Content, Events, Ai, Power of Proximity & more with Neel Dhingra!

All right, so welcome back to another RE Education Experience podcast with me, your host. Today I'm welcoming another amazing guest, one that I've been trying to get on for a while, all the way back to when I was running an event called Thrive Not Survive in my local market. I ended up, you were on there and we had a conversation virtually around that this is going on, I'm going to say two years back already now that sometimes flocks. So our guest today isn't a realtor, never was a realtor. Probably if we asked him would never want to be a realtor, but maybe he'll say otherwise. Yeah, but he is, he is in our industry as a mortgage broker, but which we'll talk about event creator, video content creator, just business growth mind. Right now. He's, he's on the forefront of a lot of people's learning. So I'm really excited to have him. So it's for these reasons I thought the alignment. I love hearing people's perspective in and around our industry, but not fully in it. And I've. Dude, I've been watching your success and your growth and it's just nothing but inspirational. So our guest today is none other than Neil Dhingra. Neil.

Thank you, Darren. Thanks, appreciate it.

Of course. N E L so he can be followed and not just can be, but should be followed on his Instagram account and it's just at Neil home on his channel. And the thing I'm pointing you to there, guys listening is because the examples he provides are his real world execution of everything he preaches and teaches and gets a chance to like work on at the highest of levels that we can all just learn from. So he, he also, I said he was a, a creator of an event. He puts on an incredible marketing and growth conference that I have yet to go to. But every that I know goes to it in Vegas. It's called forward event. I know you're fresh off of that too, right? You're fresh off of these.

Yeah, we just finished that event which.

Totally like guys like Sharon, our president. Right. Gary Vaynerchuk for all of us realtors who of course follow his world. Chris Trent, Phil M. Jones, Jamie Lee Curtis, a whole swack of people that people would pay huge dollars to see any one of them. And he puts them all in one. Super.

I noticed you have Alex Horo's book behind you. There he was.

Oh yeah. Heroi was there too, right?

Yeah, yeah, he was at the event too.

Yeah. So man, welcome to the show, my friend. And it's Been a minute. So what did I miss there on that intro?

I think you got everything, man. I think it's more about, like, you know what? You know, everybody kind of judges these things based on what they're going to get out of it. You know what I mean? Like, people don't care about. I noticed people don't care about your story. They care about their own story and how it. How it fits into yours, you know, like how it can be related. And so I've always focused on that part of, like, hey, I'm just a regular dude. Just like you guys watching and listening. And I just did a few things differently that led to a huge success. And so that's what I love sharing nowadays. You.

Can you tell me a little bit how that. So this is, what year running have you done the Ford event now in Vegas.

So we've done that event for four years now. This is our fourth one. I did micro events, like local events, like what you talked about before. And the reason why I love events is because, you know, events change lives, you know, like, it's just the way it is. It's just live experience. I've had that personal experience myself. Going to an event, it hits differently in the room. You know, people say, well, I'll just watch the replay, right? It's. Yeah, it's better than not doing that, for sure. But it's totally different when you hear it in the room because something clicks with you there. And it's not just the information. It's the spark you get afterwards. So I've got countless messages, like hundreds of literally hundreds of messages, Aaron, from people after every event that said, bro, here's what I did based on. I finally got inspired. And it's things that people have been putting off for years sometimes. Sometimes it's like a move that you knew you needed to make for like 10 years. And then finally it clicked for you at the event. You're like, dude, I'm doing it tomorrow. Like, wait a second, bro, I thought you were pondering this for the last 60 months and you just decided overnight. Well, that's the power of the right event, the right room, the right people. And so when I saw that happen for myself, I was like, dude, I'd love to do this for others. Started doing these local micro events to teach people digital marketing.

Mostly they were based just around kind of your. Okay, correct.

Yeah, like what I could provide the most value. And then I would bring in guests as well who were from that communication, marketing, advertising, and just help people grow their Business. And so that's what I was doing on local level and then I decided to take it, you know, bigger and that's when we did the, the big Forward event. It started off with just a few people in like a freaking basement, you know, and you wonder if anyone's even going to show up. And now like we have a thousand people that come out from all around the world to come and hang out with us and learn and grow.

And like not just casual conference seekers, like real like high performers across industries coming not just to be on your stages, but like the people in the audience. The caliber of that is insanity. Right? When I look at the people and I know the people in my relationship.

People in the room that are going to give you the kind of, the some of the most benefit. Like obviously you get value from the stage, but you get people get value from people around you. So I know you've implemented this, Darren, and your business strategy and growth events can be a huge thing. Not just, you know, for fun. Because it's actually not very fun throwing an event, as you can tell as, you know, like there's a lot of work involved. It can be pretty painful putting together an event, all the stress and all the headache. But the impact to your brand and to your business if you do it correctly is huge. So I would say this for anybody watching, listening, like what's, you know, something that you would like to happen next year or this year and it might be more customers, it might be more recruits, it might be more business partners, whatever that is, or it might be just to build your network and your brand on social cool. Part of your strategy can include throwing your own event. And it doesn't have to be anything big. It could be literally like you partner with somebody locally, bring in a few people, make it about xyz. And I've seen so many people implement this, Darren. Like it's crazy. And just you, 50 people in a room or a hundred people and you're like, well that doesn't matter. Like because you're trying to get thousands of views or millions of views online. Well, this is different. The val. The impact in person is different. And then the relationships that get created, the content you make from these, like it can be a game changer for your brand.

Totally. Going from basement to that stage you just pulled off in four years time is an incredible trajectory, right? I mean when you unpack that journey, I mean, I think when people hear that, they're like, Neil, that sounds like a good idea. I've always kind of Wanted to do that. Can you walk me through some of those fears going to that like really when you leveled up and how you got through this, almost like going from basement to Gary Vee. Right. Going from basement to Ed Mylett last year. Right. That that trajectory is incredible. Can you share how you pulled a bit of that off and maybe a bit of the.

