Content Creation Master Class with Annie Dickerson

Sean: [00:01:05] Thank you very much for being on the show today. Go ahead and introduce yourself and let us know who you are and how you got into real estate investing.

Annie: [00:01:11] Hey everyone my name is Annie Dickerson. I am a co-founder and managing partner of Good Egg Investments and we help people learn about and invest in something called real estate syndications, which are group investments. And so to date we have co-syndicated over 400 million dollars in real estate assets ranging from mostly multi-family assets. But we’ve also done some self storage and manufactured home parks. And now I know that may sound very impressive but believe me I had very humble beginnings. In fact when I was growing up my parents never even bought their own home. So I didn’t know anything about real estate growing up. I would never have thought I would get into real estate investing. And what happened was after college my husband and I got married young. We were 23 when we were looking for our first home. And our realtor approached us, we were living in DC at the time, and he suggested that we look at these row homes, which are pretty popular in DC. And he said, “You know, a lot of them have a basement in-law suite and you could live in the upstairs unit and rent out the the in-law suite. And if you play your cards right you could get get it to be cash flow positive”. And that was the first time I had ever heard of anything like that and it completely blew my mind and I was like, “Oh we have to give this a try. Let’s do it!”. And so we started with that first duplex and then got another one, and then another one, and another one. And then we started investing out-of-state in small multifamily. And then we discovered syndication and now through Good Egg we focus on the capital raising portion, meaning we help investors to learn about real estate syndications and then help them to invest in these real estate syndication deals.

Sean: [00:03:15] Thank you so much for that introduction. I interviewed Julie a couple episodes ago regarding Good Egg Investments, and I want to know what is your role?

Annie: [00:03:23] Yeah, that’s a great question. Part of the reason that Julie and I formed the partnership was because we have such complementary skills sets. Whereas Julie focuses primarily on the investor relations side of the business helping investors to learn about specific deals that we’re working on and helping them to invest in those deals, my role is mainly on the marketing and education side of things. So if you’re thinking of a marketing funnel, I’m sort of the top of the funnel and Julie is the bottom of the funnel. She’s the closer. So my role is mainly to help people who have never heard of real estate syndications to understand what they’re all about and to understand the process and get them comfortable enough to where they are ready to invest in their first syndication.

Sean: [00:04:13] Very cool. Sounds like inbound marketing, right?

Annie: [00:04:15] Exactly. You know it!

Sean: [00:04:17] Okay. Can you walk me through what are you doing? And what are the strategies that you’re using?

Annie: [00:04:22] Yes. There are so many things that we are doing but I will start from the beginning. So one of the first things that we did was we started with our blogs. It’s the easiest thing to do. And so that’s what we did. When I started over a year ago, I set out a goal for myself to just write one blog post a day just because I didn’t have the experience and I didn’t really know what I was trying to say. And you know, I knew I had no followers at the time. Nobody was reading these, it’s kind of like a diary. I’m just putting out what I knew about real estate investing and real estate syndications. So I really just started there, just putting out a blog post a day. And then the next step that we did was we added on a weekly newsletter. And the reason we did this was because I wanted us to stay top of mind with all of our investors and the best way to keep us accountable was to have something regular that we were regularly putting out to them. And we have done some marketing through social media which I’ll talk about in just a second. But we’ve found that the most effective form of social media is actually email and so we do the weekly newsletter. Then on top of that we also created a number of videos and we’re working on strengthening our YouTube channel. Another thing we did was we learned that even though we had all this content out there, people were finding it difficult to sift through everything. There’s a lot and so we wanted to create an easy way for people to go through all of the content that they needed to that’s why we created our first online course. It’s called Passive Real Estate Investor Academy. After that, then we wanted to focus on how do we get people to learn about that course. So then they can take that course and then be ready to invest. So now we’re focusing on helping people to learn about what that course is all about. So we have now a free version of that course, it’s much more limited of course. It’s a 7-day email course. So one of the first things you’ll see when you go to our website is sign up for this free email course called Passive Real Estate Investing 101 and it’ll give you an email a day for seven days. Through that you will sort of get the basics of what real estate syndication is about and also have an opportunity to sign up for the full course. And because that’s not enough, there’s another way that we get people into our database which is through our Good Egg Investor Club. When you sign up for the email course, you’ll also get invited to the investor club or you can just sign up straight through the website. What the Investor Club is all about is for those investors who are ready to invest in deals, then through the investor club we get to know the investors, they get to know us and we then start to share those investment opportunities with them.

