990: Neel Dhingra | Nobody Owes You Views

Foreign.

Welcome back to the show. I'm Travis Chappell and I believe that.

If you can connect with the best.

You can become the best. So after creating 800 podcast episodes about building your network, I've come to realize that networking is really just making friends if you're doing it the right way. Anyway, join me as I make friends with world class athletes like Shaquille O', Neal, entertainers like Rob Dyrdek, authors like Dr. Nicole Lapera, former presidents like Vicente Fox, or even the occasional FBI hostage negotiator, billionaire real estate mogul, or polarizing political figure. So if you want to make more friends that help you become a better version of yourself, then subscribe to the show and keep on listening because this is Travis Makes Friends. What is going on everybody? Welcome back to the show. Today we're moving along with our next classic release before our upcoming rebrand and restructure into the Travis Makes Money podcast. If you're looking for Travis Makes Friends that will be coming back out in Q2 of 2025 with some awesome long form feature length interviews that I'm really excited to release. Honestly. I've been batching these ones up for for a new relaunch of the of Travis Makes Friends on a new feed. It's going to be awesome. Trust me. I'm feeling pretty solid today. Of course I just took my Magic Mind, which if you don't know, you gotta go get some Magic Mind. If you do anything creative, like if you're, if you talk for a living, if you're in sales, marketing, if you write, if you speak, if you, you podcast anything like that, I promise you Magic Mind is the secret weapon that you're waiting for. It's like a little matcha shot that has, has some caffeine, like 50, 55 milligrams but not too much, so it doesn't give you this huge spike in energy. And then it has a bunch of other ingredients that are on top of that, like natural ingredients like ashwagandha, cordyceps, things like that that help prevent the caffeine crash so you can actually take it and have sustained energy and increased mental clarity throughout the day. And then what's even cooler is I'm feeling pretty rested today because I've been taking Magic Mind's evening formula now, which I almost accidentally took in in the daytime one time and then saw it, it says like improve sleep. I was like, that is not what I'm going for right now. But it is what I'm going for later on when my head hits the pillow and all the thoughts of the day start rushing in. So I've been taking this at night and it has been improving my sleep quality, which naturally give better energy throughout the day anyway and allows me to cut down on some of the caffeine consumption that I was, you know, pretty addicted to before, let's be honest. So Magic Mind now has this bundle where you can get their nighttime formula and their daytime formula to help you increase your energy and productivity during the day as well as your rest and sleep quality in the in the middle of the night. All scientifically backed, proven and tested ingredients. They're not throwing a bunch of random stuff in there. There's not a bunch of chemicals, bad things in it. It's all good. All things that your body really needs to help with some of these things that we talked about. So cool thing is they're giving my audience, all of you lucky people out there, 45% off the magic Mind bundle if you use my link magic mind.com tmf jan tmfjan for travis makes friends january magic mind.com tmfjan and you can get 45% off the magic Mind bundle there. So don't, don't wait. I promise you I've tried a bunch of different stuff. I've gotten stuff sent to me over the years. Magic Mind's one of the only companies that I always try to keep working with because I actually use and like their product for the purposes that they actually market that it helps you with. So I am not just saying that. Please go pick up some of some Magic Mind for your own sleep and productivity and tell me what you think. Now today on the show, we're releasing another classic episode as we gear up for our February 1st relaunch of the the show and rename it to Travis Makes Money. In this episode, I wanted to feature Neil Dingra or at Neil Home N E E L H O M e on Instagram. He's a mortgage industry Expert with over 15 years of experience in the field. And in addition to that, over the last three or four years he's really become even bigger expert in the personal branding and content creation space specifically for a lot of the the mortgage and real estate industry professionals who can't quite figure out how to build their personal brand to increase their business and make their life a little bit easier, attract their ideal clients and things like that. So he runs a successful YouTube channel, is constantly posting on Instagram, and even doing trainings with people like Gary Vaynerchuk on how on how agents and people in this, in this space and industry can use content to help build their brand and grow their reach and their audience. So Neil's really interesting. Cool guy. I enjoyed talk talking to him on the show. I'm sure I'll have him back on for a new episode sometime. But as we gear up with these classics, I wanted to re release this episode that I had with Neil Dingra. Oh, don't Forget Magic Mind. Magicmind.com TMF Jan. All right, that's it. Enjoy this chat with Neil and look forward to the rebrand to Travis makes money. Neil, what's up, dude?

Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it.

Of course. Welcome to the studio. The, the, the, you know, hacked together in home studio.

This is nice, man. I like what you did here.

The thing is, you can't tell that it's hacked together home studio on the camera.

So no, you would think we're on like some blue wire to. Yeah, Blue part two. Yeah, exactly.

Well, dude, I've been looking forward to doing this for a while. You spoke at, I think it was an Avengers event, which is a mastermind. Yeah, that, that I'm in for. Real estate investors specifically. It's kind of like got grandfathered into that group from the 100 million group that I was in. And a lot of times I'll see a lot of the same familiar faces in the crowd because I've been in that group since like 2019. So a lot of the people that I see come in and out, a lot of the speakers, I'll see them online. I know almost everybody that they bring in before they bring them in. This episode of the show is brought to you by Chime. Sometimes it feels like all the forces of nature are against you when it comes to your finances. Putting away money, making more money. Well, Chime understands that every dollar counts. That's why when you set up direct deposit through Chime, you get access to fee free features like free overdraft coverage, getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit and more. And you can learn more@chime.com Travis I'll tell you what. My younger self would have greatly benefited from using chime, meaning you get paid up to two days early when you use direct deposit with them. With qualifying direct deposits, you're eligible for free overdraft up to $200 on debit card purchases and cash withdrawals. And to date, Chime has spotted members over $30 billion. All right now, not to mention you get access to over 47,000 fee free ATMs, which is more than the top three national banks combined. This one thing alone is enough to switch to Chime. Cause I'll tell you what, there's not much more that irritates me than having to pay money to get access to my own money. So use Chime today. Work on your financial goals through Chime. Open an account in just two minutes at Chime.com Travis that's Chime.com Travis Chime feels like progress. So you're about to make a trade.

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On my show or something. And so when you came up, I was like, I have never heard of this guy. Wonder what his deal is. And then the thing that you were talking about was social media content, which is stuff that we do a lot of. So I was very curious what the talk was going to be. And, and I've heard a lot of people talk on these types of things, but I wanted to bring you on the show because I liked, I liked the style of content that you were doing. I liked the metrics that you were posting. I liked how you tied them directly to like business results. It wasn't just, you know, vanity metrics and things that didn't matter. So there was a lot of things about, about your talk that, that again I, I was learning from which I'm not to say that I'm like the expert at this point, but I have been doing this for a while and it's hard sometimes like, you know what I'm saying? Like you'll bring people in, they all say the same thing. So it was refreshing to hear a new and fresh perspective on it, which I want to get into with you. But before we do that, the show is called Travis Makes Friends because it's my goal to share stories of people who chose an unconventional path in life so that the listener, the audience can kind of see, hey, maybe this path that I'm currently on isn't the best path for me and I want to go do something different. So yeah, let's rewind the clock. 10 year old, 11 year old Neil set the scene for me. Where were you in the world? You know, what was growing up like for Neil?

So immigrant family, my parents From India. I was born here in the US My brother, sister and I grew up in a, you know, that conservative family where your parents want you to be the best student, become a doctor, lawyer. You know how all that stuff goes. They're, you know, deep into higher education. So it was all about, you know, work hard, keep your head down, do all that stuff. And I was reading, and I bring that up because I was recently at this event where this dude, my buddy Renee, he was trying to put to. He. He basically helps you come up with your thing, your. Your. Your message, your brand. And he goes back to, like, when you were a kid during this specific. The ages that you just said, by the way, which is kind of weird. He said anywhere between 10 and 12. During those years, something clicked with you. Either that you really. That it's like, is the thing that you wanted to have come out later in life, or it was the exact opposite of that. Meaning, like, it was something that you don't want to do when you. And. And it kind of came. So for me, it wasn't anything wrong with my parents. Like, they're great. It was awesome. But they always told me to just kind of like, work hard, don't make a scene, keep your head down, get a good job, do the traditional path. Do the traditional path. Put, you know, save your money, all your money, don't waste money on anything. Save every nickel, and then you'll someday be able to retire.