Well, I think it's like we have these question. You have this like road map for success and it's like what's. You've been told, it's, it's what's like in inside of you and you said you have to kind of take things step by step. You see a staircase and you see one step at a time, you know, and they're like, well don't skip ahead because you're not ready for that. Which is true with certain things. But I'll tell you this, you can skip to the good stuff. You know what I mean? Like you can just jump. You could just jump a whole freaking flight if you want. You could accidentally add it to zero to your goal. It like who you know, you could do something crazy. And I think a lot of it is just deciding like, dude, I'm not going to have these small goals. Like I'm all for small goals on a micro level because I want to just get done this today. I, I have goals for today, I have goals for this week. And I think some too many times people have this big overarching goal. I want to do like $100 million in production this year and make million dollars in, in net income. And it's like, bro, that's cool. But what are we doing today? You know what I mean? Like that's, that's a lofty thing, but what are we doing right now? So I'm all about the day to day grind. I love that as far as the micro goals. But in terms of like your next goal for like what you'd like to achieve, why not make that bigger? Even if you come short, it's still going to be like way bigger than what you originally planned on. So I just said, you know, when we, we were doing the micro stuff, I said I'm going to take this to the big level. How do the people who have done this before do this? So that's the trick to jumping a flight of stairs instead of taking the slow steps or jumping in the freaking elevator. You know, like better yet, let's just take the elevator instead of the staircase, right? How do you do that? Well, friends in my network, I was in a mastermind and the guy who threw the Mastermind had put on a huge event, this guy Cole Hatter. So I got to spend some time with him and he told me how he did his huge events back in the day. Or you know, not even back in the day. It was like 2021 was his last one. And he showed me how he did them. And then I talked to other people in the space and then I have people that I work with, like you met Trevor on my team and other people on our team within the forward family that all kind of gave me their input. Like, hey, why don't we try this? Hey, I saw this, I did this. And then we kind of put our brains together and came up with like, we want to do an event, a conference. But we don't want to call it a conference, we want to call it an event. Like, we want to do it different. So like, what's going to be the differentiator for you? Well, here's what I don't like, here's what I do. Like, I'm going to make my own version of it with just the things I like and take out the shit that I don't like. So that could be like your, your spin on whatever it is. Micro events, webinars, content, you know, all that kind of stuff. And there's no, there's actually no rule that says you have to go slow. You could just jump ahead if you want. So that's what I did. Jumped in the deep end. Yes, it's a big investment, but essentially what I'm doing there is betting on myself. So I learned a few things like, you know, on how to fill events and how to, you know, like get the goal of whatever it is you want to happen at the end. If you want business, if you want to sell something, if you want to get a call, make a call to action at the event. I learned all that stuff by doing it. But the main thing is, is like you could throw something way bigger than you're thinking of. Like if you're doing, if you're handling this many leads a week, what would it look like to handle 10 times that amount? Like what would you need to do in order to do that? You'd probably need more infrastructure, you might need more salespeople or ISAs, whatever that is. Like, let's look at that as an option instead of just thinking that that's too far fetched. So that was basically the first shift, is just shifting your mind to think bigger.

You mean that first move you made to, to be In a group of people that had done bigger things, first of all, opened your mind up to more and then having kind of the wherewithal to reach and dig and, and, and find what they've used in their successes, which I think is back to this whole idea of events and how realtors, mortgage brokers, listening to this can just level themselves up. Right. Is like, get in those rooms, but then reach and dig and be proactive within those rooms to take in and learn what you did. Is that fair to say?

100%. Yeah. Like, look where who. Dude, I'm so surprised. The most successful people love talking about business and success. They love sharing. They're an open book, honestly, right. When it's the one thing that we enjoy the most. But like, you don't have time to, to talk to everybody. Maybe some of these people are very busy. They got other things going on. So the way to kind of hack into those things is again, put yourself in the right rooms. So when I would go to an event, I would find out like, what's the most expensive ticket? And it's not that. It's like people, like, I feel like people who are stuck always look at the cost of things. I look at it from the upside, the roi. So when you said Gary Vee, I don't know if people know this, to book Gary Vee at your event cost 150, 000. It's higher now. I think that's a lot of money, bro. You could buy a freaking condo out here for that and you're getting just an hour and a half with Gary. How could you leverage that to really help yourself and to create a relationship with Gary? What else could you do with that? Like, so for me it was like, okay, I'm gonna invest $150,000 in this individual speaker. Now, I'm not saying that's the right move for your event. There could be other speakers that could be more or less valuable, depending on the theme of your event. That's great, but I'm going to leverage that. And in the beginning, it wasn't that it was like a $20,000 speaker or in the beginning it was just people in my network for free. So I kind of. I did take a few steps before I jumped in, but like, I did jump from like 20k to 150k pretty quick with, with the speaker fee. So we also jumped to like a big venue, which is like another a hundred grand. Or we also jumped to like all these different things. And the way I did that again was through the advice of other people who had done it before. So that was the big help. But there. But I view that 150k as an investment. And what, how could you leverage it? So I think a lot of people, Darren, like, are scared to make the investment because they're worried about the cost and they kind of see the downside. I'm more focused on the upside. So if I had a speaker like that, could I then what would that, what credibility would that lend to what I'm doing? All right, now the event becomes much more credible. Cool. Could I leverage that speaker to get other people to come and could I be honest with them and tell them, hey, I blew my budget on a few speakers so I can't pay you guys. But hey, it's going to be a world class event. Would you just want to come speak? I'll get your hotel room, but I can't pay your speaker fee. But like, I'll, I'll speak for your event. Like, could we trade here? So I did a lot of that where I as I built my network of like, dude, I'm doing this world class event. We have the best AV team at this world class resort. We have world class speakers, but I don't have enough budget for XYZ speaker fee. What could we do here? And people will work with you. So I just said, like, how could I leverage that? Also, while he's there, could we shoot a podcast together? There's content. Could we also divvy up his time on stage to where he's doing a keynote? Plus maybe a Fireside chat with me? That's another piece of content. Like, for example, Alex or Mose just spoke at our last event. Now I'll tell you this, that dude's probably one of the most difficult people to get to speak at an event. Like, it's, it's literally impossible. I don't even know how you can do it, honestly now, because you can go to his website. The fee was like 50k. Then it went to 100k. Now I think it's 250k. Like, I think they just are saying they don't want to do events. Basically. Like, they don't have to. He, him and his wife are doing really well. They don't really want to do events. That's cool. I get it. They're at that point. But you know, through networking and just through asking, I think I asked every other month for about three years in some shape or form and then finally got it to happen.

