EP 685 - Building A Strong Personal REI Brand With Paul Copcutt

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This is the no Closer show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property for panties on the dollar. Get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now, here's your host, CEO of We Close Nodes, Scott Carson.

Hi, this is Paul Copcut of the REI Branded Podcast and you want to tune in on this week's show. I'm here with Scott Carson, the Note Closer show, and we're talking everything about branding, personal branding, marketing in the real estate space.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Note Closer Show. As always, Scott Carson. Excited to be here with the day. And I'm really jacked up to have a guy who is kicking ass and taking names. He absolutely has a passion for helping other real estate investors get their word out and market themselves. He's the host of the REI branded podcast, the man, the Myth, the Legend, Mr. Paul Koput. Join us here today. What's going on, Paul? How you doing today?

Hey, Scott. Good, thank you. How are you?

I'm great, man. It's a little warmer here where we're at than where you're at as talked about earlier.

But hey, it was two degrees this morning, so it was cold.

It was fresh cold. But 2 degrees, whether it's Fahrenheit or Celsius, it's damn cold either way, right?

Exactly.

I mean, I love your podcast and share. So why don't you share with our listeners out there? Because we've got a variety of real estate investors and people looking to get into real estate. Talk a little bit about your podcast, also talk a bit about your mindset and what you focus on. Working with other peeps.

Yeah. So the REI branded podcast is for real estate investors or other professionals associated with real estate investing and helping them get noticed because I find a lot of people are kind of invisible. So first of all, get them noticed and then hopefully get them involved in business, either hired or they find investors. There's a lot of real estate investors running around trying to find private money and then obviously get referrals and build their reputation. That's the intention. So I have guests on there that people like yourself that have built a personal brand and really kind of niche and focus in on a particular area and help people understand that if you try to be something to everybody, then you're nothing to anyone. That's the intention of the podcast. And then what I do in my coaching consulting business is help those people do exactly that, understand what it is that makes them unique. And then how do they stand out? Because there's a lot of people running around all saying they do the same thing. So what makes you different, what makes you special? So what we're trying to do is just get that essence and then how do we get that message out there on a consistent basis?

That's one of the most frustrating things because we deal with a lot of people, people that want to be investors, they're working a regular career or a job, something that they're into that's different than real estate. And them coming into the investor side of things, they have the hardest time of understanding that they have to share what the heck they're doing, get the word out and market and brand themselves. That drives me bonkers. I'm sure it drives you like crazy when you're talking with people, huh?

A lot of people who are in real estate investing, well, initially they're probably doing it on the side. They've got a corporate job going on because that's where the money first comes to help them get those first 1, 2, 3 properties. They may have promoted themselves in a corporate job, but the chances are most people don't. Because I used to do a lot of work in the career space and I didn't find people shouted about their successes or their strengths enough. And then you're transferring them into an entrepreneurial place where you've got to do that. There's just no ifs, buts or maybes. You either do it or you disappear. And that's the thing.

What do you see in today's crazy world of fake book and TikTok and Twitter and Instagram street probably get this question a lot. But especially for real estate investors, what do you see as being the biggest bang for the buck or the places that they need to spend the most amount of time on maybe starting and things maybe they're not utilizing right now.

And again, it goes back to that corporate background. I mean, the chances are they've already got a LinkedIn profile. Why not start there? The other danger I see with social media is, well, the two things. One is people think social media is the be all and end all and no it isn't. I started off in classified newspaper advertising. That was my second job out of school. Social media is just the modern day version of classified advertising to a degree. And we're seeing that obviously with Facebook and Instagram. Now it is almost a pay to play environment if you want to get noticed LinkedIn, you still got that free availability, you don't have to Pay. In fact, LinkedIn advertising is horrendously expensive and it's not the way to go. And if you spend time authentically building relationships on LinkedIn and you've got something in common with people because the chances are you're reaching out to people who have spare money that you're looking for them to invest, maybe it's coming from their pensions or something like that, or they've got additional funds if they're corporate background, so why not reach out to them and say, hey, actually there's a client I'm working with right at the moment and she's a real estate investor. She used to work in the oil and gas industry. I said, well, there's your target market. Just hit everybody in the oil and gas industry. So we went on LinkedIn. I said, okay, what was the company you used to work for? Okay, so we just hit the company. She used to work for 1700 people within her province in Canada. I said, they are. There's 1700 leads. Okay, next school, university. Okay, which university did you go to? Which years were you there? Okay, here's seven and a half thousand people that went in those same four years as you and they're still in Canada. Okay, there's your next leads that will keep you busy for the next 27 years.