Sean: [00:07:50] Cool! Very thorough. And I see you guys have a lot going for you. I want to go back and clarify some things. Before you met Julie, were you also doing a blog post or is that only after you started partnering with her that you started doing this daily blog.

Annie: [00:08:02] You know, actually I started doing the daily blog posts before Julie and I officially partnered up and that was actually funny enough one of the things that led to us partnering up. So what happened was Julie and I met at a conference a year, little more than a year ago. At that conference I had just quit my job to go into real estate full-time, and she was really wanting to quit her job . And so after that conference, she went home from that conference and the next day, literally the next day she put in her notice. We didn’t talk about a partnership at that point, but maybe a month ,maybe two months later. We got together just to catch up and because we’re both working on the same things. So we got together to catch up and at this point I had been blogging regularly for several weeks. And that’s why we started talking about the partnership was because she asked what I like so much about what I get to do. And I said, “You know what? I love the content creation stuff. If I could just write blog posts all day long I would be in heaven. And if I could take one thing off my calendar, it would be meeting with investors.” And she said, “Are you kidding? I love talking and meeting with investors. If I could take one thing off my calendar it would be blogging. I look at the blank screen on my computer and I know I’m supposed to write something but I don’t know what to write.” And honestly it was the blogging, that foundation in that blogging that really led us to consider a partnership because I had already started creating that thought leadership platform and she could see the strength that I had in that. That’s what led to the partnership.

Sean: [00:09:58] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You have a skill that she doesn’t want to do and she has a skill you don’t want to do. So together you guys are perfect. Now when you quit your job, you weren’t already raising money at the time were you?

Annie: [00:10:09] No, no, I wasn’t.

Sean: [00:10:11] So what were you like falling back on? How did you just quit your job like that?

Annie: [00:10:15] That’s just how I do Sean. That’s just how I do. You know, I had been studying up on real estate and real estate syndications for several months at that point and naively I thought. “How hard could it be? Surely it’s just a matter of time before I find a deal and I can syndicate it on my own. How hard could it be? I’ve done a four-unit deal. I could do a 40-unit deal. No problem.” So I started down that path and I had a couple of good prospects on the line not under contract, but I had submitted LOIs and I was like,”I’m going to make this happen one way or another.” And you know, I was working in tech in the Bay Area like if worst comes to worst I can always find another job but this, this real estate investing opportunity, this may not present itself again. So that’s what led to me quitting my job, even though I had no fallback plan. I was just burning the boats.

Sean: [00:11:20] That’s amazing. I’m assuming Julie had the same mentality too. She’s like, “I can do this. No big deal.”

Annie: [00:11:25] No! the funny thing about me and Julie is that we are so incredibly different. Julie had been raising capital for a year and a half at that point. She was already raising capital and we got together and I was like, “I haven’t raised much capital at all and I’m quitting my job”, and she’s like, “Are you kidding? I’ve been doing this for over a year. “ And I think that’s what gave her the guts to really quit her job and make that leap. But yeah, she had been doing it on the side for a long time.

Sean: [00:12:00] So at the time I’m guessing you were thinking about being like an operator and not necessarily money raiser, and it wasn’t until Julie came into the partnership that you decided, “Okay, let’s focus on raising money first.”

