Why Real Estate Entrepreneurs Need a Personal Brand ft. Shane Seo | Coffeez for Closers with Joe Shalaby

15:57Joseph Shalaby:And what we do not know if that, or don't, know at the moment we know other people in the industry that do it and they ended up having a pretty good rolodex of people that were already you know had pretty good large podcasts and stuff so um we we sat down they filmed me a little bit they gave me some scripts and i kind of went off script because just because they give me a script doesn't mean it's the way i would believe so i just took the ideas that they said and i read it and i said okay let me put it in my words and i taught it in my way because i like to buy things a little different than what most other investors would do because i like to be creative instead of just giving one offer we get three every time we have reasons why we do it and then what do we do two weeks later before closing or whatever so i would just tweak it up so then they would film it they would edit it um i would review it and give notes then whenever it comes perfect where they all feel good about and i feel good and then we would try and uh post and i guess they put it i guess you can schedule when they come out so they looked at the optimum time to schedule when something that's a lot of work yeah a lot of work now just to get out a few of the videos yes video and then if we do a podcast like this apparently you can break it up into multiple shorts right so they would choose pieces there and now we've been delegating talking to other people like that i don't want to say their names i guess but like just other people that edit for some of the other podcasters and uh other influence some of the bigger i didn't realize how expensive it was until we did it it's like six grand for like 30 shorts i was like man that's ridiculous but those got the best traction and they know when the hook and keep the audience's attention apparently you want on a short them to watch the whole thing and hopefully watch it again and then on long form you want them to at least watch 30 seconds of it like to make sure they stand then you can kind of slow down the pace and let me nerd out a little bit there is a lot of science oh it's a lot i was talking to your good guy here tim he was teaching me some more stuff so it's like i'm always trying to learn coming out we're coming out with something

17:53Shane Seo:for because we've converted our podcast to a media company as well for guests who need content we meet a lot of people who are just like i don't have content so we're rolling a lot of cool stuff out to help our guests that really like launch you know their content i think you'd be interested tim will chat with you about it and he'll for sure he'll show you um you know what you can do to really optimize your content what to say what like pictures to add and how to really like you know add the hooks etc there's a lot of science to the it's actually more science in this than anything else because it evolves so quickly it does it evolves every single day the algorithm is changing at rapid speed and we really are in a place where you know if you're not up to date with what the algorithm wants.

18:44Shane Seo:It's like your content's null and void. It's not going to be served to the audience, et cetera. So staying up to date, staying relevant, optimizing all the time for what the algorithm wants is like imperative. No two companies are alike. That's why the American Express corporate program can help you customize rewards, reporting, and billing options, all designed for your business. Build your program with American Express at americanexpress.com slash corporate. Terms apply. To gain adoption.

19:13Joseph Shalaby:No, that makes it. And from a scale of one to 10 of saying that 10, you know, I know everything about social media. I'm like a four. Yeah. I mean, I would say I'm a two.

19:22Shane Seo:I mean, it's impossible. Like I'm going to conferences. I'm going to, you know, all types of stuff just to kind of keep up with the times. And it's like, you know, it's really, it's really a difficult, a difficult industry to to to really dominate it is be the top podcaster the top social media influencer because someone's better than you that's right like way better than you you know and it's also

19:46Joseph Shalaby:pretty interesting you said because it's like mcdonald's cheeseburger it's not the best burger but it's the most bought burger you know what i'm saying so in my opinion same thing it's like i i just want to know enough but i want to get the best between austin and hailey and then some of other guys that are using his editors and kind of giving us advice and definitely like work tip he knows this stuff he was over here dude i was like man yeah because we've been at it for yeah 18

