Today I reveal what I have done with a few hours and my smartphone.  Building an Instagram following can be a long drawn out process, but is actually easy with a few simple strategies.

 

Resources:

My Veteran Agent on IG

My Veteran Agent Website

Miguel Feliciano IG Account

Miguel Feliciano Website

eZy Watermark - Photo

WordSwag

Unsplash

 

Show Notes:

So couple things before I get into the topic of what you can do with just a few hours and a smartphone tomorrow night in North Tampa is going to be the hard money presentation I'm having a guest speaker come out from his Capital they are out in Orlando dirt back from coming in as a favor to me to come out and speak about hard money to teach how hard money Works The Good the Bad the Ugly how it works how to leverage it and how to work with his capital and get your deals funded so if you are in the Tampa Bay Area come out to the IHOP on bearss and 275 tomorrow night at 7 p.m. we're going to have that presentation and then also some networking as well and yes that'll be that'll be pretty awesome tomorrow alright so let's talk about what you can do with just a few hours and a smartphone yesterday I was talking about how I was going to build out the Instagram account for my veteran agent and use what I had learned over this past weekend at the 10x growth con about sales marketing and execution so I am executing on an idea of using Instagram as a platform as a stage 2 generate more business at work generate business as a realtor EXO I finally was able to get the accounts kind of separated so now I have Miguel Feliciano and that is connected to my Facebook page Miguel or official Miguel Feliciano and it said that once separated and it's connected properly and then the veteran investor on Instagram is separated and that is connected to the better investor LLC Facebook page and now I have my veteran agent Instagram account with with that connected to my veteran agent Facebook page so a couple things one is I started doing this I started actually setting up the account yesterday but I didn't post anything until today and it's been a few hours and we'll see here pulled it up I've got my at my logo on there right now which at first there was a photo of me and I'll probably switch switch that out from time to time from the logo to a picture of me just want to show for the few things that I want to share as far as some of the things that I had picked up over over the time of learning about Instagram and how to use it to Market a company and use it to basically build out a audience the first thing you want to do is when you put it in your name you have your username and then you have the name that the name that shows up when someone goes to the the page normally I would have Miguel Feliciano right because it's it's me well what I did was I put in Miguel and then I put it up I now which is that vertical line and then I put in my veteran agent the reason I do this and I'm going to be doing this with the other account for the better investor is when someone starts to search for veteran or agent I want them to I want my page to come up in the in the results and I'm so over time as I build the audience for the account and someone starts to search for veteran or agent my page should show up at some point right and I couldn't put my full name and then my veteran agent mainly because it's too long right you're you are limited to a certain number of characters which is fine the next thing is you want to put in some of the key words associated with what it is you do kind of bug a background of what you do and for who you are and what you do I put that in there and then I I went ahead and started posting I posted my logo right that was the first thing and then I started building a few photos with a specific theme right so the tone is more like vibrant colors mainly because I'm dealing with the path Florida weather I'm dealing with I'm working in the Florida environment and you want to portray a vibrant atmosphere you want people to be excited about what it is that you're showing them and so I'm going to go over a couple of the tools or apps that I've been using to set this up and you'll definitely want to check out these apps they may not be exactly what you want but for me these are the ones that work best for me so so so far I have 9 photos on my on my account you can go to Instagram and check out my veteran agent and you'll see 9 photos there right now the first one is my Milo de which is basically the exact same thing as the veteran investor I just swapped out the name and the the mission so my veteran agent mission is real estate sold and then I have a another photo of their kind of patriotic just me and the flag and then the rest of the photos are of places in Florida that kind of provide that feel of you no pay I want to live there and then a few houses and a couple of kitchens the at the main thing is just a little text on the image saying hey what are the kitchens looking for a forever home or looking to upgrade at your home these are these are things that I put in so I kind of get that that conversation going right and then I grow in the hashtags in the comments I don't put it in the description for the for the post I'll put in something else and then in the comments the first set of comics that that I put in or the hashtags and what's great about that is and if you are now learning about you Instagram and using it and everything put your hashtags in the comments that way you're not the actual image and the description put them in the comments and then later on you can go back and have a different set of hashtags that you can throw into the post and what that does is it kind of bumps the the post back up so people can see it when they are searching for specific hashtag your page will will pop up or your image will pop up and they can go to it and so you can you continue to raise awareness for your page by adding in new hashtags or changing the hashtag so that you you continue to spread your your account or your page Sprint awareness for that so that's your as people follow you based on for me what I'm doing is based on the kind of accounts that are following me I'll look at their accounts and if they are legit if I feel like they are legit I will go ahead and follow them back and if they if they are serving me well then I will I'll maintain that follow you want to be aware of like who you're following back because a lot of these are digital marketers have that have a couple of thousand people that all there looking to do is gain your business they are what they're