.
It’s just a whole lot of fun. I love doing it. I love going out and, and, you know, just learning about new places and or patronizing businesses and, and just being you know, being a person, kind of being a citizen of the, of the city. And so. That’s really where that comes from. And so the process for me, kind of the next step for me has been, okay, so I’m creating content for people moving here.
And now even more, I’m trying to create it now that the channel has gotten to a certain level of visibility where it’s not all search traffic anymore. It’s a lot of, we can talk about that if you want, but a lot of more browse traffic and, and sort of that organic YouTube. Reach how do I make content for people who are already here, you know, who are just thinking about moving here?
So not just the pros and cons of living in Denver or, you know, maybe questions people have, but for people who are already here, how can I help serve them or, you know, give them something interesting on a weekly basis about the town that they live in to help. You know, like, so if you, if you live in Denver already, you know, let’s go look and try to find the best steakhouse.
Let’s go look, try to find the best burger or whatever it is. And we can have conversations about that. And I just, I love doing that stuff. I gotta be honest. It’s a, it’s a very like, I’m acting out like a very low rent, Anthony Bourdain fantasy that I’ve had for a long, long time. You know, I just, I love that type of stuff.
Like you said, the food network, sort of the evolution, I kind of came to it the same, same way you did, where I just really, it was just, it made sense to me. And so it’s been great. I’ve enjoyed it.
Doug: Very cool. And so people, go check out the channel. So you could follow on cause I’m going to describe some stuff here for them, but it’s a Denver living with Sam.
Currently right now we’re recording this like in the beginning of March, 2025, you have about a 7, 300 subscribers, 281 videos, but the cool part, you know, there’s part like real estate. topics. There’s some food stuff. There’s some stuff about just like the, the local area, whether it’s traffic or specific like there’s the remote, most remote homes for sale in Colorado.
So just like Thank you. It’s geographically interesting whether you’re in the state or maybe going to travel there or whatever. I used to live in Montana for a little while. I watch content about Montana because I, it makes me feel nice to remember traveling there or whatever. So there’s a lot of, like, different topics here and some are It’s like very closely related to people that are thinking of moving to Denver or are already there So like you highlighted that perfectly.
There’s some Specific walkthroughs of different Real estate how much how much time do you spend? Preparing for the different types of videos and maybe you could break it down to I’m asking two questions at once How much time for preparation and then like how do you divide up? What the topics are going to be.
Cause I feel like maybe you have like 20 percent this type of video, 20 percent this type of video. So you’re hitting the areas that you need to. And you’re not like pigeonholing over a period of time.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. And so it just really depends on the type of video. And it’s probably, I mean, the way I do it, it might, it’s probably not even the smartest way to do it.
If I was really going to try to dig in, I’d have separate channels, one for home tours and one for food content, you know, and then maybe one for real estate market stats. Those are probably the three you know, the three buckets that I do. I just, I certainly don’t have time for that, you know, at this point I’d love to.
And, but also, you know, for better or worse, this is just, This is just, I’m just trying to be your kind of your no BS guide to Denver whether that comes to real estate or whether that comes to you know, something else. And so, yeah, home tours, I usually, I used to just do just for houses that I thought were cool.
And I would just go walk through them and try to show those. And now I usually just do them almost always just for homes that I’m listing. Homes that I’m bringing to the market and try to find a unique angle for those and just tell a story a little bit. So not just sell something, but make it interesting.
Why do I care? You know, why why am I watching this? I try to show it in the community a lot and kind of give context about the neighborhood. And so those are longer. I don’t know that I spend a lot of time preparing for those. It sort of depends on the home shoot, but that’s all nothing in the office studio.
That’s all in the field. And so we go shoot for a few hours probably. And then those ones for the most part, I do still edit on my own. So probably a few more hours editing. So we’re done. And then I’ll do different sort of more basic market updates and newsworthy type of stuff. Talk about what’s going on with downtown.
Talk about economics in Denver, real estate or otherwise. And then just normal real estate market. What’s happening with the market? Where’s it going? Those https: otter. ai I see my least preparation of videos. I might do a half hour to 45 minutes for one of those just based on I’ll, I’ll see something that, that piques my interest and then you know, just gather some bullet points.
Basically I don’t script. I don’t really script things. I just get bullet points and start talking. And then, you know, I end up with, I don’t know, maybe 30, 40 minutes of footage and then send it to the editor and God bless me, cuts it down to something meaningful. Hopefully. And then the last thing would be food.
