Behind the Lens: My Journey in Real Estate Media & Client Engagement

John Harcar (00:01.813)

Okay, hey guys, welcome back to our show. I’m your host, John Harcar, and our guest today is Jake Chacon. And what we’re going to talk about with him besides his journey in business and in depth to what he’s doing now, we’re going to talk about why it’s important to have good real estate media for your business. Remember, guys, at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, I mean, really all real estate entrepreneurs, 2 5X their business.

I mean, we provide the tools and training to grow the business you want to grow, which helps you live the life that you want to live. So Jake, man, welcome to our show.

Jake (00:36.27)

Bye.

John Harcar (00:38.376)

How’s everything going? Everything good?

Jake (00:40.103)

could be better, but yeah, you know, just trying to do whatever.

John Harcar (00:43.981)

Got it. All right, man. Well, I’m excited to talk about, you know, real estate media. It’s something I really haven’t don’t know much about at all. But before we talk about that, why don’t you tell our audience about, you, your background and business and how you got to what you’re doing today?

Jake (00:58.446)

So yeah, so back in 2000 I started in graphic design went to school got a bachelor’s finished that I Got a job for at a marketing agency doing video which I learned it myself a couple years later by computer by the camera and learned it While I was at that place I went back to school to learn 3d animation using Maya Autodesk because it helped add another tool to

the creations because I was working with medical. So blood flow, dynamics, bones, dental, whatever it is, I could do it myself. Was there for about 10 years and that’s when the world shifted from 2007 to 2017. That was a completely different world of getting creative work. Before it was like, hey, this is what you do. We have an opening, go. You know, if they want you. When it was out, was…

send us a link to your online portfolio. We’ll get back to you. Maybe, you know, if we see what we like, if we don’t see what we like, it was completely different. So it was difficult being that where I was at was all proprietary technology. So everything I did for 10 years, when I left, I wasn’t allowed to show. So that put me in a pretty big, pretty bad situation where in a different world can’t show any work. So anyways,

So I’ve been trying to rebuild something ever since then, but it hasn’t been easy. It’s been very difficult. So along the way I learned photography, I learned web design. I just keep getting, learning more skills. I get bored and I learn something new. So a months ago I got into, or I saw something about real estate media, which is the photography, HDR, flambient.

The whole video walkthroughs that they do now, vertical drone, everything, all that fancy stuff. The Matterport tours, I got a camera for that. And yeah, those are the big ones. And then everything else now with the VR staging or whatever. So I can do all those things. But that’s kind of quickly where I’m at now. And now I’m trying to build my own real estate media services to…

John Harcar (03:15.757)

Okay.

Jake (03:25.998)

Orange County, LA, San Diego, whatever, San Bernardino. It’s all the same to me. I can just get on my motorcycle and don’t have to worry about traffic.

John Harcar (03:35.161)

There you go. What type of struggles are you running into as far as building this new business?

Jake (03:40.398)

Getting agents to use you because a lot of them already have somebody. So it’s getting that foot in the door to for them to use you and then refer you and start building up a referral and consistency of them. Hey, I have a house. Are you available? You know, go. So that’s

John Harcar (04:05.913)

Okay, how do you reach out to realtors? mean, do you just kind of go through what you find online and maybe send some promotional stuff or send like a email?

Jake (04:11.455)

Jake (04:19.406)

The trendy way everybody talks about is the whole Instagram method. Not a fan of it.

John Harcar (04:29.635)

Why not?

Jake (04:32.183)

To me, it’s lazy. I like to physically go and talk and get off my ass and actually do something, not sit there and DM people all day. But that’s what that is. You find agents in your local area, you send a message, you don’t send right away like, hey, this is me, this is my business, I offer these services. You like a couple of their posts, you respond to a couple, hey, congratulations on the listing, or saw the picture of you on vacation, so cool.

You build up that for a few weeks and then you hit them, by the way, if you ever need somebody, this is what I do. So it’s just, know, it is a spammy thing. You know, you can only do so many messages per day before Instagram kind of blocks you for a little bit or something like that. So I don’t like it. To me, it’s spammy and I try and do it here and there but.

I just don’t like it. So I’ve been trying to hit up the offices, good walking in, open houses, just more physical approach, like where they see me, they can talk to me. Being that I’m a graphic designer, I build my own flyers and media and I hand it to them. I don’t use Canva, I use professional tools. So it helps that I don’t need

really anybody to do something in this. know how to do everything, even the editing of the photos, which, once again, they promote overseas, the work, not going to do that. I like to keep the work in America, USA, all that kind of stuff. not sending my

John Harcar (06:21.197)

When you say overseas, what do you mean? Like they’re using just outsourced VA type of stuff.