20:09Shane Seo:months every day all day talking to this guy and and tim also like my team we have a lot of resources so you know i'm talking to so many ceos so many founders so many big creators so many influencers every day i'm coming up with something i'm collaborating directly so that's awesome that's awesome we're coaching each other and i'm studying this stuff every day so i can probably properly speak on it because i speak all over the country talking to people about branding because i'm gonna you know again me and you are both in very boring sectors we are so branding to a lot of mortgage professionals and real estate professionals isn't that important they just think they got a door knock they got a you know cold call or whatever it is that they're doing it's like dude welcome

20:58Joseph Shalaby:to 2025 i know and who would have thought okay because i came back when i was younger myspace was the big thing you know you never would have thought like one of the founders of myspace on my show oh that's crazy yeah i'd like to meet him i just never thought that it would be so big that social media is just you know what i mean like when i'm i still thinking i used to love myspace you know it's just kind of crazy but i will throw this out there since you're speaking around like on stages and stuff so we did atlanta real estate conference which is our just real estate based we had about 400 people last year then we did a business conference and now we're going to try and do a creator one so we can have those three going throughout the year the reason why is because we think uh business people need to make money and preserve their wealth in real estate but they also need to do personal branding and like influencer stuff then we think the real estate people they need to treat their business more like a business and they need to do social media then you got influencers who are good at making money and talent but they don't know what to do with their money and they don't treat what they're doing as a business so we feel like there's a good little triple pillar if you will so i'd love to have you come out to our creator summit when we

22:07Shane Seo:hold it yeah let me know yeah we could do it i'm again i'm going around speaking to boring mortgage real estate professionals all over the country figuring out how i can help them build their business and really like giving them insight into the importance of building their brand based on ai indexing my my conversation isn't just about branding it's about how the algorithm is interpreting your personal brand interesting yeah so it's a different outlook on on it because it's it's the future because we now use ai for decision making oh wow yeah right that's what you that's right it's like if you go who what plumber am i going to go with or what's the best place to shop or what's the best milk to buy or who's the best loan officer to work with who's the best who's going to give me the best interest rate so who's the best realtor who provides the best finance and like kai is deciding everything for you hence the reason we got to be

23:01Joseph Shalaby:more on personal branding to make sure it picks it up that makes sense so you got to formulate

23:06Shane Seo:your brand around what you do and put out content and podcasting is important because every word you're saying right now everything is going to be i mean chat gpt is going to cite everything i just said that's amazing even every stutter every word every um every uh well i like chick-fil-a with a

23:25Joseph Shalaby:large sweet tea if you're at any of my conferences bring it to me you guys

23:31Shane Seo:um now what gear tool software actually helped you move faster like when when you uh when you launch your business like when i started doing the real estate stuff real estate what what gear

23:43Joseph Shalaby:tool software using podcasting oh okay yeah so for real audience just some some tidbit of just my cell phone which of course right now chat it's starting now because i can start what i did when i started real estate is just driving by seeing for sale by owner signs or or craigslist but like right now it's definitely chat gpt good ai stuff like that is always helpful with like you said i sit there and brainstorm i do 10 20 minute notes you know i'll do it and it'll i'll be talking and it'll stop at 10 minutes i'll wait for it to catch up and then i'll keep doing over and over again until i ask it a bunch of questions and brainstorm with it so chat gpt definitely um we use a lot of software is when we're doing sourcing too you know um we use facebook marketplace when we're finding deals we are always constantly looking for landlords so we're using you know social media you know facebook um what else are we using uses just just internet tools you mean yeah yeah i mean this

24:39Shane Seo:is more application like when i'm studying somebody i want to know what they're doing what's your tech stack what's your you know sourcing stack what's your well we use costar craze because we're looking

24:48Joseph Shalaby:for commercial stuff there. Facebook, we also scrape the public records too. We're trying to find the current evictions going on or water shutoffs to see what's vacant or where some of those motivated sellers are.

25:04Joseph Shalaby:We do a lot of ads or inorganic ads. We're sourcing, hey, look, if you want to sell your property or hey, you're a landlord, it wasn't as easy as you thought or why did you get into it? We're trying to build up more landlord community as well. And then, of course, we don't use Clickman. We use Go High Level. That's a software.

