David:
This is the BiggerPockets Podcast show 629.

Brandon:
Success is not a surprise to anybody who’s successful. In fact, it’s surprising when you don’t get it. If you had somebody driving for dollars three times a week, mailing all those things, had a sales guy entering the phone, meeting with people and you didn’t land a deal after a year, I would be surprised. I’d be like, “Wow, something went wrong in that system. Obviously, the machine just was broken,” but I’m surprised because I feel like it should have worked, and I would say, usually, the reason those machines don’t work is because you invented the machine yourself.

David:
What’s going on, everyone? This is David Greene, your host of the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast. Here today with my cohost, Robert Abasolo. In today’s show, Rob and I are going to be interviewing my former cohost and best friend, Brandon Turner, a staple in the BiggerPockets community. So if you are new and you don’t know who Brandon is, you are in for a treat. Rob, good afternoon to you. What were some of your favorite parts of today’s show?

Rob:
Oh, man. Very tense show, man. I felt like Brandon was staring me down the whole time, and like I was stepping on some shoe. No, I’m just kidding, man. It was really great.

David:
That’s a good point. What was it like to meet my ex?

Rob:
It was really great, man. I was like, “All right. This has to be a good podcast or else I will have failed at my job,” but honestly, I don’t know if we’ve ever laughed quite so much in my short tenure as a cohost on the BiggerPockets Podcast. So had a really great time. Brandon’s always a hoot, as they say. We came up with a really fun acronym that we’ll be revealing at the very end of the episode. We talk a lot about personal brand development and you know how you can use social media to boost your real estate career.

David:
That’s exactly right. So Brandon was instrumental in hosting this podcast with Josh Dorkin to get it started building. It’s what he is. He’s the best selling author of several books. One of them, the book on rental property investing, is the best selling book in the entire real estate world, period, which is pretty amazing. He’s also my best friend, which is really his biggest accomplishment, and about, what it was, six months or so ago I’d say, maybe longer, he left the podcast to focus full-time on his company, ODC, where they raise money and buy apartment complexes, mobile home parks, really big cashflowing stuff and make money for their investors.

David:
So on today’s show, we get into what Brandon has done to build his email list, to build his social media following, to build credibility and trust with other people so that they’re willing to lend him money and how our listeners can do the same.

David:
Before we get into the show with Brandon, let’s get to today’s quick tip. Today’s quick tip is brought to you by Rob Abasolo.

Rob:
Listen, guys. If you are looking to jumpstart your real estate career, if you want to get into content, I think you don’t need to overthink what kind of camera or microphone that you guys have. All right? At the end of the day, they say that the best camera on the market is the one that you have on you. So my quick tip is put yourself out there because even before I was Robuilt on YouTube, I was striking up partnerships, I was taking on investors, and I was partnering with people all over the place just by simply making content on social media and talking about my Airbnb journey. You can do it, too, guys. You really can. How did I do?

David:
That was amazing, especially because you had to make all that up on the spot.

Rob:
I know, man.

David:
I have no idea I was going to drop it on you.

Rob:
How dare you?

David:
Now, just a announcement to everybody. Today’s podcast is going to be a little bit longer than usual. We went into overtime because it’s not every day that we get to have Brandon back on the show, and we know that the nostalgia factor will be pretty real and high for many of you, which is exciting. So make sure you listen all the way to the end because there is a challenge that has been dropped between Brandon and I regarding our text letters, and I would love your participation and you don’t want to miss out as well on Rob’s amazing acronym that he created on the spot. So listen all the way to the end, participate in the challenge, please. Brandon’s not here anymore so I can just say vote for me.

David:
One last thing before we bring in Brandon. We’ve got some free content for you. Go to biggerpodcast.com/podcasts and click on The Real Estate Show. It’s one that has Rob and I’s pictures on it in the top left. Click on it and you will see a link to download some free information on how you can build your own social media following because we want you to be able to raise money to buy more real estate just like us. All right. Let’s bring in Brandon.

David:
Brandon Turner, welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I know nothing about you. I’m not sure how we even got you booked on the show or why you’re here. So can you tell us a little bit about what you have to do with real estate investing and why we should be talking to you?

Brandon:
Yeah, guys. It’s such a good honor to be on Deeper Pockets. I’ve heard a lot of good things about the show, but I don’t know why my agent booked me. So anyway, what do you guys talk about in Deeper Pockets again?

Rob:
Yeah, how to spend money on houses and you know how to manage crazy tenants and stuff like that.

Brandon:
That’s lame. Let’s switch gears today and let’s talk about something more fun. Do you hear about CrossFit? Can I tell you guys a little bit about CrossFit?

David:
No, I have it, actually.

Brandon:
How do you know somebody’s in CrossFit? They’ll tell you.

Rob:
When they say terms like what.

Brandon:
There you go. All right. So I’m Brandon Turner. I was the host of the BiggerPockets Podcast for a long time. I don’t know how many years, a long time, nine-ish years, and then there was a mutiny and Rob kicked me off. So now, I live under a bridge somewhere outside of David’s house and he feeds me occasionally, and it’s all good. So that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

David:
Those that are new to the podcast, I’m a bit of an Eminem to Brandon Turner’s Dr. Dre, if you will. So Brandon’s the man responsible for pretty much you hearing me right now and anything to do with me having an opportunity other than real estate investing. So thank you for that and thank you for coming back. I just mentioned you on the show that we were recording about how I needed a really clever name. Rob, do you remember what I was saying I needed a name for and I was saying I wish Brandon was here?

Rob:
Something about the 1099 mentality and then I believe you were like, “Oh, yeah. This is one of those moments where I really miss Brandon Turner.”

David:
Yeah. We were talking about the fact that new investors have a very difficult time adapting to this space because it’s an entrepreneurial mindset you have to have. You have to be creative. You have to have the 1099 mindset, which is, “I got to figure out a way to solve a problem, and that means that I have to work past 5:00 sometimes or I can work on a Saturday, not a Tuesday.” There’s flexibility. When people bring the W-2 mindset into real estate investing, they’re just constantly frustrated because this world will not honor the way that they’re used to thinking. I was like, “I wish I had a word for what that’s like when their expectations are the W-2 way,” and I had little tear come down my cheek. I’m like, “I wish Brandon was here. He was always good at this.”

Rob:
It was more than a tear. It was more.

Brandon:
It was a sob.

Rob:
We had to tell the editor to, we had to have him cut out 10 minutes of David sobbing.

Brandon:
Well, if you want a real connection there, we don’t need to go into this because we’ve talked about it on the show many times before, but the BP Con speech that I gave last year at what, 2021, and David, you came up on stage and did it with me, we talked about those four mindset levels of entrepreneurship, right? It was the DIY level, which is, “How am I going to solve this problem or build this business?” Then there’s the project manager level, which is, “I’m going to hire my brother-in-law or cousin or whatever, some person I know to do that thing.” Then there’s the COO mindset, which is, “I’m going to build a business.” There’s the fourth level, which is, “I’m going to inspire a team and I’m going to be the visioner that leads it, but I’m not actually doing anything,” right? There’s the four levels.

Brandon:
So here’s where I bring that back to what you just said. People bring the mindset at which they were at at their job into their real estate so often, right? So if they were a DIYer in their job, which 99% of jobs are DIYers, unless you’re a middle manager, then you’re probably a project manager, unless you’re a CEO or COO, then you’re that, but you bring what you brought in, right?

Brandon:
So when J Scott, for example, book on flipping houses J Scott, when he got into flipping houses, it never occurred to that guy to go and pick up a hammer because guess what he was at whatever, whatever tech company? I don’t know if it’s Microsoft or Google or whatever, but he was a project manager. That was literally his job. So what did he do when he came in? He project managed.

Brandon:
When I got into real estate, what did I do? I picked up a hammer because we carry the mindset in which we left our job or which we currently are at our job into our real estate. It’s not always a bad thing, but it can be a limiting thing.

Brandon:
So yeah, if you want to tie that into today’s topic a little bit, the fourth level there, which I mentioned, I call it the architect. It’s that visionary. They inspire. One of the greatest ways to do that is to have a personal brand or a following of some kind or at least to have a good reputation out there in the world. That’s how you elevate to that fourth level. So that’s why today, when we were talking about what we were going to talk about today, I thought that would be a cool topic.

Rob:
Yeah. So do you feel like you have to do all? Do you have to earn your right of passage in each of those levels or do you think it’s possible to skip around or move from one to the other faster?

Brandon:
Dude, that is the question. That is the question. I mean, I could spend hours on this topic, but here’s what I would say to that. Number one is you do not have to. If there’s one thing you take from today’s show, I hope it’s this. You do not have to move through them. Everybody does, almost entirely. Most people move through them, but you do not have to. You have a full, complete, 100% choice on where you begin and where you begin matters because every level has a limit. You are not going to be a multi, huge millionaire working four hours a week sitting on a beach if you’re the DIY mindset. You just are not doing it because your money is tied to the hours worked.

Brandon:
So you can choose, and this is an easier said than done, but you can choose mentally and say, “I’m going to approach it this way.” I’ll give you the hack for doing that, by the way. Remember those WWJD bracelets that everyone wore back in the ’90s, What Would Jesus Do? It was like, “Should I smoke this cigarette? What would Jesus do?” and you point to your wrist and then you don’t do it, right?

Brandon:
That concept, I literally want to have a bracelet that says WWEMD, What would Elon Musk do? What would Richard Branson do? So think of the person you want to … Who is the ideal person in that category? Whether you want to be a COO type level, you want to be more of the architect level or you want to be a project manager level, who’s that guy or girl? What would they do? That’s the easiest hack to start thinking in that mindset. So yeah, you can choose. Rob, great question.

Rob:
That’s very tangible advice, I think. I have to remind myself that I don’t always have to do everything. I’m in between two and three right now, but I want to be a four, but I don’t want to quickly move up there until I’ve really cut my teeth on this 2.5 stage that I’m at right now.

Brandon:
Yeah. Well, be at that four, that architect level, not that I’m always there, but I feel like when I built the current company I have which is called Open Door Capital. By the way, I never explained the story. We can come back to that. I built a big real estate company. We did a lot of cool stuff. I was on the podcast for years. I wrote some books, but when I built the current company, Open Door capital, which now I think we’re right on the verge of 4,000 units, but when I built that I said, “I’m going to build this like an architect.” I’m not going to move through it. I chose to build it as an architect.