going to do is follow you and then once you follow them back they'll send you a message and then they will drop the follow for you so that the the numbers of the ratio of followers to following remains pretty balanced they want the number following the number of accounts that they are following to be very low in the number of followers to be very high so be aware of who you are falling EXO in the few hours that I've had this up and running I am now at 4082 followers so right off the bat not very few if not not too bad on the amount of followers because I didn't I started adding photos probably about app for 4:00 somewhere around there so tomorrow I'll start adding some additional photos I also added a passing videos on IG TV in and what not again for people that are getting into Instagram using it for your business and trying to build an audience or that you can generate more business these are some of the tools that are some of the tools and tips that I've picked up that you should be implementing into your strategy your Instagram strategy as far as the tool that I've been using there's this one app that I used quite often and it is called swag word swag and what it does is it allows you to either take a photo or choose from your photo library or also search for free photos and from there you can change how you want the photos to be laid out so you can have a square crop you can have 9 by 16 or 16 by 9 you can set it up for IG stories Facebook posts Facebook covers so it doesn't allow you to do quite a bit with it which is very very nice and then once you have the right crop that you want for the image then you can add text on top of that you can change the colors for the text and what not and then you can also change how you want to eat at the actual photo to look so what I did was I just went in and selected the vibrant filter and that is how I'm going to theme my page which means I have to go back to to my other account and start start updating the theme for those accounts so that the things are probably going to be a little bit different for one account has a better investor is probably going to pick up the same theme that I have for my veteran agent so word swag is a really really good really great app for setting up your Instagram images and also for Facebook and then I have this one app called watermark okay it is it's called easy Watermark photo and it's the letters e e z and y easy and then Watermark photo this app allows you to actually take a PNG which I have of my my logo for the better investor and now I also have it for my veteran agent and if I create a image my logo on top of this is what is going to allow me to do that which is great because with a PNG with what I have which is a transparent PNG the only things that would show are the actual text and then the not the main image of my logo so everything else it looks as though kind of drawn the logo onto the the main image it's it's a great way of having a watermark for safe for your photos so it's it's nice to you to have that kind of Brandon and then and then the other things that I am using which I would normally go on to the website and it is unsplash unsplash is a basically a repository for you to find free photos you can leave the attribution for the photographer or not so they do allow you to do that to me it's a fantastic website and then they also have an app that you can download and that is what I've been using normally I use the website when I'm doing things for the web I like my websites but not before this is specifically for Instagram and Facebook if I'm going to be posting photo that is not mine then I'm going to use unsplash and again these these photos are free and then I use a hashtag generator right now what I'm using is this called just called hacks and what I do is I just write in our just type in realtor hit done generate hashtags and it literally will generate about 30 hashtags that I can copy and paste right into my post so that's what it's a great way of your page setup and that way you can building being that today is Tuesday I just started adding photos today about 4 or 5 somewhere around there I'm only at 82 followers 8383 followers so I'm looking at probably hitting somewhere around maybe 200 hopefully 200 by tomorrow and then see if I can get up to about four hundred maybe 500 by this weekend so the idea for me is that I want to eventually reach 10000 followers and the way you do that is with consistent post and you want to put out two to three posts per day if you are setting up a new account and your you wanted to generate a lot of traffic to your page and build up that body and you're going to want to post two to three times a day and then anytime someone comments on any of your photos you want to reply as soon as quickly as possible and I'll follow you again just check to see who you are following and make sure that it's not a a fake account I have seen a couple of fake accounts follow me and then when I go to check them out the follow back button changes to a follow these are legit 83 followers legit those are some things for you to take away with me and take away from from this conversation about using Instagram as a stage to build up your audience and again I went ahead and had created a i g TV channel which is easy to do you just click on the ID TV icon and then just create the channel and then once you do that you can upload as many videos as you want and they don't have to be new one minute videos you can actually upload news as long as the videos you want so that's that and then what I did was in the ID TV video I've had a link to my my website my veteran agent.com where people can download the free ebook that I have available for fist bumps and that ebook is 5 killer fizbo marketing tips so if you are looking to enhance your marketing skills and and and possibly sell a house that you that you own if you know this is a primary residence or if it's safe investment and you are looking to sell it and without a realtor download that ebook if you are looking to sell it with a realtor so I can give me a call and go check out my website my veteran agent. Com and you can also go to Miguel Feliciano. Com where I have information about myself and my background and then linked to the better investor my veteran agent and then also links to this podcast from different platforms so Apple Google and Stitcher that I will see you tomorrow again join me in North Tampa tomorrow at the IHOP on bearss and 275 at 7 p.m. the talk is going to is going to be about hard money so I hope to see you there and until tomorrow

