Why You Need A Human Connection Over Technology—It’s Important For Your ROI

Three. Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and we got a lot going on. We've got Lone geek and flight school and tons of new goodies coming out. But before we we go into plug fest mode, I think it's important to introduce my co host, Scott Todd from scotttodd.net landmodo.com and if you are not automating your Craigslist postings for some odd reason, you got to go to posting domination.com thelandgeek Scott Todd. How are you, Mark?

I'm awesome. How are you?

I'm great. I'm excited for today's guest. He's a big deal.

Look, we are getting a lot of big deal guests here.

Yeah, this guy's a big deal. Yeah. Because the Art of Passive Income podcast keeps getting people to, if you subscribe, rate, review the podcast, we can keep getting big deal guests. It's really, really important. It takes 30 seconds. It really, really helps us get these quality guests. So let's talk about Ted Rubin for a second. Should we talk about them?

Absolutely. Let's talk away.

All right, so Ted Rubin is a leading social marketing strategist, keynote speaker, brand evangelist, and acting CMO of Brand Innovators. Ted Rubin, how are you? You're good. Can you hear me?

Did you just say my name?

Yeah, yeah.

How are you?

Yeah, well.

You tapped out for just that quick second. I heard all the rest of that stuff, by the way. You guys are really what this show is about. It's not about me. It's really not about the guests. It's about what you guys are doing. So I'm really excited to be here. Thanks for having me, and thanks for bringing me on board. And thank you for keeping that bio and all that nonsense really short.

Yeah, yeah, no worries. So, Ted, how does Ted Rubin become Ted Rubin? Like, what's your, what's your. Your superhero story? What's your origin story?

You know, there's. There's no, there's no superhero story. And first of all, like, you know, I'm not an expert. I'm not a guru. I just, I'm just a guy that says what he thinks and engages with people. And really, to me, that is really the key. It's understanding that you don't build a personal brand. You don't build a following overnight. It takes. It takes hard work. It really takes just being, I like to say, being who you are and being authentic. That's at least my Style. I'm not taking anything away from the guys that have, you know, developed a particular Persona, whether and whether or not it's exactly who they are. But maybe it's more about something they believe in. But for me, which I think the question was really about, it's just about. It's about being myself. It's about. It's about talking about what I believe in. It's about taking the years of experience I've had and kind of bringing it together and sharing it with others. And more importantly, it's about learning every day about what people want to hear about what's important to them, what works for them. And, you know, I like to say that I don't just talk about shit. I do it. So I don't. I very rarely have ever told a brand to do something I haven't tried to do myself. And that's really how it's worked for me.

I love it. Scott. Todd, I think Ted's onto something here. What do you think?

Yeah, I think so. Look, I think that, you know, I think that there's a lot of. I think that there's a lot of ingenuous activities like on social media, and people put out there what they think a market wants. And really what I think people want is they just want you to be yourself. And I know that even like Mark, within our business, there's people that they struggle like, do I want to be this big company, even though it's just me and my wife, you know, And I think that what people really connect with and what people really crave and desire, even from big brands, is they just want. They just want people to be people and not, you know, robots, not artificial things. They just want people to be people. And you see that. I mean, you see two extremes on social media. You see people that are. That are not themselves and they're, you know, robotic. And they think that, you know, they put out there what people, what they think people want. And then you have those brands and those people that are just genuine, real people, and those are the people that connect with other people.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And we talk about this a lot at bootcamp, you know, starting from the inside out. Like, what's your why? And what's interesting to me about what Ted is doing is that I don't know if he even realizes it, but we all need to become a brand because huge swaths of the economy are going to go away, right? We have in, you know, it. It's coming, right? Disruption is coming. AI is here. Self driving cars are here, right?

Huge.

I mean, jobs are going to go away. And if you're not sort of creating your own brand and you're in figuring out a way to create value out in the world, in the marketplace, I don't know what you're gonna do. Ted Rubin, what are your thoughts?

