Welcome to Creators on the Rise, where we find and profile breakout creators who are in the midst of extraordinary growth. You can check out previous installments here.
When Aaron Grushow decided to become a real estate agent, he knew social media was going to be a big part of his career.
He grew up with a media executive father and an interior designer mother, and their interests sparked his own. For as long as he can remember, he’s been interested in architecture and digital marketing. He didn’t exactly plan to end up in real estate (he went to college for comparative ethnic studies), but the more he looked at the industry, the more it seemed like the perfect blend of all his passions.
Subscribe to get the latest creator news
And, he thought, he had a leg up on his more established competition: “Real estate agents really weren’t leveraging social media to what I believe was the best of their ability,” he explains.
His plan was to use social media to show off the kinds of properties he was dealing with. But, as a new agent, getting into those homes wasn’t easy.
“I had to hustle really hard to get people to trust me to come film their luxury homes,” he says. “‘Who’s this kid who has been an agent for just a few months asking to come film this $40 million home?’ There were plenty of people who were like, ‘Get lost,’ but through hustling and networking with the right people, I was able to get that access.”
Now, Grushow shows off luxury Los Angeles homes to 1.4 million followers on TikTok. His account has helped him find a few leads for sellers and buyers, but mostly, he says, it’s helped him brand-build. To keep that brand-building going, he’s launching his own podcast, The Standouts, in partnership with Estate Media and Caspian Studios.
“[A]s the name suggests, it really is about how to stand out in today’s saturated world, mostly in the spaces of real estate content creatorship and entrepreneurship,” Grushow says. “Every episode I bring on a guest, someone who I deem as a standout in their particular field. Again, often real estate agents, content creators, entrepreneurs, and we really sit down and discuss what it takes to stand out, what they’ve done differently, how they’ve failed, how they’ve learned from those failures, and how they’re succeeding.”
You can see the first few episodes of The Standout here, and check out our chat with Grushow below.
@aarongrushowhomes Ever see a shark aquarium in a house?! #shark #fish #fishtank #aquarium #house #mansion #luxury #amazing #beautiful #fyp ♬ Can We Kiss Forever? – Kina
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tubefilter: Imagine somebody’s reading this and doesn’t know who you are. Give me a little bit of introduction about you, where you’re from, and how you got into real estate.
Aaron Grushow: Absolutely. My name’s Aaron Grushow. I am born and raised in Los Angeles. My background is content creation and social media strategy, which is what I pursued after graduating college in 2018. Always been a passion of mine, but felt instead of working for someone else, I could apply those skills and my expertise to building my own venture. With that in mind, I decided to get my real estate license and leverage my knowledge of social media to grow a business, and personal brand and stand out in one of the more saturated and competitive industries in the world.
Fast forward, I’m now a real estate agent, having been working for four and a half years now. I work with one of the most incredible teams in the world, AKG Christie’s International Real Estate. We’re one of the top-producing luxury real estate teams and brokerages based in Los Angeles. I continue to try and leverage social media to stand out, grow my business and personal brand, and just do things a bit differently than the traditional real estate agent out there.
What makes you so passionate about real estate?
That’s a good question. Growing up, I had a father who was a media executive and a mother who was an interior designer. Both of those professions in hindsight definitely influenced me. I’ve always been interested in interior design, architecture, luxury homes always fascinated me–and then, of course, on the media side, I’ve always been interested in digital marketing and media in general. It was a few years back when I recognized that there is a gap in the luxury or just real estate space in general. Real estate agents really weren’t leveraging social media to what I believe was the best of their ability. Real estate was always an interest of mine and I thought, why not give it a go? Trying to just stand out, do things differently in the real estate space. I love working with people. I love building relationships. I love just helping in general, and I love thinking a bit outside of the box, and that’s where the content creation comes into play.
Did you go to college for real estate?
No, I did not.
What’d you go to college for?
I went to college for something completely different. I was a comparative ethnic studies major.
Really?
Yes. Again, I love people. I love culture. It was an idea of mine to not take the traditional route of business or marketing. I wanted to stand out. Again, that seems to be a theme in my life. Just do things differently. I love people and culture, so I thought it’d be a very fascinating thing to study and then maybe apply indirectly down the line, which I think I do. Los Angeles is a salad bowl, a mixing pot of culture and ethnicity and race and backgrounds. Every day my goal is to meet people and service them to the best of my ability. It helps having somewhat of an understanding of people’s backgrounds and where they came from in order to connect with them.
Content creation has always been a really big part of real estate for you.
Yes.
How does that shake out for you in terms of how you balance your time?