Brandon:
So to do that, and this is my encouragement to anybody out there who wants to operate their business in that way, to be a Elon Musk or a Richard Branson, the number one thing to do is to hire yourself a CEO or a COO. Again, easier said than done, but that’s the key is if you want to elevate to the next level, you hire the one at the current level. If you want to stop painting your rental units and answering the phone when a tenant calls, what do you do? You hire a person to answer the phones and paint. So now you’re a project manager, but if you want to just jump right up to the top, go hire yourself a good COO.

Brandon:
Here’s the thing that’s so powerful. When you have an online presence of any kind, I don’t care if you’re experienced or brand new, when you start building that now, that allows you to connect with people and network in a much bigger way than you could ever do in the old world where you actually have to go physically go handshake people.

Rob:
Oh, taboo.

Brandon:
I know. I know. I don’t like touching people. Now, you get to touch people online, right? It’s way less creepy and less germy.

Rob:
In a metaphorical sense.

Brandon:
Yes, purely in the metaphorical sense. Anyway, so the idea being, if you want to elevate yourself, why would we want to do that? Because you make more money and you work less hours. I mean, that’s awesome about being elevated and you get to inspire people. Having a good reputation, especially having a good reputation, is key online because you can find people to work on your teams to get you to that next level. You can find your CEO, your COO, your project managers, your whatever. So that’s been my focus a lot the last six months. Ever since BP Con, I’ve just been every day thinking on this concept.

David:
So my thought was-

Brandon:
It’s like I just gave you permission. I just called on you.

David:
I know. You can’t help it, man.

Brandon:
Yeah, I can’t help it, man. I’ll allow you to speak now and ask a question, David. What would you-

David:
I take it when you’re around your dad or something and you’re getting to drive somewhere that he’s giving the keys and he drives your car. It’s just how this thing works.

Brandon:
Yeah. You automatically go back to those. When I go home for Christmas to my family, I’m instantly back into like I’m 12, my sister’s 13, my brother’s 10 and nine, and we’re fighting in the back seat of a minivan. It’s like we’re right back there again. Anyway, David, what did you want to say?

David:
When you described your four levels thinking, I think there’s a fallacy that people have that the DIY level is the wrong way to do it, and the higher you go up this list, the easier it becomes. So what you’re trying to do is just put aside the temptation to do it yourself, and with every level, it becomes easier and easier and easier, but that’s not true. It’s a different set of skills that you have to do.

David:
There may be a higher value at being an architect versus do it yourself, but that doesn’t mean that you just become an architect. You don’t just say it. I mean, there’s a skill of project management that J Scott had built. Often, that’s what stops the DIYer from going up is they don’t know how to win at that level.

David:
So what we’re really describing here is how do you build the skills to be good at every single level because we do want to be progressing upwards, but it doesn’t just happen. You don’t just get a promotion. When you’re at the level that you’ve achieved, Brandon, where you are raising money, you’re hiring people, you’re calling the shots with Open Door Capital, I was wondering if you would share what are some of the skills that you’ve had to build so that you can do those things to earn the right to get to the level where you’re at now.

Brandon:
Great question. Yeah. So I’ll lay out a few of them. So first of all, if I want to move from DIY, so when I originally got into real estate, just like a lot of people listening to this, my wife and I were out there till 2:00 in the morning painting rental units before a tenant moves in. We were taking all phone calls. We were doing all that stuff. So that is where we all started or at least most people tend to start is doing all the stuff themselves.

Brandon:
The skills needed to get to that next level, if we want to just jump one level at a time, I want to go from that to project management. All right. So what does a project manager need to do? They need to know how to set a scope of work like, “This is what needs to get done.” Now, obviously, this is industry-specific, so different industries have different requirements, but basically, you’re going to say, “This is the job I’m going to hire you to do. I’m going to hire a property manager to manage my tenants. That is what my job is going to be. I’m going to hire a contractor to go do this job and you need to keep them on time and on budget.”

Brandon:
Now, I personally hate that level. I hate project management more than probably any other thing in the world. I would rather DIY or jump to the other one. This is why you brought the point. It’s not that any of the levels are bad. I like DIY and there are areas of my life I choose to DIY business stuff because I like it. I like being involved with that stuff, but there are areas of my life that I really like. I don’t want to be a project manager typically ever. So anyway, so if I want a project manager, I got to be able to set schedules for people and hold them accountable, hire the right third-party people, all that next.

Brandon:
Next, if I want to be a COO or the CEO, COO, however you want to call that, you really got to understand how to, A, hire internally because you’re probably building an internal team at that point, but you need to know how to organize that whole thing. This is where the book Traction from Gino Wickman comes in really handy, and we had Gino on the podcast a while back. That is a system in which you manage all of those people in their organization.

Brandon:
If you want to visualize this, by the way, a COO, that level I think of as you’re in the middle and there are a bunch of roles around you. You are the center and you’re meeting with all these people that are on your team and you’re inspiring them and you’re pouring into them, and it’s amazing. It’s a cool spot to be in, but if you suddenly got hit by a bus, it’s painful for the team because you were the team lead, you were running everything, you were there as the CEO. That’s the difference between the fourth level, the architect. The real skills you need to learn there are things like inspiration. You need to be problem solving, delegation at a large level, not just like, “Hey, I’m going to let you choose how to run that, whatever, how to paint that wall,” but to the point of, “You might even choose what properties we buy.” You’re delegating large things at that level.

Brandon:
Really, you’re just working on brand. I mean, at that point, the fourth level is largely about brand. Richard Branson can own 150 companies and raise all those money to buy these companies and do all this cool stuff because Richard Branson is a freaking cool individual, right? Some people are like, “Oh, yeah, Richard Branson is doing it. Okay. Yeah, let’s do it. Oh, Elon Musk is doing it. Yeah, let’s let’s do it,” right? It’s because they have this persona that just radiates out energy from that level, and because of that, the team can be built just based on that radiance, but the person’s not in the middle. They’re not even involved. They might not even know what’s going on. I doubt Richard even knows half the companies he owns, but it’s his energy that drives the growth of those. Does that make sense?

David:
So let’s talk about that. If you want to build something like that, what are some things that people need to be aware of that will work or what’s a strategy they could have? What have you learned since you’ve left the podcast about how to grow that personal brand?

Brandon:
A couple thoughts. I mean, we can dive as deep as you want on this. It’s like I can do a masterclass on this topic here. First of all, let’s talk about what a personal brand is for a second because I have a friend who’s an attorney and very different mindset, very W-2 mindset, but she always makes fun of me if I ever say the word personal brand because she’s like, “There’s no such thing. You either are a person or you’re a brand. You cannot be a personal brand,” and I differ because the word brand, if I were to ask you guys about Coca-Cola’s brand, what is that? Is it their logo? I mean, that’s part of it, right? Maybe. Is it their colors that they use? Is it the cute snow, what’s it, the little polar bears they use at Christmas time? What is Coca-Cola’s brand?

Brandon:
This is how I define your brand or your personal brand is it’s how people think about you when they think about you, right? How do you think about Coca-Cola when you think about Coca-Cola? The answer to that, that the bulk of people when they think about Coca-Cola, what they think about that is your brand. So if people think of David Greene, what are they thinking about is who David is. I still think of … and largely, books can help with this, right? So I think of David as long distance investor. He’s really good at that. He loves the BRRRR stuff. He’s awesome at the BRRRR stuff. He’s a real estate agent that’s one of the best in the world. When I think of David, I think of ridiculously large, strong arms that are bulging because I don’t know if you guys have seen David lately, but his arms and shoulders look like … He looks like the Incredible Hulk but a more handsome version and he’s not green. It’s insane.

David:
Wow.

Brandon:
When I think of David, that is a large piece of David’s brand, and now getting into vacation rental stuff. It’s how I think of you is your brand. So I would argue that every single person out there, Rob, you’re included and everybody, has a personal brand right now, but most of the time, we’re not even thinking about how to improve that or why that even matters. So when I say personal brand, that’s all I’m talking about is what do people think about when they’re thinking about you.

Rob:
It’s very funny that you say all this because my former life before I was a podcaster, YouTuber, content creator, I was actually in advertising. I’m a creative copywriter by trade. So literally, my career-

Brandon:
I love that. Dude, just this morning I was like, “I need a copywriter to help me with some copy. I don’t know a single copywriter.” I said that to my assistant today. I was like, “I don’t know a single copywriter.” Look at that. The universe brought me one. The universe brought me one.

Rob:
There you go. You’re looking at a senior creative copywriter. I’ve written-

Brandon:
All right. Well, I’m going to need you to quit this podcast and come help me on copywriting from now on. All right. Anyway, keep going.

Rob:
Well, it’s funny because of the amount of scrutiny that all of my clients had. I worked for Gatorade, for Hyundai, for Sonic, for Ole Smoky Moonshine, you name it. I’ve worked for so many brands, and there’s so much scrutiny that goes into the brand and, “Oh, that word, that’s not very Hyundai,” or “That’s not very Gatorade.”

Rob:
So my whole career I’m so scrutinizing what brand really means, and now that I’ve quit advertising, I’m like, “Eh, I’m fine. I’m good. I’m good to break rules and stuff like that.” So for me, I’m very focused on developing personal brand and who I am, but I really have to really challenge myself to just push the limits of what that means because I also don’t really like being conformed to the box of a brand sometimes.

Brandon:
Yeah. I agree. I don’t think you have to define it like, “Coca-Cola is a soda company.” That’s not my brand. The brand’s evolving. It’s just how do people think about you. I mean, if you’re posting on Facebook inappropriate comments all the time or you’re negative all the time and complaining, when you’re posting an Instagram comment that’s just, that’s the brand you are building, and people don’t realize the things you do today affect your building in the future.

Brandon:
So going back to that, what we said earlier about this idea of does this apply, does this concept apply to new investors or is this something I’m talking about people who want to raise millions of dollars like we do, it applies to everybody, especially if you ever want to bring on a partner ever. You got to know that your partner’s going to check you out on online and figure out who you are.

Brandon:
If you ever want to raise money in any sort, maybe you want to raise 100 grand to help fund a flip, you want to raise $100 million to buy an apartment complex and everything in between, the brand you build today, I mean, the brand you’re going to have in the future you’re building right now, right? It’s like that great quote, “Dig your well before you’re thirsty.”

Brandon:
If you ever think you’re going to need to raise money from people, start building your brand today, and it doesn’t mean you have to have a logo and colors and a beard or whatever. I go a little overboard sometimes with the branding, but it’s just pay attention to who you are, and then if you want to supercharge it a little bit, you can get into the world of content creation, which is what the three of us do online, and we do that for a reason, not just because we have big egos, but because it actually grows our business to crazy levels.

