How To Rebuild Your Fortune & Life After Losing It All | Tony Giordano

Welcome back to the Hannah Hammond Show. I'm sitting here today all the way from California. You just moved to Newport Beach.

Did.

Yep. Tony Giordano. And I'm so excited for this conversation because, I mean, you are truly a story of building it all, building an empire, losing everything, moving into your car and living on the beach after having everything you could want in your life after coming from very modest beginnings and a very challenging childhood. And then you rebuilt it all, and now you're a speaker, a coach. You run a real estate empire. You sell the most expensive luxury properties all over the world, globally through your marketing agency or the president of Opulent Agency and Giordano Industries. So you just are a serial entrepreneur. And I'm so excited to get to know you more today, and I was lucky to get to know you of it yesterday. But I just can't wait to share your story and learn some things about the rock bottom moments in your life that you've overcome. And then talking about how you really market yourself and build your business in the world of real estate, whether you're a commercial broker, a mortgage broker, a real estate investor, and then also speaking and how to have an engaging audience and how to speak on stage, because that's hard. That's really, really hard to do. And you've. You're a master at it. I mean, you speak as a keynote speaker at so many massive organization. So thank you so much for being on the show.

Thank you for having me. I don't know what more I can say. You just nailed it all.

Oh, a lot, A lot.

But thank you for having me. I'm honored to be here.

Thank you. So let's go back to the beginning. And I just like, what do we have to understand about your childhood to understand who you are today?

Came from very humble beginnings. Didn't come from money, per se. You know, my dad was a landscaper, mom was a bookkeeper. So we just had very humble beginnings. And there was no question that there was struggle all the time. My parents are amazing at us thinking we were rich, you know, but as the older I got, the more I realized just how much they struggled and why we moved around so much, because by the age of 18, I had moved, I think it was 13 times, probably 10 different schools throughout my childhood. And so very humble beginnings. But I also think that those, you know, things made me who I am. So, example, because we moved around so much, I had to be good at getting to know people in a new city all the time, which then made me naturally somebody who became social and I can talk to anybody at a Starbucks and everything because I was raised that way. You know, having to learn new environments as well as new hobbies. You know, we moved away from the beach. I'm not going to be surfing in Palm Springs, so what do I need to learn how to do there? So I learned new hobbies and things like that. So I think my beginnings definitely made me who I am today. But definitely, definitely had bigger dreams of wanting to. Not necessarily, you know, just wanting to make money as much as just change the course of our family, create a legacy of some sort, even before I knew what that legacy would be. So that just led to just having a natural drive. You know, I was the bully kid, you know, young in school. I was the daydreamer, but it was just because they couldn't, you know, I knew I was smarter than the teachers for the most part at that point. It wasn't that I was daydreaming. You're just not keeping my attention.

Right.

And so finally, I think there was just this moment where my passion was to become a firefighter. I wanted to, I really wanted to do that. So at a very young age I was, you know, lifeguarding in my teens, then know, getting CPR certified, becoming a CPR instructor, then becoming an emt, emergency medical technician. I was, I was going to be a firefighter. That was, that was my dream. And I was. But I didn't have any money. So I was selling cell phones for AT&T door to door, just a business to business type a personality. And I walked into a mortgage company business with my AT&T cell phones ready to sell, you know, somebody there. And the branch manager bought a phone from me. And after she bought the phone for me, she goes, I'm going to offer you a job. And I go, I don't need a job. I'm a lifeguard. I'm just doing this to make money, to put myself through the four month fire academy and become a firefighter in the state of California. And she goes, trust me, you need this job. She goes, I think you'd be really good at it. And I'm 20 years old, December of 1998. And I go, what do you even do here? Because I didn't come from business average parents. So she goes, we do mortgage financing. And I remember Hannah like this was yesterday. I looked at her like a deer in the headlights because I didn't even know what the word mortgage meant. And I go, mortgage financing. So you financed the funeral?

Oh my God.

Yeah, I said that. She looked at me like a deer in the headlights. And she goes, not mortuary. You're not a mortician, you're a mortgage originator. And I'm still like, help me out here. She goes, a home loan. And I'm like, oh, okay, got it. When somebody buys a house, they need a loan. Got it, got it, got it. She goes, yeah. She goes, here's what you could make. And she just shows me what I'd have to do every day. Just start pounding phones and looking for people who needed to refinance their house to pay off bad debt or collections from the 91 crash. And now it's 1998. People have equity again, or a little bit of equity. And that was the beginning of what would become the subprime refi market. And so when I saw how much money I could make, I knew, okay, I can save up money way faster selling home loans than phones and get myself to the fire academy, because that's my passion. I not going to leave that. And so I start pounding phones. I mean, the next day and the day I started at that company, it was like December 21st or 22nd, 1998. I didn't have a car, I had no money to my name. I barely made enough money to just pay for food and stuff as a lifeguard and selling cell phones. I lived on a couch in a three bedroom apartment with three other guys who had the rooms and they had the couch for me for 200 bucks and was always being made fun of because they were, you know, getting success and friends around me would have success and you know, Tony's just Tony. And, and, and that was the first day I started eight months later. I had a nice car. I had a two bedroom, two bathroom condo on the hill with panoramic ocean views with Catalina off in the distance. I had $35,000 sitting in my bank account. I had never been anywhere my whole life. Even though I'm in love with flight since I was three, I had never been anywhere. I'd never been on a plane before I got in a mortgage. And I had been in that eight months to Fiji, to Hawaii, because I won the contest at this mortgage company as like one of their top loan officers. And this business just changed my life. I, I could help family financially. It changed the course of what would eventually become my own family's life and, and create a legacy. And there's no question that it's, you know, the, the real estate industry. No matter what position you're in, lending Commercial, residential, it's limitless, you know, and you can either be somebody who makes $50,000 a year, you could be somebody who makes 5 million a year. The only limit is us. I've seen it time and time again as a coach, like we're the limit, the industry's not the limit. And so funny enough, I resigned eight months later even though I was the rookie of the year.

Yeah.

And the reason I was resigned is because I have the money now to go to the fire academy. And she was shocked. She was just like, you're, you're throwing away a career worth millions based off of how good you are at it. And I said, but it's not my passion. I enjoy doing it, but my passion, I need to do this. I need to either fail at becoming a firefighter or I need to do it. And so I resigned in September 1999. I went into the four month full time fire academy in Southern California, graduated December of 99. But now I was out of money because I used my savings for the academy. So I had to go back to the mortgage company to start doing home loans. While I was testing with fire departments, got picked up as a reserve in Malibu as a firefighter, went into medic school at night, was doing home loans during the day. And really my biggest lead gen source was all the firefighters. Like I was just, you know, I was known as the loan officer who's a firefighter. So they were just having me do all their home loans. And then that just led to 2000 being my true rookie year as a mortgage broker where I did a whole year making $160,000 as a part time loan officer. And then at this, you know, one day at the station, three days off, I'm in the office for those three days. And 2001, September 11th happens and the fake housing market was born. Anybody who has a heartbeat could buy a house. And so it was so easy to double it. So I made like two something. Made my first million at the age of 26 in 2004. Because now it was anybody. You know, we've all seen the movie the Big Short, right? Right. So anybody could buy as long as Dog walker who makes 16 grand a month. No verification of income a year. Exactly. And so it was just too easy. And then by 2007, I now own, I'm part owner with my partners and we're pretty much one of the largest mortgage broker firms in Southern California to doing insane amounts of volume, sending to Countrywide and Washington Mutual for those that remember those companies back in the day. And I have everything you could dream of. Like I was married, I had two young kids, white picket fence or wrought iron fence, you know, multiple properties, boats, classic cars, Hummers, you know, just I had everything that one would want and happiness too at that point in my life. And I lost everything after making millions in less than 18 months in the 2008, 2009 crash. Now, there were multiple factors that played into that. Obviously I was over leveraged on everything. I was buying properties, double edged sword. I'm buying properties at the highest price point and value on record. So it's the top of the market. And that market is based on a house of cards that is not real because of September 11th. So it's a double edged sword. So when the faucet turned off on the mortgage industry and real estate in 2008, actually towards the end of 07, I turned off with it like it literally just went to crickets. No volume was coming in anymore. Lehman Brothers is crashing, Bear Stearns is crashing. I went through a, a divorce the year before. So that just aided losing everything even quicker. And you know, I went from an 812 FICO score to 496 in like nine months.

