Gary Vaynerchuk on Finding Deals Through Social Media & Crushing It as an Entrepreneur

 Josh: This is the BiggerPockets podcast Show 264.“The thing that drives me crazy, brothers, is that I just want everybody to win because I don’t think it comes at my expense, right? I think a lot of people can win in a lot of different ways and I just wish they understood what they were actually doing”.

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Josh: What’s going on, everybody? This is Josh Dorkin, host of the BiggerPockets podcast, here with my co-host, Mr. Brandon Turner. What’s going on, man?

Brandon: All right, I have two questions for you. Who are you and what did you do with Josh because I don’t know who this bearded bandit guy on the screen is.

Josh: Handsome, handsome.

Brandon: That wasn’t the word I was going to use.

Josh: Oh, well.

Brandon: How are you doing?

Josh: First of all, it is January 2^nd.

Brandon: It is officially the new year.

Josh: We’re recording this. Happy, happy new year.

Brandon: Thank you. For everyone else listening to us, happy February.

Josh: Yeah. Whenever this posts. Yeah, I think this comes out February 1^st. So happy February. Yes, yes, yes. And I am Josh. I have been somewhat absent over the past month or so.

Brandon: You have been.

Josh: Yeah. I mean, really quick, without diving too deep, I had some family stuff go down. My daughter had to undergo a procedure and it just kind of didn’t go the way it was supposed to go and been dealing with some trauma and you know, it’s been hard. It’s been hard. I’m always a family first guy. And I’m actually stepping away from family stuff to record this because I really wanted to do this show, super pumped about it. But you know, my wife and I—Julie, we’ve been spending pretty much all of our days taking care of our daughter and trying to get her better. So it’s been hard, as you can probably hear. I’m a little emotional. A lot emotional.

Brandon: It’s been tough on you, I know. I’ve been watching from afar but I’m glad you’re here today. But anyway.

Josh: Yeah, man. Anyway. So that’s where I’ve been and again, I’m super excited to be doing this show and I just want to give a huge thanks to Brandon and everybody else on the BiggerPockets team for holding the fort down while I’ve been away but again, I’m always a family first guy and right now, that’s where my time, my energy is. So, but bringing things up a little bit here, yeah man. How have you been? Congrats. I think you closed on your trailer park today. Mobile home park?

Brandon: I think I closed today. I mean, it might close tomorrow but it should close today. Yeah.

Josh: That’s awesome.

Brandon: Yeah, it’s pretty exciting. Things are good. The holidays went well. All that good stuff went well so it’s nice to be staring off into Hawaii. I should actually be in Hawaii right now.

Josh: I should be, too, but you know.

Brandon: I mean, I will be when this episode comes out. I will be in Hawaii. You’re going to be in cold Denver.

Josh: I was supposed to be in Hawaii but we had to cancel said trip. But yeah man, all right. Well, so today, before diving into all that stuff, today is a very, very different show than we normally do, for a number of reasons. A—we couldn’t quite get the time. The timing was tough but we were fortunate to have gotten some time out of Gary, our guest, and we got to chat with him about some really interesting stuff. And we’ll get there in a second. Before we do, why don’t we jump into today’s Quick Tip?

Brandon: All right, so today’s Quick Tip is actually something I’m looking forward to this year. This is going to be a total ad, so if you don’t care—

Josh: It’s okay.

Brandon: A plug. Here’s the deal. I want to reach, Josh wants to reach, we want to reach a lot more people with BiggerPockets. I mean, BiggerPockets already is the largest name in real estate investing but I want it to be the largest name in the world. I want to reach more people. I want everyone to know about BP.

Josh: That’s great.

Brandon: So, as such, we are looking to build out our marketing team a little bit. So if you are somebody who is a self-starter, a hustler, a marketing expert, somebody who’s worked with affiliate marketing or Facebook ads and things like that, I want to work directly with you.

Josh: People out there creating content, people who know or understand real estate, real estate investing, and are just really, really creative.

Brandon: Yeah, we’re looking for you. If that’s you, hit us up at [email protected] and it might be a job, it might be an internship, it might be we’re just going to work with you in some other way but if you’re somebody who is a rock star marketing expert, I want to talk to you.

Josh: And make the subject line—

Brandon: Marketing expert.

Josh: Marketing expert. Yeah.

Brandon: Marketing expert. And then we’ll know to look for that. So anyways, [email protected]. Hit it up because I want to reach billions of people in the next few years at BiggerPockets.

Josh: Billions.

Brandon: Billions. All right. With that, let’s get to today’s show sponsor.

Josh: With a word from today’s sponsor. Yes.

Brandon: Hey guys, it’s Brandon. I’ve got some exciting news. So SimpliSafe, you know the company that we talk about a lot here on the podcast and that I use, I just released their brand new home security system, the all-new SimpliSafe. It is completely rebuilt and redesigned. They’ve added a ton of new safeguards to protect against power outages, down to Wi-Fi, cut landlines, bats, hammers, and everything else in between.

