Boroughs & Burbs, the National Real Estate Conversation

Boroughs & Burbs 191 || Real Estate Profits & Podcasting

• Season 5 • Episode 191

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In this episode of Boroughs & Burbs, we welcome Canadian real estate investor and podcast host Dave Dubeau, the voice behind the Property Profits Podcast. Dave has spent years interviewing top investors, educators, and strategists, and now he shares his own insights into how everyday people can build wealth through real estate. We’ll explore how he raises capital, identifies opportunities, and helps others grow their portfolios. Whether you're a beginner or scaling up, Dave’s straightforward, no-fluff approach to real estate investing will leave youinformed and inspired. Tune in to learn how content, capital, and connections can fuel your real estate journey.

SPEAKER_00:

The Burroughs are New York City. The Burbs are everywhere else. Real estate is the ultimate game of risk and reward. It's the biggest investment most people ever make. Fortunes are made over a lifetime and lost in a day. And we're not playing with monopoly money. How do you stay ahead? Who's buying? Who's selling? And why? What do they know? We want the truth. You need an edge. Burroughs& Burbs is your secret weapon, giving you the insider knowledge and strategies you need to succeed in the high Because

SPEAKER_04:

Everyone can make money in real estate. This is going to be a very special show. Episode 191, Season 5 of Burrows and Burbs. We're talking property profits with Dave Dubot. Hello, Dave. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_01:

John, Roberto, it just seems like a minute ago I had you guys on my show. Because you did. Where in the world is Dave Dubot? Dave DeBow is in beautiful British Columbia, Canada. So just up the road to the left of you guys a little ways.

SPEAKER_04:

Excellent.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

And what are we talking about today? Property Profits. What's that mean?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, Property Profits is the name of my podcast that I just had the pleasure of having you gentlemen on. I've been running that since 2018, which is a long time in podcast years. And I think we just hit episode... 1200 or something like that. So yeah, it's been a going concern for a while.

SPEAKER_04:

Gee, Roberto and I were puffing out our chests over 191 episodes. Gee, Liz, you're like at Joe Rogan levels

SPEAKER_01:

here. Well, not quite. I don't have a million views on my YouTube channel like certain gentlemen that I know. So... Yeah, so yeah, it's great to be on the show. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, my whole, I've been in the real estate game as an investor since 2003. And lately, what I focus on a lot is helping real estate syndicators and fund managers raise capital by investing. leveraging a podcast, their own podcast to connect with high income, high net worth perspective investors for their deals.

SPEAKER_04:

So I'm showing the screen. I want to interview you on Property Profits Real Estate Podcast. And so people would find you. I just typed in your name, found you immediately on LinkedIn. And this is what I find. So I would contact you there and say, interview me. I need to tell my story to a greater audience.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. That would be a good way to do it for sure. Dave, how did you

SPEAKER_02:

conceive starting this?

SPEAKER_01:

The whole what? The podcast thing?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. This particular podcast. It's just a form of outreach of what you're already doing.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, you know what I did, Roberto, is like a lot of people in the real estate space. I saw a whole bunch of guys starting their podcasts. and growing big audiences. And I thought, hey, that's pretty smart. It's a great way to create content. John, we were talking a little bit about repurposing content for different things. So I was getting kind of sick and tired of having to come up with stuff all the time. So originally I thought, hey, a podcast would be a great way to create content consistently without me having to do all the work because I'll interview smart guys like you guys and have you kind of create the content for me. And I can use that as a way of staying in touch with my list. That was part of the reason. The other part of the reason was to grow an audience of people people that ideally some of them would eventually figure out that I might be a smart guy and they might want to do some work with me and kind of help this as a business helper. So that's how I started it originally back in 2018. And I did my best to interview some of the gurus out there, the Kiyosakis of the world, the Grant Cardones of the world, the higher level real estate investors. And you know what? It worked, kind of. I grew a bit of an audience, but there's a ton of competition in this podcasting space, as you gentlemen know. I think the average podcast lasts about seven episodes before it fizzles out and dies. So you guys are at almost 200 episodes. Hats off to you. You've got an amazing show. And I was just kind of struggling with monetizing my podcast. And I'd love to say that I came up with this idea, but I didn't. I actually heard about it from somebody way smarter than me on a podcast, a young guy named Jamie Atkinson. And I was listening to him and he was talking, you know what? I've just flipped the whole thing on its head. So instead of focusing on... interviewing the bigwigs and hoping that they promote their episode and hoping we grow the podcast that way and hopefully have a big audience. I just flipped the switch and I said, why don't I just interview the exact kind of people that I'd either like to have as my customers or I'd like to do some sort of a cross promotion with. And that's where the light bulb went off for me, gentlemen. That was about three and a half, maybe four years ago now. And I just switched my podcast from being a sporadic once a week podcast twice a month kind of thing here and there to being very, very focused. And these days I do between 10 and 12 interviews a week with smart folks, just like you guys keep the interviews very short and sweet. And it's become a major, major lead generator for my business for doing it that way. And about a year and a half ago, I came up with the bright idea. I said, Hey, This is working really well for me. Chances are this would work well for syndicators and fund managers who would like to connect with high income, high net worth individuals. Let's just create a podcast that appeals to their avatar as a guest and as the audience members. And then let's create that flow of conversations of interviews for them so they can make those connections and turn those into capital down the road. Does that make sense, gentlemen?