Ouch.

I had multiple foreclosures on my credit report. Lost all my properties, all my cars were repossessed. Boat was anchored out of Marina Del Rey harbor, you know, with my name on the side of it. Big old cigarette boat, you know, people calling me Tony. You saw your boat like getting anchored out, like, what's up? Bother, they're working on it, whatever. I could say, yeah. And it was a huge turning point in my life. It was the first time, I think there was a major challenge that I had to figure out how to face. And you know, my youngest son was diagnosed with autism during that time as well. My mom was diagnosed with cancer, stage four ovarian. And it just kept getting worse. I also had a really bad injury and, and hit shallow water head first and compress the discs on my neck. And now I couldn't stay on the fire department anymore. So I'm losing that income. I've lost that income. I'm bartending on the weekends to put food on the table for my kids when I have them week on, week off. I hadn't, like, it's probably September of 09. I hadn't funded a loan in three or four months. I'm 30 days behind on my rent and, and it just got worse and worse. And finally there was just this moment. I think it was really the Turning point for me, I was. I had just gotten out of the shower and I had this little apartment now with a little beat up pickup truck because everything was gone. And I had just gone out of the shower. Little phone booth shower, little pedestal sink, you know, like just a little. And you can imagine when I shave, it's everything so you only see my eyes. So I'm putting cream on and I have my towel on and I'm still a little wet and I'm. I'm in a rush. I have my phone right on the little shelf and I'm waiting for my loan processor to tell me about two loans that are supposed to fund, like, in the next 48 hours. And I really need that money. I need to get caught up on my rent. Like. And I'm thinking things are, you know, I came from nothing and built an empire. I can do it again, but I need some help, please. Right? And I'm like halfway through shaving and I remember my phone buzzing and I, like, look down and I kind of grab it with my hand. And she texted me on the little first edition blackberries with the keypad in the small screen and she said, nine one, one, call me. But both loans just got declined out of funding, and there's nothing we can do. They're not going to fund them. And I just remembered, like, I don't know what, it's a little blurry, but I had grabbed the pedestal sink so hard in anger and just shook it that it ripped the drywall where it was siliconed. And the mirror, the medicine cabinet mirror, bounced off the wall, hit the pedestal sink. Sink shattered. And because it was wet, and I kind of abruptly moved so fast I slipped. And on the way down, I hit the back of my head on the towel bar of this metal towel bar, like old school towel bars, hit my head and hit the ground on my tailbone and just lost it. Like, it was just. I just broke down. Like, it was just everything had boiled up to this point and I don't think I'd ever really cried it out, you know, of everything that had happened over the course of that crash. And so I just broke down. I don't know how long it was. Probably two minutes, three minutes of just, you know.

Bawling.

Bawling. Thank you. And when I finally opened my eyes, I had just. I didn't move. I just opened my eyes and there was this triangular piece of mirror literally facing my face perfectly in the corner. And what I saw in that reflection, I never wanted to see again. It was Just the saddest useless man or boy that I'd ever seen. Like, woe is me. It honestly reminded me of a three year old getting their ice cream taken away. It was just this useless of a man. And I remember it just kind of like, like burned in me. And I got up so fast and I kind of just. I didn't have a mirror to look at, so I just went in the room and I went into another mirror and I said, that was your moment. Like, lock it up, Dust yourself off, smile. It's time to get going. Like, there's no more. No more asking your godfather for money to help you through the crash. Because my godfather was helping me. My, my great uncle Mike. No, like, it's time to, to rely on yourself. And so I went to the beach for like two hours without my BlackBerry and I listened to just positive music and I went back and went to the office and I still don't know who did this. But I get to the office and there's the movie, the secret DVD sitting on my desk. Still nobody, nobody's ever told me who did it.

Wow.

Nobody's ever taken credit for it. And I watched that and I started learning about the law of attraction and positive mindset, because negative is thousand times stronger than positive mindset. And so if you have the slightest little negative thoughts, those are going to supersede positive thoughts any day. So you have to just remain positive and find the positive in every negative thing that happens. And so because those got declined, I lost my passion for lending. And so I decided I'm going to be an agent and switch to the, switch to the agent side and sell the house instead of finance the house. So I called up my buddy Madison Hildebrand from the the first several seasons of Million Dollar Listing that a lot of people know. And he sent me all his clients for home loans. And I called Madison, I said, I'm switching to your side. I'm a loan officer. No more. I'll be an agent. So I joined his office in Malibu. Coldwell Banker was the first brokerage that I was with. And I became an agent like overnight. And I had two big reality checks. First reality check was, I don't have any money, so how am I going to prospect? How am I going to market myself? How am I going to lead, generate? Like, what am I going to do as a loan officer? The prospecting was easy. You just took real estate agents out and sent them to the spa and took them out on your boats and took them golfing and built relationships. So that they sent you their clients because they're at the top of the food chain. Now I'm at the top of the food chain. How do I get clients? You don't really go door knocking in Beverly Hills, right. And what I'm going to pull up into Beverly Hills flats in my beat up pickup truck that backfires and leaks oil. Right. So I didn't know how I was going to approach prospecting. And I started Googling a lot of big, big agents. And I noticed that most agents all had these gorgeous high end luxury websites. And so I started calling website companies and the, the company I would see on a lot of them, a company by the name of Agent Image. They, I, they were on a lot of those sites. So I called them and I said, make me look like that, make me look like these top dogs. And they're like, that'll be five grand. I was like, never mind, because I don't have any money.

I remember them when I tried to get a price from them too. I was telling you that it's like $15,000 now or probably more, but, and.

And I'd pay 30, 50, like when you, when you realize what it actually does. But I didn't know what it did. I just noticed that they all had it. And so I called up my godfather one last time and I said, I said, uncle Mike, I need $6,500 and you can't ask me what it's for. And I, he, I had already owed him tens of thousands for two years of the crash, like just running off of his home equity line of credit on his house. And he goes, why can't I ask you what it's for? And I go, because you won't let me do it. And he goes, I go, but I promise you, I know, I keep saying this, but I promise you I will pay you back. He goes, I know, I know you will. He goes, but I'm telling you right now, this is it. I am cutting you off completely after this. If you need to eat, I'll buy you groceries. If the boys need to eat, I'll buy them groceries. But I am not giving you another dollar, Tony. And I said, well, what if there's like a big. I'm already backpedaling. I'm already like, well, what if.

Yeah.

