Epic Real Estate Investing - Jason Stone - Influence to Affluence | 469

Episode Date: September 13, 2018

Listen to today’s episode with Jason Stone; an investor, a social media influencer, and a marketer, and discover the cruciality of influence to affluence! Learn the best way to attract people on social media, why content is no longer king, and what ideas Jason has for real estate investors who integrate Instagram into their marketing strategies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Terrio Media. You can have a startup on social media and go from zero to multi-milliones in less than a year. It's just, it's fabulous because you can reach people around the world. It's a worldwide app. Everybody's attention is on Instagram. And if you could just harness that attention somewhat a little bit with your phone, you know, the world is yours. Hello, I'm Matt Terrio of Epic Real Estate.

and today is another episode of Thought Leader Thursday. Okay, so today I'm joined by investor, influencer, mentor, growth hacker, strategist, consultant, brand master, and viral marketing expert who is widely known by celebrities and almost two million people around the world as millionaire mentor on Instagram. He has successfully launched multiple six and seven figure Instagram and internet platforms and is becoming a well-known social media influencer and marketer. He's known for his e-commerce success in the automotive industry in his early years with his with Treadstone Performance Engineering Inc.

He is a mechanical engineer, a real estate investor, car enthusiast, startup investor. He has co-founded the Impact Billions Movement and also created Gentleman's Mafia Instagram network, which culminates relationships and success among the thousands of its members worldwide and utilizes his experience and passion as a motivator, mentor, teacher, and social media influencer to help others create success. So please help me welcome to the show, Mr. Jason Stone. Jason, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.

You bet, you bet. You know, you've done. doing like so much. I'm not quite sure where to begin. And congrats on the success, by the way. But yeah, let me ask you this. With so many deserved titles like investor and influencer and mentor and growth hacker, strategist, consultant, all that sits up. Which one are you most proud of and why? Oh, man. I'd have to say the word influencer because influence is such a strong word and it just dates back to, you know, advertising history. You know, advertisers have to be able to influence the world.

You know, one of the greatest books of all time is how to influence, how to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. And I think that's the author. So influencer and be able to influence people, whether it's, you know, your friends, your family, or people you need to sell to or in business relationships, you're constantly selling yourself, and that's a way of influence people. Whether you're making friends with somebody or your girlfriend or your wife,

the term influence goes a long way. That word right there is so powerful and can make a break, a business, a relationship if you don't have some power of sales or influence over somebody. Right. I mean, life is, it's a people business, right? And every piece of business is going to be with another person. and an influence has a great deal to do with one success in business. So I get it.

With that said, what would you say is your greatest victory to date as an entrepreneur? Greatest victory. Amassing three million people on Instagram. Explain to me, where is the impact and how does that impact you? It has impacted so much in my life. It's opened up so many doors. It's unbelievable. the amount of opportunities that have come my way because of social media.

I praise social media because it has allowed me to conduct business on a whole another level from my early years of just being a mechanical engineer and, you know, building a traditional business, you know, slowly through the years, 10, almost 20 years in the making that business is still running. And then you can have a startup on social media. and go from zero to multi-milliones in less than a year. It's just, it's bad for you can reach people around the world. It's a worldwide app.

Everybody's attention is on Instagram. And if you could just harness that attention somewhat a little bit with your phone, you know, the world is yours. Right. Yeah, it seems that way. And I've got a bunch of questions here, but I'm going to skip over all of them since we're here on this subject. Let's keep it just, we'll stay in congruent with what we're talking about right now. now. So when did you get on the platform, Instagram, and at what point did you notice that,

wow, this could be something? I was on the platform with a personal account, actually. And without going too much into the story of how Millionaire Mecca was birthed, I just realized when I started the account, you know, I just want to provide value. I realized that, you know, providing value was a way to attract eyeballs and it was a way to I had no idea what I was getting myself into to be honest with you I didn't know I was going to make money I didn't know I was going to bloom to three million people and be able to launch multiple startups and businesses from it and that's that's kind of like the what I what I tell people to do like if you're starting a business don't start a business to make a sale and they make money you know start a business to provide value

to people's lives and then they're going to pay you for that in the long run they're going to want your product to server more than you're selling it to them. So if you can just start off by just thinking of how you can impact people's lives on another level, you know, the money's going to come right back to you. So, you know, I kind of have a similar journey with their podcast. We're to start our ninth year for this podcast. And at the beginning, I could almost say the exact same words. I had no idea what I was getting into.