SPEAKER_04:

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

So what have we learned after interviewing literally hundreds, 1,200 investors? What common traits do they have in common? I mean, what are we looking for when I'm listening to this guy and I'm like, yep, he's going to make it. Yep, this is going to work.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I'm usually interviewing them at this point. I'm usually interviewing them after we already know they've made it and it works, right? So they've got a track record. They're there. Commonalities amongst people. You know what? It's that... Pig-headed determination and perseverance, I guess, is the key to everything. As you gentlemen know, you've been in business for yourselves for a long time. There's ups, there's downs, there's all arounds, there's market cycles, there's markets doing crazy things, interest rates doing crazy things, governments doing crazy things, a lot of stuff that's beyond our control. But the most successful people I've seen recently have been able to pivot. So I'll give you an example, gentlemen. We've had a lot of apartment building syndicators on the show, right? And investing in multifamily, that was big business for a long time. And then a couple of years ago, things shifted drastically. And a lot of these deals, the value, they bought them at the peak, and then the value of these properties dropped 20 to 30%. Actually, it kind of came to probably where it should be. It was overinflated for a while there. Interest rates doubled, tripled. So people's expenses have gone crazy. Insurance rates have gone crazy. So a lot of not very good syndicators have gone out of business, quite frankly. And some of the ones that are left have a much longer range of experience. They've been through a few different market cycles. They didn't quite get as caught up in the hype as everybody else did. And some of them are also, switching strategies. They're starting to look at different things. I've interviewed a few folks that have gone from multifamily into ground-up development work. That's something that people are looking at. Other people are going from multifamily into self-storage or mobile home parks or completely different asset classes where they can take their skill sets and apply it to a different asset class and hopefully not be in the same situation they are with multi-family.

SPEAKER_04:

So I hear you saying flexibility is paramount, not running out of cash, ability to pivot, being able to be where the puck is going, if you will. I haven't heard you talk about the difference between the full-time crowd and the part-time crowd. This industry attracts a lot of people, what I would call the passive investors, who are seduced by stories of getting rich quick and being able to do this on the side. Can you talk about it? Does that ever work? I mean, can I do this without quitting my day job? Listen to your podcast, understand the strategy, and can I do this on the side? Or is that just a recipe for disaster?

SPEAKER_01:

It depends on what you mean by passive investor, John. So there are, you know, if you're talking about a part-time investor who's trying to do syndications part-time and buy apartment buildings on the side, that's going to be challenging, right? To get any real traction. Single family home stuff and smaller multifamily, perhaps if you're going to kind of, you know, self-manage things. Yeah, you can do that. It's not much fun, but it's definitely doable. But if you're wanting to do this seriously and scale things up, then no, sooner or later, you're going to have to get into this full time. Now, if you're talking about passive investors in the terms of what are called limited partners, so people that join a syndicator and invest in a deal, invest in a syndication, or perhaps invest in a real estate fund, then are they going to create full-time income from that? Probably not, you know, unless they're very, very, very well healed. But can they... get better than average returns on their money if they're investing in the right deal? Can they get some really good tax benefits sometimes from investing in real estate? Most definitely. I don't know if that answers your question or not, John.