That's the thing is there's so many people out there and I think it's taking those steps just to look, I mean people and it's, I guess we, many people get overwhelmed and we all know confused mind is a mind that says no, we're doesn't take any action. I do love LinkedIn. It's one of our favorite spots. This is the easiest place. Like you said, go find somebody went to school with. Go find people that you're saying type of work or work for the company as well that have pensions. If you're making good money, there's other people there. If you're looking for outside income or other outside investments or outside help with your retirement, I guarantee other people else are doing it. Right, right.

Yeah. And we looked at the company one and we drilled that down and said, well, okay, who are the people most likely to have disposable income to invest? Well, probably VP and above. So you just go by. That's the beauty of LinkedIn. You can't do this on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or anything else. But with LinkedIn you can go right down to VP title, company, school, and most of it's free to do that kind of searching. That's the other thing. It doesn't cost you money to do this.

So what's the next step for most people? Should they just reach out with one of those annoying long ass emails like hey let's sign up for my stuff or let's do this. What do you have a three step or approach to building those genuine relationships online.

So the first message is I can guarantee you 20%. No, I'm kidding. So the first thing I always recommend is reach out and connect in a genuine way. Usually I find a lot of real estate investors want to stay local, at least initially. So when they're trying to build that portfolio, go from those three to five houses to maybe 10 or more, they're trying to stay local. So put yourself out there as the expert locally in that invite message. I always recommend putting something that's personal in the PS which is hey by the way, always love to hear about great new places in X City. Let me know if you know of any new restaurants or do you know any new stores or whatever it is once they're connected. Step two is to send a thank you message. Do not pitch, do not send anything, do not attach anything. Just send a thank you message back and say hey, my favorite place is this. Let's looking forward to staying in touch a couple of weeks later then go into a, you know, would something like this be of interest? If not, no worries. Again, nothing attached, no links, nothing like that. Just very casual and just slowly drip away Because I think the and the old adage in sales used to be you have to touch somebody seven times to get a sale and LinkedIn messaging why should it be any different?

Amy says was 80% of sales happens after the fifth contact of some sort or the fifth time you've seen you. How important is besides that connection aspect is then looking at seeing what those folks are posting or sharing or liking or commenting on those. Now I think I found something. I read an article the other day so he told me that only 3% of LinkedIn users post on a regular basis. Post on a daily basis for the most part. And I was blown away by that. It's crazy how little that's being taken advantage of.

That's probably the opposite in terms of Facebook.

Well, you're not seeing it though. Uncle Mark is hiding from everybody, right?

Exactly. Don't just do the like spend the time and add an extra comment and don't just oh yay, great for you or something like just make it meaningful make it like you really are caring that they've said something or they've posted something, but don't just do it for the sake of it. Again, it's going to look false, it's going to look inauthentic, it's not going to look genuine. I would say yes, that's one posting. I think people get overwhelmed if you say post daily, right. Because the chances are they've never posted anything in their life prior to getting on there or they've been on there for five years and never posted anything.

Right.

So I normally say two to three times a week. But again, it could be a combo of something personal, something business related, could be sharing some useful resource, pointing people somewhere else. You don't always get the traction on LinkedIn. I think pretty much every social media network now kind of clamps you down if you're putting external links and then obviously things like video are a great way to make connection. And LinkedIn was late to the party with that. But again, if as you're saying 3%, you've got a pretty good chance your video is going to get at least seen.

That was the number one thing I think with COVID We all wish we bought stock in Zoom back two years ago, but with LinkedIn not really opening up the live aspect of things and being very tight, gripped on. I know they're in the beta aspect of it, but I really think they missed out on a lot of people utilizing that for their meetings because they suffered from screen exhaustion. I think there's probably been more prescription glasses, eyeglass prescriptions written in the last two years than before. But you know, that's the thing is most people video, I'm a big believer and I think there's the stats to back it up. That video is really the way that you've got to really share your message or get people to understand who you are and help build rapport. If you can't meet in person, you've got to do something so they can kind of see if they identify it. As I always say, I'm not everybody's cup of tea and I'm fine not being everybody's cup of tea, but those that I am do really, really well with, you know what I mean?

