How Creating Daily Content Generates Massive Opportunities with Frank Garay

Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Everything Real Estate Investing Show with Sean Pan. Today we have Frank Garay. Frank is a co-host of the daily video blog “The National Real Estate Post” that’s been running for the past 12 years. He’ll be sharing his experiences with content marketing and how being consistent in anything you do will lead to enormous results. We also talked about how to consistently come up with new content to share and how to add value to other people. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the show and leave a review. We release episodes every Wednesday and Sunday. Enjoy!

Sean: I’m so happy to have you on our show today! Go ahead and introduce yourself and let us know who you are and how you got into real estate.

Frank: Okay, great Sean. Thanks. My name is Frank Garay. First and foremost I would say I’m the co-host of “The National Real Estate Post”. You can see the National Real Estate Post at thenationalrealestatepost.com. It’s really easy. But it’s a daily video blog that I’ve been doing with my partner Brian Stevens for 12 years on July 2nd. And in that blog what we talk about is the real estate industry as a whole. So if you’re a real estate investor, it’s actually a good blog to watch because that’s all we talked about every day. And we poke fun at it and we call people out and pick on politicians and do all that fun stuff that you know a good blogger should. That podcast or that blog has a subscribership of about 250,000 real estate mortgage professionals across the country. We fly around the country on a regular basis, get flown around to teach and train and coach real estate and lending professionals. Also through the podcast or the video blog we became part owners of a real estate technology company and this is the technology that was used by real estate agents to get more business. Basically one product is called Listing Booster, but another product that’s really kind of fun is something called key boom, which is the world’s only fully interactive property search channel on TV. We accomplish that by putting a property channel in the streaming space. If you’re familiar with the streaming space, that’s Roku, Amazon Fire Stick, Apple TV, the streaming devices and the just smart TVs that connect to the internet, but the product is called KeyBoom! It’s a property search channel and 1.6 million listings are there. You can search properties right from the comfort of your couch with your family on the TV. So that’s been a lot of fun. My partner and I were featured in the Inman 100, which is the “top 100 most influential people in real estate” by Inman news that was back in 2010. And then we’ve also been featured on “After The Bell” which is a Fox News show with Liz Claman as real estate experts multiple times, and that’s always been fun. It’s fun to go on national TV like that. It’s kind of weird and they got a studio in Sacramento and they got one in San Francisco and you go in there and it’s super intimidating

Sean: Is it live?

Frank: Yeah, it’s live. And you can’t see them or anything. You’ve just got this little earbud sticking in your ear and there’s a little delay and you’re trying to pay attention to what’s being said and your little earbud, you know, then you try to respond as intelligently as possible. So yeah, that’s a little background on who I am. I’ve been licensed since 1987 and my wife retired from the state of California couple years ago and she’s been licensed for a long time and started picking up selling part-time fairly recently. But now that the companies are kind of running on autopilot, I’ve really been intrigued about just diving into the actual sales aspect of real estate. So I’ve started my new blog which you saw which is called “Vacaville Real Estate News”. I live in Vacaville. So I’m doing a real estate blog for the city of Vacaville. I started on April 30th. I started posting in there and sharing socially on May 10th. So I started posting on the 30th and on May 10th shared it. I wanted to have a few posts in there before I started getting the word out. So I started releasing my daily post. I post every day. Started releasing those on May 10th, and it’s already doing well, but I know how to do it. I mean I’ve been a professional blogger for 12 years. So I’m good at it. That’s who I am.

Sean: I was wondering how did you even get into doing a daily video blog, especially 12 years ago when that was not very common at all.

