Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - The Secret Recipe of Content Creation with Neel Dhingra Ep 84

Episode Date: June 23, 2023

The Secret Recipe of Content Creation with Neel Dhingra Ep 84 Neel Dhingra founder of the Forward movement discusses his secrets to content creation that turned a side gig into a multi million dollar business.💬 Did you enjoy this podcast episode? Tell us all about it in the comment section below!On his podcast, he discusses all sorts of topics, including what made him successful and some of his core tenants for living life and managing successful businesses.➡️ He is often joined by Chris Connel and Colt Amidan who are dear friends and successful business people in their own right.The Power Move podcast stands to be one of the top sources of knowledge and insights, specifically into real estate and entrepreneurship out there! Not to mention tons of coverage of topical events and insights into our non-commercial lives as well…➡️ Learn and burn Entrepreneurship from serial entrepreneur John Gafford and his band of mayhem makers. From stripper poles to the oval office, business lessons are everywhere. If that sounds interesting to you, make sure to subscribe to my channel and don't forget to hit the bell icon to never miss a Podcast! 🔔💯 About John Gafford:After appearing on NBC's "The Apprentice", John relocated to the Las Vegas Valley and founded several successful companies in the real estate space. ➡️ The Gafford Group at Simply Vegas, top 1% of all REALTORS nationwide in terms of production.Simply Vegas, a 500 agent brokerage with billions in annual salesClear Title, a 7 figure full service title and escrow company.➡️ Streamline Home Loans - An independent mortgage bank with more than 100 loan officers.The Simply Group, A national expansion vehicle partnering with large brokers across the country to vertically integrate their real estate brokerages.✅ Follow The Power Move with John Gafford on social media:Instagram ▶️ https://www.instagram.com/thejohnmgaffordFacebook ▶️ https://www.facebook.com/gafford2/🎧 Stream The Power Move Podcast with John Gafford Episode here:Listen On Spotify : https://open.spotify.com/show/7cWN80gtZ4m4wl3DqQoJmK?si=70ad5ca4f51e4acc Listen On Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-power-move-with-john-gafford/id1582927283☑️ Featuring:Chris Connel - Esquire - https://www.connelllaw.com Colt Amidan - Director of Commercial Real Estate at Simply Vegas - https://www.amidangroup.com#ThePowerMoveWithJohnGafford

from the art of the deal to keeping it real live from the simply vegas studios it's the power move with john gafford back again back again for another man this is gonna be a banger today episode of the power move joined today in the studio by my buddy neil who is the founder ceo all-in-one all-encompassing megaforce behind the ford event which is really quickly man i gotta tell you this event if you haven't seen it we're gonna talk more about it in general but you know these events pop up constantly they're're constantly around. But this one, I will tell you, has got some teeth to it, man. It hasn't been going very long and had amazing success out of the box and is only built on that success. Where you see these things, sometimes they'll

come out fast and they teeter off. Sometimes they just don't even get out of the box. They just don't sell tickets and nobody shows up. But this one, man, really, I'm impressed with Neil. I'm impressed what he does. I want him to talk about it. And we're lucky to have him today on the power move. So glad to have you, buddy. Thanks for having me,

man. So, so tell us real quick, man, let's talk about the event first in case, uh, you know, we,

we, it gets weird. We talk about some random stuff, but let's talk about event first. So tell me about Ford. What is it? What is it? Who's it for?

Whoa. Tell me about it, man. Yeah. So I, uh, started the event three years ago and basically I have like an online community. I'm in real estate mortgage, like doing my thing for years and I wanted to do an event. So I started doing these little classes and meetups for people that were almost like everybody who is looking for an outlet who's different, you know, like, I don't know, we think different. We want to be more creative with our marketing.

We're looking for different ways to grow our business rather than just the standard stuff that's been tried and true. And I'm not knocking any of the traditional stuff. Like it works. Everything works if you work, right? But I wanted to do things my own way. So I had grown my business using content marketing, which was kind of new in 2018 or 19, like a lot of people weren't doing it. So then I wanted to build a community around that.

So I started doing that on social media. And then I wanted to have an event. So I did the first Forward event in 2020. Yeah, 2020 during COVID. And all the places where you couldn't get an event in Vegas. So I had to do it at my buddy Brad Lee's, your friend Brad Lee's, his training center. We had 75 people there. I don't know if it's legal during that time, but hopefully I don't think Brad cares if it's legal.

I don't know if you gatherings were not legal at that time. I don't know, but allegedly it was a Brad's. It may or may not have happened at Brad's training facility. We had 75 people there and it was awesome. And I was like, I was, I was like, man, this is cool. You know what? I just remembered. Yeah. I just, I, I was there that day. You were there like a day before. I was there the day before. I just remember, I just remember that. Cause yeah, you were setting up for that event. I was there the day before and you were, it was funny cause you were kind of telling me what it was. And, and I was like, okay, cool. And it's like, you just hear so many people just yap, yap, yap, but don't really execute. And you'd see, you were just kind of like of like oh good luck to you whatever blah blah but what's cool about that john is like

that's what all of life is yeah like dude hey i'm doing this thing all right cool man and then you go back to what you're doing yeah you see it 14 times more you're like oh okay then you see it gain momentum they're like okay now years later you think oh the shit this is serious so that's exactly what happened it started off with 75 people. We had a small event during COVID. Then the next year, we had 750 people at Resorts World. Then this year, we're going to have 1,000 people. And it's not about the number of people, but it's a community of like-minded people in real estate, in mortgage, who want to do marketing different, who want to become better marketers. Yeah.

So they want to grow their business. They want to learn new trends and they want to use all these new technology tools to improve their business. So that's what it's about. And it's been awesome. Well, dude, I'm going to talk about something else because I'm going to put you in a category

that to me, I think is a great category. You should love this. This is, I meant, is a very unique, wonderful compliment to you. But I'm going to put you in the same category as I put Pace Morby and Jameel. That's good. And you know what category that is?

It's unlikely guru is the category I'm going to talk. Because you kind of look at the look and the image that most of the guys that run the big events have. Yeah. It's very similar. It's like they're a little bit different. The tattoos might be a little different. Yeah. The black t-shirt might be a little tighter here there but it's but it's all about the same guy and like you have your own unique deal you've always got the hat on backwards

you have your own uniquely you're not apologetic you're not trying to fit in anybody else's box you're being unapologetically you very similar to what pace does yes there's no conform to what i'm not trying to model what anybody else does. I'm just being me and it's resonating with people. Yeah. So the question that, so there's the compliment, but the question that comes behind that is what is it about what you do that

you think resonates so well with others? So I think what's cool about, you know, when you show the journey, you document it, nobody cares in the beginning, but you just keep showing it. And so what I found with marketing is like, you got to teach people things. You got to provide value.

Everyone says provide value. So I do that. But then when you're showing the journey, like I've had people that kind of followed along for years and they see you executing. So here's what I found. Nothing sells like results, right? So if I'm just documenting, hey, I'm trying this, I might fail, but I'm documenting the process. Hey, I'm doing my first event. I might fall on my ass. I might lose money. I probably did. I lost money, right? But I'm going to do this publicly.

