Episode #252 – Encore: How To Find Buyers Now

You're listening to the REI Marketing Nerds podcast, the leading resource for real estate investors who want to dominate their market online. Dan Barrett is the founder of AdWords Nerds, a high tech digital agency focusing exclusively on helping real estate investors. You get more leads and deals online, outsmart your competition and live a freer, more awesome life. And now your host, Dan Barrett.

(00:40): Hey guys, welcome back. You're listening to the second part of last week's episode. Let's jump back in. Yeah, I was always, prior to finding real estate, I was always like anti guru, anti influencer. It seemed so fake and disingenuine. And once I had that moment where I was like, Well, I have a responsibility to share this. I didn't know any other way to get information out to people other than social media . And so when I started, it was just like before and after pictures and just talking a little bit, It was all picture based. I never showed my face cuz I was like, no one cares about seeing my face. They just need to know how to do this. They don't need to see my face. And so I tried to share numbers and just pictures so that people could see what things look like. Cause it could be scary buying a junker. You don't know what you're gonna walk into.

(01:37): And then, then turning it into something beautiful. Wanted to show people that you not scared. But all that did was lead me to kind of honing my social media skills, if you wanna call it that. And I remember I had an epiphany one time. I never posted a video of me of my face talking and I can't remember what it was, but something happened in my business or in my life. And then I got such an overwhelming response from people and it was so kind. And so I just wanted to do this video where I just thanked everybody cuz I felt so happy that people cared. And so I just remember I did this quick 15, 10, 15 second video where I was thanking people just thank you for what you did and what you said. And it really meant a lot for me. And I posted that video and the numbers and engagement went through the roof and I was like, Oh, I've heard people say you're supposed to post your face .

(02:37): But I guess so from that point forward I started, People do wanna see your face. Yeah, I think so. And what I learned over time is, and so if you're new and people are saying, Hey, you need to put your stuff out on social media, You're right. Don't we buy houses in the ugly house picture? And if you wanna generate leads, that's a good thing to do. But that's not what your page should be about. Two things, people want to see you, They wanna see what you're doing, they want and they want you to add value. And so just when you're thinking through what to do, don't think through it. You're doing it already. If you're a real estate investor, you're doing the things people wanna see. You're looking at houses, you're making offers, you're rehabbing houses, you're renting them out. Just have somebody with a phone there recording it and then chop up a few seconds of it and post it.

(03:34): Don't overthink it. You already are the content. People want to see that. They wanna see you doing what you're doing. And raw content is more powerful than super polished content cuz it makes people feel like they can do it. It makes people feel more connected to you. If it's over polished, then you seem like you're so far above everybody else because yeah, you've, not only are you doing real estate, but you've also got time to have pretty perfectly polished Instagram videos and reels and talks and things. But if it's just you, somebody on a recording, you on a phone and you're just in your business, I've even had my social media person just record me while I was doing a podcast like this. Just pretend she was standing right here recording me doing this. And we posted that and it did great. It's just post what you're doing, don't overthink it.

(04:24): Make sure you put your face on stuff and try to add value. Think of the most insightful, valuable tips that anybody's ever given you. Turn on a camera for 10 seconds, say that thing and then post it. The more value you add, the more people will be drawn to you. And then you'll start to see what works and what doesn't work. You'll be fine. But just keep value in mind. And I try to say the same thing with if you're gonna create courses, if you're gonna create things that are supposed to help people, you'll find yourself, I found myself doing it. What's gonna produce the most revenue? What's gonna produce the most income? Cuz as a business owner, we're taught focus on the most income generating activities. Right? Those are the things that you should spend your time on. And that is good advice. But when you're talking about a product or a service to help somebody else, you've got to think in terms of what's the most value I can give people? And then that's the thing you should focus on. And then you can tailor that back based on what you think it'll do revenue wise. Don't go spend a bunch of time on something that's gonna give people a lot of value, but isn't gonna produce a ton of income. But don't let income be the thing that drives what you produce. It should be what's gonna help somebody the most. Then go do that thing. And then

(05:43): It strikes me too, you build a reputation over time. So it's like if you are really packing these courses or the social media posts with things that really change people's lives really have an impact. Sooner or later they get to a point where I have a friend of mine who does coaching programs and stuff of general business coaching stuff. And it's to the point where pretty much anything he'll put out, I'll either buy or seriously think about buying. Last thing I bought was really expensive. I didn't even know what it was. I was just like, Oh, you're doing a thing. Or I'll buy your thing. It's just his track record is so strong that kind of just matter. And I got a bunch of value outta it. And I was like, He would've refunded me if I hated it. But So you're kind of building that track record. I mean, it just strikes me as the long term ROI is in building those people that really trust you. Right. So where are you primarily doing your social media right now? It's the Instagram I think was where you started. Is are you in TikTok and doing that very seriously? You're in the podcasting kind of world as well. So you can talk about where you are seeing either the most engagement or either where you just enjoy being doing your stuff the most.