Frank: No, in fact YouTube was around. It had not yet been bought by Google. Google bought them I think and it was just in the the beginning stages when we started and what happened was that was the mortgage meltdown that was 2007 and that’s when things started really just exploding in the mortgage and real estate industry and it was just a matter of desperation. It was I started sending a little video to my salespeople. I owned a mortgage branch and I had about 50 loan officers working for me and I had been in the industry now for almost 20 years and I’ve been through tough markets, but I wanted to coach my people that were working for me on how to get through this really hard market. But you can’t really wrestle 50 people that are spread around 50 mile radius together for sales meetings very easily. So I just kind of stumbled on “well, I’ll make a short video and I’ll send it to my guys and hopefully they’ll get something from that.” It didn’t really help. I mean the the company got absorbed by the parent company and all that but what came out of it was this daily communication that I was doing originally just for my loan officers became something that started spreading and going viral. We did one video, it was about the IndyMac deal. It was One West Bank bought IndyMac’s assets from the FDIC during the crash and they got a sweetheart deal where no matter what they did, One West Bank, they couldn’t lose. It was a money-making deal for them. No matter how they cut: it if they kept the people in the house or if they foreclosed on the people it didn’t matter. They were making kajillions of dollars. And we did a video on that and that video alone got over 20 million views. It really registered with not only the industry people, but with the consumers at large. In fact, the FDIC had to do a press release on us saying that we are all full of crap, that our video is a bunch of lies and it wasn’t true and it was a press release by the FDIC on me. So that one really kind of propelled us into the industry eye. And then also a lot into the consumer eye as well, so it’s an interesting time.

Sean: And how did you decide to do it every single day and be consistent about it?

Frank: That was me. I was desperate to motivate my originators and I did my first video and it was funny. You know, I made sure I wanted to always make it have some humor because nobody wants to watch a boring video, right? So I tried my best to make it funny. And I’m a musician, I play guitar in a couple of bands, you know, but I also ironically play in a hillbilly band. And I play the jaw harp, you know that funny thing you play with your mouth. I play it pretty good too just so you know. And so I did a little skit with my first one, it was July 2nd 2007. I’m playing a jaw harp. I’m singing a song. I’m going “I ain’t got no loans, what I do?” My brother who was working for me at the time was behind me with these big white pieces of paper that had big letters written on like “get off your ass”, “do something”, “pick up the phone”, you know, it was this funny little thing that was two minutes long and it went crazy and the people they loved it and stuff. So I called my business partner that afternoon and I said “Did you see that crazy video?”, he said “Yeah”. I said “Oh dude, I think I could do this every day”, he goes”You’re out of your mind”. I said, “I know I can do it.” And so I just made it a point every day to come in and start and shoot a video about the mortgage industry and real estate industry and what’s going on and primarily in the beginning it’s for my loan originators, but after that it just took off and then my my current business partner, my brother had to quit after six months. He had to get a real job. But in the brokerage that I was working for there’s another guy in there that my broker at the time said this this guy you should partner with him. His name is Brian Stevens. And it’s a funny story because I said “Brian?”. He goes, “Yeah”. I go, “But I hate that guy”. He goes, “Yeah, he doesn’t like you either but you guys are stupid. You’re perfect for each other. I’m friends with both of you. Trust me you’ll do well together.” So I asked him and he reluctantly agreed to start shooting the show with me and here we are 12 years later and we’ve done just crazy amazing things because of that video blog . It’s been quite fascinating, thrilling adventure for us.

Sean: A partnership made in heaven. So how’s that daily video helped you out with your business. Are you still you still doing mortgage loans?

Frank: I was in the beginning. Brian and I think was able to stop around 2008 as well where we decided we were going to just go full time doing the blog itself and it was scary and it was difficult because the model is not making as much money, you know. We helped the mortgage company that we were at through our inspiration with them we help them develop a product to sell the mortgage loan officers that quickly did fairly well, so there was enough money in that product to justify us getting money because we’re the ones that got it launched. We have the mortgage eyeballs to launch this product. So it was able to launch quickly. So they were paying a small amount of money for a while then eventually we have to part ways with them and kind of fend on our own. We parted ways with them because in our video blog we don’t hold back on any politicians or government agencies. We kick them in the balls Sean when we feel like they need to be kicked in the balls. The problem with that is there was a mortgage company that “owned” us and here we are kicking the nads of all these government agencies and they were like, “We just can’t have you guys doing this here anymore. We don’t want these agencies coming after us because you guys are talking all this smack about them.” So we had to part ways and when we parted ways all we got to take with us — we didn’t get to take any of that product– all we got to take with us was our name. No, not even that because we had to change the name. What we took with us was our database, our viewers. And so we had to do a name change and find a way to make it in the blogging world. We did.