Yeah. So sort of that sometimes I’m just talking about my favorite restaurants at a desk here. You know, I did one of the most underrated restaurants where I was literally just sitting here talking about five restaurants. I feel like don’t get the love they deserve. You know, that I’ll probably spend A little bit more time in preparation, not necessarily preparing, but just more laying out what I’m going to talk about.
Or if it’s something you know, in and around the area where I’m actually going out and, and showing a restaurant, which is my favorite way to do it. Yeah, I’ll, I’ll maybe do an hour or two of prep and then I’ll just go out and start shooting And, you know, mostly, mostly iPhone with those sorts of things.
Sometimes I’ll have my videographer along with me to be a little more just a little more involved, but that doesn’t really change preparation at all. It just, it’ll probably make the shoot a little longer and there’s a little more coordination involved, but I try to spend, you know, I should probably spend more time preparing for some of these things.
It seems like the more time I do spend, the better it ends up being. So I am trying to focus on that more. And then just essentially. Run and gun and shoot a bunch and then figure out what the story is during the editing process.
Doug: Got it. Okay. And you mentioned the videographer, so I think most likely you did things in a more simple way at the beginning, and as you got more traction and you saw things were working, you could invest more in an editor and the videographer.
Can you talk about that? Progress and the, and the change over time.
Sam: Yeah, absolutely. And I’m still not there yet. So, but at the beginning did everything myself you know, once in a while when I needed a standup shot, like I’d have my wife come over and hold the camera for me, you know, something like that, she’d do a great job, but I’d have to pull her away from something, but few and far between, but then, the first thing I did hire was an editor and that was a game changer. Just I do, I released one video a week, you know, but for me with everything else going on with the real estate business and kids and family and everything else, uh, it was becoming very time consuming. What I found was if I can farm that out, you know, and pay a decent amount, but nothing exorbitant to somebody, then that’s going to free up a lot of my time.
And they’re actually going to do it. better than I would be doing it. Like I said, I have a lot of a lot of history in the business and honestly just a lot of experience editing, but I just, I’m not going to devote the time to it as, as someone will who I’m paying to edit it. So it ends up being a way better product at this point.
For those, those simpler videos. And so that’s one thing that I did. Like I said, I still do some of them on my own, just because there are certain videos that are finding. I have a very clear vision for it. I just say, all right, I’m just going to sit down and hammer this out. Rather than go back and forth with changes and stuff like that.
And then yeah, videographer, I, I’m not at the end yet. I do have this dream of just kind of having not a full time videographer, but one who I shoot with once a week, whether we’re shooting a house or something like that or not just go out and shoot content with. But, um, so I’ll just do it on an as needed basis here.
So, you know, maybe twice a month we’re out shooting something with my videographer. I’m going to do a sort of a neighborhood tour next week. And it’s actually, it’s I use a couple, a couple of my old good friends who two folks I used to work for actually in the industry. I, I just hired, but you know, I, I only do that because those are my contacts.
I, I think it’s. Somewhat. I don’t know. You tell me somewhat easy to find a videographer who, who can get the job done. If you just look for him.
Doug: Yeah, I think probably so. Uh, like funny side story. Like I, I do live stream. So someone that I know is like, Hey, we’re looking for someone that could do live streams for our choir and the church was charging too much and maybe they weren’t doing as good of a job.
And I’m like, I could, yeah. Maybe help you find someone, but I’m not the right person. They’re like, Oh no yeah, maybe you could do it. Cause like, it was so expensive to hire like an actual person to do it. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, you know what, what, what’s your budget? It’s a nonprofit.
It was my friend. And I’m like, I don’t need to do this for money. So I could just, I’ll. I’ll get it out there for you. And it’s been like a relatively fun gig cause I had not done anything like that. So, yeah, I think there, there are videographers out there that you can find, and I, I have a feeling like you could probably go to like a, a university or a school or something and like talk to the AV people there and they may, like there’s freelancers, like students that can help you that are probably like way better than, you know, what I could do like you said.
If they’re getting paid and they’re like, Oh, I’m just thrilled to have this gig to go around and video stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very cool. Any other notes about like audio, for example? So you mentioned sometimes you’ll, you’ll do some iPhone stuff, which it’s such high quality. And we were chatting before we hit record.