So I'm building in public from the beginning, like, okay, I'm trying this new idea. Here's how it worked. Or here's the results I got from this. And I'm giving people inspiration for them to try it as well. And I think what happens is people say, hey, dude, if that dude did it, I can do it. I love, see, I think that's a lot of the unlikely guru. I think there's a lot of that. Because you're just a regular dude. I'm not saying I'm like a genius. I'm not a guru or an influencer. I'm just documenting what I'm doing. And I built it from 13 people to thousands of people, right? It's just, it just slowly grows. So it's very like kind of guerrilla marketing style. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I think everybody that's in

business or in sales or whatever else is trying to, you're always trying to improve your charisma, your attractability, what it is that binds you to people, you know, are these skills that you say, cause obviously you got it, man, there's an it factor with you. And it's a lot of the people that come to the studio have that it factor. And is that something that you've spent time developing? Is that something you've always had? I mean, was there specific books you read that you liked it to help develop those things? I think it's just a, it's probably what you've seen this happen with your career as well. You just get more confidence in what you're doing. So A, it's, you know what you're doing. You're talking about stuff that you know, because I see a lot of people just talking about shit they don't really know about, you know what I mean? So that's the first thing is like,

do you have expertise in something? So for me, it was like, you know, I've been in this industry for a long time, so I can teach a lot of things about that. And then I've been doing the marketing stuff I'm teaching for a while now, so I can teach about that. And so I was just talking about stuff I'm doing. I might not be the expert, but I've gone from A to B. And so I can teach that. And what I found is over time, you get like, you know, just more confident with your message and your communication. So I think it's just confidence. It just takes time. And a lot of people will say, well, dude, how do you get confident? If I look back like four years ago, you know, like when I watched the videos, it's like cringe. You know what I mean? Like, you know, it's bad when you can't even get through your own video. You know

what I mean? Like that, that's how bad it was, but that's how you're supposed to start. And then you just get better at it. So it's knowing what you're saying, but then now being able to confidently say it in a conversation on a podcast on camera. Well, we've had conversations in here a lot about like imposter syndrome. And I think one of the biggest problems that people have is they don't understand that. It's like as you develop and as you learn things

and as you get further along with your own personal education and whatever you're trying to become the master of, you know, when you get to level 12, right. Your confidence starts to wane. And you don't understand that if you teach people that don't know anything, what you learned on level four, it's like, they just discovered fire. You know, it's so funny. You'll see these presentations sometimes. And especially if whoever's presenting is talking about something you're intimately like acquainted with, you're like, God, this is like first grade shit. Like

who's watching this? And then the guy next to you is like, like, bro, that just blew my mind. I don't know what to think about this. So I think part of that is understanding and having confidence in the knowledge that you have, even the rudimentary stuff, because that is where the magic is. And I and I think you can really teach people from a place of high confidence there. Yes. And not bullshitting on stuff you don't know. Yeah. Which is, I find what people do a lot. They do. Yeah. And you can just be like, actually that doesn't work like that, you know? And so you want to build the skills and teach what you know. And then, um, the, you know, somebody told me this, I don't know who's,

who said it, but they said the best way to learn something is to teach it. Because what happens is the question, you see how people receive it. If you're trying to teach something, you have to know it well. So you have to execute, prove it, make sure it works. So a lot of the marketing stuff we do is I'll try it myself for months, maybe even a year, make sure it's rock solid, it's bulletproof, and then present it to a group. And then even then, they're going to have a bunch of questions that didn't quite make sense. So then I go back, figure it out, tweak it, then redo it again. And so a lot of, like I noticed this, there's a lot of people who are experts at what they do, but it's a totally different thing to be able to teach it and

present it. That's a hard thing. I mean, how many times you see people, we go to so many different events and masterminds and there's a guy that's worth, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars on stage. He's an expert at what he does. But you don't know what he's saying. He's lost everybody in the room. Either people are asleep. Ted Dalek's presentation to 100 mil. Everybody was like, what? Yeah, this happens.

And it's no shame against the person. They're freaking rich. They're an expert. But it's a totally different thing I found to be able to present things and to keep people's attention. And same thing with video, same thing with the podcast. Like I'm sure your first podcast aren't as good as, but probably totally different. If you look back, you'll notice it starts officially starts everything streaming

in episode two, cuz episode one, we just call it the last episode. Yeah. Because you don't, like, you're just trying, but that's how you have to start. Oh, it's a mess. Yeah. I think it's just like, hey, teach stuff, you know, and you get more reps, more confidence. Like I could barely speak in front of a group of people a few years ago,

and then, you know, now I love it. So it's like you just have to keep trying. Well, one of my favorite Peter Thiel quotes is, if you're not completely embarrassed by the first iteration of your launch, you waited too long. Yes. There's another thing that happens. You said, hey, you're being yourself, unapologetic.

Like you give yourself permission at some point so in the beginning you're copying somebody else yeah like dude I like that guy I want to be like this dude who's cool or he's my idol

I was trying to be like Gary V yeah you know for years and then what happens is you along the way you get the confidence

to just be yourself yeah so how are you and then that's the part I think that relates the most because most people are like flexing trying to be something that they're not sure and once you're yourself it'll work like it'll connect with more people So how are you? And then that's the part I think that relates the most because most people are like flexing,

trying to be something that they're not. Sure. And once you're yourself, it'll work. Like it'll connect with more people. Okay. So let's go back, man. Let's go back to young Neil. All right.

Way back. Let's go all the way back. So, you know, I like these stories. I like to hear where people came from. I like to hear the origins. I'm a big, I'm forever seeking the knowledge of nature versus nurture. I'm always trying to understand that as a, as a parent, my, myself, I'm always terrified that I'm ruining my children on a daily basis. So I like to hear where successful people come from. So where, where did you grow up? What was the childhood like? Where'd that start?

So I was born in Alaska. Then we moved to Nevada. I grew up in Reno. So just now moved to Vegas, but I've been born and raised in Reno. How old are you now? Um, 41, 41 old. So like whole life in Reno, pretty much the whole time, small town. Now it's gotten pretty big. Um, but, uh, just to, it's just like a, it's a really small community, uh, very kind of like under the radar, you know, families, like if you know anything about Asian families or Indian families, they want you to study hard, become a doctor, a lawyer, or, you know, something like that. Right. So I'm not the best student in school. I have ADD. What did your parents do? Uh, my, my dad works for the university and mom's a therapist. Okay. Right. So you were supposed to be an engineer or a doctor. People that have spent, you know, a decade in school,

you know, they love higher education. They love it. And I'm like, education's the worst. Like, I'm bored in school. Not for me. So anyways, I get through. And then in college, I start doing loans for a bank, working at a retail bank, doing loans.

And my brothers, this is pre-housing crash, 2006. My brother's working at a mortgage company. And if you know any, I'm sure you know about this, back 2005, 2006. Just printing money. Printing money. And young people,, I'm sure you know about this. Back 2005, 2006. Just printing money. Printing money. And young people, he's in his 20s. We're in our 20s.

It's ninja loans. And money's just like falling from the, you know. And so they're just making money. If you had a pulse, you could buy a house, that type of thing. So he's like, man, you need to get out of the bank. Come work at this mortgage company because we're killing it, man. You're going to make a lot of money. We're still in school at this point?

Yeah. So literally I start doing that and going to school. I quit school because I'm starting to make so much money in, in more, in, in mortgages and real estate. What was that conversation like with the folks? Yeah. But like it was hard in the beginning, but then as they saw, like, you're making a lot of money and success, like, okay, like maybe, maybe he's onto something, maybe figured out a way.