SPEAKER_02:

I would think that the passive investor has to be someone who is joining into some sort of fund or something like that because otherwise you just get it handed to you because there's too much local and small knowledge and knowledge of being boots on the ground that you just have to possess in order to not get in trouble. We

SPEAKER_04:

had a young man on the show. I'm going to say young because he was in his, I'm going to say early 20s. And he was in Florida and he had invested in rental condominiums on the waterfront. And one, two, three, after five, he said, you know what, I'm going to make this my full-time job and I'm going to leverage the five into 30. And it was an Airbnb strategy. And so I think of this kind of case study in my mind where the 20-year-old who's under capital capitalized, learns the business on a small scale, buying one, two properties and says, you know what, I can scale this to infinity. And I have to say, you know what, that's a great entrepreneurial spirit. And he realized that he needed to be a specialist and dedicate full time to actually making this work.

SPEAKER_01:

Was he doing the Airbnb arbitrage route? Is that what he was talking about?

SPEAKER_04:

Well, he said that his niche was really in being able to make a better presentation than the next guy. And he said, your ability to rise to the top of the Airbnb and make a better presentation, a better thumbnail, better imagery is going to get more turns. And that was his particular niche. And I had to admire that as a strategy. But to your point, the market can turn. I mean, nothing's more cyclical than real estate. And when the market turns, a lot of these 20-something-year-olds undercapitalized, for whom the strategy has worked in a low interest rate environment, no longer works. You've got to have deep pockets to weather the storm. Is that a recurring theme on your podcast?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I hear that from time to time. And that's a whole interesting field in and of itself. The challenge I have with short-term rentals is the rules can get changed on you like the flip of the switch. That's what's so scary. Years ago, again, I've been running the podcast for a long time, so I've interviewed a ton of Airbnb type guys. And in certain areas, they've been completely shut down. Like up here in Canada, in the province that I live in, they basically, it's not outlawed, but it might as well be. It's very, very difficult to have short-term rentals, especially in the most popular places to have short-term rentals. The same in

SPEAKER_03:

Manhattan.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, exactly, right? Boom, shut off overnight. So what happens to the cashflow? You cannot make those properties cashflow as regular long-term rentals. So then people have to get creative and try and do midterm furnished rentals or rent by the room or these kinds of things, or turn things into group homes and these kinds of things, which is a whole different business model. But again, I've seen a lot of that over the last few years as people having to pivot due to those kinds of regulatory changes as well. So that's why I was curious.

SPEAKER_02:

We've interviewed, We had interviewed Dave Seymour. Do you know him? He was on a television show and we had him on for multifamily investing. And he actually kind of scared me because whereas I thought, you know, I sure I could, I should dabble into or go into that. I was, I literally thought to myself, if I'm going to do this, I have to do it with someone like him because otherwise I would get myself in trouble.

SPEAKER_01:

You're a specialist in your market, right? But not in that. asset class so yeah that was a smart definitely one of

SPEAKER_04:

my favorite shows recently was the trailer parks episode loved that this guy had figured out a way to go find trailer parks bought up trailer parks from people who had developed them 20 30 50 years ago and somebody you know is ready to retire sell a trailer park and you started to think wow the the The cost of the trailers, not that much. They paid for themselves pretty quickly. They penciled out, and we said, you know, why did you choose the ones in Michigan? Why these states? Why not in Florida where you live? And he said, yeah, he couldn't make the numbers penciled out in Florida, I guess because of the weather. Most of his were in the Midwest, and... I was like, wow, what a great niche strategy. So you had the apartments, you had the Airbnb strategy, you had the trailer parks. I think we're going to do self-storage next. I mean, that's going to be exciting.

SPEAKER_01:

There's a fun one within self-storage, which is pro-storage. That's kind of a different... niche within storage. What's that? And then there's luxury self-storage, which is very cool. ProStorage is where they build out these storage facilities for contractors, basically. So a lot of contractors are getting squeezed out of their flex warehouse space by these same-day Amazon guys renting everything up. They still need a place to operate their business out of. So some smart Investors are building these pro storage places where these guys can, you know, store all their trucks and their equipment and all that kind of stuff in a very secure manner and run their business from their cell phone, from their kitchen table, whatever. But they've got a place to keep all of their stuff. Yeah, no, there's that. That is that is a fascinating thing about my show is. I should keep track of it, how many different niches or how many different asset classes. I have it, but there are so many different ways people are investing in real estate. And the

SPEAKER_02:

luxury storage would be like for cars and things like that?