Well, first of all, I love what Scott said about being human, because it's something I talk about a lot. And I try to make brands understand this because they're all looking for. Everybody wants to know, what's the best app to scale your engagement? What's the best way to give people quick answers? And all they want to come up with is simple ways to make it less human. And what they're misunderstanding, in my opinion, is that the world has come full circle. You know, there was that day where everything was personal, everything was human. You walked into your local grocer or your local general merchant. He knew you, he knew your family. He knew if he recommended something that sucked, you were going to be back the next day and wanting to return it and complain about it, or you might not want to deal with him anymore. And then all of a sudden, mass merchandise came around. Everybody thought we were anonymous when we really were. They were tracking us the whole time, even before all the latest technologies. I mean, American Express knew every single purchase you made and every single thing you did. And companies got you into their loyalty programs not to give you shit for free, but so they could track you and know what were doing. And it was all behind the scenes. And women thought they could go to the supermarket and hair curlers and nobody would see them. You know, now everybody realizes that there is no privacy, that there is no anonymity, that everything's being tracked. And they're willing to give up all that information as long as you get value in return, as long as you feel you're not just being upsold, but you're being sold something better or your trip to the supermarket. Sure, you might walk out with more things because you can get in and out faster. But what's more important is you're getting in and out faster. You're getting done what you need to get done in a better, more efficient way. So what I think is people want that human side. They don't want to be a number. They want you to know who they are. They want you to know the last thing they purchased. And there's almost no excuses for this anymore. Why do I keep going back into Lowe's and the guy doesn't have a clue who I am or does he not remember what he showed me last time? It's so easy for these associates to have iPads, to have equipment, especially from these Fortune 500 companies is where it should be easiest, but they're making it harder. So now let's take us to the thing that you were talking about, Mark, after that, about finding our own way and ways to build our personal brands. I've been talking to Tori Johnson about this for years, back when she ran her business that helped women get jobs. You know, then she had her. She has her segment on Good Morning America, and we were talking about how things have changed. And sure, you still might have a job and you might have it for a lot of years, but you never know when it's going to change. And you could also add to your income in so many different ways, and it might not be dollars and cents. It can be that word value. And value comes in a lot of different forms. Value is having more time for your family. Like I like to say, everything comes down to return on investment. I talk about return on relationship. And a mistake a lot of people make is they think I'm saying return on relationship versus roi. They go, oh, Ted Rubin, saying ROI is not important. We have to look at ror. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that return on relationship will enhance ROI in every form. It comes to you because everything comes down to return on investment, even in your personal life. Do I give time to that charity? Do I get something back that means something to me? Do I give time to my family, to my friends? It's all about what we, you know what? And by the way, getting something in return doesn't mean something physical, doesn't mean somebody's time. It could be just a good feeling we get from smiling at somebody, even if they don't smile back at us. I mean, I've learned, you know, I've come to a point in my life and the challenges I've been through, that I just want to be happy and I want to be nice to other people. You know, I use a hashtag, just be nice. I've adopted something called be good to people from a woman, Chris Wittenberg. Because what I've learned is it's not just about being good to other people. It makes me feel better. It takes that angst out of my system and out of my body. When my initial reaction when someone bumps into me is to get angry. And you can feel all that negative energy and how it hurts you. But when I stop for a second and I just smile and say, hey, you know, nice to see you today. And that person kind of looks at you like, really like you didn't get pissed. It's amazing how much better