Sure.

But I'm like, okay, now I finally got this to happen, okay, now, and I, I can't say how much it paid, whatever, because they have like a whole confidentiality thing. But it, but the point is, like, it's a. It was a big thing for me to get in there. Like now how could I use this to provide the most value to the audience and also to where I get an ROI too? Well, we did it as like a podcast episode live at the event, right? So the event people got it as a surprise guest. They got a ton of value because this guy's a genius. He taught so many great things at the event. They loved it. Also, I got an episode out of it that's currently blowing up on YouTube. Also, there's about 20 clips in there that could blow up on short form on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube shorts. Also, I got inspired by a few of the things he said with me through the interview that I made a change, literally on the Monday that I interviewed on Saturday, on Monday morning at the office, I made changes in my business that are already generating me more income today, just two weeks later. Also this. Also this, right? So I'm taking that investment and squeezing the heck out of it. I'm taking the fee I paid to Gary and squeezing the heck out of it to get a million dollars out of that 150. And so what I realized along the way was this is literally the best investment you could ever make in your life if you do it properly. Like, bro, imagine like how you could put the money in the S P 500 and you get 10% a year. The best investors get 10 a year. Like, there's a lot of hedge funds that underperform the index. So if you're one of the best investors in the world, you can put a hundred thousand dollars into the, you know, to get a hundred thousand dollar return, you'd have to put in a million dollars into the stock market to get that on an annual basis. If you're really good in investing versus you could flip that on the other side, invest 100 grand in your brand and your marketing and your business, and you could realistically turn that into a million dollars, right? That's insane, bro. In terms of return, like, you'd have to. That's like a freaking jackpot at a casino, bro.

And I think you've, like, I don't.

Think people realize that that's the type of leverage you have. Once you understand this type of investment totally.

And like the cost of things, like you said, you end up going down the what if Rabbit hole of, well, what if this doesn't work out and then all the negatives pile up. But you said, well what if this could, or what could this do for me? And you went down positive rabbit hole. Right? You took that.

You should do that with everything, like content with this, with investing, with events, with real estate. Like if you constantly focused on what could go wrong. I'm not saying don't evaluate risk, but I'm saying my relationship with risk has changed and I have a higher risk tolerance the more times I've done this. So this year we spent 750 grand on an event. If you told me that four years ago, I probably would have pissed myself. You know what I mean? Like, there's no freaking way. Are you kidding me? 750 grand for two day event? That's nuts, man. But it's that, it's that valuable to me now to where? That's where. But in the beginning I spent 50 grand, 60 grand, you know, so you. It does it. There's levels to the game, but it all starts with essentially you're making a bet on yourself. So what are the investments you need to make in your business now? Maybe it's a key hire. Maybe it's like, dude, I'm doing content, but I'm doing it half assed. Maybe you need to hire somebody. Bro, do you have like, like, it's so crazy to me, Darren. I see so many people in our industry who could be way, like they could be doing so much more, but they're just don't have the bandwidth. Yeah, so what does that, what does that look like? You need to hire somebody? So one of the jobs I have is like, dude, I have all this content. I'm not distributing it enough. Right? Like, I'm not getting it out there. I'm putting out a fraction of what I create. So I need to hire like a content distributor. Someone that literally just chops up more of my stuff and gets it posted to all the platforms and gets me to increase my output. I, I'm, I'm maxed out in terms of like bandwidth. Plus I want to, I don't want to take time away from my family. Right, you want to. I'm just like, dude, I need to.

Make a hire, right? You don't want to turn that content creation. Probably love to. Oh my God, this is a burden, right? I feel that all the time. Where I, I feel the same way as you. I don't get it out.

And what I. Bro, you're probably sitting on a ridiculous amount of content, clips from podcasts, sound bites, events you spoke at, events that you hosted. There's so much content there that just needs to be mined, chopped and posted. And we just don't have the bandwidth. So what's that person look like? It could be literally a 20k investment for the whole year for a VA in the, in the Philippines and these people are extremely competent. Or it could be someone that you have in your office that just. You tell that person their job is to cut this stuff and their job is also to pop in on you at this time every day and ask, prompt you with the question so that you can get it posted. Imagine what would happen then. You'd post way more. You'd make more calls to action. You'd get more recruits, you'd get more clients, you get more business boom off of a 20k investment or a 50k investment if they're in house, or a 60k investment, I don't know, depending on which market and how much you have to pay, that's annual and that can turn into hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars over time. And so I think like, people need to flip this around and be like, man, yeah, maybe they're like, dude, I don't have enough money to do that. You know, I don't want to give bad financial advice, but like, bro, what if you had to freaking go into debt initially to get something going in your business? I've been there.

100 bucks on an LLC for a while to drive that ROI, right? When you're betting on you in this case, right?