Sean: That’s amazing because you know, I have this platform here at the podcast. I post twice a week. I think that’s a lot and I’m wondering, you know, my main source of income was flipping homes. And I was thinking how can I use this platform to do something more and I have no idea. How did you guys make a daily blog more financially lucrative than originating loans.

Frank: Yeah. Well you got to get the eyeballs that you’re after which you’re obviously doing. How long have you been doing it? When did you start this podcast?

Sean: I’ve only done it really seriously since January, like 60 posts or so.

Frank: So you’re just getting started. So as long as you’re providing value for real estate investors… You’re looking to actually do flips, right? So for you, it’s not only providing value to the real estate investors, because you can certainly network with other investors to cross sell each other in certain ways where you can make some money off that. But also if you can provide some sort of interesting value to people who might be in a position where they feel like they have to have to get rid of their home where people can say, “Hey Sean, I need to dump this house. I need you to help me with it”. So I mean that’s kind of what you need to do. And also if you’ve got a good enough audience what you’d be looking at is to train real estate investors. So teaching real estate people how to become flippers, how to become real estate investors, and if you can teach that, there’s opportunities to monetize that because now the people will pay you to learn from you. If they’re paying attention to you on a regular basis, at some point we’ll go, “Yeah, I want Sean to teach me. I’ll I’ll buy the course or I’ll attend the webinar” or whatever the case may be. So it’s a matter of just gathering eyeballs. That’s what it is. And the only way to do that is just brutal consistency and just never stopping ever.

Sean: I mean every day for 12 years. That’s crazy! You guys are providing a lot of value, training people, and whatnot.

Frank: Yeah. We just did it every day, every day and it just caught on and caught on. And people subscribe and people watch us every day to this day. People watch this every single day and if we didn’t do it every day, it would have never happened. It’s all about the consistency. The thing with a blogger or podcast or any of the other people that are listening who might be thinking diving into that space is that a lot of people quit right before they make it to the finish line. Blogging is such a weird thing, and podcasting too. It’s so weird. You know, you just do it and do it. You might not necessarily see any return on that for a long time. But all I can say is that some point you reach the tipping point we’re all of a sudden now there’s return on it, but I think a lot of people quit before they make it. And they might have been right there on the edge of it and a lot of people quit after their second or third post. So you’re way ahead of the curve over the crowd out there. If you got 60 posts, you’re like way out, you’re doing great.

Sean: Obviously you’re super impressive because the first iteration of this podcast was me talking, trying to do something similar. Maybe not daily but weekly or bi-weekly. But honestly after 20 episodes I ran out of things to talk about that’s why I have guests on my show now because I don’t know about much at all. But everyone else knows so much more. How do you come up with content to talk about something every single day for 12 years?

Frank: That’s a great question and just so you know, we do interviews too. So sometimes we lean on interviews. Like we’ll probably do 4 interviews a month. So like once a week we’ll do an interview and we kind of call those mail-ends. It’s like “all right. I’ve got an interview. That’s an easy one”. And this is certainly something that you can do or anybody else who’s interested in the space: just search all the new sites. You can possibly search about the space that you’re in. So there’s a lot of stuff out there on the on the web about flipping and investing and that sort of thing. The other thing I’d recommend too is get a new Twitter account, a brand new one and don’t worry about anybody following you. It’s not about you following anybody. Just use it to follow all these new sources and interesting other people that talk about the subject matter that you want to talk about like flipping and real estate investing. You follow news feeds and people so every day just like on your Twitter feed and just see who’s talking about what. And when you see something, understand that what we’ve done for 12 years as we certainly have definitely had our own stories where we had a hundred percent journalistic rights to it where it was completely our story, but 95% of the time we’re just reading what’s going on in the news and then editorializing on it. So a perfect example of that is what you found of mine where I talk about marijuana and real estate. And so I found an article that I thought was interesting and then I just editorialized on it and I talked about the article. But then I link to the article and I give credit where credit’s due. I don’t plagiarize anything but it’s perfectly fine to editorialize something. So when you find some information, it’s just you giving your opinion about what somebody else has written, if that makes sense. Like this guy wrote about this. Here’s my thoughts on it. Here’s my opinion about it. And here’s a link back to it if you want to check it out. But here’s my thoughts and my opinion and it’s your thoughts and your opinions that wind up mattering to your viewers.