And the all-new SimpliSafe was redesigned to be practically invisible with sensors so small, you can blanket your home in protection and never notice. You know who will? The intruders. And this is what’s truly remarkable to me. SimpliSafe actually spent years building this system and they’ve added so much but you still get the same fair and honest price, 24/7 protection for $15 bucks a month. And no contract. It’s smaller, faster, and stronger than anything they’ve built before but supply is very limited so visit SimpliSafePockets.com now to order. Again, that’s SimpliSafePockets.com.

Josh: All right, big big thanks to our sponsors. All right, guys. So, today’s guest—I’ve been watching this guy for years and he’s one of those folks that I’ve long admired because he’s always focused on the hustle, always focused on the grind, always focused on the hard work and I’ve always had the mindset that that’s what you really need to be successful.

You know, I didn’t get angry at people who are like, oh, I’ve got an idea—oh, I’ve just got $50 million dollars to fund it. There you go. Like, good for them. Shoot, man. That’s amazing. But everybody hears about that and the media pushes that. And that’s not how the world works. There’s very, very few people who come up with an idea, raise countless millions of dollars and suddenly are successful.

The average small business person is coming up with an idea and then they work their behinds off in order for it to get some. And that’s why I love Gary. I think he’s the guy who really tells people, forget about all this nonsense. You have to work hard in order to get there. You really, really do. And so, for me, that’s the big reason I wanted to have him and Brandon, I know he’s been one of your inspirations as well.

Brandon: Yeah, definitely. I mean, back six years ago, I read his book Crush It, which was fantastic and it really motivated me to drive my real estate business forward. I mean, let’s be clear. Gary Vaynerchuk is not a real estate investor. You know, we like to bring people on the show occasionally who are not because I believe that real estate is a business. I mean, Josh, you believe that, too. If you’re good at business, you can be good at real estate. But it’s hard to be good at real estate if you’re not good at business.

So what he drives is entrepreneurship and how do you become a good entrepreneur? And specifically, Gary talks about how do you harness hustle and social media—those two things—to drive your business? And that’s what we focus on in today’s show. How can a real estate investor really use—and he gives a number of really interesting, cool ideas for how a real estate investor could beat everyone else in your market, so to speak, by doing things that they’re not willing to do.

So anyway, I love Gary V. I loved the book Crush It. He’s got a new book coming out called Crushing It. It’s kind of a follow-up to the other book, Crush It. He’s got a lot of great books out there. But you’re going to hear a little bit from Gary V. today. And again, I wish we would have had like four hours to sit with him. But he’s actually on vacation.

Josh: He was in his car on obligation.

Brandon: Obligation, yeah. He took time to talk with us today, which was awesome. So with that, the fact that he’s in his car, that’s why the sound quality is a little bit lower than normal but, you know.

Josh: Yeah, yeah. And why the show is a little bit shorter because he didn’t have a ton of time. Really quick, a little more about Gary. I think he’s most famous for growing his family wine business from this $3 million dollar business to $60 million bucks. He’s a New York Times bestseller, as Brandon mention. He runs one of the largest social media companies agencies out there, Vayner Media. And he’s got the Ask Gary V. Show out on YouTube.

Brandon: By the way, did you know he was also a judge at the, I think it was the Miss America competition? Do you know that?

Josh: I’ve seen him like all over random places. I mean, his brand continues to grow so I’m sure he’s going to be hosting some TV shows. He’s going to have all sorts of stuff out.

Brandon: Yeah, he’s got a TV show on iTunes with Jessica Alba also, called Planet of the Apps. But yeah, he was also a judge on Miss America. Yeah. I’m looking it up right now. He was. So anyway, crazy.

Josh: Awesome. Very, very cool. And one day he aspires to own the New York Jets so there you go. Well, if anyone deserves it, I think he does because he’s working his behind off to get there. So with that, let’s bring him in.

Gary, welcome to the show, man. It’s great to have you.

Gary: Not at all.

Josh: All right, man. So you talked with an insane number of entrepreneurs and wannabe entrepreneurs. So what drives you crazy about most people who call themselves entrepreneurs today?

Gary: You know, it’s insane. I mean, it’s 2018, new year, you’ve got kind of new thoughts. Fresh thoughts. You know, it’s funny. It’s not that I’m crazy like yo, you’re a fake entrepreneur and you’re making all entrepreneurs look bad, which I think is happening, right? There’s entrepreneurs, and I do think there’s a confusion in the system.

But I’ll be very frank with you. It’s not like I feel like that’s taking anything out of me, right? Like, some 23-year-old dude who’s like going out every night and just puts ‘entrepreneur’ in his Instagram because he wants to hook up and it’s like a cool thing—screw this. What drives me crazy is I just don’t want him to be sad at 31. Like it’s not so much that he’s f*cked up or he’s f*cked up my game.

Like, I feel like I’ll always be okay. It’s more empathy of like, that person’s insecure. That person doesn’t have self-awareness. That person’s going to really hit a weird mid-life crisis. I really wish that person knew what made them happy. It’s not going to be a Rolex. It’s not going to be a new Jaguar. That’s not going to disguise the insecurities that he or she feels. So what drives me crazy is I think it’s one huge Band-aid for a lot of people who are emotionally soft. And I’d prefer that not happening to them.