And yeah, it's like, I think I would rather bet on you because I'm in control, right? Rather than like, dude, I'm going to put this in some crypto thing and see if I make a 10x. Yeah, it's just gambling versus like this. Would you actually be in control of the result? So you'd be surprised what you're capable of when you put yourself against the wall. Like, put some pressure on your shoulders.

I love the term like healthy urgency, right?

Nothing, nothing is more inspiring. Nothing will like drive you to get more done than a frickin deadline that cannot be missed. Like, bro, when I had paid the speaker fees, when I had paid the venue, when I had paid the AV company and their seats to fill, you better freaking believe that. I'm going to fill the seats any means possible. Like, I'm making dms, I'm calling people, I'm letting them know how awesome this is. I'm personally inviting people, I'm Asking my friends and family to share this out. I'm doing podcasts, I'm speaking at other events to let them know about mine. So all of a sudden, I'm becoming the best marketer in the world. Why? Because I have a shitload of pressure on my shoulders and I must come through. So I think a lot of us are really good at like, you know, always letting, putting, making sure we come through for other people. So, for example, like, if a client messages you and they're like, hey, I want to do this deal, you'll show up to the call. If you're your realtor and you got to go meet the client, show property, you'll make sure to be there. You're not going to miss the listing appointment. If the deal blows up in the middle of your family vacation, you'll literally abandon the family. I go in the hallway, take the calls, take the time. Hey, honey, I have to go fix this thing. It's going to blow up. It's. I can't let them down. So you'll, you'll never let anybody else down, but when it comes to your own stuff that your own personal growth, it's really easy to just let yourself go down. Like, you're just like, it, man. Me, I'm the least important. You let that go on for a decade goes by and you're like, man, I need never got to my goals. Why is that? You know, so it's like, bro, what. How would you make like, flip this around? Well, it's. Make a commitment to other people that you're going to do something. Now all of a sudden you have to come through because you don't want to let those other people down. So if I, if I told Darren I'm going to be doing something with him and it's also going to benefit me. I'm like, dude, I'll show up because I'm not going to let Darren down. But incidentally, I'm going to get benefit from it too. So that's the hack is for me, it's always just like, set the date, put the thing on the calendar, make a promise to other people, and then watch how you kind of rise to the occasion.

So, I mean, this world of content creation, which you take part in a ton of, it's been a big reason for your trajectory from just, you know, mortgage broker guy running a team probably very successful to where you are today. This content creation overwhelm that I know that you coach to. It's getting worse or better out there right now. Are people Getting more burnt out, more overwhelmed than ever. Tell me.

Informational content is like, you know, you can get burnt out on doing it. You also get burnt out on the day to day stuff. Because we, as people in the industry, as educators, we, we tend to devalue the value. We tend to like lower the value of the information that we have. So we take it for granted. Because we do this every day, right? Every week, 52 weeks a year. The client who would be benefited by this or the viewer who would be benefited, they might do this once in five years, once in their life. So like we, we tend to think, oh, that hack, that's kind of boring. So you. The biggest problem I see is we're always saying no for the audience. Like we're like, dude, nobody's going to really watch that or benefit. You're thinking of all the downside again, first versus flip that around. Yeah, yeah, flip it around. Be like, dude, what if somebody watches this at the right place and right time and it changes the way they thought about investing or buying property and all of a sudden now they're doing it because of my video. My video started the wheels turning. Maybe I get the deal, maybe I don't, but whatever. Like I played a part in some change, so that's the upside. So if you think about coming from a place of service and doing that now, it's like, man, we're doing God's work out here, man. Like we're trying to help people build wealth and do these great things and, and achieve things for their family. And so now the information becomes even more valuable. So now there's a purpose behind it. If the purpose is just like, I gotta make the calls, I gotta post the videos, then it's just becoming like a motivation thing and you know, eventually you get burnt out on it.

Gotcha.

So I would say like, you have to have a bigger goal, like a bigger purpose. So that gets you more excited. The other thing I think as far as burnout goes, Darren is like, you know, I think we're all focused on doing things short term. So like, dude, I'm gonna make the calls. I'm gonna do this so I can put the numbers up this month, right? And it's, it's just short term nature of our business. And if you're only doing things every day that would benefit you in the short run, like that's how the whole year goes by, years go by and nothing really changed. Yeah, you made some money, hopefully you put that money into some good investments, but other than that, nothing Changes about your business. Your business is literally worthless. Like, that's a, that's the hardest truth about real estate and mortgage and sales. You're as good as this month's pipeline. So you'll be like, bro, what about all this? 10, 20 years of experience? What's your numbers this month? Not that good. Okay, well then you're not that good. Wait, wait a second, bro, what happened to all my experience? It's worthless if you don't have sales. So I don't like that.

Right?

So I'm like, how do you monetize this? The experience, that thing that is not worthless, that helps us, that's content. It's helping other people. So I like to serve the Neil of today and this month for these month's numbers. But then I also want to be doing an activity and I think everyone should be doing an activity that would serve the future you. So the guy who's five years down the road, what's that person gonna look like? Like, what opportunities is Darren 2029 gonna have? Well, I can tell you this, if you put out content, you build your brand. The opportunities that you have in 2029 will be insane. And a lot of them, you won't even know what they are today, but you just know that there's some big shit coming. So I've seen this personally where a couple. Some of the best things that have happened to me were not things on the roadmap. It's a random thing that happened. Like we just talked about, you know, hey, Sharon was at the event. Well, you know how I met Sharon in person the first time I was at the super bowl in Las Vegas and I made a post there. I'm there. The first comment on the post is, Sharon, hey bro, look behind you. And then he was in the box in the same section I was in. And then we got to chit chatting and then now we're doing some stuff together. Prior to that, he was watching my videos, I was watching his videos. There was some mutual respect. But like that was the first time we got to connect in person. Well, what would have happened if I decided not to post that video? Sure, maybe I wouldn't have had the meeting with him. Maybe he wouldn't have spoken out at my event. Maybe he wouldn't have done a podcast yesterday. Maybe I wouldn't be speaking at your guys event in this, in the, in the fall. Maybe I wouldn't have 17 other connections because of our relationship. All because I didn't post a video while I was sitting down at The Super Bowl.