Brandon:
I don’t know. It’s like magic, isn’t it? Remember back in the day? You’d have to go to conferences every week and go speak and go meet with people and meet with hundreds of people, and then maybe a couple of them might invest with you and you could raise a few million dollars over the course of 10 years of doing that. Now, it’s like you could have a podcast or you could have a YouTube video or you could have a TikTok dance. It’s crazy. Anyway, yeah, David?

David:
Rob, I’m going to throw it to you in a second to ask about content creation specifically because you did it from the ground up.

Brandon:
Oh, I thought you just pulled the Kanye like, “I’m going to let you finish in just a second,” but Beyonce was-

David:
The real MVP, yeah.

Rob:
I was calling on David because he raised his hand.

Brandon:
Oh, there we go. Okay.

David:
Yes. Yes. See what you’ve done, Brandon? You’ve now put Rob in the position where he is like, “I will allow David to speak. You have the floor for 30 seconds.”

Brandon:
See, Rob, let me teach you a few things about handling David here. Number one, you have to put him in his place right away. It’s like going to prison. Find the biggest guy and knock his teeth out. Dave, you have to knock him out right away and then he’ll do whatever you say. Keep going, David. I’ll allow it.

David:
That was the only piece of advice you had?

Rob:
That’s it. Just hit David.

David:
Yeah, just hit Dave up and punch him in the mouth.

Brandon:
Yeah, walk up, punch him in the mouth. You’re fine. All right. David, you were saying?

David:
You know what’s going to happen at BP Con now when I’m surrounded by just thousands and thousands of people that are like-

Brandon:
Those watching you, yeah.

David:
All right. So Rob, you did it from the ground up without a platform like BiggerPockets. So I think you have a lot to contribute to this conversation, but what I wanted to point about what Brandon said, what I don’t want to have be overlooked, there are certain phrases that in our industry and other industries, they trigger a response that isn’t really accurate to what the word means, but it can be associated with things that people don’t like.

David:
So HELOC, for a long time, we don’t think about it bad now, but if I go back five years, 10 years, saying HELOC made people bristle up immediately like, “Enemy, bad.” You use HELOCs to do bad things and you lose your house. Appreciation, I mentioned several times, has been lumped in with speculation. So when people hear the word appreciation, they automatically think you’re taking a risk, and every time I say that word, I then have to go defend what I meant by when I say it because nobody’s trying to understand.

David:
Networking has that connotation. It sounds like you’re walking around glad handing people, handing out business cards, schmoozing in a very unnatural way that nobody likes, right? So we’re trying not to say the word networking. What we’re actually trying to describe is go meet people, make connections, build genuine relationships, and then they’re going to want to help you.

David:
Brand has that same vibe to it. I hear a lot of professional athletes are describing is, “I need to build my brand,” and it just sounds very pretentious. It sounds douchey. You’re not that important that you need to have your own brand, but if we use a different word to describe what they’re actually saying, it’s my reputation, the way that people feel when they think about me. That’s very different. I could get behind that and I want to highlight this is what you’re getting after is when I go look at, say, Brandon’s TikTok or, sorry, his Instagram. I was warned by Brandon not to go on TikTok because it’s addicting. So I’ve never actually done it.

Brandon:
It’s addicting. I’m there. I’m there.

David:
Your Instagram tends to be very inspirational and uplifting, and it gives me a good feeling whenever I see it. It’s like a puppy. You feel good when you’re going to see a puppy, right? Other people’s Instagram give me the feeling of this person just wants attention. They’re posting things because they want to be noticed or they just want to be controversial for the sake of being controversial. They just throw things out there to see what’s going to fire people up.

David:
If you think about the way that you impact other human beings, it is a incredibly smart business move because other people will subconsciously make decisions about pleasing those they like. So if you want someone to bring new deals, if you want someone to share their contractor with you, you guys all agree, we don’t share our contractors with just anybody. You’re not going to let your girlfriend get in a car with just anybody, right? You know this person really trusts you when they’ll leave you alone with their wife or something like that.

David:
If people don’t trust you, they’re not going to tell you about the secrets that they have where they’re really going to help you versus if they like you, they want to see you win. They are way more likely to give you those little ins. So that’s one of the reasons, Brandon, I think people know your heart is so good, that they’re more likely to lend money to Open Door Capital because I would be thinking, “Brandon wouldn’t put a person on his team that’s not a good person. Brandon’s not going to put his name behind this if it wasn’t a good product.”

David:
If you don’t have that with your sphere of influence, if people don’t get that impression when they look at you, you’re never going to know it, but they’re not going to be sending good things your way.

Brandon:
That’s a really good way of putting that. I love that you brought up the fact that they see me on social media. This is why social media is, I think, so valuable for people who want to eventually raise money or bring partners in or build any kind of real estate business. It’s because people like to do business with people they like. So what’s the fastest way or maybe not fastest, the best way to build knowledge, like, and trust, right? Those know, like, and trust, the three keys. Once they know you, like you, and trust you, people will want to work with you, give you money, partner with you, whatever.

Brandon:
So how do you develop that? Then more so, how do you develop that at scale? Social media allowed that more than anything else ever. So people will watch me for years. I mean, there’s people right now listening to this probably who listen to me for seven years on a podcast, eight years, nine years on a podcast and then invested with me because they were like, “Oh, now, I know him. I feel like I know him because I’ve seen how … I was there when his daughter was born. I was there when his son was born. I know how he treats things,” because we all know how you do anything is how you do everything. Even if you’ve never said that phrase, subconsciously, if you’ve got a buddy who’s always late to everything, always mismanages his money, always broke, always struggling, you assume he’s probably going to be like that if you were to give him 50 bucks to whatever. How people do things is how people do things.

Brandon:
So social media establishes your reputation over time so that you can cash in on that in the future. I don’t mean that in a bad way, but you can jab, jab, jab, right hook is what Gary Vaynerchuck calls it. You give, give, give, give, give, and then when you need something, you can ask, and it’s the most powerful thing in the world.

Brandon:
You actually nailed this better than anybody else on earth. Josh Dorkin, founder of BiggerPockets because Josh, for the first decade, didn’t charge anything for anything on BiggerPockets. It was all just free, pretty much entirely free. He had a donate button. You guys remember the donate button? He had a donate button. That’s how BiggerPockets made money is people donated. Why did Josh do that? Because he understood that if he can get millions of people to know, like, and trust this brand of BiggerPockets, he could do whatever he wanted later. He could start a publishing company. He could launch whatever. He just knew that. So yeah, brand is huge.

Rob:
I think that a lot of people, also, they over, okay, what am I trying to say here? They overthink what social media has to be because they see people like us, influencers out there making content. Oh, man, influencer is another word, David, by the way. That’s another one. I hate ever saying that I’m an influencer, but content creators, I like that more. They see it and they’re like, “Oh, well, if I can’t be that, then I’m not going to do it because I can’t do it that well, but what I try to remind people for myself is that when I got started raising money and partnering with people, I wasn’t Robuilt on YouTube. That did not exist. What I was doing was I was posting photos of my Airbnbs. I was putting all my properties up there. I was showing people. I was always talking about it because I was so proud of my successes that I was like, “You guys can do this, too.”

Rob:
Then I would have friends that reach out and they would say, “Hey, I see that you’re really good at this Airbnb thing. I don’t know. Can we partner up?” and I’d be like, “Sure. If you fund it, I’ll run it.” So I got a lot of partners this way and this was far before I had any platform. So for people that are looking to get out there, I always tell them, just put yourself out there because really, just posting about it, you never know who in your life or who in your network or that random person that you went to college with on Facebook might be interested in actually investing with you.

David:
Well, let’s take this a little deeper, if we will, and this is going to be applicable to everybody. It’s just uncomfortable. As a real estate agent, I’m often telling the agents that are out there, you need to make videos, you need to post things online. You don’t want to be a secret agent in this world. Everyone needs to know this is what you do. The majority of them will come back and say, “I’m not comfortable on camera,” and that sounds very humble like, “I’m just not a person that wants to put myself out there. I’m very private.” These are the words they’re using today, but they’re really-

Brandon:
Yeah, but you have that passive-aggressive like, “Oh, it’s good for you, David, to put yourself out there, but I just don’t have that big of an ego.”

David:
“I don’t need that much distention as you.” Yeah, that’s what’s there.

Brandon:
Yeah, exactly, “I don’t need that much attention in my life.” Some people it’s okay for you, but I’m like-

David:
That’s how it comes out now, but what I’ve learned is that’s coming from a very defensive part of us because the reason they’re not good on camera, I mean, there’s a degree of you got to learn how to do it to a degree, but it’s more they are not confident in their skills as a real estate agent. They don’t know what’s going on on the market, they’re not a good communicator, they maybe sold two houses and they don’t even know what forms they’re supposed to use, but they don’t want their clients to know it.

David:
Social media is an amplifier. If you are an attention-hungry degenerate, it’s going to show up. People are going to be able to tell. This is how you live your life. It’s amplified for everybody to see every single pictures of your butt. If you’re somebody who genuinely likes teaching or helping, it’s going to show up. It amplifies what’s already there.

David:
So when someone’s not confident in what they’re doing, it’s very clear when they make a video. They can’t hide it anymore, right? I would say email is the opposite of an amplifier. It’s like a diminisher. You can pretend to be a keyboard warrior when you’re just typing a comment on YouTube or you’re in an email. Video and social media makes that harder.

David:
So what I’ve recognized is if you make yourself go out there and do what we’re talking about here, the holes in your game, the flaws in your approach get exposed, your lack of confidence, your lack of knowledge, whatever the problem is, you can’t hide it anymore, and that’s what everyone’s actually trying to avoid addressing when they’re saying, “I don’t like to post,” and it’s just an uncomfortable thing.

David:
There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance associated with, “Yeah, that’s why I don’t want to make videos.” So I’m going to throw it to you two. Did you have those emotions, and what did you do to get over those when you both started making a lot of content?

Brandon:
Rob, would you like to be next? I’ll allow it?

Rob:
Yes, I would like to go. I would like to go.

David:
It always reminds me of that scene in the office where Michael says, “I’ll allow it,” when he’s being at a disposition where he has to answer questions and they’re like, “Mr. Scott, can we ask you something?” and he says, “I’ll allow it,” as if he’s in control. Yeah.