It was just something to do. And there was a moment like where someone just reached out and said, hey, I like, what you have to say, will you help me? I'll be happy to pay you for it. I just had a call. And I was like, that's where like that moment hit me like, wow, I didn't see that coming, right? Did you, did you have one of those epiphany moments? Like, oh, maybe we should double down and take this a little bit more seriously?

I guess when someone pay me to post their advertisement, can you pay me to mention, actually, it wasn't even an advertisement. Can you mention me in your account? And I maybe had like 50 to 100,000 followers at the time. people wanted to pay me just to mention them, just to tag them. I'm like, really? You're paying me to tag you and just pipe out a little name in my caption, and I'm going to get paid for that.

Right. That kind of blew my mind right there. I'm like, I need to double down on this. Right. How long ago was that when that first happened? Four years ago. Four years ago? Three years ago.

Three and a half. So, yeah. Got it. So then what was kind of your strategy or your way, of going about how can I attract more people like this? Just going back to that value. I was figuring out what people wanted

and what people needed on their vision board and why they followed me. And I just remained consistent. And I tack into the niche, the entrepreneur niche. 99% of entrepreneurs they want the life, the women, the cars, the jewelry, the clothes, the vacations, the freedom.

And, you know, I just started creating that vision board. And over time, I started putting quotes over that vision board. So not only got the luxury pictures, the lifestyle pictures, we got motivational and inspirational quotes that go along right with that. So that was the content strategy. And I just figured out what was working. Little tweaks along the way of a building account obviously helped

and learning along the way how to build it up. and what works and what doesn't. And, you know, we blossomed. My business, you know, I started an agency out of it. People need help of social media. All businesses need help. You know, their businesses don't have time to run their social media account. Social media is still so new for a lot of businesses that they need help.

They want help from a professional that's been doing it for four years. So, you know, that business blossomed out of it, which is going good as well. Yeah, you just mentioned that it's so new for a lot of businesses. And, I mean, it's really. kind of in a social media is really it's in its infancy itself right how important would you say the platform is to entrepreneurs or businesses is it something they they can do without or do they have to be on there is there somewhere in the middle yeah i believe every business needs to be on social media it doesn't matter what business you have um your business and your presence need to be on social

because it's another touch point it's another way to get to your customer that's another way of speaking a different language. Maybe they see your advertisement on Facebook and they're scrolling through Instagram fee and they see behind the scenes of your business in action. They're like, oh, wow, these are real people. This is a real business.

This is a behind scenes look at their business. Oh, I'm going to go to their stories now. Even more behind scenes look at their business. Right. So definitely, it doesn't matter about business you have. You've got to make a social presence. Good example, like Will Smith, he hasn't he hasn't made a movie in a while he made a comment about the rock and kevin hart

pounding out four movies in one year and mr smith just opened an instagram account on the ellen show i think the beginning of this year he's i don't know many millions of fathers have so he hasn't made a movie in a while i'm willing to bed because of instagram he's got five movie deals lined up because of his presence on instagram he made he made up splash in the water he blew up his Instagram page, he's now relevant again. Not saying he was ever not relevant, but it's just an example of someone that was not on social media, no YouTube channel. He's starting his YouTube channel now.