Right.

So I think this is the thing people don't realize. Like the power of one piece of content can be zero. It could also be a, it could set you on a path that changes your life. You never know. And so I would just tell people like don't ever say no for the audience. Like, yes, there's things you could do to level up your content. We can get into tactics, all kinds of this stuff. But in the beginning, like the main mindset shift is like, dude, I can't not post because of fear or like I think people are going to not like it.

Are you generally posting? So I got a couple questions from that. Are you posting with the idea of growth, that this is going to reach new people for me? Are you posting to serve an existing people that a group of people that already follow you that would bring you mortgage business today or is it more to say I need this to get.

Me to new so you can have different content for different goals. Right. So when I put up a podcast on YouTube that's a long form podcast, that's like a long term brand play subscribers that would be with me. There's something called time on brand. The more time somebody spends with you, the more trust that they have with you. And then whenever the need arises, you're the guy or the gal. So that's important. From a long term perspective that's just a long play. But like short term I have content that would be just more broad, that would just be meant to bring in more followers. Then I also have content there where I'm just speaking to like bottom of the funnel. Hey, if you're looking to buy a house this year, this is a great tool that you should be using. If you want me to break it down for you, comment this word and I'll send you the info. That's like a direct response ad almost, but it's structured as a piece of organic content but that's meant to speak to like a small group of people within the audience. It's not going to go viral, but it's going to get me business. Some of the in some of the pieces that have got me the most business have been the pieces of content with the least amount of views but they reach the right people. So I think people forget that in this business like we're in a high margin business and whether even if you're not in real estate or mortgage, if every client mean is meaningful to your business, like if one extra customer is meaningful to your business, then view count doesn't matter because it's about the right people seeing the piece of content. I've had videos with terrible views where two of the people who commented were the right people that ended up doing a deal with us. So that's the most important part. So there's broad content that's meant to bring followers. There's. There's more direct content that's meant to speak to people in the audience for sales purposes. And then there's personal content like that. I was telling you that I post a lot of. That's again, mostly to the people who already follow you so that they can get to know you and trust you.

More and just further, just long term funnel, right. And I think the reason I asked that is because so many realtors see content, hear content, and like, I got to do this. They think virality is the thing. And I, I always challenge them. Do you even have your base handled properly first? And then of course, if you do, then you can really go with the broader super niche or wider stuff to bring new folks. But if you're just.

I've seen people, yeah, I've seen people with less than a thousand followers, but they're engaged, right? And many of those people are potential clients. And I know people with less than a thousand followers that generate six figures a year from that audience. Because within there are a dozen people who will transact with you this year or that know someone who could transact with you. That's powerful. So you definitely don't need huge numbers. It is. I will tell you this. People do say, like, it shouldn't matter. I'll tell you, it does matter. Because the more you have in your audience, the more people respect you. Like, it's just like it's easier to hit the follow button if there's already other people doing it. It's like social proof. Like, if you have 0 reviews or you have 97 reviews and they're 5 stars, like, you might trust that person more. So if somebody else, if a lot of other people have already watched the content and are and are following the person, it gives you the clearance to go ahead. So it does matter. But it's not the main thing that drives business.

Let me walk you through a scenario that I've been thinking about in my head. So you've got media, you've got the team, you've got the editing, you've built the practice, the habits to shoot, right? And all of a sudden now you're pushing distribution. It's getting wider to all these platforms. To me, I see a world With AI now that from a single agent that wants to slow down and just get it out of their head and write a text prompt, could, in a year from now, probably have that entire system done for them because of AI. Meaning the text prompt creates the B roll, even faceless or even on camera. With, like, the tools that you and I know exist with distribution, with copy, with descriptions. Where like, a year from now, I could just literally put my thought down and the rest happens. For me, yeah, I see that existing, which means is content be gonna become commoditized really quickly here, where it's like, right now you're winning because you're ahead of us, right? Or you're. You've been doing this and you've built this, but all of a sudden, a year from now, if any, if an agent wants to slow down, they might have that same distribution at a fraction of the cost. And now I see noise out there. This is the world I see where we could literally have Neil's times 1000. Because the ability to pull that off happens so much easier with AI and all the tools that are rolling down the pipeline. Do you see? Does that make any sense or am I crazy to think that.

No, it does. I think it's further. I think it's a. It takes longer than we think to get to that point, but it definitely is there. Like, for example, there's already things that you can create content with, but the content doesn't resonate as well, you know, with the AI generated content. Also, the platforms require now to be. You have to. There's a button that gets turned on when it's AI content versus creator content. So they do have some protections there of like, yeah, they want to prioritize content that was actually created by a human being versus AI. Yeah, there's some of that going on. They also want to prioritize whether this is a fake or this is a real, like, so people can't impersonate other people. So there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes, but you're 100 correct. Like, we are like, you know, for the last several years. It's like, dude, you need to build your brand. You need to put out content. We're now getting to the latter innings of this to where it's no longer like, dude, man, I'm trying to bring you in nicely. It's like, dude, you better get here or it's going to be too late. You know?

Right?

