NEEL DHINGRA | Nothing Sells Like Results

In everything. In businesses, you're not entitled to shit. Yeah, nobody owes you fucking views. They don't owe you their business. Like, oh, so and so is winning and I'm not. Well, fuck, maybe learn from them. Like, what are they doing differently? Maybe it's not fair, but somebody hooked them up. Yeah, okay, well, how do you get your hookup? What value could you provide to people so that you could get that shortcut too?

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

If you can connect with the best.

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If you're doing it the right way.

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What's up, guys?

Welcome to another episode of Travis Makes Friends podcast.

Today I have a friend of mine.

Neil Dhingra, in studio. Neil comes from the mortgage space. He's got decades of experience selling mortgages on cold calls, which is something that we talk about. And then he started using that money to start investing into real estate, residential and commercial and all that good stuff. And then a few years ago, got into building his personal brand after watching a little bit of Gary Vee, which, you know, who didn't, Although, you know, some people started and then stopped. Well, he started and just kept going with it. And now his audience organically.

And I've gotten pretty good at this.

Point of sniffing out, like, who has fake audiences, fake followers, fake engagement, fake likes and comments and all that other stuff and who's doing it for real. And Neil is one of those guys that's doing it for real. He came and spoke at a mastermind.

That I'm a part of, I want.

To say six, eight months ago. And whenever I hear somebody talk about social media, most of the time when they're saying stuff, it's like that's been taught for the last, you know, three or four years. And some of it's outdated and it's just there's nothing new under the sun, but sometimes it's just like a super repetitive.

But Neil came up and gave a.

Bunch of really great advice, advice on how to create short form video content specifically for your brand to blow up on Instagram and TikTok YouTube shorts and all these other platforms. Because everybody's optimizing for this short form video and I actually learned some stuff from it. So after that talk, we connected and he hit me up with some podcasting things and then I was asking him some questions on his short form content and we eventually schedules lined up and he made it in studio here today. So we talk a little bit about.

Why he got into creating content to.

Begin with, what he would recommend to young people who are trying to make more money. We talk about some different social media strategies that have been working for him. We talk about how he filled a thousand person live event completely organically without a dollar in paid advertising, which is pretty wild. Lots of things we talk about in this episode. I think it's going to be really helpful for you. So without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Neil Dingra. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to their episode of the Travis Makes Friends podcast. Today I am sitting down and making friends with Neil Dingra. Neil, what's up, dude?

Thanks for having me, man. Appreciate it.

Of course. Welcome to the studio. 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 home studio on the camera.

So. No, I'm just curious. You would think we're on like some Blue wire two. Yeah, Blue Wire 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 that I'm in for real estate investors specifically. It's kind of like got grandfathered into that group from the a hundred million group that I was in. And a lot of times I'll see a lot of same familiar faces in the crowd because I've been in that group since 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 or I've had them 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 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 the style of content that you were doing. I liked the metrics that you were posting. I liked how you tied them directly to business results. It wasn't just vanity metrics and things that didn't matter. So there was a lot of things about your talk that again, I was learning from. Which I'm not to say that I'm the expert at this point, but I have been doing this for a while and it's hard sometimes, you know what I'm saying? You 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's 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, 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 let's rewind the clock. 10 year old, 11 year old Neil set the scene for me. Where were you in the world? 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 that conservative family where your parents want you to be the best student, become a doctor, lawyer, how all that stuff goes. They're deep into higher education. So it was all about work hard, keep your head down, do all that stuff. I bring that up because I was recently at this event where this dude, my buddy Rene, he basically helps you come up with your thing, your message, your brand. And he goes back to 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 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 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, 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.

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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 sell mortgages.

Yes.

You don't Even have to get. So you had to get a real estate license, right? You didn't. There was no nmls.

This is the craziest shit. So back then, 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 fucking 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, so you would go to, like, get your fingerprint cards, like a police card type shit. But I don't think they ever ran 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 get over here. We're making a lot of money. So I started learning that your brother. Older.

Younger.

Older.

Okay.

So he brought me into that. He was like.

So 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 happened. And then what happened was like, everything collapsed. You know, 2008, so just full collapse. 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 studio?

Yeah, we had a whole company, like, more.

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 two. 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 I kind of.

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 a million dollar 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 years we had like very little income but you know, did okay.

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

Yeah, for sure, bro. 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. Used 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 want to say it. Like mortgage. Like you're dealing code. You're the guy that, you're the reason.

Our 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 shit, nothing like that. Just on the ground making relationships, shaking hands, holding deals, hiring people, running a business.

Yeah.

And then I just kind of, 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 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 Gary Vee. You gotta 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 shit.