Today I talk about using what I learned this past weekend to generate business as a realtor using the Instagram stage.  I reveal what you need to add the "Swipe Up" link option to your IG stories.

 

Resources:

The Veteran Investor on Instagram

The Veteran Investor on Facebook

My Veteran Agent on Instagram

My Veteran Agent on Instagram

Miguel Feliciano on Instagram

Miguel Feliciano Website

 

Show Notes:

So I am back home in Tampa this weekend this past weekend was awesome it was an awesome experience to go down to Miami and attend Grant Cardone 10x growth conference it was the third one he put out and it was it was actually different than what I was expecting so a couple really cool things that said that he did just too I guess you'll start the the conference one he actually parachuted into the Marlins Park so he was a live video feed of him up in the plane and then he jumped out and then they switch to his helmet cam which is providing us a live feed as he was coming in and we got to see it in your eyes actually have a video of it on my phone and I'll be uploading a lot of this content to my Instagram and Facebook pages some of incredible stuff and then that was the first day I thought was Friday Friday was jam-packed with a bunch of speakers it was all about sales I did not miss a couple of speakers on Saturday and fart Friday and Saturday so Friday was all about sales and Saturday was all about marketing again I missed a couple of speakers Saturday I got I missed John Maxwell and I also missed guarantee white he was a guest speaker that came on after everyone was pretty much done I thought that was it right so I grabbed my stuff and I start heading out and lo and behold I get back to you my brother in-laws house and as I'm about to record the episode for Saturday I see on my phone that actually been there and was speaking he was a speaker at the pump I was I was okay with it I mean I have seen Garrett speak through the wake up Warrior movement going through his training and everything it would have been nice to have seen him live and you're speaking on stage that would have been pretty awesome and then you take off Saturday I'm kind of jumping around here to pick off Saturday Grant Cardone had Snoop Dogg actually come in and he had them in the Rolls-Royce yeah which was pretty nice it was on stage he had it on stage and both Grant and Snoop Dogg were in the Rolls-Royce and they both came out and Staples doing his thing and then Sunday Sunday was all about execution I spoke about Pete Vargas and had never heard of this guy before and he actually gave a very awesome talk about stage and then Sunday was kicked off with Lil Jon a little John doing his face off turn down for what I was pretty awesome so I'm glad to be back recording you're going through the proper microphone and what I am going to be talked about today is kind of based on this past weekend and that is trying to put sales marketing and all together and trying to take advantage of one of the stages that's available to me and when I talk about stages I mean a platform where you can speak from there's offline platforms like actual stage that you stand on and you're speaking in front of life it's a lot of people and then there's the online platforms so you've got all the social media platforms you can record a video and post it for you can go lie and you want to take advantage of that and so today at what I started to do was look at my Instagram accounts I have several of them and go between two accounts at my main account that I use quite often is the veteran investor is that one I use the most and you're looking at everything that I've posted on there it doesn't really go well with that specific account that specific account should be more geared towards putting more about the real estate space and trying to educate people with in real estate and everything like that especially from a investors point of view and then I have my personal account Miguel Feliciano and that one I hadn't I don't use very often because it's as soon as I came up with the brand company names of Veteran investor I thought that was awesome I need to be I need to become that person and until I started looking at that and I was like you know what a lot of the stuff that I'm posting on the better investor should actually be posted on the personal account which is actually converted into a business account I believe and so until I have the at both of those accounts and Miguel. And then I today I was thinking of okay how can I use everything that I've learned or at least start to use everything that I've learned over the weekend and start implementing it right away and so I created a new Instagram account that is more in line with the retail side of real estate so now I have my veteran agent has a Instagram account and I was starting to set that up so there's no followers no one's following there's no photos yet elected a photo from this past weekend until I have to complete the the whole profile and everything and then eventually linking up to my Facebook page my veteran agent on Facebook so that way I can start building that that account as well so here's here's where I wanted to take the conversation I'm going to use the veteran investor I'm going to use Miguel Feliciano and I'm also going to use my veteran agent right and I'm going to use them as part of the stages that are available to me so that I can share my story Instagram stories kind of hear my story how I started in real estate and what it is what it is that I'm trying to do in real estate how how I'm trying to help people and whatnot provide a call to action and then wrap it up with my heartfelt story or something like that so what what time looking to do is drive traffic from Instagram stories two specific Pages or funnels where I can post something as a story and I would be able to have people swipe up on the story so that they can get access to whatever it is that I put out there well I just learned that you cannot do that until you have a business account and you have $10,000 now what you could do is you set up a ID TV account for I guess it would be just