(06:59): So main source of social media traffic comes from Instagram. So that's where most of the time gets spent. And then I would say it's TikTok follow behind that and some Facebook. And we're starting to venture into other social media platforms. We're starting to build up on Pinterest and LinkedIn. Now I do some podcasting, but it, I'm bigger pockets. So I'm under contract to do some co-hosting for the Bigger Pockets podcast and I create content for them. And so I can't have my own podcast while I'm under contract with them. Oh, okay. At some point. And when I'm ever not on contract with them, I'll probably focus a lot more on YouTube. And Does that kind of count for that sort of arrangement? You can't really do the YouTube thing cause I just can't do it in real estate investing. Oh, okay. All right. Well, alright, so yeah, your other channel, we basically just talk about Legos. Yeah, right. Yeah. That's Interest. If I wanna do a toy unboxing YouTube channel, totally fine with it. Yeah, I mean I know those dudes aren't killing, these kids are chilling it, Right? I say dudes, but I mean six year olds. But yeah, than my, Yeah. Yeah. So I mean that's so interesting to me. So let's talk about Instagram a little bit, if you don't mind diving into a

(08:25): No, no, let's Do it. I'm personally fascinated by this and I was a big user of Instagram and I kind of got off of it mostly for my own consumption reasons. I was like, I'm so using Instagram a lot. And I was just like, they're a little too good at knowing where my buttons are and stuff. So I kind of got out of it. But I do feel like, well, this is a huge channel. I'm actually watch, my wife, wife is she got into ceramic, she makes this beautiful pottery. She's starting up her own business. So she's got an online store and she's getting into Instagram using it as a channel. And right now looking at her use it, she's like, Well, it's all about reals now. It's all about video. It's not really about image posts. So is that kind of your experience too, where it's very Instagram's competing with TikTok in some ways, so they're really going after the kind of video formats rather than the image formats. What's been your experience of Instagram today versus, I mean, I was just thinking about when Instagram started and was like, Oh, I'm gonna put a cool filter on this picture on Camera.

(09:37): Nobody does that. Nobody's filtering yours anymore. So what's been your experience? Yeah, man. First of all, I think if you have any business, I do not care what the business is. If you don't have a presence on social media, you're missing customers. This is how people find out about business now. Yeah. TV ads aren't the same. People aren't watching TV as much as they're looking at their phones. They are not. So brands have realized this now. That's why you're starting to see more and more brands, not just producing content, but leveraging influencers to get content out there mean we get millions, millions of impressions. And they're TV networks that run similar numbers to what influencers

(10:42): Or Getting as far as capturing eyeballs. And so if you aren't producing content, if you aren't on social media, you're missing traffic. I don't run ads for my courses. I don't do paid ads. I don't do paid ads for my coaching program. It's all organic, just reaching eyeballs through the free content that we put out. And so you gotta get over yourself with social media. If you have a business, it's not about you, it's about serving your customers. You gotta be where people are. If you have a business and people are on social media, so if you want to stay relevant and you have to have a presence on social media now with that out the window for us, TikTok is current in the future. That's where the growth is. The users are like, but from a business perspective, they're not where Instagram is. And also the average age of their user base is much younger. And so if you have a business where you need adults to spend money, then Instagram is where you're gonna be able to get the most eyeballs. Cuz that's, it's got a higher age user base. But the cool part about it is there's so much similarities with both platforms that you can take the same piece of content and put it in both places with very minimal, with minimal effort. And so we're just cross, every piece of every reel goes on TikTok and vice versa to capture both audiences.