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

We did mail. Direct mail, bro. We did a lot of mail. I had that shit 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 tricks.

All the little tricks of the trade to get people. So I knew, like, sales. Yeah. But as far as marketing goes, that's some.

I mean, that's some marketing stuff, right? Mailers and stuff like that. Those are some psychology pieces that work online just like they work on. On mailers.

Yeah.

That's interesting about marketing and sales. Really is. Like, the principles are the same.

Yeah.

The platforms change, you know, the method might change, but the principle, you know, is 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 shit. 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 up your head like that?

Oh, yeah, I'm sure that. I mean, there's a lot of stories like that of. It'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 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 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 the ability to communicate and persuade people to do something. So I'm curious if somebody came to you and asked you, 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.

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Done things in a structured way. Meaning like when do you make your calls? How many calls do you make a week? 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 years go by and you just ran in the same place. So how many people out there? You're working your ass off, you feel like you're running and you look back and You've gone nowhere.

Yeah, that's the worst.

You've done nothing.

Those are the people that are like, I have 16 years of experience. I'm like, 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. And 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 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. Mm. How many deals you got in the pipeline this month? None. Okay. You're worthless. Oh, shit. What about that? Ten years of. Oh, fuck, it's not worth anything. Yeah. Because you don't have any deals right now. So what I was viewing 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. 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.

Right.

You're like, oh, my Gosh, I made $16,000 this month. 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. But it's so up and down and you're not in control of that. And that's 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 other than just building this month's or this week's sales.

So I tell people, 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 are you going to be able to stop doing this activity? That's when it kind of hit me, was when I was showing up to these things and 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 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 got to 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 got to get back on the treadmill. Right, Exactly.

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 gotta be a better way. And the other thing that got to me, and you probably felt this, too, 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, 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 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. Speaking, right? 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. Cause 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.

Mortgage professionals, real estate professionals, real estate professionals. And then also doing for, like, consumers. I would have like five, 10 people come and just test, just try, you know? And some of these were horrible as well. 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 a waste of time. But it wasn't a waste because that's how I. 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 and got me so much further than the stuff before then. 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 Morbi 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 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 how it could be everywhere. 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 going to 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, 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, and 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 that. If you don't communicate well, you're not going to go anywhere. I mean, you're like the dude who bought the most expensive tennis gear that sucks, all that kind of shit.

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

Exactly. So that was me at the bed. 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 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. 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 the platform's 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 works. It doesn't even work anymore, bro. You're telling a strategy from two years ago or six months ago that doesn't even work today. So things are moving that quickly. So you gotta 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, sure.

What's the algorithm change that you can hack in there to get more reach. 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 book, 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 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 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.

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 can't really.

I mean, you can do whatever you want, but it's typically 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 get your message out to a mass amount of people so that you can find the people that really like you and repel the people who don't like you. It has to do both of those things. In my opinion. Good marketing repels. It attracts the ideal person as much as it repels the non 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 the 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 before? 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. You know, I'm just giving you a basic example.

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, I'll fucking buy that. It's like $5,000 worth of K Swiss, which I donated to a kid's school because I didn't want him. And then I got to go hang out his office. And that was the first time I met him in 2018 or 19. And I was like, gary, I'm in the mortgage industry. Super boring. What kind of content can I create? He's like, financial fitness. People love the trips, the tricks, the hacks. 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, 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 mortgage and real estate? Like, put those tips out there and present them in the right way. That's your ticket. Don't just talk about, like, the latest program. So that type of content everybody's interested in, I think that can bring more people on your channel. 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 an industry practice that you stand against? Dude, I hate that the people in my industry do this. That's kind of polarizing, but at the same time, it separates you from all your competitors. The industry takes a standardized approach. My team and I, we go deeper with each person to find a 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 shit. 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. That, to me, has generated the most amount of business. And then the second part is, like, what you just said. How do you, like, repel the people that you don't want to work 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? 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, 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 media? What are the odds that some other people might like that shit, 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 going to 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, fuck, you know you're leaving. Don't leave. Yeah, you don't know. But they just leave because they didn't, like, 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.

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. Sort of 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 whole hold you down from the potential future positive feedback. Because the negative feedback in my experience has always come first before the positive feedback. Like anytime I'm doing something that's not generic, that's not like, you know, that's just more interesting or it's maybe a little bit edgy or it's showing a part of my sense of humor that maybe not everybody likes. The negative feedback comes first because the algorithm searching for the people that are going to 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 fuck off and go follow somebody else's stuff.

It's huge. 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 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 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. They're like sacrificing their long term brand for short term views. You know, it's like, well, 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 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're in marketing or you're in finance, right.