Yeah.

And, you know, that was the path, right?

40, 40, 40 plan.

Yeah. And so, like, later in life found out that, hey, you know, I'm like. I felt kind of like, constrained by that. You know what I mean? So kind of just continued doing the normal path of that. Everyone's done, like, school, all that stuff. And then.

So you ended up going to college.

Yeah, I ended up going. And then in two years in, I quit going to school because I got into finance. Mortgage finance.

Okay.

And this was during the crazy days of, like, pre 2008.

So it's 2004, 2005. Yeah, exactly.

So just doing crazy. No respa, no. No rules. Yeah. Like, you get a pulse, you can buy a house.

Yeah. And you people sell mortgages.

Yeah.

You don't even have to get. So you had to get a real estate license. Right. You didn't know there was no nmls.

This is the craziest. So back then, you. You'll be freaking shocked. The process to get a mortgage license, when I got licensed was a form. They didn't even have it digitized. It was a Piece of paper, and you mailed it with a check for 75 to Carson City, bro. I'm not kidding you. This is the. This is the process. Then then they added. You had to turn in your fingerprint cards, but I don't think they ever ran the cards. Yeah, go to like, get your fingerprint cards, like a police card type. But I don't think they ever had because I knew felons who were doing mortgages, like, honestly, you know, so famously. Yeah. So you would. You would get a piece of paper, a check for $75 made payable to the department of whatever on your fingerprint cards. And you are now a licensed.

Certified, baby.

Certified, bro. So we started doing mortgages. I was doing, like, regular loans at a bank, and my brother was doing mortgages. Like, you need to get over here. We're making a lot of money. So I started learning that your brother.

Older? Younger.

Older.

Okay.

So me into that. He was like.

He was already done with college. He found this thing. You were in college. I'm sure your parents were super stoked.

That your brother pulled you out of school. They're very excited about that. It was like a frat house, bro. It was like, you know, just people make. You ever see the boiler room? Oh, yeah, totally. Boiler room vibes. Yep. Money, A lot of things I can't say. But anyways, like, that all that shit happened. And then what happened was like, everything collapsed, you know, 2008. So just full collapse. Yeah, we had about 40 people in an office. It was. Everybody was. Just went on to different things, you know, and we just. Me, my brother, we subleased our office out and we cook. One room that was the size of this.

So it was your office?

Yeah, we had a whole company, like.

So you weren't even the one just. You weren't even just one of the guys. Hidden phones?

No, no. We were like running a division for a company. We had a partnership. Everything that company went under. So then we had to just go get our own license and do loans. So we kind of got through that period of 08 to like 12, which was just bad.

And it was. It mostly just like you to what made you stay in it when everybody else was leaving.

So honestly, I didn't know what to do. It was the only thing I knew. And so there was ways to make money. It was like less people were buying homes, but there were still people out there, like, picking up houses on the cheap. There were still government programs to help people stay in their home that we had to help. There Was like reverse mortgages for senior. There was still ways to make money in the industry. It was just slow. So I just stuck with it because, like, I know you actually had to.

Be qualified to buy a home.

Yeah. So it got very difficult.

Stated income only. Yeah, totally. I can afford that. Okay, great. Here's $1 million home.

Exactly. So we like, luckily I saved a few nickels like along the way. So it wasn't like broke, it could survive. I remember a couple of years we had like very little income, but, you know, did okay.

Was it a like I told you so moment for your parents at all?

Yeah, for sure. They were like, man, see this is all, this is what happens. Get rich quick scheme. You guys are all shysters. And then it took a while for like anybody in real estate and mortgage to like get credibility again. Use people, be like, dude, what do you do? I'm like, I don't want to tell you. Like, you know, you don't even say like mortgage like you're dealing with. You're the guy that.

You're the reason economy is in shambles.

So it was just bad. But we got through that. And then from 12 onwards just kept growing, like, kept getting bigger, bigger. And we made a, we did like a joint venture, did all these cool things in the industry, bought a bunch of rentals and just kind of built my net worth and business just the old fashioned way. Like no social media, nothing like that. Just on the ground making relationship, shaking hands, closing deals, hiring people, running a business.

Yeah.

And then I just kind of, I, I would say like got just burnt out of that whole industry. The hustle, just the hustle. Like, you know, just, you know, doing constant sales, cold calling leads, running a sales team, keeping them motivated. It's like, dude, what, what is a better way to do this? Like, how do people do marketing? Because I was all sales, no marketing. And so then I got into like social media, you know, watching GaryVee and hey, you got to put out content. Well, what the fuck? How do you do that? So then I started doing it, just really bad at first and slowly found my way, you know.

When did you start posting?

2018. So prior to that I didn't even have an account. Wow. I didn't. Like, all my family was on social media. I was like, I'm not signing up for that.

So 2008 to 2018, you were just slinging mortgages, phones, sales rooms?

Yeah, we did mail. Direct mail, bro. We did a lot of mail. I had that down to a science. Like, you know, fake Stamps on the letter so people would open them. We had a freaking handwriter, you know, just like all the shit like I, I would, all the little, all the little tricks of the trade to get people. So I knew like sales.

Yeah.

But as far as marketing, that's some.

I mean that's some marketing stuff. Right. And stuff like that. Some psychology pieces that for work online just like they work on mailers.

Yeah.

That's interesting about marketing and sales really is like the principles are the same. Yeah. Do the platforms change?

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Learn more@WhatsApp.com you know, the method might change, but the principle, you know, it's human psychology.

Yeah. Like open rates, subject lines on emails, you know, how are we, what CRM are we using? How are we doing this? What's email deliverability? All that kind of, I was behind the scenes just like a nerd into that, but didn't have like a personal brand, didn't have an online presence or any of that stuff.

I'm curious, do you have anything off the top of your, off the top of your head that was like a story of closing somebody down? Or you're on the phone and it's like it's seemingly impossible to get this person to close, but then you end up closing it. Do you have anything that's help you? I'd like that.

Oh yeah, I'm sure that, I mean there's a lot of stories like that of. I mean that's happened more now that I've gone into B2B stuff really. But back then it was more of just like we didn't really have to hard close anybody, you know, on buying a house for a while, like you just wanted it so, you know, you didn't really have to do much other than just be good at the process.

And build good relationships with the realtors.

Exactly right. So that was it. But I remember, you know, there's definitely times when like people didn't qualify for stuff and you had to like help them get comfortable with it.

You got to be the financial wizard almost.

Yeah. And so that was a. There's been some difficult clients for sure. But yeah, we didn't really have the environment of like you had to hard close this guy for a big. It was more just like they wanted it and could you do it now.

We have to find the path.

Exactly. Yeah.

I was having a conversation with somebody recently because we're just talking about like different career paths and stuff. And because I come from a background of sales, I did like six years, seven years of door to door sales, multiple different products and stuff like that. And I typically recommend for people who don't have a clear direction of like where they want to go in life, like just do something in sales, like get yourself in front of people, talking to people. Get good at convincing people to buy something or persuading people to move toward a solution to the problem that they're experiencing. Learn how to do that. Because that's going to spill into literally anything else that you want to do in life, including the things that you don't think it spills into. It spills into, you know, the ability to communicate and persuade people to do something. So I'm. I'm curious, like if somebody came to you and asked you, you know, obviously you spent over a decade doing that exact thing. What are some of the biggest lessons that you took away from just that discipline of cold dialing and phone sales?

Well, it's like you have to do the work, you know what I mean? And a lot of people in that time period, it's just who's willing to do it consistently wins, you know what I mean? And so it's a lot of averages. Yeah. And the other part is just like attrition. Like people just quit along the way. People like. Another thing I notice is how easy it is to beat your competitor by simply just doing things in a structured way. Meaning, like, when do you make your calls? How many calls do you make a week?

Yeah.

You know, what's your process? Do you even have a process? I mean, so many people are in this just flying by the seat of their pants. And then you like years go by and you've, you, you just ran in the same place.

Yeah.

So how many people out there? Like, you're working your ass off, you feel like you're running and you look back and you've done. You. You've gone nowhere.

Yeah, that's the worst, right?

You've done nothing.