Annie: [00:12:12] Yeah sort of. So what happened was I was going down the path of getting my own deal to syndicate and I was approached by somebody that I met at a conference and I was given the opportunity to help them raise capital for their deal. And at first I said, “Heck no, I’m not going to raise money for your deal. That’s the most boring and the hardest and the worst part of the whole process. Why would I do that?’ But I after talking to them, I understood that it would be a great opportunity for me to start growing my investor base by connecting my investors with a solid opportunity with a solid operator. So I said, “Okay. I will try the capital raising, but I’m going to save my good investors for my deal. Thank you very much.” So that’s what I did. I dipped my toes in the water with this other deal and as luck would have it, I loved capital raising because at the end of the day capital-raising is all about investor education and investor relations, talking to people and helping them to understand this opportunity that most people never come across and never know is even possible. So that’s what I loved about it. And so once I had the opportunity to raise capital, actually, before Julie and I partnered up, I decided to abandon doing my own deal because it allowed me to see that in fact, I would not be a good operator. You do not want me to be the asset manager on your deal. I’m not good with details. I like numbers, but I’m not a stickler for them and I am not a hard-ass, I guess is the best way to put it. And so it allowed me to see that I would not be the best operator so I could niche down and really focus on raising capital.

Sean: [00:14:12] Now you’ve mentioned that you are really good at content creation. And I know I tried exactly what you said, to write one blog post a day. It’s hard! Like you run out of things to talk about. That’s why I prefer interviewing, everyone has a different story, this is great. Or I prefer documenting. I’m learning something new, I can just record what I’m learning at the same time. But having to think and have something to actually write about, you can only write top 10 list of best ways to do XYZ so many times. So tell me what do you do on a daily basis? And how did you keep creating content for several weeks writing one blog posts a day?

Annie: [00:14:47] So it’s now been over a year since I’ve started that and I’ve created well over 60 blog posts at this point. So now I’m not doing it everyday, instead I’m spacing it out quite a bit more. But here is the hack, the insider tip. Okay. You ready? So before you start blogging, before you even write that first post, you sit down and you put your mind into the mindset of your investor and you think, “As a new investor coming across real estate syndications for the first time, what are all the questions that I would have?” And you start listing all of those questions. You think what is a real estate syndication? How does it work? Who’s involved? What is it? How do I learn about it? What is an investment summary? What will I find in there? How do I find a good market to invest in? What is a cap rate? What is an equity multiple? How much is the minimum investment? How long will my money be in there? So you think about all of these questions and then you make a list of all those questions and then guess what, each one of those questions can turn into a blog post and as you’re talking to more and more investors, they will have questions for you. Keep a track of those questions because those are gems. You don’t want to be answering the same questions over and over again. You want to take those questions, answer them proactively. And then the next time an investor asks you a question you say, “You know what? I love that you asked that question. In fact, I wrote an entire blog post about that question and here’s the link.” And so that’s ultimately what you want to get to and that’s where we’ve gotten now. And in fact when we first partnered up Julie said that she would spend an hour or two on the phone with each investor answering the same questions over and over. And over time we’ve turned a lot of those questions into blog posts and videos. And now when an investor signs up for our Good Egg Investor Club and they schedule a call with Julie, guess what, they talk with her for 15 minutes and they’re like, “Okay, where do I send my check?” They’re ready because they’ve already done the hard work of educating themselves. And that’s really what you want to get to.

Sean: [00:17:14] That’s actually really smart. Put yourself in their shoes. What will they ask you? You’re giving them the information so now they trust you. So I’ve a couple questions regarding that blog post though. These questions are kind of hard to come up with right? You actually come up with 60 questions about one topic, but it seems like you can just answer those in maybe two sentences. How do you stretch that into a whole blog post? And how long are your typical blog posts in terms of like word count?