Sean: Yeah. That’s really good advice. I mean by doing it this way you basically have an unlimited amount of resources because Twitter and the internet, there’s so much information out there every single day.

Frank: Just follow the right people, follow the right thing, follow the things that pertain to what you’re podcasting about. Follow those people or those new sites. The National Association of Realtors is on there, I follow them. Housing Wire’s on there, I follow them. There’s multiple publications and websites that talk about this stuff every day and all I do is editorialize on it and just give my opinion about it.

Sean: Yeah, so that’s the reason why I want to bring you here in the first place. It was because I saw your article on that Facebook group and was talking about how the legalization federally of marijuana could help the real estate industry because now you have all this money from marijuana which is now legalized. Do you wanna talk about that for a little bit?

Frank: Yeah. Well, the the article itself was… everybody knows this and we’ll just say it though the fact that marijuana is legal in California is one thing but it’s not legal federally, right? So there’s issues. Where the issues really come into play is banking. So most banks especially if they’re federally insured banks, FDIC banks, they’re not going to allow money to come into the bank that is generated from marijuana. Because federally it’s still considered to be an illegal substance. So the banks won’t accept that. Well here’s the big fat problem is. It’s generating literally billions of dollars a year in California already. Let alone the other states that have legalized it. All this money that’s being generated on a state level with marijuana,that’s cash! I mean people are running around with buckets full of cash and safes filled to the brim with cash and it’s completely impractical.

Sean: There’s an industry of people who have to take money from the safe from dispensaries into a different safe in a bank because it can’t just put it into the bank account, right?

Frank: So anyway, the state of California is finding ways. What they’re trying to do is get it through state-chartered banks and give the pot industry in California mechanism to get the money into the banking system. And so with that in mind that creates a lot of opportunity especially in the real estate world because let’s be honest. A lot of these companies and individuals who own these companies growing pot in the state are making an enormous amount of money. Do you think these guys want to invest in some real estate? You bet your bushy they want to invest in real estate. Outside of real estate there’s probably nothing that you can invest in. Sure you can play in the stock market but that’s stressful as hell. I mean a lot of people would love to invest in real estate because it’s solid, it’s there overtime. It’s always going to do well for you. You get the depreciation write-off on your taxes. Plus you get the appreciation of the property itself, you get the rental income if you’re renting it out. And so now if these pot mobiles in the state of California can now start entering into the banking system where they can… it’s pretty hard to show up at an escrow to buy a flipper home with a bag full of hundreds. You know what I mean? It’s not going to happen. It can’t happen. It has to go through the banking system. Well now you know if this gets passed and there’s some bank gets opened up to the budding pot industry, then there’s going to be big opportunity for real estate. Even if you wanted to own a dispensary and the state has approved marijuana, that doesn’t mean your city has, that doesn’t mean your county has. You still have trouble even leasing a space. So, you know most guys they got to build their own dispensary. But if the banking system comes into play and the money could start moving through banks and that sort of thing, now even the dispensary side becomes easier. Everything becomes easier for them and everything becomes documented and traceable and trackable and taxable. Now I’m not saying all the pot growers and dispensary guys out there are crooks trying who cheat a little on their taxes, but all I’m saying is if you’re dealing with bags of money every day, it’s a lot easier to cheat on your taxes than if you’re not. So, you know, that’s that’s the deal and so that’s what I wrote about and I saw that. That article was actually published in my local newspaper and they actually took that article from somewhere else, another state paper and kind of editorialized on it. Then I took theirs and editorialized on it. Put a real estate spin on it and there you go. Now I’m talking to you.