it makes you feel. So, you know, I just think that we all have to start thinking about, you know, how we position ourselves and, you know, back to something like we were talking about right back in the beginning about being yourself. It's so much easier to be yourself than somebody else. And, you know, people say to me all the time, you walk the walk or, you know, you are like, what you preach, you actually live that way. And for me, you know, I think it's not just something to be proud of. It makes my life easier. I don't have to think about what I said last time. I don't have to remember, was I the TED that was pushing vitamins and therapy on that call, or was I the TED that was saying, oh, that's nonsense. You know, exercise is more important. You know, I had a. I don't know how much, you know, guys know about me or your audience knows about me, but part of my personal brand is a part of who I am is I had to fight to keep my kids in my life. And I use a hashtag, this dad won't quit. I have a Twitter handle, this dad won't quit. And it was, it was. It's still a long, drawn up process. My daughters are 19 and 21, and I still have to fight for them because of the roadblocks that are put in the way by my ex wife. And a couple of things I learned from that. One was that I really wanted to be happy instead of angry, you know, and I wanted to change that. And the other thing was that when I was going through this battle, you know, I would be in court all the time and almost every attorney, unfortunately in the county got to know me because I was there. This thing went on for so long and some of them came up to me and said, you know, if there was something called a designated. A designated, oh my God, my head is. I'm losing my train of thought. You know, when you're on the stand and you're a designated testifier, you could make a fortune like a designated hitter in baseball. And I said, actually, I couldn't because the only reason I'm so good at it is I'm just saying what happened. I'm not making up stories. I'm not stopping to think. And I think in our personal lives, in our personal brands, in what we do in business, it's really important to be that way. And I also think as consumers and as employees of companies and as small business owners, because you might not work for somebody, but you have to maybe answer to your customers. We need to be able to be who we are. And this has really come to the attention of a lot of people recently with the election, you know, and I'm very into speaking my mind. I think this is a time to use my social presence and my influence and my platforms and everything I've built to say what I believe in. And I think everybody should, whether you're on, no matter which side you come from. And there's been all these people saying, oh, you know, you shouldn't talk about that. It can hurt your personal brand and you could lose customers. And I'm like, well, you shouldn't be disrespectful. You shouldn't be unprofessional. You shouldn't be a dick. I hope that's okay to say that on your show. But you should most certainly speak about what you're passionate about. Now, if you're not passionate about it, and you couldn't care less, but that's fine, too. But I don't think that there's been so many social media, quote, unquote, experts telling people that, number one, you shouldn't be talking about politics online. Number two is you shouldn't be. Don't waste your time. You'll never change someone's mind, really. So we can change their mind about Oreos, but we can't change their mind about something that's actually really important to us. So in other words, all these social media experts are selling their services to brands to influence people via social media, but nobody changed their minds on social media. So, bringing this way back to the beginning question, because I tend to go up. My head's like a Twitter feed. I can go off on tangents a bit. So I apologize. But to bring it back to your original thing, if you say what you feel, if you are, who you are, if you tell the people you work for, listen, listen, I'm not gonna be disrespectful. I'm not gonna do anything against our brand. But on social media, I wanna be able to say that I think it's important that kids have lunches at school, or I think it's important that everybody has the right to vote. Or again, whatever that thing is, whether it's supporting Hillary Clinton, whether it's supporting Donald Trump, whoever it is, you should be able to speak your mind. And that also, I think People wanna know who you are. And look, I certainly have lost respect for people that are nasty and angry and say, h. But I gained more respect for my friends, even the ones who don't have my political opinions, for having conversations that let me understand how they're thinking. Yeah.