Annie: [00:17:41] Yeah. That’s a great question. So for SEO purposes, that’s search engine optimization purposes, so people can find us on Google, I tend to write longer blog posts. So at a bare minimum a thousand words, but more likely, if I can swing it closer to 1,500 2,000 words. Or If have a few that are called pillar posts that were linking to again and again, they are you know, 2,500 words or more. And so you’re right. It’s not easy because you could say what is a cap rate and then you take one sentence to answer that right? And yeah, you could absolutely do that. And I think a lot of people get stuck there. They say well, ”Yeah, that’s easy.” You just answer it in one paragraph and then what do you do, right? But then see here’s where you again get into the mindset of the investor after that paragraph. Do they really understand what that means or could you give them more? Could you give them an example? Could you show them what this means in real life? And that’s how you take a one paragraph topic and then you stretch it out into this full blog post. And if you go through a lot of the blog posts that I’ve written you’ll see that some of them are lists, ideas for things you should try, or top 10 tips for XYZ. But some of them are case studies that we go in depth. I wrote this one blog post about how I helped my mom buy a condo back in 2009. And at the time I thought it was the best investment for her. She would be able to cash flow a hundred hundred fifty dollars a month on it and I was like, “This is golden, this is the best!” And when we sold it, she actually only made like $30,000 on it over the span of almost 10 years. And so then I wrote about what that meant for me and for my mom and then I took a look back and I said had I known about syndications back in 2009 and could have invested her money in a syndication back then, here’s what that money could have grown to by now. So it’s things like that is just taking one topic and just looking at it from all 360°, slicing it as many different ways as you can because our investors are very different and they like to learn in very different ways. So while one blog post that talks about cap rates and gives a very textbook definition might reach certain investors, it might not reach other investors. So you’ve got to talk about the same topics over and over in many different ways.

Sean: [00:20:33] Awesome. And are you the main content creator or do you have other people helping you write these content?

Annie: [00:20:38] At this time I am the main content creator. So I write all the blog posts, all the emails, and create all the videos.

Sean: [00:20:46] That’s a lot of work. I know from experience it’s a lot of work doing all that stuff. So let’s move on to the newsletters, especially when you’re first starting out. I can’t imagine having something to really send out. What were you putting on those newsletters?

Annie: [00:21:03] Yeah. Yeah, you know actually we just sent out our 49th newsletter and we’re coming up on 52, which is the big one year mark. And so in preparation for that I took a look back at our first newsletter and it looks so different. You know I had the advantage working previously in design. So I had seen a lot of different well designed newsletters. So when I set out to create our newsletter I had some inspiration from well-designed newsletters. So I started there and I just looked at what other people were doing that resonated with me, that I liked and I said, “Okay. Well I could use something like that and I started honestly the first few months, I would share maybe a blog post that I had written that week and then I would share, you know, upcoming opportunities that we might have and I might share, you know podcast that I found interesting or a book that I was reading and then I would share, you know, latest real estate investing news that I was reading. You know at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter what’s in those newsletters as long as you’re continuing to share with people. Because here’s the hurdle that I had to get over when I first started creating emails. I thought well, what’s the use when most people are just going to see it in their inbox and then probably not even read it. They’re probably just delete it. But even if they delete it, they’re still seeing Good Egg in their inbox. Every week. And that’s the point: that top-of-mind awareness and continuing to build that trust over time. And so that first newsletter looks nothing like what our newsletters look like now. I mean now one of the new things that I’ve been doing is I’ve learned that even though we are a company we are still made up of individual people and that’s what our investors resonate with, they want to hear our personal stories. And so that’s what I’ve started to share through our newsletters: little, little anecdotes from my daily life and people love it. So that’s the latest thing that we’re doing.

Sean: [00:23:29] That’s very smart. You know Grant Cardone? The 10x rule? I went to his 10x growth conference couple months ago. And he says we beat people up on emails, like a stream beats a rock. And he sends me two to three emails every single day. I tried to find my ticket. I couldn’t even find it because it was buried in so many Grant Cardone emails. So I love what you guys are doing. Do you guys use any email software? What are you guys using?

Annie: [00:23:58] We are using ActiveCampaign and when we set out I did the research to look into ActiveCampaign, Convertkit, MailChimp and a number of others and really did my research on what would work best for us? And one of the reasons that I love ActiveCampaign is it has these visual automations. One of the things that we do when people sign up either for our newsletter or our Good Egg Investor Club is we send them out a drip campaign. So what that means is we send out a series of emails over a number of days to them and they’re all automated and so what ActiveCampaign allows us to do is to create that automation visually. It’s almost like a flow chart so you can say, okay once they sign up for The Good Egg Investor Club on a certain date, wait one day and then the next day send them this email and then wait two days then send them this email. Then you can also add in functionality. We have in there a check if they have scheduled a call with Julie. If they have, then continue on with the automation. If they have not, send them this other email that reminds them to schedule a call with Julie and then continue the automation. So there’s a lot of functionality in their automations that we’ve really leveraged to grow our business.