Sean: Perfect. Well, let’s go for a quick example. So you read an article about how California is helping the marijuana industry get legalized federally so that they can put their money into the banking system or something to that nature. So your spin on it, your editorialized version is that you just added more components about how that could help real estate. Basically it huh?

Frank: Yeah. How does that apply to me? How does that apply to real estate? And it does apply to real estate big time, right? I think in my opinion, I mean wouldn’t you agree?

Sean: Oh, yeah. I mean, it’s honestly just a extra source of funds. It’s like when money from somewhere out of the country comes in like in China. Yeah, boom now real estate goes up.

Frank: Oh, you’re exactly right. There’s all this money that can’t be spent. They’re sitting on barrels and truckloads of dollar bills that they can’t do anything with. If it was in the banking system they can buy some real estate. Maybe buying real estate, buying plots of land, putting buildings up, making bigger grow sites. They would be building bigger dispensaries, better dispensaries and they would be buying houses. They’ll go out there and say “I’ve got all this money now, I’m wealthy from my marijuana business. What am I going to do with it? I’m going to go do some flips. I’m going to go invest in some real estate.” That’s what’s going to happen. But you know, we’ll see how soon.

Sean: Yeah, we’ll see how soon. Have you seen any other interesting articles recently or something that you’ve probably seen and written about?

Frank: Sure. Today’s article was really really interesting on my blog. So what I was talking about here is the the National Association of Realtors cited a survey that was done by Chase Home Lending and the survey was of a thousand millennials. And what they were asking them is about home ownership and that type of stuff. It’s interesting the article was, I wonder what you think about this Sean? So the article says that, and the survey says that, 70% of millennials out there say that they’re willing to cut back on expenses if it means that it will help them buy a house in the next 12 months.

Sean: Yeah seems accurate. Is that not right?

Frank: Well, that’s what they said. Do you feel that’s probably fairly accurate?

Sean: Well I have my house. It’s kind of hard to say and I did like house hack. So basically my cost of living is almost zero. Yeah, but I look at my friends who are looking to buy a house in the very near future. And absolutely they are willing to cut all expenses. They’re willing to go back home and live with their parents for a few months.

Frank: That’s what happens. That’s a big thing that’s going on in the country right now and there’s many articles on that if you want to look into that. But you definitely have that. You’ve got millennials moving back home to save money to buy a house. So I thought that was interesting. Oh one of the things that they said they’re only cut back on are like eating out and spa days and and things like that. And I know that could be met with some resistance like “well, what’s that really going to save you?” But you know if you’re a married couple and you work professionally somewhere, most of the time you’re not bringing your lunch to work right now. If both of you are going out to lunch every day in the workforce, what’s a lunch going to cost me? A lunch for one person even if you’re on the cheap is going to cost you $15-20. You think about that you, do the math. The married couple if they just didn’t go out to lunch during work for a year, it’s going to be $7000-8000 saved in their pocket. You know that goes a long way for a first-time homebuyer, somebody trying to buy a house. So that’s true. The funny thing though about it is that when it comes to not eating out, the women far surpassed the men. The women like 73% of them are all for it but only 40% of the men were for it. So they’re not really big on that one, but I think the most encouraging thing about the article that I found interesting is that it says, I wrote here “the article closes by noting that 52% of millennial first time home buyers feel like they’re financially ready to buy a home right now.” I thought that was pretty interesting. I wouldn’t have thought that it would have been that high. I bet there’s a lot of parents out there who want to kick those people out of their house right now if you’re ready to buy. And it says 93% of millennials surveyed said that home ownership is on the horizon and they’re excited and hopeful about the home buying process. Another interesting thing, now being a flipper this might… You’re not a licensed agent right Sean?

Sean: I have a license. Yes.