The other one I've still getting good traction is polls and that's getting a lot of likes, a lot of views. Now people have to understand that somebody scrolling past your post counts as a view. So don't get excited when your numbers jump up. But if you can get the interaction, I mean the nice thing with poll is we've all got an opinion so people like to jump in and give their 2 cents worth. So that's why I think polls get good traction.

Polls do really good and I think it's a great way to keep it. Maybe some of the extremists, the leftists or the right is the people that like to shake it up a little bit. God knows we've got enough negative people out there. But great polls, like you said, it's a great way to kind of see what people's opinions are and people to interact a little bit more and then identifying who voted what or said what. Kind of maybe not another way to filter through your connections but another way to identify opportunities. Right, right.

And I'm not sure about, I mean they've just opened up to everybody, I think. At least it seems so because I keep getting them in my inboxes. Sign up for my newsletter via LinkedIn. I'm not sure about those. I haven't tried it and I haven't signed up for any. I don't need another newsletter. So.

Yeah, don't we all need another newsletter we don't read? They say email is still a very powerful tool to market with people. What are you talking or what are you teaching or kind of helping your clients? How much time should they spend on there? How much should they send out? What's the length should be. And we all know that I think the power of the shorter email is really gaining traction versus a long sales letters. Right.

I was hearing, can't remember the resource but apparently you have a link, a live link in the first third of the email. It gets picked up by Google and puts in spam much more regularly. You don't want to have anything, a live web link initially in that email somewhere down the bottom. Yeah. Keep it simple. One call to action. Always have a call to action, even if it's. You see it from people like Chris Brogan's an example. He always says in his Sunday email, I'm drinking a cup of whatever, some crazy tea that he's drinking and he always asks the question what are you drinking? Let me know. And that's a call to action. What you're trying to do is engage. You're just trying to get people to be used to taking action so that when you send something that's more business related and you want them to do something in terms of invest with you or whatever it is or inquire about something, then they're much more likely to do it because they're used to. They've built that trust with you that when you ask them to do something, you respond.

I think Gary Vee said it right, the jab, jab, jab, right hook aspect of things. So give, you know, what are you drinking, you know, want to hear from you, what's your favorite poison, you know, what's going on, what you doing for the holidays, you know, that people forget. I think, you know, one of the things we were always like, look, you got to communicate with your audience some sort of fashion, at least on a weekly basis. I think the daily emails get obviously spammed out or go to the junk mail, but once a week just to touch base. You know, we've been doing Note Night in America webinars almost every Monday night for like 11 years and it's such a great way just to touch base with the audience. But it's all an email. I know I got to send out one or two emails the day before or the week before to get people on it. It's just a little, hey, here's what we're talking about tonight. One call to action. And that repetitive has built trust over the years with people.

Right. I think some people are reluctant to put the personal touch in there and I'll give you a great example. So this weekend we had the chance to go up and just close up the cottage for the year. So this is the last visit. Of course, Canadian weather as it is, you never predict what's going to happen. So what do we get? We get hail on the Saturday and snow on the Sunday. So there you go, winter's here but no Internet as well. Internet was cut for 48 hours. So what happened was that I normally get my Sunday note out to people and I couldn't get it out there. So I sent the note on Monday saying, hey, life happens. And the response was incredible that people would come back and say, hey, yeah, gosh, yeah, I wish I could do without Internet for 48 hours. I'd be so happy. But I had nothing to say business wise or anything. I just said, still trying to be consistent. I'm still trying to say I'm out there every week, but this is the reason I was 24 hours late and it got a better response than you send a normal email. The best analogy I heard when you're looking at your activity on LinkedIn or wherever it's going to be and your email list is always. Michael Hyatt said it. If you view your website as your home country and treat all the social media networks as your embassies. So it gives people a flavor for your country. But what you want them to do is come visit. Obviously you can get them to the website and then get them on an email list. And the email is still by far the bang for your buck in terms of money, resources, time. Still the best value.