One of the reasons a lot of people struggle with—well, not a lot. One of the reasons 20% of the audience struggles with me at first, and I’d love to hear you guys’ thoughts on the first time you saw me. I have a very strong reaction one way or the other because there’s a truth in this subject matter where I really know my stuff and I spit a very strong truth which becomes overreaction in either direction.

I don’t want any money from anybody. I’m not trying to sell them my course. What I’m trying to do is help people and I think what happens is, 80% really love it and 20% don’t like that I’m exposing them and shedding a lot on it. The thing that drives me crazy, brothers, is that I just want everybody to win because I don’t think it comes at my expense, right? I think a lot of people could win in a lot of different ways and I just wish they understood what they were actually doing.

Josh: No, that makes a lot of sense. Our community of real estate investors, when this community got started at BiggerPockets, we had—everybody was at each other, right? It was this steep competition. Your neighbors are a competitor. Every other investor’s your competitor. It’s like, hey, if you guys work together, we can all dominate. We can all win. And so everybody gets together and rock it, right?

Gary: And don’t get me wrong. Like I think competition’s amazing. Like, I genuinely like Vayner Media to beat every other agency. I do. Like, I want my books to do better. I want to win. I just don’t think my winning is at the expense of another.

You know what’s funny, the place where I’m most emotional is sports. It’s really the Jets, you know. I used to get very upset, probably up until three years ago, that after the game where I’d be crying, my players who had just lost a huge game would go shaking hands and high fiving everybody else, right? And it was tough for me to swallow. I was emotional about it.

But in business, I’m not emotional, meaning when other people are winning and have more successful podcasts or make more money or whatever it may be, it’s interesting. I don’t get upset because I genuinely do think that everybody can win to their own version. Nobody is taking money out of your pocket. You are taking money out of your pocket. You know what I mean?

Josh: Oh, absolutely.

Gary: I think that’s a very big factor, like yes, somebody might have got the Dr. Pepper account instead of us, but that’s a micro taking out of my pocket. At a macro, nobody’s stopping you. And so, if you got outbid by $100,000 on this property as an investment, you know, maybe Rick or Sally beat you in that micro but at a macro, nobody’s stopping you from going to the next emerging country, state, beachfront property, development, neighborhood. Nobody.

And I think that’s a very important thing for people to understand. They’re playing against themselves and not against somebody else. While I think it’s fun to make pretend or even manipulate you’re playing against somebody else, just to get your juices going, I think that’s cool. I just think it’s an excuse that people use at times to not address their lack of x.

Brandon: So, let’s talk about excuses real quick. So three of the things I hear almost every entrepreneur complain about, or want to be entrepreneurs because everybody wants to be one, right? And this is true for real estate investors or not, any kind of a person. They lack like three things I hear all the time—no time, no money, no opportunities or like no deals are out there or whatever. We hear that all the time. What do you say to people who complain about those things? I don’t have any time. I had kids. I’ve got a family. I’ve got a wife.

Gary: They’re wrong. I mean, well listen. Then don’t be an investor. Don’t be an entrepreneur. Like, my mother is my hero. She was a stay-at-home mom. Hasn’t made a nickel in her career. The biggest inspiration of my life. The foundation of my trillions. Then don’t fake it. Like, I am a workaholic and I spend time with my family in extremes but here I am in the week that I’m supposed to spend time with my family, I’m sitting in a f*cking car with you f*cking jerkoffs because I can’t get away.

Brandon: You love us.

Gary: You know what I mean, though? Don’t bullsh*t. Like everybody’s got strengths and weaknesses. Lack of opportunity, lack of time are absolutely fundamental excuses for an entrepreneur. They’re excuses. Now, if you choose to parent deeper, if you don’t have natural energy and your demeanor and the chemicals in your body needs more rest or escapism. And that’s just your real life but don’t act like—that’s like me.

What I’m fascinated by is the things that we can’t lie about physically but we lie about emotionally or mentally. Meaning, I can’t walk around and say I’m a seven-foot basketball player. You can just look at me and understand that’s not true. But people can say they’re an entrepreneur but the definition for me is not going to be someone who’s going to be a firefighter who can emotionally deal with a ton of shit, who’s lonely, who’s a grinder, who’s got intestinal fortitude as Guerilla Monsoon in WWF used to say. But you can’t see that on the outset. I can’t see that in the three of us right now watching this. So that gets exposed over time.

Josh: Absolutely, yeah. You know, I mean, of all the entrepreneurs that I’ve met, the ones that I admire the most, it’s not necessarily hours in the seat. I mean, hours in the sea—one of the hardest lessons I learned over the first eight years running my company was, I was working 80-100 hours a week every single week at the expense of my family, at the expense of my health. Granted, I am successful today because of that. There is no doubt. However, would I be successful had I done it smarter, had I worked lesson hours, I probably would have. So it’s not hours in the seat, right?