Sean: [00:25:27] Yeah, I know some friends of mine are using ConvertkKit. So you’re saying ActiveCampaign is just better because the workflow is like more visual instead of just…

Annie: [00:25:36] Yes, I’m a visual person. And so I did sign up for ConvertKit way back when. But I found the user interface to be a little more intuitive with ActiveCampaign just personally.

Sean: [00:25:52] And are you creating every email individually or is it pulling from like your website like the last week’s blog post or something like that?

Annie: [00:26:01] So every newsletter I create manually. That’s one thing that we have not outsourced. We’ve talked about outsourcing it, but I realized that it’s such an important touch point with our investors that I wanted to stay on top of that so I create every newsletter manually and then the drip sequences. Those go out automatically. We write them once and they go out automatically and I think those are the main emails that we send out.

Sean: [00:26:27] Yeah, I mean, so basically you create every single email by hand. That’s pretty impressive.

Annie: [00:26:31] Yeah. Oh, I’m totally neglecting Julie’s side of things. So Julie uses Active Campaign as well. She uses them to send out the investor updates. So once the investors invest in these deals, we keep them updated every single month. So every month for every deal. We send out an investor update. So to date that’s a dozen or so deals. So that’s a dozen emails that she’s creating around the middle of the month every month. So she’s doing that and she also creates a quarterly investor update.

Sean: [00:27:08] Okay, so just to go back you said you have a seven-day drip campaign when they sign up for your website, I guess for the first time to like learn more and they have a weekly newsletter. And then if they invest they have a monthly update as well as a quarterly update based on their investment.

Annie: [00:27:24] Yes.

Sean: [00:27:26] Okay, perfect. How about other social media platforms? Are you guys on LinkedIn or Facebook?

Annie: [00:27:31] Yes. I’m glad you asked. we have accounts on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook. We’ve tried on all three platforms posting, posting blog posts, posting quotes, posting updates. We’re still trying to figure out exactly what works in terms of posting updates. But the one thing we found that has worked for us is our target audience are working moms like ourselves. And so then we really got into the head of the working moms. And we said, “Where does a working mom hang out online?” And one place that moms tend to hang out online is in Facebook groups. So because Julie and I are also moms ourselves we have joined a number of moms’ groups on Facebook and then occasionally we’ll go in there and comment. So when people are talking about any sort of financial matter, usually not necessarily real estate, we’ll go in there and chime in and provide our two cents. We’re not trying to sell them on a deal. We’re just trying to provide our own perspective. So for example, when moms ask about saving for college, a lot of people will ask about the five to nine plan. And so then will chime in and talk about what we like and don’t like about that approach and what we do instead.

Sean: [00:28:58] Okay, so you’re coming as a member of the community and just kind of building rapport without actually sayin. “Hey invest in our product.”

Annie: [00:29:06] Right, exactly.

Sean: [00:29:07] Because you know, you said that email campaigns were the best way that you guys actually get investors but to be on the email list they must have known you first and they must have subscribed. I mean they’ve gone on your website and subscribed. So, how are you getting more people? And that’s why I was asking about social media platforms.

Annie: [00:29:25] Gotcha. So I would say the top ways that we have found new investors is through SEO, so through Google searches, through our YouTube videos, through podcasts, that’s a big one, and through in-person networking events, like conferences and meetups.

Sean: [00:29:49] Yeah. I actually know some of my listeners actually reached out to Julie because they heard her on my show.

Annie: [00:29:54] So there you go, that’s what works.

Sean: [00:29:56] Okay. Perfect. Can we talk about the content that you’re actually putting out for YouTube videos?

Annie: [00:30:02] Sure. For YouTube it’s much like the blog post. And in fact a lot of the YouTube videos complement the blog posts. The difference is not everybody likes to read a lengthy 1500 word blog post and often you can’t really grasp these complex topics within there. So what YouTube videos do is they layer in my voice, my face, my stories, with some of these complex topics and wherever possible I tried to also layer in some fun graphics and infographics to keep the the viewers engaged.