So I finished two years of school, didn't finish a four-year degree. And then- Do you regret that? Yeah, a little bit. I wish I would have finished it, but honestly- Me too. I'm the same thing. Me too. I was bored. I got my community college degree, whatever. And then I dropped out of UNR. So I started doing this stuff and making a lot of money as a 20, you know, early twenties, you don't really know what to do. So like money comes, just, it goes, you know, you have cars and houses and you just, you know, that's,

that's what it was. It was a party constantly. So we were coming back and forth between, you know, Vegas cause we had an office in Reno and Vegas. Sure. A lot of crazy things going down. Which company? This was a Soma financial I think is what it was back in the day. Put you to sleep. Yeah. We put race to sleep. they got race to sleep yeah who thought of that name by the way they went bankrupt shocker yeah in 2008 folded i'm gonna

go work at cocaine home loans the dude was i think there was a lot of cocaine use at the time but anyways it was just a massive party we had a huge office you know 50 lawn officers and all these people and parties all straight wolf of wall street straight like that all young kids then 2008 hits boom it's like the music stops parties over parties over every one by one people start coming one by one our properties are underwater now you're just like and so i kind of i like that because you know it was early enough in the career to where you can just roll with it, but there's a period of time where you're like, yeah, PTSD. So a lot of people like, dude, why didn't you pick up all these properties and do all these things like in 08, 09, 10, 11, 12. I think even up until 12, it was just like kind of flatlined because you have

PTSD because you just got hosed, you know, and you don't trust anything anymore. So that was a rough adjustment because we, we went from a huge office, everybody left. It was just me and my brother in this massive, we like subleased the rest of the office out and we kept one room. So a room the size of this podcast room, we were just there trying to make it through during that time. But you grinded it out. Yeah. Yeah. You could still do loans. It was just like government loans were good. A lot of banks wouldn't lend on properties cause they were falling. So like you're in a declining market, so we can't lend. Uh, it was a tough period, but we just kept doing deals, kept getting through it. Uh, we did like reverse mortgages. I mean, any, whatever product

would work, we would do it. I was freaking, uh, hosting a class for seniors to learn about reverse mortgages for a year. I remember because there was no deals. That's what you could do. Whatever I could do, I figured out. Then I remember one of the things that helped us out a lot was FHA loans and these government programs, because that's all you could get. So we did that for a while, kind of got through that. And then basically, I think around 11 or 12, every year thereafter, it just started to keep going. Pick back up, yeah. Yeah. So then we started hiring more people, expanding, opening new offices. So you guys, when you split off, you open your own your own this is your own company we're talking about now yeah so we were like our own mortgage brokerage at that point uh because the

company we're with before died yeah so you just yeah put a new shingle up and here we go we're open yeah you were brokering so it didn't require a lot of yeah it didn't require a lot of capital yeah yeah easy and then in like around, I think it was 2015 or so, met a guy named Chris Biaggi who owns All Western Mortgage here in Vegas. Did a kind of a joint venture with them to expand and partner with somebody who had more capital and resources. So it's an actual-

And a correspondent desk. Yeah, exactly. A lender rather than just brokering deals. Yeah. So that helped us a lot because then we don't have to worry about the backend. We could just go out and execute and get business. we did that uh worked out really well you know we're really successful in the mortgage business for years and then in around 18 or 19 just kind of

was burnt out after doing this for so long and trying to figure out new ways to get business like i was tired of doing the old way so that's when i started doing a lot of content on social and this is like like I'm telling you, cringeworthy stuff, trying to do videos. So go back to 2018 on good old Neil's social media. Yeah, bro. I even delete, like one of the accounts was gone, it's deleted, but barely could get through a video.

But basically what happened was people told me, hey, you need to start doing videos. And I was like, I didn't even have a social media account at the time. And I was like, shit, I'm going to start trying it. it and uh really bad at first actually the guy who's here with us today eric he filmed my first video back in 18 uh we've been working with each other ever since but so we started doing these so the bad video was eric's fault is what you're saying no he actually helped me get he actually made it palatable if it was me it would have been dead so we made that video

and then we just started doing them and we kept doing them. And I would go to all the conferences and they would tell you, Hey, why don't you try this type of video? Why don't you try this marketing? I tried everything. 90%, 95% did not work. It was a waste of time and money, but that was my tuition. That's how I learned this shit. Right. So I learned how to do shit. And then most stuff did not work. A few things did work. Finally got a little bit of confidence along the way. And then just built this online community primarily on Instagram, but you know, just built a community of people who want to learn about finance and real estate and marketing and all this stuff. Yeah. I love that. No, it's, you know,

and it's so hard to find good advice in social with stuff that goes so fast i mean i you know me and travis were talking about this on his show you're doing travis chapel show later we were talking about this last time i was with travis which was we just got some really bad advice early on early in the social stuff where it's like we're just gonna you know we're gonna pound your account with all these followers and blah blah we're gonna buy likes because it raises your algorithms and all this stuff yeah and bro it took it took a solid year and a half to recover from the damage that they did trying to work the system yeah instead of just doing it right well because you and i are used to just like what's the like what do we do what's the shortcut how do

you get there quicker yeah how do i get to that how do i get to that and it works in other parts like we we we buy time yeah that's what we're doing. Yeah. And that's what successful people do. Right. So, you know, I've invested in real estate, invest in this, I invested myself. So I started investing in different things and I did the same thing. I started an account, you know, people gave me the wrong advice. I had to delete the account because basically it was just dead, like useless. And I wasn't building anything. So I started a brand new account and I think 19, uh, and that's the one I still have today and just, you know, built it from dirt.

Just organically, just, just doing the right thing, posting videos and sharing valuable content, like trying a lot of different things. Yeah. So obviously it's funny. Cause you say that, cause like when you say you did your first video in 2018, like I've been like, I have no issue being in front of the camera. I apparently I love myself. I have no issue with in front of the camera. I really I love myself I have no issue, but I guess but uh, but yeah, like I'll see videos that'll pop up on my Facebook from like

Here's a real estate tip for my car from like 2016 and I'm thinking man and you look at it and it's like Fucking 400 likes and like all this stuff because back then it was straight blue ocean, right? You weren't you weren't you were not There was just nobody else kind of doing that stuff. So how do you make content now to compete in the red ocean, which is where every single, I mean, just everything is, is, seems to be pretty simple. How do you do that? What's cool about it is just in the last year, there's been a change, right? There's these new things that have come out, which are this TikTok style video. It's a vertical video that can go viral, that can get organic reach.

And you've seen it happen with clips from this podcast. Yeah, on reels. Just crazy free reach, right? So what happens is, you know, I have a TikTok account. I don't really get much there. I think my average follower on TikTok is 14, lives in their mom's basement. You know what I mean? So I'm getting most of my engagement and community from Instagram and then some on YouTube as well.

So I started doing vertical video at some point and that was where it really took off. We're like, okay, you can make 10 vertical videos. And if you're giving good information in a quick bite-sized format, you get to the point quick, you have good hooks, you start your videos with the right hooks, you'll reach way more people. And so what's happened now is like Instagram was falling behind TikTok. TikTok came out. Number one app, number one time spent in app, just crazy growth, right? Instagram was kind of sleep at the wheel. So they were like, oh shit, we better catch up. So about a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago now, they started saying, hey, if you'll make reels, vertical videos, we will push these to new people for free. We'll help you. We need you to make more vertical videos. We could

be like TikTok. So they started doing that. Now it's getting more saturated, but you still have free reach. So you don't have to pay for this. That's a huge opportunity because pre-vertical video. Well, now you have Google playing catch up now. Yeah. So you got YouTube Shorts. But before that, there was no real way for the average person to go viral. You had to build it just slowly, you know, or just ground level. Like people just literally come into your account and hit the follow button. It was very difficult for the average person to make a video and have it just take off and build your account.

You could still do that today. So it's actually a better time as far as that goes. But so many people are doing it. You have to stand out. So A, you got to teach something that you really know that's valuable. And it could be, like you said, basic. Basic shit works. I know, because it's amazing

what you think is so rudimentary that somebody else thinks is just absolute fire. So what have you done? You know, like, what have you done in your life? Well, look back. Okay, well, I bought a bunch of real estate. I've built a successful company. I've done some mortgage stuff.

I've done some marketing stuff that worked really well and exploded my business. And I've invested that money that's in the ways that have worked for me. So I'm going to talk about that shit. That's the stuff I know. That's what I, and now you take those topics and you just have to put it in the right package because anybody could just talk. Nobody's going to listen. You have to say it in a way that people would, would want to watch the video. So I think about like, when you talk about real estate, you were giving your tips for buyers, right? So I talked to agents, like agents are the avatar. I always talked to you. So you talked to agents. That's the business I'm in. Yeah. So like, what's, what's a tip for an agent right now? We talk about agents.