Ted, I think it's interesting that, you know, you're so out there about everything, because I can imagine a Fortune 500 company be like, oh, that's. You know, we don't do that. That is not our business.

Well, let me just say one thing real quick. I'm not selling a brand. They should be talking about that. I'm not talking about companies. I'm talking about individuals.

Okay, okay. But even an individual, right? Like, let's take me, for example, or Scott, right? You know, the fear would be, hey, look, if I put my political views out there, I'm going to lose 50% of my market because the country is so split, right? It's so divisive. And Scott and I have talked politics a little bit, and it's interesting because, like, I've got a neighbor, right, who has a libertarian sign on their. On their lawn, or what's his name? Gary Johnson, right? The nicest people, right? I don't share political belief. And I kind of thought to myself, like, well, what's going on with them? Right? And I came back to myself and I thought, you know what? I'm lacking empathy for this guy, right? And that's what I think it is. I think we're lacking empathy politically, right? It's hard, and it's hard work to step out of your shoes and imagine what it's like to have those. To have that story or to be that person and believe the way they believe based on, you know, they're, you know, they're tapping into something. And I don't want to go there because it's hard work. Scott, do you feel the same way?

Yeah, I mean, you know, like.

There'S.

Times where, you know, like, it's hard to be kind of empathetic. Like, it's almost like I don't want to necessarily be involved in that aspect, you know, so you kind of just, like, you just ignore it. You keep the blinders on. You just keep marching to your own drum as opposed to stopping and looking and kind of wondering. I mean, Ted, you kind of said a lot there, which is. I mean, you had a lot of key points. I mean, one of the things that I think that you hit on, and it's kind of something that I personally believe in too. Is, you know, you were talking about how, you know, you walk into a Fortune 500 company and they don't know you. You know, and they can have iPads and there's all the other stuff. And I gotta tell you, I agree with you.

There's so.

There's so much technology in the world today that literally where I feel like doing business the most is with companies that know me. You know, and it's. It's not necessarily about the technology that drives that, but because I go to, like, the same places every day. Mark gives me Mark. Mark harasses me for, like, going to Panera Bread. But you know what? I go to Panera Bread and I walk in and they know me, right? They know. They know what I want. I can go to another restaurant. I go to his first.

Watch.

I sit down and the waitresses, they know me because I'm consistent. I go to McDonald's and I get a tea. Before I'm even pay. Finished, paying, they're giving me the cup, right? It's that level of personalized service, but that's really the people caring. It's about the people making the connection with the other people.

And, you know, it's about the culture. It's whether they want to make. They want to empower people to do that, right?

And I think that, you know, like, and I think that where generations that are, like, younger than me, like, I look at my kids. My kids are very active, like, on Twitter and other social media platforms. And it's amazing to see, like, what Marcus said, Mark said. You know, everybody's building a brand. Well, you see these people that, you know, like, my. My children are connecting with on social media, not in a bad way, but they're. They're connecting with these people, and they're building their own brands. These other people are building their own brands, and they're connecting with their audience. And, you know, you don't need hundreds of thousands of people to move the needle in your life. You just need a thousand of your own followers, people that connect with you. And then all those other things take place. Like, you know, if you're supporting one political candidate, well, odds are that the people that are following you are probably supporting that person too. Because we like people that are like ourselves. So you should be yourself. You should put it out there, you know, like, you should. And it's an uncomfortable feeling. But, you know, I don't. I'm not always gonna agree with my friend or I'm not gonna always agree with Mark, whether it's political or something. But that doesn't mean that we can't be friends, you know, it doesn't mean that, oh, you're gonna vote for that person. I don't like you anymore. It just means that.

I don't think you're going to lose business because of it. I don't think that the people who disagree with you are going to look now, if your business sucks, that might be the excuse they need to leave it. But if you're providing value, if you're doing something good for them, they're not going to leave. Now again, if you're really nasty, if you say horrible things back, if you post things that are inappropriate on their pages, well, that's a different story because that leads towards your character. But if it's just about your beliefs in general and also understand I'm not telling everybody they need to do this. What I'm saying is if you want to do it, you shouldn't not do it because of these things. I'm not saying you're dropping the ball if you're not sharing this kind of content. That's absolutely not true. Your choice might be. I want to keep my political proclivities to me, like to myself. I'm not that passionate that I want to change other people's minds. That's fine too. The point I'm making is you should be able to do what's important to you and you need to be who you are and you shouldn't just not have to do it. I mean, I've had a few people reach out to me and I'm not going to name companies or names who have reached out to me privately saying, oh my God, I love what you're posting. I really support it, but I can't even like it for fear that my employer will see it, you know, and that it just shouldn't be that way. And plus, I think they'd be surprised. I don't think their employer is going to, is going to let them go because they liked something.

One follow up thing is a very. An author or social media expert, Guy Kawasaki, right. You know, I'm sure you know of him. He, as a political season ramped up, he started posting links because he does a lot of content curation. He started posting links to articles especially about the candidate he liked. And he had a people, he had people that disagreed with his political post. However, in one post I remember I was reading like the comments and someone said, why are you doing this? You're alienating, you know, half your people. And he Said the number of trolls and the number of comments is taking my engagement on Facebook so high, I'm crazy not to. And I'm like, that's genius. He's dialed into it. He realizes that the level of engagement, it pushes that post out to more people. More people see his name. It reinforces his brand just off of the content of others.