Jake (06:25.334)

Yeah, outsource, VA, outsource the photo editing. Because it takes time to edit these photos. It doesn’t come straight from the camera all nice and pretty. You gotta do some post work. But it can take, you shoot 25, a minimum 25 pictures. You shoot more, but 25 photos per house, it can take five to 15 minutes maybe, depending on how fast you are, to make those photos look the way they do.

John Harcar (06:31.203)

So like fiver.

Jake (06:55.426)

You go shoot two houses, that’s 50 photos, and you got another two, four, five, six hours of editing that you have to get ready by the next day for the photos. The videos can take a little longer. But, and I get why it is, you have people do what they do and you send the work to somebody else. I don’t have somebody else doing the work, but I’m not sending it to India, China, whatever it is. keep the work in the US. So.

John Harcar (07:15.991)

Yeah, right. Right.

Jake (07:23.136)

And I’ve gotten it down to pretty fast to where I can get the photos done within a couple minutes to 15 minutes. It’s the windows that are hard. Those are the difficult part, depending on how you shot it. So that’s what can take. No, cameras can’t expose for interior and exterior. Like if you ever noticed, it’s either really perfect outside, but the inside’s dark or it’s, or it’s.

John Harcar (07:35.043)

Mm-hmm.

Like reflections and that type of thing, is that what you’re talking about?

John Harcar (07:49.954)

Yeah.

Jake (07:51.392)

Inside is good, but the windows are blown out. So the process is with like HDR is it takes multiple exposures, you blend those, do a little more work, and that’s how you get the nice pictures. Another one is called like flamboyant where you take pictures like HDR, and then you point the flash directly at the window. So it makes it, the window’s perfect. And then by blending it in a certain way, it just, it pits it perfectly.

You don’t have to cut out each little square like you do with HDRs. Like you have to manually mask out the windows so there are different layer and you can color correct them. Anyways, yeah, it takes time. You send it out to somebody else and like, I did it one time. It was fine. But when you do that, you don’t have to control the layers. And if there’s a change, an edit, a color, now you have to redo that one or send it again, so on.

So with the AI stuff, there’s a couple of services out there where you can upload the pictures and their program kind of does a pretty good job, but the windows are still not good when you look closely at it. And you don’t get the same quality resolution back. been downgraded.

John Harcar (09:08.953)

Yeah, I was going to ask, does AI, all this stuff coming with AI, mean, is that helping you in the editing process or cleaning up?

Jake (09:16.782)

No, no, to me, pretty much 99 % of this whole AI is a joke. It’s a toy. It’s pretty much useless in a real working way, especially in anything I do. The image generation, cool, but it’s a toy. It’s not helpful, it’s not professional, it’s just garbage. Google’s new VO3,

John Harcar (09:26.041)

Why do you say that?

John Harcar (09:38.67)

Yeah.

Jake (09:45.26)

whatever they’ve done there, you know, know there’s been some trickery in what they showed. But the point is, is technology’s there to where you can prompt a little mini video where it has the text, it has the voice, the audio, the music sound effects, the whole cinematic little five, 10 second clip with a prompt now. It’s all there. It’s just gonna get better real quick. But it’s…

It’s still useless because you don’t have the original layers, whether it’s the image or the video, you didn’t put it together yourself. Maybe, you can re prompt it and say, change this, but you still don’t have the control of the original layers that you created with logos, imagery. It’s, it’s a flattened thing and you have to prompt it every time you want to change it. So, so until they can,

John Harcar (10:36.985)

Alright.

Jake (10:43.672)

prompt and give you the control over the editable layers of whatever it is, it’s a toy, it’s useless, it’s not gonna work in a professional way. So the only thing I really use it for is copywriting. That’s the only thing I really almost can’t do is copywriting. So I create my stuff and then I say, write this better.

John Harcar (10:51.129)

is not gonna work. Yeah.

John Harcar (11:01.529)

All right.

Yeah, I know you’re newer in this, but are you seeing any trends in, before we talk about like the importance of the media, but are you seeing any trends into what people are starting to do, prefer, you’re seeing more of?

Jake (11:20.558)

Well, in my area of the real estate media, which I’m trying to build, is the AI stuff, uploading your, what they call bracketed photos, the multiple exposures of the pictures, and then it does it for you pretty quickly, like five, 10 minutes it can put together. And it’s the world we live in which is good enough.

