1.4 Million Followers in Months! + 3 Steps to Financial Freedom w/Braiden Shaw 🚀 | Ep. 422

0:00Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast for marketers. We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode. We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out. We are back for Do This, Not That podcast, and we got a smart dude here. Who's here? We got Brayden Shaw. Now, Brayden, you may know him from Instagram because he has 1.4 million followers. What? He is a financial genius. He won't tell you that, but I will. Let me tell you who he is and then why I've asked him to come on. So Brayden owns one of the fastest and most successful mortgage brokerages in the country, which is Fulcrum Home Loans.

0:40But he also is the CEO of this thing called Amplify LLC, which basically is like, listen, a lot of people need help, not just buying stuff, but learning how to do financial freedom, all this stuff. And they have the best content, resources, webinars, courses, stuff. This Amplify LLC is amazing. He's crushing it. I've asked him here for two reasons. Number one, we're going to learn quick, easy steps about financial freedom. But number two, we're going to learn about how to grow on social because this guy went from 2 ,000 followers to 500 ,000 followers in under nine months. How do you do that? We're going to find out.

1:12Braden is here. Thanks for joining the show, man. Yeah, for sure. Thanks for having me. This is going to be fun. This is going to be fun. All right. Let's just jump into it right now because if you go on Braden's Instagram, we'll put it all in the show notes. you will see he puts out all these quick tips about how to not screw up your finances, financial freedom, how to save money, do stuff with money. So, so Brayden, before we get into your quick tips, how did you amass this like knowledge? Yeah, you just have to know 10 percent more than the person that you're talking to. And you're considered the expert.

1:47When I jumped into like financial, there was there was some thought process there. and I'm sure eventually we'll get to the marketing side of it. Like I enjoy finance. I studied finance, but I know infinitely more today than I did two years ago when I started. And so really it was learn on the job, kind of continue to educate, jump into as much information as you possibly can. But it's not like you have to start with that and most people don't. You just have to know a little bit more and to be considered the expert. And to be willing to share it. I think that's the secret sauce of your success is that you just share whatever you learn.

2:18Is that a fair statement? Yeah, I don't believe in gatekeeping. When I jumped in, I was so frustrated with the financial literacy content out there. You either have Dave Ramsey, never allowed to get a credit card, put 20 % down on a 15-year mortgage. It's just not realistic for the everyday person today. Or go drop ship and get a Lambo and a private jet and live in Dubai. And there was no middle ground for the everyday person. And so, yeah, I don't believe in gatekeeping. I was along the financial journey as well. I got extremely lucky. amassed a wealth early on and just try to share everything I possibly can to help people do it as well.

2:52All right. Well, we're going to do that right now. So I'm going to put you on the spot. I want to know, because I need all the help I get. Three steps to financial freedom. I mean, hit me with it. I want to know what I got to do. Oh, geez. Conceptualize it all down to three steps. I mean, step number one is a big one, but you have to get out of debt and balance a budget. And for a lot of people, they're like, check, done, move on to step two. But there's a, I mean, the stat is 50 % of people are living paycheck to paycheck. And so half of America listening to this, I mean, that's the first thing you have to do.

3:24You can't be in consumer debt, bad debt. I consider anything bad debt under nine or over 9%. Anything good debt is below 9%. But you have to get out of debt and balance a budget. Step two is you've got to create liquidity through the traditional markets. I have a 401k. I have an IRA. I have a high yield savings account. I have a brokerage account. I have these accounts in the stock market to kind of build that foundational, that foundation of liquidity or foundation of investments that everyone needs to have. And it has to be those accounts. You can't, the average 401k in America returns a four to 6%.

4:01That's barely keeping up with inflation. Like 401k is almost overused one. I'm not saying it's terrible, but it's overused, but put 15 % of your income in there and build a solid foundation. Step three though is where real wealth is created. And this is where 99 % of Americans just don't understand how to do it. And that's, you've got to get into private market investments. The everyday American can do it. We think that's for the millionaires, multimillionaires, billionaires, family offices, those families, they get to do venture capital, private equity, large scale real estate, alternative investments.