And he's just like, tony, do you want to know the reason you're in the situation you're in right now? And I'm like, yeah, the banks, the bad banks and the mortgage backed securities and subprime and you know, look at what happened in the economy and, and blah, blah, blah. And he was just like, no. And I go, me, like, you just think I'm useless. He goes, no, not you either. I'm like, then what? He's like, me. He's like, I'm the reason you're where you are because I keep helping you and you have me to rely on. He goes in, I'm telling you right now, the moment you have no one else to rely on but yourself, you are going to build your empire again like you did the first time when you had nobody to rely on, right? You lost that drive, you lost that person. Deep down. You need to find 20 year old Tony again.

And how old were you at the time?

30, 32 on this conversation.

So you were a couple years into the crash of just struggling at this point.

Oh yeah, I'm two years in, losing everything, like barely surviving and him fronting a lot of it. So he's pretty much telling me, you're, I'm. He's the reason that I'm where I'm at. And so he gave me the $6,500. I sent five grand immediately to agent Image. They launched my website, made me look like an absolute baller even though I hadn't even sold a house yet. This is like end of October 09 and I only had about 1500 dollars left. I'm bartending and I knew I had to be very selective of how I was going to use this money because I didn't know when's the next money going to come in. And so I'm 30 days behind on rent. I need to figure out how to market myself in lead gen. I need to feed my kids. So what am I going to do? And I have this philosophy that I've always had and it's play chess, not checkers in life. And I don't even play chess at a high level. Like I understand the basic principle rules, but I'm not a chess player. But I am a chess player in life. And the basic principle is you're seven steps ahead to know what move you should do, right? And so I do that in everything. Like, okay, I have fifteen hundred dollars left. I can't really go to Motel 6 because I'll run out of money. I can't move in with my brother because he's losing his house and moving out of state. I need to feed my kids, but I also need to market myself, but I am going to get evicted. I need to buy a camper shelf for my pickup truck for $963.17. And I remember friends of mine, like Jason, who sat at the same office as me, he was just like, dude, you are in tactical survival decision making mode right now. He's like, you're playing chess when we're all playing checkers. We're just reacting to adversity that hits us. But you're like, if I do this, then I'm going to run out of this. Then this, this, this, this. And I came to the conclusion the best investment that I would have the longest ROI from was a camper shell if I had to end up living in my truck. And so I bought the camper shell website was launched. And then I see a class being offered at our office called Facebook 101. And I have this amazing website now and maybe there's something more to social media that I'm taking advantage of. And so I went to this five hour class and to keep the story short, you know about the details. Bottom line is I learned some things that I was going to implement, but I also learned a lot of things that I disagreed with that the techie instructor was, was teaching us. Because I realized, well, techies, techies aren't in sales. They don't understand relationship building and language of sales and stuff. Like, otherwise they'd be in sales. They're, they're techie instructors. And so he would say things that I just disagreed with. And, and I think that's when the light bulb went off for me is it was the things that I disagreed with that made me realize the correct approach to take with media and the correct approach that I try to teach audiences still to this day in all things tech, even AI and everything. But back then and, and today is everything we do online, we take the same approach that we do that same thing offline. Short example, if I walked into Starbucks and I saw you getting napkins and you're, you're, you got a, a holder of like four different coffees and you're struggling, right? And you're trying, you don't have any, whatever it might be, and you don't know who I am and I just walk over to you wearing a cloak where you can't even see who I am. And I say, hi, can you and I be friends? What would you do?

No, no.

Same thing with adding a friend on Facebook where all of your settings are set to private and they have no idea who you are. Why would they do that? And so of course I wouldn't be wearing a cloak. I'd be oh, can I help you? Blah, blah, blah. Hi, my name's Tony. Oh, my name's Hannah. Oh, nice to meet you. You come to the Starbucks often and we're going to get to know each other and maybe see each other over time and build a friendship. So I took this offline. How do we actually meet humans? How do we prospect? We go door knocking, I'm going to go door clicking. But my door says 24 mutual friends, seven similar interests, you both have a dog named Roxy and you're both die hard Red Sox fans who live in la. Imagine if the front doors of homes said that we'd all use that. But we that doesn't exist in any form of legion except for online social media. And so I just started engaging people. I neutralized. I got rid of my political preference and my religious beliefs. I got rid of past posts of mine that had F bombs and pictures, partying at the beach clubs in Las Vegas. And I just neutralized it where I'm everybody's friend. There's nothing offensive about this guy Tony. And I just start engaging people, liking people, commenting, adding them as, you know, complimenting them in a comment thread. They would compliment me back, then send them a friend request. Friend request accepted. And I was only doing it Hannah for probably a weekend. And a lady who I had added over the weekend, Kathy, she accepted my friend request after we engaged each other three weeks later she referred me her father's 5.8 million dollar listing in Manhattan beach in Southern California. And the rest is history. By the end of my rookie year in 2010, I had done 43 million in volume. 90% came from Facebook. 2011, double it. I am now writing the first book. Coldwell Banker has me speaking all over the country for their events and their regions. Realogy, now known as Anywhere Inc. Realogy, the owner of Coldwell banker owned Sotheby's era century 21. So then they said we want you on all of our brand stages. So now I'm speaking. My team at Coldwell, or my production is, is being leveraged off so that I can do what I love, which I love. Speaking, I love teaching and helping people. I've always been that way. And then that led to writing the first book. The first book came out in 2012, hopped around to different brokerages, Keller Williams Compass, back to Keller Williams over the years, franchise owner, things like that, investing in businesses. But the books became bestseller and that just escalated my speaking career even more. And then it started pulling me not just for real estate, but Allstate Annual Conference, aflac, Wells Fargo, Citi, you know, mortgage companies, insurance. It just really. Just domino affected after that. And now I'm writing the third book. And so, yeah, I started my coaching company several years ago because people were wanting continual education and training on what I teach and speak on. And that's kind of the story in a nutshell, you know, of coming from nothing, making millions, losing it all hard, in addition to physical loss as well and relationship loss. So it all piled up. Snapping out of it and rebuilding it, but building it now in a way where it is more on what I love to do rather than just the money coming in.

Right.

And I think that's key because I love people and I get to be in front of people all the time.

Yeah. It's so incredible what you've done, Tony. I'm just so proud of you.

Yeah, it's been a run.

How? Because I fear so much, losing what I've built. You know, there's always that in the back of your head, like, oh, don't take that risk or play it safe here, maybe you shouldn't go here. Or this business is costing a lot to get going, going, and we need to see revenue coming in and all those things. How did you feel when you lost everything? Like, not just money, but you lost everything. You.

I mean, it's my country song. Yeah. I was down to a pickup truck and my. I got my. My pickup, my dog and my surfboard.

Yeah. Like, what were some of the mental.

Oh, they were brutal. I mean, brutal swings of just. There was a lot of. At first, ignoring, pretending like I didn't lose everything, you know, going out and, you know, just trying to play the part still and be like, everything is fine. But people weren't stupid, you know, that. You know, I could only pull that off for so long. Like, where's your boat? You know, if you remember. I don't. I don't know if you do, but 2007, 8, 9 was the biggest. At the same time, the big rise of environmentalists and the Prius and like, people like, you know, all about saving the environment. And so I'm all about saving the environment too. I've been, you know, I'm a. I'm an ocean fanatic my whole life and, And. And stuff. But I would use it. Like, what happened to the boat? Where's your. Where's your. Your V12 Audi?

Yeah.