SPEAKER_01:

Cars, toys, RVs, motorcycles, that kind of stuff. Yeah, boats, that sort of thing. So there's big, big money in that or as an add-on to existing storage facilities. Yeah. That's

SPEAKER_04:

fun. I want to talk a little bit about what you've learned about podcasting and how to promote. I mean, Roberto and I have been at this for a while, and we do this to get smarter and to be better agents, better capable of serving our clients. But it seems to me that we've now got an expert, Roberto, on the show who could tell us a thing or two about best practices when it comes to podcasting. You got any advice for John and Roberto and our clients who all want to self-promote? Yeah,

SPEAKER_01:

well, you guys are doing a really good job. So no, I don't have too much, too much advice for you. It's working for you. I work with people that are just getting haven't even maybe even thought about a podcast, but they're looking for a an additional lead generation podcast. venue, right? So a podcast can be an amazing lead generator. So I'll just kind of outline what we do for a new client. We figure out number one, who is their target market? Who is their avatar? Who's their absolute best client, customer, investor, whatever that would be. Okay, then let's build a show around that target. versus, you know, Dave's real estate show, right? Now, my avatar happens to be real estate guy, so that fits all right. But let's say, for example, I've got a client, Dr. Tudor Franku. And Tudor is a medical doctor by profession. He's also a real estate syndicator. But guess who his best investors are? other medical doctors, right? Medical professionals. So he wanted to connect with more of them on a regular basis. So we built him a show called Stellar Success Leveling Up for Medical Pros. Now, does that title say anything about real estate investing, multifamily, syndications, anything? No, nothing about that. So what we do is we built the show. And then the second thing we do is we go out and we find Tudor.com. Five, six, seven of these medical professionals who he can interview every single week. Now he's a busy guy. So we time block things two hours, twice a week. He has these interviews back to back to back. Very, very quick, very efficient. And these people are happy to be on his show because the show is all about professional success, personal success, financial success. And these doctors, guess what? they don't get a chance to strut their stuff very often. Like they're not getting kudos at home. The wife's not giving them big pats on the back. They definitely are getting kudos at work. So when they get the opportunity to be on this podcast, number one, most of them have never been invited to be on a podcast before. So it's a really big deal for them. Number two, they get to kind of strut their stuff. They have a conversation with an intelligent person who speaks the same lingo so they can kind of dig into things. And then from Tudor's point of view, this is an amazing way to make those connections, right? It's all about making the other person look good, feel good, sound good. So that leads to that connection, that personal connection, and that rapport, that reciprocity. So towards the end of the conversation, he starts poking around a little bit about what that doctor's thinking about when it comes to financial success, what that looks like for him now, or what they're thinking about down the road when they don't want to have to be working so hard for their money. You know, just kind of finding out a little bit about that. It doesn't press too much. But if it looks like they're at all interested in investing, then once the show stops, the interview stops, he's still on Zoom with the doctor. He says, Dr. Smith, sounds like you're starting to dabble in stocks and bonds or whatever. What do you feel about the kind of returns that you're getting, the stability, the security of that investment? Is that something you're 100% happy with? Or is there maybe a little room for improvement? Don't care who you interview. I could interview Warren Buffett. He'd say there's always room for improvement, right? Okay, well, that's cool. Well, we're doing something interesting with other busy doctors like yourself in the apartment building space. And the great thing is we're getting them very solid, steady Eddie, double digit returns on their money. It's backed by a real tangible asset. And at the same time, quite often we can get them some big tax savings on their tax bill. Is that something you might be interested in taking a look at? Boom. get them booked into a follow-up discovery call, get them in the system, eventually turn them into investors that way. So that's kind of big picture how the whole process works.

SPEAKER_04:

So success hinges on the quality of the conversation, the connection between those two. You didn't mention at all about needing a million views or large audience size. It's not really the quantity of views, it's the quality.