The different social media things. People always ask me, why are you doing this? I'm like, no, because my audience isn't there. There might be some there, but we only have so many times in the day, so many hours in the day, and we got to focus on where our audience is at for the most part. Email being that one spot and then LinkedIn's the number one. And then of course, we really love the podcast. Podcast in the last two years has become such a big thing out there. Did you get any people emailing you, like Sunday night? Hey, where are you? Are you okay? It's kind of like when you miss an episode and release an episode. People, are you okay? Did you die? Something happened. You know what I mean, right?

Yeah, no, I didn't. Oh, that's. That says something.

Well, maybe they're getting around to it on Monday. Waiting for giving you a 24 hour thing on that there for you. We talked a little about the branding and the consistency of marketing on a regular basis. And many people, like we said, don't know how to kind of brand their stuff. One of the things I was always like, I said, like, look, if you're doing something once a week, make it a systematic kind of marketing approach to things. You know, like, we can always send an email out. Like right now, you've got the holidays coming up, you know, Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Merry Christmas, Happy New Year's, you know, then Valentine's Day is February. That's a good kind of at least once a month promotional how. What do you kind of recommend for folks to fill in the rest?

You can get those calendars. It amazes me. There's a National day for everything.

National Margarita Day, you know, National Hot.

Dog Day, you know, that can be a little bit different. I mean, if you've got a little bit, you know, humor is part of your brand, then that's a great way to pick a different kind of message each time. You could pick other things, case studies, testimonials. And it doesn't have to be again, it's not in their face, but it's showing people that you're competent, you've got skills, you're good at what you do, you deliver on what you say. You're going to do. I think the other thing would be to collect. Sometimes I'll see something, and I think that might be a blog post. So quickly pull out the phone, snap a picture. Yeah, maybe it will be, maybe it won't be. The cottage was another good example. So we had some trees come down, cut them all up, put them all up in a nice pile of logs. It was very meditative. So I snapped a picture and I thought, well, you need to have thinking time in your business. Take a moment. So go stack some logs, you know, and people liked it. You know, again, you're relating everyday stories and relate it back to what you do or real estate investing or whatever it is you do.

Yeah, I think that's such a great counsel. There is share the personal, share what you're going through and a lot of things. I think that's the problem with Facebook and Instagram. So things. Everything's supposed to be so rosy. It's kind of like that whole Matrix complex. You know, where in the movie the Matrix they talk about, this is like the eighth version of Matrix. Why did the others fail? Because it was so perfect, nobody believed it. And that's the same thing when it comes to marketing. You gotta share the good, the bad, or, hey, I'm having an off day or something. Simple versus just buy my stuff or sign up for my stuff. Just something to laugh at yourself sometimes is the easiest thing. Or poking fun at yourself too gives people a little bit chance. Oh, he, he made fun of himself. Okay, so we can make fun of him and they're okay with it. You know what I mean?

In terms of brand, I think that, you know, people. You're right. People do struggle with kind of getting clear about what their brand is about. What do they stand for? And your values is a good way to, you know, great foundation exercise to do in terms of your brand passions is the other. I always ask the question to people, okay, you win the Max Lotto ball or whatever it is tomorrow, what are you gonna do? It's amazing how many people haven't really thought about that. I said, no, no, no, that's all taken care of. Oh, well, I go do this. Yeah, but what about the next week or the next month? What would you do then? And then you can start to really dig into people's true passions. Oh, well, that means I could do that. Okay, so why don't you share your passion for X as part of your brand messaging? Because there'll be other people out there that find that interesting.

Exactly. Another connection point versus just if you work with them or if you're age group or school, stuff like that, that's, that's that personal relationships that really builds the fibers for strong relationships in a lot of cases, you know. Yeah, you've been doing the branding aspect of me in person brand for what, 18 plus years, almost 20 years now. If not, what would you say is the biggest mistake you've ever seen somebody make? A couple people make when it comes to branding, I think the Elon Musk smoking weed on Joe Rogan, if you look at the, just the dollar value of Tesla dropping a day, but for him, that's his personality, who gives a shit? Right?