Those are the people that are like, I have 16 years of experience and my. No, no, Correction. You have one year of experience done 16 times in a row.

Yes.

You never did and so never moved.

To the next step. So, like, the thing that I learned the most from that whole period was you can make a lot of money, but you're building an ink. You're building just cash, but you're not building any business because you're on a treadmill. The second you stop running, your business stops, your money stops. You have no brand. Like, you're as good as this month's pipeline. How many deals you got in the pipeline this month? None. Okay. You're worthless. Oh, what about that? Ten years of. Well, it's not worth anything.

Yeah.

Because you don't have any deals right now. So what I was using it as is like, hey, make some money. Invest it properly. That's the only thing you could do. So I started buying real estate, which helped me build wealth, but, like, the actual business itself was not worth anything. And me personally, I had no brand. So that's why I was like, that's why I really. That's the first thing attracted me to marketing stuff was like, hey, like, now I'm not just building an income, I'm actually building a brand. A business. Yeah. That's worth something.

Yeah.

And what it's. What's it worth? Well, it's worth a lot, you know, after you keep doing it for a while. Like now you have relationships, you have, you know, different ways to get business. You can attract business. You don't have to, like, chase people. You can attract people. It just makes, like, your life way better. Every, like, problem I had in life was solved by building a brand.

And it's the difference between long term and short term thinking for sure. Because especially if you don't come from money, you can get really wrapped up in some of those commission checks. You're like, oh, my Gosh, I made $16,000 this month. Like, that's. I thought I would have to be an anesthesiologist to make that much money. And I made it by sending a $75 check in the mail and jumping on some phone calls.

Yeah. And, you know, it's so, like, up and down.

Right.

And you know, you're not in control of that.

And that's.

Rates go up and then you're out, or, you know, the market doesn't come through. Yeah.

Yeah.

So, you know, it's like there's some different things you could do to do it better, but at the end of the day, you have to do something different.

Yeah.

Other than just building this month's or this week's sales.

So I tell people, if you're. If you're not in the long game, you're in the wrong game, because you will always have to go out and go back and hunt.

Yeah.

You know, it's like the. It's like the insurance salesman that is at every chamber of commerce meeting and has been there for the last 25 years brings the donuts. You know what I mean? It's like, dude, when. Like, when are you going to be able to stop doing this activity? You know, that's when it kind of hit me was when I was, like, showing up to these things. I was knocking on doors, and I was doing everything I was supposed to do, and I was just like. Exactly what you're saying. Then you. You go on vacation for a week and a half, and you come home and you're like, oh, I'm not making any money now. I gotta go work twice as hard for the time that I took off to make up for the fact that I took some time off because I wasn't money while I was gone.

You're on treadmill.

You gotta get back on the treadmill.

Right, exactly. Yeah. And the other part that sucks is it's. You're just treated like a vendor. So, you know, like you said, you're gone. Somebody else fills your spot. Yeah, right. And what are you bringing? Flyers, tchotchkes, freaking donuts, bagels. I mean, like, what value is that? Somebody else can do the exact thing you're.

They just got.

You're fully replaceable.

They just got another beer, Koozie.

Yeah, exactly, bro. So it's like, what are you going to do different? So that's the part that I wanted to get off that hamster wheel. Yeah. And then I also saw that there was like, there's got to be a better way. And the other thing that got to me, and you probably felt this is probably why you do so much content. And I'm sure a lot of people who watch and listen to your stuff feel this way. Like, do you ever feel like you're meant to do more than what you're doing?

Yeah, totally.

You know, and so, like, I had that nagging feeling for, like, A decade. Like, dude, I'm more than just a loan officer. I'm more than just a sales dude or a freaking realtor or whatever you are. Like, there's. You want to do more. You want to help more people. You want to make a bigger impact. You want to have a purpose. Yeah. And so I wasn't finding that in what I was doing. And I think, like, that's what kind of. I didn't know it at the time, but that's what kind of drew me to, like, putting myself out there. Because now you do have a purpose. You are helping people. You're helping people that you don't even make money from, but you're just making an impact, and people are now better off because of what you did.

Were you comfortable making the first few videos that you made?

No, man, These are terrible, bro. You gotta. I can't even show you.

As I say, you still have them or.

We have some. We lost some, but there's some. I think I have, like, a lot of the stuff from 18. Bad. Cringe worthy.

Yeah.

You know, it's bad. You can't even watch your own video. Yeah. You know, you can't even get through it. How do you expect other people to get through it?

You didn't do anything prior to that? I'm assuming, like, no other form of nothing. Content.

I mean, I would write. I. Dude, I was terrified to speak. Could not speak in front of people. I was the best man for my brother's wedding. Literally looked down at my phone and read the speech because I was so, like, scared to speak in front of a group. So anyway, could not speak. Could not do video. But just started and just got through that really awkward phase.

Totally.

And then it just kind of got better. I started doing meetups, like, small events for, like, local people in my industry.

Okay.

And professionals, real estate professionals. And then also do it for, like, consumers.

Okay.

I would have, like, five, 10 people come and just test, just try, you know? And some of these were horrible as well. Yeah. But that's how I learned, you know? So that was like my tuition. Most of the things I did 18 and 19 did not work. Like, 95% did not work. They're wasted time. But it wasn't a waste because that's how I look. Yeah. You know what I mean?

But stop, Neil. That's not working.

That's true. But what I found was, like, the small amount that did work was so cool.

Yeah.

And got me so much further than the stuff before that. I was like, man, that's Like a glimpse. It's like just a little bit of that. Oh, dude. I'm like, you get handed an opportunity that used to take you years from one video. And what's cool about that is it's. You realize it's not really about being an influencer or views or the metrics. You. You just. Like, it sounds cheesy, but you just need one.

Correct.

You need to connect with somebody on that video.

You build the relationship with one individual who's watching.

That's it.

And that's all that matters.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was actually. I think it was at that same event because obviously we've been creating content for a long period of time. And I've told people this I don't know how many times, but I loved the way that Pace Morby said it when he said, my core job is to create pace clones.

Yeah.

And when he said it that way, it was just like, what a, like, perfect, succinct way to say it where it's like, me and you are talking right now, but somebody right now is watching a video of you, and somebody else is watching a video of me. Talk to them about something completely different than what you and I are talking about right now.

Yeah.

It's like when you really start wrapping your mind around how powerful that can be and, like, how. How it could be everywhere.

Yeah.

Like somebody could be watching you on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, reading an email, listening to a podcast. Somebody could be doing all of those things right now as you and I are having a conversation. They're building a relationship with you and then probably DMing you to do business with you that you're gonna have to respond to once we get off of this podcast.

Like, while you're sleeping. Yeah, while you're doing this. You know, so it's just duplicating yourself.

Correct.

And it's a simple thing, but so many people don't do it.

It's your best business development rep. That's it, man.

You hired the best person, you know?

Yeah.

Like, it's like you. You're doing it. You close people like nobody else will just duplicate yourself. So that part, I think, is where once you see the benefits of that, even if it's just small, you're like, man, okay, I'm onto something here. When you stick with it.

When did you start really, like, investing into the content strategy?

So I started really in the beginning because I had, like, you just said I wasn't like, a creator.

Yeah.

I was like, a guy who.

Entrepreneur Turned creator. Not creator. Turned entrepreneur.

Exactly. So a little bit of success in business, you know, could deploy some capital. So I was like, okay, I can buy. I can hire someone to help me with some videos. I could make them look good. I could, you know, buy some equipment, that kind of thing. So I started doing that. But I quickly realized you can invest in all the video and equipment. All if you're. If you don't communicate well, it's you. You're not going to go anywhere.

Yeah.

I mean, you're like the dude who bought the most expensive tennis gear that sucks. You know, like all that kind of shit.

So it's like $300 basketball shoes, but you don't know how to dribble.