SPEAKER_01:

It's the quality of the guest, exactly. It's the quality of the relationship you have with the guest. It's just like yourself, John. Like, I mean, all of the stuff that you guys do, which is amazing in social media, the goal is to get face-to-face with a property seller. You still have to kind of build that relationship, create that rapport to get the listing to sell the house, right? I mean, it's... It's basically the same idea. It's all about creating that rapport, that relationship. We're just doing it one-on-one via a podcast.

SPEAKER_02:

So Dave, but after he goes through those seven people, then who's next?

SPEAKER_01:

Next week, it's another seven. Next week, it's another. So we're getting our clients typically five to six interviews booked a week on average, about 20 a month with their ideal avatar, right? So for most of these guys, they're busy. They're doing syndications. They're doing other stuff.

SPEAKER_02:

So they're not necessarily local to him either. They're just,

SPEAKER_01:

it doesn't have to be in his case. It doesn't have to be. Now we have another client. We have, well, we've got quite a few clients, but we have a client, Tim. He's in Phoenix. I think you guys just did a show about the Phoenix market, right? So Tim is a syndicator in Phoenix. He's kind of a meet and greet kind of guy. Like he likes to meet his investors face to face. So we focused his whole show on, on the Phoenix area. It's called the Phoenix Prosperity Podcast. And we're looking for successful business owners, entrepreneurs, C-suite executives in Phoenix, in and around Phoenix and Scottsdale to be his guests. So he's had about 150 episodes so far. So we've done a very, very good job with getting him those guests on a very regular basis. Wow.

SPEAKER_04:

Is this transferable to realtors? It occurs to me that if I'm a realtor in a market and I am trying to get in front of qualified leads, you can help me there too? Or is this specific to investors?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, no, this could be anyone with what I call a high ticket offer, which you guys definitely qualify for. It works better in like a B2B setting, right? At least that's been my experience. Now, could it work in residential? Yeah, it could. Probably would work better in commercial just because a little bit more easier to identify exactly who you're looking for kind of thing. But there might be some kind of way of doing that, especially if you're, well, John, you're in Connecticut. So it really depends on where do most of your clientele come from who are buying properties locally? in Connecticut, right?

SPEAKER_04:

This is really interesting, not just us, but I'm thinking, Roberto, of people like Scott, who's a luxury home builder. And so the question is, is it really that I can put content out there and somebody will stumble across it? They'll get a sense of me and my business and they'll call me up? Or is it really the connection I'm making with the interviewed? And it sounds like that the real value is in the connection, the one-on-one connection with the guests. We've found that, Roberto and I, over the last five years, years, have connected with the top real estate agent in every major market in the United States. You say Aspen. Yep. We did a show. San Diego. Yep. Los Angeles. Yep. I mean, all over the world. We did the London show, the Paris show. Oh, perfect. Marbella, Spain. So

SPEAKER_01:

you're already doing this in a certain way. In your case, you're kind of doing it to connect with potential, what would I call it, cross-promotional partners. Like if you've got a client that wants a place in Aspen, you can send them to your guy in Aspen and vice versa. He's got a client in Aspen who's looking for something in Manhattan or in Connecticut. He knows exactly who to send that person to. That's a beautiful way to use a

SPEAKER_02:

podcast. We have a lot of brokers who watch our shows. So they're local brokers in some ways. We have had enough of them. But with regards to people in other markets, we can refer business to one

SPEAKER_01:

another. Yeah, exactly. That's smart. I just had a little... mini mastermind with some of our clients last week. We were talking about all the different ways you can leverage a podcast. So my number one priority with my clients and myself, my own podcast is direct communication. to guest connection. That's just like you were talking about there, John. It's creating that value with your guests. That's my number one priority. But there are lots of different ways to leverage your show. So like you guys are talking about, it's a great way to connect with potential partners, cross-proportional partners, in your cases, other brokers in other areas. It's a great way to create content. You're doing that already, John, right? So you're repurposing content from the podcast on social media, slicing, dicing, creating reels, that kind of good stuff. Solo episodes. which I believe you gentlemen do as well. So it's just the two of you talking about something specific to the market. That's great because that really elevates your status in the eyes of your viewers. And then something interesting that I've started doing just because I was looking for more tax write-offs is I take my show on the road. So when I go traveling, my wife and I like to travel two or three times a year. So we just did a trip recently in Europe. Well, guess what? I pulled out the old phone, videotaped some solo episodes, and voila, and had some of my clients as the sponsors of those episodes. Boom, business write-off. All my travel, and I like to get out in the bush and paddle and kayak around, so now I do an occasional thing like that from that and writing off all of those otherwise personal expenses. has business expenses. I'm going

SPEAKER_04:

to be in South Carolina, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina next week, and I'm going to have to do a podcast from Myrtle Beach. You've done one from there before. Yeah, I've done this before. I may have to write off the margaritas.