Gary: Listen, it’s hours in the seat but it’s also smart hours in the seat. Like, look, I always use sports. It makes sense. I could play 50,000 more hours of basketball over the last two decades, no question would I be a much better player? Would I be NBA-worthy. Absolutely not. And so like, skill matters. Like talent matters. So for me, I have talent in selling stuff and marketing and communication and hours in the seat, and that’s why I think I’m an abnormally, enigma, I think I get to sit where I get to sit because of both.

Here’s my thing, and this is why I love hours in the secret. It is controllable than being bore with gift and natural ability. The end. The end. So now, if I have a heart attack at 42, to be done with crackhead, to get a divorce of somebody you really loved. There are certain—so many things in life that matters besides being successful professionally.

The one that scares me the most is the people that don’t know themselves. Meaning this is the person that I’d love to reach this early in the year in 2018. If you make $211,000—let’s first start with that. That’s a lot of money. Like, a lot. If you are going to ruin everything else to get the $317K, that’s stupid. Because $211K and $317K are totally close in the scheme of things. Like, what? Like you’re going to get one better suit? One more vacation? That’s not smart.

To me, it’s about knowing yourself. For me, I would break if I couldn’t work. Or hustle. Or grind. Or have the axe and I’d break. I’d break. So for me, it’s not about the dollars and cents. For other people, maybe it is dollars and cents but the difference between $100,000 and $1 million lets them buy all those things, do all those things they’ve always wanted to do.

Some people literally want to buy a Lamborghini. I have empathy for that. I do. I wonder why. I hope it’s not because they want to prove to everyone—you need to understand why but the big thing I would tell everybody to understand is what’s the difference between $80K and $160K in your happiness and in your finances.

For me, it may not be the biggest difference financially, but happiness, that extra 20 hours is everything. Because I want to do that. Like I want to do that. I don’t know what else to say. The end. So I think you have to know yourself.

Brandon: Yeah, I think that’s good advice. When I read Crush It back in the day, that was one of the very first entrepreneurial books I ever read. What I loved about that was your push towards, again, hours in the seat, the hustle. I remember there’s a line in there you talked about where if you want to build your business, if you’re not happy, I guess I should start with that.

If you’re not happy where you’re at. You need a hustle and you’re building your business, go to work from 9:00 to 5:00 and then spend a couple of hours with your family, and then you’ve got until 9:00 to 2:00am to go work on your business. Like, that drove my wife and I to go spend every night until 2:00 in the morning working on nasty rental properties. Because we were like, we are not happy where we’re at. So that drove me through that. I do want to recommend people read that. You’ve got a new book coming out, Crushing It, which I just got finished reading an advanced copy. I loved it.

Gary: Okay, so first of all, this is huge. This happens every year. Excuse me, every time. This is my 12^th business book. You’re the first person I’m talking to that’s read it.

Brandon: Oh, nice.

Gary: I’m super pumped right now. I want to apologize to everybody listening to the podcast, or watching, whatever you guys do. I need three to four minutes to myself now, I’m going selfish. So, I’m super pumped. I’m really excited. Okay? Why? So you read it. When’d you read it?

Brandon: All right, I read it over the last three days. So, I got it from your team like four days ago.

Gary: What was the biggest kind of first takeaway or like give me three bullets.

Brandon: Sure, so I love stories. I love hearing how things are working in other people’s lives. There’s theory, right? Which is good. But what I liked about Crushing It is there’s just like story after story after story of people who are actually doing it. Some guys that I know like John Lee Dumas or Pat Flynn, other people I had never heard of in my life. It was just like really fascinating stuff. That was super, super cool.

Also cool was there’s a lot of breaking into social media, right? So how does Snapchat work—honestly, Snapchat scares me. I have one but I just use it for the funny faces, right? But like, I probably should be using that. You’re talking about Alexa skills. I am fascinated by that. We’re totally going to build BiggerPockets Alexa skills now. Anyway, I like that take on things.

Gary: Let me tell you about Snapchat real quick.

Brandon: Please.

Gary: Filters. Geofilters. Like literally putting a filter, so everybody listening, you know those filters when you scroll through the bottom, it says New York or Los Angeles or the time or what have you—the fact that you can make a custom filter and put it over a location is super fascinating. And my big thing is that it’s clearly an under 30 platform, so everybody who’s listening, if you’re trying to recruit somebody under 30 in the world, I highly recommend buying filters on college campuses. You can get free interns that way. Say you want an internship, the filter that you design on like Photoshop can say, “Want an Internship?” and for six dollars, you could get hustlers. Like, there’s so much smart sh*t. So we have the Snapchat thing. Was there any takeaway tangible like, oh, I want to try that?

Brandon: I mean, definitely the Alexa thing.

Josh: The Alexa stuff, we talked about last night.

Brandon: That was one of my biggest takeaways. You know, I have not used a ton of social media in my past with my real estate because I’m like, I mean I use it in my own personal life but real estate’s the second oldest—

Josh: You’re using it, this podcast and social media are the same thing.