Right. It's part of his brand. So I guess probably two things. One is the things that you're so naturally good at, you underestimate. Something that I use with the clients is we use as a personal brand assessment, it's a 360. So it's not like a corporate 360 though. It's an opportunity for people to go and get feedback from other people as to their perception of your brand. What words would they use to describe you? What skills do they think you have? And the other question, one of the other questions is, what's your greatest strength and why? When I run through the results with clients, 9 times out of 10, 99 times out of 100, I say, well, people see this as your number one strength. The reaction is, oh, yeah, but I do that all the time. You don't communicate it. People know it and they really value it. But you're not putting it out there to other people that might be interested in that kind of strength. And so that people underestimate the value of what they already do. They're always trying to improve that weakness. And I think it was Marcus Buckingham, the strengths finder guy, said, you'll never make a weakness. You'll only get a weakness to a point of mediocrity. You'll never make it a strength. So why put all that energy into that when you could find other ways to get that weakness dealt with? Or you could at least minimize it or minimize the impact on your brand. But strength, if you double down on your strengths, then you got it made. So I think that's one. The other is everybody trying to be everything to everyone and it's just dilutes things. It really does. People get confused. You're right. Is he this or is he that or is she? Does she do that? I can't. Oh, well, that's it. Brain switch off, go somewhere else, find somebody else. That has a clearer message, you know.

And that's a common thing in real estate with real estate investors. Is there try to be a jack of all trades. I do this and this and this. Or we've all gotten those business cards at meetings where they flip it over and they got 12 different things they do. And I'm like, this means you're not good at any one of these. I can't think of that. But you need to know one thing and focus on one thing and master that before you add a second kind of focus. Right, right.

Because you think of the people you refer and somebody says, do you know somebody that does this? I know somebody does that because that's all he does. Or she does this and this, but she's really good at that. If that's how you refer people, then are people doing the same for you?

Right. That's such a huge thing. Now, going back to the first point made about, you know, focusing on your strengths and trying to delegate it, what are some of the best ways you're helping your clients delegate duties or marketing that they may not be good at? Some tips for doing that.

So the personal brand strategist doesn't always follow his best advice. And I did not for years. I counsel my clients on get help, hire a va, whatever else. But did I do it myself? Nope. I'll be honest, no. That one thing completely changed my business 12, 15, 18 months ago. It was timed around Covid. And you think, oh well, maybe you've got more time to do stuff. I had a team of part time VAs, but then my VA company came to me and said, you should take a full time va. I said, well, I can't fill eight hours. They said, well, how many hours are you working yourself right now? It was a great coaching question. And I said, 10 12. Okay, so half that, everything that you do at least three times the same you should not be doing unless that is your unique skill that brings in revenue or what. And so I did that and oh, what a difference. And completely not just change the business, but I mean just change the way I, I operate, change the way I look forward to doing things outside of work. Because now I can, I think, okay, I could take an hour there or I can take the afternoon off or. And you know, before you'd be thinking, oh, well, I'm not quite sure. And then you. I think the advice on that as well is do it before you need it. Hire somebody as a VA and then figure out how you're going to fill their time. Not sit there trying to figure out all the tasks and everything you're going to give them ahead of time. You'll never get to that point because you're going to be end up being busy doing it yourself all the time. Don't second guess just because they're going to be three times slower than you can do it initially. Let it go, Let them do it. Don't lose sleep over it. It's a little bit of a learning process, but I'd say that's the biggest difference. Pretty much all my clients end up hiring a VA to some degree.

I've always said, listen, if you want to make 100 grand, hire somebody because they will do all the stuff that's below your hourly income level or they'll do the things that you don't need to be doing that you're wasting your time and delegating it. Starting off part time with somebody, 20 hours a week, that's four to five hours a day. That's a lot of stuff that we get tied down with contracts or evaluations or due diligence in the real estate space. Show somebody how to do it once, record it via zoom or video.

Right.

And it's one of the most valuable. You got to train them and they're not psychic. You got to communicate with them. I've seen some of the big names out there, people I know, they're like, oh, yeah, doing all your stuff was like, you can't do it all yourself. You will burn out eventually. Or you're not. It's a whole. You're leaving a lot of money on the table. Take what you're making an annual basis, a double it. Because you could clone somebody to do all the stuff that you don't want to do for the most part.

Yeah, exactly. Yep.