Rob:
So funny story. Actually, I might have oversold that. It’s just a story. When I started the Robuilt channel, I didn’t tell anybody. I was scared. I was like, “I’m stupid. I’m going to look stupid. This first video is really bad and I’m not going to tell anybody.” So I posted my first two videos because they were bad. They were bad. I knew that. I was very self-aware of it, but I was still proud that I’d put myself out there.

Rob:
Then on my third video, I went to the Reddit DIY subreddit and I posted it and I said, “Hey, I started this channel. It’s about DIY. Here you go. I hope you guys like it.” It got voted to the front page. It got 3,000 up votes. Then my first video, it got 15,000 views in a day.

Rob:
I was like, “Oh, my gosh!” I was like, “Maybe, maybe I’m onto something,” and I was like, “You know what? I am going to tell the world. I don’t care what the consequences are. I don’t care if people laugh at me,” and I posted it and I made a big, long post, changed my Instagram handle from Robasolo to Robuilt. This was a big deal because Robasolo was my handle for 10 years.

Rob:
I said, “Hey, guys. As of today, I started a YouTube channel. It’s called Robuilt. I’m going to teach you how to do DIY in weird quirky ways and I hope you follow me.” I was like, “Oh,” and it turns out that everyone was incredibly supportive. Everybody sent me text. They commented. That to me was the big game-changing day in my life was I put myself out there and so many people accepted it. It’s like we are our worst critic. I was in my head about it, but I’m so glad I did.

Brandon:
Well, me on the other hand, my first stuff was just flawless. I mean, it was pretty much perfect if you go back. If you actually look at my very first videos, if you go back to, yeah, go to BiggerPockets YouTube channel, and then go in reverse order chronologically, you get through a bunch of really funny old Josh ones, which are him talking to animals and stuff. It’s great. Then you’ll get to my older videos. I’m not going to lie. They’re amazing. You’ll love them. I have my cat. Of course. I think I talked like this. I’m like, “Hi. I’m Brandon and this is how you do a HELOC,” and I had a cat on my lap. I was stroking this cat, and it’s beautiful thing. You guys will love it. Check it out.

David:
Those videos, I always thought when I see those, they look like a stock image of a Pacific Northwest youth pastor. You were-

Brandon:
I was a Pacific Northwest-

David:
I know, man.

Rob:
Oddly specific.

David:
Yeah, and you can tell from looking at it. That’s exactly what you’re getting. You had those glasses, your beard was a lot shorter, your hair was a lot of color.

Brandon:
I had a flannel shirt on. That’s all I wore was a flannel then.

David:
Yes, super flannel. Yeah. So here’s the thing.

Brandon:
You become like the area you live. You guys notice that, right? You just become like the people in the area you live.

David:
Ben Hardy wrote a book on that. What was the book he wrote about your environment having a much bigger impact on you?

Brandon:
Yeah, Personality Isn’t Permanent. That one?

David:
I’ll look it up and see. It was a very good book where it’s basically we give ourselves way more credit for how we turned out than really it’s the environment that you get put in, and I’m a huge, huge proponent for that. You guys became very good content creators because you were making content all the time and you go look at your video and you cringe and you go, “Ugh, what was that?” and I don’t do that anymore or, “Ooh, that part looked good.” As being in that space over and over that you have developed into now, Brandon, you’re much more handsome, you’re very good with the video quality that you’re putting out.

Brandon:
Thank you.

David:
Tell me, honestly, if you start catching yourself getting out of shape, when you’re on video more often, is that an inherent like, “Ooh, I don’t like how that looks. I want to do something about it”?

Brandon:
Well, I try to keep my shirt on for most of my online videos, but yes, it is a thing. When I do take my shirt off on videos especially, I’m like, “Wow.”

David:
Yeah. So it’s your-

Brandon:
I did a video-

Rob:
I’m looking at my videos. It inspired me to get into shape.

Brandon:
Yeah. Thanks. I did a podcast a few months ago and I don’t remember how it came up, but somehow the idea of taking off my shirt came up. So I took off my shirt in the middle of a podcast. I don’t remember whose podcast that was, but that was the first.

David:
Do it. Do it.

Brandon:
No, I’m not doing it today. No. I just got off a three-month long, I was on the road for 92 days on a road trip. In which case, I did not work out one time in 92 days and I ate crap for 92 days. So I’m not going to be taking my shirt off right now.

David:
Okay, but here’s what I would say, Brandon. Probably the fact that you’re not making content like you used to might have played a role in why that happened.

Brandon:
You know what? You’re probably right.

David:
Right? So that’s what I mean by the environment does have a big influence on how we turn out. If you put yourself in this environment of I’m telling people I want to buy real estate or I want to raise money so I’m going to talk about it, they’re going to ask you questions that you’re not going to answer, and it’s going to create a hunger in you where you’re then going to say, “All right. I need to go get these answers.” It’s going to help you by putting yourself out there. That’s really the part I wanted to highlight is you can’t wait to get ready, and when you think you’re polished, you’re going to be like, “All right. I’m going to go make videos on social media.” You got to start talking about it and then letting that lead you down the road.

Brandon:
Well, and could I emphasize also? There are numerous ways in which a person could build an online brand like video and TikTok and Instagram. Video, that’s one of the most powerful ways and that’s very common today, but it’s not the only way. I mean, there are people out there who just are not going to ever be good on camera. I mean, maybe that’s a limiting belief, but if your thing, if you’re an amazing writer, you just love writing, okay. So find a way to make it writing that that’s your thing or some people are amazing at LinkedIn, and they’re just really good at LinkedIn. I’m terrible at LinkedIn. I don’t understand it, but Brian Murray has, I don’t know, 40. He’s my partner at Open Door Capital. He wrote the Multifamily Millionaire with me. He’s got 40 or 50,000 followers on LinkedIn. I don’t even know you can follow people on LinkedIn. I didn’t even know that was a thing, but Brian’s really good at that, and he never does a video. You’ll never see a video with Brian ever, but he’s got a ton of followers and he raises a lot of money for Open Door Capital via LinkedIn.

Brandon:
I happen to like YouTube, right? Some people like TikTok. You could do TikTok without your face. You could just do text on the screen like the little lady on TikTok reads, right? There’s so many. You could start a blog. You could do a forum. You could just be involved on the BiggerPockets forums. We haven’t touched on that yet, but that’s probably one of the most important things you can do, especially as a new investor.

Brandon:
A lot of you who are listening that are new are thinking, “Well, how does this apply to me? I’m not going to go create content. I don’t even know what I’m talking about.” So that’s when you just get involved asking questions on the Facebook group or the forums, and you just start that magic networking thing, which is really just making friends with people.

Rob:
We had that guy on recently, Jonathan Greene. He’s a big contributor to the BiggerPockets forums. He’s a legend in there because he is in there every day answering questions and he sets aside time every single week to Zoom with people and just help people. I’m like, “That’s a very cool creative way to network with people that you otherwise wouldn’t have met.”

David:
So I want to get into the different ways that you make content on different platforms, but I’m sure regardless of what platform you’re operating in, there are certain key components to the message that you’re really trying to nail down. Can you share with us, Brandon, what are some things that every content creator needs to make sure that they’re including in the message and how they could go about doing that so someone has a bit of a blueprint if they want to start making online content?

Brandon:
Sure, man. Yeah. So the first thing I’ll say, I actually have a framework for this. I’ll tell you in just a second, but first, I’ll say this is one of the mistakes people make when they’re creating content in our space, in a real estate or a business setting, is they forget that this is not Kylie Jenner showing off her makeup. This is not about us. In the fashion world, you can just post picture yourself smiling and people like that. What we have to think in the business world is how does this help the person who’s watching this. Every post should be considered. How does this help the person watching this? Whether or not it’s you write a blog, I mean, a post on Facebook or you did a video or whatever, how does this help that person who’s watching this and help a lot of people watching this. So starting with that, I think, is key.

Brandon:
Then let me lay out this little framework here. All right. I want to make sure I got it right so I wrote it in here somewhere. All right. There it is. I’m calling it today the viral formula, even though it’s probably a terribly generic name, but it’s the idea of I watch-

Rob:
Oh, yeah, the VF.

Brandon:
Okay. Yeah, the VF, the viral formula. Trademark that right now. Actually, Rob, I would say Rob’s got even more experience, especially on the YouTube front than I do on this. I’m much more of an Instagram guy, not that you are not both on Instagram as well, but I see this especially in YouTube videos that do really well and I see this on TikTok and reels and Instagram videos that do well. I see it on blog posts that do well.

Brandon:
Here’s what I wrote down. So if you’re listening to this, take some notes real quick. This is number one. First thing your content piece should have is what’s called the hook because our minds go so quick, we scroll so fast. You do it too on Facebook, Instagram, whatever. Everything’s so fast. You have to grab away to hook them real quick and pull them in. So the hook could be something, whether it’s a physical thing like the camera does some kind of movement or it could be you’re doing some kind of thing like you’re putting your hands in the air or you’re pointing at the camera or you’re doing something funny or maybe it’s a clip from later in the video if it’s a video, where it pulls a funny outtake from later on, just something that in three seconds or less hooks them.

Brandon:
On TikTok, for example, it might just be a message. It might be like, “In this video, I’m going to say three things that are going to make you a multimillionaire guaranteed.” I just said that in what, less than three, four, five seconds?

Rob:
Three seconds.

Brandon:
Well, now, I might have hooked somebody in just enough to watch the rest of the video. So as stupid as it is, we have to do it. The only videos that you’re seeing typically have some kind of hook. A blog post, typically the only blog post gets seen. If you’re not interested in the first sentence, you’re not going to read on. In fact, I heard a famous author. I can’t remember if it was Steven Pressfield or Steven King or somebody once said, “The purpose of the first line of your book is to get somebody to read the second line, and the purpose of the second line is to get them to read the third line, and so on and so forth.” So you’ve got to hook them in.

Brandon:
All right. So number one is the hook. Number two is what I call the tease. Now, this might be connected to the hook. It might not be. So the tease is basically, “This is what I promise you’re going to get in this video.” So if you had a hook that’s a little different, maybe your hook is, “How would you like to be a multi-millionaire in 30 days or less?” that might be a hook. Then the teases would be, “In this video or in this blog post or in this, whatever, I’m going to share this with you,” and that’s just one example, right? There’s a million ways to do the tease, but you want to let people know what they’re going to get when the video is over. Again, it’s really, really quick.