SPEAKER_01:

Bow tie and a Speedo. That's what we want to see there,

SPEAKER_04:

John. Oh, I don't think you do. I don't think you want that. I will say... that the bow tie has been very effective.

SPEAKER_03:

The

SPEAKER_04:

bow tie in combination with the podcast means that if I go to New York and I go to an event with other realtors or new development people, they'll say, oh, I remember you. You're the guy with the bow tie. And many times, even if they haven't seen the podcast, they see the promotions for the podcast and they know what I'm all about. And it's been very effective branding.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I'm the guy. You're the guy on the show with the guy with the bow tie. Is that what happens? I've had that twice. But I wanted to ask you, so when you're helping these people, let's just say someone's struggling with some level of authenticity about who they are, or how do you help them with that?

SPEAKER_01:

authenticity about who they are? Yeah, like, you know,

SPEAKER_02:

people want to be very regimented about, I need to be a certain way. And I think that what's most resonates with people, whether it's an audience or a guest, is you just being yourself and communicating with them. And people really have trouble breaking out of that. The moment that camera is on, there's someone else.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, some of our guests are terrified. They're like, can you send us the questions? You know, how is this supposed to work? I mean, they're terrified by the whole idea of a podcast. I mean, we're not NBC, you know.

SPEAKER_02:

So one of the things that I also do, we're sitting there before we record, I always come on and say, let the healing begin. Just because everybody's like, oh, okay, okay, I get it. And it just kind of drops the tension of the moment, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, that's good. I had no clue what you're talking about when you said that, Roberto. No, it makes sense. I didn't need it for you. Now it's just

SPEAKER_02:

a tradition. One time I didn't do it, Robin was like, what's the matter with you?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, but that's a good point. So yeah, we have to teach our clients how to be natural hosts. And the way I try to do this, and it's not always successful, is just to remind them, you know what? The show... The way we do the show, the show really isn't about you. The show really is about your guests. My like on my podcast, I'm not trying to strut my stuff with my guests and position myself above them or anything like that. My job on my show is to make my guests feel comfortable. look good, sound good, and feel good. That is my job. So if I get out of my head and I'm not worried about how I look, and I'm just really kind of trying to focus, focus it all on the guests, it makes life so much easier. So I keep trying to instill that in our clients. Now, the good news is they get a lot of at bats very quickly. So after about episode 15, they're getting pretty comfortable. So really, because we're getting them four or five of these interviews a week, within a month, they're going pretty good. They're not as nervous anymore.

SPEAKER_04:

I got to lean in and ask you a dirty secret of podcasting, but anybody who's in the podcasting business will start to get emails and WhatsApp solicitations from people who say, I can help you promote your podcast. I can get you a million views. I can get you more followers, what you need, boss, what you need. A vast majority of these offers are coming from over And I know it's happening on Instagram. I know it's happening on YouTube. I know it's happening on Facebook. It's happening across the board. And I've been warned by my by professionals. Do not buy followers. Do not buy exposure. Do not succumb to the temptation. Can we talk a little bit about this? Because it is very tempting to say I put a lot of time into my podcast. I'm talking to quality guests and I only got got 500 views. I only got 50 views and I want to do something about it and I want to do something quickly. What's your answer to that?

SPEAKER_01:

For my clients, my answer is that's irrelevant, right? Our whole focus is on getting you talking with your ideal customer, your ideal client, your ideal investor. That is the whole goal. Audience growth happens organically, because guess what? What we do put a lot of effort into is organic growth via getting those guests to promote their episode to their network, which is a lot easier with these kind of guests who are not professional podcast guests, because professional podcast guests aren't going to do a damn thing, right? But you get Dr. Smith that's never been on a podcast before, gets his episode, gets released, He's going to want to show that sucker off. So he's going to put that up on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn and all that stuff. And if we make that job easy for him by providing him with all of the content he needs, just plug and play, copy and placed, it's super, super easy. So I had a great example of this. One of our clients, Matt, just a few months ago was mentioning somebody, one of his audience members reached out to him and said, hey, do you mind looking at a real estate deal with me? He said, sure. Okay. So he looked over it. Wasn't a very good deal. Said, I recommend you don't do that deal. And the guy said, okay, cool. How about you? Do you have anything on the go? So he ended up getting a$70,000 investor from one of his, you know, audience members, which was all grown, you know, organically. Because here's the thing. When Dr. Smith promotes his episode, to his connections, a lot of those connections are other doctors, right? And the end of every episode says, hey, if you've got a good story and you'd like to be a guest, book in to be a guest at whatever the website is. So we just, we don't focus on, we definitely don't focus on fake audience growth. And we just let the audience growth happen organically because at the end of the day, if we're able to get our clients you know, conversations with a couple of hundred of their ideal prospects every year, that's what the whole goal is. This is a direct lead generator. Anything in addition to that is gravy, it's bonus.

SPEAKER_04:

Are you asking them for their Rolodex of ideal targets or are you able to help develop the target list?

SPEAKER_01:

Both. So the way we start people off, John, is I highly recommend, for example, let's say it's a syndicator. Well, let's pull up your list of current and past investors. Let's find 2025 of these folks and let's invite them to be the initial guests on your show. And then we accomplish a whole bunch with that. So out of the 25, you might get 15 that actually book in and do the interviews. So number one, we get our new host practice at Friendly at Bats with somebody they already know. Number two, we create content to launch their show with a bang. So instead of just kind of trickling out, let's launch the show with 15 episodes day one So boom, it's kind of a big deal. And I encourage five-star ratings and reviews and all that kind of stuff from their guests, from their guest connections, grow things that way. But then there's some really cool stuff that can happen in the background. Number one, when you're interviewing a happy customer client investor, that's the perfect time to get referrals, right? Right, it really is. So what we have our clients do is, hey, pull up that investment, the last investment they did with you, go over the numbers, Give them a quick little snapshot. This is after the interview. Give them a little snapshot and then ask some open-ended questions about that while you're doing a second recording. Great way to get video testimonials. Great way to get sound bites. Great way to get feedback, right? That you can use in your marketing materials. Then you get referrals. You get warm introductions to their connections. And then it's also a great way to get the re-ups or reinvestments to get them to do business again with you all from that one interview. So yeah, we hit it hard with our new clients to get them to interview their existing book of business first.

SPEAKER_04:

Wow. So you've done 1,200 podcasts. You help others create podcasts from scratch and get going and ahead of steam, a couple hundred episodes. And you're appearing on our podcast, episode 191, season five. Do you recommend that Roberto and I go Speaking on other people's podcasts, that's new to us. A lot of podcasters just stay in their lane. Has that been an effective strategy for you to grow your audience and connect with others?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, most definitely. Yeah, it's a great way. for doing cross promotion. So we do a lot of podcast swaps, interview swaps. You guys are in a perfect position to do that. So anybody, and there's a gazillion real estate focused podcasts. Like if you're looking to connect with some- We should connect.

SPEAKER_04:

We've got the smart one and the good looking one.

SPEAKER_01:

There you go. Pointing the wrong direction on my camera. Anyhow, I don't know which way it's going there.

SPEAKER_04:

We've got it all, right, Roberto?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah, we do. But yeah, for sure, you guys can get on pretty much any real estate show that you'd want to be on or any other podcasters that you'd want to be on. Just be strategic about it. What is the goal? Who do you want to connect with? What do you want to do? If I were in your position, I might focus on... local podcasts. So New York focused podcasts. So Roberto, for example, if you're looking to get more listings, more clients in Manhattan, then focusing on, you know, upper end type podcasts that are local to New York, which I'm sure there's a gazillion of them would be a smart move. Same for you, John, right? We've

SPEAKER_02:

done that with Vince. We have a former colleague who does a podcast. We've been on his and he's been on ours.