4:35But the fact is, everyone listening to this, you can get into those investments. You just need to know how and to find the network to do it. We actually met in a venture capital firm. I think your son was there shadowing, interning something. And that's how we met just a little bit ago. But through that network, you can get into these home run investments. And that's where you go earn 20, 30, 40, 50 % a year. And that's what creates generational wealth. So many people are stuck in step one or never get to step three. And it's those three steps that turn into generational wealth. And it's mind-blowing.

5:11Pull out a compound interest calculator, go to Google, pull out a compound interest calculator, and just play with that return. Instead of getting a 4 % return or 6 % return in 401k, what if you can go get a 12, 15, 18 %? You will turn into tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars just by doing the path that has been proven by all the ultra elite. You just have to get around the right people and network into the right people to be able to get to step three. All right. So before we figure out how to get to step three, and we're going to get to the marketing side of this, I'm just curious about something.

5:43At a very basic level, the people that are listening out, they're like, should I lease a car? I have a mortgage. Should I pay it off? Interest rates are historically not super high right now. Are there any basics that you're like, listen, this is, you got to do this to get out of debt. That's just like, is a no brainer. Yeah. Um, getting out of debt's not fun. Like I just kind of made fun of Dave Ramsey, but honestly, me and him agree with how to get out of debt. Once you're out of debt, we have different opinions on how to grow wealth. Um, but getting out of debt, you just have to do it. Like live below your means, pay it off, get out of debt.

6:19It's going to be a terrible two years, but do everything that you can to make it happen. Where I disagree is I don't believe that you should pay off your home as fast as you can. And I can mathematically, statistically prove that to anyone. Even if you get the same return as your interest rate, if you get a 6 % return in the stock market and your interest rate is a 6 % interest rate and you had a$400 ,000 loan and $400 ,000 in the stock market, at the end of 30 years, you will have paid$800 ,000 in your mortgage. You would have made$1.7 million in the stock market with the same return because one compounds up, you're compounding up your return, you're compounding down your debt.

7:02And so it does not make sense to pay off every debt as fast as you can, but you cannot have credit card debt. You cannot have personal loans. Auto loans, it depends. If you've got a 12 % interest rate, get out of it. If you've got a 4%, you can stay in it. But you just have to get out of bad debt so that you can start investing and start getting that compound return. I think that's so valuable because, you know, I'm a big believer that when you hear the word best practices, like run, just 99 % of the time, these best practices that people tell you are outdated and ridiculous. and to your point people say pay off your mortgage as fast as humanly possible and you just say it and then everyone's crushing themselves trying to do that and there's math and there's leaders out there like yourselves are saying that might not be the best plan for you you know that doesn't mean you should buy a home that's beyond your means but don't believe every single thing these people are saying 100 so all right let's flip the script here for a second um i want to talk about the marketing side of this thing uh how did you go from okay i'm gonna help people with their mortgages and financial freedom be like i'm going to be a known personality on instagram and what were the steps you had to take to actually do that because your videos for everyone out there hasn't been to braden shaw's instagram what he does he i might as well call him braden listicle shaw that might as well be his name because the guy will be like the three steps of financial freedom the five things to do to pay off your college debt the three this is for this the five that so what did you do to grow this and how did this all happen yeah so like the ideology behind it um i realized that influence was powerful and that i was an entrepreneur and i was a business owner and i wanted to continue to do that i had to get an audience um people hate selling the ads are the enemy online yet every single business owner gets up there and tries to sell or push their business or their call to action is if you know anyone looking to buy, sell or refinance into my way, like you are what people hate online.

9:03And so I realized really quickly, I could never be a business. I could never sell. I just wanted influence. I want to trust. And so the way I approached it is I promised myself I'd post every single day for a year and I would never sell one time. No one would even know what I did for a living. I just wanted to help as many people as I possibly could. And the way I decided what I was going to post is I went to my closest friends and family, my eight closest people to me. And I said, if you were to come to me for a piece of advice outside of mortgages and real estate, because I'm not allowed to do that because I can't sell, what would you come to me for advice for?