What's the most interesting that you've outsourced? I think of the movie with the multiplicity where the guy outsourced the work guy, then the love guy and then the homemaker guy.

I have had clients do that. So I've got one client and she outsources all her meals. So chef turns up once a week, cooks all the meals for the week, sticks them in the fridge labeled Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And that's just not her. She doesn't like cooking. It's not what she enjoys doing. She figures, I'll outsource it. Why not?

Why not? Especially if it's something you dislike doing, somebody's probably going to make a better and healthier meal for you. He spends a couple hours cooking it Saves you an hour to two hours a night. That's exponential greatness. That's worth. Especially if it's cheaper than takeout or at the same cost of takeout, at least on a meal by meal basis, it's healthier and better for you. That's awesome, right? What do you see with marketing and being such a chaotic thing and it's constantly changing, especially with so much going on and the upheaval of Facebook and people talking about getting off that platform or trying to find other things. What are you kind of doing to prepare for next year?

I'm seeing podcasts, as I've heard some great descriptions recently about podcasts. The fact that. How personal it really is because you're right in the ears of somebody right there. It's almost like having a conversation with them or it's as close as you'll have to a conversation without actually meeting the person. And I think that has a lot of power and value for people. So I think you're going to see. Are there other things that are going to come along in audio? Possibly. What I personally love about listening to podcasts is I can be doing something else.

Cloning the ears, baby. Outsourcing the ears. Exactly. It's interesting. You brought up the whole thing of other things. Talking about replacing podcasts. Clubhouse, a great example. Clubhouse. Everybody was all excited about it at first and thought it was really great. But then it's really taken off the deep end. I used to spend quite a bit of time on there. Don't spend any time on there at all. It was a lot of the same people regurgitating the same thing. It wasn't the same thing as being able to put a class together or episodes together to really, I guess you could say, clone our brains, which is what a lot of us are doing with our podcasts, sharing with our inner thoughts. A lot of times.

I think the other big thing is we've all tried or a lot of us have tried to control our own community, have our own community. All those kind of trying to get people away from the big networks. And the biggest challenge is that's a habit. It's a habit to go to Facebook 17 times a day, at least for some people. It's even a habit with LinkedIn. You don't have to be there every day. If you can be there three, four, five times a week, you'll get pretty proficient and noticed pretty quickly. Why go through all the angst of trying to create your own community when most people will default to one of the big ones? Doubling down on that next year will be. Eventually you'll get people back to your website. Eventually you'll get people signing up and exchanging their email for something that you're giving them. So you'll get that connection eventually. But use your resources and time wisely in terms of marketing yourself and getting out there. And as you rightly pointed out earlier, Scott, go hang out where everybody else is already hanging out. I mean, those have already been created. And yeah, that may mean Facebook then. That takes a little bit of discipline to stop yourself going down a rabbit hole for half an hour because you suddenly saw a video and then a post and then something else.

I was cracking up today that people literally. I mean, I get it, people like to follow, but the whole people playing video games and then everybody just watching somebody play video games for hours and hours and hours on end. I think maybe it's a different generation and things here, but for the most part, Mike, I guess you have no time. You too busy following. How are you getting anything done? Being productive? Well, I don't think you see productive people doing that, obviously, first and foremost, for the most part.

My youngest, they're 18. They will sit and watch somebody else playing a video game. If you think about sport, I mean, that's kind of what we do.

I can get it if somebody's got a soccer match on or they're playing a football game, I get that. But driving a farm or a tractor, that was the thing that showed up in the Facebook feed earlier today. Somebody's driving a tractor, I'm like, they got like 2,000 people. Like, I'm doing something wrong. Watching Scott type an email, watching Scott record a video. You know.

I guess. I guess it has been done. Has it? I mean, Gary Vaynerchuk, you mentioned Gary. I mean, yeah, he has two videographers following him all the time, you know, just basically filming what he does. I mean, now it's probably not what everybody wants to watch, but he's. I mean, he was early in that.