a i g TV channel you set that up you put in upload one video and from there you're able to add the swipe up and add a link to your ID TV well for me yeah that's well and good but I actually don't want to drive traffic to that I want to drive traffic to my website and specifically to your specific pages on my site and possibly later on to other websites as well I do have I do have my URL in the account but overtime I I want to drive traffic to different sources and in doing so you're having that ability to swipe up swipe up so that they can have access to a specific website or whatever that's going to help me in sales so not only am I using a the stage that is available to me online stage I'm using it to Market myself promote myself and my services and probably promote and market a product like a free ebook free program something that I develop I can put that out there and then from that it would eventually generate sales so I am trying to execute on this building the stage for each account and using them in a way that allows me to Market a service that I have and be able to generate sales based on last month which was all about I'm actually going to continue with that and this month will again also be all about the retail side of real estate in trying to build more business listings get buyers get to a point where I can start having some consistent closing so that's why I want to have this set up with Instagram and Link it to my Facebook page and again there I would do the same do the same thing with Facebook so I would have the Instagram stories then the actual page with Instagram page for my veteran agent so those two right there where I can have a person educational post on the page and then some kind of marketing that will drive traffic to a a product or some kind of information product that I will offer which I already feel I have a eBook available on my veteran agents.com am I better than agent.com fsbo for fsdo - ebook so fizbo - ebook and you'll be able to put in your email address and get the link to that that PDF ebook and I already have plans of creating another ebook and you'll provide that for free as well so that I can build the list emails and and names and everything so that I can continue to Market City people and say hey if you're looking for a realtor within near this area and you're looking to do in x y and z yes here's my number call or text me send me a message let me know what's a good time for me to contact you and let's have a conversation and so I need to not only set up the accounts by social media accounts so that people can interact with me through those channels through those stages but I also want to come build out the the story for the realtor site for the retail side of real estate as my veteran agent and that way as I talk to someone as I speak to a couple or someone that's looking to either sell their house or buy a house I have the story set up for them and and this is all based on I'll keep vargas's talk about using the stage and building your story so that when you talk to these people from that stage whether it's a one-on-one one-on-one or you are doing it online as a kind of stage you have that that talk that you can you can deliver that he calls it the signature talk and so that way you can deliver that talk and people understand what it is that you do why you do it and how they can work with you so again the the one thing I wanted to bring up because I just found out about it just a little while ago is if you are looking to add the swipe up link option have for your Instagram accounts for the Instagram story I should say you will need a business account that means taking you or your account on Instagram right now and converting it to a business account which means you're going to need a Facebook page I believe that talk Works had Facebook pages set up so I just linked them I have not tried skipping that option but from what I can see right now that's that's the process you need the business business account and then you're going to need 10,000 followers I don't know why that's need limitation that I looked it up how do I add links to my Instagram story and at the time of that video being published with her is she here So that video was published back in October 2018 and back then but you're going to meet me or they require you to have the 10,000 followers that that means I need to start now building up the amount of followers that I have on those accounts if I want to start driving traffic to those new information products that I will have available for them and I do have a book that is all about Instagram I started to read it and a lot of it is pretty basic information about how to set up your Instagram page what kind of names you want to have like how to develop your other name for the page and all these different things but I didn't at the time that I was reading it I didn't really focus on building the audience to be massive but now it looks like that's something that I will have to start doing if I want to take advantage of that stage so with that hope you learn something new about Instagram as one of the stages that's available to you and I will see you tomorrow actually before I sign off this Wednesday which is February 6th I will be at the IHOP on bearss and 275 in Tampa because that is the night that we will have a guest speaker from his Capital coming in from Orlando coming in to speak about hard money The Good the Bad the Ugly so that you can learn about how hard money works and how you can work with his capital I called every time I read his Capital actually read his capital but yes so check it out this Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the IHOP on 275 and bearss Avenue in Tampa we're going to be having a guest speaker come in talking about hard money The Good the Bad and the Ugly so you're not going to want to miss that going to be awesome. Specific lending for that specific funding resource especially if you are getting into real estate and you want to start looking at doing rehabs near whether it's wholesale or full-blown rehabs or even new builds so check it out and I'll see you tomorrow