Yeah, it's really interesting to be doing this. So, Ted, if you said, look, if I asked you, look, there's so many social media channels now. You got Facebook, you got LinkedIn, you've got Twitter, you've got Snapchat. Right. And we only have so much, so many hours in a day. Right. And you're a real estate investor. And he could only dedicate time to one. Which one would you choose today?

Okay, my answer to that would be I would start looking at the market I'm in. That means what area of the country, who my clients are, what level of investor I'm looking at and I would have to make. I cannot say that it's one platform in general. It would depend on who I'm dealing with. I mean, I say this to anybody, no matter what business they're in. Yes, time is limited. Not everybody has time to be on every platform. My advice is don't be on platforms you don't really have time for unless you make it clear to people you're not going to engage there. But I think it's really important to look at your market and determine it might be Instagram, it might be Facebook, it might be Twitter. It all depends on what's happening. Every area of the country is different, every segment of the market is different. So I can't make it easy for your audience. I can't tell them just use Facebook. And some people might go there thinking it is certainly the biggest platform with the most reach and the most tools. I mean, all else being equal, I might say that. But I would also look very closely at who your people are.

Great answer, great answer, Scott. Todd, you're on Snapchat, right?

Sometimes I like Snapchat, but then, you know, it's really, really turns out to.

Be.

The 13 year old, the 15 year old, the 18 year olds. You know, my son's friends love me on Snapchat.

Yeah, it's like, yeah, you got to know your market. So like my Ted, my problem is I'm not showing up consistently. Like, I go on periscope erratically and I just show up, right. Maybe, you know, one week I'll show up four times, the next week, once I show up at least once, but it's a problem, I think, for me, that I'm not consistently doing it. What do you think?

Well, it all depends on what your goal is. Now. You're absolutely right. If your goal is to build up a strong following on one of those platforms, whether it be Snapchat or let's just take Periscope, which, you know, which is interesting. Periscope, Facebook Live for the real estate industry certainly have their great uses. If it's important to you to build up a strong following there for people to show up whenever you're on, then consistency is everything. Look, I'm sure that this consistency to your podcast, it goes out at a certain time. People are alerted to it. They know what it is. They basically know the kinds of guests you have. They're not going to be totally surprised about what they come on for. And then your audience grows gradually, sometimes very quickly, but it's going to have a steady kind of growth, and people get used to it. So if your goal is that you want to be the land guy, let's say, on Periscope, then you need to be on there consistently and more rather than less. It's always okay to be there more than your scheduled times. But again, if that was your goal, then I'd want to be. Whether it was every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. You know, you can count on Mark and Scott to be on Periscope talking about their latest deals.

Yeah, it's good advice. I think what happens is, you know, it's like a drug, right? I want that immediate hit, right? Because I look at Grant Cardone, he's got 10,000 people on his periscope, right. I've got 18. I'm like, oh, well, you know, look, If I had 18 people come to my house and talk to me for five minutes, I'm honored. I'm humbled. Amazing, right? 18 people gave me their attention for five minutes. Right. Like, I think I, you know, I can do a better job of it. The problem is taking.