(12:13): That makes a lot of sense. Do you automate that? Do you have a team? You just do everything yourself? How do you do That? So I was doing it all myself. I now have a full-time social media manager. Awesome. And so she's capturing video for me, editing it, getting it posted, and in both places. And we just did that a few months ago. And has that been a world of difference for you or is it kind of just the same as just frees up some time? Yeah, so it absolutely frees up time because now I don't have to worry about the consistency. I pay someone to make sure I'm consistent. Cause that's the only way. These algorithms at TikTok algorithms different than I history's. Algorithm is different than YouTube's algorithm and the only way to stay. And then all three of those are different. And then they're all changing all the time. So no one person can stay on top of every single change. And so the only way to beat the algorithm is to just, I call it relentless consistency with your posting. You just have to be in people's faces all the time. And so I don't have to worry about the consistency frees up time for me to go do more income generating activities. And then, yeah, we've seen it in engagement, impressions, views since having that person, because I pay them to pay attention to what's trending, what's working, so they can post and then they can pay attention to the videos that they're putting out there and saying which ones are doing better and posting more content like that. Whereas when I was doing it, I just had time to post, post and then I'll post something again later. I don't have time to think about what's trending, what's not, how to do this, that, and the third. So it's helping. Yes.

(13:52): All right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think the thing that's interesting about it, and this is exactly how you did it. You did it yourself and then you hired a person to help you rather, I think a lot of people jump straight to, Well, I don't wanna do it, so I'm just gonna hire somebody. And they never really develop their own voice as a function of that. So I think you did it in a really interesting way. I love, by the way, the thing that you pointed out about the differences between TikTok and Instagram, where TikTok is where all the growth is, it's where the younger people are, but Instagram right now is where most of the money is. I think all that's really amazing. Do you, in your content, send people to your courses? Or do you basically just say, I'm putting out quality content's gonna be good, and then they're gonna click through to my profile and that's how they're gonna get there? How do you think about that?

(14:44): It's a combination of both for us. So I'll post a valuable piece of content where today we did one, I saw she posted one today. That was just a great tip that anybody can go use. And that was it. It was a great tip. And so the idea with that is that builds trust. And then people will eventually check out the Lincoln bio and maybe they'll buy something. But we also do posts where I'm like, Hey, I just bought this house and we're gonna do X, Y, and Z with it. And I didn't have to bring any money to the closing table when I bought it. And if you wanna learn how I do that, you can check out my course on how to finance deals with little dumb money, click the link in my bio. So we do a combination of both. That makes a lot of sense. So have you found social media to be valuable for finding sellers for the real estate side of the business? Because that strikes me as in many ways, more difficult than connecting with investors, same muscle groups, to use a weird metaphor that I don't know. But anyway, you're exercising the same kind of stuff. Do you guys do much of that or do you rely on other marketing channels for the sellers side of the

(15:50): Business? Yeah, if we're fine, I don't use my Instagram to find sellers, the people who are gonna sell me their home. Yeah, no, I think I've ever bought a home from somebody. Now I've gotten leads from somebody who knows that I do this, who might send me to somebody who they know, right? That's happened. But never just somebody who's like, Hey, I follow you. I have a house, you wanna buy it? Nah, that hasn't really happened. And we don't target it that way. So for me, this is kind of how my infrastructure set up. So I have my real estate investment business where I'm out buying property, renovating it, monetizing it via rentals, flips, Airbnbs hotels. And then I have my social media person videographer who was just me before I hired her. Right? And so then it was me capturing that. So I'm doing this, just turn on a camera, capture parts of it, chop that video up and then post that cuz I'm the social media side and people want to see me doing that.

(16:52): Those videos now build trust, people click the link in the bio. I have courses very, very inexpensively. $40 for a course where somebody else might charge them 2, 3, 4, $500, I charge 40. But it's the same type of content. They get the same kind of value. So then they build trust because they see me doing what I said I was doing and then they buy a course for 40 and get four to $500 worth of value. That builds even more trust. So then they go buy more products or they apply for my coaching, which costs substantially more cuz it's way more involved of me helping you grow your business. And then that leads them to be like, okay, well I'm willing to pay more because I paid 40 and got $500 worth. So if I pay this, how much am I gonna get? I feel good about it. And so it's all, it's connected in a way.