And your Hummer. And I just be like, you know, we got. We gotta stop killing Earth. You know, I just. I turned it all in and, you know, I'm riding my bike now. You know, I'm just trying to get play, you know, do what I can to do, but eventually that just, you know, it's all BS and so I think when it really hit me was 09, because 2009, you know, I torn my ACL and meniscus. I have no health insurance. I can't fix that. I can't fix my C spine from the 2008, you know, head bash. You know, I'm finding out my mom has cancer. It just. I think that was the. That was the bad year and also created bad habits that we won't get into and just, you know, wanting to, you know, down a half a bottle of. Of Jack and just until I just passed out, even with my sons, you know, asleep in their room because, you know, they were safe and nothing's gonna happen, but I just. I didn't want to face the realities anymore. And I think that that big moment that I told you about in the restroom was that moment that I just. I couldn't. I couldn't allow it to. To kill me.

Yeah.

I mean, I was. You know, people didn't see it, but I was dying inside. You know, I was constantly depressed once my front door closed because I worked so hard to build it.

Yeah.

You know, and. And I. To just. To lose it and know that you failed on so many levels of not being smart with the way you built it and leveraged it. And I think that was just, you know, the. That was the main thing that weighed on me.

Yeah.

That point.

Yeah.

So to answer your question back on, how do you. You know, that's how I felt about losing everything. But how do you, you know, try to constantly make it where you are? Recession proof, I call it. You know, and my grandfather's the one that told me this. He was just like, you need to be recession proof. And I'm like, what's recession proof? And he tells me after I lose everything. And I'm like, because you could have told me about this, like, a few years ago.

That's like when mom says, careful after you hit your head.

Exactly. And so. And rest in peace, Papa. You know, he died at 90, you know, just a few years after he told me this, but in 09, I think or something, he said, you need to be recession proof. I go, what's that? He goes, two things. He goes, liquid assets and liquid knowledge. He goes, and you need to increase both of the amounts of that all the time. He goes, if you had even just had, like, if. If you had had both of those, then you would have been fine. Not only would you have not lost everything, son, you would have actually been able to take advantage like the rich are taking advantage, buying your stuff at 10 cents on the dollar and 20 cents on the dollar and your $50,000 watches and your, your priceless art pieces, and they're scoring it on you because they have the money to buy it. That's what the rich do. They wait for these things to happen and they don't buy it at the highs of the market. Right. And so when he said that, he goes, you know, but you were over leveraged, you weren't liquid, and so you lost all your equity. And then, and then the banks took away your home equity lines of credit, which you thought were savings, but they weren't if they just took them away before you could charge them out. And then he said in liquid knowledge that you're constantly researching, you're constantly learning new things that you hear the world is embracing. He goes, you will be recession proof because no matter how bad things get, people will want to hire you for what's in here, whether you're speaking, you're teaching, you're consulting, whatever it might be. He goes, there's nothing more powerful than those two things. And so I just, it that's all I can tell people all the time is, you know, you have to constantly be learning and constantly be saving because there's nothing else more guaranteed than those two things.

Yeah, yeah. And we're in one of those markets right now.

Yeah.

Cash is king. And if you could take advantage of it and not get caught in it, it's unfortunate for the ones that do get caught in it. But you probably learned your lesson on that one and are probably.

I'm always learning.

Yes. It never ends.

Yeah, I think I've told you a couple of those last night.

Yeah, me too.

Yeah.

But so you leave mortgage and you get into real estate, luxury real estate in la, when it's still a bottom of the market pretty much. I mean, things hadn't recovered at all. And in my opinion, real estate's harder than mortgage, depending on the market and things like that. But it is more work.

It's way more work.

Yeah. So how did you use social media? And I know you talked a little bit about the high level of what you did. You use Facebook essentially to build rapport with people, comment on them, get them to like and trust you, and then add them as a friend and use your small network to, and their network to expand. But what are some of the tactical things for people in real estate or sales of any sort, for that, like for my sales team or your sales team or any, anybody's sales teams out there, what are the tactical things that you would teach them if they want to 2x their business this year using social media?

Well, without question, you have to look at your current social media, because your current social media, whatever amount of your GCI or your income, whatever amount of revenue comes from your social media, you have to look at the level of your social media and be like, okay, this is aiding this. I want a 2x or 3x my business right now. Well, the first and foremost thing is people. The more people who know you exist, the more business you're going to do. It's that simple. And so if you're sitting there at 2, 000 friends and, and 5,000 followers on Instagram and 2,000 connections, what are you doing in an action plan to raise and increase that audience size combined in everything your database, you know, everything, you constantly should be increasing your audience by 20 people a day combined on, all on the network. So five new people on Facebook, 10 new followers here, five new connections on LinkedIn. You added three people to your database, whatever it might be, but you, you're constantly increasing that by several hundred people a month. Because now those are several hundred people that now know who you are. But it's not about just adding, it's about taking the time to engage. And this is where people start to say, tony, how do you have time for this? Like, this is just another thing I have to add to my plate. I'm sorry, meeting humans is another thing you have to add to your plate. How else do you do business? Well, I go door knocking. It's the same thing. You're going out to meet humans. I do networking, I go to conferences, I do podcasts, whatever it might be. But is it increasing your audience size? And so that's, that's one thing. The second thing is what is the most effective form of marketing online today that can lead to 2x in your business? Because are you still running targeted ads and sponsored ads? Because there's some industries where, yeah, it's worth spending a million dollars a month running Facebook and Instagram ads, and YouTube ads, and LinkedIn ads, whether it's retail, a product, anything like that. But real estate agents, it is not as effective as it was several years ago running those ads. And now Facebook and Instagram deleting posts. And they have AI reading it and they're removing things that are lead capture Landing page links like all of it's going away. And so I go back to what has been the number one form of marketing for decades is what advertising agencies do. Right. Michael Jordan picking up, you know, putting on a pair of Nikes. Well, what is that? That's influencer marketing. He has influence. And so I have this other philosophy. Do what billion dollar companies do for your small business. So whatever billion dollar companies are doing when it comes to marketing, you need to do that for your small business. You're just not going to spend the same amount of money, obviously. But if billion dollar companies are spending millions and millions and millions of dollars hiring celebrities and influencers to drink their new flavor Coca Cola or whatever it is, then I need to do that as a real estate agent or any of the businesses that I own. But what does it look like for a small business? So for anybody listening to this podcast today, just imagine you have fifteen hundred dollars to spend on some type of a marketing campaign for yourself as a real estate agent or a commercial broker or a lender. You can run it in an ad in a magazine. 1500 bucks full page. You can do a 1500 dollar targeted ad on Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram or whatever. Or imagine going to somebody you know, who isn't necessarily even your client, but they're a micro influencer in your market. This could be a physical trainer, a nutritionist, they have like 5 or 10,000 followers. They have a very dynamic page. Or she's a yoga instructor and you know everybody, she gets tons of comments and she's just built. But she's a, she's a micro influencer. Well, the people who follow her are probably 95 in your market also. They're not national. Right. So that's even, even stronger. Imagine going to her with that fifteen hundred dollars and saying, hey, you know, we're friends. Would you mind posting a 60 second story to your followers and say, hey everybody. I just wanted to give a shout out to my girl Hannah because if you ever have any questions about real estate, you guys need to call her. Here's her contact information. She's also one of my best students, blah, blah, blah, whatever it is. Now for anybody listening, what do you think is going to come more off.

Of those three attention leads, friends, followers.

Which one wins out of those three that you had to choose what you're gonna get? Yeah. Which one are you gonna spend $1500 on?

Oh, the influencer.

The influencer for sure.

Yeah.

Right. But nobody's thinking this way.

Yeah.