Okay. Well, you know, here's the number one tip for you guys to grow your business or that's a simple hook, but but like what about like you know doing this one thing has made me millions of dollars over the last three years and that is you go into it like i might want to watch that because i'm like shit what's john gonna tell me so literally that first line only makes or it's all it's all only but that first line will make or break your video right and so so what happens is you get better at just creating those hooks. That's it. So what's the form? Give me my, give me my long video, my, my vertical video formula. What is it? Cause it's just a recipe. It is. So what's the recipe?

So we start off with a hook that will grab attention and you want the hook to be simple, spark curiosity. What are you going to say next? Okay. Okay. And then deliver on the promise. So you could give a solution. You could give a problem and then a solution and keep it short. And you actually don't want to provide all the context because you don't have enough time. A lot of times in our industry, we want to explain everything. Storytell. You've got 40 seconds.

You've got 33 seconds. It's a long time, but it's not a lot of time to shoot the shit. So we just got to get straight to the point. Now, here's the thing. Long form works still really good. I was just talking to my buddy, Sean Cannell here. You know Sean from Think Media. YouTube is amazing.

Long form. I make 10-minute video on YouTube. It does great. That's for YouTube. Well, that's what this is. Yeah. That's what we're doing here. People want to listen to long form or they want to listen to very short.

It's like a barbell, I think. People will spend two hours watching your podcast on YouTube, but then they'll also on Instagram have no attention. And they got like 12, you got like two seconds on to the next thing. You got a fraction of a second. So yeah, start with a really good hook. And so that's, if you start with that, you're going to keep attention and then just get to the point quickly.

So whatever it is we're trying to teach, we want to put the benefit of that first. Are you using AI? Are you using ChatGBT to get topics, to get ideas? Yeah. So what we do is we will ask it for ideas. It works, but you really have to refine it. So you have to ask it multiple ways. So you would say you are a social media influencer

who teaches content about this. Here's a sample of the last 10 posts. Give it some sample. You have to give a lot of context. People just ask it a question, it spits out a robotic answer. So you want to ask it a lot of questions, give it a lot of context, and then refine it so it gives it to you. Make this less formal. Make this more conversational. Make this more intriguing, and whatever. So you give it a lot of guidance. I think you can get better results. But for me, I found like some of the clips just happened by accident. Like just talking to people and you're documented, like this is being filmed. There'll be a clip here that we could use. So that shit works. But as far as like what I found in the beginning, when you're trying to grow,

a lot of people will have a podcast They'll start with like, you know, just a conversation and people will come to that clip and back. Who are these people? Yeah, why should I listen to them? So in the beginning I found it works really well Just stare down the lens of camera and tell them what you're gonna teach. Mm-hmm Well, I gotta tell you since you know Travis when I first decided to do this and start doing this in here, he just said, I actually wasn't Travis, it was Brad. I was talking to Brad because I did Dropping Bombs with him. And then after it, I said, what's the biggest benefit you have out of this podcast? What is it?

The reach, the whatever, social media content. And he goes, there is no better way to get to know somebody than sit in a room and talk about them for an hour. He goes, most relationships that I have are, were forged in this room. And it was like, wow. He's like, yeah, I mean, you can, you can talk small talk over business, but when you really get into somebody in their life and how they do what they do and you know, your tentative, it's just, it's an amazing way to really get to know people. So that's, I mean, that's the benefit for me that I get on this. Now, again, when you look at content distribution, which is your specialty for me, in most cases, it's just omnipresent. I kind of go with the

Chris Cronin approach. Like, like it's not, it's not hyper-targeted and I know it should be, I should spend more time doing actual specific content creation because I know that's what you teach. And I have, you know, I am blessed, blessed at our company that I will say, we've got some people here that work for us that just do it better than anybody else. I mean, I've got the number one agent in Vegas on YouTube that sits 25 feet right there. You look at even a guy like Jason Griggs who's just come up in the last year. He's blown up. Just doing what he's doing right, educating and staying specific within his niche.

He's done extremely well. I love it, and I love that. So for me, but, but again, it's kind of omnipresent. I sit in here for an hour, they cut it up.

It goes up. You'll see me at, you'll see our face running through your social media feeds as we go. And what's cool about that is you have a different goal. Everybody can have a different goal. Yeah. You don't have to want to be an influencer. Yeah.

You could just want to have a more efficient way of staying top of mind yeah it could just be that your your database your your sphere sees the videos that's cool that works too so i found a lot of this success will happen by just wanting you take a small group of people so in your case it's like there's agents that follow you and there's people you work with that want to learn from you you i see a lot of eclipse you post you're just teaching a a class yeah and there's people you work with that want to learn from you. I see a lot of your clips you post. You're just teaching a class and there's fire like a tip that you just gave the group. That's the clip. It's not something like that you sat down and if you're already doing some shit, just, just document that and have somebody chop it up. How important do you think it is to develop

the avatar of who you want to talk, who you were trying to attract? Like I always tell people like in real estate, especially, you're going to catch the fish depending on what lure you put in the water. Yeah. Like if you put it out there that, you know, like for example, like on AdWords, like if you type in fixer upper or short sailor for Corolla foreclosure, you will never see one of my ads because I don't want that client. Yeah. Like I, I I'm shopping for a different client and then AdWords, I think people think about that, but they don't think about it so much with their social. You're right. So like, how important is it to think about who you want your ideal customer to be

and then really craft a digital image for that person? Yeah. So you would want to look at what are you, the things you want people to think when they see your videos. Okay. So for me, it might be like, I want them to think these are high, these are good quality. Even if it's just a quick clip, I want it to be good quality, not perfect, but good. Okay. Next thing is I wanted to them to think that the information is innovative. It's different than everybody else. And it's, I'm teaching something related to whatever. So in my case, it might be with marketing, right? So I'm trying to like a target, a specific person in the, in this industry. Have you thought about what, have you thought about what they feel would be important?

Yes. So you're thinking about like, what are they looking for? You could look at like answer the public. You can look at Google trends, see what people are searching yeah now you can address that and then now every single time you post a video you're like you want it to fit into that lane you know what i mean so there's like and you could still post some other shit like 20 i would say it could be whatever you want but 80 of my content is in my lane yeah and so i like a lot of people like you said they're just doing it just to do it. And so one video is about this, the next video is about this, the next week. And it's all over the map and it's just confusion. Somebody told me this, I don't know who, what the original quote comes

from, but it says humans are attracted to clarity and confidence. They're repelled by confusion. So if you're, if your content strategy is all over the map, confusing, messy, it's not attracting anybody. So I think, yeah, for people within the real estate industry, I noticed this, like you want to attract, a lot of them will tell me they want luxury clients. Obviously you make more money. Sure. Cool. So then- Until you, everybody says that until they get a bunch of luxury clients and realize how demanding they are. Yeah. So this is like the, everybody wants it. So are you showcasing luxury properties in your market yeah no okay

well art like is your quality is the quality of your content next level do you realize people judge you i don't understand like it'd be nice to think people don't judge everybody is the worst like they're so judgy on social media they're just judging people all day we have let people go from this company because they're social really dude because it's a bad it's vegas so you know but but like i'll give you an example and like and i fight this battle and you have to tread lightly when you have this conversation but i've had to have this conversation with a couple of agents before where it's like if you are a beautiful woman in this industry and you are over sexualizing your marketing,

yeah, no wife is going to want her husband anywhere near you. That's true. And it's, and I, and we fight that battle all the time. It's funny. Gavin,

my partner did a presentation for the Raiders last week. They had him to the facility and first slide he had was, he goes, the first slide he had was he goes the first slide he had was a chick swinging from a pole and he goes he's like gentlemen let me tell you something he goes if this is your realtor it's costing you a lot more than it would just to go down and give her the money directly and he goes and he goes and they all started laughing he goes you think you're laughing but gavin sells a tremendous amount of homes north of five million here in town and he's like i've seen some of you walk in to showings with this person yeah he's like and it wasn't a specific person he was showing stripping and whatever but it was the generalism and it's like dude you've got to be your your online digital image has got

to be crafted and like i've seen guys that are like every other picture of them is swilling booze and it's like, you look like a drunk. Like it's not just about over-sexualizing women. It can be anything. So how important is it? Do you think, I mean, I know Gary Vee talks about like, or Dan Fleischman says like Gary Vee gives you three things. I love the jets.