Like your video is awesome. I thought you were on a DSLR, but you were like, No, I just, I started using the iPhone. Like it’s a new feature. Like it’s syncs really quick. It’s. It’s awesome. I’m going to start using it, but audio can be tough depending on where you’re at. So any tips on that for people that are on more of a bare bones situation?
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s one thing. When I talk to people about it, one thing I say to focus on is that, you know, I think that if the video quality is average or even a little below average, people will forgive you depending on what you’re doing. If it’s interesting, if the audio quality sucks, man, they’re going to turn it off.
You know, if they can’t hear it, it’s just, it’s, there’s just no way around it. And so, yeah, that’s, that’s what I usually tell people is to start with your iPhone or your smartphone. If you have one for video, because that’s the video camera in there is Better than any camera in human history up until about, I don’t know, six, seven years ago and still better than most of them.
But you know, it is fun to, to get a little bit beyond that, depending on what type of stuff you’re shooting, but especially to start out, start out with an iPhone or a smartphone of some sort, and then just get an external mic, just plug into it. You don’t have to spend that much. I mean, you can go really cheap and spend 20 bucks on Amazon.
That’ll get you somewhere. Um, but if you spend 150, 200, you know, with a wireless system that really takes it from below average to pretty solid. You know, and then if we’re in a studio setting, having a mic like you do is, is, is absolutely fantastic. And I think that that’s probably the place where I’d tell people to invest.
If you’re going to invest a little bit of money audio and then lighting, like you don’t have to invest money in lighting, but just making it not awful, you know, makes a big, big difference. I think, that’s really it for me. Yeah,
Doug: agree. A hundred percent. Yeah. The audio is so important and yeah, it does frustrate me.
Sometimes you can’t control it if it’s like windy outside, but then it’s like. Maybe you have to wait until it’s not windy or go somewhere else or do voiceover or whatever you got to do.
Sam: Yeah, it was funny. We were doing a home shoot the other day. It was a beautiful day, except it was just so windy. And so we, you know, I really wanted to show kind of these trails around the house.
So we went to do it and, you know, the video was fine, but I was just like, as the wind was coming in, I just. I just told my videographer, I’m like, I’m just going to voice over this. Let’s just walk and show it. And I’ll just do VL later.
Doug: Sometimes you got to adapt along the way. So, okay. It seems like you’re pretty comfortable on camera and that could be natural.
It could be a skill that you developed over time. Can you talk about that a little bit? Did you have any broadcast experience otherwise or public speaking or anything like that?
Sam: Well, I’m very lucky in that I was born a narcissist, so I just love seeing myself on camera and hearing myself talk, which most people don’t.
You know what, man, I, there’s some truth to that. And I did have some experience on camera in college and high school doing little things. It’s, it is something I always just took to that. I was just enjoyed doing. I find it. Fun, less than scary. Public speaking terrifies me. You know, if I’m up on a stage talking to somebody, it’s, it’s not my, I eventually I like it, you know, once we get over those nerves, but I don’t get that nervous for being on camera.
And so I just do think that the way I’ve had success with it is approaching it with enthusiasm and, you know, just kind of joy, honestly, rather than this has to be perfect. And remembering that you know, the imperfections sometimes are what makes it. And so that’s kind of what people, it’s okay if you have some ums and ahs, it can’t be a train wreck, right?
But it’s okay to not be perfect and even preferable in a lot of ways. That really lets me sort of relax when I’m doing it and have fun with it. I don’t know, what’s it been like for you?
Doug: It, it was rough at first. I have. videos from I think 2014. And I was like, I do want to do video and it would take me for, it would be like a three minute video and the audio is bad speaking of bad audio.
Like I didn’t know, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know, like we didn’t have all the equipment like to get the right kind of mic back then would have been like hundreds of dollars. Now it’s like, you can get a cheap, like 15 mic and it would. It would be amazing but basically I was scared of the camera and it was, it was really tough for me.
So it would take forever and I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t just keep rolling and like try to improve. I would like stop. I was trying to get it in one take also, which makes it like so much harder. But eventually over time I did better. And the main thing that I did when I decided I wanted to do more YouTube editing was Very time consuming and I didn’t super enjoy it.
So I decided to just do live streams. So no editing, the people are usually a little bit more patient sometimes not cause it’s the internet and people can be mean, but I just rolled with it. And over, I think I did it for a quarter. So I did it for, you know, several weeks in a row. I showed up whether other people did or not, and then just kept rolling with it.