That’s a good question. In the beginning, when I didn’t have much of a real estate business, I was really focused on content creation. It’s where I spent most of my time. In hindsight, I maybe should have focused a bit more on traditional real estate tactics like prospecting, but I had a long-term vision and it did pan out. As my real estate business started to grow, I started to spend less time on content creation and more on specific real estate sales. A few years down the line, I’d say at this point I’ve now realized that they’re both one and the same for me. Content creation is part of my real estate business, so I make an effort to dedicate time every single week to my content. I now have help and I’ve partnered with amazing people like Estate Media to help me with content creation and balancing that while I can still focus on real estate sales and servicing my clients.
How do you decide what properties to feature?
In the beginning, it was all about which properties I felt will have the most viral aspects, what people would find the most interesting. When I first started, I focused a lot on Instagram and Facebook, and Instagram Stories. This was before TikTok became the platform it is today. I was getting great feedback doing little house tours of luxury homes in LA. The feedback I was getting, this was from people who lived in these types of homes, who saw them every single day. I thought, “Wow if these people find this interesting, imagine people across the country or around the world that have never seen a $10 million, $20 million, $30 million home?” I know through creating content around those types of properties, it’ll fascinate people and it’ll really have that viral effect.
It really comes down to what I feel people will resonate with the most, will find the most interesting, but I also now balance those with my team’s listings, my own listings. It just depends on my goal for the content that I’m creating on that specific occasion.
Got you. Do you have a set production schedule for videos or is it just what you can do when you can manage it?
Yes, I’m working on having a bit more structure in my life as a real estate agent. It’s difficult to create that structure just because things change so quickly. We’re always on the move but I dedicate two days a week to content. Maybe not that entire day, but I dedicate a significant portion of that day to going out and filming content. I’m working on having more of a consistent upload schedule as we speak. It’s all been a learning process.
I do feel like you’re at the whims of the market in terms of the number of properties you have available for you to film or that you want to film.
Again, I’m really lucky to be working with one of the, if not the biggest teams in Los Angeles. We have, at any given time, an inventory of 100 to 200 properties that I can go film. These agents of course welcome me to film them because I’m able to expose them to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people around the world, which is very valuable today, but because I’ve grown the audience I have, there are a lot of real estate agents in this area who follow me, who ask me to come film their listings. Luckily I have a lot of access to homes. It wasn’t always like that in the beginning. I had to hustle really hard to get people to trust me to come film their luxury homes. “Who’s this kid who has been an agent for just a few months asking to come film this $40 million home?” There were plenty of people who were like, “Get lost,” but through hustling and networking with the right people, I was able to get that access.
That was the next thing I wanted to ask actually was, social media has always been part of real estate for you, so are there measurable effects it’s had on the trajectory of your career? Have you had people buy homes from you who are like, “I first encountered you on TikTok”? How has it affected your career overall?
In terms of lead generation, as you can imagine, there aren’t many, many people scrolling on TikTok who are capable of buying and selling luxury homes. I absolutely have gotten clientele from TikTok, a lot of people who are relocating to Los Angeles or in the rental market, which I’m happy to help, but more so than lead generation on the platforms, I’ve used them as a tool for personal brand awareness and reach, and then leveraged that when doing prospecting and talking to clientele off the platform. When I approach a seller, go for a listing appointment, I’m able to share that. I can showcase and expose this property to hundreds of thousands, if not again, millions of people around the world. As real estate becomes more and more digital, that often really resonates with people. It’s had amazing positive effects and benefits to my business but in different ways. I’d say mostly just brand awareness and that social proof when someone looks you up and sees that you have this kind of an audience and can watch a video and learn a lot about you. Just through that video, it creates that automatic sense of trust that is necessary to build relationships and work with people who are buying and selling luxury homes.
Absolutely. How long is the filming process for one of these?
It depends, and I’ve got a few different kinds of videos that I typically make. I guess you’re probably referring to a traditional just short-form house tour walkthrough.
Yes, the short ones.
It also depends on the size of the house. Sometimes I film 10,000, 15,000 square foot homes. Those are obviously going to take significantly more time to walk through than the smaller 5,000-square-foot four-bedroom homes. I’d say on average it takes about an hour to two hours to film and capture B-roll.
Got you. For everything, and B-roll. Interesting. Then do you edit all your videos yourself?
Yes, I’ve always edited all my videos entirely myself.
I feel like you have a distinct editing style.