Brandon: Yeah I mean, I don’t use a ton of it but I did this interesting study the other day, well not study, but in a Facebook group of real estate investors I’m part of, somebody asked the question, what’s the #1 way you’re getting tenants today to rent your properties? And the options were like Craigslist, an ad in the newspaper, a street sign—you know what absurdly took over the entire chart? Facebook. Facebook is overtaking Craigslist, it’s overtaking newspapers, everything. And I’m just beginning to play with that.

Gary: It makes me so happy. Anybody who’s been paying attention to me for the last 18 months, I’ve been diarrhea of Facebook. And honestly, if Facebook goes away tomorrow, I don’t give a rat’s ass. It’s just, it works and it’s underpriced. The end. And look, a screwdriver works. It works better for somebody who fixes things than it does for me because I don’t use it as well. Just coming from the gym, all those machines work but if you don’t know how to use it, and I think people think black and white. Oh, Facebook doesn’t work for my business. No, no, no. You haven’t put in the 50 hours to become good at Facebook or your business. The end. For anybody listening right now, this will be the takeaway. Go figure out Facebook in 2018. It’ll be the biggest financial upside of your career.

Brandon: Yeah, right on.

Josh: So how specifically—take a real estate investor, right? They need to find motivated—

Gary: Real quick, I’m screwing up the show again. Real quick. So punch line being, obviously I’m on with you right now and you know me, but net-net, do you intuitively think Crushing It is going to be a popular book?

Brandon: I do. I think it’s going to be good. I think everybody listening to this show at least,a  couple hundred thousand people, should go out and buy it.

Gary: Because you think it will either inspire them and/or paint pictures and/or give them a practical advice or two, worth the $18 bucks?

Brandon: I think that people do not see social media because real estate is like the oldest profession. It’s like one of the oldest professions in the world. It’s so, why do you need to use it? I do believe that. I believe that is the future and I believe it’s one of the reasons I like listening to your stuff. You’ve been harping on that for a while. Social media is not a fad. Social media is the future. And so—

Gary: It’s the current state of the internet. More interestingly, it’s the current. To me, that’s the bigger part. It’s not the future. It’s not like, hey, real estate person, in three years everybody is going to be here so get ready. No, no, no. his marathon is happening right now. I mean, I have a friend who bought a $17 million dollar home from one Instagram photo from a real estate agent. I don’t think people understand.

It’s just attention. It’s why podcasts are important. It’s just attention, like hundreds of millions of people are scrolling like this through Instagram and Facebook every day and a lot of those people are buying sh*t, including homes and art. Cartier and [inaudible][24:53] and Christies, they’re selling—my buddy told me they sold a $3.7 million dollar piece of art off a post on Facebook. Like, real stuff is happening. And it’s no different from a magazine or a newspaper or television show. It’s just attention. I’m sorry, go ahead. What was the question?

Josh: No, don’t sweat it. So the question is practically how can a real estate investor who’s looking for opportunities, who’s looking for deals that are off-market—how can somebody who’s trying to find tenants—I mean, Brandon gave a great example before, but how can those persons today dive in on Facebook or Instagram and get this stuff figured out?

Gary: Two ways. One, you use it to create real life interactions. Two, you use it to build your brand. So Crushing It is a manifesto of how to become the person in people’s mind when they transact. If you put out tons of videos and pictures then you spend money buying real estate and you’re that person, and you don’t want to sell a $50 dollar e-book but you want deals. By the way, sell a $50 e-book. But if you’re putting out content and this is, hey guys, I’m Gary Vaynerchuk, I live in Manhattan. I buy real estate properties in warm weather places with the ambition to develop them into the future resorts of America. I will be doing this for the next 50 years. If you think that’s interesting or if you have anything to talk to me about, leave a comment.

If you run $100 dollars and you run that against people with $100,000 net worth or greater in a 10-mile radius of where you live, here’s what happens. Somebody just thinks that, and then you write copy to your video. Everybody knows what Facebook looks like, right? It says, I’m in the real estate investment business. If you’re looking for some money or you’re looking for some opportunities, let me know.

So now, somebody watches that, of the people I spent $100 on. And their uncle owns property in Costa Rica and their aunt has been diagnosed with cancer. I’m going rogue. I’m going with real life. I don’t want to use this scenario. It doesn’t make me happy. I’m just talking about life, right? Actually, I’m in too good of a mood. I don’t even want to use that. The uncle just won the lottery and he’s moving—the uncle just inherited the great-grandfather’s money and he doesn’t want to work anymore and on Spec, he brought property in Costa Rica 15 years ago.

You, the nephew, know that and you forward the link to the Facebook video and the uncle reaches out to me. I mean, life. It’s so easy, actually, it scares me. And it’s just that people aren’t willing to take the risk and the reward. I’m willing and I’ve always been willing to waste 30 hours and $3,000 on Spec to learn Facebook and if nobody e-mails me with Costa Rica beachfront property, who gives a sh*t, I learned something. And I know that the attention’s there. The end. Right?

Brandon: Yeah.