It's like, fuck, man, maybe three years from now, you're like, dude, I Mean, just give it up. Like, don't do content because like you said, there's so much noise now and you, you weren't in at the time when you need to be in. So I think about this, like people always think, like, I'll wait till this happens and then I'll do it. Like, I'll wait till the market gets better and there's more activity and then I'll start posting videos. Well, wouldn't it be nice that when that time comes, you were good at video, you're really good at speaking succinctly and you could make calls to action. And you had your funnel and you had your many chat and you had your AI sequence afterwards and you had all these little pieces dialed in so that when something happens, boom, you can take advantage of it. Like, it's not luck that market conditions come around and people make a shitload of money. It's they're prepared for the event, right? So like I feel like people have a little net, like a little, you know, fishing net or something to get lucky. Like they're like just roaming around with this little net and they're trying to catch four leaf clovers for luck, you know, and these are like your clients and you might get lucky, you might get some business. But like then all of a sudden we come into a period where there's just luck everywhere, bro. There's just, it's falling from the sky, but you still have this little tiny net that you're just going around with. You'll get more in it, but it's, it's not gonna like capture much versus me, bro. I'm rolling around with this freaking parachute.

Size net, commercial grade fishing boat.

Yeah, bro, it's like. And I got a freaking barge. Well, wouldn't it be nice to have the barge when that happens? Like, I think like people are waiting for that moment to start building their bar or their net or whatever and the time is, is before that. And so that's why I say like, the next cycle of this is going to be much more difficult. It's not too late as of today, 100% you should do it. Start today and you could still win.

I like to paint the picture, not to freak people out. But there is this window of time where you still have big influence, build potential before the noise is just absurd. I can almost see a world where the noise is so noisy out there with content that people turn away from online and go right back to offline relationships. And that becomes the core because they're like, it's just so much I can picture. Like those 20, 50 old movies where they're saying, what's the what? You know, they. They see all these crazy images everywhere because there's just so much being thrown at us.

That's why I do other things. So, like, why should people come to events when you could just get all the information online? Well, because events are different, right? And wouldn't it be nice that when you get to that point, Darren, that you speak of years from now, where content online is like, it's just too much, man. It's just noise. And what's the antithesis of that is flying to a room to do something together live. Wouldn't it be cool to be good at that thing when that time comes? So that's why I'm doing it now. It was the most difficult I've ever had of time filling events in the last 24 months. Why? Because information is no longer valuable. Information is everywhere. It's abundant and it's free. So if you're selling information, people like, I'm not paying for that. I could just watch it tonight on YouTube, bro. I don't need to go pay to see Alex Hormozi. I could just read his books and watch. He uploads three amazing YouTube videos a day, right? Like, you can find anything you want on the Internet, but what's it like to see, to do, ask questions, live? What's it like to network with other people? That's why I do events. Same thing with like email. What about the. When the. Like you said, when the platforms are so crowded with content that the algorithm becomes very, very, very difficult and you can't get your content seen by your followers, Right. Wouldn't it be nice at that time to have an email list where you could just control the distribution? So that's why I'm using this time right now to even build a small. Like to continue building my email list. Even if it's just a few people a week that get added to my email list. I control my communication with these people now. It's not up to Facebook or YouTube anymore. It's like I can just shoot them an email with some valuable information. I could do a call to action this week. So it's like online leads to offline, right? And you need, you know, the answer is not or it's both. How could your online stuff lead to more offline?

Yeah, I mean, it's like that parallel journey, right? We don't need something to just be happening in series, you know, Right now with all that's coming our way. There's a couple paths we should be taking at the same time. The lead to just a bigger, bigger. Right.

And imagine. You know what's crazy right now to your point, Darren, is like when you make calls to clients and you actually have something valuable to share with them or business partners and you take time to listen, they're actually shocked because nobody takes the freaking time anymore. We're in this, you know, world where everything's online and did like people really value the in person. So I think there is a point where it's coming to where people. It will shift back to the other part of like they really value people who are competent and can talk and that you can't send a freaking robot to do that. There's no AI for that. That's you.

Yeah. I think there's a lot of agents on the fence spending a lot of energy on social that are just never. They're not taking the next step. And I'd like to almost give them permission. If that's just not going to be who they are. They're not going to do it. No matter how much Neil provides you the tools and AI provides it just you could redirect it to the personal relationships this business started with and you could make seven figures and can continue to make seven figures. Among all the craziness that you and I are seeing experience as we're playing in this game. I just there was permission there guys, if you needed it, right. To not play the game that Neil has done. And I'm Mickey mousing my way with and to still have an incredible business. Right.

But and also give yourself credit like you're doing a podcast. You know how many people don't cons like what's the stat on podcast? People don't even get it to episode eight.

Yeah.

And then they give up. Right. It's like 90 plus percent of podcasts. So like that puts you in the top percentile. You're producing events, you're, you're, you're networking, you're building your team. So like, you know, like there's progress there in terms of what we're doing, but then at the same time we could be doing a lot more totally using these tools. So my thing is like AI is not going to replace us, but it's going to allow people like myself and you and the people listening who are serious to just ramp up their production in terms of output. Like I'll give you example. I'll drop a full episode of what you and I are doing into a software called Opus Pro. Opus will find the clips within minutes, give you the clips ready to post on social media with the captions there if you want them. And they just added a feature where now if you wanted to put B roll in the clips, you can turn automatic B roll on. I don't use that because it's not, it's like content is, you know, certain content doesn't need B roll anymore. And then also they have a feature now where it can connect to your accounts and you can, with one button, post the video to four accounts.

Oh, amazing.

So it's, it's like, dude, it's these tools. Yes. They like, they're going to replace some people, but like they replaced the video editor. Yeah, but they allowed me, the Creator, to 4x my output in minutes.

The guy who's slowing down to do the thing to create it now has way bigger amplifier on them, way better execution. And that's why that gap's going to grow really fast, right?