Yeah, exactly. So that was me at the bet. Like, I bought the cameras. Most of them just sitting around, don't even know how to operate them properly. Eric's trying to teach me stuff, but it's just, you know, I'm not getting anywhere with this. So what I found was, got to teach people what you really know. Like, could you become a better educator on and be a better communicator? More confidence on camera. All this stuff that just comes with the reps. And so I just started doing more of that and then figuring out what works. Because you saw, you know, the platform is always changing. That's why when you mentioned, like, somebody will come up and say the same old thing. Sometimes the same old thing isn't what even worse even work anymore. You're telling a strategy from two years ago and. Or six months ago that doesn't even work today. So things are moving that quickly. So you got to be like a real student of the game. And for me, I'm a nerd. I love treating this like a video game, you know, like, dude, how do we hack attention? Sure. What's the algorithm change that you can hack in there to get more reach? Yeah, it's the same thing. Going back to like direct mail. What's the freaking font on the envelopes that results in more opens? That's the same type of shit. Like, I'm like, okay, what hooks do we use? And I've seen you talk about this, like, how did you go viral on YouTube shorts? This type of hook, this type of video. And then what's the purpose of all this? Not to get the vanity metric is to get more free reach out of these platforms. I caught like, my tent. I'm trying to bring more people into the tent.

Yeah.

So that way I could make a bigger impact, find my people. So I'm like, creating content for the masses so I have the opportunity to reach the few. Yes. That could move the needle for my business and I could move the needle for them. We could do business together, help each other. So that's been my thing is like, hey, this is. It's kind of fun when you think about it.

Yeah.

Like what, What. What are the things that would work, what doesn't work, all that kind of stuff.

How do you think of being polarizing in your content when you're in. Because you're in kind of like professional services space. Right. You're in real estate, you're in investing. You know, you can't really. I mean, you can do whatever you want, but it's typically, you know, frowned upon to be maybe, I don't know, verbose or silly or talking about whatever. Religion, politics, extremely polarizing topics. But you still kind of want to. Exactly what you were just kind of referring to earlier. You still want to. You still want to get your message out to a mass amount of people so that you can find the people that really like you and. And repel the people who don't like you.

Yeah.

It has to do both of those things, in my opinion. Right. Good marketing repels. It attracts the ideal person as much as it repels the not ideal person.

Yeah. So I found it's in two categories. The content you create that would, you know, have a lot of reach. And then there's also other content you create that speaks to your people, your tribe. Right. And both can work. You know, not every piece of content has to do it all, but one piece of content you can make with a specific goal of just bringing more people into the tent, more wide appeal, and you're trying to reach the most amount of people. Another piece of content, what's an example of that? So that would be like teaching a topic, taking a niche topic and giving it broad appeal. So a niche topic could be this new loan program that helps you buy a house.

Okay.

Right. And it's called XYZ Program. Most people in the industry will just tell you about this new program. They'll give you the acronym and they'll tell you nobody gives a shit about that. They care about how it helps them. Right. So you come up with a hook, like, here's a simple tool that helps you buy a home even if you don't have the best credit. Or, you know, I'm just giving you a basic example.

Right. But that would get your house with no money down.

Yeah. That would appeal to people, not just who are in the transaction or in that window who might need you. But, like, they would save it. They would share it with the family friend. Like, it have more appeal. And so you're giving them real tricks, hacks. I think everybody's interested. I did benefit. This is just a benefit I had of, like, getting on social in 18 and just, like, following all these people. You could have access to some people who, you know, have huge brands today. Like people like Gary Vee, for example. I remember seeing an Instagram story and he was like, man, I just came out with my latest K Swiss sneaker. If you buy X number of them, you can come hang out with me in my office. I was like, holy shit. Yeah, I'll fucking buy that. You know, it's like $5,000 worth of K Swiss, which I donated to a kid's school because I didn't want him, right? And then I got to go hang out his office, and I was in. That was the first time I met him in like, 2018 or 19. And I was like, gary, I'm in the mortgage industry. It's super boring. What kind of content can I create? He's like, financial fitness. People love the trips, the tricks, the hacks. It is like, why is Cindy. What's her name? Orman. Susie Orman. Freaking. What's the old dude who's super rich? The freaking guy. Dave Ramsey. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, like, these guys give out the financial hacks. It's a big thing. Like, people want to get their money, right? They want to learn about what do you know about investing and. And mortgage and real estate? Like, put those tips out there and present them in the right way. That's your sticker. Don't just talk about, like, the latest program. So that type of content everybody's interested in. I think I can bring more people on your tent. It's not polarizing at all, but you deliver it in your way.

It's your style.

So, like, my style is different than your style, which is different than somebody else. So I think people can eventually tell this dude's for real. So your delivery style and then the other type of content I found that works really well to get business and speak to your people is two ways. One way is proving competence. So what can you post that would prove you're competent? Success stories, client reviews, testimonials, your take on the news. What's a industry practice that you stand against? Dude, I hate that the people in my industry do this. Yeah, that's kind of polarizing. But at the Same time it separates you from all your competitors. Yeah, right. The industry takes a standardized approach. My team and I, we go deeper with each person to kind of custom solution. So in this world of tech and push button, get house and all that type of shit, it's not like that we do this. So now you've separated yourself. Right. So that's a way to prove competence. You know, like all these questions you can talk about on social that would just show you, you know, your take a news article and apply it to the consumer. Like, make it simple. That shows, like, dude, you know your stuff, you're on top of it. So that to me has generated the most amount of business. And then the second part is like what you just said. How do you relate? Like, repel the people that you don't want to work at and attract your tribe. That's where you just show more of your personal life. For me, yeah, like, what are the things I'm into? What are the music I'm. What am I doing with my family? Yeah, like, what do you want people to know about you? And so when I started incorporating that. And a lot of people don't want to because they're like, dude, I don't want people to know this one thing about me that's cheesy or like, that's weird. But I just say it like this, dude, if you. What are the things your friends and your family like, love the most about you? Like, what if you showed that on social? What are the odds that some other people might like that too?

Yep.

They might find your weird sense of humor funny, or they might find the fact that you like this cool.

It's the fear of the people that are gonna hate it is why they won't put it out.

But those people just hit the unfollow button.

Right?

So, like, for me, I'll have a piece of content about you. Get a bunch of new followers. Then as I follow, as I start posting stories, I literally see it go down. Yeah, they're leaving. I'm like, you know, you're leaving. Don't leave. Yeah, you don't know. But they just leave because they didn't. Like, they like, dude, they're like, your story popped up and it was you, I don't know, doing whatever. And you're like, dude, I don't want to follow this guy. And then follow.

Cool, right?

Like, just let it. It's just a process. Like, bring them in and then keep the ones that want to be there. The other ones leave.

Lose sight of the fact that social content in general is there to build relationships and trust with people.

Yeah. Conversations.

At the end of the day, you're always going to have a better relationship and have more trust with somebody with whom you share common interests or you have certain commonalities with. Whether it's your sense of humor or a show that you're watching on Netflix or the restaurant that you like to go to, or the type of beer that you drink or not drinking at all or, you know what I mean, like whatever that thing is. There's quirks that all of us have about how we choose to live life, our personalities, everything about that. And it's really easy to get scared about the negative feedback that you're going to get and let that hold you down from the potential future. Positive feedback. Because the negative feedback in my experience has always come first before the positive feed. Like anytime I'm doing something that's not generic, that's not like, you know, that's just more interesting or it's, or it's maybe a little bit edgy or it's showing a part of my sense of humor that maybe not everybody likes likes. The negative feedback comes first because the algorithm searching for the people that are gonna like that.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? So you have to kind of deal with some of the negativity in the meantime until it attracts more members of your tribe and until those other people finally just off and go follow somebody else's stuff.

Yeah, it's like, it's kind of divisive. Like if people don't. You want it to have a little bit of a debate. So there's people posting content trying to be polarizing. Like it's. You shouldn't be trying that hard. Like you should just be showing. And maybe people don't vibe with it or maybe they disagree with what you're saying. That's a healthy debate. That's cool. But like I don't have to try. It's just like share more of what you really think. Like, what's your thoughts on this topic? Share them honestly.

Right.

If that is kind of polarizing, that's cool. But I think when people try to do it, then it's like, yeah, absolutely. You're just like attention hungry.

Yeah. I've had some friends who've like, who've tried to be polarizing and then it inevitably takes them down this path, path of like, of political polarity. And then they get sucked into these either right wing or left wing vortexes and then lose track of their entire mission. But they they, they're like sacrificing their long term brand for short term views. You know, it's like one. But it's, it's working. It's getting a lot of views. It's like, well, that's not always the metric to decide whether or not it's working.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like, you should also be thinking about, is this the type of stuff that I want to be known for? Do I want this to be a part of my brand? Do I want, do I really want my most watched videos to be a strong stance on. Fill in the blank on this big political topic or this religious debate? It's like, do I really like.