Brandon:
The thing I always add in there is some kind of credibility. Now, if this is on a platform like Facebook where everyone’s following you on Facebook anyway, they already know who you are, your followers, it’s not as big of a deal. If you’re trying to reach people on Instagram reels, which is brand new cold traffic, you don’t know who they are or TikTok or YouTube, you got to establish some piece of credibility so they know that you’re legit.

Brandon:
So something along the lines of like, “I’m Brandon with Open Door Capital. We’ve raised $100 million in the past three years to buy real estate. This is why I’m qualified to speak on this topic.” That’s what you’re saying is, “This is why I’m qualified to speak on this topic.” Like, “Hey, I’m a CPA that works for investors. Hey,” whatever. So we got hook, you got tease, you got cred, and then the fourth thing is gold. You’ve got to give them something that they can take away from that piece of content.

Brandon:
The biggest mistake I see people making in the content space is they give way too much gold or what they think is gold. They just go on and on and on and on. In reality, is it simple? Is it easy to grasp? Easy to remember? Is it unique? Is it actionable? So you got the hook, tease, cred, gold, and then finally, a call to action of some sort. If you’re trying to build up your following, “Hey, don’t forget to like and subscribe.”

Brandon:
If you’re trying to, whatever, you’re trying to get people on your email list, “Hey, join my email list by going to this URL. Go to beardybrandon.com and get on my text letter,” right? Those kind of things, quick call to action. Otherwise, people just won’t. It’s not like they don’t like you, it just never occurs to them, “Oh, I should follow that person,” or “I should subscribe to their list.” So tell them what you want them to do real quickly.

Brandon:
One little trick is sometimes I will put the call to action earlier in the piece of content by just saying something like, “Hey, as I go through these five points, if you like this, just hit that heart button real quick. It just helps me out. Thanks,” number one, and that way, if they don’t watch the whole video, they might just hit the heart button right there. They didn’t even watch it, but they’ll still click the like or the heart.

Brandon:
All right. So I want to know first, based on that, I’m going to review it one time and then I want to know, Rob, your thoughts on this because you’re the genius on this. So I came up with hook, tease, cred, gold, and a call to action. I don’t have a good, what’s the word? I don’t have an acronym for that.

Rob:
Acronym?

Brandon:
Yeah. We need an acronym. So I need a thesaurus. This is the homework for everybody listening right now, by the way. Hook, tease, cred, gold, and call to action. Somebody put that into an acronym somehow. Use a thesaurus and we’re going to have a word for that and then that’s going to be trademarked for BiggerPockets. All right. Rob.

Rob:
Well, first of all, let me give you the advertising corporate version of this, what we used. We used an acronym called CHUBS, and it was-

Brandon:
You have an acronym. Oh, look at the acronym man over there.

Rob:
No, but yours is way cooler because ours meant crop. So if we were making a commercial, okay, basically, if we were making a commercial for let’s say Hyundai, we’d want to make sure that it could actually crop to be square and fit the format of your phone. Then it was hook, which is exactly what you’re talking about. How can we edit the front end of a commercial to get straight into it, and then usage, which is how much of that commercial do we actually need to communicate to people on social in 15 seconds or less, branding at the end, meaning we’d want to get the logo out there to make sure that people knew who this commercial was about, and then sound off, meaning people who have their volume off, which is 90% of people, how can we make this work for people, meaning that’s putting the subtitles on there. So that is a way less cool. It’s a cool name.

Brandon:
It’s a cool acronym, CHUBS.

Brandon:
Yeah, but way less cool than the actual bullet points that you put up there. I think you nailed it, man. I mean, it depends on the actual platform that you’re going for, but if we’re talking TikTok, I did a lot of TikToks and I failed and then one guy reached out to me and was like, “Man, we got to blow you up,” and he had 300,000 followers and I was like, “All right. Teach me, master.” So he basically gave me a quick one hour consultation, and literally, the next video went viral. The biggest piece of advice he gave me was you got three seconds. Stop saying, “Hey, guys. It’s Rob. Don’t forget to follow,” and say, “Hey, here’s why you’re going to fail at starting an Airbnb.” Boom. Hook them, and then that’s all my format now.

Brandon:
Whereas on YouTube, yeah, you know what? I could probably grow faster on YouTube if I followed exactly what you’re talking about, but I tend to do funnier intros that hook people in that way, but I’m an acquired taste, admittedly. So it doesn’t always work.

Brandon:
YouTube’s a little bit longer form, right?

Rob:
It is.

Brandon:
So YouTube, you’re allowed to … This is one of those I think of know the rules than break the rules kind of thing. Once you understand the logic, the psychology behind what makes things popular and go viral, then you can start playing with it and trying different things and get quirky and get your own take on it. So yeah, I love your videos. In fact, it’s one of the videos I looked at when I was coming up with this formula is like, “What does Rob do?”

Rob:
Wow. Thanks.

Brandon:
“What makes it successful?” I think you do this masterfully. David, you do, too. In fact, David’s skill on social media has gone through the roof in the past few months. I don’t know what you’ve been doing.

Rob:
Oh, yeah. He’s stepping it up.

Brandon:
He is stepping it up. If you guys are following David Greene-

David:
I hired a company to make my cards out for me.

Rob:
There you go.

Brandon:
Because you, sir, are an architect mentality. You’re a level four, man.

Rob:
That’s right. Yeah. That’s the hard part.

Brandon:
What would Elon Musk do? There you go.

Rob:
I mean, it’s really hard because of the, I don’t know, it’s hard for me to turn it over to a diff … I have one editor and him and I are just going back and forth all day and we are to the point where I need probably three or four if I really want to go Brandon style with Instagram reels and TikToks and everything, but it’s hard because I just know that I can’t manage the creative the same way that I can with one video a week on YouTube, but yeah, it’s the struggle with, “Do I want to just slowly grow or do I want to try to amp it up a little bit? I think slow and steady for me has been the game.

Brandon:
Well, I’ll throw out another thing. I did not invent this thing, Gary Vaynerchuck is, I think, the guy who really blew this concept up. There’s probably a name for it. I don’t have a name for it, but I’ll explain the strategy. Again, Gary was on our podcast back, I don’t remember what episode, a few years ago, but the idea is this. You do one, and this is literally what I do. I spend maybe an hour a week total on all content creation. I do one long form piece of content. Usually, it’s a podcast, whether I’m on somebody else’s show or when I was doing BiggerPockets, one piece of content.

Brandon:
I always record my video separately just so I have one. If you don’t have a fancy camera, that’s okay. Phone actually probably does just as well, if not better, on most platforms. So record yourself doing something like an interview for an hour, and then I just hand it over to my virtual assistant who is awesome. He’s over in the Philippines, and he just takes it and dices it up into a bunch of different content. He makes YouTube videos. He makes Instagram. He makes TikTok. He makes reels. He makes everything, even pulls out paragraph that I said in that content and makes a physical post, a text post, all that from one hour.

Brandon:
Then every day, I just have three pieces of content coming out and I don’t do any of it. I just got that straight from Gary Vaynerchuck. It’s one long form content can be put into about 30 different pieces of content.

Brandon:
So anyway, just throwing it out there for anybody who’s like, “I don’t have time to make all this content.” Just see if you can’t get booked on a podcast once a week, even once a month. You don’t need to put out as much content that I put out. I’m not trying to grow a big operation.

David:
I mean, back to being on a podcast itself, here’s something a lot of people don’t realize. I’m going to let the cat out of the bag in our world. Saying you have a podcast is a lot like saying, “I wrote a book.” It’s not hard anymore to write a book. You can self-publish a book insanely easy, sell three copies, and it will be a bestseller in that category. Brandon, I know you have some really funny stories about how easy it is to make it look like on Amazon that you’re a bestseller.

Brandon:
Yeah, that foot thing?

David:
Podcasts work the same way. It’s not nearly as difficult to get one on. It’s very difficult to make one good. So first off, a lot of the podcasts you’re listening to, don’t assume that the person that you’re hearing it from has a lot of credibility. They might have 12 listeners and half of it is their family, but no one knows that. So getting on someone else’s podcast and then putting that on your Facebook or on your Instagram and sharing with the world, “I was interviewed to tell how I do this thing really well,” will give your brand, for lack of a better word, some credibility, right?

David:
It also invites people to get to know you. They get to hear your story. They get to hear you talk. They get to see what makes you tick, which creates that connection that you’re describing. So I think going on other people’s podcasts, even though you’re not going to maybe get heard by a ton of people because most podcasts don’t have a ton of listeners. It’s something that you do for your own circle to get an opportunity to hear you speaking. Then like you said, you can take clips out of that and you can run with that for months. You just take clips of some of the best stuff you said and you create reels and you put those out there. What do you think about that?

Brandon:
Yeah. That’s exactly it. I think that’s exactly what you should be doing. It’s easy to be interviewed. I mean, it’s easier to be interviewed than it is I think to try to just come up with a script and write-

David:
Produce it.

Brandon:
… produce a 10-minute video. It’s like you sit on Zoom and you record a video. Most people are pretty good at answering questions about themselves and about their own life, right? This is super easy for me. It’s easier for me to be a guest on the show than it was when I was a host, right? Way easy. I just sit here and answer your guys’ questions and then take over the show and allow David to talk once in a while.

David:
What’s that? Let me talk once in a while? You said that.

Brandon:
Yeah, I do. Yeah.

David:
I think simply Googling real estate podcast, you’ll get a huge list or search on iTunes for those and just start emailing the people that have them and saying, “Hey, I own three duplexes in this area. Can I come be a guest on your show?” It doesn’t have to be huge, and the majority of them will be like, “Absolutely. I’d love to have you on. I have been having trouble making shows because nobody knows who I am and wants to do my show,” and bam. You’ve got some, and you’re also getting some experience speaking and articulating yourself and communicating, and it puts you in the environment that we’ve been describing about.

Brandon:
That’s such a good point. I’ll let another cat out of the bag here is that energy on a podcast matters almost as much, if not more than what you say.

David:
Content?

Brandon:
What I mean by that is, yeah, the actual quality of your content. I’m not saying we on the BiggerPockets podcast we want people who don’t have good content. We do, but you can’t have good content without good energy. We have canned shows before because people have not had a good enough energy. So by going on smaller shows, you develop the skillset needed to get on the bigger shows where you can bring the energy.