Josh: Put in the time. Put in the effort. And give it a shot. And if it doesn’t work, try something else and keep playing with it until you figure it out. That’s the game, right?

Gary: That’s the game.

Brandon: I love it. Anyway, I love the idea of social media again. Like you said, I am such a big believer in being the guy. Like you said that word, “the guy”. Like, I want to be the guy who buys nasty properties in my area. I want to be the guy who buys mobile home parks or trailer parks. I want to be the guy who buys apartment complexes.

Gary: Because you’re smart and it’s good business.

Brandon: It is good business. I’m just closing my first one today.

Gary: Honestly, Facebook, Instagram, podcasts—let me give you a good one. I would put a Facebook ad in the area in a 50-mile radius, which is the area but wide. I would again target people of a certain income level that are likely to own certain things of that nature and I would create a dinner series. The video that you put out on Facebook is, I do investment real estate dinner series. Twenty people RSVP. If you’re interested, RSVP right here and I will pick 20 people and send out an invite in a week. Right?

So now you’ve used Facebook locally to create a dinner that you’re going to pick up the bill for. You’re going to create a Google Form URL where you get to ask any question you want. You know your business, right? So they have to fill out 13 questions. Now, they have to RSVP and fill out 13 questions. You spent $1000 on the ads. You spent another $1000 on the dinner. You’re in for $2000, right? And you’re in for five hours of reading 89, or three hours or nine hours of reading 137 applications and you pick 20 people, right? Now, you’ve got 20 people where you’re the maestro, you’re the guy, you’re sitting around and a million different things can happen.

You can buy from two of them. Two of them can work for you for a year for free to learn. There’s just a million different things that can happen. Now, you’ve used Facebook digitally to create a real-life experience at a dinner. Now, you go a second time to a restaurant and say, hey, I’m bringing 20 people, can you comp me the dinner? So now you’ve saved $1000 back. Just smart. Hustle. Smart. Hustle. That’s how you become the guy.

Josh: I love that. I love it.

Brandon: Well, before we get out of here, I want to shift gears over to the last segment of the show, which we call our Fire Round.

It’s time for the Fire Round.

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Brandon: Now, these are questions from our audience from people who are a part of our communities. I actually asked all of these on Facebook. So I’m just going to fire them at you and see what you’ve got to say.

Gary: Let’s go.

Brandon: All right, number one. Daniel Tansel asks, what are your thoughts on New Year’s resolutions and why most people don’t keep them?

Gary: Because it’s a bad concept. Right? Like why do you need January 1^st to start getting your life in shape? Use February 3^rd. Use March 9^th. Use December 16^th. It’s just a bad concept.

Josh: Nice. That’s great. All right, Derek Clifford asks, what does your morning routine look like? How important is a morning routine?

Gary: I used to not have one. I have one a little more now because I work out every morning, first thing in the morning. I don’t think it’s that important for a certain group of people. Other people that are more, like, I don’t want to call it OCD but they like to—my dad and my best friend, Brandon, who are like very similar, they have to like lock the door three times, triple check this. I’m like ridiculous, I’m completely like, I don’t need a routine. It’s not important to me. I think self-awareness is important. If you know you need a routine, stick to it. If you don’t and you’re functioning and you’re happy, you don’t need to force it.

Josh: Yeah.

Brandon: All right. My buddy, Shawn O’Neill asks, what is your favorite wine region in the world and then he says if you say anything other than Washington State, I have to hang up on you. But—I will hang up on you. What’s your favorite wine region in the world?

Gary: You know what’s so funny? Because I don’t want you to hang up on me, Walla Walla, Washington, which is a side island. It’s one of my five favorites. So I’ll give that to him. I’m a big fan of Portugal in the Dow region, so I would say Portugal.

Josh: Okay, cool. All right, Phil [inaudible][32:24] asks, if you could invest $10,000 bucks in something right now, what would you invest? And what about $100,000?

Gary: Both answers would be Facebook. And I’ll tell you why. It’s for 98% of people because they need it to return. For the 2% that could let it go to zero, I would go completely the other way and do something ridiculous like buy beachfront property. Like in you guys’ world, I would buy beachfront property in some ridiculous place in like the Caribbean or South America that nobody’s ever heard of. That like you’re not even sure if like the government is stable. Or some new cryptocurrency that popped up literally today as one cent. Or you know, just something extremely high risk, high reward. I think people are confused with the way they invest. They invest in the middle.

I’m a big fan, if you noticed on my two answers, to go one way or the other. 98% of the people who need the money to return, Facebook or Amazon because it will return in a five-year macro. Just don’t touch it when the market goes down. You’re good. For people that are fortunate, maybe like me, 2% goes bonkers crazy in the other direction where it’s more just part of the story and the financial impact means something. It actually—me getting a $5,000x return, that means something whereas you can’t get your juices going for 20-30%.

Brandon: There you go.

Josh: All right.

Brandon: Jordan Thibodeaux—I’ll say this last question of the Fire Round. Jordan Thibodeaux asks, you talk a lot about hustle but many failed opportunities hustled harder than the successful ones and they come up short. So how much of the success is due to luck?