So, and I still do live streams to this day. It’s a great skill to have. And I think it. Improved my public speaking in front of people oddly, just because sometimes it’s just a monologue and you have to talk.
Sam: But I, I respect you. I mean, doing a live stream, if nobody else is there just talking to yourself for how long you have to, man, it’s, I do a lot of on camera stuff.
I’m exhausted. I’ll do an hour, maybe like, you know, 45 minutes I can get to it. It’s just exhausting. So I, I respect you. And yeah, I would just say for people, if you’re getting started, just give yourself the latitude to suck. It’s okay. Because at the beginning, probably nobody’s watching, you know? And so that’s, that’s the beautiful part is that, you know, you just, it’s like anything else, giving yourself those reps that aren’t great, or like you said, Doug, just you, you improve upon that.
It just gives you the experience to, that’s the best way to learn how to do it. It’s just making little mistakes and, you know, slowly improving. I still look at, I hate. I don’t like watching myself on video still, you know, so I’ll still have times where I just go, what are you doing, dude, you know so it’s a constant, constant challenge to keep refining and keep getting better.
Doug: Yeah, great tips there. So let’s, let’s talk about the reason why you’ve started the channel. So this. Should pull in leads. So I, you know, we tried to set the stage for people and basically it’s the top of the funnel, right? Like people are coming in. They’re like, uh, I’m curious about the best pizza, the best steak place in Denver, they check out some stuff and they’re like, Oh, I’ve seen a few of Sam’s videos.
Oh, and I see he’s doing real estate too. And then they’re like, Oh, maybe I’ll give him a buzz. Like I, I trust him because I’ve watched his videos. Seems like a cool dude, blah, blah, blah. So what has it done for your business?
Sam: Yeah. Well, it’s really transformed it. And that’s, it’s, it’s funny. The, that’s the description that you gave.
That’s kind of how it goes. My favorite times are the folks who we ended up, I was sitting at a closing the other day and he’s like, you know, I, it’s crazy that the, the, the, the, the reason I met you is because I watched a video where you were looking for the best pizza in Denver, you know, and I had another close friend and client who’s just said, you know, the first four videos, five videos you as I watch, I had no idea you were in real estate.
You have to kind of, you know, work it in at some point, but again, like, like we were talking before leading with the sales element, I think it’s just not a, not a big winner in this day and age, I think just coming from contribution and just hopefully entertainment and value. Is, is what’s been, been serviceable for me.
So yeah, that’s it. That’s all it is. I’m just trying to be a resource for folks who want to know more about the area or just want to be entertained, hopefully. And, um, it’s gone from, it’s tough to say what it’s done for the business exactly because I didn’t have a strong real estate business before my YouTube channel took off because I was just getting started, you know?
So, but I said, We were in this coaching event for my, in my brokerage office. And it was, Hey, let’s all read this book over the next few weeks. And the book is literally called YouTube for real estate agents by a woman named Karen Carr. And it just lays out the whole roadmap for this is how you do it.
And this is how you get leads. And I said, okay, great. Now I have, I know that this works. I know there’s proof rather than just like throwing stuff up against the wall. And so I said, all right, I’m going to commit to this for a year. I’m going to post once for a year and see what happens. And I made all the mistakes.
Like I said, I post boring, you know, not local, like non searchable content for a while. And for six months, it was, I mean, a dozen views, you know, on a video. And most of those were family probably. And it was nothing, but that was great because it let me get those, those kinds of crappy videos out of my system.
And then I started to be more, you just learn more like you’re doing anything, just learning more about it. Watching other people doing real estate and YouTube and just watching other people on YouTube. Not even in real estate. It’s been really helpful to see, okay, this is what they’re doing. Sometimes the content is I think to serve, to, to bring clients in, right?
But then sometimes it’s just to raise the profile of the channel, right? Sometimes you have something that’s going for views and then sometimes it’s the, the ones that get fewer views, bring in more clients. I think both those things are good. So learning about that kind of helped. And then at the six months mark, I started getting.
Comments and people reaching out, nothing amazing, but just like, Hey, he saw you on YouTube. Maybe let’s chat down the road, that sort of thing. And then I think it was a year before I had my first closing. And so it was a long road. And I tell people that real estate agents that, cause they’ll ask about it and they just get this far away.