Especially if you want that marketing or you're in finance, like, right.

You're not trying to sell a book on religion, then maybe like, yeah, ease back a little bit, you know, like let your personality come through. But, or just make sure that you're asking yourself the question, I guess is my point of like, yeah, that video may have gotten more views than this video, but does that mean that we should go create a bunch more content like this video? Because ultimately I don't want to be the next Ben Shapiro. You know what I mean? I still want to be a real estate expert. I still want to be looked at as a, you know, entrepreneurial figure. Yeah, I don't, I don't want to be this political talking head or like a pastor of a church or the next Richard Dawkins, you know what I mean? So like, like, you know, sometimes it's okay to let those things shine through, but yeah, always, you know, have some clarity around where am I headed with this?

And I like the fact that, you know, you talk about, hey, you got to put out content that, you know, teaches your expertise, you can help people with. But then at the same time it's not like, so you're looking at your, your, your niche, what you want to teach. What's the best way to do that? The most, you know, the most innovative way, the best way to keep attention with that. That's cool. But you're not like going into a topic just for the sake of views.

Yes, correct.

That's, that's where I think it goes wrong because now like you're just playing a game of like, you know, whatever, it just doesn't serve you long term. And then it just like the audience isn't going to be quality. So I've noticed a lot of people have audiences, some are worth more than others. So for me, the best part has been building A real community? Yeah, like what's a community of people? And I look at like the algorithms and they keep getting worse in certain parts, better in a certain, like short form content. You have the ability to go viral for free. That's cool. That didn't exist a couple years ago. That's a cool thing. But other than that, the algorithm is always worse. When I post an Instagram story, it shows it to fewer of my followers. When I post a regular picture of me and my family, it shows it to fewer of my people. So like you're reaching less and less people over time. And so like in that, in that thing of like you're posting and you're not reaching as many people, how do you get people off that into an actual community? Email is great. Sign up, you know, opt in, come to in person events. That's why like, I love doing in person events. Like get the relationship off of Instagram into like another platform.

Is that why you started your event? I know you have, you have. Forward coming up in Vegas, July 14th, 15th, 16th.

Just 1415.

Okay. In Vegas, July 14th 15th at Resorts World 2023. Got a great lineup of speakers. Is the reason you got into events to build community or was there another catalyst?

Yeah, it was a. To build, to, to have a place to meet up with people and like minded people who all have the similar goal and want to meet each other, help each other. And then also I had been to so many events and I was like, you ever go to a business and you're like, dude, I could do this better, and then actually did that. I was like, okay, I'm going to try this. I'm going to make my thing better than, than the standard thing.

Yeah.

So I was like, there's the standard formula for a conference in my industry. I want to blow that out of the water, make mine different and stand out. So you think about this. This is a cool topic, actually. That would help a lot of people. I was listening to this podcast the other day and people were talking about some big brands that have been developed in the last five, 10 years and they were very like, they weren't new or that innovative. It wasn't some new thing that they invented. They found an existing category and blew up within that. So for example, you ever go to the shop, the freaking grocery store, and you look in the vitamins section and there's these vitamins Ollie.

Yep.

They have really cool branding. I bought that too. And you know why you bought it? Because it freaking looked cool and they look like candies.

And they're. Yeah, I was gonna say because they're gummies and I'm their child in my heart.

Yeah, exactly. I like Sour Patch Kids, bro.

I don't want to swallow a multivitamin before I go to bed. I want to chew a gummy cherry.

And they're freaking good. And your kids will eat them. And they're probably got all the in them that you need. Maybe some stuff you don't eat. I don't know.

Probably. Yeah.

But the thing is, they took over and they blew up. Why? Stale category. Innovative branding.

Yeah.

So what's a, like, mortgage? Stale as.

Yeah.

Innovative brand wins real estate. Same thing. Conferences, they're terrible. Most of them 90% boring. Couple keynote speakers, the rest of the day's filler, or it's a pitch fest and you're just being sold to all day. Like, stale category, for sure. So I want to innovate within that category, and all of a sudden you stand out. So with forward in three years, we've blown up, like, not to. I'm not anywhere close to where I want to be, but we've had, like, probably a decade worth of progress in two years just by being super innovative within a steel category. So anybody who's listening, you think about categories like. Like, it's. You can find more and more examples of this. Yeah.

Did that with tooth toothbrushes and toothpaste.

Same.

Yeah. What's that? A. Manscaped.

Yeah, with clippers.

You know, like if you. If you bought the first version of manscaped clippers, they were. Yeah. Like, all they did, literally all they did was buy cheap clippers from China, slap manscaped on the brand, and then had fantastic branding and marketing. And their second and third products were actually, like, innovated by them with a product team. And they're really good, but they became famous.

That was like their mvp. That was like the proof of concept. People will buy this. Okay.

Now we need to actually make their marketing and branding. Yeah. And then they actually followed it up with a good product.

Yeah. So for me now, in a world where it's noisy, there's a lot of people trying to make money, trying to do marketing, trying to do videos, trying to. How do you stand out? Well, you could be yourself. Authentic. That's. That's innovative. And then just up the quality. Like, this is good quality you got going on here. Yeah. I'm sure you guys take some time to make sure that we can be clearly heard. We have a mic, we have clear video. Like, stand out.

That was the Whole reason for Dinner Party. Yeah, the episodes that we were filming was, is that exact thing we just, we kept working with, with some of our, our coaching clients on, on their shows because, you know, I just get sick of like the whole thing where everybody's just like, yeah, I have a podcast. But their podcast is like their redheaded stepchild. It's like we have it and we post content there, but it's always half assed. It's just willy nilly. Let's turn on the camera. I got a couple ideas in my brain. Let's just spitball it and see how it goes. And then they wonder why it doesn't grow and they talk shit about the platform. You know what I mean? It's like, well, you're just not, you're not treating it properly.

Yeah.

So Dinner Party is just kind of, kind of like it's going to be an experiment for the next, you know, year, year and a half because, you know, it's expensive to create one of those episodes. It was time consuming to create one of those episodes. It's difficult to schedule all the guests on a certain day when you have that many busy people and then have to clear by the venue to get the gear rentals to have the staff show up to. Like it was a whole thing. It was like a production. So we'll probably do like one every six to eight weeks or something like that. But it was an experiment just to be like, what if we just, what if we gave it our absolute best shot at quality to do something that nobody else in our space is even thinking about doing because everybody's just doing the same played out stuff and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But it's largely based on the personality behind the mic, not based on the production value of the actual event. So yeah, it's a, it's an experiment for us, but it's largely based on exactly what you just said. Like, how can we create something that's kind of the same but also completely different and innovative in much higher quality?

Yeah, I mean, that's what the first thing I saw about it. Like, I don't even know what it's about, but I was like, man, this is well done, done. Yeah, I can see the quality. So if somebody took it that serious, maybe it is good.

Yeah.

Like when you give it. So you're really just trying to buy a few more seconds from somebody so that way they have the opportunity to learn how fun it was or what values there. So don't like shoot yourself in the Foot. By doing it half assed.

Right.

And then now you're blaming the fact that there's no reach.

Yeah.

Well, like, bro, would you watch your own stuff? Like, if you would even watch it. Yeah. Would you watch this? Honestly?

Yeah.

And, like, ask somebody their honest opinion. Get. That's the other cool thing about, like, being in this. In. In the entrepreneur's category of, like, masterminds and these things. Like, you can ask people for honest feedback and they'll give it to you. They'll be like, dude, great job here. But honestly, here, you need. You need to level up, man. Yeah, this was weak and the food sucked. Yeah.

Or the speakers weren't that great.

Yeah, give me your feedback. Or like, when you do your content. You know what? You lost me there. It drags. I'm just being real. Like, this doesn't work. And then you'd be like, oh, thank you. I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna fix that. Or you give a talk, where did I lose you guys? Where were you bored? And then now you know that you need to tweak that. Like, watch, like, it's like sports, bro. People watch film, they get better. Those who take it seriously win. Those who don't lose and don't even get a chance to play. Like, treat this the same way.