Frank: You do. So another interesting thing in the in the survey was that millennials really truly do want to talk about the home buying process, like a very high percentage are more curious and want to learn and want to understand what that process is. And so knowing that, there’s some fodder, for your podcast. Is there a way to help those people who are seeking information learn it. And the other thing too as they said, that they really want to learn if possible from their friends. I’m 57 I’m a Gen X. With millennials, I always think “well everything has to be on an app for them or everything has to be in the cloud.” You know, they don’t talk to people anymore and that’s not the case. They just want to talk to the to the right people.

Sean: Like this is one of the biggest purchases that they’re going to make in their lives, right? It’s a scary scary number, especially for people in the Bay Area houses here on the cheap side is $800K. And starter houses like single family homes it’s $1.1M-$1.2M.

Frank: Wow, incredible.

Sean: They’re going to want some kind of consultation from a friend. And honestly like the research part though, they don’t ask the buyer’s agents,”Drive me to this house. Show me three places”. No, they do all their own research. But what it comes down to is like “what do I need to know about this disclosure package. I have no idea how to read this thing.” That’s when they need the agent for right?

Frank: Exactly. So I just thought that was an interesting article. That was my post today. I saw it, talked about it, released it. There’s always something new you know, there’s always something.

Sean: How long does it take you to go online, find something interesting, read it, and then write up an editorial and create a blog post for your daily blog?

Frank: I would say 60 to 90 minutes.

Sean: And you batch that so you probably do like 5 posts in one day and then just two days you can chill out?

Frank: No. I do it every morning. When you get to be my age Shawn, when you’re like 57 years old, the weirdest thing happens in the world is you wind up waking up at like 3:30 in the morning and just getting up. I might as well just get up and start. I’m drinking coffee by 4:00 a.m. I mean I start looking for what am I going to talk about today. And then I just put it all together before anybody gets up. I’m done.

Sean: Wow, that’s amazing. And then do you do your daily podcast as well?

Frank: Yeah, of course, so that’s at work. I go to the office. That’s the first thing we do at work is we knock out the National Real Estate Post Show. And that surprisingly doesn’t take very long. We do the same thing. We scour some articles. Me and Brian will talk to each other about what we want to do. Brian writes the show. He loves to write the show and I wouldn’t have it any other way because he’s just got this crazy cynical sense of humor. And he has just this incredible wealth of absolutely useless knowledge that winds up being useful on the show. And so he’s funny and he loves to do it. So once we sink our teeth into a story, it only takes him maybe 20-25 minutes to ride it and we shoot it. We get in front of the green screen and we shoot it and then we hand it off to an editor to edit. I was the editor for three years and then ever since then we’ve always had someone… we’ve got a kid. It’s actually Brian son. He’s 18 and he edits our show every day and we don’t really give him a lot of direction. We’ll say just make it interesting. And so now we got this crazy weird vibe on our show. That’s just like, okay, whatever but it’s cool.

Sean: How long is every episode typically?

Frank: 5 to 7 minutes.

Sean: Okay. You record for maybe 20 minutes and then cut to 7?

Frank: It’s scripted. So we record, if we make a mistake, we’ll stop and do it again or whatever. But you know, he just cuts it up and make sure the mistakes are out of there. It’s not like we’re shooting a breeze. It’s scripted. It’s very scripted. And after so many years of doing it like when I read Brian’s script, I know exactly the tone that he’s trying to do and decide we just get through it very fast. It’s really a pretty quick part of our day and it’s been the heart of our business for 12 years.

Sean: Yeah, so what else do you guys do for the rest of the day?

Frank: Well, we sell our products. We have our technology product Listing Booster and we have KeyBoom!, the TV channel. And those are products that we sell to mortgage and real estate people across the country. So the rest of our day is really wrapped up in that. It’s wrapped up in making the money off of what the video podcast has delivered to us. Because of the video blog we became partners with technology companies that are excellent. And the reason we became partners is because the people who own the products, their users are mortgage and real estate people and we have all the eyeballs, they pay attention to us every single day. So they were like, “hey man what can we pay you to advertise me?” We say you can pay us 50 percent of ownership in the product. That would be fine. So at one company we’re 50%, one company we’re 25%. Then we have ownership, but now we’re into it. You know, I mean now we’re a 100% in. It’s not just an ad, we have advertisers too. I’ve got 4 advertisers on the video blog that pay us annually to be there.