Today I review day 3 of the 10X Growth Con... it was about execution in your business and I dive into what Pete Vargas said about speaking on stages.

Today I review day 2 of the 10X Growth Con.  It was all about marketing.

Today I review day 1 of the 10X Growth Con... today was sales.  Tomorrow will be marketing.

I'm in South Florida and have gone mobile... so, just the conversation on expanding your growth.

Today I talk about the one question to ask when networking... it's simple, yet powerful.

 

Show Notes:

So I went to this networking event it's called Network after work and it is focused focused I guess it's it's for every industry right there are people that are in accounting that show up I met some people that do immigration law let's see a lot of network wiring or network setup for businesses so audio wipe data and then I see you one guy that actually does some some really cool stuff which is he comes in he'll do clean outs for businesses or Residential Properties and he can come in with his team and set up security cameras and everything but he does it in a pretty slick way so I'm not going to go too deep into that because the focus of this episode is the one thing you should be asking or one thing you should be doing when you are network and that is just one question which is who is your ideal client or customer and that is a very powerful question while you are network should be actually the most important question you asked other than you know hey what's your name what are you do you want to know who their ideal client is so that you can refer a business to them actually when I left the networking event I took my phone put it on selfie mode and recorded a video saying Hey this is Miguel I just want to say it was great meeting you tonight and I have one question which is what is or who is your ideal client and if I didn't ask that while I was networking at least now it's a it's a question that I have if I did ask it while I was networking now it's it's repeated again so I'm more focused on helping them build their business helping to refer business Cheeto and the reason I do this is because if you if you think of and I'd actually just spoke about this I believe it was yesterday's episode The Go Giver when you are in business there are times where you may not be able to take on a specific client and at that point what you do is you refer them to your competitor or in this case for networking you refer whoever you can to that person as long as you know who their ideal client is or who their ideal customer is it shows that one you care about what it is they do to that you're most likely going to be referring business to them and 3 without asking for anything back like in return it's already kind of suggested that they do the same for you it suggested but it's not said anywhere during the conversation I just want to know who your ideal client is so that I can refer business to you now this is something that Russell Brunson talks about and.com secrets and also with expert secrets and he talks about who the ideal client is and there are networking groups that are exclusive networking groups like BNI be and I believe stands for business networking International stuff like that and then there's a few others that I've heard about that are very exclusive basically for each chapter or subgroup they only allow one bit from a specific industry and then once that industry has been filled. Sit there you can't come in so I'm a realtor coming into this group at no other realtor will be allowed to join that group they're going to have to find another chapter in order to join and within that especially with like being I'd actually teach that which is new who is your ideal customer or who is your ideal client so that I can refer business to you and then here is who my ideal client is and in that setting yeah you are there to refer business to each other and to help each other grow said you know what the what the focus is what the mission is for that meeting and then you start to perfect your pitch when you are networking with other people you start to present your business I remember I had joined BNI years years and years and years ago and that was something that they did which is you have kind of a round-table you go around everyone stands up they have literally like 10 15 seconds up like that to stand up say who they are and introduce themselves and then introduce their come and you have so many seconds to pitch your cuss word Picture company enjoy your day would work on holding that pitch crafting it making it better and at the time I had joined as a web design company now you being that I'm more into real estate I have a team. Which I joined a few years ago and I still ask that question here and there but now it's being more of a bigger more important question because it's it does show that you care about that referring business to those people and knowing were hoping that they will also refer business to you so I recorded that video just a little while ago and I'm going to send it out to this stack of business cards that I have I made it generic enough that I can send it to everyone you can do the same thing you can make yours generic so that you can send it off to those people or you can customize it for each person the problem you run into when you do that is you may be walking away with a stack of 1 E30 even 50 cards and you don't want to have to make a custom video message for 50 people so a little bit more generic video message is ideals then all you have to do is hear you record it once and then for each person you just text them that video which is what I will be doing in a bit so that is the in my opinion and and my perspective the one question you should be asking you must be asking when you are networking and when you do things are going to improve for you your network starts to expand and you start getting referral business so go ahead and do that when you go to your next networking event gather up all the business cards and just right after you back when you leave right before you get in your car just take a quick 10 second video doesn't even have to be 10 seconds actually mine is about 14 15 seconds so not you're not very long and 15 seconds goes a very long way until tomorrow which is the day that I will be driving down to Miami I will be out of figure out how I'm going to put out this podcast as I will be focused on the growth, and maybe what I will do is that when I get back to where I'll be staying down there when I get back at night I will record my experience for everyone to listen to afterwards so until tomorrow we'll see you

Today I talk about expanding your network with casual conversations and also dive a little bit into Russ Perry's book, The Sober Entrepreneur.