Gary: I don’t think it’s luck. I think it’s talent and work ethic. I think talent is the one nobody wants to talk about because it’s like being beautiful. Like, you can’t fucking change it. Which is why self-awareness is my jam. You know how many people are real estate investing right now or doing social media or wine or writing books? Trying to think about all of our joint things. That are the third best pasta cook in the world and we’ll never know it? You know how many people right now making $400,000 a year selling homes would be making $2.7 million selling art? Do you know how many people—I mean, I can go on. I’ve made my point, right?

Josh: That’s a great point, man.

Gary: That’s the point, guys. The point isn’t about luck. Luck is—luck happens every day and people don’t see it. Like, people don’t have the talent. Was it lucky that I met Mark Zuckerberg? No, I made a video that caught his eye. The million things that happen, luck is the wrong way to think about it. It’s not controllable. The thing that’s controllable is putting yourself in a position to try different things and see what makes you happy. The big thing about Crushing It and Crush It, to tie it all together here in a bow is, I talk about doing stuff that you love. When you love it, well then, you work 15 hours a day. Working 15 hours a day just for the money to then do the thing you love—you lost.

Josh: Yeah, that’s great, man. All right, before we let you go, last question—what sets apart successful entrepreneurs from those who give up, fail, or never get started?

Gary: It’s so fun, that literally is the last thing I said, is the answer. It’s the people that are happy with the process versus the people that are looking for the pot. I love making the rainbow, not getting to the pot of gold at the end.

Josh: I love it, that’s awesome, man.

Gary: Like, one day I’ll be 87 and people are going to tweet 30 years from now or whatever we’re doing then. Well, f*ck Gary V. Don’t listen to him. He didn’t achieve his goal of buying the Jets. And the truth is, they’ve missed the point. I’ve already achieved my goal. It’s the chase of the Jets.

Josh: It’s the journey, yep.

Gary: The journey, brother. Guys, I love you. Happy New Year.

Brandon: Thanks, Gary.

Josh: Enjoy, take care.

Gary: Thank you, byebye.

Josh: All right, guys. That was Gary V. Gary Vaynerchuk, the man, the myth. The legend. Yeah, that was great.

Brandon: That was great. Whenever I talk to Gary—I shouldn’t say talk to him, I’ve known him for the podcast—I hear from Gary, I always leave inspired. There is a video, if you guys are not driving right now, and if you’re at a computer, go to Google and type in ‘Read this if you need some motivation’. And there’s a blog post that this guy put out on a site called—it used to be called Think Traffic. I can’t remember what it was called now. Read this. I’m going to look it up. Anyway, in there, he links to a keynote speech that Gary Vaynerchuk gave and it’s unbelievably good. I’ll actually put it in the Show Notes at BiggerPockets.com/Show264. I’ll actually put that YouTube video there and it’s definitely not family-friendly in terms of language but it’s unbelievably good. That fires me up every time. I love talking or hearing from Gary. Because it just leaves me inspired. We talk all the time. Yeah, me and him are BFFs.

But no, anyway. I love that. And again, it reminds me that we are in a different world from ten years or 20 years ago. People who can harness the tools that we have in today’s world like social media can really do some amazing things. Even the idea that he came up with at the top of his head on the show for real estate investors, I thought that was fantastic. Like, building a dinner for people?

Josh: That’s clever. Yeah, it’s akin to putting together a real estate Meetup group in your area, which we talk about all the time on the show. All right, but it’s just a different angle to take. Yeah, I mean look, at the end of the day, social media is “new media”. It’s current media. People consume—nobody reads magazines anymore. People are spending less time on television. People are spending less time with other people. They’re spending more time on their phones flipping through pictures and stuff.

By the way, I just took a month off of social media. And boy, do I feel good. I’ve been dealing with all of this stuff. I have not been on social media except to post a video yesterday that I think some people would get a kick out of.

Brandon: That’s pretty awesome, of you eating that pickle? Yeah, that was great.

Josh: Oh man, that was horrible.

Brandon: You don’t know how much Josh hates pickles. Like, if the waitress walks out with a pickle on the plate, even though he’s told her not to, he will straight out just yell and scream and throw a fit. Throw the pickle across the room. Okay, you’re not that bad. But you will send that plate back even if the pickle is within ten feet of that plate. And throw it back.

Josh: Yeah, I ate a really nasty pickle sandwich as a way—for my daughter, basically, because I told her I would. I would do some really nasty thing if she worked her butt off and she did. Buy anyway, new media is current media. That’s where people are. That’s where they spend their time. That’s where they’re consuming information. So if you are not there, it doesn’t matter what your profession. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, real estate, accounting—that’s where people are going to find you.

So that’s why I think Gary and his books and what he’s doing is so important, because I think people still believe that oh, social media is like this newfangled thing—no, that is where it is literally and as much as it disturbs me, because it does disturb me. I am very frustrated when I go out and about and I see people who are just glued to their phones. But it is a fact of life.