Not perfect, but it’s good enough. I don’t do good enough. So I get it’s fast, it’ll work, but that’s lazy and that’s what people do just to save a few dollars by sending it overseas, whatever, uploading to these things. Yeah, it’s just, it’s not something I’ve tried two of them, don’t like them and it’s not good.

John Harcar (12:16.803)

Well, let’s talk about why it’s important to have good real estate media, why it’s important to not shortcut that piece of the whole process.

Jake (12:26.712)

Because cell phones are and Cell phones are garbage, you know, it doesn’t matter how good they get I have a 15 Pro doesn’t matter how good that camera gets it’s still not What these are no matter how you do it it still will never ever be what these are because as those get better These will get better You know

John Harcar (12:29.721)

Heh!

John Harcar (12:43.225)

Yeah.

John Harcar (12:50.713)

those get better.

Jake (12:54.54)

So, you know, the sensors, the processors, whatever all that technology in there is you don’t have that kind of same power in the small, in a phone camera that you do in these things. You know, you have the lenses that are, you know, the lens alone can be like this one right here is $2,000. That’s just the lens. The body is four.

John Harcar (13:07.886)

Yeah.

John Harcar (13:18.201)

Well, I think it’s too…

Jake (13:18.37)

This is a hundred dollar camera. The phone is a thousand bucks, but this little shit, this is a hundred bucks. If even that, I don’t even know, but barely even that. So.

John Harcar (13:24.185)

$100 camera.

Well, and correct me if I’m wrong too, is that, you know, the better and more media you have, i.e., you know, the drone footage and all these other type of things, the better chance you have maybe to sell a listing or stuff like that, right?

Jake (13:40.706)

So yeah, so that leads up to the gear as far as you need the cameras to do what they do to take those kind of photos. Cell phones can’t do it. And you know, you have to have it a certain way so things are straight and not kind of angled. That’s kind of one thing. But you need the camera to get the resolution and the quality professionally by somebody who knows what they’re And then…

And then when you do the video, same thing, you gotta have a gimbal so the video is nice and smooth when you walk. I said the drones, obviously you can’t, the drones. then the Matterport’s are a nice extra. Not everybody does them because they’re kind of expensive, but having the 3D tours where they can walk through. And there’s a couple different versions of that. There’s Matterport and there’s Cubacasa and there’s a…

Zillow, you can use your phone but I’ve tried it with my phone, have the Matterport camera and like said, it’s good enough but it’s not the pro level. You see the difference when you really know what you’re looking at which most people don’t. But I do and I don’t like it.

John Harcar (14:49.465)

It’s not you want the best.

John Harcar (14:58.105)

Got it. So where are you doing your business? I think you’re in Southern California, right?

Jake (15:03.34)

Yeah, Orange County, right here in Tustin area. anywhere from LA, San Diego, Riverside, San Marino, whatever, it’s all the same. Kind of like how I mentioned earlier, if I don’t want to sit in traffic, I get on my motorcycle, put everything in my backpack and go.

John Harcar (15:26.051)

Well, if there’s people out there that are listening to this that are in the area, how do they get in touch with you? Do you have a website somewhere I can direct them to?

Jake (15:36.14)

Yeah, I have my own website. It’s called pureformcreative.com. All the packages are there. Everything is bookable online 24 seven. You don’t really don’t need me at all to do anything. You see it, you click it, you pay for it and it’s all done. know, it’s everything I do, all the packages I have where there’s just photo or photo and video all include.

John Harcar (15:55.778)

Easy peasy.

Jake (16:05.006)

The marketing kit, 2D floor plans, it’s all part of it and direct access to your own little media, each agent’s little media. Once I upload it, they can get it whenever they want to and download it all MLS ready. The marketing kits, there’s some pre-made template stuff. So it’s all, they just kind of choose a template that want, edit it, but it’s already populated.

All the images sort of just already placed in there. All the video links, Matterport links, everything’s there. They just get what they want when they want.

John Harcar (16:43.737)

And we’ll put the website address down in the show notes. I appreciate you coming on here today and sharing about your business, Guys, I hope that you guys enjoyed the show out there. If you’re in the Orange County area, in those cities or areas they talked about, give them a call. Use them for your real estate media. And we’ll see you guys all on the next one. Cheers.

Jake (17:08.942)

Bye.

John Harcar (17:10.81)

you