Yeah. So then the people who are already in the game doing the thing are good at the thing. Now they get to put gas on a fryer. So then they're, they're gap between the guy who's now is here. This person still is debating whether to start. Like there should be zero energy on whether or not to start. The only energy you should be spending is like how to get better and how to do more. That's it. You know, and you people, like, you and I, like, we shift our content pretty soon to supporting those who want to do more and less of the. Trying to convince the people to get off the starting line. Like at some point the people who are just not doing it sounds kind of harsh, but like they'll be just left there because there's so many people who want to do the thing that we can help and support to do more. And there's enough of those people to where now you kind of forget about like the whole convincing argument. Like we can't convince you to do it. It's like, man, Godspeed, God be with you.

So you're, you're, you've been posting a little bit also. Speaking of like something we're about to go through is this NAR settlement issue and you've gone ahead and you've, you put that out there. As a broker, I mean, how do you foresee from the mortgage world seeing this playing out? Do you have any thoughts on where after August 17th and all the brokerages are making these changes? Do you see, what do you see happening in the agent world, knowing that you support agents every day in there. Right.

So I think the good ones have it figured out. They're great. They provide more than enough value to justify and they have their communication skills locked in. There's weak agents who don't communicate with the client who will be most like, most affected by this. Because now they have to communicate their value and negotiate their fee on the buy side up front. And some buyers are going to not be okay with that depending on like how good you are with that conversation. So like now you need to level up your skills there. We can help as a community. We can, like those of us who are in leadership roles can help agents do this. So there's, it's not like we're saying you're screwed. It's like, dude, if you're not good at that, let's work together. All the brokerages are put out, tons of guidance on this. The leaders are talking about it. Sharon is doing a webinar on it. I saw the exp people doing some stuff on it. You know, everybody's kind of jumping in, chipping in here. So that's important. But I do believe this. We went through this in the mortgage industry a long time ago. The compensation to mortgage people in the US was, was almost hidden. Like it wasn't disclosed in certain areas. And in some areas it's still kind of like behind the curtain.

Same way with us in Canada. Yeah, yeah.

But what happened was they made changes to where it was more upfront, it was more talked about and there was more disclosure. As a result, the compensation on an individual transaction went down over time. It's just what happened. I'm not saying that that is, I'm happy for that. But that's just what happens. Right, so then what's that? What do you need to do? You need to be running an actual business and do more transactions. So like the guys and gals who are in the real estate industry who just do a handful of deals, the part timers, and you really, you make enough on it to make it worthwhile and you call yourself a full time realtor, but you're not really treating this as a full time profession, those people might be adversely impacted because if your compensation was cut in 20, 30% on just the handful of deals you do next year, that's a pretty big pay cut.

Yep.

Versus the guy who's just, hey, I can do more deals. They've already built the infrastructure.

I have the team. They've got it all.

Yeah, yeah, the system. So like it's about being able to provide a high level of service to more clientele on the buy side and on the list side. You know, I think it's the same thing. The listing agents are going to try and get more listings because their listings are even more valuable now.

Right.

So I think like, it'll play itself out, but I think it will eliminate, eliminate some of the weaker players. Some people in the industry tell me this is good. You know, I mean, unless you're the person being eliminated, it's a good thing. Right.

I see the role with the mortgage broker actually becoming stronger. To be honest. The realtors don't just commoditize their broker or their couple brokers that they send to. They use their connection with the valuable mortgage broker to help lean into their value. And if you can build that communication, I see that relationship tightening for the good ones. Do you see that too?

Yeah. So it's like you provide a concierge type service. So here's what we do for our buyers. We help you with this. We have a partner that helps you with this. We also help you with this and this and this. And we go above and beyond. We have hundreds of five star reviews for the things we've done. Here's the compensation that we charge on the buy side. Typically this is paid by the seller, but like if it's not, we can work something out. But here's how this all works. All right, cool. Like, let's move forward. And then it's like, okay, sounds good. If you don't have that like value proposition or that conversation dialed in to a T. Yeah, I suggest like, that's the part you need to work on right now. I mean, we've, we have to work on that. Like if I talk to a client on the mortgage side and we don't have our value prop, most likely they treat you as a commodity and they just could drop you at any time, or they go shop around and they find somebody on the Internet and they replace you versus if you have a really good conversation up front, that the likelihood of that drops. So I think like that's where things are going to change for the agents. Like, you got to get good at that. And then we need more people in the funnel so that when you do have those people who do are going to treat you like a commodity regardless, because that's just the way they are. We've all had clients like that. No matter what you say or do, they just treat you like shit. All right, well, move on. Like we, I got more clients. It'll be good. We just need more in the funnel.

Totally. When you. And then. I agree. I think this is going to be interesting. I'm looking forward to that dynamic building in my market. We already have all this. Like we have.

Yeah.

We've been fully transparent and open and we have buyer agency agreements. We fight for this. We've done this behind. It's behind us up in Alberta. I'm sure there'll be some changes that come as a result, but we're in that zone so like we feel good where I am, but I know the rest of North America doesn't sit that same place.

So yeah, some people are worried about it for sure. I even made the post and like a lot of agents were, were, you know, kind of like happy about the change. They think it's good for the industry long term. They said there's some pain short term, but long term it's good. But then there were some other agents who said hey dude, stop talking about this. Yeah, this is like they got mad that I was posting about it.

Totally. I mean it's even if you got to fake the confidence till you make it right now, like have it because you want to like force yourself to learn these skills if it's new for you. So tell me about your YouTube focus versus short term focus. Because I learned about you through short form content and now you're pushing bigger pillar pieces. Is it fair that you started with micro pieces and then broke into the YouTube world and then went more pillar style content? Do you.