Like, people aren’t experiencing life anymore. They’re glued to their phones. If you are a business person, you better capitalize upon that. You better use that to your advantage and reach them where they are. But the fact of the matter is, people spend way too much time on their phones. They are glued to this stuff. But hey, if they are, catch them where they are.

Brandon: Yeah, that’s true. I still use that Moment App on my phone to get me to limit how much time I’m on my phone. I love that thing.

Josh: And the other big thing, by the way, about talking to Gary—he dives in on figuring out who you are. Right? I love how he talks about, look, you can go and make a million dollars doing something you hate. But you hate life. Why the hell would you do that? I also liked, again, where he was talking about hey, what’s the difference between $200,000 and $300,000? Or $60,000 and $120,000? You know, if you’re miserable. So figure that out. If it’s not real estate, find out what it is that makes you happy. The thing about real estate is it gives so many people opportunities to get out of those things that they do hate and that’s why people love it so much, I believe.

Brandon: Yeah, I love it. People will say from time to time, like my buddy Seth Moseley or even Ben Liebovich will say it—they don’t like real estate. I actually do like real estate a lot. They don’t like real estate. They like what real estate gives them. It’s the freedom and I firmly believe it and you firmly believe it—real estate is the #1 best way for the average person to build wealth in America today. Like, you don’t have to be born with a silver spoon.

Josh: Or I think real estate lends itself to more opportunities, I think it’s easier than starting a business. But it is starting a business. It’s a kind of business, right?

Brandon: It is a business. But here’s my thinking with business and I could be wrong here, but they say what, 90% of businesses fail in the first five years? I don’t believe that 90% of real estate investors would fail if they’re just like doing what they’re supposed to do.

Josh: Once they start.

Brandon: Once they start, yeah. Once they start buying property.

Josh: Some people never get started, right?

Brandon: And that’s probably why it’s harder to start investing in real estate than it is to go start a Tupperware business or whatever. But I feel like real estate is more secure. I mean, I love business. I start businesses all the time because I just really like business. But most of my business ventures that I try to do end up failing. But real estate is like my one constant, that I just know that it’s going to work out.

Josh: Nothing. Don’t worry.

Brandon: Are you making fun of me?

Josh: I was just talking about some of your failed business ventures.

Brandon: Like my wooden sunglasses business or my—

Josh: As I talk smack about them, that’s why I love you, man. I mean, it’s trying and trying and trying. That’s what it takes, right? I mean, you’ve got to keep trying.

Brandon: Yeah, there’s a great quote that says, I think Cuban said it maybe. It was like, the great thing about entrepreneurship is you only have to be right once. Because like you can fail and fail and fail and then hit one right and you’re good for life if you hit the right one.

Josh: By the way, that whole idea that you had about creating iron kites to fly? I think you should try that one. It’s great.

Brandon: It was not iron kites. It was normal kites. The kite business. The kites are cool business models. I still want to sell—I have like 400 kites in my closet that I still want to sell someday. I probably won’t do it. Here’s what I found. And like, this is an interesting topic. So like a year and a half ago, I had this idea that I wanted to sell kites on the internet. I thought that’d be a fun thing to sell, right? And I started getting into it and I realized that selling—building an online business was ridiculously hard. It was way harder than real estate was, which I was shocked at.

Josh: It’s really hard.

Brandon: Yeah, it is hard.

Josh: It is real, real hard.

Brandon: So I’d still take real estate over any of that. Maybe five years ago, it was easy. I don’t know. There’s a lot of gurus out there talking about how easy it is. Like, furthermore, it distracted me from a lot of other things that I probably should have been doing. What I should have done is—here’s what I did. I hired my little brother a little over a year ago. I said, hey, I will hire you full-time to work for me and you can go build a business. This kite business. We spent a solid year—well, he spent a year working on it. And we never really got it successful. We spent a lot of money, wasted a lot of money. I should have just hired him to do my core competency which was real estate. He should have really been finding real estate deals, which is how we’re going to shift moving forward.

Josh: Makes sense.

Brandon: Anyway, lesson learned.

Josh: Yeah. Cool. Anyway, all right, guys. So listen, hope you enjoyed it. Hope you got a couple of nuggets out of it. Again, we thought there was enough value in there to make this a worthwhile show. You know, if you take one or two lessons from any show, anything that we do. Anything in life, right? If you read a book and you walk away with one nugget—I certainly walked away with some stuff and really appreciate Gary coming on the show today. And I look forward to hearing you guys’ feedback on everything and obviously, I’m excited to see Brandon’s kite business get off the ground.

Brandon: I’m done with the kite business. All right, well, let’s get out of here.

Josh: All right, man. I’m Josh Dorkin, host of the BiggerPockets podcast. Big thanks to my replacement hosts for filling in for me while I’ve been gone and future filling in for me when I’m not able to be around. But thanks to everybody. Thanks for all the support. Brandon, thanks for holding it down and until next time, I’m out of here.

Brandon: You’re not going to sign off with “This is Josh Dorkin, signing off?”

Josh: There you go. There it was. Nicely done.

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