Yeah, he was very early on that. But they. It was always giving good stuff. I make the joke that I had to turn for me to be successful. I don't stop watching Gary Vee because I would spend an hour every morning watching the Gary Vee show, and I'm like, wait a second. I'm wasting my morning when I just need. He's saying the same 12 things every time in just a different way for the most part. And he's the first one that'll tell you that. Turn me off. If you Want to go be successful. So yep, true thing there. Talk about your client, who's kind of your main clients for you, Paul? Somebody who's brand new, what they're doing, They've been doing what they've been doing as an entrepreneur for a little while. Got their hustle on what's kind of your ideal client that you work with.

Yeah, typically the clients I work with are they've been in real estate investing for a while. They may still be working full time, but they're thinking about getting out of the 9 to 5 and how they're going to do that and let real estate investing do that for them. And they may have reached the limit in terms of A lenders, the banks won't lend above certain banks here in Canada, five houses, seven houses if you're lucky, then you're maxed out. So then it's into the private money, B lenders. So they then realize that they perhaps need a message or something to present that says this is who I am, this is what I've been able to do. So that's typically so the real estate investors, professionals outside of that, realtors, but they tend to be still real estate investors as well. People that need some work around, clarity around their message, how do they differentiate themselves? And then some have gone a little bit beyond that. So one, actually one or two of my clients now do coaching of other real estate investors. So it typically happens is they build a reputation of visibility and then somebody says well could you teach me what you're doing? And they think, oh well, what's a coaching program? How do I pull a coaching program together? So we help them with that. I have a client that I've been working with now for four years and when we initially started all they had was they didn't even have a business card. Interestingly though, they had a podcast and they had quite a good podcast and quite successful but it wasn't consistent. So I said okay, first things first, we need to be consistent with this, right? Then we can work on website. And so they didn't have a website. So everything now. So originally they were full time employed and last year they quit the 9 to 5. We replaced all their corporate income with additional passive income or not passive income, but additional income beyond the real estate portfolio though. So coaching, sponsorship, all those kind of things. So helping people build a real business, real estate business, real estate investing business versus yeah, I've got two or three houses and for some people, two, three, four, five houses, that's enough. That's all they want that's probably not the person I'm going to help because they don't need that to go to that next level that they're looking for.

Well, that's the thing. I agree that a lot of investors, when they get in and they've built a name and done good stuff, the coaching program often is the next step for them to exchange their time for their hour and their knowledge versus just answering questions all day. I think we all have dealt with assholes and you have to monetize your time. So those that can pay for your time, it becomes much more valuable. Those are people that end up ultimately having some sort of investment and that time is valued a lot more free has no value. As we all know in a lot of cases, aspect of things. I mean, that's what we did. We were buying debt, buying debt, buying debt. People say, well, can you show me how to do it? I'm like, yeah, sure. Let's figure it as we go and go from there. So the natural progression, those that are always looking to take their business to the next level and I think many entrepreneurs out there that they want to do that, they want to go, what's next? What's next? And get rock and rolling. What's the best way for our listeners, Paul, to reach out to you, to connect with you, talk about working with it, see what's in that 360 degree breakdown or that evaluation that you mentioned earlier.

Yeah, thank you. So reibranded.com is the website or paulcopcut.com and then connect with me on LinkedIn. That's where I spend most of my time. Yeah, I'm on Facebook and Instagram. But if you message me, I might see it in a week if I happen to notice the red button up there because I'm trying to avoid it. Not in a bad way. It just, it's just not my priority.

Well, those two things have been bombarded with so many spams and bots and stuff like that too. I agree. If I get a message on LinkedIn, that's usually unless it's a text to me, my phone. Yeah, it's the best place to connect with him on there. We'll have his LinkedIn profile and URL in the call notes in the description. Everybody. Paul, this has been a pleasure, man, visiting with you, picking the brain and talking about marketing and real estate all in one. But two of my favorite passions, man.

Right? Yeah, it's been a pleasure, Scott. Great, great time. Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah, guys, gals, go out there, take some action. Look up Paul, connect with him on LinkedIn, take him up on a reach out to this guy. There's a lot of people that call themselves a brand expert, but when somebody's got two decades of doing it and has been through different trends, that's who you want to deal with. So reach out to Paul, give him a phone call or a LinkedIn message and get the ball wrong. But go out, take some action. If you really want to take your game to a whole next level in 2022, start there and start now. And we'll see you all at the top. Everybody. Bye.

Sam.