I love trading cards. And I love that. That's all you're going to get from me. Yeah. You don't, you're not getting anything else. How important is it? Do you think it is to decide what the public sees and what the public doesn't see and then stick to that? So if you're doing something that's highly offensive or could be like,

especially with politics these days, that becomes a problem too. People are very on one side or other. There's a huge divide in the country. So that stuff is tough to whether or not you should do that. I think you can say how you feel about certain things in a classy way, in a respectful way. You can post things and just keep it classy. Like you said, if you're an attractive person, use it to your advantage, but don't take it too far. Yeah, too far. You know what I mean? So there's a line you cross.

But anyways, if you just put out quality stuff and by quality, I'm meaning like, okay, did you wipe the lens before you post a, you know, I used to do this. I used to take like a selfie video. These phones are on your face and your hair. There's just, it's like chapstick across the lens covered. And so you're literally like reducing your worth in the terms of the viewer by not wiping the lens. Do you want to upgrade your iPhone or Android? You know what's so funny? Just wipe the lens.

You know what's so funny? It's so true what you're saying about this. Because like, do you know Kenny Simpson in San Diego is a mortgage guy? Yeah, yeah. Kenny. I literally sent Kenny a message like maybe two weeks ago. And he just said, man, these videos are beautifully shot. Yeah.

Like I didn't know what he was talking about. But he upped his game so much in just i didn't know what he was talking about but he upped his game so much in just the production value what he was doing i was like bro beautifully shot but it raises his value yeah so you're like you think of him better because he freaking got a better camera or he wiped his lens so simple things like this would improve and then as far as like what you should show from your personal life whatever you're comfortable with i know people i would encourage people to share more, like the more things I've shared about what I'm doing behind the scenes, what I'm into, you'll find people that relate to that.

Yeah. And so as long as you're doing it in a respectful way, I think people like they'll vibe with it. I got to tell you as much as I know, I know way more about real estate than I do about being a parent. I've sold way more houses and done way more deals in real estate than I have experienced in my short time on this planet of 15 years of experience. I literally have more experience in real estate in time than I do in parenting. But yet the stuff that I put out that always does so well is when I just talk about situations with our kids and how I handle it. Like that stuff does a better, I could give you the formula for how to push appreciation on a, on a $20 million multifamily deal until exactly I lay it out.

But yet I tell you how I got my kid to like, want to learn about money and that's going to do better than this. Yeah. So I found this, this is huge. You post all these videos about what your subject matter expert in, right. And you're teaching things.

Those now aren't necessarily the conversation starters with people. What starts the most conversations are food, faith, family, fitness, all these personal things and asking questions. Everybody, dude, everyone's an expert. You ask a question of your audience related to health or fitness, you'll just get everybody to respond. I'm like, where were all you motherfuckers when I asked about real estate? So like nobody was there. And all of a sudden I'm like, hey, guys, should I do this lift or this lift in the gym to get?

And they all give you different answers too, by the way. Everyone knows. Look out for the fruit, bro. A lot of sugar. Yeah, exactly. Like do this diet, take this before you go and do this, whatever. So anyways, if you ask questions,

you show some personal stuff, you will get a lot more conversations going and that's the thing that i think people miss is like it's not just like build it and they will come you'll get all this you want to have conversations with people that's the whole point of the whole platform is to connect with way more people so for me i have you know hundreds maybe thousand open conversations with people quick back and forth just dms yeah and then now that line of communication is open. You'd be surprised how many times we're talking and shooting the

shit about the golden Knights. Three weeks later, I'm asking you about a deal. Yeah. Right. I mean, you've seen it happen countless times, right? Because it's just comfortable. It's a relatability thing. And I think, and I think too, if people always think that all you are is business, business, business, it's, it's a little repellent. Yeah. It's a little impulsive. Nobody wants to just like, Oh, they want a real here we go. Yeah. They want to talk to somebody that's actually human. So what's, okay. What's a good mix? And we talked about the formula for the video itself. What's a good formula for some business, some coaching, some personal? What's the formula for steady flow of content? So I would say this in the feed, I would go 80%

should be your niche as you're growing. Now, if you don't want to grow an Instagram following or social media following, do whatever you want. But if you're trying to grow. But if you're doing this, you got to do it to grow. I mean, why are you doing it otherwise? Well, some people just have it just for a small thing. I don't know. But if you're trying to grow, 80% of the content should be in the niche because A, when people come to your feed, let's just say one of these podcast clips goes viral. They come to your feed and it was 20 different things.

They'd be like, I'm out. They come to it. They're getting more of what they came for. They might hit the follow button, right? So that's first and foremost. It's also telling the algorithm, I create content about X. So you have to narrow down. Now, the other 20% in the feed, you post whatever you want.

In stories, post whatever you want because it goes away in 24 hours anyways. It's kind of gone. Yeah. So you want to share your family, whatever you do, do it. Go all in. But as far as the feed goes, I would say make an 80-20 rule would work for most people. Now, here's what happens. As you get more people, I call it like a tent, trying to get people into your tent that want to learn about what you're doing. Some people will leave because you'll share something. Like I noticed this when I share a lot of stories, I'll have people leave. They'll be like, ah, I didn't sign up for this. Cool. That's fine. Like you're weeding out. That's just a process, right? Well, that was the year and a half process that it took me to weed out the people that were paid

to be there and get in people that actually want to pay attention. It took a year and a half to fix that. It takes a long time. So now you've got the people there who are into what you're doing. You can start sharing even more. Now you could dial it down to like 70, 30, maybe 30% of content you're into freaking hiking and you show more hiking tips. Like that wouldn't have worked in the beginning to grow, but it'll work now that you have an audience. So as you build an audience, you can now do a bunch of different things. And that's the problem. A lot of people see what someone's doing now, who's already an influencer, already has an audience, and like, I'm going to do what that guy's doing. No, you want to do what he did in the beginning to start the account, to grow it.

It's not like what he's doing now. Like Gary Vee could take a picture of dirt and it'll- And it would get a million likes. But like, he's like, just post anything. Flip this dirt. Yeah, whatever. And so he's talking about flipping, he's like, just flip this dirt. Yeah, whatever. And so he's talking about flipping. He's talking about this, this, whatever. In the beginning, if you were all over the map like that, you wouldn't grow. It's just the facts, right? So pick something and teach that and do that for freaking a year and see where you end up.

Well, you know, it's funny. You talk about, I just want to do what that guy's doing. And we were talking about before we went on the air today about the event, about your event in particular. And, and, you know know when i see these events and and you see them a lot now they're all over the place and it seems like there's an event over there weekend and it got to a point where people would just raise a little bit of capital or use their last time i don't know what they're doing who knows what they're doing it's expensive it's expensive i know it's expensive and then literally what they would do is they would just say okay what was the speaker lineup from this event in Miami?

And just grab the same exact people and throw them up with a different name over here. And I think the public has gotten a little wise to that. And I'm going to give you credit, my man, because you seemed like I always look at, when I look at your list, like there are a couple of names of people. I don't know who they are. I love that. There should be a couple of names on there. I don't know.

Because if it's the same people that I can just see over here, it's not this, it becomes a wash, rinse, repeat. Yeah. And I love that you're focused on not being that guy. So my question is, as you do your forward event, as you do your things, right? How do you decide who you're going to bring on that's going to give you the most value? Yeah. And how do you not keep, how do you keep it fresh?