Sean: Yeah. So you guys are doing this constant lead generation by a just promoting this content, right? So then ultimately do you guys still prospect for leads or is it because you have such a big viewership that they all come to you?

Frank: Yeah, they come to us. I mean the show is the prospecting. We open the show every day with our little mention of whoever our advertiser is and then we go through the content, the value item what’s valuable to the viewer. And then at the end of it we’ll close it out with “hey, don’t forget to buy a product” or sometimes we open the show with “hey, don’t forget about our product. It’s really great.” So the the show is the vehicle, that is the prospecting. That’s what I’m doing on the real estate news. The content is the vehicle to get the attention but then on the front side and the back side of it is my call to action, “Don’t forget. I’m here to help you with real estate.”

Sean: So I think it’s a daily reminder, that daily ping. Oh, yeah, I’ve seen this guy over and over and over again. And like that 80% of it could go to your trash but that one who clicked on it…

Frank: Yeah just takes time. You just got to do it every day. That’s what I’m looking forward to on Vacaville Real Estate News a year from now. A year from now I’ll have thousands of subscribers in Vacaville my hometown, subscribed to my real estate blog who are going to be talking to me about real estate. It’s just that’s what’s going to happen. There’s no way not to.

Sean: So when they have a question, you’re the guy right?

Frank: Yeah, this Frank’s great. We know him. He talked about real estate every day. He’s always like “hey Frank help me out.’ That’s the way it’s gonna be because they listen to me. They pay attention to me. That’s what it’s all about.

Sean: Honestly by having these kind of platforms, especially through voice or through video, they see you more often and they think “oh this guy is like my friend because I see and hear his voice over and over again. I know his personality. I like the way he works. Let’s work with him.”

Frank: Yeah, it does. In fact with us, me and Brian and the show we’ve been doing it for so long, when we get flown around the country to do these trainings and stuff, dude, I’m not lying to you. We have had people line up to take pictures with us because like ,”Yeah, I see you every day. I can’t believe I’m actually here with you.” It’s like cool. Let’s take a picture, you know so funny. It’s great. Really cool.

Sean: So, how are you distributing your content? I saw your post on Facebook. You have email blasts and whatnot.

Frank: Yeah, well with the National Real Estate Post the primary way’s through email believe it or not. And that’s because it started in 2007. A lot of the social stuff wasn’t very present. Plus my audience there is real estate and mortgage professionals who are still very email driven. They’re still very very email driven. So that’s primarily email. We do share it on social site, Facebook, LinkedIn. With the Vacaville Real Estate News though, my personal blog, it’s a little different approach. Yes. I do have a the ability for someone to subscribe to email but I don’t really pick up a lot of email subscribers. So what I do is I post into groups. So we’re you met me was in I think it was the Bay Area Investors Group. I post in a new group. So what I did is I would search Real Estate Focused groups on Facebook in my probably 50 60 mile footprint of Vacaville and I found all these groups and I joined them and they let you in there. Well, these are people that I know are going to have an inkling, this group is something has something to do with real estate, or in Vacaville. Since I’m very focused on Vacaville, I have “What’s happening in Vacaville”,”Speak on it Vacaville”, “Vacaville Crime and Community”. These are just groups about the city of Vacaville. In Vacaville alone the total group membership that I have in my groups is probably 80,000 90,000. So by me posting into these groups… So I make my blog post then I just go and share it into groups. I just share it into these groups every day. I share in like 15 groups. It’s all there and then I’m exposing myself to those 80-90 thousand people who, some are going to click it and read it and comment. Oh, the other thing I do is just so you know, this might be useful for you or whoever is listening who might be thinking about blogging. But the other thing you do is to be really effective at it is when you share into the groups, if anybody likes it or does a little reaction face or makes a comment, immediately Facebook lets you know somebody liked it. So I fly over there I click on the like and I can see who it is. I can quickly figure out if they’re an agent or if they’re a consumer. I don’t want to talk to the agents. I talk to the consumer. So if it’s a consumer, I just friend them immediately and I shoot him an instant message and I say “hey thanks for watching/liking my post this group. I appreciate it a lot. Just let you know I sell real estate. If you need any help or have any questions regarding real estate, I’m here to help”. So that’s where the real interaction comes in. I’ve only been doing it not even a month and picked up two leads already doing it that way.