9:34And I just wrote down all their answers and they were all over the board. Okay. Then I went to my eight favorite clients that I've ever had in the mortgage space. I went to their profile, I hit their followers and I wrote down every blue check mark that any of them followed and what that content was about. So I had a list on one side of my favorite clients, a list on the other of what the people close to me see as an expert and it was just a Venn diagram. Here are the four things that overlapped. One was golf. Kind of wish I would have done that. That would have been a lot funner. But finance, self-help were the two that I was like, okay, I know enough about finance that will attract the people online that I like working with because that's the content they actually want to consume based on who they're following.

10:16And so I'm just going to begin creating financial content, give every piece of knowledge I possibly can for a year. And at the end of the year, I'll figure out what to do with the following. Honestly, I thought I'd get 4 ,000, 5 ,000 followers. It'd be a massive success. And I'd kind of run with it. Ended up being a million followers in less than a year and turned into something massive. And it's been an amazing blessing since. But I think the way people approach social media is completely wrong. Don't sell. Don't go in your industry. Just give. Educate or entertain. Those are the only two reasons anyone ever wants to consume information is they want to educate or they want entertained.

10:51Figure out which one you're good at. I suck at entertaining. So I was like, I got to educate. And I leaned into it and I just gave every piece of information I possibly could. So first of all, you should have another page just about social media, because I think, again, you can be educating people. That is probably the most tactical, real explanation about growing on social that I think I've ever heard. And I'm curious about something though. So when you started out, you're like, maybe I'll get four or 5 ,000 people. And you started posting and these short videos every day, do these three things, whatever.

11:22Was it like one video took off and you blew up overnight? Or was it just this steady stream of just building? Yeah, so I think what a blessing in disguise that I didn't know I had is I was a business owner first. Like we had a hundred plus people working for us, we were growing, we were successful. And so I thought like a business owner, it's all about AB iterations, It's about leaning into what works. Try a hundred things, two of them work, lean into them, magnify them. And so I treated social media that way. And so my first 90 days, like I get views, but nothing took off the first 30 days. And it was just my friends and family making fun of me saying I look like an idiot.

12:05But my first one was I posted a video and it was the 10 cars most likely to get to 100 ,000 miles. and I think I got like 5 ,000 views on it and I was like oh that's sick okay so the next day I had another video already filmed ready to go but I scratched it went into the studio that morning it was like the 10 cars least likely get to 100 ,000 miles and I just started iterating off that and start building little bits of momentum and then it started to roll and like it was a slow like if it was a linear line over the course of a year to a million followers but to do that I mean there's days you're adding five, seven, 8 ,000 followers a day to try to get a million people in 300 days.

12:48And so it went parabolic, but it wasn't like there was one video or one month. It was just a slow and steady AB iteration leaning into what I call like the viral formula to try to get as far as I possibly could. So I think that's so important for people to hear that it is totally doable. You weren't some sort of mega brand. I mean, your business is very successful, but it wasn't like, you know, you're out there. Oh, I'm Mark Cuban. Now I'm going to start giving a new channel. I would you follow me. You weren't Braden Shaw yet. I mean, you were to some people, but you weren't really yet. And this is very, very doable.

13:22So let me flip the script one more time back to what you said originally, because now I'm curious. So you said, let's get back to financial freedom. You said the third, the third topic, which was the thing that most people aren't doing, 99 % of people aren't doing is tapping into the private equity markets, venture, all this stuff. And to tell you the truth, I think the average listener out there is like, I can't get involved with private equity. I don't know how to invest in venture capital. How does, other than jumping on an Amplify, we'll talk about all that. How do you get involved in these opportunities?