And so that's My newest thing that I'm sharing to audiences is you need to find your micro influencers. Now, there's also another way to do this. Sometimes you don't have to pay, right? Could have a client that has 5,000 followers and you sold them your. Their house, and they didn't even post it or tag you on a story like, hey, everybody, this is the front door of our new house. Thanks, Hannah. Like that. That would probably be for free. But my biggest thing is you become an influencer of other companies and businesses in your marketplace. First, you promote other people. Go to that best deli in your market and say, hey, I want to interview you tomorrow. I just want to, you know, tell people I love coming here, I love your subs here, blah, blah, blah, or you're the best steakhouse or the car dealership or whatever it might be. And imagine me going to, like, say, you own a restaurant and you're the general manager, the owner of this great steakhouse here in Scottsdale, and I go there a lot. Imagine me coming to you and saying, I'm going to interview you. And, you know, just something little shout out and, you know, let people know that you're the best. And you'll say, sure. You know, why wouldn't you? Very few people would say no unless they're super camera shy. So I get there and I just start with my phone. Doesn't even have to be a professional, you know, setup like we have here today. Could just be the phone, wipe the lens off, Make. Make. Make it look as good as possible. Face the light and just say, hey, everybody, Tony Giordano here. And I am here with the owner of such and such steakhouse, Hannah Hamm, who's an amazing individual. And the reason I'm going to interview her today is because I absolutely love taking my clients here after they buy or sell a house anytime as, like, a thank you. And the reason is they're the best steaks. Hannah, why do you have the best steaks in Scottsdale? Like, what is it with your broiler? Like, what are you guys doing back there in that kitchen? Tell. Tell everybody what makes you guys the best. And now you go, now I send you that video, you're going to post it to the restaurant's Instagram account because you were interviewed. I'm going to post it. I'm going to tag you. Maybe that's how you repost. You just reshare it to the restaurants following. Let's say your restaurant followers is 15,000 fans of the restaurant. What did I just do there. I promoted your restaurant, but it wasn't about me. But what did I say in my video?

Like to take my clients here for.

Dinner after they buy or sell a house. But I said it so fast and it wasn't about me. And so you might not even realize that I said that you're just so excited to share this amazing little video we shot together. So it's about promoting others and giving back to your community. And watch how that comes back. Forget 2x10x in the sense of gratitude. Right. That comes back at you. And now you're being promoted by those companies and people to your. Your page. So I would say that's what people need to be focusing on more than anything who are trying to build a brand or their business or increase their revenue. Is. Is your audience size increasing every day? And are you promoting other people in your marketplace every day?

So good. I mean, I, that's how I built my businesses to date was organic social media posting and content. And more recently I started the podcast and I love people. That's my thing. And so it's so fun for me. It's not even work at all. And then people that resonate with you, however, and that's the thing, people. Some people tell me like your podcast should be more just commercial real estate. Like you should only be interviewing people that are your direct client. Like, no, I don't think that at all. Because you can cross market and you meet other people and you expand your network and you expand your sphere of influence and they know people every. Like, if I know you, you might let. I mean, you're more in residential. You do commercial now too. But let's say you're somebody that's in healthcare. You share the podcast to all your people and we talk a little bit about real estate or whatever. And then they get exposed to me just like you're talking about and they follow me if they like me and they resonate with me. And then that leads to more business because I mean, I get leads all the time from people on social media because a lot of my target client are generally a lot of them are older people that aren't maybe aren't even on social media. Right. So it's a little bit different. But their grandson is on social media and following me and is like, oh my gosh, you're in commercial real estate. My grandfather's buying a, doing a $12 million development. Can you help fund the loan for him?

So true.

And so I think it's just so brilliant and it's Free. And it's fun and it's connecting and it's networking and then you really can attract people that resonate with you and you're not trying to sell yourself ever because you become a magnet to the exact people that you want in your life. And then it makes business so much easier and so much more fun.

Mic drop right there. I mean, that nails it. I mean, you're spot on.

I just love it so much.

I think it's so easy and it's just right at our fingertips. You just have to create a habit of doing it. And I think that that's where people, you know, one of the biggest things people have a problem, problem with, I think is they get distracted. And when I first got that first $5.8 million listing, I was never distracted ever again. In that news feed. I blew right past all the stuff that would tick me off or that I would disagree with. Like once I saw the power of how quick it, it works, I just ignore everything else. I'm in and I'm out. I'm not sitting there just scrolling like so many people do and not being purposeful in the use of social media. And when you make it about other people, that's what it's all about. You know, other people, not me, me, me, posts and humble brags and, you know, all that stuff that so many people do, it's promoting others.

Yeah. And providing value to other people. Because a lot of people go on and just post, here's my meal today, you know, or here's my fitness update. And some of that is good sporadically. But the goal should be promoting other people like you said, and providing value to other people like we're doing here. And it's interesting because I was a 18 year old girl, very broken, very lost, very unexperienced, no knowledge, no experience, never done a deal in my life. And I walked right into commercial real estate because of Facebook. I went on Facebook, I changed my title to commercial agent, and I started joining all the groups and posting about commercial real estate even though I hadn't done any deals or I did luck out of my very first deal was commercial. But that's because I'm like, I'm a commercial agent. This is what I'm doing. I have $0 in my pocket now. Well, I had, I think I'd saved up 20,000 by the time I got my license, but I didn't have a big marketing budget is where I'm going with it. And I didn't know a single person in commercial Real estate. I didn't have, I didn't know any wealthy people, I didn't know any people that owned commercial real estate. I had just read books and watched YouTube on commercial real estate and just.

Decided, and look what you have built.

Thank you.

You're welcome. I mean it is, it is staggering what you've built and continually grow.

Thank you.

So keep doing what you're doing. And that's the power of all of it. And you did it in not the easy side. You know, residential probably would have been a quicker run for you. Right. But no, not only are you going to jump in a commercial, which is the boys club, you know that they've called it for so many years. Decades.

Yeah.

And you've just absolutely crushed it.

Thank you.

So I, that's why I was even more honored to, to, to finally do your interview as well.

I appreciate you.

Yeah, no problem.

I still, you know, feel like I'm at the floor, but I. It's that balance of being having respect for yourself and having gratitude and honor for where you've come, but also realizing there's so many more levels to the game.

So many.

Yeah.

But that's why I'll never retire. I'll just redirect. I can't imagine never. Still going at it.

Oh, me neither.

I'm like, I have to be on a stage, I'll be speaking until I, I collapse probably on the stage.

I. And I want to talk to you about speaking because that's where I'm at in my point of my businesses, in my life right now is people are starting to ask me to speak and I'm scared shitless. You know, I'm like, I've spoken on panels and to some smaller masterminds, but I stand up and my body's immediately shaking. But before we segue into that, this, the social media thing. And I think, as you said, and I get lost in this too, it works so good. And almost every lead I've ever got has been from organic social media posts and then after that, referrals. But I get so busy in the business and I think a lot of people probably feel this as I get busy serving the clients and then I stop prioritizing the social media. And then that's where a lot of investors, brokers, lenders, they end up having dry spells and they're like busy dry.

The roller coaster.

Busy dry.

Always.

Yeah. So how do you, in your, let's say you're working an eight hour day for most normal people? I know we work probably 12, but you work in an eight hour day. How do you recommend people time block every single day to be in social media or on LinkedIn and doing these organic things? And how much of a time this.