Thank you. I’m always working on it. I do not have a background in editing. I have very basic knowledge of editing and my skills are limited, but I try and keep it relatively simple on purpose. I think especially on TikTok, but most of these platforms who are promoting short-form videos, the audience resonates more with less produced, less curated content that comes across more natural and authentic. I try and lean in on that. My editing is not crazy. It’s pretty straightforward. As I get more busy and grow quicker, I will probably employ the help of some professional editors to help me out.
Understandably. It’s an interesting point when people decide that they need, or that they want, editing help. It’s always an interesting inflection point career-wise.
Absolutely. Honestly, I probably need it more than I know. [laughs] But I really enjoy the process. I love editing. I love putting the pieces together. It’s almost like a puzzle. Solving how to really tell a story of a home. From capturing the video, usually I have somewhat of an idea in mind of how I want the video to go, but sometimes once I have that footage, I’m unable to tell that story the way I initially thought, so I have to reorganize and find the best way to put those clips together to tell that story. That’s fun for me. I enjoy it.
That’s cool. Don’t lose that. I know you might get editors in the future, but people who are really passionate about editing are always really interesting to me, and I feel like it’s sad to lose that.
For sure. Look, I am a creative person at heart. It doesn’t matter what I do in life, I’m going to need to introduce some creative aspects to that. I think content has really kept me going in the real estate space because don’t get me wrong, I love real estate sales. I love what I do, but it can be very difficult, very draining, and the content gives me an outlet and a way to be creative through doing those difficult everyday tasks. I appreciate that, and if I do get an editor to help me out at some point, I’ll definitely be extremely hands-on with them.
Definitely. What has been your favorite part of this whole experience of being online?
That’s a really good question. It just goes back to what we just talked about. The process itself of creating content. I just love to create content. I love to see that finished product, and I love sharing my work with the world. Growing an audience is so awesome. I’m so thankful to everyone who’s tuned in and supported me and continues to watch my content, and I love connecting with them. The process of creating content is truly my favorite part of it all.
Then any cool plans or projects you’re working on? Anything you want to talk about that you want people to know about?
Yes. I’m continuously trying to evolve my content. As social media becomes more and more saturated, there are more and more agents and people like me who are trying to do exactly what I do, so I’m always trying to stay ahead of the curve and create new types of content, stay engaging. I just partnered with Estate Media and Caspian Studios to launch a podcast, which I’m extremely excited about. It’s called The Standouts, and as the name suggests, it really is about how to stand out in today’s saturated world, mostly in the spaces of real estate content creatorship and entrepreneurship. Every episode I bring on a guest, someone who I deem as a standout in their particular field. Again, often real estate agents, content creators, entrepreneurs, and we really sit down and discuss what it takes to stand out, what they’ve done differently, how they’ve failed, how they’ve learned from those failures, and how they’re succeeding.
My goal is really to just provide as much value as I can back to my audience and really create something that I wish I had when I first started my journey, and I am pleased to say that it’s worked out well so far, and it’s become just that. We’ve launched a handful of episodes at this point. I’ve had some incredible guests on there, and I’m excited to keep it going, and yes, it’s been an awesome journey.
Since you’re dealing primarily in short-form, seems like a podcast will give your audience a way to encounter you for a longer period of time.
Yes. That’s another goal of mine. There’s only so much you can share in a 45-minute-long TikTok, and besides just providing as much value-driven content through the podcast, I really want people to get a chance to know me better, the real me and how I think because I haven’t been creating a lot of content that I think showcases my thinking and who I really am as a person, and I think that is essential to building a brand online. I started on TikTok in October of 2019, and by January 1st, 2020, I had a million followers, but not a single person knew my face or who I was. I was behind the camera for all of that. Unfortunately, COVID happened shortly after, which put a huge damper on my plans, and it became very difficult to film houses and create content, but there was a silver lining.
I actually started to get in front of the camera. That honestly is when I recognized a huge shift in my personal brand and in my business. People started to learn who I was, and I think that was essential to the next evolution of my content and my business. Really getting in front of the camera and being authentic and truly sharing who I was as a person.
Any last things you want people to know about you?
Not necessarily. Again, am so thankful to everyone who’s watched my content and again, my business is also real estate sales, and I look at content as a way to grow my personal brand and whatnot, but I think there’s a lot of people who forget that I’m also a real estate salesman and I’m here to help people buy, sell and lease homes. I think some people are a little intimidated by some of the content I post, which obviously entail a lot of luxury homes, but I work with all types of clients from first-time home buyers to those luxury clients, to people who are looking for a one-bedroom rental.
If you’re looking for real estate help, whether you’re in Los Angeles or anywhere throughout the world, I’m happy to help in any way I can–provide advice, and give direction.