Look at their eyes of, Oh God, a year of making videos before I have any closings. But you know, at this point, my last year was. My best year by far. I mean, I, I had a, a fantastic year. It’s looking even better in 2025 and it’s 60 to 70 percent YouTube clients coming in serving the business. I really don’t know if I’d be doing real estate if I wasn’t doing YouTube at this point.
It’s just, it’s I like, obviously I like doing it. Like we’re talking about here today, but the type of client that comes in is just typically a really really good client. Knowledgeable already feels like they kind of know you, you know, so you’re not really competing that much once in a while They say hey, we’re interviewing a few people which is cool.
But a lot of the time it’s just like hey, we saw your stuff We’d love to work with you and your team and then you have that conversation and off and running I got uh some clients who came into the office to meet for the first time this morning. And they’re out looking for, for homes with a business partner of mine this afternoon.
And it’s just, it’s really, it’s just a fantastic way to, in my opinion, run the business rather than bothering people, which is a lot of the time, what client acquisition in real estate is it’s a necessary evil. So,
Doug: yeah, so interesting and a bit of a business idea for people if they want to run with it or, or it sounds like your business is doing great.
So you don’t need to, but like I come from creating content and then I, I created online courses and basically like, you know, you could give workshops to real estate agents. And you’re like, here, like, this is all I did. Like follow, like, it makes so much sense. And I was on a podcast a couple weeks ago and.
She has a podcast and a YouTube channel for financial advisors who are trying to have a podcast. And nowadays, like, podcasting and YouTube, it’s hand in hand. Like, people can do video first and make it a podcast later. But basically, To your point, like not, not everyone’s going to like you, not everybody is going to like me, but the people that do they’re pre vetted, they, they already like you and trust you.
So they just walk in the door and, um, they feel like they’re friends with you because they’ve, you know, been to restaurants with you metaphorically watching your videos, which is really cool.
Sam: Yeah. That’s the best part when, um, people go, Oh God, I feel like I, you know, I feel like there’s a celebrity here.
And I’m like, yes, very, very low level local celebrity. And that is correct. Thousands of people subscribe to the channel. It’s a
Doug: D list. Yeah. Yes. Do people recognize you like going around town occasionally?
Sam: Yep. Yep. Not all the time, but here and there it’s happening more and more. I’ve had some videos that popped in the last six months and so, yeah, it’ll be, you know, people just sort of stare for a little bit and you’re kind of like, what’s going on?
And then they’ll usually say, Oh, Hey, I follow your YouTube channel or something like that. So it happens every now and then. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s very funny.
Doug: Wait, what’s your wife think of that? I could think of my wife would just be like, she
Sam: thinks it’s hilarious. She thinks the whole thing’s hilarious.
And so yeah, no, she, she’s super supportive and it always has been of everything I do. So I throw her in a video here and there. I don’t usually put my family on camera, but once in a while I’ll put her in just for fun. And, you know, people say, Hey, good to see Kristen or something like that. It’s kind of,
Doug: yeah, that’s fine.
So, all right, this stuff works, but. You tell people, Hey, it’s going to take a year and they’re like, I thought it was going to be like six weeks or something. Like, what are you even talking about? How did you push through those six months where you weren’t getting traction? You were probably having like some minor failures along the way.
And you’re like, I thought this was going to do. So, wow. And it’s not, yeah. And
Sam: that was, yeah, that it was actually really frustrating for awhile because I had this inner thought of like, and I would see other people doing it and it seemed like it was working faster for them and it probably was, I don’t know, I think it took me a little longer to figure out or who knows why, but I had this whole thing of coming from the video production industry where I was like, I’m good.
Like, I know how to do this. Like what’s going on. And it just wasn’t happening. And so, but. The only way man that that I pushed through it was I said, Nope, I said I was going to do this for a year if it doesn’t work after a year, I’ll stop and do something else. But I was just looking at the other ways of building real estate business and just most of them.
Man, I can cold call it like I did it for a little while to try it out. I know I can do it. I know it’s not a long term way to build a business for me. I’ll just Lay down and die. If that’s the way, like people, I had a real estate coach early on, who just said, Hey, well, no, I want you to do this because it works.
And I said, cold calling. And I said, I know it works. That’s, that’s my fear is that it does work. And now this is what I do every day. You know, that’s, there’s just, I’ll go do something else. If that’s the case. And so it was just, I was just saying, this is the way I think I want to build a business. And so let’s try it.