Sean: [00:30:44] Okay cool, and I’m guessing for podcast its kind of I go online and you’re just talking about your story and giving more information so people just know who you are and if they are curious and say, “Who is Annie with Good Egg” and they would look you up afterwards.

Annie: [00:30:57] Yes, exactly and we intentionally try to do a good mix of both real estate investing podcast as well as podcast outside of real estate. I mentioned that our target audience are working moms. And so we try to think about you know, what are the podcast that moms listen to. And we’ve done a number of those podcasts as well.

Sean: [00:31:21] That’s interesting. Can you give an example of something that’s not real estate related that you talked on?

Annie: [00:31:25] Yeah, so there’s so many podcast with Furnished Robbie which is a financial podcast. So she does all things financial. She does budgets. She does investing she does retirement. So she talks about all things financial. I don’t think she had somebody on her podcast who had talked about real estate syndications before. And that’s what you want. If your a syndicator and you’re trying to get people’s attention to invest with you, you don’t want to be in the pond where everybody else is fishing. You want to go to the open ocean where you can really stand out.

Sean: [00:32:03] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Now. Let’s go back to your website. You said you had a course and the first one was like a 7-day free course and then you had a paid version of that. So what are you charging for that course? And what kind of information is on there?

Annie: [00:32:16] Yeah great question. So the I’ll start with the free course as mentioned. It’s a seven-day email course and in those emails each one links to at least one of our existing blogs or video resources. So each email gives you a story or an anecdote about how real estate syndications work and then it links you to a resource where you can learn more. So that’s over 7 days. And so you can imagine at the end of seven days reading seven emails you only get the tip of the iceberg. You still don’t have that confidence to invest fifty thousand or a hundred thousand dollars into a syndication just yet. But what it does is it gives you enough to where you think, “I think this could work for me. I’m going to learn more.” And that’s really the goal. Through that seven-day email course we want to get people to a point where they can make a decision, yes or no is this right for me? And then if it is then we let them know about passive real estate investor academy and that course sells for $997. It goes way into depth on exactly how real estate syndications work and your role as a passive investor. It’s really geared toward taking people from knowing next to nothing about real estate investing to having the confidence to invest in their first real estate syndication

Sean: [00:33:52] And what platform are you using for that course.

Annie: [00:33:56] Yeah, the course is created in Kajabi.

Sean: [00:34:00] So besides Kajabi and ActiveCampaign, Julie mentioned that you’re in charge or pretty much all the software involved. What other software tools are you using for your business?

Annie: [00:34:10] There are a number of them. So ActiveCampaign, definitely all the Google tools: Google Drive, Google Sheets, Google Docs. We use Slack for internal communication. We use Zapier for a number of things actually, but one of the main reasons we use Zapier is when we release a deal to our investors, they sign up on a page on our website through an ActiveCampaign form. Then we use Zapier to connect the form response with a Google Sheet. So if you fill out the form, Zapier then takes your information and dumps it into a row in a Google Sheet that we’ve created.

Sean: [00:34:55] That’s pretty cool.

Annie: [00:34:55] Yeah, Zapier is great. It connects a ton of different tools and software.

Sean: [00:35:00] I heard MeetingBird and I was wondering why you like MeetingBird over like Calendly?

Annie: [00:35:05] That’s a question for Julie. She did the research on that and she chose MeetingBird. I just went along with that one. Here’s a good one for your listeners if you’re ever in in store for stock photos. I know this was me a long time ago, you know, I didn’t know where to turn for free stock photos. They’re all you know, what’s royalty free and what Is paid and where can you use a commercial license this and that. A great resource that I found for free images for commercial use is unsplash.com and they have beautiful images. They’re all taken by individual photographers and they put their images up there for you to use for free.

Sean: [00:35:53] Yep. I love Unsplash and Pexels as well. Pexel’s great too.

Annie: [00:35:57] Yes, and then besides that, for all of our design stuff, I use Adobe Illustrator. I’ve been using Adobe Illustrator for over 10 years pretty much since they came out. So I have a fair advantage over most people but if you’re just getting started, Canva is also great.