Brandon:
I don’t naturally talk like this in real life. When David and I are having a conversation, if we were to record ourselves just talking without any cameras, we’d be like this. We’d be like, “Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. I mean, it’s okay. Yeah. I think I’m going to go to the gym later. You want to go later? Okay.” That’s how we talk like normal people, but you develop the skill of this. I’m talking, my hands are moving, I’m excited. So you gain that skill by going on smaller podcasts.

Brandon:
Now, let me throw the question to you guys. What about those people listening right now who have no deals? They’ve not done any real estate. What are they going to go on a pod? They can’t go on a podcast. So what do those people do? Any suggestions for them, Rob?

Rob:
That’s a hard one. I guess-

Brandon:
That’s why I gave it to you.

Rob:
Yeah, I was going to say. I mean, I think I would rather, oh, man, I guess I would rather put them more in the content creation and learn what it takes to get your first deal and document that journey and create content around, “Hey, I’m looking to get my first 10 steps,” or sorry, “I’m looking to get my first property. Here are the first 10 steps that I’m going to take to do that,” because you can actually document a journey. Whereas on a podcast, typically, you’re speaking retroactively about experiences that might have happened, but the thing is, as David mentioned, I mean, there’s million podcasts out there. So it’s not like you have to get into a podcast right here, right now. I think you can wait for that, right?

Rob:
What I think what you can do that’s actionable is use your phone to just make content. A lot of people get really caught up on photo quality and they’re like, “Rob, your videos are so crisp and this.” I’m like, “Dude, my first viral video was shot on an iPhone.” My editor always says that his teacher used to tell him that the best camera on the market is the one that you have in your pocket. Yeah, exactly.

Rob:
So I think, for me, just to be straight up, on TikTok, my really terrible quality selfie videos on my iPhone perform significantly better than anything that’s super crispy. That’s why I actually don’t do a lot of TikTok. I have a huge following on there, but I post a TikTok once a month because it takes me two hours to record and edit it, but that’s all part of the process.

Rob:
So I think if you’re getting into real estate, document your journey and try to create a business plan for where you want to go and just make that into snackable content for people to watch. I really think it’s that easy.

Brandon:
Yeah. I love that answer. I think what my thought went to is not every platform is ideal for every person. If you’re brand new, yeah, you shouldn’t be interviewed on podcasts about your journey. You should probably be doing something else, like you just said. Maybe on TikTok you make like, “I’m about to buy my very first duplex. Follow along. Follow my process. Today, I’m going to do this,” right? People would eat that up. They would love that or they might not and you at least gained some experience in doing it, and that’s cool, too.

Rob:
Dude, that’s what I did on YouTube. I mean, I was at the very beginning of my real estate journey. I wasn’t an expert. I was very green and, literally, my content was like, “Hey, guys. I just built this. Here’s what happened. Here’s what went wrong. I’m going to do it again. Watch my journey.” If you just watch my YouTube channel over the last two years, it’s really just a progression of how I’ve leveled up little by little by little. If you just look at my video today versus two years ago, it’s a whole different person, but it’s not because, I mean, it’s just because I’ve just been doing it and documenting it. That’s all it really is.

Brandon:
Well, let me throw one more strategy at people who are maybe brand new and they’re like, “Well, I can’t create content. I’m brand new. I don’t want to do TikTok,” right? Here’s a very simple strategy. Go find 15, 20, 25, 30, 50, 100 people in the real estate investing industry like the three of us, right? Follow us on Instagram or whatever platform you like the best. Go unfollow everybody else that you follow unless it’s your mom or something, right?

Brandon:
So Russell Brunson, who’s the CEO of a big marketing company, he says, “You should be a creator of content, not a consumer of content.” I’m not telling you to go sit on TikTok and swipe. You should not be doing that. You should be going out and buying real estate deals. However, if you’re going to go on TikTok to swipe or if you’re going to go on Instagram to swipe or you’re going to go read a bunch of blogs, they should be on people that you want to get to know better and you want to build a relationship with because they’re going to be a big part of your life in the future.

Brandon:
So here’s what you do. You go find those 10, 50, 100 people. You follow all of them and turn on post notifications so that you get a text, not a text, but you get a popup on your phone, “Hey, Brandon just posted. Hey, David just posted.” Now, why is that important? Because you go and leave a comment right away, and not just a, “Hey, good job,” or a thumbs up or an emoji, but you leave a thoughtful comment about that whatever they said.

Brandon:
Now, there’s a few people who do this to me. I know they’ve read the same books I have because they do this to me. Every single time I post anything on my Instagram, I get these really paragraph-long comments that are really helpful for people. Guess what? Other people see them commenting and go and follow them. So they’re building this big platform by just doing that to other people, and they’re just providing value in the comments section.

Brandon:
Funny, actually, one of the couples that do that all the time, they’re on the cover of the BP, BiggerPockets Wealth magazine. So it clearly works for them, right? They’ve built a whole brand around it, around just commenting on other people’s stuff. So that’s something that if you’re brand new, anybody can do that right now is just go follow, turn on notifications, and just comment right away with a really thoughtful comment, and you will start gaining people that are following you just because of the help that you’re providing there.

David:
Brandon, what are your thoughts on the idea that we tend to see the end result of a ton of work when someone else posts on social media? So I’m noticing there’s this trend of realtors that are saying, “Just help my clients buy this house,” or investors, “Just picked up this duplex. It’s a lot of hard work, but I got it.” They’re showing you the closing, but you’re not seeing the 17 properties they analyzed and didn’t get or the offers that were written or the process to get to that point. I think it creates the impression that you’re just wandering through life in the real estate investing world. You step on something, it turns into a duplex. You’re like, “Oh, there, I got a house,” and people are waiting for their moment when it’s going to hit them versus being intentional about putting these stages because that’s not shown on social media nearly as much. You don’t see the process behind it.

David:
So I know you’re a person that likes to focus on build a machine, don’t chase an event, right? The same with maybe a workout picture. You see the end result when somebody’s been training for this competition like Tony Robinson. He posted some pictures at the event, but he didn’t post himself at the gym working out every day. What advice can you give for the reality of what it takes to be successful here being different than what you’re seeing on social media.

Brandon:
Yeah. Yeah. Really good stuff. Yeah. What you said there is build a machine, not an event, right? In other words, what I mean by that is so many people, this is how they think of … I mean, this could be buying a real estate deal, right? The event is I’m going to go buy a real estate deal or I’m going to go drive for dollars today. Let’s go there. I’m going to get my car. I’m going to drive around for the next two hours. I’m going to write down every single property that looks vacant, and I’m going to write down their address. I’m going to come home and I’m going to look up who owns the property. I’m going to send them a letter, and by the time 5:00 hits tonight, I’m going to have at least 20 letters out in the mail. That’s great, right? That’s a great strategy for getting a deal. I almost guarantee you none of those 20 people are going to call you.

Brandon:
So what you’re going to do is you’re going to be like, “Well, I did it, it didn’t work.” I mean, you’re going to give up. The truth is if you want something to work, don’t do the event, don’t do the one day I went out and drive for dollars or one day I made a video on YouTube. Ask yourself, “How do I do this every single solitary day or three times a week? How do I build this into a repeatable machine that over the next six months, 12 months is going to produce the result because it would be ridiculous statistically not to produce the result?”

Brandon:
So an example would be I’m going to do a drive for dollars every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 3:00 to 5:00. I’m going to hire a VA who’s going to take all that and they’re going to send the letters for me that I generate. So all I have to do is get in my car and drive or I’m going to hire a high school kid to drive every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. They’re going to upload it to this site. The VA’s going to take it from there. They’re going to send the letters out. From there, it goes to the people. Now, all I have to do is answer my phone.

Brandon:
You can go even bigger than that. I’m not going to answer the phone. I’m going to hire a call service. One of my buddies runs I think it’s called Call Magic Leads. They do outbound calls. So they find the phone number, then they call all the sellers or the homeowners and they ask them if they want to sell their property. So now, only the really important leads are coming to you, but then you go and build a machine that hires a salesperson for your team that answers those phone calls.

Brandon:
Do you notice how at every level you can build a machine bigger and bigger and getting you out of the work? Now, if you had somebody driving for dollars three times a week, you had somebody sending all those people letters, you had somebody answering the phone that was good at sales and talking to people and trying to convince them to sell the house, if you did that for the next 12 months straight and never missed a week, are you going to land a deal? Is there any chance you wouldn’t land a deal? No, but that’s not what people do. People want the event, people want to do it one time and they give up.

Brandon:
So what I’m saying is focus on the machine, don’t focus on the event because the machine is what gets you the success. The reason we were able to buy, and I think we’re at $400 million almost in real estate in the past three years with Open Door Capital, the only reason we’ve been able to do that is because we just built a machine and we make 75 offers a quarter on massive deals. We have a machine around that. We have a machine around investor relations growing our email list. We have a machine around all of that stuff and it just gets done.

Brandon:
If you’re anything like me, you’re not good at getting things done sometimes, I’m terrible at getting things done, so I just hire other people to run the machine for me and then it actually gets done. So that’s a much longer conversation, but there you go.

David:
There’s a lot of wisdom in what you’re saying, and I’m trying to think of the best way to address this without giving the wrong impression.

Brandon:
I hope it’s an analogy.

David:
I’m sure one of them will be, yeah, but which one? It just popped in my head right now as you said it. In this world of education, we have to give people value that they could not … We can’t just say, “Go out and do something,” even though that’s the best advice to give anybody, “Just go start doing it. You will find your way,” but they’re not listening to us to be told, “Just go do it.” They want something they wouldn’t have known from an experienced person.

David:
So what we end up doing is saying, “Here’s the end result and here’s the steps you’re going to take and walk you back to where you are.” So you have some idea of a path. That’s what people are looking for.

David:
The problem with that approach is your brain doesn’t work well when you’re trying to learn things you haven’t done yet. We could say, “Hey, here’s what you’re going to do when you get to this step.” It just doesn’t sync in, right? I notice, here’s the analogy, that this will come up with something like jujitsu. I will want to sit there and talk to a person who’s a higher belt and say, “What do you do when this happens or how would you get out of that?” I’m receiving it when I’m in a certain state of mind, but then when I get out there on the mat, I don’t remember anything that was said. It actually isn’t practical information when I’m in the middle of rolling.

David:
The way I learn is actually the opposite. I get out there and roll. A thing happens that I can’t fix and I’m hungry for the information. I come back and say, “How do you get out of this thing?” and then they tell me and I’m like, “Boom. I got it. I will never forget that. I don’t want to experience that feeling again. Now, I’ve learned.”