And if it doesn’t work in the time I’ve committed to doing, then we will reevaluate. But I was obviously doing other things to survive at the time, you know, a lot of sphere based marketing and things like that, knowing that YouTube wasn’t bringing in any money. It was actually costing money. Right at the time, but but I knew that I kind of had this North star for I had seen people build businesses that were sustainable and enjoyable to them and weren’t, didn’t always have them just on this hamster wheel.
And those usually were the ones that took the longest to hit.
Doug: It totally makes sense. Yeah. So any like unexpected results from the success of the channel, anything that surprised you?
Sam: Yeah, a lot has surprised me. I think that I think a few things I think of, and I don’t know why this is. I have some, some theories, but I’ve just kind of wound up in luxury real estate, not completely, but doing a number of luxury real estate deals, high dollar deals.
You know, I’m from Chisago city, Minnesota, where it’s like cornfields and lakes and marijuana, you know, it’s just like, I’m allowed to say that on YouTube, but it was just, I’m like, I’m not that. And so at least that’s not the way I viewed myself, but just having people reach out for who are like, you know, high dollar buyers and sellers was very, very interesting.
I think it had to do with just the way I presented some things and certain real estate. Tours and neighborhood tours and stuff like that, but that has been surprising. That’s been a whole lot of fun. Just walking through awesome houses all the time. It’s been just a blast. It’s, it’s, you know, it’s a, it’s a fun thing to do.
And then beyond that, I think some of the, just some of the relationships that have come up. From from doing this stuff, it’s, it’s sort of these, this ancillary benefit, but the things I really, really like, I’ve met a lot of cool people that it might not be any money attached to it, but there have been, you know, number one, just cool relationships and number two, other opportunities that have come up.
I mean, just even here talking to you today. It’s really cool just to sit down and talk shop with you. And the longer I go, the more and more that stuff seems to happen. And those are the things I really enjoy. And so I, I kind of have aspirations with all this a little beyond just real estate. And that’s, what’s really, really exciting to me too.
I, I speak with some other folks who do the same thing in different cities and a lot of what they will say is You know, I don’t necessarily care about views or, or any other metrics like that. All I care about is clients and closings, like how many of those I get from the real estate channel, which I think is cool.
And I think that’s probably the right way to look at it, because a lot of the time we get bogged down in vanity metrics like views and things like that. But for me, that’s just not necessarily my approach. Of course, I, I, it doesn’t really work. It’s not a vehicle for the, the real estate business, but I.
There’s something else out there that I want to keep growing towards. And, um, so I do care about other things, other than just how many clients and how many closings are coming. I care about you know, how much reach it’s getting and just positive reach. Like I’m not just going for views just for views and I’ve never gone crazy viral on anything.
But I really I really like just Trying to reach different people in the community that something like this would be value valuable for and getting that to be a broader and broader audience. I had a weird video that popped a little bit a few months ago. I think I talked about it with the most underrated restaurants.
And one of them I talked to was just this donut shop. It’s just called the donut house. And I just think they have awesome donuts and nobody really talks about them. So I threw that on there and the video did fairly well. And they posted on Facebook a few days later and said something like. We welcomed a significant number of new customers today who said they had heard about us on this video and posted the video and tagged me.
And I just thought that was so cool just that I could, you know, give my honest thoughts on a thing that I really like. I’m not trying to like, you know, pretend and promote something or just give some random answer. I just, this is honestly what I like. And that that connected with other people and that, you know, that helped that business.
Doug: Okay. I have like 10 questions I want to ask you. So I’m going to, Oh, sorry.
Sam: It was a lot of rambling.
Doug: No, no, no. Great answer. And I, I was going to say, I’ll have to focus. I can’t ask you like five things at once. So I’m going to, I want to ask you, we’ll put a pin in it for now, but you said you have bigger aspirations.
You kind of alluded to it. We’re going to put a pin in it, but I want to know like what’s coming up and what those big ideas are. But I don’t want you to tell me yet. So just everyone, I didn’t miss it. We’re going to come back to it. I wondered if you have done any collaborations because I literally searched on YouTube and I was like Denver restaurants just trying to see who’s out there.
There’s a few of y’all doing stuff. Doesn’t seem like you’re directly competing. Like there’s not other real estate agents and collaborations. That’s how I grew my channel. And I love networking and I don’t really view anyone as competition. It’s just like future partners that we haven’t done anything yet.