Yeah. People forget that you have direct competitors, like your direct circle of competitors in your. Especially when it comes to creating new content or putting on an event or. But the product that you're selling with your content is attention.

Yeah.

So you have a lot more to worry about than your direct competitors. It's like, well, I'm doing better than so and so does. Who's also a. Whatever, a mortgage professional or real estate expert or whatever. And it's like, but you don't have to beat just so and so, because every second this person's watching you is a second that they could be watching Joe Rogan.

Yeah.

Or Ben Shapiro or Anak Asparian or Grant Cardone or name anybody else who's creating content online. And that's just talking about YouTube and podcasts. We haven't even touched on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV plus Hulu. Like, there is no shortage of people that are trying to gain and retain attention. You're not just competing with so and so who sells mortgages at the office down the street. You are competing with Apple TV with an unlimited budget of billions of dollars that they're plugging into these brand new programs and programming and television and content after content after content and your ass is just like throwing up a camera with a shitty mic and nothing and just like, let me talk about mortgages for four minutes and then it doesn't go viral. And they're like, oh, I'm shadow banned. You know, and it's like, oh, maybe you just suck a little bit. And that's okay because we all sucked for a while. But don't just let yourself suck. Do something now that makes you better. Like, learn from that. Watch the game, film to your point, and do better next time around.

Time. And the other part is there's one thing going for you that those big people don't have and those companies have, and that's the relatability factor.

Absolutely.

That's the fact that if you did, I can do it. It's that, you know, I'm one step ahead of you. I'm not 50 steps ahead of you. I'm not a celebrity. I'm just like you. And I've done it. So follow along. So I.

Three years ago.

Yeah. That, like, that zero to hero is a. Is a huge thing.

Yeah.

In marketing, your personal story is your biggest piece of marketing. Yeah. And so if you're selling or promoting anything and you've done it yourself, or if you haven't done yourself, if at least you've helped others do it, like your clients. Here's the clients I take from A to B, and I keep showing that over and over. Yes, you're not freaking Apple or Netflix, but you've got something they don't have. You know, you've got that relatability, and you're like, on the ground level with these people. So if you up your quality now, you can actually compete. Yeah. Because you've got something. You got a leg up on these people that they don't have.

Exactly.

Zillow and all these big companies, they don't have a dude on the ground in Vegas helping people.

Yep. You know, you just gotta increase your effort.

Yeah.

And understand that, like, people's attention can go to you literally anywhere. So you got to give them a reason to be with you.

Another thing that you brought up, too, which is just true in everything in businesses you're not entitled to.

Yeah.

Nobody owes you views. They don't owe you their business. Like, oh, so and so is winning. And I'm not. Well, maybe learn from them. Like, what are they doing differently? Maybe it's not fair. But they. Somebody hooked them up.

Yeah.

Okay, well, how do you get your hookup? Exactly what value could you provide to people so that you could get that that shortcut, too.

It's a tough pill to swallow sometimes because there's been recent recently where I've gone to people who I kind of initially wrote off when they first entered the space.

Yeah.

That I've kind of had to swallow my ego and go like, you know what? Whatever they're doing is working.

Yeah.

And sometimes it's difficult to swallow your ego and. And admit that you need some help, but that, like, we all do. And to your point earlier, the algorithms. Everything about what we do is changing constant instantly.

Yeah.

So if you're not committed to the process of learning and growing, there's always going to be somebody coming up behind you that will be.

Yeah.

You know, they got that chip on their shoulder still. They got that ambition that's like pushing them and driving them to figure it out. And then you just got a little too comfortable. And that's when you have. We're talking about earlier, which is the speaker who gets up and talks about these awesome social media strategies that aren't even applicable anymore. Because that's what worked for you two and a half years ago when you were in the game. And now you. You're not. But you're still known for it. So you still teach the old shit because you don't really know what's working now. You know what I mean? And then you get all. You know, your ego gets hurt and you get really fragile and you won't. You're not willing to go listen to anybody that's coming up. And, you know, it's like, well, they've only been doing it for two years, and I've been doing it for eight years. It's like, yeah, but if it's working, it's working.

Yeah.

That's the beautiful thing about it. That's actually the awesome thing about it is, like, the market decides whether it's good 100%. You know, there's. There's not a lot of preferential treatment, you know.

Yeah. And then you can get better at certain things. Like, I didn't care about Twitter or writing. And then it started getting. Doing that in the last couple of years, and then slowly got better at that. And that's just the skill of, like, copywriting. Like, how do you get a huge thought into just a few lines? Yeah. And have it impact people. No video, no shit. Like, nothing. All you have is your words on a screen. And so that there's things you could. For me, I'm just like a student. I just want to learn more.

Yeah.

So I'm always trying to think, like, what could I do to get better at this? I want, I like, the one thing I want to do is when I do teach something or present something, I want it to have already been tested. Proof, like I said earlier, like, nothing sells like results. Nobody's going to listen if it. If you don't prove that it works. So when I. You said something about like, you show actual business results. That's. I start with that because then people will pay attention because they're not going to just watch. I mean, they're not. Like, it'd be cool to think everyone's going to like, like you for you, but everyone's selfish. They want to know what's in it for them. So if you're like, hey, guys, I know you're trying to grow your business. Here's something I did to grow mine. Here's proof it works. And let me teach you how, like, I found that formula works with even a crowd of people that don't know who the you are, you know you can. The results will speak for themselves.

And that's why people continue to follow you, is because they want something that you have done or you. Some result that you have. Yeah, we've put out a few videos recently about why Alex Shamozi blew up. And you know, and there's so many video people that are analyzing the text and the copy and this and that and just like, well, I have a theory. It could be because he wrote a viral book in the middle of exiting his company for like $57 million. Maybe that's it. You know what I mean? Like, that, that might have something to do with it.

He showed his podcast going back long time. Yes.

Seven years ago.

And so he's been doing it a.

While and also good at creating valuable content and has the proof to back it up.

And he's freaking smart like you looked at. He just made a post recently and it shows his whole career. He's like, I turned. It was on his birthday.

I think I saw that one.

And it like documented. Dude went to freaking school, graduated magna cum laude from Vanderbilt. Plus he did this, then he worked this, then he did this, then he did this. And he's got like the track record of success. Like, I remember seeing him at an event. Me and Eric were an event with Brad Bradley's office. And this was like 2019. And Hermosi spoke there. He didn't even look the same as what he looks like now. And it was, it was a really, if I'm being honest, it was like a Bad presentation. But the knowledge in there was like, dude, this guy's a freaking genius. Yeah. He just was. It was not presented in the right way. So he was going over a spreadsheet and all these Facebook ads, analytics and all these things, and everybody was lost. But I was like, man, this guy, like, there's a reason he's here. Yeah. And then years later, I was like, oh, same thing, but packaged differently. Yeah. So that's another cool point of like, hey, whatever you're teaching, you got to package it in a certain way. Just. I've seen a lot of people who.

Are skill by itself.

Yeah. Like, they're really good at what they do. Super rich, successful, but terrible at teaching it. And so you get better. Obviously. He's a perfect example. He got super good at teaching it.

Yeah.

Just communicating through reps.

So you were entrepreneur turned creator. We have a lot of people listen to the show that are in that boat. We also have a lot of people listen to the show that are creators and they're trying to learn how to make money online. So, like, they have a podcast or they have a YouTube channel, or they're doing reels or clips or something to try to. To try to get out of their nine to five and start making money online. Yeah. What would your advice be to somebody like that? Who, like, they're not. They're not making six figures, they're not in sales, they're not in any aspect of business. They work a job and they're trying to create some sort of a living around a topic or something that they care about, and they're just, they're not able to monetize. What would your advice be to them?