Yeah, there's no doubt that. But if those 18 people were the same 18 people every time, and each one of them were in your business or relevant to what you were doing, then. Absolutely. There's a lot of talk about people with smaller followings have much more influence than people with larger following. When there are people that actually take action based on the things they hear from these people. But again, I have to go back to your original point. It's about consistency. I mean, it doesn't matter if you have 10,000. If you have 300 that come regularly and that do something that's important for you. So just to give you an example, I just had a breakout post that I posted and it's gotten close to 400 shares on Facebook. So it's an article I shared and it's gotten shared close to 400 times now. Now that does not happen very often for me. I'll tell you, I'm lucky when something that I post get shared once or twice. That doesn't mean the amount of people that came to see it, the amount of impressions, the amount of likes. I'm talking about people that shared it now. It was one of the few times I asked people to share something. So I also try things like that. Like, oh my God, like I asked. I don't ask often because again, when you ask too much, people start, you know, you lose that sense of urgency. Like, oh yeah, Mark asked me something every day and wants me to share something. I very, very rarely ask people to share stuff. I'm happy when they do. I thank them when they do. But I rarely put those words in there that say, please share this. And you know, it gives you a little bit of a view into the virality you can have from all this work you've done over time when and if either you. I don't know if it was because I asked. I don't know if it was because of the topic. But I'm also going to try to figure that out. I'm going to do, I'm going to, I'm going to look a little deeper, like, was it a combination of everything? Was it the topic? Was it the political climate? Was it the fact that I asked? But these are things we all need to learn from. And then again, make decisions based on your time, what you can, how you can devote yourself to things and what's most important to you as far as end results.

All right, fantastic. Well, Scott, Todd, we're at that time now.

Yeah, just one other, one other, one other thing. There's just one other follow up to what he said. What Ted said is that I found that like when I send out an email blast to people and I ask, hey, please forward this to someone that you know that could benefit from this. And I don't do it all the time, but when I really want to push something, I'll do that. And then you see it, you see it get shared. It's a, you know, it's a little thing is like you just have in your emails to people, you just need to be very, very clear what you, what you want them to do. You want them to go look at something, give them the link and say, click here to see. You know what I'm talking about. You want them to share, ask them to share. You want to call you, ask him to call you. But the worst thing ever is getting to the bottom of the email. You're like, I don't know what the guy wants me to do. Was he just sharing information? Save my time, Delete, you know, make sure that you have that call to action email with what you want.

Scott, that, that's such a great point. I'm so glad you brought that up. That's really important because, I mean, I have to always remember that for myself and remembering that for, you know, with reminding other people to do that. And then the second part of that, which you touched on very briefly but then didn't continue, was make it easy for them. So I tell people all the time, if you ask me to share something, pre write something for me, say to me, you can edit this any way you want, but just in case you'd like to share it this way, now you've done it for me. And I do a lot of that. People reach out to me all the time, say, ted, I'm going to be going online soon. I'm raising money for this, or I'm supporting this cause I'm doing something. I would you mind sharing? And I say, do me a favor, make it easy for me. Send me what you'd like me to share, and then I'll edit in a way that works for me. And I just think that's really important as well.

Awesome.

I love it. Yeah. That clear call to action is so, so important. And, you know, I see it as a huge mistake that other, you know, land sellers make is that they'll put up an ad and there's no clear call to action, and they just lose them. So. Okay, Ted Rubin, we'll put you on the spot now. You ready? You sweating? I'm going to ask.

Hold on a second. Let me, let me shake it off a minute. Okay.

All right, let's go.

You good? You good? Okay, I'm going to ask you for your tip of the week. A website resource, a book, something actionable, where the art of passive income model listeners can go right now, Improve their businesses, improve their lives, improve. What do you got?

Okay, here it is. Everybody out there, everybody in your audience. I'm going to make an assumption, but I'm going to assume that the vast majority of them have smartphones. Okay. And Even if they don't, they all have phones, right? But all of you guys have smartphones and I would bet you that every one of you has apps on those smartphones. So you all have all different apps. You can do all different things. But most of you forget that there's an app that comes pre built into that phone that every single one of you have and most of you don't use. It's on a screen and there are the numbers 0 to 9, and if you press on 7 to 10 of them, somebody actually answers the phone. You can hear someone's voice and have a real conversation. It's remarkable. Okay, so here's the tip I'm going to give you. Here's the challenge I'm going to give you. And by the way, when they do pick up that phone, you can scream, you can whisper, you can laugh, you can cry. You do not have to use emoticons to express emotion. So here's my challenge. My challenge is for the next 30 days, pick up the phone once a day and call someone you haven't spoken to in a while. Okay? If you haven't spoken to your mom, then pick up the damn phone and call your mom and make her day. But call people. And then here's what I'm going to suggest you do. Make it easy for them. Because the reason a lot of people don't answer the phone is they're worried you're going to keep them on the phone for too long. I mean, it's why guys love text, because they don't have to go through that. So, how's your day? What do you want for dinner? That kind of a thing that happens with their wives. It's why guys love where they can just go, see you later. But here's what you do. Pick up the phone, call somebody every day and just say, how are you doing? Is there anything I can do to help you today? And if they want to talk, be prepared to talk for a few minutes. And if they say, hey, you know, Mark, I'm really busy, really can't talk right now, say, hey, listen, it was great hearing your voice. Call me whenever you need something. I'm here to support you. And then get off the phone. Now, if you can do more than one a day, God bless you, but try at least once a day. Now here's what happened. People say, oh, that doesn't scale how many people you can you touch. But remember this. A brand is what a business or a person does. A reputation is what people remember and share. And by Doing this, you will build your reputation. People will tell other people, oh, my God, Scott called me today. Oh, my God, Scott called me again. It's amazing. And they will share that with each other and your brand and your reputation will grow and people will feel much more connected to you.

