The Secret Recipe of Content Creation with Neel Dhingra Ep 84
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From the art of the deal to keeping it real. Live from the Simply Vegas studios, it's The Power Move with Jon Gafford. Back again, back again for another, man, this is going to be a banger today, episode of The Power Move. Joined today in the studio by my buddy Neil, who is the founder, CEO, CEO.

all-in-one, all-encompassing mega force 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 these events pop up constantly. They'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 don't.

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 with what he does. I want him to talk about it. And we're lucky to have him today on the Power Move. So welcome, Neil. Glad to have you, buddy. Thanks for having me, man. So tell us real quick, man. Let's talk about the event first in case it gets weird when we talk about some random stuff. But let's talk about event first. So tell me about Ford. What is it? Who's it for? Tell me about it, man. Yeah, so I 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.

20 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, uh, his training center. Yeah. So we had 75 people there. I don't know if it's legal, uh, 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 anyway, it was at Brad's place. We'll go with that. 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, man, this is cool. - You know what I just remembered? - Yeah. - I was there that day. - You were there like the day before. - I was there the day before. I just remember that 'cause yeah, you were setting up for that event. I was there the day before and 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, oh, good luck to you. Whatever, blah, blah. But what's cool about that, John is like, that's what all of life is like, dude, Hey, I'm doing this thing. Oh, 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 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 gonna have a thousand people and it's it's not about the number of people but it's about it's a community of like-minded people right in real estate in mortgage

who wanna do marketing different, who wanna become better marketers. So they wanna grow their business, they wanna learn new trends, and they wanna 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 gonna talk about something else, 'cause I'm gonna put you in a category that to me I think is a great category. You should love this. This, as I meant, is a very unique, wonderful compliment to you. But I'm gonna put you in the same category as I put Pace Morby and Jameel.

and you know what category that is it's unlikely guru is the category i'm gonna talk because you kind of look at the at the at the at the look in 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 why,

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 gotta 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 tell, 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,

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 because 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? 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, uh, 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, for a while now. I can teach about that. Yeah. And so I was just talking about stuff I'm doing. I might not be the, the expert, but I've gone from A to B. Yeah. And so I can teach that. And what I found is over time you get like, uh,

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. Yeah. 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,

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 in,

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. And so you want to build the skills and teach what you know. And then somebody told me this, I don't know 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 where he, what he's saying. He's lost everybody in the room. Either people are asleep. Ted Alex presentation, a hundred mil. Everybody was like, what? Yeah, this happens. And I'm not, it's not, it's no shame against the person they're freaking rich. They're an expert, but that's, but it's a totally different thing I've 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, you know, probably totally different. If you look back, you'll notice it starts officially starts everything streaming in episode two, because episode one, we just call it the last episode. Yeah. Because you don't think you're just trying, but that's how you have to start. So yeah, I think it's just like, Hey, teach stuff, you know, and you get more reps, more confidence. Um, 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,

like you give yourself permission at some point. So in the beginning you're copying somebody else. 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 Vee, you know, for years. And then what happens is you, along the way you get the confidence to just be yourself. 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. 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? 41, 41 old. So like whole life in Reno, pretty much the whole time, small town. Now it's gotten pretty big. But yeah,

It's just like a, it's a really small community, 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 or lawyer or, you know, something like that, right? So I'm not,

not the best student in school. I have ADD. What did your parents do? 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 a decade in school, you know, they love higher education and I'm like, education is the worst. Like I don't, I'm bored in school. So anyways, I get through and,

And then in college, I started 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, 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...

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 successful, like, okay, like maybe, maybe he's onto something. Maybe he 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, I was bored. I'm the same thing. Me too. I was bored. I got my community college degree or 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 20s. 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. Um, 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. - 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 law officers and all these people and parties all throughout the year. Straight Wolf of Wall Street. Yeah, straight like that. All young kids. Then 2008 hits. Boom. It's like the music stops. Party's over. Party's over.

Every one by one, people start going 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. Oh yeah. So a lot of people like, dude, why didn't you pick up all these properties and do all those things like an 08, 09, 10, 11, 12. I think even up until 12, it was just like kind of flatlined.

- Because you have PTSD 'cause you just got hosed, you know? And you don't trust anything anymore. So that was a rough adjustment 'cause 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. It was a tough period, but we just kept doing deals, kept getting through it. We did like reverse mortgages. I mean, any, whatever product would work, we would do it.