So have you collaborated? Cause I, I mean, I think. It’s, I mean, if you’re all are into food and you’re just like, we’re going to go to restaurants and we get to hang out and we’re, it’s like the more people that watch Denver food content, the more people watch everyone’s food content. So have you done any collabs with the other folks in town?
Sam: A little bit, mostly what I’ve done, honestly, has been off camera. Like I’ll get together with folks and we’ll just sit down and talk shop and just try to figure out, you know, what are we doing? What can we do better and, and sharing notes. I’ve done that with a number of folks, not as much on camera.
I’ve collaborated with some folks who are like adjacent to the industry, not. Not necessarily real estate agents on camera so much only because we just haven’t set it up and logistically we probably should. There’s another, not a real estate agent, but a mortgage lender named Jimmy Everett’s who’s got an awesome channel in Denver too.
And uh, he and I talked quite a bit. We actually work together on the real estate mortgage side. And then we’ve been working on, we haven’t got one out yet, but we’ve been working on a few video collaboration ideas and he actually reached out initially, which is so, so cool. I think that. Real estate agents do get a little competitive.
And so I think that for some folks that may be the case, but for me, I’m like you, I think I don’t do there’s enough clients to go around and your people might not be by people if we’re real estate agents, right? Like you said before. And so I know I love doing that. And one of the reasons, the only reason I haven’t, I think is because just because of.
Logistics, it’s just challenging and time consuming. And that’s something I’m working on my business too, to free up more time to do these really, really important things.
Doug: Right, right. Well, and all those would be awesome. I was thinking only just like the people that cover restaurants in Denver. Oh, yeah.
Sam: Okay. Okay. Yeah. So, so yes. And same thing. So same answer to that basically. Okay. A little bit behind the scenes, nothing on camera, but I have plans and I’m, I’m working on it. There’s a Denver food writer named Alison Reedy, who she and I became friends online. I call it because she wrote this beautiful ode to this Burger restaurant called good times, which I love.
And I like, I think I emailed her after it. And I said, this is the most, this is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read. And, you know, kind of just as a joke, but she’s, she’s awesome. And I’m totally, I got plans to invite her on the channel and really anybody else who will work with me. Yeah. Yeah.
Doug: Yeah. There’s so, like I said, there’s so much power in the collaboration and as long as people are like, yeah, we’re just working together and yeah, I totally get it with on the real estate side. Okay. The other side note, which may fold into your. Your bigger idea, you mentioned just the donut place. You gave a shout out, a lot of business, like it kind of changed their business a little bit, at least for a short time.
There was an interview with guy Fieri on, I, it was like two hours long and I usually just watch a triple D and you know, some other stuff. So he puts on a personality, but like this interview was like him just shooting the shit with someone. And it was, it was awesome. And. He mentioned that he would have quit the show like years ago, except it absolutely like changes people’s lives.
Because the restaurants get so much more business and I’ll, it’s long. I’ll send it to you. There’s probably a clip of him just saying that, but it’s pretty cool that like you’re you know, small, modest channel can like. Boring business and like help people like make money to pay their mortgage. And it’s like helping the community and all that stuff.
Um, have, do you have other examples of that too, where you’ve, you know, brought business in? I’m just curious if you have any others.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. Smaller examples. But I do have. I mean, I did so much restaurant stuff when my channel was very small, so nobody was watching, you know, and now it’s just, it’s, it’s still not big at all, but it’s, there’s more, you know, it’s just more traction and more regular viewers, I think.
And so yeah, no, but a lot of, I will have, honestly, I’ll have restaurants and PR for restaurants reaching out to me, not all the time, but at a fairly recent, uh, fairly reasonable clip. I think that it’s a lot of You know, there’s a whole Instagram TikTok restaurant world too, which is not really my world and a lot of those will get a lot more views.
But what I do is, you know, a little different and a little more long form. And so it’s folks who really value that and are like, Oh, I think that we could kind of tell our story a little bit. I’ve had folks reach out a fair amount on that and then, yeah, they’re always really thankful when we go do it.
It’s always great when it pops. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. But I mean, even if we get a few thousand views. You know, introduce people to restaurants. I hear about that all the time. And that’s you know, it’s fun just because again, I’m not trying to be some PR arm for anybody. I’m telling the truth.
You know, if I hate something, I’m not going to say it. I just probably won’t talk about it. But I really like to just you know, be honest about the stuff I really like. And I think that’s what makes it work is that it’s genuine. Right on. Okay.