Yeah, I love that advice because we all know it and yet so few of us do it, are aware of it. I remember when Scott Todd, before he met me, he's listening to my podcast and he wanted. He had a question for me and he called me. I answered the phone and he was shocked I answered.

He thought he was leaving a voicemail. Right?

Yeah.

Scott, you remember that?

Oh, yeah.

And I just had one question. It was like a 30 second connection connected with Mark. That's all I needed. That's all I needed.

I've got to tell you guys, I give out my phone number on stage, no matter how big the audience. And invariably, well, invariably when I'm on stage, one person calls because they don't believe me that it's really my phone number. So they call. The phone rings and I go, yep, it is my phone number. And what happens is when a lot of these people do call you, they go, oh my God, you answered. I'm not really sure what I wanted to say. I just was gonna leave a message. So, you know, it's really cool when you do that in the reverse and you call people and even. And what you'll also find is the ones that don't pick up your call will call you back or text you with something about, oh my God, you called me. So, you know, try it. I really think it'll make a difference in your life.

Yeah. Some of the worst advice I ever got when I, when I first started doing Land Geek was don't be available. Right? Horrible advice. Make yourself scarce. You're the guy. And I see people doing it in business. I'm like, horrible advice.

It's horrible advice. And I have to tell you, I spoke at a sales and marketing conference for Cox Business and the SVP hired me. And apparently he loves my message, he loves my reach out. One to one, connect with people. It scales. Because most people participate vicariously. They watch the conversations, they feel a part of them. And apparently I was pulled aside by one of the guys that works for me. Goes, last year we had this guy go on stage as the keynote in front of all our salespeople, and he told every that one to one and the telephone is dead. Don't ever pick it up again. And they had to hold down The SVP and sales, he wanted to drag the guy off the stage.

It's so funny.

It's funny because when I. When I was in my corporate job and, you know, I'd sit in the ivory tower of the corporate office, I would. I would call, not. I would pick up the phone and, like, I had a regular rotation of people that I would call on my team. And. And when I say team, I don't mean, like, direct reports. I would call it down into the organization. So, you know, these are people that, you know, I might be three. Three levels above them or more. And you call them and you're like, hey, it's. It's Scott Todd. And you could hear in their voice like, oh, you know, you just. For no other reason than to say, hey, how's it going out there?

Have a great day.

Hey, I appreciate what you're doing. Or you worked on this, and I appreciate it. I heard that you were, you know, you worked late or many hours to solve this problem. You know, is there anything I can do for you? And I can tell you, in all these conversations I ever had with people, I don't think that maybe once, twice, maybe three times, someone asked for something beyond that, they're like, no, thank you. They wanted to get off the phone with me very fast. But you know what people it connected with? People, like, they would say, hey, Scott called me today. And then I would hear from my direct reports, hey, you made their day by calling. You know, it's just that human connection. And it doesn't have to be for any other reason than just to say, hey, how you doing today?