I was freaking 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 like 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 like keep back up. Yeah. So let me start hiring more people, expanding, opening new offices. So, so you guys, when you split off, you open your own car, this is your own company we're talking about now. Yeah. So we were like our own mortgage brokerage at that point.

because the company we were with before died. Yeah, so you just put a new shingle up and here we go, we're open. And you were brokering, so it didn't require a lot of- Yeah, it didn't require a lot of capital. No lockdowns or anything, 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 a actual correspondent desk, exactly a lender rather than just brokering deal. So that helped us a lot. Cause then we don't have to worry about the backend. We could just go out and execute and get business. So we did that, uh, worked out really well, you know,

were 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 cringe worthy 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 is 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 i'm going to start trying 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

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, it's so hard to find good advice online.

In social with stuff that goes so fast. I mean, I you know in me and Travis We're talking about this on his show you doing Travis Chappell 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 blah we're gonna buy likes because it raises your algorithms and all this stuff 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 we get there? 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. And that's what successful people do, right? So I invest in real estate, invest in this, I invest in myself. So I started investing in different things and I did the same thing. I started an account, people gave me the wrong advice. I had to delete the account because basically it was just dead. It was useless. And I wasn't building anything. So I started a brand new account in I think 19-

And that's the one I still have today and just built it from dirt. - Just organically, just doing the right thing. - Just posting videos and sharing valuable content, like trying a lot of different things. - Yeah.

obviously it's funny because you say that because like when you say you did your first video like 2018 like i've been like i have no issue being in front of the camera apparently i love myself i have no issue with it 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 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 Tik TOK style of 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, 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 where 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. Just, we need you to make more vertical video. 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-

- 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, or just ground level. Like people just literally come into your account and hit the follow button. It was very difficult for just average person to make a video and have it just take off and build your account. You can 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.

- I know, 'cause it's amazing what you think is so rudimentary that somebody else thinks is just absolute fire. - So what have you done? 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 in ways that have worked for me. So I'm gonna talk about that shit. That's the stuff I know. 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. 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, or,

That's a simple hook. 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. Cause I'm like, shit, what's John going to tell me? So literally that first line makes or breaks, but that first line will make or break your video. Right. And so, uh, what happens is you get better at just

- Delivering those hooks, that's it. - So what's the form? Give me my long video, 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 story tell 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 you know here you you know sean from think media youtube is amazing long form i make 10 minute video on youtube it does great that's

for you too that's what this is yeah that's that's that's what we're doing here yeah people want to listen along for them 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 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 the

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

you know, social media influencer who teaches content about this. Here's a sample of the last 10 posts. Give it some sample. Like 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, you know, 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 in the back. Who are these people? Yeah. Why should I listen to them? So in the beginning I've found it works really well. Just stare down the lens of camera and tell them what you're going to teach. Well, I, I gotta tell you since, you know, Travis, when I first decided to do this and start doing this in here, um,

He just said, I actually wasn't Travis, it was Brad. I was talking to Brad 'cause 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." - Yeah. - He goes, "Most relationships that I have were forged in this room."

And it was like, wow. He's like, yeah, I mean, 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're attentive, it's an amazing way to really get to know people. So 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 omnipresent.

Like it's not it's not hyper targeted and I know it should be it 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 you look at I mean, I've got the number one agent in Vegas on YouTube that sits 25 feet right there I've got you know, you look at even a guy like Jason Griggs who's just come up in the last year He's doing what he's doing, right?

Educating and staying specific within his niche. He's done extremely well. I love it and I and I love that so for me But again, it's kind of omnipresent. I sit here for an hour. They cut it up. It goes up You'll see me at you 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 got 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

of staying top of mind. It could just be that your database, 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.

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 you had it. So if you're already doing some shit, just document that and have somebody chop it up. How important do you think it is to develop the avatar of 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 core load foreclosure, you will never see one of my ads. Cause I don't want that client. Yeah. Like 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 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, try and see what people are searching. 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 your, if your content strategy is all over the map, confusing, messy, it's not attracting anybody. So I think, um, yeah, for people within a, in 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 showing, are you showcasing luxury properties in your market? Yeah. No. Okay. Well, all right.

Is the quality of your content next level? Do you realize people judge you? I understand it'd be nice to think people don't judge. Everybody is the worst. 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 Vegas, so...