 

Resources:

The Sober Entrepreneur by Russ Perry

The Go-Giver

Network After Work - Franklin Manor

 

Show Notes:

Today I am talking about growing your network but first I want to read something from schober entrepreneur by Russ Perry it was something that stuck out to me today as as I was finishing up what chapter is this chapter 5 is what I'm finishing up which is beat the clock and he says in one of the other sections here if you stop evolving the world moves on without you and that's almost worse than bottoming out and the contact for Aldis is a chapter called beat the block and what she what he talks about is is the block is essentially a it's your your Optical that you're going to go through when you're about to hit rock bottom right and he actually talks about three distinct types of breaking through the block the blockages in some kind of actually on the Block as we will call it is this willful self-delusion that you can have your cake and eat it too so it's something in your life that's that's currently happening you are either wear it or unaware of it and it's actually damaging not only your health and your wealth and in relationships but it's damaging like everything else he has three types of breakthroughs that can happen one is hitting rock bottom that means you've basically gotten to that point where you've lost everything you finally wake up to divorce papers your your company has basically gone out of business completely and you've lost your house and everything you know so you've hit rock bottom and the good thing about hitting rock bottom is not sit there is no more you like there's nothing else that can take you down even further you hit rock bottom now it's just an ear for you too it's time for you to recognize that you've done that and start turning things around right so he's got hitting rock-bottom hearing your inner voice which I spoken about in an episode before and something that stuck out with that specific section is if your body is telling you that you are on a collision course don't push it away or try to rationalize your bad decisions listen you need to pay attention to that voice not spoken about that before where you sometimes it's almost like you have the devil and Jesus on on each shoulder. They're both telling you what to do and you have to really listen to the one voice chat is your has your best intentions in mind even has your your life focused on what you should be doing and and I've encountered that sometimes I've actually encountered it for some reason last night I encountered that voice where everyone was going to sleep and I was going to stay awake and watch some TV and basically wait until I got tired to go to sleep knowing that I would need as much sleep as possible to get up early so that I can do everything that I needed you so after I took the dogs out actually meditated on everything that has happened for the day that you're everything happen for the day and quieting my mind once I was completely done with my meditation my mind was completely quiet everything was off the TV was off everything is off as soon as I got the bed I about your past out how I was done I went right to sleep so I heard the voice saying hey instead of staying up and watching TV or whatever getting on Netflix and watching the new season of Punisher do a meditation focus on what you should be doing which is getting enough sleep so you can get up and and do what you have to and then the next section 4 for this beating the block is shocking your system and its analogy is that of a pool after a while you leave the way the pool is near you leave the water the way it is and don't treat it or anyting your overtime that gets really nasty and you have to eventually shock the pool you have to put in all those chemicals to clear it up and everything and so he talks about that and that's the that's where cheap he said that one phrase that I like which is if you stop evolving the world moves on without you and then he goes on to ask a few questions are you still growing are you still challenging yourself doing hard things reaching for the next level in your life are you still having real engage conversation with your spouse and connecting with them physically are you being proactive in your business and taking an active interest in your kids or are you posting posting as in you're just a pool of water not doing anything and then over time everything just get stagnant in nasty and then at some point you realize that you have to have a shot happened in your life so that you can renew your life and and start moving in the right direction it's a he he goes over all that with chapter 5 I might talk about this book a little bit more I'm reading it because it's it's interesting to read from a different perspective as far as being sober as an entrepreneur he just talked about how the majority of entrepreneurs will set date with some kind of other chemical weather it's drug or alcohol or they are addicted to other things and so he talks about all that and which is really really informational and and I really like the way he wrote this time I actually read some more about it or talk about it some more but the main topic I really wanted to talk about is growing your network the day I went out to to the barber shop got my haircut or as I tell my son I got my hair's cut I got more than one haircut and I was speaking with my barber which I don't normally do but this guy soon as I had them cut my hair is perfect way I like it and you know we started talking this guy is a licensed agent as well as a barber and yeah I started talking to him about real estate and everything he's got a couple of closings already in the books and he's moving out to get his 45-hour course done so that that's part of the entire few years the first few years of being a realtor so talking with him I found that you know she is actually looking for investment properties because he has buyer have specific criteria and he's trying to find property for them lo and behold I know quite a bit about finding your discounted properties and in all that and so I was talking I was talking to him about that and now he wants to learn a little bit more for me about all that and he wants to connect with other buyers who wants to start expanding that side of his business in real estate and so that allowed me the opportunity to not only teach him some things about real estate investing in wholesaling things like that but it allowed me to expand my network so now I have him but now I I may also have access to even more people more cash buyers people that are looking for investment properties I can go through him and and say hey I've got this property characters all the numbers and everything see if one of your buyers isn't looking too interested in that and then we will we will split the assignment fee or do something there so I'm growing my network and that's based on just a regular conversation I just asked him hey so how are things going with your license now how are things going with being a realtor and he went into it and then it was just something that he had said that I asked a question like tell me about that it was very very natural very natural conversation he was very animated he I could tell he was very happy to really share his experience and and talk about near where he's at with his real estate business and it gave me some motivation to continue to do the same thing be able to talk with more people expand my network and and then help serve others as near as much as I can so that as I served them they in turn serve me and that's probably a reference to the trying to remember that book The go-giver go-giver so that's actually a link that book in the description as well as the Silverado and the follow up with the networking and expanding my network I will be at Franklin Manor tomorrow at I believe it's at 6 from 6 to 9 is the event and I will link to that as well in the description so if you are interested in networking with people go ahead and click on the link in the description sign up I believe it's probably 20-25 bucks now it was 15 or earlier in the month and because it's going to be the same day you can probably show up and pay right at the door but I will be there I will be wearing my I guess now popular or male famous stars jacket and that way I stand out in the crowd people will remember who I am when I handle my business card because my business card is branded near red white and blue very patriotic and then I'm wearing my blue and white stars jacket which really go where with some red pants but I won't be wearing red pants tomorrow so I will be doing that tomorrow night at Franklin Manor in Tampa and and then this weekend I will be going down Miami to network with even more people and attend the Grant Cardone 10x growth con so I will be expanding my network tomorrow I'll be expanding my network tomorrow and then again even more this weekend and that's what you should be doing expanding your network you never know what may come of it even if it's speaking with someone that is outside of your industry for me I'm in software development but I'm also in real estate I've spoken with your people that offer solar panels or Windows I mean yes it's kind of related to real estate but then there's also marketing and marketing marketing website or doing SEO things like that I've spoken with a hundred people that do with a variety of things and through them I've actually learned something about them and their business and also they knew they were always very polite about everything but they did say if you have any properties on I'm actually looking to buy a rental property or young looking to property coming up in 6 months or whatever so I have had those kind of conversations and so it's those are there very beneficial and if if it doesn't turn out then at least they have my card they can pass it along to someone else that may be looking to sell their house or looking to buy a house as I will be focused on the real estate business vs. software development and are tomorrow and also this weekend so expand your network they say that your network determines your net worth it is true and just go ahead and get out there get some some business cards email them text them one thing that popped up in my head just now is as you are leaving the venue yeah whenever you go networking as you're leaving the venue record a video of yourself saying hey this is Miguel was a great I had a great time meeting you tonight at this event I look forward to hearing from you and then leave it at that it's very generic enough where you can send it to everyone that you met that night and then all you have to do is just text it to each person so I'm going to do that tomorrow and see what happens and then I will also be back this weekend so my phone stores going to be blowing up after tomorrow and also this weekend with that grow your network and I will see you tomorrow