Sean: Wow, congratulations! So I feel bad if I did that because I would feel like I’m spamming even though I’m creating value. I was wondering you know how to get over that fear/rejection because when I post on groups that I’m not the moderator of, I feel like I’m spamming if I post my podcast over and over again.

Frank: No, I wouldn’t feel bad about that at all because your podcast provides value. I mean you’re providing value. At the end of the day, they don’t have to like it. They don’t have to look at it. But it’s not like you’re just saying buy something from me. You’re saying “hey, I’ve got something you might be interested in. Here’s something of value. And by the way I flip homes”. I mean there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t feel that way at all and to tell you the truth I have had somebody say “This feels like an advertisement.” and then somebody says, “Because it is!” I’ve had that happen and when I reply I go, “Hey, sorry you feel that way, but actually I write all these myself, my heart and soul into it. I just provide something I think is valuable. I do mention that I sell real estate. Sorry if it offended you, sorry you feel that way” and then I always get like a happy face back. You can defuse it fast if something comes up. Am I trying to say I sell real estate? Yeah. I mean, come on if I’m not going to help myself nobody is, right? But I’m providing some information that’s interesting. If it wasn’t interesting they wouldn’t have clicked on it. They wouldn’t have read it. They wouldn’t have known. You know that I sell real estate and called me an advertiser, but for the most part I’ve had no problem. I’ve not kicked off any group, I’ve not had one admin say “hey stop doing this”. I think the admins appreciate it because it’s actually good content getting thrown onto their group.

Sean: Yeah, making the group more lively to yeah.

Frank: It’s not just a blatant sales pitch. It’s genuine information. Here’s some information.

Sean: So for my last question to you, from all your years of doing this, what are some of the key lessons you’ve learned from being in the industry?

Frank: You know, the only thing that I would say is I think consistency is true no matter what we do. And I don’t care if you’re flipping homes or making podcasts, if you don’t consistently do the things you need to do every day to be successful at it, you’re not going to be successful at it. And I would say the most important thing to do would be to make sure what you need to do every day, what those items are, and that you do them every day. And if you can do that, then you’re going to win. Then it all pans out in the end. It could take time but nothing that’s awesome happens overnight. Nothing awesome happens overnight. Then you hit the lotto then something awesome happened overnight!

Sean: But hopefully you’re consistently buying the tickets, right?

Frank: Yeah. You better be buying them every day.

Sean: Awesome. Well, thanks so much for being on the show today. How can people get in contact with you?

Frank: Well, you know, I would just encourage people to go to my new blog either thenationalrealestatepost.com where you see the National Show or go to my Vacaville Real Estate News site, which is vvrenews.com. I’m there every day.

Sean: Awesome. Well, thank you so much again for being on the show.

Frank: Hey, man, I really appreciate it. Best of luck to you out there and great stuff.

Sean: All right. Thanks. Take care.

Here are some of the key takeaways I got from speaking to Frank. Consistency is key. Produce content on a consistent basis and add value to people’s lives. To have an unlimited supply of things to write or talk about, create a Twitter account and follow popular blogs about your topic. Find an interesting article and editorialize it. If you keep producing content and adding value you’ll be seen as the guy or the girl of the industry and people will start coming to you when they have questions. Once you have the eyeballs on you the possibilities are endless. Hope you all learned a lot. Thanks, and have a great day.