You know, but, but like, I'll give you an example in 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, 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 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 5 million here in town. And he's like, I've seen some of you walk in to showings with this person. Yeah. He,

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, bro, 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 V talks about like, or Dan Fleischman says like Gary V 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, you know, um,

- Especially with politics these days, that becomes a problem too. People are very on one side or the 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,

Like if you're an attractive person, use it to your advantage, but don't take it like too far. You know what I mean? So there's like a line you cross. But anyways, like 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, it's so funny. Wipe the lens. You know, it'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? Kenny. Yeah.

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 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 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. 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 way more deals in real estate than

than I, that 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 that 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 of,

for how to push appreciation on a $20 million multifamily deal until exactly I'd 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 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 and

you'll just get everybody to respond. I'm like, where were all you motherfuckers when I asked about real estate? 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, dude, 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 hundreds, maybe thousand open conversations with people, quick back and forth, just DMs. 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? Yeah, of course. Because it's just comfortable. It's a relatability thing. And I think, too, if people always think that all you are is business, business, business, it's a little repellent. Yeah, for sure. It's a little impulsive. Nobody wants to just like, oh. They want a real human. 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. Yep. 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, 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. Yeah. That's just a process, right? Well, that was the year and a half process that it took me to fix, to weed out the people that were paid to be there and get in people that actually want to pay attention. Exactly. 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 gonna do what that guy's doing.

No, you want to do what he did in the beginning to start the account. Yeah. To grow it. It's not like what he's doing now. Like Gary Vee could take a picture of dirt and it'll get, but like, you know, 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. Yeah. And we were talking about before we went on the air today about the event, about your event in particular. And, and,

you 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.

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, 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. Yeah. Avengers. And I saw Irwin speak. Yeah. I thought Irwin'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 got connected with him and then he spoke for one of our micro events from a mastermind. I was like, this is a great guy. So I see it and I'm like, okay, 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. So there's things like that. You have to look, you have to go out there and see asking feedback from people. Hey, like of all the events you go to, who was the best speaker today? Who's like the most unlikely person that 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 got to 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 best-selling authors yeah they are they're amazing teachers they 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 about it but

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 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. 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, you know, so make it fresh, make it more innovative, have a better experience. So just put yourself in the audience 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, 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 going to sell tickets or blow out an event. Like you could do a small one, but you want to sell a thousand tickets.

Like it's going to 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. 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 built XYZ companies. So seek out those people. We need fresh people.

- Yeah. - You know, in this game, right? Everyone's tired of the old stuff. So there's the tried and true people like the Ed Milets. - Yeah. - I mean, I've seen him speak three, four times, every time he's good. - Sure. - But there's other people where you're like, dude, I've heard it. I could do, you know, I could go on now. It's nothing against him, 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, they kind of discount about events is 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 just, 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, what is forward 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. Yeah. So we actually force it. So everybody who's there is of like-minded.

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, like whatever those tips are. Brush your teeth, man. Yeah. But you can, you're not gonna be able to get through any networking if, if, if it's like, oh shit, you know? So yeah. Address that kind of stuff. But the other thing is like, how do you network? You'd be surprised at how many people like don't even know what the fuck to do. Right. So yeah.

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.

Oh, you know what? I actually use a CRM that would work really good for that. 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 i'm like i don't know i'll give a what you do tell me about you you married your kids like what what do you like what we're talking about you because they're so programmed to spit out that elevator pitch over and over and over it completely skips their 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 gonna pay, like it's gonna pay off 'cause they're gonna reciprocate and new things are gonna happen to you. So that's the thing. And then the last piece, which nobody ever talks about is when you leave, and this is, it works a little better if you fly to an event. - Yeah. - 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 in 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, 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 a little, I'm going to be a little different when I go home. That happens. I think any, any good event, you should have that somewhere, somehow, something, you know, 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 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. Yeah.