Sean: [00:36:18] I personally I use Sketch on the Mac. Photoshop is great too. How about for video editing?

Annie: [00:36:25] Oh, yes. So for video editing, people always get stuck on the video editing because they think, “Oh I have to get a fancy camera, have to get lights and I have to get a microphone.” Okay. So here’s how simply I started. I literally just use my phone. And I used a little selfie stick to just stand it up on a tray, actually on my bed. This was how simple this setup was. And then there’s a plain backdrop behind me. Just a plain wall behind me and at the beginning. I didn’t have lights. I didn’t have a microphone. I just was facing the window in the room so I could have some natural light and I would just hit record. And that would be that. You know, I would just talk straight into the camera and I would be talking as if I were talking to an investor and then I would take that and then I would edit it on iMovie. That’s how simple it was and I didn’t throw in a lot of extras at the beginning. It was just really about getting the message out there. And so now it’s not much different. I still use iMovie. I still use my iPhone. I’ve added a little lapel mic which is you know, 10-20 bucks on Amazon. I do have a couple of lights that I use occasionally if I need it, but now I’ve sort of gotten to know how the sun moves around my house. And so I know in the mornings I should be, if I’m doing video, I should be on this side of my house. And in the afternoons like me right now, if I’m videoing, this is the perfect spot because I have a lot of light on my face right now, so I should be on the side of my house. So you live and learn along the way but the important thing is not to get stuck on the set up at the beginning and just get out there and do it.

Sean: [00:38:24] And how often are you releasing those YouTube videos?

Annie: [00:38:28] Yeah, you know it used to be once a week and then it’s spaced out and I’ve made a commitment starting next week to get back on once a week.

Sean: [00:38:37] Okay, cool. So what is a typical day look like for you? Are you going to an office somewhere or you kind of just doing everything at home? How do you spend your day?

Annie: [00:38:46] As one of my favorite parts about being a business owner is I don’t have to commute. I don’t have to get on the smelly BART every morning. I don’t have to brave the rain. I don’t have to worry about any of that. I get to stay home if I want to. I get to go to a coffee shop if I want to. As long as there’s Wi-Fi, I’m good. So most days I work from home and I usually start my day pretty early, I get up at 5AM and I do a number of things in the morning, personal development things: exercise and meditation, reading, journaling things like that. A couple hours and my kids get up. So then we do the whole breakfast routine. So we’ll sit down and have breakfast together and then I’ll walk the dog and then get the kids off to school. And then around nine o’clock that’s when I start my day in my home office. Depending on the day it might be a day where I’m focused on creating a blog post or pitching articles to different media publications, or maybe I’m creating videos that day or maybe I’m writing the newsletter that day or maybe it’s a day where I’ve batched together a number of calls from potential investors. So it’s really what I love about it is I get to decide what my day’s look like and that’s I think my favorite part about being an entrepreneur.

Sean: [00:40:17] Yeah, that’s amazing. And it’s crazy that you get up at 5AM willingly. You know, like I actually wake up at 5:45 every day and sometimes I’m not loving it.

Annie: [00:40:29] Yeah, you know, I don’t love it the moment that I get out of bed, but then when I actually get out of bed, I love it because my two boys are 6 and 3. So as you can imagine once they’re up, it’s just go time. There is no stop. And so to have those, that hour and a half to two hours in the morning every morning for me, just me is priceless.

Sean: [00:40:57] And I mean, is your husband also waking up at the same time or he sleeps in?

Annie: [00:41:01] No, I forbid him to wake up that early.

Sean: [00:41:06] Okay, that’s your time.

Annie: [00:41:08] Yes, that is my time. And when he does occasionally he does pop up, you know, maybe 6AM, I’d like him to go in that room and this is my space right here. Yeah, so I very purposefully take that time for myself.

Sean: [00:41:24] So are you still sleeping? You know like early like 9 PM. Or are you waiting till like 12:00 AM?

