Jacob Peistrup is an ambitious and driven professional with a strong skill set for modern-day SEO, content marketing, and lead generation.
He uses his digital expertise to build relationships and support real estate teams. Over his career, Jacob has built a captive audience, with millions of online impressions from YouTube and Google search.
Jacob was born in St. Louis and spent childhood moving around New England until coming back to St. Louis at the age of 15. At 18, he left to go to college in Boston and then came back to St. Louis after graduation.
Jacob holds a bachelor's degree in finance from Northeastern University in Boston, MA. He is licensed to practice real estate in Missouri, Illinois, and Massachusetts. He is also a licensed part 107 commercial drone pilot.
Northeastern University
Bachelor's degree, Finance & Business Administration
3.47 GPA
MICDS
High School Diploma
3.94 GPA
Real Estate Broker - Illinois
Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation
Credential ID 475.199252
Broker-Salesperson - Missouri
St. Louis REALTORS ®
Credential ID 2020011548
Real Estate Salesperson - Massachusetts
Massachusetts Association of REALTORS®
Credential ID 9570920Credential
Part 107 Remote UAS Pilot
Federal Aviation Administration
Credential ID 4783512
When I first heard the word “coronavirus,” it was January 2020. I was a freshman in college.
I was studying at Northeastern University, and I didn’t know my life was about to be turned upside down.
In March, I was studying to get my real estate license in Missouri.
I came home to St. Louis for 10 days during spring break.
On the 10th day, I learned I’d be finishing the semester virtually because Northeastern’s campus was shut down for the foreseeable future.
Because of the COVID lockdown, my real estate license took about a month to get processed through the Missouri Real Estate Commission.
By May, things were opening up, and I joined Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices and dove into real estate.
For the next 6 months, I tried just about every form of marketing I could think of to get real estate leads:
I struggled.
I closed 2 deals in those 6 months.
They were referrals from agents in my office where my take-home check was about 20% of the commission.
In November 2020, two things happened that changed the course of my career.
1. I met Madison Hayes. Little did I know she’d become my business partner and one of my closest friends.
2. I massively changed my approach to making YouTube content. I started following this guy named Jackson Wilkey who changed my strategy for making real estate videos.
From November 2020 to about March 2021, I started to feel good about a career in real estate.
I was heavily focused on making YouTube videos about the St. Louis market.
And it was working.
Random people from the internet who liked my videos started reaching out because they were moving to St. Louis and didn’t know who else to talk to about buying a house.
I was learning a shit ton about real estate from Madison:
Originally, the team consisted of Madison, Chloe, and me, but we were planning to add a few more agents.
In Spring and Summer 2021, my work paid off.
I closed just under $4,564,000 of real estate deals: 8 buyers and 2 sellers.
I felt great, but something was missing.
I never planned on real estate being my career: It was supposed to be a way of dipping my toes in the water during summer break 2020.
COVID changed everything, and I decided to take a break from college for 18 months.
During the pandemic, I got not one, but three real estate licenses: Missouri, Massachusetts, and Illinois.
By September 2021, things at college were somewhat “back to normal,” and I decided to return to Boston for the semester.
I didn’t want to be a college dropout.
But I was making good money for a 20-year-old and didn’t want to give that up.
That’s where things got interesting.
I was generating leads off YouTube. More and more every month it seemed.
So I had an idea: What if I continued making videos while in Boston and started handing those leads off to the 4 agents on my real estate team?
Would it work? I had no idea.
Would there be challenges with that? Absolutely.
2022 was the first year I was fully “out” of selling real estate. I was just focusing on making YouTube videos.
Mid-2022 I learned about SEO and realized the value of knowing how to rank websites, not just YouTube videos.
So I started to work on making blog posts, landing pages, and building backlinks.
In the summer of 2022, I also learned about leverage and the concept of buying my time back.
Making YouTube videos was a lot of fun, but editing two or three videos a week while taking 21 credit hours of college classes was time-consuming.
I hired 2 assistants who live in the Philippines: Len and RJ.
They work with me to this day, and I am beyond grateful for their help with editing videos, managing websites, and posting social media content.
In 2022, the Living St. Louis YouTube brought in $9,902,144 worth of business:
The end of 2022 marked another milestone for me: I graduated college.
I was tired and frustrated.
I felt like I had wasted a lot of time learning nothing in college and sacrificed a lot of earning potential since so much of my attention was given to schoolwork.
I graduated with a Bachelor’s in Finance from Northeastern University.
I completed my entire degree in 5 semesters of class spread over 3 years.
It wasn’t fun, but it was fast.
The following 2 years after graduation, I felt confident, free, and ready to 10x my business.
My goal was to generate $10, then $15, then $20 million in real estate closings from my YouTube channels and websites.
And I did.
I got all sorts of people who wanted to work with me:
I started to invest in my skills.
I met Nathan Gotch, founder of Gotch SEO Academy, and he quickly became a mentor to me.
The Academy became a network of marketing agencies and friends I could rely on.
I started to invest in people.
I started hiring freelancers like crazy:
Each website I work on is its own project. And it’s my job to combine the right content, people, and strategy to rank and generate business from it.
Where do I see myself in 5 years? I’m not sure.
But where I see myself now is continuing to work on my YouTube channels and websites, partnering with the right people so we can win together, and learning from experts in real estate and marketing.