So I would say this. Find people who are in the entrepreneur and business space who need help with X. So if you reached out to people like you and me or anybody in business, what are the things you need help with? Like, and then you. You made an offer around that. You know what I mean? So, like, maybe they need help with, like, a lot of people do social media marketing, you know, video content creation. It could be something with ads, it could be something with YouTube. It could be a niche within a niche. For example, there was a guy who I found recently who's really good at setting up YouTube ads. So not even like paid media in general, just specific to just YouTube and Google AdWords. He knows the ins and outs and he'll have you have a way better ad spend and get results from your YouTube ad, guaranteed. Here's the proof. Proof, proof, proof. Okay, so how do you get to be that person? Is he just tried, like you did it probably for free, for somebody first to learn, offered it, and then got better and better at it. So I would say this. You got to have a skill. Like, the skill can't be that you make content on its own. Like, that's a commodity. Anybody could hire someone to make content. It's just, it's like I make content that gets X. So I don't just create content. I make content that gets you more clients points. Yeah. Here's my success story. My success story. My success story.

And start helping with one specific thing. Yeah. I write tweets that convert.

Yes.

Or I make short form content from your long form content.

Yeah. It's a niche.

Yeah.

And I'm really good at it. So the idea is then you can make money.

Yeah. So the idea is start a business, essentially.

Yeah. Like, what's this? Acquire skill. If you don't have, if you have a skill, monetize a skill. Sure. Teach people how to do it or help people and charge a fee for that. That cool. If you don't have a skill, get a skill. Get the skill. You need a skill. Like, how are you, how are you going to stand out? So maybe your skill is you freaking. You're a G in Excel. I don't know. You just, you know that and you have a little mini course on it and you provide consulting and then you work your way up from there. And honestly, the skill could be video editing, content creation. There's, there's niches in there too.

And probably is that if you're, if you're a creator, you know what I mean? And you just, you can't figure out how to make more than 300 bucks a month from these random sponsors or affiliate deals that you're getting and you're just like banging your head against the wall because you hate your job, but you offer that service to somebody else.

Yeah. And it could be copywriting. I would say that videos that actually get results would be the best way. So then you just go deep on like, why is this person winning? What is the way they wrote it? What was the way they delivered it? What's the tonality they used? Get into all that. Just become a student and then learn it, practice it, execute it, and then do it for people for free or for low money so you can get the results. So I would reach out to someone like you and be like, dude, I'm really good at finding the best clip that can do X for your business. You don't even have to pay me, but can I or just do it for you?

Yeah.

Be like, hey, I've already done that. I took your last episode, I did this and I gave it to you.

We had a guy send us a cold dm. I think we, I think we sent him a couple clips to edit because he came out, he came at us like that. We've had people like, I'm sure you get a ton of DMS from people like this who are like, I'll cut up your content, I'll cut your content. But it's mostly, you know, offers to buy their stuff. Well, this one guy came in was like, I'll do it for free and you only have to pay me if it gets over a hundred thousand views. And I was like, okay, yeah, deal. Like as long as I, as long as I know you're not buying fake views on some random bot site, then like you have yourself a deal. That's a good offer. You know what I mean? But I'm, I, even if we didn't send them stuff, I have no doubt that that kid will turn that into a six figure business within 12 months if he keeps sending that offer to people. Oh yeah, you know what I mean?

Because it's like, it's a guarantee. It's like an offer that you can't refuse. Right. So, because it's not.

I don't want more clips.

Yeah.

I want more views. I want impressions.

Yeah.

So you're selling me the result.

You reverse engineering. So what do you need help with? What's the one thing you need more than anything? Oh, I need this. Yeah, I can help with that.

People think they need clips. In reality they need impressions. You know what I mean? It's like, so clips provide impressions a lot of times, but sometimes if your clips suck, they don't provide impressions. Or it's like your social might look okay, but if all of them get 212 views because they're cut up by a VA in the Philippines and no shade to anybody that does that. I'm just saying, like a lot of times they're, A lot of those types of working relationships is just that they're just workhorses and they, they just cut up a bunch of clips and cut up a bunch of clips and it's like, well, that's not the metric of success. It's got to have a good hook. The clip has to be well chosen. It can't just be a clip for the sake of having a clip. It's got to stand alone without context, it's got to have the ability to go viral. It's got to have a good hook or three that we can test. You know what I mean? Like, he did a good job. Like you said, reverse engineering the goal, which is not more clips, the goal is more impressions. And then said, if I can do this for you, I'll do it for free, and you only pay me if the result that you want is actually, actually achieved. And it was like, okay, sure, yeah, here's a couple videos. See what you can do. You know what I mean?

Yeah. And that's the part of, like, maybe it's a niche within the niche of content creation. I help you get more conversions. I help you use Instagram stories to get this. And so getting just like. So anybody who's listening trying to get us, you got to get good at something and then monetize that. And if you're already blessed and good at something, just monetize that thing. And then now it just becomes about what's the right way to package it. Sure. And build that business.

So in 2018, you started creating content. Yeah. At this point, you have 140,000 followers on Instagram.

Yeah, something like that.

You got. You're putting out content everywhere. You're omnipresent.

Yep.

At what point from 2018 to 2023 did you really start seeing an increase in, like, viewers, impressions, followers, everything going on? Was there a. Was there a particular, you know, 90 day time frame or has this just been like slowly, gradually increasing from day one?

So I would say this the first account I made on Instagram, you know, I started like, I'm trying to, like, buy time. You know how we're entrepreneurs. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna hire someone. Help me with this. Hired some company. They were gonna help me with xyz, turns out, ruined my account, so I had to like, shut it down, start a brand new one. I think I did that in 19. I started my current Instagram account from scratch and. And just built it from scratch. Just ground up and just building a community. Right. And so trying to get more people to watch the videos. And in the beginning it was really slow. And then what I found was as Instagram reels to start taking off, you know, a couple of my pieces of content went like semi viral. And that brings a lot more people in and then a lot more shares and saves. And then what you're doing in real life helps you too, because you speak at a micro event, it's only 50 people or whatever. But if like 40 of the 50 end up following you and sharing all your videos. If those people have like 200 person audiences now, you're introducing to all them. So you can kind of like build it really from the ground up.

Yeah.

And then what's cool is like the numbers look cool, but in reality it doesn't mean. Because you need an actual, like, what of those people? How many people are you like, actually watching your stuff, sharing your stuff, engaging with you? And that's like a fraction of the total number number. So it's cool to get these big numbers, but it, you know, like I'm more focused on the actual results.

Yeah, the true fans. Like Kevin Kelly calls.

Exactly. And that's the, that's what really moves the needle. That's the people who are flying across the country to come meet, you know, hang out and do all these good things. So that part's cool. I'm trying to now focus on other platforms too, obviously. But I think the one, the reason why I got so focused on Instagram was because of the fact that they're falling behind of TikTok. So they're pushing short form more, you know, now it's getting more difficult, but it's still really possible to get a lot of reach with, without any ad spend. What's cool is also the DM feature that doesn't exist on TikTok. Really? Like my DM on TikTok is all spam. I don't get anything there. It doesn't even exist at all on YouTube. So that's specific to Instagram. And then the other part I like is Instagram has the right demographic for my business, which is millennials. Affluent millennials are there. There's a lot of broke people on social media, but then, you know, there's a lot of people with the means that are there too. So it's like the perfect demographic for a lot of businesses. Is that millennial with money?

Yeah. What is it? What is the primary thing that you're teaching or converting people into now?

So I have my, you know, business, my, my core business, which is like real estate, mortgage stuff. But then the. My education company, which is forward. We help people create within those industries, real estate, mortgage, insurance, financial services, any of those people, client service business.

We help you with your personal brand.

Creating content that gets results and staying on top of how the things are changing. So we have a group that's our like entry level group where you can join, learn about how to do all this stuff. And then also we have like calls every other week Where. Because things are constantly changing. What we were talking about six months ago is what we're is different than today. Even two weeks from now or two months from now, something new is going to come out, and we're gonna be on top of it, you know, so that's. That's a cool group to join. And then we. And then we have events throughout the year. We have a mastermind, like the highest level, which is like a mastermind of people who are, you know, just crushing it, that want to be there and. And network and all that stuff. So just different tiers, basically.

Yeah. Are you now in your. In your personal life, are you focused mostly on building your. Your personal brand with your daily activities, or are you still kind of operating your businesses? What is your daily schedule?

I just. I'm doing the business stuff, and then I just. Just be intentional about showing more what I'm doing.

Okay.

Because I found that that is the. The best way to grow my business is to grow my personal brand.

Yeah.