25:24Shane Seo:That's your general CRM.

25:25Joseph Shalaby:It's just a good CRM. Yeah, I'm not very tech. It's real good for all my people. I know, like I said, on a scale of one to 10, I'm always a three or four. But I have the best guys around me that know every bit. I can just at least talk the language to make sure we're all on the right page.

25:42Shane Seo:now um have you ever had someone call you or want to invest with you or do a deal with you

25:49Joseph Shalaby:based on your social media presence or what they saw online we have yeah um coincidentally enough it was i think my first larger podcast that i got on and i was sitting there speaking and then we had someone come to the meeting um like our little workshop because we mentioned it on the podcast then becoming one of our private clients which he is the best guy i'll even shout out his name is jamie so if he comes out so he became a private client of mine and we got him doing his first deal right now and then uh we met another young boy uh tanner so i'll give him a shout out and he was 20 years old he's 21 right now so in one year we got him 52 doors very proud about that Yeah, we just showed him how we sourced, how we talked to landlords, and how we structured.

26:39Joseph Shalaby:And he did all seller financing, so no banks. Now that he's going past a year, a year and a half, we're trying to help build his relationship with banks and lenders. Because we want to burr or cash that we finance or bundle the loans or maybe wants to sell in 1031.

26:55Shane Seo:He just went knocking on people, just took over their mortgages.

26:59Joseph Shalaby:Well, no, no, no.

27:00Shane Seo:How do you have the money to give the sellers?

27:03Joseph Shalaby:Yeah. Yeah. So some of those he paid down payments, but I have this method that we do. Let's just say a landlord. Let's just say you're a landlord. And then I call and I'm talking to you. I know you're in the middle of an eviction. And me and you're, you know, I'm talking to you, figuring out your motivations. And you say, OK, I'll use a real one. My biggest portfolio I ever bought as far as single family was 92 homes. I was going to a Little Caesars pizza to buy pizza for my grandma, which we call Big Mama, and my little niece and nephew. When I went through the drive-thru, I saw a for sale by owner sign kind of in the distance.

27:37Joseph Shalaby:Had a buddy with me. I said, hey, go get the number. He went and got the number. Called the guy. Ended up being an older gentleman. He was about 81, 82 at the time. And he was just surprised that we had called him because this is a city about three hours from me. My grandma lives about three hours from me. He said, what are you doing down here when you live up there in Atlanta? And I said, sir, we buy all over the state. So he was just very impressed, super nice guy. For personal reasons, he had certain, like, I can't explain everything that he was going through, but he needed some cash. He, you know, because he had these two homes that he told me he had.

28:14Joseph Shalaby:He only said he had two at the time, two homes. He needed to sell them for a personal reason, and he needed the cash, like, right away. I said, well, look, you know, I'm very interested. I'm a young guy. I'm trying to catch up to you. I'm trying to get into real estate. Looks like you're trying to turn it more passive. Lo and behold, he owned 92 total. So I said, sir, how about this? How about I buy two of those homes traditionally? And let's let that count as the down payment and you seller finance me the other 90. So I bought those two homes. I bought those traditionally. Those were$100 ,000 each.

28:46Joseph Shalaby:It's just kind of close to around$200 ,000. So I paid$40 ,000 down, did the whole 20 % down and got a loan for$160 ,000, bought the homes. And then he seller financed me the other 90. so that's what we we try to repeat and do the thing that i did though since i came out 40 i'm always saying how can i get my 40 back still on the property cash flow and then 1031 later because if you sell or finance it you lose the 1031 eligibility right yeah so i bundled up about 42 43 or 44 doors i forget how many it was because some of the homes that i didn't necessarily want They're more work in the hood, a little bit harder work.