Annie: [00:41:30] No, you know I am one of those weird people who doesn’t need a lot of sleep. So I’ve done a number of sleep experiments loosely on myself to find out the ideal time that I need to sleep. And I’ve done five and I can’t do five. I’ve done seven, seven’s not great for me, too. I think the length of my sleep cycles doesn’t line up and then eight is okay, but also sometimes too long. And so 6 is really the ideal number for me. And so I typically go to bed by 10:45, aiming to fall asleep by 11:00 and wake up at 5:00.

Sean: [00:42:08] So you get two extra hours than the average person every day. So what’s next for you? What do you plan on doing with the creative side with Good Egg?

Annie: [00:42:25] Yeah, the next thing that we are working on is our first book. So now that I’ve been writing these blog posts for a year. We have a lot of written content. And so what we’re doing next is we’re taking a lot of that content and creating our first book. So actually I just finished the first draft of that book and so now it is out of my hands. It is with a copy editor and hopefully shortly after that it’ll go to the book designer and then it’ll go to print.

Sean: [00:43:00] Yeah, that’s super super smart. I mean, I know a few syndicators who have done that and it has definitely boosted their presence, like people know who they are. Then they would have more confidence and also that credibility so they find out more about you, right?

Annie: [00:43:21] Yes. I mean imagine the difference. When an investor approaches you and you’re like, “Oh, here’s my business card and go check out my website and I have these resources for you”, versus an investor approaches you and you’re like, “Here’s my book. I literally wrote the book on this topic and here’s a gift to you. Here’s my book.” I mean what a difference that makes you know, it’s like a golden business card.

Sean: [00:43:46] Especially if it’s. “Here’s my Amazon best seller book.” Yeah. It is the ultimate business card; better than just Googling your name. I know you guys have recently started about a year ago and so it’s amazing to see that explosive growth. Imagine you have to do it all over again. What would you do differently? What would you keep the same?

Annie: [00:44:04] That is a really good question,

Sean: [00:44:08] You know more now but just assume that you are starting fresh with no network and no credibility.

Annie: [00:44:13] Yeah, you know there’s not a whole lot that I would change. I think the sequence that we went through from blogs to then that newsletter and video and creating an online course, that made a lot of sense for us and it gave us by the time we were creating that online course, I had had a lot of practice creating these individual videos and scripting these blog posts and things like that. And so that sequence really made a lot of sense for us. I think if we could change one thing it would be getting on podcast sooner. I think in the early days both Julie and I were just nervous about getting on podcast. We like, “Oh, I don’t know. What kind of tech do we need? Do we need a microphone or headphones?” you know, and so we just kept putting it off and putting it off and and then finally when we started getting on podcast we’re like, “Holy cow. This is so fun. And this is such a great way to provide value to people. And our investors find a ton of value in hearing us talk about these syndications.” Because like I said, they’re a very complex topic to understand so you have to hear about it a few times from a few different angles to really fully understand what syndications and passive investing are all about.

Sean: [00:45:44] Perfect. So that’s all the questions I have for you today. Did you have anything else like to say before we end the show?

Annie: [00:45:49] No, I think that was great. We covered so many golden nuggets in there I think.

Sean: [00:45:55] Yeah. Oh, thank you for sharing all that information. So how can people contact you?

Annie: [00:45:59] the best way to learn more about us is to go to our website. It’s www.goodegginvestments.com. And at any time you can reach out to me at annie@goodegginvestments.com

Sean: [00:46:09] Alright. Well, thank you so much for being on the show.

Annie: [00:46:11] Thanks for having me Sean.

Annie gave us so many useful tips in this episode. If you’re just starting out, one of the best things to do is to create a blog, write one blog post every day. And before you start, create a list of all the possible questions that a new investor will have. Be creative and make them longer with case studies and examples. Weekly newsletters are the biggest way to attract investors. So make sure they look great and sign up for some other newsletters for design inspiration. Like I mentioned in the introduction, this kind of marketing is the best way to get consistent clients for your business. It creates an atmosphere of trust and credibility. For a full list of the software resources, go to our website EverythingREI.com to see the show notes with Annie Dickerson. And if you’re really interested in learning more about investing in syndication, I highly recommend taking their course. You can find a link to the course in the show notes as well. Hope you learned a lot. Thanks, and have a great day.