David:
That’s what I’m trying to highlight is this is why we say you have to get out there and you have to take action because your brain remembers the lessons and they become a part of you when there was some form of pain that was associated with getting out there and doing it, not just sitting here and hearing the story laid out for you of perfectly how this should work.

David:
You said something. If you did this for a year, could you possibly fail? No. You would have to get a property. One of the things I’ve noticed is if someone’s like, “Well, I’m not sure. Should you do this bench press or this style? Should you do that one or this?” No. If you work out as hard as you can every single time you go to the gym and you have decent form, is it possible to not get stronger?

Brandon:
Yeah. It’s guaranteed.

David:
Impossible. That’s it. If you just go to the gym and you say, “Hey, I’ve got some basic exercises. I’m going to do as hard as I can for as long as I can and then I’m done,” you have to get stronger. Go ahead.

Brandon:
This is where that phrase comes in that I say all the time now. It’s like success should never be a surprise. In fact, my best performing Instagram post of all time was me just talking about this. Success should never be a surprise. Nobody ever wakes up and they go, “Whoa! Where did I get this six pack from? What? Where did this come from?” Nobody wakes up and goes, “Whoa! I’m a millionaire. Crazy. I had no idea.”

Brandon:
Success is just the natural result of the process in which you do. Yeah, once in a while people win the lottery, but they end up losing it because they don’t have the right process. So success is not a surprise to anybody who’s successful. In fact, it’s surprising when you don’t get it. If you had somebody driving for dollars three times a week, mailing all those things, had a sales guy answering the phone, meeting with people and you didn’t land a deal after a year, I would be surprised. I’d be like, “Wow, something went wrong in that system. Obviously, the machine just was broken, but I’m surprised because I feel like it should have worked.”

Brandon:
I would usually the reason those machines don’t work is because you invented the machine yourself. You didn’t learn from somebody else. I mean, we’re lucky right now. We’re in an industry that millions and millions of people do and share freely what they’re doing and have done so for hundreds of years. We’re in the easiest industry in the world to learn how to do stuff, and then we’re in the greatest market we’ve ever seen for that. We are in the YouTube and the blogs and the content, the courses that are out there, the mentor, everything is just there. You have no excuse. So if you’re like, “Well, I don’t know what to do,” I don’t know. That’s a problem.

David:
Well, that’s the value of a machine, though. If you work at the thing, it’s going to happen. I love what you said. It’s impossible to not happen if you’re taking these steps. So I love that advice is what the people that are good at something do is they focus on the machine, not the end result. They don’t wait for just the property.

Brandon:
You want to real example of this, actually? So by the way, I can teach this stuff and I sound like I know what I’m talking about, but I screw up this stuff all the time. I’ll focus on the event and not on the process. I’ll give you a real example. I’m driving with my wife and my kids on our road trip. We just did three months around the country and we’re on the road, and I’m talking to my wife about how we just landed this massive apartment complex deal in Texas. We’re going to have to raise more money than we’ve ever raised before. It’s like, I don’t know, 50 or $60 million I got to raise.

Brandon:
I’m like, “Shoot, Heather. I don’t know. I don’t have a big enough email list to be able to raise that much money that quickly. That’s just so much to raise.” I was like, “So I guess I could go on a podcast, maybe talk about it.”

Brandon:
She goes, “Well, what’s that going to get you?”

Brandon:
I was like, “I don’t know.”

Brandon:
This is what Heather said to me. She didn’t talk to me. She’s like, “Brandon, it’s not about going on a podcast. It’s not about making a post.” She’s like, “Why don’t you go on two podcasts every single week for the next six months straight? Would that get you what you need?”

Brandon:
I was like, “Yes, they probably will or at least they’ll get me closer. It’ll get the word out there.”

Brandon:
Again, I need to be reminded of that. It’s not about the one off. It’s not about doing the thing. It’s about what machine can I build. So then I called my assistant, Matt. I’m like, “Matt, I want to go on two podcasts every single week for the next six months.”

Brandon:
He’s like, “Okay. I’ll make it happen.”

Brandon:
All of a sudden, now I’m scheduled on all these podcasts scheduled out for the … and I’m getting the word out there. I’m like, “This is how it’s supposed to work because now I have a machine to be able to raise that money.” So that’s just one example, but there’s so many ways in life that if we just turn things into a system, into a machine, it actually will get done.

Rob:
Yeah. You can also, outside of podcast, you can also make appearances on certain YouTube channels and all that kind of stuff, too. You know what I mean?

Brandon:
Yeah, but I don’t know anybody who has a good YouTube channel.

Rob:
That’s true. I know. We’re always looking. We’re always looking.

Brandon:
Rob, we should do some JV stuff together, man. Yeah.

Rob:
Let’s do it, man.

David:
I was telling the agents on my team. They had a client that they worked with for over a year and they finally put him in contract on a two and a half million dollar property. We were talking about, “Well, what was that like?” He was describing how it was very difficult at first because the guy was calling every single day to ask a bunch of questions and he wasn’t in a position to buy anything.

David:
I remember the advice I gave them was, “You got to stay in touch with the person, but you can’t let them monopolize your entire schedule if they’re not ready, in our world, be ready to sell, in that world, be ready to buy a property.”

David:
So they worked it out to where they just consistently stayed in touch over email and text messaging until he got to a point that he was more serious. I was telling him, “Every person you work with is eventually going to buy a house once they’ve been qualified.” It’s like turning the little thing on the Jack in the box, right? If you turn it long enough, it’s going to pop. The key is setting up a system that your arm doesn’t get tired before the Jack of the box pops, right? It has to be effective turns. You want to be able to use your energy wisely.

David:
You saying, “For the next six months I’m going to do two podcasts,” you don’t have to pick the perfect podcast at that point. You don’t have a lot of stress about, “Oh, what if I make a mistake?” You got a lot of opportunity over this period of time. You’re not going to get discouraged. You’re going to keep turning that crank, and then eventually it pops.

David:
That’s what the advice I’d love to people to leave with is when you’re making content on social media, you want to raise money to help buy your next deal, you want people to be bringing you leads, whatever it is, the first content you make is going to suck, and who cares? Because I would love it if people go back and look at Brandon and Rob’s original stuff and be like, “Oh, Brandon doesn’t sound nearly as polished and tanned and handsome as he is now as when he was first recording.”

Brandon:
That’s true.

David:
I mean, you’re a bit of a goober. I mean, when I first met you, you weren’t even as polished as where you are right now. You come very far. That is very encouraging to everybody who’s thinking about, “Ah, but I’m not going to be good at it.” You’re not good when you first go to the gym, you’re not good when you first do anything at all. It’s the machine that you build. It’s the commitment to the process. It is impossible not to get better if you keep doing it.

Brandon:
Can I add two more quick points to this that I think are valuable, especially for newer investors this first one? So I’ve been teaching on BiggerPockets webinars now for seven years in a row, right? David, you’ve been teaching a lot. Rob, are you doing webinars yet for BP?

Rob:
Yeah, yeah. I just did one last week.

Brandon:
Okay. All right. Good. So you guys know what I’m talking about. If anybody listening has been on a webinar before, you’ve probably heard the term LAPS, L-A-P-S. This is some acronym I put on a webinar years and years ago and I beat it like a drum, dead horse. I don’t know what the phrase is there, but I say it over and over and over and over and over. Every time I get a speech, anytime I talk to new investors, I say it over and over and over. It’s exactly what we’re talking about today.

Brandon:
LAPS stands for you’ve got to get leads coming in your business, you’ve got to analyze those properties, you’ve got to pursue them, which means go after them, make an offer, and then once in a while, that will result in a success.

Brandon:
Now, why do I beat this drum so hard so often? It’s because that’s the machine. If you want to land real estate deals in any market, competitive or not, if you get leads coming across your desk, you analyze them, and you make offers, you will land success. It’s not a surprise.

Brandon:
So that’s why I said earlier my team makes 75 offers a quarter. That was just a number we worked backwards to figure out. We get about one in 10 offers accepted. So if we make 75 offers a quarter, we’ll get roughly seven to 10 offers a quarter accepted on mobile home parks or apartments. It exactly worked out that way. That’s how we’ve bought so many properties.

Brandon:
So I don’t care if you’re trying to buy your very first single family house or a duplex or a flip or a wholesale deal or an apartment complex. Doesn’t matter. The LAPS system works. Everybody uses it, but the people who are the best in this industry, they know the system and they’re always working to improve it.

Brandon:
So it takes all the mystery around, “How do I find a deal? I can’t find a deal.” It’s just LAP and then you get S. So that’s the encouragement I have for you, for everyone listening, is take the mystery out of it, build the machine, and let the machine work.

Brandon:
Now, the related point I want to make as well is I am the laziest person. I’m not good at self-control. I’m lazy and I have terrible work ethic. I’ll admit all those things. I’m not good. If I say I’m going to go to the gym, David, when’s the last time I went to the gym? I don’t go to the gym unless David shows up in Maui. Yeah. When’s the last time I went to the gym? It was with you. Every time I go to the gym-

David:
I have to pull every string I can to get you in there.

Brandon:
Right? So I will tell myself I’m going to the gym and then I will not go to the gym because I’ll be busy doing something else. I’m so bad at doing things, even things that I know are vital to my success and existence in life. I know I need to work out. I know I need to analyze deals. I know I need to make those phone calls. I know I need to … Basically, I know I need to work these systems. I’m so bad at doing it. I recognize that.

Brandon:
So I can fight against my nature to be lazy or I can hack my nature. Here’s what I mean by hacking your nature is I find ways to obligate myself to do those things. I have a personal trainer show up in my garage and he shows up. Now, am I going to be able work out if Jerry’s down in my garage? Yeah, because he’s here in my garage. I don’t want to make him waste his time to come all the way out here.

Brandon:
So when I’m feeling moments of inspiration like, “Oh, yeah. I should work out next week,” I’ll find a way to obligate myself to do that. I do it with all sorts of things or I hire an employee or a team member to do those things because as an employee, it’s really easy to do those things, mundane things, because you’re getting paid a job to do it, but as an entrepreneur, I’m really bad at it.

Brandon:
So that’s how I hack my nature by either hiring someone to do it or making somebody show up that obligates me to do it. So hopefully that helps somebody out there who’s in a similar boat of just being lazy like I am. It really helps.

David:
Rob, you’re pretty lazy. What do you think about that?