You're not trying to sell a book on religion, then maybe ease back a little bit, let your personality come through. But 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 entrepreneurial figure. I don't want to be this political talking head or a pastor of a church or the next Richard Dawkins. You know what I mean? So sometimes it's okay to let those things shine through. But, yeah, always have some clarity around where am I headed with this?

And I like the fact that 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 niche. What do you want to teach? What's the best way to do that? The most in, 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, 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 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 for him.

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

Just 14th.

15Th, 14th.

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 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 I actually did that. I was like, I'm going to make my thing better 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 shit 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. Cause they're gummies and I'm a child in my heart.

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

I don't want to say, 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 probably got all the shit 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 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 it's. You can find more and more examples of this.

Yeah.

Quip did that with 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 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 then their second and third products were actually like innovated by them with a product team. And they're really good.

Yeah.

But they became famous.

That was like their mvp. That was like the proof of concept. People will buy this shit. Okay. Now we need to actually make it.

Better 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 innovative. And then just up the quality. Like this is good quality shit you got going on here. I'm sure you guys take some time to make sure that we can be clearly heard. We have a mic, a clear video, like stand out.

That was the whole reason for Dinner Party. The episodes that we were filming was. Is that exact thing. We kept working with some of our coaching clients on their shows. Because I just get sick of the whole 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. So Dinner Party is just kind of, kind of like it's going to be an experiment for the next year, year and a half. Because 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 to have to clear by the venue to get the gear rentals to have the staff show up. It was a whole thing, it was a production. So we'll probably do one every six to eight weeks or something like that. But it was an experiment just to be like, 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 an experiment for us, but it's largely based on exactly what you just said. How can we create something that's kind of the same but also completely different and innovative and 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. I can see the quality. So if somebody took it that serious, maybe it is good.

Yeah.

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 value is there. So don't shoot yourself in the foot by doing it half assed and then now you're blaming the fact that there's no reach. Well, bro, would you watch your own stuff? Like if you wouldn't 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 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. 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, shit, thank you. I'm going to go back and I'm going to 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 would watch film. They get better. Those who take it seriously when 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 whatever. 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 Anna Kasparian 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, 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, big 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 it, 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 can see it.

Three years ago.

Yeah. Like that. Zero to hero is a huge thing in marketing. Your personal story is your biggest piece of marketing. And so if you're selling or promoting anything and you've done it yourself, or if you haven't done it 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 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 and understand that, like, people's attention can go to literally anywhere. So you gotta 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 shit.

Yeah.

Nobody owes you fucking views. They don't owe you their business. Like, oh, so and so is winning and I'm not. Well, fuck. 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 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 constantly.

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 what 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'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. 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 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. That's the beautiful thing about it. That's actually the awesome thing about it is the market decides whether it's good 100%. There's not a lot of preferential treatment.

Yeah. And then you can get better at certain things. I didn't care about Twitter or writing, and then it started doing that in the last couple 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 and have it impact people? No video, no shit. Like, nothing. All you have is your words on a screen. And so, yeah, there's things you could. For me, I'm just like a student. I just want to learn more. 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 gonna 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 gonna just watch. I mean, they're not. Like, it'd be cool to think everyone's gonna like, like you for you, but everyone's selfish. They wanna 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 mind. Here's proof it works. And let me teach you how I found that formula works with even a crowd of people that don't know who the fuck you are. 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 some result that you have. We've put out a few videos recently about why Alex Shamozi blew up. 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 the. 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. Yeah. 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 her mozzie spoke there. He didn't even look the same as what he looks like now. 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, shit. 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, just communicating through reps.

So you were entrepreneur turned creator. We have a lot of people listening to the show that are in that boat. We also have a lot of people listening to the show that are creators and they're trying to learn how to make money online. So they have a podcast or they have a YouTube channel. Or they're doing reels or clips or something to try to try to get out of their nine to five and start making money online. What would your advice be to somebody like that who like 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? And then you made an offer around that, you know what I mean? So 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, 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. Okay, so how do you get to be that person? Is he just tried, like he 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 gotta 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 like I make content that gets X. So I don't just create content, I make content that gets you more clients. Here's my success story, my success story, my success story.

And I can help with one specific thing. I write tweets that convert.

Yes.

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

Yeah. It's a niche and I'm really fucking 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 the skill. Sure. Teach people how to do it. Or help people and charge a fee for that. Cool. If you don't have a skill, get a skill. Get a skill. You need a skill. Like how are you going to stand out so maybe your skill is you freaking. You're a G in Excel. I don't know. Fuck, you just, you know that shit. 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 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 want to 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. She 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, here, I've already done that. I took your last episode, I did this and I gave it to you.