It's easier. Yeah, if you don't have the time or the investment or you're not as good as communicator. It's easier to make short form than long form. It's also easier to ramp up the number of pieces that you put out through short form. And then I love the community aspect of short form. Meaning like we could connect in dms, we could take the conversation into conversion conversation for clients. Like there's so many things that you can move the ball forward on in short term where you can't do that on YouTube. There's no messaging feature there. So I started there and that's how I built my audience and built my community online was all through Instagram. But then I realized like I would was doing YouTube but I was doing it half assed. I'd throw up a video every few months. Long form, even though I have a lot to say and a lot to teach and I'm decent at communicating now. I didn't used to be, but I'm better at it now. So then I was like, I'm leaving an enormous amount of opportunity on the table because, you know, if somebody sits with me on a 60 minute YouTube video, I looked at my Instagram reels, Darren. And so I looked at a hundred Instagram reels. My average view long length of time for those videos was 44 seconds. For each one of those 100 videos of the 44 viewed, 44 second average video. The average watch time from all these millions of people, or hundreds of thousands depending on which period you look at, the average watch time was 16 seconds. So like some people finish the whole 44 second reel, but a lot of people watch a little bit and move on. It's still good because I stayed top of mind and they got some value. So 16 seconds average video versus like an hour long YouTube video. The difference it, you know, like in order for me to get that time with you for 60 minutes, you would need to see at 16 seconds of pop, you need to see 225 reels.

Right? Yeah.

For the same effect and brand lift that I could get from you watching one 60 minute conversation on YouTube or a 15 minute video on YouTube. Whatever you want to do. So I was told this by one of the leading YouTube coaches to entrepreneurs in the world, this guy, Evan Carmichael. He's helped some of the biggest people build their YouTube presence. He said to me at a conference, he said, neil, what is the topic that if you and I went to the bar unscripted, just off the dome, you could speak to me for over an hour on like, what are the things you could talk about? Go make the YouTube videos about that. Right, okay. And so if you don't have that thing yet, maybe you know, you could do shorter videos. But like there's a big opportunity for longer videos on YouTube, like 20, 30. I would do 60 minute interviews sometimes on YouTube.

Right.

And people just watch it, you know, casually. They listen to it like a podcast. And so I was just leaving that off the table even though I had it. So I just decided to take it seriously about six months ago. And voila, my YouTube channel is growing now and you know, the videos are blowing up and I'm getting business from it and like people are reaching out from a recruiting standpoint because of they just spending more time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's just, dude, like trust. We, we don't sell loans, real estate, insurance, whatever it is that you think you sell, you don't sell, that you sell trust. People trust you, they work with you, they'll They'll. They'll. They'll refer you. How do we get people to trust you is just spend more time with them. How to give them some more time. YouTube. Not short form. So I love short form. It's great to catch people. But then there's still a huge opportunity with YouTube. So for me it was like initially it was. Or until I could figure out a way to do. And the answer is always and. But we don't have the time or the resources to do and. And you just are a few systems or hires away from doing the.

And I love that you said that. It's like when you. When you were. You were told by Evan that it's like when you have something that you can speak at length, then you know you can go there. Right. If you're trying to force the at length, that's probably not going to land so well. Right?

It's very competitive on YouTube. Yeah. It's like, dude, and you can make a video and it can get literally eight views. Right? I know people who make long form and they get no views. It's brutal.

I'm trying to play that game right now. And it's. It's interesting, right?

It's hard. It's a. It's not even about what's in the video. It's how you packaged it. What was your title, your hook, your thumbnail. So I've realized, like, YouTube is not necessarily the best. Is the information the video platform. It's a packaging platform. Who had the best information is secondary to who packaged it the best.

Well, man, I know you got to run to another conversation. I had another hour's worth of stuff. Because you've got such a wealth. Quick question I asked in the intro.

I said, well, let's do another episode. If somebody. If you think we should. Darren and I should do another episode, let him know and then we'll do it. We'll schedule another one to go through the next step.

Neil, would you have ever been a realtor and you're. If you were to redo this again, knowing all the realtors, you know, and the life. Is that something that you would have said? Yeah, that would have been my thing or no?

Yeah, I think I would. I would have done it. Like, I think it's. It's very similar even to mortgage side. I'm more nerdy with numbers, so I kind of picked mortgage. But at the end of the day, nobody's excited to get a mortgage. Like, they're excited about real estate. And so I think we sell the Same product at the end of the journey. And so I think of them very much the same. We're all after the same thing. But yeah, I think I would have done it. It's not. I don't, I don't. I think it's almost like very complimentary or just a lateral move.

Yeah. And you'd have all the sexy things to show off. Not just the interest rate, just the numbers, payment calculations, which I know you still share, which is great. So even this far down your journey, you're sharing some of the basic things on some of your new videos that appeal to a first time buyer, a first time investor, yet a lot of people be like, well, I think I got to keep coming up with new stuff. But you, you're not. You're rolling back to some of these pieces, new tweaks on it. And I love you keep doing that to give agents this idea. Like, they don't have to start. They're not the first person to ever say something ever. And I know we don't have time to go down this, but I love.

Yeah, I just finished. We can finish with this. Like, it's not about coming up with a thousand things to say and, and teach. It's about one or two or three things and you doing it in a thousand different ways.

Right.

That's what it's about. Like, it's. You don't need a new ideas. You don't need to become viral every video. You need to be like super talented. You just need to unlock what you have and package it properly.

Amazing. Well, this has been incredible. Yes. Let me know if we need to continue with this, Neil, for another episode. Thanks for being on this again, my friend. And I know you've got a busy day and life and all this stuff on the go, so keep crushing it. You're an inspiration to so many. I'm honored to call you a friend and we'll catch up with you again soon.

All right. Thanks, bro. Appreciate you.

Have a great one.

Yeah, you too. Bye.

Bye.