29:27Joseph Shalaby:And honestly, this is three hours away. So I kept the ones that I wanted. And then those that needed a little bit of work, I bundled them up and did a master lease and sold an option. So I charged these investors that live down there. I said, look, you just paid me. They paid me$150 ,000 down. I master leased it to them for$12 ,500. bucks and that paid for my mortgage, gave me some cashflow and I got all my homes for free and I got my 40 grand back. So I made 110. So that's kind of what I did. So now what this boy Tanner did and what I want him to keep doing is we find a property. If I negotiate with the seller and let's just say you have a$400 ,000 home, you want 40 down, I'll get it under contract.

30:11Joseph Shalaby:And then I'll find a tenant buyer that can pay me 40 or more since I've got to pay you 40. and let's just say I find someone give me 60. They give me 60. I then close with the attorney. In Georgia, it's an attorney. Is it escrow or title state here? Yeah, it's a title state. Title state. So I would then close out the title company once I know I have the tenant buyer in place. So now I've either made money or broke even. Then I can cash flow at least with the option. And then when they cash me out, I can 1031 it. And during that time, at least got the depreciation and have it as long term. So that's kind of been my goal.

30:50Joseph Shalaby:So always put out money, get it back, hold, put out the money, get it back, hold. And then as I accumulate, then I'll put that into more of a B plus A class asset with my own money. Because now I need to put the money somewhere. I don't want to just leave it in my bank account. I think it's very volatile that way. And for asset protection, that's terrifying.

31:09Shane Seo:Absolutely.

31:09Joseph Shalaby:So that's what this young gentleman did. So he's just been rocking and rolling and doing it. I'm very proud of a young man that.

31:16Shane Seo:Oh, he's killing it. Yeah. A couple last questions for you. What's a personal goal that you have for yourself, a business school that you have for the business and a family goal that you have?

31:24Joseph Shalaby:Who I'm going to start with family goal. So I just got married in November. And so same thing as I went to grant Elena. So I went, not just the grant grant went to Elena Cardone here in Costa Mesa. Well, you're in this Irvine, right?

31:37Shane Seo:Yeah.

31:38Joseph Shalaby:There's two mentors as a Glenn and Mindy Stearns. So I went and asked them and just see how they are as a husband and wife. And I went to as many wealthy people as I could and said, how does a wealthy couple make it to have a maximum business, maximum portfolio, and still be able to give time to each other and be a good family man? So they all gave me great advice. So in family, I want to make sure I give 100%, 100 % present with my wife. I want to be able to have five children. I'm going to start with one, though. But we have the idea of wanting to have five. I got four myself. Oh, I want to walk into a home and it'd be like chaos a little.

32:14Joseph Shalaby:I don't know. I just, that's just how I like, I like the kids. I don't know. That's what I imagine it to be. Is that how it is for your family? And yeah, to me, that's a blessing. So that's with my wife. I want to give her everything. I want to have a ton of kids. I like to have two or three homes throughout the country. It doesn't have to be big ones, but just something we're working over a little bit here in California, a little in Georgia, a little in Florida. In business, I want to get into M &A and I'm getting in the movie business. I love to expand on the movie business. I believe the movie business is the only business that hires every type of business.

32:48Joseph Shalaby:So there's a great M &A play there. So I like that. And it has a real estate play, which I love. And then in real estate, I want to get out a single family and start doing more higher end stuff, all privately owned right now. And then I do have two little debt funds. And the only reason I started that was to retire my mom and dad in those funds. and then all the sellers that did seller financing when I cashed them out, they didn't have nothing to do with it. So I put into my debt fund that's cross-collateralized about multiple properties instead of just a first lien on one property. So it's just a way to make sure I have that.