Like, he's going to blow up from this. Right. Yeah. It's not that he was irrelevant, but we haven't heard from him in a while. Who knows what's behind the scenes, whether it's his choice or not. But it's a way that he certainly got back into the spotlight. So, yeah, I agree. I just wanted to hear it from someone like yourself who's a conversation.

social media and yeah good so i got on the platform a little late this is a little bit of a self-serving question you don't mind do you if i take advantage of that all right so i i got on like in 2012 but i think i posted once a year since then and i didn't take it seriously until about a year ago and i was about six to eight months ago we really got serious and from what i've been reading and hearing it's a little more challenging to build a following today and and so i just want to kind of ask a rather cliche question you've probably gotten it before but i want to know if you lost all of your followers today. What methods or strategies would you deploy to get them all back? I had no followers. How would I get them back? Obviously, I implement the same content

strategy I use on my personal page and Millionaire Mentor. And one of the key terms that I use is, you know, everybody heard the word content is king. I don't believe that content is King anymore because if I need to get all my followers back, I still have the best content in the world. I could put that all back on my profile, but who's going to see it? How do I get the followers back? So I go by distribution is now key. And what I call by distribution is distributing your content to the users that want to see

your content and relate to your content and follow your content. So if nobody sees you, no one's going to follow you. So you have to distribute your content to where the attention is. And that's where all the eyeballs are. And that's on all the other accounts that are right now, the big accounts, they haven't lost their followers. Got it. The world star hip-hops, the travel pages, the motivation, the fitness pages. Fitness pages on Instagram, millions of followers.

These are what's called like the theme pages. You can target celebrity pages, but you're, you know, this is what I'm going, what I'm getting at is you have to pay to deliver and distribute. Right. You have to pay to advertise your content. So you can pay for shoutouts and shoutouts a mention where someone mentions your Instagram profile. That's how I built my account up is with shoutouts. Right. It all goes down to distributing the right content in front of the right people.

So if you lost all your followers, the short answer is you leverage other people. Yeah, you got to pay. You got to pay for shoutouts and mentions. You got to pay for it. Same way, I got paid 20 bucks from my first mentioned four years ago. You got to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars. You want to get back to a million followers. I see.

I was just going to ask you. But what is, is there a rule of thumb or a market price out there per number of followers someone has? It really depends on the niche. Like it depends on what niche they're in and how niche down are they? and what kind of type of content, but you're 100,000 followers, you probably can get 50 to 100 bucks sometimes, but nowadays, maybe $20, you know, nowadays for 100K account. You know, people sell status for five bucks.

It's finding those gems, negotiating the deals, and figure out which account's going to give you the best bank for the buck. And you can set up long-term campaigns with them. You know, it just really depends on the niche. Got it. So it's a matter of searching those accounts, searching hashtags, finding accounts with followers, sending them DMs, and just starting that conversation. Yeah. And just negotiating and, you know, negotiating your shoutout price. Like on my account,

you have four or five hundred bucks sometimes. You know, I charge sometimes a thousand dollars for a mention or story endorsement. Mm-hmm. Sweet. What are some, and I want to talk about your, what you're doing in real estate right now, but to make this a nice seamless segue, what are some ideas you might have for real estate investors integrating Instagram into the? their marketing strategies. Target the home pages, house pages, the hotel pages. Okay. People that follow, you know, those types of pages are looking to be inspired by looking in houses and they might be in the market for a house. So you get shot us from those type of accounts. Luxury accounts. Mm-hmm. Real estate, you know, I have advertised for real estate,

like Chad Carroll. He's a big influencer on Instagram. What's his name? Chad Carroll. Chad Carroll. Okay. I was, I just advertised him for the other day. That's kind of puffed in my head. Mm-hmm. He might have 100,000 followers, I think.

But he just, he didn't pay for shout-offs. He advertises his property listings on Instagram. I actually have a real estate page. It's called RE millionaires, real estate millionaires. So at RE millionaires, it's like $100,000. And that's all, I just post real estate stuff. Mm-hmm. I have pictures of houses, hotel.

and then I have a real estate info product in my bio. Got it. Got it. Yeah, I didn't know that one. I have to follow that one. I was actually following you, Jason Stone. I was following a millionaire mentor and I had no idea you were the same person. So, yeah, not until I started doing a little bit of research for this interview.

And, you know, what are some intriguing and impactful questions I could ask? And I was like, oh, this is the same guy. Sweet. So let's talk about your real estate. It's in, it's one of your titles. What is your real estate investment? look like today? I mean, I do maybe one deal a year my last.