13:55Is there like, how do you do it? Yeah. And that's the hard part is it's historically speaking, pre-internet, there was no way for an everyday person to do it. And that's how come the circles, these billionaire circles, the rich got richer. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy is just because you had to know the right people. The internet came to be, and that's still the case, but those circles are widening as a result of it. And so it's still to the point where you have to know the right people. It's all, it's a networking game, but the networking game has completely changed because the internet where now I just have to self-educate myself.

14:30I can teach everyone what enough vocab and information in a couple hours so that they know what to look for and what circles they want to run in to start getting, we call it deal flow or deals across your desk inside these different areas. And a lot of people are like, I don't have the time. I don't know how to educate. And they're going to, I'm going to call them out a little bit. There's a little bit of a victim mentality there that it's not for me when like I help people every single day do exactly this. All they had was a 401k a year ago. And now they're in two venture capital deals, two large scale real estate deals, and they've dropped their effective tax rate from 30 % to 10%.

15:06It is so doable, but it is a networking ploy. It's not something that you can just log on to Vanguard and hit purchase. It takes some work, but it's a 10X payoff. It's the greatest investment in time you will ever do is networking and educating yourself in it. When you talk about investment in time, I think that when you go, the other night where I was at dinner and my wife's like let's all look at our screen time how long we were on our phones whatever and it's like hours of nonsense you know and if you literally i know it's people like oh great everyone talks about but if you take one of those hours out and you do a research and networking and you're intentional about this your life will change just by not looking at brain rot online for an hour so let's talk about how people can get involved with your world where do they consume this?

15:53How do they tap into what you're doing? Hit them with everything. Yeah. So my world, Amplify, basically what Amplify is, is it's a parent company that owns 22 different financial services companies. So I own everything from budgeting apps and consulting services all the way up to private equity, venture capital and large scale real estate. So I own all these companies. But Amplify was exactly that. I realized as I owned all these companies that people just didn't even know what they didn't know. And so I created, I hate the guru community, like that world. But I realized there's a reason it works is because education is shifting away from college to online.

16:30And I had to provide a form of education. And so my first thing I did as I created what it was called foundations. And it's exactly that financial foundations. It's 25 bucks, dirt cheap. And it's a community, there's 1000s of people in there. And I that is, there is probably 100 hours of education, there's really six hours that you need to go through. And that's exactly what I'm telling you, I will teach you everything. We started getting out of debt. By the end of it, you conceptually understand private markets, self-directed IRAs and cryptocurrency. Like it is a masterclass in education. And so 25 bucks, get in there, learn it, do what you need to do.

17:05The whole reason I lose money on that community. Like I don't make, I lose money, but my goal is to get people educated enough where they can come invest alongside me, become millionaires with me and graduate into my inner circle or my, we call it my growth circle. There's hundreds of people in there and we just invest alongside each other. I, I, me and you will become business partners. I've invested in 127 different companies that own over a thousand doors of real estate. And all of those I've just co-invested with people that have graduated from this foundations community. And so that's, that's my whole concept.

17:35Is that growyournetworth.com? Is that where they go? Growyournetworth.com is, is kind of the URL where they can start to find that stuff. All right. Everybody out there, check it out. I'm serious. Growyournetworth.com. Um, it's listen, 25 bucks. Come on. That's like three Starbucks or I don't even know what the hell it is, but it's nothing. All right. And find Braden Shaw. We're going to put in the show notes. It's B-R-A-I-D-E-N Shaw. He's on Instagram. He's got a zillion followers. Braden, man, thanks so much for being here. Really appreciate it. Yo, thanks for having me. You did it. You made it to the end.

18:08But wait, the party is not over. Listen, I want to keep hanging out. Subscribe to this podcast. And if it wasn't the worst podcast you've ever listened to, give it a five-star review. Why not? But you know what? I want to do even more with you. go to gurumediahub.com and we can partner there. You can find out about all of our free events, all of our stuff. And if you're epically bored, go to jschwedelson.com and we can stay connected. You can find my newsletter and everything else I got going on. Thanks for being here and hope you subscribe.