33:21Joseph Shalaby:But now I may start ramping that up a little bit. But I'd like to grow to a couple billion dollars in assets under management in 10 to 20 years, hopefully as quick as possible. So I think that's real estate, business. I want to do more M &A and family. uh yeah that's that's what i said about the personal anything personal for yourself personal i um i speak spanish now i want to learn more korean because i'm half korean i'd like to be able to speak to my family in korea um i want to get in better shape i've been have more of an uncle body right now so i want to be getting more maximum shape um definitely want to do that and i want to be a little bit more comfortable on stage speaking I want to be a better speaker because I'm a southern guy.

34:07Joseph Shalaby:I stutter. I'm introverted. I don't like being up there, and I start getting nervous. I want to be more comfortable and just work that muscle, so I want to be able to do that.

34:16Shane Seo:The only way to do that is just do more of it.

34:18Joseph Shalaby:That's what they say.

34:20Shane Seo:You've got to just do more of it. I would be terrified speaking on stages before. Now it's like I just go up there, and I'm just me. Me everywhere I go. Me on this podcast. Me on social media. Me on stage. It's just me, me, me, me. Well, that's great.

34:33Joseph Shalaby:And I have a lot to learn from you. You and then I know David Meltzer. I call him Uncle David. So I have a lot to learn from you guys. I wish he was here today.

34:41Shane Seo:He would have done your show today here.

34:43Joseph Shalaby:Yeah. We did one sometime in May, I think. It was a couple of weeks.

34:48Shane Seo:And then you got it. In May. Yeah. One last question.

34:51Joseph Shalaby:Yes.

34:52Shane Seo:When you're in front of the pearly gates, what do you think God's going to tell you? you know

35:01Joseph Shalaby:that he doesn't see anything but his son that's what I would hope he'd say because if he saw me I would be straight to hell that's what I think so I hope he sees through me sees his son lets me in and he because I don't think there's anything that I can do to win myself to heaven you know but I have fully I grew up in the church since I was four years old and I had done mission trips since 19. I was actually a pretty full-time missionary from 19 to 28, but I got born again, though, when I was 28. So I know what it feels like to be religious, and then I know what it is like to have the actual thing, not just a counterfeit.

35:42Joseph Shalaby:Does that make sense? And in that moment when I was 28, I realized no matter how kind I looked or how people looked at me or how much I stood in church and all the people that I fed and people that I helped, I still saw it. I really saw that wretched man that I am. You know what I mean? I've always heard that in the church prior, but I didn't get it until I really experienced how wretched of a man that I am. And I got saved that day. So I hope when I stand before the pearly gates, he doesn't see me at all. He just sees his son. That's what I hope.

36:15Shane Seo:I hope that for you too. God bless you. How about you? you know i realize how wretched i am all the time right we all do because that's just part of being saved and you know for me when i'm in front of the pearly gates all i want god is like i know you tried and i know you're a screw-up and i know you keep trying and i know you get back up but one thing he knows that i'm a fighter and i keep getting that back up and i'm gonna keep fighting i'm gonna keep just doing his work i exist for one person one reason just here as a vessel to do God's work. He knows that. I love that. As long as he knows that, because that's my whole purpose in my life.

36:53Joseph Shalaby:Absolutely. No, I love that.

36:54Shane Seo:Do God's work now. Do I screw up? Every day.

36:57Joseph Shalaby:Oh, yeah. Every day. We all fall short.

37:00Shane Seo:But he knows I'm here to do his work. Yes, yes. And he's given me a lot of power in society to push a message. And I do that. And I do that with no shame. And I do that even though a lot of people hate on me for it. And it is what it is. But I'm pushing the message. No. Well, I love that.

37:24Joseph Shalaby:Bless you on that. If people want to connect with you, how do they find you? All right. So I'm not on as many as Joe here. But I'm on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and X at Shane So. So at S-H-A-N-E-S-E-O. I'd love to connect with you guys.

37:41Shane Seo:Let's go. So Mr. Shane, so he is dominating. Make sure to connect with him. He will make you a real estate millionaire. Let's go. Let's do it.