How do you not just make another event? What's your process for that? So I go to events myself and you see, like I was at the mastermind you were at that one in Tampa, the Avengers. And I saw Erwin speak. I thought Erwin's one of the best speakers there. He's a great guy. He's great.

He's amazing communicator. He has so much to share. I immediately gotten connected with him. And then he spoke for one of our micro events for my mastermind. I was like, this is a great guy events from a mastermind. I was like, this is a great guy. So I see it and I'm like, okay,

that's, that's something different. I never heard of him. Anybody in my group had never heard of him, but he was the best speaker at my event the next time. Right. So there's things like that. You have to look,

you have to like go out there and see asking feedback from people. Hey, like of all the events you go to, like who was the best speaker today? Who's like the most unlikely person that, you know, you didn't think they were, you didn't even know who they were, but they blew your mind. I want to know those names because I don't want the same old, same

old, like it's gotta be different. And so it takes time. You got to research this. And then I also found this, John, I was like, there's a lot of people out there who don't really exist on social, but they're geniuses. They're freaking bestselling authors. They are amazing teachers, but their social media, you would never know it. Because it's never been a thing. It's not their thing. They don't give a shit about it, but you bring them on a stage, they will blow your mind. They'll teach you X, Y, Z. And now even those people are starting to build their social now because they're like, they have to, or their son told them they got to do it

or whatever. So I start looking for those people too. So it's, it's a lot of subject matter experts. What can they teach you? So basically all I do is I've been in so many bad events where I was just bored. It's like one or two keynotes. The rest is just filler or they just try and pitch you stuff, sell you shit all the time, whatever. So I've been in all the bad events. I'm like, I want to make mine different. I want it to be all killer, no filler. Yeah. I want it to be people that can actually teach you. And all the things that are bad about events, I want to make sure we address. So make it fresh, make it more innovative,

have a better experience. So just put yourself in the audience's shoes. Like, would you want to be here? And it's tough to cut through the noise because I noticed this year in particular, there's like event fatigue. A lot. People are like event fatigue a lot people are like like you just said like same old shit so if you don't have a strong message brand and you can't

clarify like why you should be here i don't know how you're gonna sell tickets or blow out an event like you do a small one but you want to sell a thousand tickets like it's gonna be hard bro i went to an event not too long ago that was within two weeks of another event that I had gone to. Yeah. And the day two of the event was identical to day two of the event before I'm stay. I was like, I'm going to fly back early. It was crazy. But you know, it's interesting. You talk about those people that are great and brilliant, but don't have socials. Do you know what I found is super guilty of that? People that are decent founders or CEOs of decent companies, and then the company gets acquired, and they've spent their entire life building that brand instead of their own.

And all of a sudden that brand is gone, and they're like, shit, nobody knows who I am. Those are the people we want to learn from. They're great. They're highly successful. They've built companies. They have stories to tell. And they don't have social because

they spent like they built X, Y, Z companies. So they'll seek out those people. We need, we need fresh blood, you know, in this, in this game, right? It's a, everyone's tired of the old stuff. So there's the tried and true people like the Ed Milets. I mean, I've seen him speak three, four times every time he's good, but there's other people where you're like, dude, I've heard it. I could do, you know, I can go on now. It's nothing against them, but I've heard it too many times. Same spiel. Same thing. So bring in new faces.

And then the second thing that I think people don't, uh, they kind of discount about events is, uh, having a great experience so people can connect with each other. Yeah. So making it a good environment for networking. So if I come to Ford, what, what can I expect as far as is putting me in a situation? Cause let's say I'm a wallflower, which obviously I'm not, but let's assume that I am. And let's say I'm a wallflower and I really would love to connect with other people. What is Ford going to do for me to put me in a situation where like it or not, I'm shaking hands and I'm going to meet some

people? Yes, we actually force it. So everybody who's there is of like mind. They're like, I want to learn how to grow my business. I want to connect with more like-minded people. So most people go by themselves to connect with other people. And we do a lot of communication with the people who are coming to let them know, hey, make sure you connect with other people. Make sure you ask questions. We even do a call before the event, tips to get the most out of this event.

Oh, it's so smart. Bro, first thing, like Brad always says, bring some freaking Listerine strips. You know what I mean? Like whatever those tips are. Brush your teeth, man. Yeah, but you're not going to be able to get through any networking if it's like, oh, shit.

So yeah, address that kind of stuff. But the other thing is, how do you network? You'd be surprised at how many people don't even know what the fuck to do, right? So why don't you go up to somebody, introduce yourself, start talking and ask them, what is the struggle they're having in their business right now? I understand you're crushing it,

but like, what's something you're struggling with? This is your best, this is your best. So this is, I'm getting right now. This is Neil's best networking tip. You walk up, you ask them what they're struggling with. Yes, and then they will tell you and you find out if you can help with that thing. You ask, oh, you know what? I actually use a CRM that would work really good for that. And let's set up a zoom call after the event. Do you know what I do? What's that? I'll

tell you, this is my networking gold right here. This is what I do. And it works every time. And I'll have people come up to me years later and say, man, I'll never forget that. Walk up to people and I'm like, Hey man, tell me about you. And they're like, Oh, I work at XYZ company. I do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, I i don't know i don't give a shit what you do tell me about you you married your kids like what what do you like what tell me about you because they're so programmed to spit out that elevator pitch over and over and over it completely skips their fucking brain and they're just like oh uh yeah man i mean uh yeah lived here for so-and-so like this all your kids and they're like this dude really wants to know who i am, not just what I can do for him. And skipping their brain like that has gotten me so many connections and it makes it,

it has made, I don't know how, I don't know how, I don't know how good my memory is. And some of the people that I meet, but I know that that makes me memorable, which to me in a networking event, I would rather be memorable that have the best memory. Yeah. So I think that's huge. Connecting with people. I've made lifelong connections at these events. I've had people tell me something that was more impactful than the speaker on stage. And then now we do a Zoom call afterwards and I helped their business, they helped me.

Or they connected me with someone that could really help me. So if you try and be that resource, it's going to pay. Like it's going to pay off because they're going to reciprocate and new things are going to happen to you. So that's the thing.

And then the last piece, which nobody ever talks about, is when you leave, and it works a little better if you fly to an event. You go to the event. You're not in your day-to-day grind. You're not thinking about what you got to do after work today. You're not thinking about the fight you got with your wife last week or the receptionist problem at the office or whatever you're just sitting there away from everything you have a chance to reflect on your life and your business and where do you really want to go like what are the things you need to do to move

the needle what are your freaking goals like you know and you start hearing this people on stage who are really good and something will click for you in that seat. That's happened to me before. And so it sounds kind of cheesy, but it works. Like you're there, you're not thinking about this. You're like, man, dude,

I've been doing this thing last year and it's not the best use of my time. I'm going to stop. I'm fucking, I'm changing the shit when I get back. I'm going to be a little different when I go home. That happens for people. I think any good event,

you should have that somewhere, somehow, something. And it could be a small shift, but that could change your whole trajectory of your career and your life. Maybe you go home and you're like, you know what? I've been a dick to my family. I think I'm a big time business dude and I've been spending any time with the kids. And you know what? My wife probably freaking doesn't like me right now. I'm going to go home and change that. And that happened because somebody said something, you were in the right place to receive it. So it could be business, life-related, but I think that's important for people to consider

is like, you may not know, there's things you know, there's things you think you know you need to learn about. But then there's things that you don't even know about. And that could be the thing that happens when you go someplace. Bro, we were sitting in, where was I? I was at boardroom. I was at Ken Clothier's mastermind. And we're sitting there in the back and this was crazy. And it's like everybody in the room was just like, what? You talk about the value you get from not off the stage, right? Just in a room, just whatever. And this cat casually threw out how AIG had funded 90% of their project at 5.5%.