CEO thing that I've, I've always expressed to people like, because we know any successful person, the very successful person knows their hourly worth rate. And I think that once people understand what their hourly rate is, of what their goal is, you start to be very, very selective of who takes your time. And so in order to do that, I'll just make the, for, for the sake of time. If somebody wants to make a million dollars and they're only making 200 000, take a million dollars, divide it by 52 weeks, divided by 40 hours a week, $433 an hour to make a million dollars, 40 hours a week. What are you going to allow in your day to take you and take $433 out of your pocket? That lunch with your girlfriend who's never going to be a client and you spent 90 minutes at the restaurant with her, you just spent $600 for no reason. Right. And so once we know this, we start to time block and manage our time very, very well. And it's the CEO mentality of your every position of your company until you can hire that position. So from 8 to 10 on average, especially when I was growing from 8 in the morning to 10 in the morning, I was CEO. Nothing about marketing, no operations, no systems, I'm just CEO. What's the CEO's job? Growth. So lead generation for a real estate agent. Once I was done with my legion and prospecting and everything, then I took off my CEO hat and from 10 to 11 I was CMO Chief Marketing Officer. So now I'm not doing any of the duties of CEO even if somebody calls me from my lead gen efforts, I'm not the CEO anymore. I'm the CMO for the next hour. So I get the most important work done of the CMO position of my brand, of my company. So I'm proofing ads, I'm, I'm posting on social media, I'm, I'm engaging people, whatever it might be, getting the marketing done for that hour. Then once that was done, coo, back end systems, operations, do I need to automate anything, you know, leverage the CEO anyway, you know, put out an application for, for a job that we have opening, whatever it might be. So by noon I've gotten the most important work done of the three most important positions of any company in the United States. Those are the three. Now I get to act as all three of them throughout the afternoon. Like I'm going to have different things that I have to put the hats on for a reason. And then once or twice a week, cfo, you know, going over the PNL with my accountant or CPA or me actually having to do that before I could hire an accounting firm back in the day. Right. And so I think that that's how I stay on point with my stuff is I just know that I need to act in each of those positions. And even though I technically have those positions filled, I'm still in charge. Like, nobody's going to change the logo of the company without my permission. Right. And so I still have to time block the CMO hour to just be on the phone with my marketing team and my head of marketing to go over things that we're doing. Because I'm still, at the end of the day, I'm still the one who's going to decide yes or no.

I like that idea with time blocking. And I do the same thing in my business where I figure out what's the most amount of money I've made in an hour and that's my minimum hourly rate. And anything that is less than that that I could hire for less than that, I delegate.

Yeah.

And then let's continue to grow.

Brilliant. That's exactly what I'm saying.

I didn't teach it myself. I think I read it in Dan Bartel's book or something. But it works really well because it, it changes your thought process because then you're like again, that lunch with the girl that you don't really want to be around, but you feel guilty because you've known her for three years or whatever. Like somebody referred you, somebody said what these obligations. Right. But you really have to get tactical about in your fun time too. It's not all about profits and money.

It's not like a friend of mine asked me to help a move on Sunday. I'm like, I just don't have the, you know, $8,000 that I feel like spending out of my pocket.

I'm going to send you bill. But out of your work efforts.

Exactly.

And what is your time worth and what are you doing? So I do the quadrant is the activities I love and I'm great at the activities I love, but I'm not great at the activities I. But I. Or I don't love, but I'm great at. And the activities that I don't love and I'm not great at and then you delegate that quadrant and then I rank them from dollar signs. I think this was Dan Martell's books.

Yeah, it's, it's, that goes back to the, you know, Plato's philosophy, the 80, 20 rule.

Right.

20% of what you love and the most important leads to 80% of the results.

Yeah. And when you're in the green zone, in a state of flow, which is why I hammer this in all the time. When you're in a state of flow, studies show you're 5x the production, five times more productive. If you're doing what you love and what you're great at, you're going to accomplish five times more in the same amount of time, which is amazing. So the quicker you can delegate those things out and just because you're not good at it, somebody else is good at it and they love it and they can operate in their zone of genius, which then you get into right.

Person, right seat and hiring the right talent.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So as it's all awesome, but leading people is a whole nother skill.

You get as giddy as I do over this stuff.

I know. I love it.

Yeah. I mean that's, it's, it's business and growth. I mean it's what, it's what stimulates our minds. Right. It's constant thinking.

Mine never shuts off.

Yeah, neither does mine.

Yeah, never shuts off. All I think about.

Yeah.

I dream about it.

Very hard for me to be on vacation.

Me too.

Like after a couple days I could just. My brain just. I need to, I need to be doing something. I need to be thinking about something. Or I can never unplug completely.

No, me neither. Now my vacation this year is a 10 day real estate summit cruise with Robert Kiyosaki. And I heard about that. Robert Helms and Ken Macroy and all those guys. So I'm super excited. That's my vacation.

Yeah.

10 days of which won't be vacation, but that's the, that's the only fun vacation to me. Okay, cool. So switching gears into you have a huge team. You've been on million dollar listing, you've sold hundreds of millions of billions of dollars of luxury real estate. And then you shared with me that you started to get requests from people that are, that needed help marketing their properties. Because marketing is the pinnacle of it. All right. If you don't have good marketing, you don't have anything. You don't have sales and you don't have operations, you don't have anything below that. So how do you Go about marketing these ultra luxury properties globally to ultra high net worth individuals and like what are some of the strategies you do there to sell these properties?

Yeah, so you know, every time that I would be speaking to the luxury real estate audiences, you know, and showing them all the things that I teach and write the books about, they would constantly ask me like, like can you do this for my luxury listing? Like it's not selling or I'm up to get this big luxury listing. Can, can I, can I say that I'm, I have you on my team that can, can do some of this stuff. And, and it just, I kept getting asked so much from 2011, 12, 13 that finally in 2015 I just decided to launch the Opulent Agency which would become this luxury real estate advertising firm for not just agents with any brand who sell luxury listings and want more exposure to themselves and their listings, but developers all over the world who have their in house sales teams that are building these luxury resorts and other countries. But they more than anyone I see a big issue with, they don't even know where to start. A lot of the times they don't know how to, they don't know how to get PR and articles in like Wall Street Journal and things like that. They, they don't know what magazines have the best ultra high net worth readers. They don't know how to run targeted campaigns correctly for the resort tying into the residences. And so when I launched the opulent agency it was supposed to be like advertising my athlete and sports and entertainment relocation and blockchain and crypto. When people buy homes using crypto, I'm, I'm heavy into the crypto and blockchain space. So within two years Opulent HD just took off and it was just all over the United States. Cnbc. I was doing segments on CNBC where people were learning who the opulent agency was and what we did. And then country after country after country after country, just developers and resorts just started calling. And the key, real key to the marketing campaign or the effort is getting it in front of the right eyes and ears. The UHNW class a lot of the time ultra high net worth people who have a net worth of 30 million or more, not just top 1%. And where do you, how do you get them? You have to know what they do, what they read, where they go. And so we have partnerships with, you know, social media channels and magazines like dupont and dupont Registry. Rob Report, Wall Street Journal where when Opulent Agency gets onto these developments, our connections allow major publicity to hit that Development and get it in front of the right people. So that's kind of just been our key. And of course, social media, video marketing, YouTube ads, getting the resort video of the residences or the development or the high rise to go viral on YouTube. Because I think people forget YouTube is number one when it comes to ads. And they're owned by Google. They're the second largest search engine in the world. Every day we're on YouTube and we hit skip ad. And so many real estate agents, commercial brokers, are not making them self be an ad, even though they know it works because they're, they see it. Even if it's just for a few seconds. It goes a long way because you have that first few seconds to hook someone and they're forced to at least watch 10. So it's all a matter of how it's done. And we've, we've learned the niche on how to get it done.

How'd you learn the niche on how to get it done? Because this is hard.

