In 2015, I started The Broke Agent account as a “side-gig” to test the waters of the real estate industry. I wondered: Would people like this? Can people inside the industry laugh at themselves and acknowledge the ridiculous nature of this business?
The answer, of course, was yes. And the answer will pretty much always be yes because people have, and always will, like funny.
That’s why the ultimate content hack is humor. And the easiest way to express it is with memes.
I was worried memes would die once TikTok and Reels made short-form video the dominant format, but memes are stronger than ever. They’re not going anywhere.
Why? They’re easy to make, easy to consume, and by far the most shareable form of content.
That’s why The Broke Agent has over 500,000 followers and keeps growing—because a funny “realtor on vacation” joke with a trending White Lotus picture almost always performs better for me than a well-thought-out carousel or a talking-head style Reel on our BAM account.
I got lucky in the fact that I created The Broke Agent under an alias and posted from a separate account so it wouldn’t initially affect my real estate business. As a “funny” agent, it is difficult to pull off humor when you’re constantly worried about upsetting a client or calling attention to something that’s currently happening in one of your deals.
I always struggled with that line of “Should I post this, or will my clients think it’s about them?”
Also, if you meme the real estate industry, you will naturally attract other agents to your content, not clients. That can be great for referrals, likes, and recruiting, but won’t result in much actual business unless you are a unicorn like a Matt Lionetti or Derrick Gregory. Trust me, I’ve been doing it for ten years and am certainly not swimming in real estate deals.
So… What Should YOU Meme?
Instead of memeing the industry and all of its characters and problems, how about you meme your local market? The stuff only locals get. The stuff people complain about at brunch.
Every city has its own inside jokes.
- The annoying traffic light.
- The overpriced grocery store.
- The one bar everyone ends up at even though they all claim to hate it.
That’s the gold.
If you’re in LA, it’s the person from New York who books a hotel in West Hollywood and tells you they’re “basically in Santa Monica” even though it will take you ten hours to drive to them.
If you’re in Austin, it’s complaining about Californians taking over. If you’re in Tucson, you think YOUR Mexican food is superior to any place on earth, including Mexico.
Or of course, the easiest thing to joke about in any market…the weather. This is an example from Kyle Talbot, who is a master meme lord of his local market.
Look how simple that post is and look at the engagement.
When you tap into these hyper-specific, semi-painful truths and turn them into memes, you do two things. You make people feel seen, and you make super shareable content.
- Why this Italian place is better than that one.
- Why you dislike that crowded hiking trail and everyone who goes there.
- Why you have to walk your dog at 5 AM in Phoenix because by 6 AM it’s already 100 degrees.
The truth is you don’t have to be “really funny” to make memes. You just have to nail something that a lot of people are thinking, but aren’t necessarily posting about.
Now, how do you go about making these memes?
I’m going to do a follow-up blog or ebook and go more into detail on this, but I’ll give you a couple of places to start.
First, you can download the Mematic app that has a lot of built-in meme templates. You can search trending memes, new memes, or expressions like ANGRY or PISSED and it will give you the images.
However, they have stopped updating the app and it’s getting more and more dated. CapCut also has an amazing bank of the “green screen memes” like in the example below.
Another thing you can do is simply screenshot memes that you see, download them to your phone and repost them with your own caption.
If you are trying to download a video from Instagram, I recommend using the Repost+ app.
Now, this is self-serving but also true. The best thing you can do is join our BAMx SKOOL community because we just started providing meme templates with built-in captions for our members. All you have to do is fill in the text with how it applies to your market.
This is on top of the social media templates, video scripts, blogs, and emails that we provide to our members on a weekly basis, so your content is always timely.
We also have office hours and trainings to walk you through exactly how to create these.
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