And everybody in the room goes, what? He's like, yeah, the insurance company funds, I don't fund anything 15 to 50 million. It was like, and these are hardcore experience,

multifamily developers. And everybody in the room was like, what the, how do we do that? And connect me with your guy. And it was like, I mean, you would have thought this guy was giving away like,

I mean, free garter belts at the strip club. And it was was like, I mean, you would have thought this guy was giving away like, I mean, free garter belts at the strip club. And it was just like, I mean, it was just like everybody all over him. And it was, it was incredible that that piece of information that people didn't even know was out there.

Yeah. I mean, this guy had a mainline to it. Yeah. I was talking about an email marketing thing. And then I heard Joel Marion talk about, don't do that. It's a waste of time.

It'll ruin your email marketing, your deliverability. You'll go way down. And this guy's, I don't know what he's worth. He's worth a lot of money. He knows this shit. Right. And he was talking about it and I was like, Oh shit, I was about to make that mistake. That would have cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars. What was the mistake? Do you remember? It was like, um, getting your emails through this channel, you know, like doing a promotion where you'll have a lot of people opt in, but the quality of the opt-in is very low. So it looks cool,

but now you're emailing to this list, which gets very low deliverability. And now that's harming your other people. So if you have an opt-in that's worth, you know, 50 cents, dollar, it's now all of a sudden you've got like people that would be worth a lot more to your list that are not even seeing your emails

because now your deliverability is going down. So you need to like really focus on having a quality list of people that actually read your emails and segmenting it. Even Cody talks about this a lot. He's like, man, you need to keep that shit, like segment the people who don't engage with the emails out of your main thing.

Because when you're just doing a blast and there's all these people who are, it's just going to spam. Now all the email service providers are putting it all to spam. So you're not even getting in the inbox anymore. You know, so there's just like, those are just little tweaks. Email's hard, man. Email's tough, but you got to, like,

you got to learn from people that have done it before. How are you getting, you know, because obviously so much of what Forward is about branding and marketing. Yeah. So how are you getting in front of new folks to, to export, to expose them to Ford, to attract them to the event?

What channels are using? So I'm using right now, this event was just sold out using organic, which is crazy. I haven't run an ad, but I do know a lot about, you know, I've learned a lot of in last year or two about paid media,

especially I found it a lot of good results from YouTube ads, better than Facebook and Instagram ads. So YouTube ads are great. I think you could target better there. And it's a different type of viewer there. It seems like more serious, like they're there to learn just different like mindset on YouTube. So that's one way to reach. But for this, for me, for this event, all I've done is I've done it through word of mouth and I've done it organic. Like people, I'm just like, dude, if you're coming, would you bring somebody? Would you tell someone about this and do a really good job? So like the best marketing job is like do a great job. And then people will tell you about, like, they'll tell their friends about it. So you just brought up such a, you just brought up such an interesting point, which is

people probably like, you got to remember why people are where they are. Like people are on Instagram to not really be educated. They're there to be entertained. Yeah. Give me my quick fix. It don't mean I want to be entertained. If you can educate them a little bit while they're going through, but you're right. People probably do go to YouTube more to get educated because when you learn

how to do something, where do you go? You go to YouTube. It works way better. And I don't know why people are dumping all of their, you know, you sell an information product and they're way heavier on Instagram and Facebook. Or they're trying to get entertained. Dude, go to YouTube, man. People love learning on you. I go to YouTube to specifically learn

things and I'll watch long videos. I'm way greater attention span on YouTube. So like that was a hack. That was just something I stumbled into, which has worked really well. And so it works for real estate, mortgage, information, education, whatever your niche is. But on social, the ads, I found unless you really know what you're doing with ads- You're going to get burned. You're just going to waste your... You're just lighting money on fire. Yeah. Because they're not going to work. Yeah.

So you got to get good at the content game first and really know what you're doing when you're buying ads. Yeah. No, I agree. I've always found, I always tell people, it's just like Google AdWords. Hire somebody to set it up. Just make sure you own your own Google AdWords account. Don't set up on their account.

So when you fire them, you still own all the work that happened. You know the guy, Billy Jean? Yes. Yeah, so he's due to help me with the ads on YouTube. And so, like you just said, I don't know shit about it. Yeah, but you turn it over to him. Yeah, ask him, can I work with you guys? Or do you know someone you can connect me with? Ask people who they worked with that they could recommend.

What do you think? I'm just curious. What does Neil think about Billie Jean's little, it's a hard pivot on his social. Yeah, all AI. Yeah, what do you think about the hard pivot? Dude, he went all in on that. Do you think it's working? Do you think it's working against him? I think it's working because he has- We're talking about it. Dude, he went all in on that. And do you think it's, do you think it's, do you think it's working? Do you think it's working against him? I think it's working because he has, we're talking

about it. Yeah. He has 10,000 people in who have bought his, um, his crash course on AI. He just posted that and showed proof. And I know Billy personally, and I was like, man, he went so early and he went all in on it. Yeah. Hard. And, and I've had conversation with him about this. It's been his number one thing he's done in business, his whole career ever. So you can't argue with the result. I mean, he's getting that result. He did something right. So that works. It's working. And I think what he saw was this is not a trend. Like remember a few years ago, there was like NFs were the hot thing and crypto yeah like a lot of people jumped on that and then it died yeah this isn't that way

this this is like it's only going to get bigger and bigger and bigger and more and so he saw like how quickly it was going and he just pivoted quick and he saw that there was a need to teach this to people and he pivoted fast and it worked yeah Yeah. I had a meeting this morning, I had a meeting this morning with a company out of, on the East coast and they've created an AI to interpret terms off real estate contracts. Wow. And to, to,

to automate a lot of the title work that gets on our title company. And I was like, yeah, but I don't take it. He trained the contracts by volume. Do you have a contract? I said, yeah,

I'm going to send me a PDF right now. It's fucking thing. When it extrapolated all train the contracts? He goes, do you have a contract? I said, yeah. He goes, send me a PDF right now. Send a PDF. And this fucking thing, when it extrapolated all the terms, all the dates, and just that quick. I need a legal contract. It did it better than the legal.

I know. I know. It does it better. And then you can adjust it for free, by the way, fast. I know. So I would be worried a little bit about not knowing this stuff it's still early like you it's got a lot to go yeah but the speed at which it's doing things now you need to get familiar

with this shit well here's my question okay so which brings us which brings us to my next question which is with all of the innovations in ai coming out i mean you can already tell chat gpt to write your script you can already get the voiceovers and it spits out a voiceover you can already then go and create a you know a fake video with a fake person how long before all of our social medias are just flooded with so much bot content that it becomes almost impossible to cut through what's what is what's the pivot man what's it because you got to be thinking ahead of this you have to if you're not you're going to be a dinosaur what's the pivot, man? Because you've got to be thinking ahead of this. You have to. If you're not, you're going to be a dinosaur. What's the pivot? What says Neil? Well, I say that if you're doing it, if you're really good at what you do,

you're a good communicator, that's going to stand out versus the AI-generated person doing the script from chat GPT. It's going to get good to where it's very close, but there's always something about human connection and doing it with a real human. I don't think people are, you know, lining up and super excited to be a part of a community of that's led by a

robot. You know what I mean? Like, or a fictional person, right? They want, they want to be, you look at who some people vote for.

I think that would be an argument. Yeah, you're right. They could be, but like, there's a lot of people who want to be part of a community of people. So there's certain things that can't be outsourced to tech, like building communities, you know, and that relatability, that real human thing, part of it. So I don't think you're going to be replaced by AI. I think you're going to be replaced by a person

who uses AI. So we just need to use AI to do more. So we can use AI, like you just said, to save a shitload of time, to increase our output, to do more content, to be omnipresent. ChatGPT will be taking all your videos, turning them into blogs, posts, and then there'll be a thing that lays on top of ChatGPT that just posts it for you. And you'll be using all this shit to just really spread your message and just put gas on a fire. And so if you're not doing that, I think you're, you're in trouble, but I don't think you have to worry like that. It's going to completely make us irrelevant because they told me that same shit with zoom. Yeah. Nobody's going to come to events anymore. Why would you fly across the

country, John, to go to an event? You could just, because the magic is in the hallway. Another Peter Teal quote in the hallway. Why would you even come into an, John, to go to an event? You could just because the magic is in the hallway. Another Peter Thiel quote. Magic's in the hallway. Why would you even come into an office ever again? There's Zoom. Well, it turns out people don't want to fucking be on Zoom all the time. It turns out people don't always want to talk to a robot. Yeah.