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 know, you, you, uh, you think you, you, you know, you need to learn about, but then there's things that you don't even know. You don't even know about. And that could be the thing that happens when you go someplace. Bro, we were sitting, we were sitting in, um, where was I? I was at boardroom. I was at Kent, uh, clothiers mastermind. Um,

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 experienced multifamily developers and everybody in the room was like what how do we do that? 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, but it was just like I mean It was just like everybody all over me 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

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 his 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,

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. 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 gotta, like you gotta 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. So how are you getting in front of

new folks to export, to expose them to Ford, to attract them to the event. What channels are you 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 in the last year or two about paid media. Especially, I found 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 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 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. I 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,

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, you know, like I,

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 really, you're just lighting money on fire because no, they're not going to work. Yeah. So you gotta, you gotta get good at the content game first and really know what you're doing when you're buying ads. Yeah, no, I agree. Um, I have always found, you know, I always tell people, it's just like Google AdWords, like hire somebody to set it up. Just make sure you own your own Google AdWords account. Don't set up on their accounts. When you fire them, you still own all the work that we have. You know, the guy, uh, Billy Jean. Yes. Yeah. So he's due to help me with the ads on YouTube. And so,

Like, like you just said, I don't know shit about it. Yeah. I go to him. Yeah. Ask him, who do you, 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? What do you think? I'm just curious. What does Neil think about Billy Jean's little, uh,

It's a hard pivot on a social. 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. Yeah. He has 10,000 people who have bought 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 conversations 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, if 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 NFTs were the hot thing and crypto. Like a lot of people jumped on that and then it died. This isn't that way. 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. I had a meeting this morning, talking about AI, 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. So you have a contract. I said, yeah, I'm going to send me a PDF right now.

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. Does it better? And then you can adjust it for free, by the way, fast. So I would be worried a little bit about not knowing this stuff. It's still early. Like you got a lot to go. Yeah. But the speed at which it's doing things now is,

You need to get familiar with this shit. Well, here's my question. Okay, so which brings us to my next question, which is with all of the innovations in AI coming out, I mean, you can already tell ChatGPT to write your script. You can already go to the voiceovers and it spits out a voiceover. You can already then go and create 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? Cause you gotta be thinking ahead of this. You have to, if you're not, you're going to be a dinosaur. What's the pivot? How, how, how,

- 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 gonna stand out versus the AI generated person doing the script from ChatGPT. It's gonna 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 lining up and super excited to be a part of a community 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, uh, you know, and, 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. Yeah. So we just need to use AI to do more.

So if we're, we can use AI, like you just said, to save a shitload of time, to increase our output, to do more content, to even, to be omnipresent. ChatGPT 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 post 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

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 Thiel quote 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 it. You said it and I wanted to come back to it. One more thing about Ford. So let's say I'm a guy or a gal, whatever, because anybody can do this. Let's say I want to build. So you started with community. That's where this started. 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? Uh, 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. - 'Cause then they wanna steal from you, they wanna learn from you. And that's cool, like follow me just to get my video ideas and take 'em. - Yeah. - Like that's cool. So people would just follow me for that. Then what happened was I had about a 50/50 thing of 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 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, like once a week, I'll send it out to my list. Make sure just make sure that you're giving value. Sure. And then 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 sense. Yeah. And then ask people to like share this. Yeah. But like we do contests where we'll tell people like, Hey dude, if you will, 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 know, like get them to share spread the word for you So at what point like it's funny cuz like you look at at what point did you monetize? This group because obviously there's probably a coaching group. So you've got to make a switch It's funny at some point it's got to be like

hey, Santa Neil can no longer be putting presents under the tree every day. We 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 got no more time for the brain to 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. Like we have a company, I built my wealth that way.

and I own real 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 started doing it and made it really affordable for people to join. I remember doing my, my first program, you could pay like three, 400 bucks, uh,

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. 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 it's called the climb. And, and,

with the fortnight first launch it's 75 days into 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 so click it 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 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 going to let you in for free. But if you quit, you got to 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, 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 it. Yeah. Because the idea is,

Subconsciously, if you get something for free, it's optional. It's like it has no value. There's got to be a price to good information because then people don't take it seriously. - Yeah, I agree. - They just don't. So they gotta have some skin in the game, man. They got to. - And 100%. And then also with like when you start doing events and you start doing these things,

they cost a shitload of money. 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, you know, that's a great business. There's, 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. Now it's taken off. It's like its own business. Yeah. It's pretty great. It's great. And it's, and it's, and it's,

And more importantly, it's designer on something you love, which is watch on that people do well, which I think it's 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-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 forwardevent.com. Forwardevent.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 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 that. Yeah. So it's almost sold out. So hopefully, 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 today, man. 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

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.