We had a guy sent us a cold dm. I think we, I think we sent him a couple of clips to, to edit because he came out, he came out 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 100,000 views. And I was like, okay, yeah, deal. Like, 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.

Reverse engineering. So what do you need help with? What's the one thing you need more than anything? Oh, I need this. 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 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, a lot of those types of working relationships is just that they're just workhorses and 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 gotta 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 gotta stand alone without context. It's gotta have the ability to go viral. It's gotta 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 achieved. I was like, okay, sure. Here's a couple videos. See what you can do. You know what I mean?

Yeah. And that's the part of. 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 was 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 going to hire someone to help me with this. Hired some company they were gonna help me with. Xyz, turns out, ruined my account, so I had to shut it down, start a brand new one. I think I did that in 19. I started my current Instagram account from scratch and just built it from, 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 started 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 shit 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. So it's cool to get these big numbers, but 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, 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 bullshit. 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 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?

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 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 is different than today? Even two weeks from now or two months from now, something new is going to come out and we're going to be on top of it. So that's a cool group to join. And then we have events throughout the year. We have a mastermind, like the highest level, which is a mastermind of people who are just crushing it, that want to be there and network and all that stuff. So just different tiers, basically, yeah.

Are you now in your personal life, are you focused mostly on building your personal brand with your daily activities, or are you still kind of operating your businesses? What does your daily schedule look like?

I'm doing the business stuff, and then I just be intentional about showing more of what I'm doing because I found that that is the best way to grow my business is to grow my personal brand. So for me, people, they'd love to see you built 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, 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 that people like, dude, I've been thinking about leaving my 9 to 5 and starting something and you gave me the courage to do that. And that's cool to see too.

So forward, where can people go get tickets? Even if they're even still available? Because I know you guys are pretty.

Close to some of them. 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. Love to have people there. That's going to be awesome.

You have some pretty sweet speakers lined up for that, right?

Yeah, we have Ed Mylett, Sean Cannell is going to be there talking about the latest in YouTube strategy. This guy, Chris Doe, 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 New York Times bestselling authors, subject matter experts, people that you may not even know, but they're just great at teaching you something. 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 fucked up, failed. You know, like you should leave an event with one to three practical things that you can implement into 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 too. The implementation timeline is so far out that you're never going to take action on any of it. 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 get some caffeine in the morning to wake you up. I don't know what to tell you, but the reason to be there is for the people that are around you. 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 gonna 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. 7. You know what I'm saying? Like, you get the. Like, we're. We're spitting content right now. 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. To watch in person. However, like I said, 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. And just kind of wrapping that whole part up, the simple way 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 going on, where they're from, what's the 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, 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 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.

Huge. Just being like, dude, I know someone that can help you. 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. Like, we connected on text and Then both of us have the same thing of like, we follow up, Simon. Right. Follow up. You followed up and then now we're here doing the thing. 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 found, like, 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. 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 the freaking washer.

Ditch them.

Fuck all that. Just text people. And then now go back to your text threads from that weekend and just follow up. It's already open. It's open line commission. 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 the. This is cool. 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, bro.

That's huge.

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 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 DMs to people and personally inviting. So I'd be like, voice memo, not a fucking Philippines VA spamming people. I personally would not.

Manychat.

No, fuck all that. It's like I DMed you, I said, hey, Travis, dude, we don't know each other yet, but we have a shared connection. Dan Fleishman. 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 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 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 gonna be dope, it better fucking be dope, you know? Cause if you come there, it sucks ass. I'm gonna be like, you're never gonna freaking believe me.

You're back on the treadmill for next year. So I'm like, 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. Everyone's like, dude, this is sick. Like you did this event, launched a mastermind. I'm like, well, yeah, dude, you didn't see all the shit ones. The 14 person one that nobody beat.

Up, you did and that nobody showed.

Up to and I sucked out or.

The Domino's pizza and a two liter bottle.

The first four 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 $100,000 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. That's it for today's episode. Thanks for spending some time with me and my friends. If you want to be better friends with me, then head over to travischapel.com team to subscribe to my free newsletter, your Free Friend Travis, where I share what's on my mind about life, building a business, raising kids, being married, and anything else I would normally share with my close circle of friends. That's Travis Chapel.com team and my biggest ask of you since I'm sharing my friends with you, is to share this episode with a friend of yours that hasn't listened to the show yet and leave us a quick five star rating in Apple Podcasts and in Spotify. It would mean the world to us as it helps us make sure that this show continues to be more valuable to you.

You.

Thanks in advance and I'll catch you on the next episode.