So for me, like, people, like, they love to see you build in public. So I got people that, you know, see, I tell them, hey, I'm doing this. It may not work. I might fail, but here's what I'm working on. Or here, I put half a million dollars of my own money into this event. It might be the worst investment ever, but here's what I'm doing. Here's why I'm doing it.

Yeah.

And here's what we're doing. And then show people all the steps, and you're just, like, doing it in public. And what happens there is, I think people, like, buy into the whole journey and they see it and then they trust you more and relate to your thing. And it's cool because it empowers people. Like, you get so many messages of people, like, dude, I've been thinking about leaving my 9 to 5 and. And starting something. And. And you gave me the courage to do that. And that's cool to see, too.

So forward, where can people go get tickets if.

Even.

If they're. If they're even, you know, still available? Because I know you guys are pretty close to.

Yeah, we're just in that last group. You can go to forwardevent.com and there's tickets there. And that's going to be in Vegas. We'd love to have people there.

That's gonna be awesome. And you have some pretty sweet speakers lined up for that, right?

Like, yeah, we have, like, Ed Mylet. Sean Cannell's gonna be there talking about the latest in YouTube strategy. Sweet. This guy Chris do, who is branding phenom. This guy's like one of the best teachers I've ever found in marketing. He also has a YouTube channel with millions of subscribers. The future.

He did some advertising for our show actually earlier this year.

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. So Chris is a great guy. He's going to be there teaching. We have New York Times best selling authors, subject matter experts, people that you may not even know, but they're just great at teaching you something.

Yeah.

And then the audiences, which is cool, is separate from the speakers. What you learn from stage. You know, this networking is huge. The dude sitting two seats down from you might have a bigger impact on your business than the guy on stage. Right. So connecting with like minded people, asking how you could help them so they could help you, all that kind of stuff.

The number one reason to go to any event, man, for sure. Like I always tell people, like if you leave an event with seven pages of notes and no new contacts, you up, up failed. You know, like you should leave an event with one to three practical things that you can implement to your business from the information that you learn from speakers from stages, all this other stuff. One to three, anything more than that, it's going to take way to. The implementation timeline is so far out that you're never going to take action on any of it.

Yeah.

Get one to three things and spend the majority of the rest of your time focused on meeting the people sitting next to you. On being at the networking events. Stay up late, you know, like get some caffeine in the morning to wake you up. I don't know what to tell you, but like the reason to be is for the people that are around you.

Yeah.

You know, those are, those are going to be the people that you're going to be throwing events with in six years from now. Once you leave your nine to five and realize the next stage of your dreams, those are going to be people that you invite to speak at your event. Because you, you were both on the come up together and you remembered the first time you met at this one event spent seven. You know what I'm saying? Like you, you get the con. Like we're, we're spitting content right now. Like you can listen to Neil's content on his podcast, you can listen to my content on my podcast, you can listen to Ed Mylett's podcast, you can read his book. Not to say that you shouldn't pay attention to the speakers because they're awesome to watch in person.

Yeah.

However, like I said, if. If it's not one of your primary goals to leave having met a bunch of other really cool people, then you're.

Yeah. And the simple way to reason and just kind of wrapping that whole part up, the simple way to. To do that is just walk up to people, introduce yourself. They're there to meet people, too. So don't feel weird about that. Even if you're an introvert, because I'm super introverted. I'm not out. Like, I'm not into that. But you just talk to people, ask them what's, you know, what's going what, where they're from, what's their business like. And then also ask them, like, what are you struggling with? Because everyone will tell you they're crushing it. And all the good things, nobody tells you the bad stuff.

Of course.

So if you ask somebody, hey, like, what's one thing you're struggling with, dude? And you're like, man. And that's a weird question, but honestly, my CRM sucks. Or honestly, I'm having a hard time on social. And then you're like, I can help there. You know, like, actually, dude, I know somebody. Either I can't or I know somebody.

Or I just met this guy who does that. Exactly.

And you could just be the connector.

So people value in being the connector, man.

Huge. Just being like, dude, I know someone that can help you. Yeah, let me get your number and then I'll text you after when we get back. And then, dude, dude, the one thing that nobody does follow up. How many times you meet somebody? Let's gonna jump on a zoom. Let's do the podcast.

Yeah.

Like, we connected on text.

Yeah.

And then both of us, like, have the same thing of, like, we follow up. So I remember I followed up, you followed up, and then now we're here doing the thing.

Yeah.

How many times that doesn't happen? Like, 98, 99 of the time. They never. Everything everybody says never happens. Just a complete waste of you just freaking masturbating each other. Nobody does anything that they say they're going to do. So I. I found, like you, I always think about this quote. You'd be surprised how easy it is to beat your competitor if you just try. All you have to do is freaking follow through. Yeah. So I love starting a text thread and then going, so not going back to the business cards that you left in your back pocket that your wife threw in the freaking washer.

Ditch them.

All that. Just text people. And then now go back to your text threads. From that weekend and just follow up. Up. It's already open. It's open line community. Just you can follow up, send the link, the calendly link to book the call, book the podcast, jump on a thing, whatever.

Absolutely. And you win forwardevent.com. yes, sir. Last question. I'll ask you and I'll let you go. How did you sell tickets to the event? Were you doing paid marketing or is it all organic through your socials?

What was. This is cool. I. I wanted to try this. It's accomplishment for me is I wanted to sell a thousand tickets to my event without one single ad. And we just. We were about to do that and so not one ad. Yeah. Thank you. Just people sharing it and me doing a good job last year. So people come back and they tell all their friends and also building a community. So I can email my list.

Yeah.

And let them know. And this is the thing I did seriously this year that I didn't do last year. So I'll tell you the first. Whenever you're doing something, you got to do the shit that no one's willing to do. So the way I filled the room last year is I literally personally sent sent dms to people and personally inviting. So I'd be like, voice memo.

Yeah.

Not a Philippines VA spamming people. I personally would not many.

Chad.

No, it's like I DM'd you. I said, hey, Travis, dude, we don't know each other yet, but we have a shared connection. Dan Fleshman. Whatever. But anyways, dude, I'm doing a sick event in in Vegas on this thing. Would love for you to be there. It's gonna be dope, blah, blah, blah. And I personally did that. That like 10 every night, 20 every night, hours every day, inviting people and then learning like, where are people's roadblocks? Why aren't they coming? What? What, what gets people to take action versus not and then delivering on the promise. So what I found was if you make a promise, like if I promised you this is going to be dope. Yeah, it better be dope. You know, because if you come there, it sucks ass. I'm gonna be like, you're never gonna freaking believe me.

Back on the treadmill for next year.

Yeah.

So I'm like a bunch of DMs.

Again. We have to deliver. So I'm like, I remember delivering. And then at the end of the event, everyone's so stoked and happy getting testimonials. And I was already thinking this event was to now help me next year. And Hopefully I don't have to send thousands of DMs next year. So when we launched this year, we sold like half the tickets to the event on the launch.

Good for you, dude.

So that was cool. And then that gave me the momentum and then people share it.

Sounds like a lot of work, Neil.

I don't know. Yeah, yeah, man. It's the. No, everyone's like, dude, this is sick. You did this event, launched a mastermind. I'm like, well, yeah, dude, you didn't see all the ones. The 14 person one that nobody beat.

Up, you did and that nobody showed up to.

And I sucked out Domino's pizza and.

A two liter bottle.

The first forward we did during COVID where, you know, I lost multiple thousands, tens of thousands of dollars and it was hard as hell to get people to come to. And then the next one where I lost a hundred thousand dollars dollars on. So yeah, I might make money, but it took a long time to get there.

Get punched in the face a lot along the way.

Yeah. And then you have to be doing a really good job to win. So people like want to launch this program or that program, like, you know, you gotta, you gotta put in the.

Work for those listening or watching, man. Selling a thousand seats to an event, a live in person where you gotta book a flight and you gotta get a hotel.

It's a hard thing.

So a thousand tickets to event is hard to do in general, but it's, it's almost impossible without paid advertising in some way. So congrats to you and all the success, man. You definitely deserve you putting in the work and I see all the stuff you're putting out. We've been learning a lot from the stuff that you, that you've been sharing. So I appreciate you coming on the show. Thanks for taking the time and I'm sure we'll be doing some more stuff in the future.

Thanks, bro.

Yes, sir.