Yeah, I mean, it's the reason I'm so passionate about passive income, too, because, you know, going full circle about what Ted said, it's not about return on investment. It's on a return on relationships. And if you're not creating passive income in your life, it's so difficult to carve out that time. Right. Because we're so focused and so busy trying to make more money. Right. And that at the end of the day, we're exhausted and we have no return on our relationships. Right. I mean, it happens all the time. For what? A new iPhone? An Apple watch?

I don't know.

Right. I mean, it's crazy, but I'm really glad that Ted Rubin is one of those people. If. I mean, it's really rare, Scott, that we hear the term turn on relationships.

Yeah, absolutely.

But at the end of the day, that's what it's all about, right? With the quality of our Lives always come down to the quality of our relationships. Money, in and of itself, it's just a tool. It doesn't make anybody happy. So, Scott, Todd, what's your tip of the week?

All right, Mark, this is a website that I'm playing with now. It's free. And I do, I am enjoying it. And let me explain the problem. I, like many people, have multiple email accounts. I have a personal email account, I have a business email account. I might have a second business email account. You know, like you get these Gmail accounts and you have a certain application for them. And then, you know, you, you have, you have documents that come in, you know, like, you know, their attachments to these email accounts. And then, then it's like, okay, I got to go find this document. Did it come in on this one or did it come in on this one? So I'm using a website called Paperworks IO Paperworks IO. And what you do is you go in there and you link. You provide links to all of your Gmail accounts. You authorize it, and then anytime there's an attachment to the file or to the email, it automatically takes it and it stores it in Paperworks IO so that I can always know where that attachment is. Because then I try to do, I try to be sophisticated. Oh, let me just forward all my, these attachments to Evernote. And then I got some stuff in Evernote. It compounds the problem. This solves the problem. I bring in all my attachments from all my email accounts all into one account.

I love it. I love it. I just signed up as you were talking. I apologize for the lack of presence. This is great because I've got like 15, you know, Gmail accounts and this is fantastic. Alright, so my tip of the week, of course, so important. Learn more about Ted Rubin. Go to TedRubin.com T E D as in David. R as in Ralph. U as in underwear. B as in boy. I as in Igloo. N as in Nancy. TedRubin.com and learn more there. Ted, are we good?

I think we're great. I really enjoyed the conversation. You guys are awesome. I would love to do this again sometime and hopefully we'll get to meet face to face at some point.

That would be great. That'd be great. You know, we could even do is pick up the phone, even talk once in a while.

Oh my God, we could do that.

We could. We probably won't.

I'll tell it to you. I'll tell to your audience. My phone number is 516-270-5511. Feel free to call anytime.

Alright, fantastic. Well, I want to thank ted Rubin from TedRubin.com Scott Todd from Landmodo.com Scott Todd.net, and most importantly, hosting Domination.com TheLandgeek Today's podcast has been what's the Word? Sponsored by Lonegeek. Learn more. Automate your payments via loan geek. Just email supporthelandgeek.com for more information as the next beta wave is coming. Scott Todd, Lone Geek is. We're close, man. We're really close.

It's, it's, it is changing the way that I think that, you know, changing the fees and everything. I'm looking forward to, looking forward to that thing expanding.

Yeah, I'm disrupting the whole market. No note, setup, fees. One simple.

Crazy.

That's crazy software.

Huge, man.

It's huge.

It's huge. Huge.

All right.

You're not gonna believe.

What's that?

It's huge. You're not gonna believe it.

Yeah, you're not gonna believe it. So learn more about me. Go to thelandgeek.com download for free the passive income Blueprint. Learn more about land investing, flight school. Because how to don't work anymore. It just doesn't. So you got to get in to a group coaching program. We want to watch you execute in real time. Right? Because if how to worked, we'd all be like Ted Rubin, you know, just, you know, retired and doing whatever we want. Right? So. All right, well, I want to thank everybody, thank the listeners. Don't forget, spend 20 seconds of your day to help us out. Subscribe, rate, review the podcast. Yeah, it really helps us out. Ted rubin from tedrubin.com thanks again. We'll see everybody next time. Let freedom, freedom ring.