They would like to. This human thing is freaking real. It's not going anywhere. So that face to face, that real human advice, that's not going anywhere. But you got to level up. Yeah, that's it. That's it. So I think I skipped over this when we were talking about, you said it and I wanted to come back to it. One more thing about Ford. So let's say I'm a guy that I, or a gal, whatever,

because you know, anybody can do this. Let's say I want to build a kid. So you started with community. Like that's where this started. Like, like you didn't say, I'm going to start with the event. You started with building a community. So how did you do that? So this started. Like you didn't say, I'm going to start with the event. You started with building a community. So how did you do that? So I started putting out content to consumers to teach them about what I knew. Real estate, mortgage, finance, right? Okay, start doing that.

50% of the people who followed me were like people, just regular people on the platform that wanted to learn about that. You know, people in my sphere, they would tell other people, it just kind of grew. Did you carve them into your, into a group like a Facebook group? No, I did not in the beginning. I did afterwards. That's a great point. But in the beginning, just people hit the follow button, joining my email list. Okay, cool. And then what happened was there's a lot of people in the industry who are like, Hey Neil, I love your content.

And so I think a lot of people are like, Hey, how do I build? I'm trying to recruit. I'm trying to speak to more people in an industry. I found that the best way to get those people is to just do the thing that you're telling them to do. Yeah. Because then they want to steal from you. They want to learn from you. And that's cool. Like, follow me just to get my video ideas and take them. Like, that's cool. So people would just follow me for that. Then what happened was I had about a 50, 50 thing, a 50% consumers, 50% other people in my industry who wanted to learn from me and were just becoming like part of that network. And then, so that just kind of kept growing. And then for me, it started to get even bigger. So now it's like 60, 40, it's like 60% are people in an industry

want to learn about marketing tips. 40% are still the consumer people who just want to learn about, you know, buying their next investment property. So it just kept going like that. And then what happened was I would continue to have people opt in to not just Instagram, but email, push my content out to those people, send them valuable tips, anything I could think of. Once a week, I'll send it out to my list. Make sure that you're giving value. Sure. Not just trying to say top of mind you actually if you're going to give me a second to read this there's going to be something that makes yeah then ask people to like share this yeah bro like we do contests where we'll tell people like hey dude

if you you're coming to the event share the event on your story your instagram story and get someone to come with you yeah i'll send you some swag i'll send you some stuff you story and get someone to come with you. Yeah. I'll send you some swag. I'll send you some stuff, you know, like get them to share, spread the word for you. So at what point, like, it's funny. Cause like you look at, at what point did you monetize this group? Cause obviously there's, there's probably a coaching group. So you've got to make a switch. It's funny. At some point it's gotta be like, Hey, Santa Neil can no longer be putting presents under the tree every day. We've got to have a little secret side group over here where it's getting really good.

So talk about that transition, how you did that. I had people that would DM ask a question. Hey, can you help me with this? Can you help me with this? Can I pick your brain? You get the DM like, hey, dude, can I pick your brain? And at some point, you've got no more time for the brain pick zoom. So I was like, man, I need to put together some sort of group course paid something so that people can get in. And so let's make a product. Right. And so my thing with selling

things, I don't think there's anything wrong with it and you should do it. It's a huge industry, but there's a lot of people who sell dog shit and they're just ripping people off. So for me, anytime I sell something, it's worth five to 10 times what I'm selling it for. So I was like, I'm going to make something. And that's the other thing. This is not my primary business. My primary business is helping clients buy homes and all that stuff. We have a company, I built my wealth that way and I own real estate. That's cool. This was just a passion project. So I don't need to make money from coaching. I just love estate. That's cool. This was just a passion project. I don't need to make money from coaching. I just love it. And I would love to help more people. And there's a price for that

organization. So I started doing it and made it really affordable for people to join. I remember doing my first program, you could pay like three, 400 bucks and you could join for like a year. And then it ended up going up from there. But I started with that until I got good at it and then started, you know, making it more, more affordable, more reach for more people. And then I built it that way. So I don't think there's anything wrong with adding a paid component education. I think it's good. I think you have to have a paid component. Cause like, even like, like I have a coaching program that's pretty much exclusively just for, we just use it here. Right. And, um, it's called the Climb. And with the Fortnite first launch, it was 75 days intensive.

And it's a lot. I mean, it's a lot. And it took a lot of effort for me to put that together. And the first time I did it, it's a cookie. You work at Simply Vegas, I'm going to give it to you for free. Half the people didn't make it. They rang the bell 30 days in.

Too much work, can't do it. Or they don't even log in. No, they can't do it. Oh, you have to. No, but 50% of them quit halfway through. Maybe at about a 25% graduation rate because they just fell off. So the second time I did it,

I said, okay, here's the deal. I'm gonna let you in for free. But if you quit, you gotta donate 200 bucks to my favorite charity, whatever it is, right? And so still 50% of them quit. They just quit. And I was like, like what the fuck so now the third run we're doing it right now we're on like day 40 of the third run and i said screw this you're paying

199 a month to be in this program and i had like four people quit that was that was it yeah because the idea is subconsciously if you get something for free, it's optional. It's like, it's, it's has no value. There's got to be a price to good information because then people don't take it seriously. Yeah. I just don't. So they got to have some skin in the game, man. It got to.

And a hundred percent. And then also with like, when you start doing events and you start doing these things, they cost a shitload of money. Yeah. They're not cheap. So you don't, you lose money on events, you know? And so you want to cover the costs and build a real business there.

And I think that that's a great business. We need more people who are just actually teaching good things and want to help people. I mean, if you're doing it right, it's a great business. And for me, it's just kind of grown. I was thinking like it's just a side project, passion project. Sure. Now it's taken off.

It's like its own business. Yeah. It's pretty cool. It's great. And it's, and it's, and it's, and more importantly, it's designed around something you love, which is watch on that people do well, which I think in its core, it's, it's, you know, people ask me, somebody asked me, why do you own this company? Why do I own simply Vegas? Why do I own this? And it's like, cause I have 600 people that I get to make an impact on the financial future of them and their, their, their families. I love that. That's the part of this job that I love the most. And so I get it.

So if somebody wants to come to Ford, if somebody wants to find you, if somebody wants to hook up with you, where do they find you, Neil? Yeah. Just find me on Instagram, Neil home. So N E L H O M E. You can DM me. I respond to everybody's messages. I go through.

And then if you're looking to go to the event, it's forward event.com forward event.com that's it man cool and you still got tickets available yes yeah i think we're down to like the last handful of tickets there's uh almost a thousand people going to be there and we have like we're down i think there's maybe 40 tickets left something like this yeah it's almost sold out so hopefully uh hopefully we can sell the last 40 for you yeah there we go if you get that you go that So check out Neil, check out his event. And yeah, man, thanks for joining us. I appreciate you coming in, bro. It's always good to see you. Great to chop it up with you, man. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. And guys, remember, tune in next week for another episode of the power move when I have another interesting person talking about hopefully

interesting stuff. So we'll see you next week. Thanks guys. How often do you do these? Hey, it's John Gafford. If you want to catch up more and see what we're doing, you can always go to thejohngafford.com where we'll share any links that we've things we talked about on the show, as well as links to the YouTube

where you can watch us live. And if you want to catch up with me on Instagram, you can always follow me at thejohngafford. I'm here. Give me a shout