Yeah. Failing forward, seeing what worked, what didn't upset clients, upset developers. Like, hey, you said it was going to go viral. It's not going viral. And then being like, well, can I try again? Like, let me try. I'll give you, like, I'll do it for free. Like we're, they're constantly changing algorithms and different things. So. And we're constantly learning like there was actually something last week where I just realized a new algorithm that was changed on YouTube into the Google SEO. When you Google something and you click the Google Videos tab, Instagram is just going viral in there now over YouTube.

Wait, okay, so I haven't done this.

So if you Google, if you Google.

Commercial real estate, Arizona.

Commercial real estate, Arizona. Thanks.

In case you needed something to Google.

Up at the top you have Maps. After you Google, it shows the good Google results. There's a tab called Videos. If you click Videos, it's gonna, it always has shown all the YouTube videos that are related to commercial real estate. Some stuff Fun Zillow, some stuff maybe on LoopNet and Costar. But for the most part YouTube dominated.

Right.

Instagram is dominating in the Google results on the Videos tab now. So I had to call a friend of mine at Google and I was just like, hey, what's going on here? He was just like, it's, it's the way you title things on the Instagram reels that is dominating some SEO right now. So I started going in and had to learn the whole thing and what to do. And now I'm Building a little presentation on what to tell people to, on how to title their stuff on Instagram because it's actually working really well.

Yeah, I didn't know that.

So I'm again goes back to liquid assets, liquid knowledge. Anything you see of me on social media, if you look at my headline and bios, it says researcher somewhere on there. I'm addicted to research. When everybody was bashing crypto and blockchain and oh, it's for money laundering and terrorism. Yeah. Because the US dollar has never been used for money laundering or terrorism. But just all the bad media crypto and blockchain was getting in 14, 15, 16. A lot in 16, a ton in 17. I'm not listening to it. I, I'm, I'm becoming an expert in it. I'm watching YouTube videos, I'm going to crypto conferences because I'm like, you can't tell me that something that tens and tens and tens, hundreds of millions of people are embracing worldwide is not real. Like this is going somewhere. And so because I research, I'm addicted to things like that. I don't just let my team run the campaigns. I have these weird things where I'll go. Every hotel I ever go to, I go to their business center. If I see the. Because that's going to be the true SEO results. Because it's not tracking my computer. Like, oh Tony, you've been here before. Not tracking their computer. So I go to business center emails or computers and I just Google myself just to make sure everything that shows still. I Google some of the resorts that we're on and where we're coming out just. And then I can screenshot and send it to my team and be like, guys, I know it's looks good on your computer because Google knows but this is what it looks like for people who are a thousand miles away.

Smart.

So we need to fix that.

I. You just made me think of AI and crypto. So how do you see. Because I, I believe in crypto. I invest weekly in a few different.

Got a, got a nice little run today in yesterday, right now.

Yeah, I know. I saw it went down to. In the 80s and now it's back in.

The coin's at 102 right now.

Oh, geez.

Yeah, I was hoping it broke the record drop.

Darn it. Yeah, I was hoping to go to 60.

It's going to 13 million in the next 20 years.

So don't I believe that? Yeah, yeah, I know. I just wish I had more money to put in it. I have, I have A friend that puts in like a lot of money every month. Just, it's gonna be so nice.

It'll, it'll 10 and 20 and 50x anyway, so don't, don't worry about that.

So how do you see crypto and we'll start with crypto and then AI and then we have to finish up, but we have a little bit time. So how do you see crypto influencing the way real estate transactions and loan transactions happen in the near or later future?

Yeah, we definitely don't have enough time for this because it's deep. But you know, I was one of the first agents where somebody bought a house using bitcoin.

Wow.

And the seller accepted bitcoin back in 2017. That caught CNBC's attention and that's why I'm on CNBC often about crypto and blockchain and how they're intertwining with real estate. Where it's evolved now is, is there's just so many different ways to convert, but it's the blockchain side that I see evolving faster. Escrows use cryptos for earnest money deposits. Now banks consider it liquid assets for verification of your assets and things like that. So it's, it's already here to stay. Now it's the next level. Deeds of trust being recorded with notary public seals at the county in a file cabinet versus deeds of trust now being recorded on the blockchain as NFTs on a company that I sit on the board committee for called propy out of Florida and from Northern California where they, they have a full AI title and escrow capability 24, 7. Somebody on a Saturday night can open up escrow, not have to wait for the traditional escrow company to open on Monday. Wire money, use crypto if they want. Escrow's open, clock's already counting and the AI is reading all the documents summarizing it. And then when that deal does close, in addition to the traditional recording of the deed, that has to happen because counties are archaic, they're also recording it onto the blockchain as an nft. And I just try to tell people, just think of the modern day deed of trust as an NFT recorded on the blockchain. In our entire lending, commercial and residential real estate industry, in the next three to five years, the entire industry will be recorded on the blockchain.

Wow.

Before we had those thick file files of our past transactions, then we went to CD ROMs, then we went to USB drives. Now we get a link and it's on the Cloud, eventually everything's just going to be on the blockchain and recorded on there. So I think agents, agents need to be learning this for two reasons. It's in your industry now and Bob and Sally in Little Rock, Arkansas, who dabbled a thousand dollars towards a bitcoin back in 2018 are not who made it a trillion dollar global asset and monetary system. Some of the most intelligent, wealthiest people in the world understand it. They know it's not going anywhere. They want to own it all before anybody else invests in it. So when you think that, who do you want to be rubbing elbows with at the party? And if you hear people talking about crypto and bitcoin, you better be able to get into that conversation because that's a client, because then you can be in conversations with people. But if you didn't know anything about that, you wouldn't get in the conversation. And little do you know he's going to be selling his multimillion dollar house in a month from now and didn't get to meet you because you didn't get to get in that conversation. So the more knowledge we have of what the wealthy have knowledge of, the more chances we have of getting into them as clients and stuff. So you should be learning it for those two reasons more than anything. Besides learning it to invest, which will only create wealth, what's a good crypto.

Conference that you think is the bitcoin conference?

Any of Propy's conferences that I speak at are really good. The Big Sigma and AIBC ones, you know, I've spoken in like they have them in Toronto, Dubai, Sao Paulo, like Malta, where there's 20,000 crypto blockchain experts attending. But yeah, I don't think you could go wrong with any well known crypto conference that's been around for a few years.

I think it's fascinating. I'm, I'm always all in on cutting edge technology and trying to stay ahead of it and that's what I'm trying to do with AI right now as we were talking about last night. But where are you at with AI? What are your thoughts on AI and how it's going to transform businesses and how are you currently implementing it in your business? Are you actively implementing it or are you waiting for it to develop more actively?

So I'm already developing my third dimensional twin avatar. Right. That you know, for those that are listening, pretty much what you need to understand is that if you think chat GPT is to write the property description on your listing, you're exactly who ChatGPT is going to be replacing. That is not where AIs going with real estate. It is going to be your third dimensional twin. It is going to write all of your contracts for you. It is going to stage virtual. You can upload photo, you have to pay for it. Chat GPT like the paid one. But I can literally upload my photos of a vacant house that my photographer took and it virtually stages it in seconds. Those photos, like it can do that to a video. It can do anything. I mean, I keep trying to tell people it can do anything already. And so now imagine the chat bot that's on our website. Frequently asked questions, right? Chat with us. That's not going to be a chatbot. It's going to be me floating there. My third dimensional twin, like Facebook and Instagram, being able to answer any question the person asks on my website. Where do I find this? Where do I find that? What market should we be in? What are the best schools? And it'll just be able to. I'll answer any question. And then I'm only. My digital twin is only taking them to the point of now. Okay, yes, let's, let's do a call. And now I'm on a call or I'm going to their house and doing the listing presentation. So it's going to take over and leverage us on so many different levels. You need to be learning this now. If you aren't going to AI conferences, if you aren't following. My favorite Instagram account for AI is Evolving AI. That's their username, Evolving AI. They're probably the best AI account to follow because then you'll know pretty much everything happening in AI.