Today I talk about my experience from this weekend where I thought I could do what I always do... copy, paste, and modify code.  Well, I learned that sometimes I have to stop cutting corners.

 

Resources:

Network After Work at Franklin Manor

Hard Money Presentation at TBREIA North Tampa

HIS Capital Group

ManyChat

ChatFuel

 

Show Notes:

The day I am talking about cutting corners or at least trying to automate something that should be done properly from the start the other thing is today is episode 120 that means I have put out an episode every single day for 4 months and for me that's a big accomplishment especially because this is something new that I started back in October October 1st was the very first episode and this podcast was specifically designed for me to declare or share what I learned on a daily basis and since I started I've I've learned a lot as far as podcasting go improved the quality of the podcast icon from recording this thing on my my cell phone through GarageBand to recording it on my Mac my MacBook and then getting a microphone and then getting a mixer so I have been getting better with the quality of the had the show and I have been changing the format here and there just to put out something that's a little bit more entertaining or more educational and in less novice I want you to put my best foot forward as I learn what I want you inside of podcasting I implemented and then I'm able to improve the show over time so today's topic. I want to talk about cutting corners and it is because of an email that I got this weekend actually I got it yesterday got me email saying that the thought that I had installed for my veteran agent was a duplicate of what I had for the better investor and I did not think of you this but would be what I would have to pay for the Box be installed on my veteran agent I thought I paid for it already I should be able to clone that bought and put it into the Asian side and then just make modifications to the entire box on the agent side well that's not the kids probably with chatfuel and some other messenger bot platforms as you install some of these templates near as a starting ground for what you want to do you have to be aware of what is required or what if the have the legality is for using some of these templates because I cloned a template that has a a very large codebase around that was built by someone else I basically just cloned that whole thing and took the the code with it so that I could modify well that's not allowed in many chat if you want to do something like that you have to install it fresh as if it's a brand new box and not a clone pot now if you build one yourself from scratch meaning that you're putting in hours and hours and hours of work building the all the flows off sequences putting in all the keywords the tags everything it's probably going to take I would say two maybe three months of solid work putting in all of that for the architecture of of how the entire body is going to communicate with your audience and and then when you do that then you yes you can that is that is your own code list that is your Bot that you created and of course you can make it into a template and sell it to other people that they can install it into their account well what I've done with the veteran investor I took that entire codebase and I started a lot of it modified a lot of how it worked in a lot of the flows and sequences on on how it communicates with my audience how it interacts with them and Howard scores the user as it's going through the communication work as it's going through a conversation it's scores at the at the user new based on certain answers that it gets back from questions that it will ask well I modified a lot of that and being a fellow / that's what we do we find code that someone's already written and we copy it right we we copy it and then we out we make modifications as we please acknowledge that helps us to move the process along there are times that yes we do have to write all the code from scratch and that's why we do that if we have the time to do all that to architect the entire structure and an architect new deep entire design of how this thing is going to function then yes we can write write from scratch and everything from the ground up but the majority of the time we are taking what's already been written and then we copy it for we clone it in this case what I was doing and I basically had my software developer hat or software engineer hat on and lonely at the pot and started making a ton of changes to it well I got the email saying that I was not technically allowed to use that because it was only allowed for the better and faster it was only installed and allowed for the better investor use and so I guess the way many chat works is it looks at we're this where the the templates are installed from so if you buy a template and you install it it knows where it came from and it knows that you've installed it as a brand new tablet and it's not a template that you bought somewhere else on another account and then transferred it to a new one so my my lesson in in doing this is that a yes I was doing what I'm used to doing on a regular basis at work as a software engineer and that is copy paste and make all the modifications I need to make all the changes necessary so that it works the way I want it to work but in this case I had to look deeper into can I use what's what's already there am I allowed to do that and maybe what I should have done looking back on it is I should have checked with the developer of that said hey already bought this for this page but I want to use it for a separate page and because I already bought it am I allowed to use it for that page and if they came back saying know which I'm sure they might say no if I if they say no then okay not a problem I'll work on building it from scratch myself luckily many chat already has a basic template for Real Estate that you can install so once you created a mini chat count you can actually install the real estate template and then make modifications and if you need to which is what I was doing today so during lunch I went through and I got rid of deep the bought that I had cloned got rid of all of it and then installed many chats basic real estate template so now and then there's still a lot more that I have to do at least now I have a starting point which is able to communicate with the customer or with the that the client on a very basic level so now it's up to me to really structure how this thing needs to work and in so I'm learning my lesson on inverse areas of using AI to to be implemented into my real estate business already have it set for the veteran investor now I need to implement it for my veteran age you're from that I need to make sure that I no longer cut Corners as I learn about what happening in the AI space and I learned about how many chat works as far as new how templates are installed and how how certain templates and not be moved from one account to another so I have to I do have three accounts on many chat and two of them are real estate base so it's a lesson for me that I've learned that I'm not allowed to do that if if it's a template that I purchased in the past for one account it cannot be duplicate it over to a second account unless I get explicit permission from the developer that template so again I was trying to cut Corners by making that just cloning it and making modifications and I learned my lesson so now I have to build it from the ground up so when we apply this lesson to the four dimensions of Life body being balanced in business what can you think of where you're let's say with body when you're working out there's no no way that you can actually cut Corners to eat to lose 25 lb and if you do find a way of doing that unless a in a week let's say you want to lose 25 pounds in a week safe and healthy way of doing that other than maybe chopping off a leg there's probably a bunch of things that you could do but is it going to be safe is it going to be long term and so for something like that you really can't cut Corners up the same with let's say let's go with being right if I want to have more focus and and have a deeper connection with God while I'm meditating or while I'm praying there's no cutting Corners I can't just say hey what's up God all right. There's there's no communication there and I need to be able to speak to God and then sit and listen for you can't just cut Corners in something like that the same with balance when you're trying to establish that relationship and and really make a deeper connection with your your loved ones in my case my wife and my son I can't cut Corners with them I can't just draw a heart on a on a Post-It note or index card and just give it to both of them I mean I could but there's there's not there's no contact behind it and I need to share in words on that index card I need to share in words how I feel about them how I am I appreciate them and honor them and love them yeah and for me to just draw a heart on a on a card and just give it to them it's cutting corners it doesn't really tell them exactly what it is that I'm feeling about them and what I'm thinking about them so again you don't want to cut Corners when it comes to something like that you want to establish deep meaningful relationships with people and you're when you start cutting Corners that's when the relationship is built on a foundation of Lies it's it's built on a really fragile and Foundation at one point or something at sometime in the future that Foundation is going to crumble and it's because you were cutting corners the same with business in my case I just learned it you have this weekend yesterday and I'm correcting the issue now I found that I could not cut Corners with manychat you're trying to implement in a i for Facebook Messenger using a bot that I already bought on on the veteran investor and trying to clone it over to the agent site I was trying to cut corners and in that case I'm learning my lesson and so I'm having to rebuild that so you want to make sure that as you look at everything across all four dimensions of Life body being balanced in business look at what you're doing are you cutting Corners with what you are doing and if so then you need to take a step back and really assess your intentions really assess your your beliefs and and what it is that you're looking to do so if you want to lose 25 lb once not going to take one week to do the to do do that and be safe about it and it's not going to be long term be realistic about what you're doing and put in the work make sure that you're not cutting Corners it will come and bite you back in here in the ass in the end so with that I will see you tomorrow today's episode 120 Monday January 20th also I will be at Franklin Manor on Wednesday for the network after work go ahead and Google Network after work I'm actually going to put a link to that networking event in the description and also I'm having a special guest come in from Orlando from his capital to talk about hard money at the North Tampa Siberia subgroup meeting and that is the first Wednesday of the month at the IHOP on 275 and bearss Avenue in Tampa so if you are in the Tampa area come down check it out it's going to be a very very educational and and very entertaining I guess speech presentation that's the word I was looking for going to be a very entertaining and educational presentation a very special guest at friend of mine from his Capital out of Orlando so come check it out and with that I'll see you tomorrow

Today as I'm reviewing my week, I decided that I should share how you should be reviewing your week with what is called the General's Tent.

 

Show Notes:

The day I am going to quickly talk about what we call in the Warrior's Way or wake up Warrior program these generals text and the General's tent is basically a exercise that we go through to identify really just review and identify what has happened for the week if we have hit our targets for the week and basically do a course correction so that we can get back on target with what we want to accomplish for a 90 Day Challenge or for the year or whatever it might be inside of Warriors you take your annual goals or targets and you break them up into 90 day challenges it's easier to work with 90 day challenges than it is to try and focus on a longer-term goal once you do that you you make it harder than what you you focus on long-term goals like a year you make it harder on yourself to maintain that motivation to continue the discipline to be able to hit those targets the goals that you set out for the year that's why you take what you have set for the year and break it up into 90-day increments then it's easier for you to hit those targets hit the goals that you set out to accomplish and in every 90 days you're switching to another Target that accomplish and every week what we do is sit down and we would do a return and Report what a Gerald's 10th allows us to do is really review what we've done for the week have we hit all of our poor forts for the week did we work out for the week did we have are green smoothie at work in fuel our bodies properly did we do any kind of meditation and prayer if we do any journalist if we work on our balance and I spoke about balance yesterday sending a note or message to your loved ones for me it's my wife and my son and then working on business learning something and then teaching it to anyone and for what I do is I've taken deep at the discovery part of business I've taken that and have applied it to basically everything that is all-encompassing for my life which means whatever I learn inside of body being balanced and that is what I will share with you and this is how I do my declaration which is the second part of the business Dimension so each Dimension body being balanced and business is made up of two parts business is made up of discover and declare so I learn something and then I could clear well today I am sharing what it is that you should be doing every single week and that is a kind of a high-level view of the generals Tech not going to go into detail because it's very specific to each person you know how you want to handle your course Corrections how you want to repay you everything that you you've done for the week breaking down your 90-day Target into weekly chart it makes it extremely easier than the annual targets so every week you have a certain number of things that you have to accomplish these are what we called the Four Keys and one door and really what it is it the 14 he's helped you to unlock that one door the one door is the big hairy audacious goal that you set out for that week and then the Four Keys are the steps that you take to unlocking that door to accomplishing the goal that you set for that week and that goal is a subset of your 90-day targets so for me I am going to be reviewing everything that I've done for the week and for this week it's been pretty busy with work as we are we were finishing up our first Sprint if you're just now getting onto the spot that I'm a full-time software engineer and I work for a company building software but I also invest in real estate or wholesale real estate and I am a licensed agent inside of software there's methodologies that we use called Sprint and it's similar to what we are doing inside of wake up Warrior we have Sprint right inside of wake up Warrior they are weak lost and so at 4 for what I do at my at my profession's what I've been doing for almost 20 years now these are two week-long sprints we identify certain features that we want to accomplish inside of that 2 weeks and we will figure out exactly what needs to be done and the user acceptance note how is it going to work and what's involved in the entire functionality and then we go up and actually accomplished those specific features for the Sprint and then we have a few where we show everything that we've done for each team there's multiple teams inside the company so every team has their own set of features right they all have a beehive a set of very very big schools for the team for the entire cycle and the cycle is made up of multiple Sprint in so for us it can be 5 6 maybe even 10 Sprint each Sprint is 2 weeks long but you do the math it's we're probably working on a lot of features within you several months and then we release all that to the public so they are the public gets a new released every new 4 5 6 months or whatever it is so it's the same as what we're doing here with warrior with the General's tent with a weekly review of what you have done it show each week you review everything and like okay I've done this I've been gone and I've done my workouts for the week I've gone running for the week I've had my smoothie every single day I've meditated Journal written note to my wife and my son and I've learned something every day and have shared it through this podcast every single day this is why I created this podcast it's my declaration and for everyone going forward as you start getting into theirs it's it's a challenge every single week is going to beach Al your building on the previous week so as you accomplish certain tasks were certain targets with for the week prior now you're setting up a week now okay let's say I have for this week I was able to launch the new version of the veteran investor I was able to launch a Bop on to that page I was able to do a few other things with the better investor and then also my veteran agent I've accomplished quite a bit for the week as well as done quite a bit for the real estate for retail side of the real estate business and now I look at what I've done and now I have to build on top of those targets so i r e lost a new design for the veteran Augusta now the next thing is for me to create and launch a Facebook ad campaign to start generating leads for that website the same thing with my veteran agent I need to create a Facebook app and watch it for my veteran agent and that built on top of previous near this previous week it's those would be part of my targets for this coming week and we are coming to the end of the month we only have the end of the month is basically Thursday and that is when I will be heading down to Miami to the Grant Cardone 10x growth con that is starting on Friday so I will be doing that and I need to focus on accomplishing as much as possible before I head down there which means I need to really figure out okay am I on target with what I want to do for the year yes or no and then figure out am I on target with my body am I on target with my being am I on target with my balance am I having a deep relationship or do I have a deep relationship and am I cementing that relationship and building a stronger with my wife with my son and after yesterday's episode am I reconnecting with two people from my childhood that I haven't seen in 30 years these are things that I have to go through every single week and you can either do it on your computer you can have a spreadsheet or you can have a Google doc or something with certain questions that will trigger you to figure out where are you and your journey throughout the year or you can write it down in a journal the journal does not have to be one thing yeah which a lot of people think a journal is write down your thoughts and everything Journal is it's used as a tool to improve your life improve upon with know where you are and where you want to be so you can use the pages in the journal to jot down ideas Draw Something Draw Something cures and structures of how you want your business to run you know how you want your your license to look like so use that journal widely used it strategically and use it as if it's just another version of your mind you know it's what you have in your mind you putting it on paper and so if it comes in the form of images draw those images down if it's a it's a it's in the form of words records works now so again today focus on reviewing what you have done for the week did you or did you not hit your charts if you have not why did you not hit those targets what happened that caused you to not hit those targets and how can you recover from that how can you change what is currently happening so that you can actually hit the those Target this coming week and that's what you need to be doing that's those are the kind of questions you need to be answering and you're reading those things down so that you have it on paper and you can look back a few weeks from now or months or years from now and look back at your what you have done for this this previously you can see oh you know what I didn't hit that that Target that week because of X Y and Z but then put I put into motion a certain plan that allowed me to pick that Target the following week and then from there you can see the progression you can see how you can measure yourself against what you used to be so I actually wrote about that this morning as I was thinking about measuring myself against other people which I shouldn't be doing it but if I'm honest with myself and honest with the people that are around me I should not be measuring myself against them I should be more concerned about measuring myself as I am currently with where I was previously for where was yesterday and then figure out where it is that I want to be tomorrow and work on that not worried about okay is it near the competition I need to outwork this person and I'll perform this person know because now I'm going to be more concerned about that and all these targets I'm going to be slipping on trying to hit these targets because I'm more concerned about where my competition is where is I really should be focused on where I'm at and focus on where it is that I need to go so with that get back to journaling get back to reviewing your week and do a course correction if you have to I'm going to be doing that to wrap up the week and then I'm going to hang out with my family so have a fantastic Sunday I will see you tomorrow