(17:40): Yeah. Okay. So let's bring it back cuz we're coming up on time. I can continue talking about this for basically forever. So I have to put an artificial stop on it, but I wanna bring it back all the way to the beginning. So one of my favorite moments of your story is sitting down with your wife and doing your goals and then doing your first deal and being like, we have to redo the goals. So it must, you've gone on this wild journey, right? That's fair. Yes. So what are your goals today when obviously it's you're very purpose driven. You've talked about sharing with people and feeling this responsibility. So when you come in the office today, what gets you motivated in the morning? What are you trying to achieve with either part of your business today versus all the way back then when you were like, I just wanna do five deals a year and then I'll be happy . Yeah, absolutely. It's funny you, I'm supposed to have some super sexy answer for that question. , Hey Look. And I don't Take any kind answer. I'm just, I'm Curious

(18:45): And I am in the mode now of trying to well of all on the real estate investment side, I love this business. I love getting to help people out of tough situations. I love getting to take something that is on the verge of being on its way to being torn down. I source terrible places and driving by now and seeing people with families, kids playing in the yards of houses I've renovated, I love. And so I have no intentions of hitting some number of doors and then stopping. I tell people I'm gonna keep buying property until God or my wife tells me to stop . So we're gonna keep going and I'll know I'm done when I'm done as far as the helping others through learning how to do this. I don't see that stopping. I feel like I am called to do this. I am called to help people figure out how to live the life they're supposed to live.

(19:54): I feel like we're all put on this planet for a reason, right? And what stops us from getting to doing the thing that we were put here to do is because we have to go to work every day to make the money to sustain life. And so I tell people, don't not the guy Cher nine to five and that that's not what I want for people. I just quit my nine to five a year, two years ago, no, a year and some change ago. I worked as long as I possibly could until it financially didn't make any sense for me to work anymore. I don't want people to, I'm not saying everybody needs to quit their nine to five. I am saying that everybody should have the option to quit their nine to five if they want to because I was a much better employee to my company that I was working for when I didn't have to be there because I was choosing to be there. And because I was choosing to be there, I was a much better employee. I did better quality work because they didn't, I didn't feel like I was going there because I was chained to them. I was going there cause I wanted to go there and do the best I could for 'em.

(20:54): So not trapped there, just like you said to your wife, You don't have to do this. We'll find someone to replace you if you ever don't wanna do it, It makes all the difference in the world. But when you are operating from operating in survival mode where you're going to work, cuz I have to make this money cuz I have to survive. When you're just going to work because you truly believe in what you're doing and you enjoy your job, you'll be a better employee. Your employer will appreciate that more. And you don't have that pressure anymore of, well one day they might let me off. The perspective is like, well if they lay me off, I'll go find something else I wanna do. Yeah, yeah. And that that's true freedom, Dude. I love it. And it really strikes me, right? It's like I asked about goals and it's in my head, I kind of had an extrinsic motivator where it's like, I want X amount of revenue or whatever. But you're all talking about intrinsic motivation. You're doing the thing you like to do. That's why you're doing it, right? That's such an amazing place to be for people that wanna specifically so find you on social media. We've talked a lot about social media. I know a lot of people are curious to wanna actually see what you're doing sort of in person. Where would people find you on social media?

(22:03): It's at the Henry Washington on Instagram and TikTok and I think it's like at the Henry Wash on Twitter, but Instagram's the best place. Okay, cool. So at the Henry Washington on TikTok and Instagram. And obviously we already mentioned henry washington.com if you wanna go check out what you're doing online. Henry, thank you so much for coming on me. This was an awesome conversation. I know I got a ton out of it, so I don't care about the audience. , I got a lot out of it. So just That's the best reason for having a podcast. It's the, That's only reason I have to podcast. I'm To get all the information. Yeah. And just secretly in it for me every time. So I just be like, Henry I'm asking for a friend problem, girls. So what do you say to them? But I very much appreciate you coming on. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, man. This was Awesome. I appreciate you having me. I blast

(22:55): That is it. That's the end of this week's episode and I hope you enjoyed it. I know I did. And I told him after I sort of pushed the stop recording button on the thing, I was like, Look, you have really inspired me to go out and actually work more on my social media. So hey, if you see me on Instagram, whatever, that's why. But look, I would love for you to leave a review of this podcast. It helps other people find the show. I read every single one and I really appreciate it. Just search for REI marketing nerds wherever you download podcasts and leave us a review. I really would appreciate it. This is Daniel Barrett signing for this week. I'll see you next time and thanks.

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