Cool. I need to do that. Yeah, I'm implementing it in my businesses, but just trying to learn it all, you know, and actively using the, the 200amonth plan on chat GBT is insane. But I'm in the Genius network and there's a AI guy there that has a conference coming up. I'm gonna go do that. And there's just so many amazing tools.

AI can read your entire database. If you have a database of 6,000 people that you've had for 10 years in your real estate career, you can literally have AI read the entire database. Every note, birthday, anniversary, anything you ever left on any contact in there. And it can go in there and be like, did you know that you have a client from five years ago that said that they were only going to stay in the house for five years? That unsubscribed from your newsletter like three years ago that you forgot all about that you might want to call.

Wow.

Like that's where we're going with it.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah, it's insane. It's. I've even like building out a board of directors of sorts. Like you can choose people you look up to that are leaders and have it build agents based on those. And then you can have a meeting with your board of directors that are those amazing. Yeah, yeah. It's exciting. It is.

If you're into research and learning, which you have to be, otherwise look in your rearview mirror because there's a whole new generation that's going to take your business overnight.

Yep. It's it. It is such an exciting time to be.

And you're kind of proof of that. Like I was when I first got in. I was getting listings that I should have never got because I was doing social media and all these other agents just had them in their little monthly drip newsletter, drip campaign. And so now you're living proof of how easy you can take the business of old school, long term, commercial veteran agents.

Yeah.

And talking too much. I'm so excited I have a frog in my throat.

Sorry.

It's all right.

It's crazy to think what the world will be like. And at the pace of technology growing, it just blows my mind to think of what it could possibly be like in the future. And then it also blows around. I was thinking about this last night. We're sitting on a floating space rock in the middle of expanding nothingness. And we were just these microorganisms in the who knows how many universes of infinite. I can't even begin to comprehend it. But it's so crazy that we're just these crazy little beings doing with these crazy minds trying to build and add.

Quantum to all of this. And what quantum is doing is. What did I see the other day? Quantum. Quantum solved.

I don't understand anything about quantum yet. I'm just learning.

Quantum intelligence solved a math problem in. I think it was, I don't want to say seconds, but it was in minutes, which would take the best supercomputer today a billion years to figure out.

No way.

Yeah, I gotta pull it up. It was, it was an insane article of what this thing did. So what is it?

What is quantum intelligence?

Oh, part two.

Oh my God.

That's gotta be part two. It's just like it's. It's everything about quantum, quantum physics, quantum everything. There's no easy way to really put it, but I think it's going to surpass AI before AI really gets going, like. Or quantum powered AI. I don't know, but we'll have to circle back on.

Yeah, that'll be a conversation.

We'll prep, create an action plan, give people books to read.

I'll fly out to Newport beach and we'll talk all about quantum intelligence.

For sure.

Yeah. Cool. Well, we'll wrap up here. But what it. If you could go back to your younger self and give them one piece.

Oh, you want to do the speaker? But.

Oh, yeah, we'll circle back that way. You want to talk about that?

We can talk about that after. And then we'll. We'll do another one of these.

Okay.

Part two with Tony Giordano, and you.

Have a million followers.

One something.

How do you do that?

Started with one. That's what's on my slides. Every presentation that I do, it says it started with one. Like, I didn't get on TV before to get that.

Like, I had to build the hockey stick. Getting on TV.

No, I had to build it to a thousand. Two thousand, three thousand. 4. Doing what I'm saying, getting in, engaging people, promoting other people, promoting other companies. I was doing that way back then. And then that led to getting big deals. Then that led to opportunities to be on shows, and then the domino effect starts and the geometric progression. Right. But it starts with one. You know, it's not like I'm some celebrity. I was never a star of one of those TV shows. I was just a guest agent with Madison or Josh Flagg or whatever it was, or selling LA on hgtv. But I was never a star. So that's. That's. That's grit right there. Still to this day. And my audiences, you know, I have little tricks where I always say, you know, all right, everybody take out their phone, follow this. And then I'm gonna do a giveaway so that, you know, from speaking to 20,000 people.

You know, 10,000 to 20,000 people.

Yeah.

That's insane. I get up in front of, like, 40 people, and I'm shaking my ass. I'm just. I'm just, like, shaking. My whole body is shaking.

It's kind of the same as 40 people because you only see the first few rows when it's that big, because it lights, you just see blackness. It's just darkness. But you can hear them. And that's a rush when you make them laugh. Like, you hear 20, 000 people laugh, but you can't see them.

I can't even imagine what that's like.

We'll circle Back on that. We'll do it. We'll. We'll talk about getting you on those stages. I can get you on stages. Yes, but first.

But I need to learn.

Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna get your craft there.

And it's like, how do you really practice until you do it?

There's ways, there's certain ways.

You just go over your presentation alone. So you really have it down.

Yeah. Or with somebody who's cons, like somebody who's coaching you on how to be a speaker. Like you're gonna do it, like, and I'm going to kind of give you pointers and stuff like that. Or. But yeah, the. In short, the two most important things to building a great speaking career is you're great at speaking. You can control an audience. You're intriguing, you keep their attention. You're not monotone, you're up, you're down, you're. You walk, you're a presenter. And what you are speaking on actually gives value or works. If you only have one of those, it won't go anywhere. You can be a great speaker. But what he says doesn't work. Or, wow, what he says works, but I just can't sit through it. He's just so, like. Right. But if you have those two things, the rest is history. So I'll just help you on. Because we already know what you teach is going to give value. So I'll help you on the presentation.

Okay.

All right. My younger self.

Yes.

What was the question?

If you could go back in time and give one piece of advice to your younger self, what would it be?

Save all of your allowance and invest in Bitcoin in 2009.

Yeah, that's a good one.

I would just say what my. So my big why is what I would tell my younger self today. My big why is stop focusing on proving the wrong people wrong in your life and change your focus to proving the right people right. And we're always also focused on the wrong people about us, the naysayers. The problem with that is that's just. It just gives you enough fuel to try to prove them wrong. But what happens is you prove them wrong, but you still have self doubt. They probably don't even doubt you anymore. But they're never going to tell you that. They're just going to stop talking. You're like, oh, shoot, he proved me wrong. So then we're the ones that say, now they probably don't think I could do this now they probably don't think I could do this now. They probably don't think it'll become a best seller now. They probably don't think I could write a second book when actually, when I wrote the first book, the guy who said I couldn't probably was like, never doubting him again. But we. It. It creates self doubt when we focus on the people who are wrong about us. And so I think when we. When we focus on the people who are right, the believers in us in our life, the mentors, the coaches, the family, whatever those people are, we. We come from a happier place, and then we just want to prove them more right over and over and over again. So I think it took me years, Adulthood to get to that conclusion. So I would go back to my younger self and be like, don't listen to them. Stop focusing on them. And who are the three people that believe you're going to be amazing? Well, duh. You already know. It's Mom. Focus on them.

Yeah.

And invest in bitcoin.

And invest in bitcoin. Mic drop. Thank you so much, Tony.

Thank you for having me.

You're awesome.

All right. You're awesome, too.