Doug: So. At the end, we’ll let everyone know where they could find you and all that kind of stuff if they want to connect more, but yeah, what’s coming up for the channel, like what is your bigger vision?
As much as you’re able to share.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. So immediately I’m working on a burger tour. We did the steak tour a few months ago and that was, I mean, it’s funny cause I brought my I just went to different steakhouses with my friends, basically. I said, Hey, you want to go have a steak? And they’re like, yeah.
And they didn’t really know what I was doing. And I just started recording. But, um, then they have been texting me like this person just said, you’re the person from the steak video. And so it’s very odd because they’re not even like YouTubers. They’re just my friends. And now they’re getting recognized, which is hilarious.
So we’re doing another version, which is just a burger tour where I’m just. Running gun low production quality going around to different burgers and eating them and giving ratings and you know, just having fun with it So I got a few more burger joints to do I think I did six try to do eight or nine and just smash it all into one video So I’m pretty excited about that long term I got, I got some plans that probably are not realistic and are going to take a long time to do, but I really I want to, we’ll probably be on Denver eventually, and I want to my favorite thing to do is tell stories.
But that’s my background. I spend a lot of time writing and publishing some stories back in a previous life. And those are the videos that have been most satisfying for me. And from the folks I talk to most impactful for certain people is where I can really kind of tell the story of what’s going on.
We did, I do this little show. Here and there called the dispatch where it’s sort of what we’re talking about, food stuff and, and trying to get the feeling for an area or a restaurant or whatever that is. And I did one on, on ice cream, just looking around and going to different ice cream spots and my videographer who I bring with on those swans and he kills me because he’s just like, dude, when are you going to put that out?
We shot that like two months ago and this ice cream one in particular, it took me forever to put out because we’ll go shoot it. And then we have all this footage and then I have to look through it and kind of just sit with it and figure out what the point is. You know, like, what is the story we’re telling here?
And so this particular ice cream video, we went around to a bunch of different places, but it ends with me just eating directly out of a pint in my kitchen at night. And the idea was just you know, I, I voiced it over and I do have a script for those. And I’m just sort of saying, you know, ice cream is an amazing thing.
And it’s great to have these experiences, but like. For me, the way to really experience a truly great ice cream is by yourself in your pajamas, you know, at nine o’clock at night. And so getting to that point, getting to the, what’s the point, what are we doing here with any video is really my, that’s, that is my north star.
And so I have a lot of ideas behind that of kind of more in depth content that we could do around this city or other cities, just trying to get there. To that idea, if that makes sense.
Doug: So it really is going back like to the Anthony Bourdain travel writing stuff, right?
Sam: Yeah, absolutely. And everybody wants to be Bourdain and I get, I’m not Bourdain.
Like nobody is right. That guy was one of a kind, but yes, it goes back to like, I think the The realness and rawness and honesty. And you know, as you do travel, you feel something about a place and trying to kind of capture that feeling and put into context what it means is that’s what I really enjoy.
That’s what I love doing in my community and kind of anywhere else.
Doug: Yeah. Yeah. Totally get that. And I mean, yeah, I love Bourdain as well and watched. Yeah. So many, he had a, you know, a few shows and he had a way to really bring it all together and his history and, uh, you know, restaurant industry gave him the, the credentials to like bust balls and like, really like talk about, you know, The behind the scenes stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very cool. I dig that. Okay. So we could keep talking forever, but we’re, we’re up towards the end of time. We’ll link up so people can get to your channel and check out you know, various videos, there’s some dispatches on here, as you mentioned, there’s probably some playlists but people could browse through if you’re into food, if you’re into sports, whatever.
And. Sam, where, where can people find you? Where do you, they went? To connect with you.
Sam: Yeah, no, go. I mean, all my contact info’s on YouTube and so go there. But then also my Instagram account to Sam Newman Denver too. That’s sort of just a different yeah, same thing, but more local. More personal, what I’m, what I’m doing.
Hit me up on there. Shoot me an email, whatever, would love to, to talk shop with anybody. Obviously, if anybody needs real estate advice, that’s what I’m here for too. But I, yeah, no, I just really, I appreciate talking to you today, Doug, and I appreciate talking to anybody else regarding this stuff.
This is what gets me going. So yeah, hit me up.
Doug: All right. Thanks, Sam. Really enjoyed it. And like I said, we’ll link up to all the places you mentioned. So people can get to it really easy.
Sam: Thank you. Love it.