Okay. Ever since I was like, you know, maybe 20 years old, I started in real estate. I did the fixing flips. I've done the, I don't want to multifamily unit before. I've done the residential. And then I got a condo. I did a little bit of everything. It's just always been like a side hustle, I guess you could say.

the money that I made from, you know, my businesses put into real estate deals here and there. So buy and hold once a year for, what's that, been 10 years or so? Yeah, I mean, I'm selling, actually selling the first house I've ever bought down here in Florida. I lived in it for five years and I've been renting it out ever since. The last six, seven years almost. Sweet. Yeah, no, real estate is a fantastic side hustle. And, you know, if you have another source for your active income,

like you do. Yeah. Yeah, smart. You've got to be knowledgeable in real estate. Every entrepreneur has to somewhat, you know, if you're in business, you got money, you made money in business, learn a little bit about real estate. That's my two cents. Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more.

You know, whether it's your full-time gig, part-time gig, or a side hustle, something you just dabbling on the side, you've got to incorporate it in some capacity into your financial plan, right? that's a show that you don't have a chance unless you do. So I think that was great advice. Speaking of advice, what piece of advice would the today version of yourself give to the teenage version of yourself? What the best way to tell myself when I was a teenager. Stop slacking off and smoking weed and drinking.

Start early. Stop doing dumb shit. I'm doing dumb shit as a teenager. Yeah, I got in trouble when I was a teenager. I got a late start for my entrepreneur career. You know, I went to college all through high school. I, you know, wasn't really driven. College is when I kind of started getting motivated.

Started my first business at the end of college. That's Tregstone performance. But high school, like, you know, kids nowadays, they're making money at high school. I wasn't doing shit when I was in high school. I guess, you know, I'm 38 years old. So this is a whole different era of people growing up. And my advice would be to the young guys is, you know, don't be that person to like, oh, I have my whole life ahead of me.

I'm going to go off and not care about making money or starting a business or, you know, soaking up knowledge or reading books or learning. Start early. Sacrifice your time. Sacrifice your time with friends and family. You know, I did that as well when I started my first business. I didn't have a social life. So all about how much time you're willing to sacrifice

is how much you're going to be successful. Right. So some sacrifices in the beginning because of the rewards that you get to experience in right now, right? Exactly. Super. So you mentioned at the top of our conversation about how to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie.

What's the best book you've read in the last 12 months how it impacts you? Um, man, you know, you know, I start books. I start books. I never finished them. Got it. And then it was skimming. Um, I remember that comment, actually.

I see a lot of great titles. I get a lot of great recommendations. I get through a few chapters like, eh. So many old ones. Gary, Gary V's book. I got expert secrets by Russell Brunson and becoming a business marketer. Yeah. That's great.

Definitely recommend. Super. So Jason, what's in the near future that, you're most excited about? Blockchain technology in the crypto market. So what about it excites you? Just the technology that people really do not know about that the blockchain technology is capable of and how we're going to cut out a lot of middlemen from this type of technology

and reward the end user. So the end user is going to be rewarded for actions that they take and be incentivized to take those actions on a certain platform. It could be an action, like any hobby, anything that you do on a daily basis, you can be incentivized by doing that. Even as an influencer, I could be getting paid to post. There might be a platform to come out where I'm incentivized to deliver more content to you or incentivized to create more value.

And you're going to get a lot more people coming out trying to do that and take advantage of this new model. Thanks for sharing your time here, sharing your wisdom. If someone was inspired about something they heard today, which there's no doubt in my mind that they are or they were, well, it would be the best way for them to get in touch with you. Drop me an email. You can go to my Instagram profile at Millionor Mentor.

Click the email button or go to jitvinatimimiton.com. Website is millmentor.com. Just a media news website right now. It's not too personalized. I do have a blog dropping coming soon, but best way is email. Direct message, your message might get lost in the hundreds. Right, right, and I can imagine. All right.

Well, thanks. Let's do it again. Let's stay in touch. Is that good? Appreciate it. Yeah, you bet. All righty, so thanks for tuning in to Epic Real Estate investing. God bless to your success.

I'll see you next week on another episode of Thought Leader Thursday. Take care. This podcast is a part of the C-suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com.