SPEAKER_04:

jonathan miller also big uh big following and um he's a regular with us and now i think he's also now putting out his own podcast yeah

SPEAKER_01:

yeah it's a great way to grow things

SPEAKER_04:

it's a lot of work this podcasting business i mean people think oh you just turn on the camera and you just go like Well, let's contrast this with Instagram. With Instagram, a lot of people are now in the habit of recording content where they're just talking to themselves in front of a project, in your case, or a property, a luxury property. Let me show off this luxury property. Whereas the podcast dynamic is generally we do some preparation. We write the questions. We try and script the show. There's some editing. There's some sound quality issues. and we have to get a guest and then we have to promote it. So very different from what the typical cycle is for daily Instagram content generation.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, you guys have another wrinkle in there because it's a co-hosted show, right? So... You have to coordinate schedules. You both have to be available for that. That's a whole other level of complexity with that.

SPEAKER_04:

And we're trying national. I mean, it's Aspen, LA, the China market, back to New York. And so we're trying to balance it to make it both interesting storytelling. Frankly, we're telling stories here. And we want to make sure that the New Yorker who's interested in other markets, which is our primary, as you say, avatar, the New Yorker who's interested in other markets finds us to be the best resource for that. And I think we're really the only resource in the New York market for that. I think we just hit Roberto. We just hit somebody's list as like the number four real estate podcast in New York, right there with the Giants and the Jets. And there we were. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_01:

That's right. Nice.

UNKNOWN:

Nice.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, this has been phenomenal. I've learned a lot about the podcasting, investing. Where do you see, I guess, final questions would be? Where do you see this going? What's the crystal ball on? I think a lot of people are saying that podcasting and short form content is taking over even in Hollywood and that we've only just scratched the surface on short form ground up content. What do you think?

SPEAKER_01:

I certainly hope so. I've learned not to rely on my crystal ball because every time I do, I'm pretty much proven wrong. My crystal ball sucks. But I do see, you know, there is tons of interest in podcasting. It's a very high churn business. Like I said, you guys making it to 190 episodes, especially a co-hosted show and all the work that you put into it. It's huge. That is amazing. Most guys and gals fizzle out after seven episodes. That's the statistic, right? So, yeah. My prediction is people who want to get into podcasting are going to kind of clue in that they probably should try and get some help to do it properly if they want to do it consistently. Gone are the days where it's super easy just to do everything yourselves. Like you guys have a team that helps you out with everything. And I think to have longevity and success in it, you got to have a team.

SPEAKER_04:

You know, it occurs to me, Roberto, maybe we ought to reach out to our associates in all of these major markets and maybe connect with Dave and get each of them making podcasts in those key markets, LA, Miami, Boca. And if with Dave's help, we can put together a repeatable, efficient process, maybe it's really the Burroughs and Burbs network of podcasts, not the Bros and Burb podcast by itself. So you're inspiring new ideas, Dave. This is very exciting stuff.

SPEAKER_01:

I know that some of the other podcasters, you guys are doing a fantastic job. Some of

SPEAKER_04:

these guests want to do what we're doing and we're in the business of making a podcast, but you're in the business of launching podcasts. So this could be very fun. All right, I'm going to hit the share button. I'm going to remind everybody that you are Dave Dubow, and he wants to interview you on Property Profits Real Estate Podcast and help you launch one, a podcast of your own. This is Burrows and Burbs. You're going to find us at burrowsandburbs.com. And the latest episodes were Outdoor Spaces and Los Angeles and the Chinese Market and Apartment Complex Investing. Dave, you might want to tune into Apartment Complex Investing, Burbs and Burbs, number 185. This one, by the way, did, I think, 122,000 views on YouTube. That was pretty amazing. I want to thank our sponsor. Dave, we didn't talk about the importance of sponsors. Sponsors are key. Grace Farm We love these guys. And we don't love them for their money. We just love them. And you'll find them at gracefarms.org. And we're going to get you some of their teas and coffees. Let me see if I can find... Where is it? Our work. Oh, there it is. Our work. Tea and coffee. So you can go to gracefarms at sharegracefarms.com. And shop for their teas and shop for their coffees. And all the profits go to doing good work. Roberto, you're going to find him at brownharrisstevens, bhsusa.com. And you're going to find me at element.com, where I am a real estate broker covering Connecticut. Again, thank you, Dave Dubot. This has been a phenomenal episode 191 of Rosenberg's. Dave, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01:

Gentlemen, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for having me on the show.

SPEAKER_04:

Take care.

People on this episode

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John Engel

Host
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Roberto Cabrera

Host