Rob:
Yeah, I like that. Yeah. It reminds me of the whole putting your phone far away with an alarm so that whenever the alarm goes off, you have to get out of bed. You’re working against your own flaws, right? My thoughts on that are that I agree, and I wanted to just bring this full circle, Brandon, because while we’ve been talking, I’ve done it. I’ve cracked the code. I’ve made your glorious acronym.

Brandon:
No, no way.

Rob:
Yeah, yeah. You ready?

Brandon:
Let’s hear this acronym. It better be good.

Rob:
All right. I’m calling it GEESE. All right? So G is going to be get. All right?

Brandon:
Okay, get, get.

Rob:
You got to get them. All right? That’s your hook.

Brandon:
All right. I like it. Get them.

Rob:
Entice. All right? You got to tease them, right? You got to entice them with a little bit of knowledge. Establish. Establish credibility, right? Then gold, right? That’s show and tell, right? Show and tell. Show up, give a performance, make them feel razzle-dazzled, and then at the very end, encourage. That’s your E. Encourage them to take some action today, follow you, click that like button, hit the notification bell, and that my friends is GEESE.

Brandon:
It’s the GEESE method. You heard it here first. Thank you.

Rob:
The bearded geese.

Brandon:
Yeah. What’s the line, David? The people person, I’m a geese goose.

David:
One of the best memes you ever posted. It’s this old pilgrim looking like Puritan holding a goose in his arms or her arms, and up at the top it says, “I’m a people person,” and then near the goose it says, “I’m geese goose,” and something about it just hits your funny bone so hard when you see it. I don’t know the whole image together. We were talking about that earlier. That’s funny.

Brandon:
So good. So good.

David:
All right. Well, Brandon, if people do want to follow your content, if they want to invest in your properties, where do they find you?

Brandon:
So I’ll give you a couple spots. If you want to see how our funnel works when people join our email list, we actually have a text message list, that’s at beardybrandon.com, beard with a Y, beardybrandon.com. We didn’t really talk about it today, and I don’t want to dig into it too deep, but I’ll make the one point on that is social media is great, but you do not own your followers on social media. Mark Zuckerberg does, right? You don’t own it, Google does.

Brandon:
In other words, you could be shut down, your account could get hacked, you could lose everything. It happens all the time. If you all don’t have two-factor authentication on your devices, do it right now. Please do it right now. Everybody’s getting hacked right now. Everybody’s getting hacked right now.

Brandon:
Anyway, so number one, you don’t own your people. You have to get them onto an email list. You need people’s email or their phone number. That’s how you’re going to connect with people in the future, which goes back to what David, as you said earlier, is keeping that warm with text messages. So we have a text message list. Again, beardybrandon.com.

Brandon:
David, you have one as well, Behind the Shine. I like that. We got Behind the Beard, Behind the Shine. Why do we have that? Because I need people’s emails to communicate with them. If I ever want to write a book, if I ever want to launch a fund, if I ever want to do a meetup and say, “Hey, I’m going to be in San Francisco. Who wants to come hang out?” I want to do that via text message or an email.

Brandon:
So anyway, that answers your question and offer some more, hopefully, advice for people is get an email list of some kind and you can join mine at beardybrandon.com and Beardie Brandon on social media everywhere.

David:
Yeah. Let’s have a challenge here. I want you to go download Brandon’s text letter at beardybrandon.com and then go to dgtlive.com/text letter. So it’s davidgreeneteamlive.com.

Brandon:
Is it better?

David:
Yeah. Not only do I want you to see whose is better, I want you to comment on each of our Instagrams to say, “Yours was better,” or on Brandon’s, his was better because mine, I’m the bad guy in a movie where I specifically engineered a weapon that could take out this specific superhero. I studied Brandon’s text letter and I’m like, “How could I make mine better than his?” because everything he does is more aesthetically pleasing than anything I’ve ever done. So I really, really, really need to know that my text letter is better than Brandon’s and I’m okay to admit that. So please go follow it and then see it, and tell us what you think.

Brandon:
I have a severe problem with yours, though, a real problem with yours that’s irritating me. You have a logo on yours of your faith and your body and your arms look like they’re little chicken arms. Look at your arms right now. Give me a flex, David. Let me see your arms. Let me see your muscles.

Rob:
Let’s see it, man.

Brandon:
Everybody wants to see that. Let’s see it, man. No, I want to see your Hulk arms. Look at David’s arms. Those are not the arms in his logo. So whoever designed your logo needs to put on these man arms on your logo. You should be hugging your logo like that. Yes. You need to show off the guns, man, because you got guns. You need to show them off.

Rob:
Don’t be so shy, Dave.

Brandon:
All right. That’s my problem.

David:
You’re making my face red on podcast for 200,000 people to be seen right now.

Brandon:
That’s what we do.

David:
Thank you for that.

Brandon:
Anyway, yes.

David:
Don’t let that distract you from seeing if mine is better than Brandon’s. I really need to know how we did.

Brandon:
By the way, we have Behind the Beard, which is my text letter, which that goes out every Wednesday. Oh, shoot. I forgot to give Matt my … I got to do that right after this call. I’m going to give him today’s Behind the Beard. We have David’s Behind the Shine. What is Rob’s? Behind the, what? What’s your text letter going to be?

Rob:
We were workshopping this just now. I think it’s Beyond the Coif.

Brandon:
Okay. I don’t even know how to spell that. So I might have a problem, but we’re going to go with it.

Rob:
C-O-I-F. Coif.

Brandon:
I was going with Q. I was way off.

Rob:
That’s honestly understandable. It’s surprising to me that coif is spelled with a C. You can also go pompadour.

Brandon:
I was thinking you’re the only one with glasses here. So I was going to go with something on that, but that’s okay.

Rob:
Oh, yeah, a riff on lenses or frame, something like that. I’ll workshop it.

Brandon:
Yeah. Ooh, ooh, that’s good because you’re the video guy.

Rob:
Right. Well, I spent all my creative juices today on the acronym, so I can really only do one creative per day.

Brandon:
That was pretty good. Yeah. I’m going to workshop that a little, too. Anyway, all right, where were we at? We are so off track. David, yes, beardybrandon.com or odcfund.com. If you’re an accredited investor, please give me your money because we’re going to take down some big deals. There you go. How’s that?

David:
Absolutely.

Rob:
That’s pretty good.

David:
I’m DavidGreene24. Check me out. I got somebody running my social media now. Tell me if you think that I should keep him or if I should fire him.

Rob:
That’s awkward because that person is me. Then you can fine me on YouTube at Robuilt, R-O-B-U-I-L-T. A lot of misinformation out there. People call me Robuilt. It’s Robuilt. Instagram, Robuilt as well, and TikTok, Robuilto, if you want to see me dance the real estate game.

David:
The last thing that we will all say here is all of us have people faking our accounts and messaging you to get your money. The most recent one was David Greene backup 24 and it says, “This is David’s private account.” So now my DMs are full of people saying, “Is this you?” None of them are me.

Rob:
Dude, I got literally 20 text messages from all of my friends today because I guess someone did the exact same thing. It’s so frustrating. I’m like, “Oh, guys.”

David:
All right. Well, thank you very much, Brandon Turner. Any last words before we let you get out of here?

Brandon:
No. Do you guys not do the famous four anymore? Did we kill that?

David:
Do you want to do the famous four? You’re going to miss-

Brandon:
No. I mean, did you kill it?

David:
No. It didn’t make sense to do it with you.

Brandon:
Whatever. All right.

David:
Question number one, what is your favorite real estate book?

Brandon:
There’s a million of them but I’m going to say the same answer I’ve said every time somebody’s asked me this. It still is Rich Dad Poor Dad.

Rob:
Question number two, what is your favorite business book?

Brandon:
I think we should change the famous four question two. What’s an impactful book you’ve read recently? If that was the question you asked me, I’m going to go with a book called The Crisis of Comfort. I don’t even know who wrote the book, but it was phenomenal. I recommend it to everybody. It’s not even a business book per se, but it is a book about doing hard things, which I think applies to business. So I’m going to go with that book.

Rob:
Then outside of, let’s see, how can I throw you a curve ball here? Okay. Outside of jujitsu, surfing, hanging out with your daughter and your wife, and building a real estate empire, what are some of your hobbies?

Brandon:
Buying stuff from Pottery Barn, buying stuff.

Rob:
That’s a good one.

Brandon:
It’s a modification house. So we have been buying thousands of dollars worth of stuff from Pottery Barn. So that’s my hobby these days is buying stuff from Pottery Barn.

David:
Rob, do you see now why I say you and Brandon are like the same person?

Rob:
Dave, I love Pottery Barn. It always got-

Brandon:
Pottery Barn.

Rob:
… and TV and stuff, but it’s legit, and Crate & Barrel.

Brandon:
No, you go in there and you’re just like, “It feels so good.” Yeah, Crate & Barrel, too, I agree. I agree. Anyway-

David:
Where does Bed, Bath and Beyond fit into this?

Rob:
Oh, low tier, low, low, low tier.

Brandon:
I don’t know if we’re going to have time. I mean, yeah.

David:
All right. Brandon, in your experience, what makes successful investors different from those who give up, fail or never get started?

Brandon:
They build a machine.

Rob:
Well, usually, I’d tell you to tell us where people, yeah, we already asked. So I mean, how about you just leave us with a little golden tidbit and then we’ll end there?

Brandon:
If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If not, you’ll find an excuse, Jim Rohn.

Rob:
That’s good.

Brandon:
That’s it. I’m just quoting somebody else’s tidbit. It was my favorite quote. So I’m going to leave you with that. Isn’t that good?

Rob:
That’s fine. I didn’t say it had to be original.

Brandon:
Here’s why this is such a powerful quote. Let me say it again. If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If not, you’ll find an excuse because people listen to podcasts, they watch YouTube videos and the natural reaction is to find a way to why that won’t work for you. Gary Keller and Jay Papasan wrote in The One Thing, “If you argue for your limitations, you’ll win every time,” and people do constantly. This is why this episode won’t apply to me. I’m not good at this. I don’t want to build a brand. I’m not good at that thing.

Brandon:
If you argue for your limitations, you’ll win every time, but if you really want to do something, if you really want to raise money, bring in partners, bring in team members, build your team, raise private capital, all that stuff, you will find a way. You will get good at the social media, the branding, the reputation building if you really want it. If not, you’ll just be coming up with excuses. So stop your excuses and go make some money.

David:
All right. Brandon, we’re going to let you get out of here. Thank you for being back on the show. It was great time. For biggerpodcast.com, this is David Greene, for Rob I’m bringing tidbit back Abasolo, signing off.