BiggerPockets Business Podcast

Building businesses from the ground up isn’t easy. It requires patience, hard work, and most importantly, a solid team. Without trust in that team, the product, the company, and the vision can completely disintegrate. When a team flourishes, you can create a massive success, where everybody wins. 

Tucker Merrihew and Elliot Smith have been working throughout the past year on Call Magic, a service that helps uncover leads for real estate agents, wholesalers, flippers, and other real estate professionals. Elliot originally teamed up with Cole Ruud-Johnson (who you’ll hear on our Real Estate Podcast, very soon), and everything was running well, but they realized they needed a leader. After Elliot talked to Tucker about the project, Tucker was in. 

There was just one contingency: the product and the company had to be the best of the best. The three partners agreed to put their all into it, and respect each other’s work. Cole already had experience running an outsourced cold calling team, Elliot had years and years worth of real estate experience under his belt, and Tucker had the Real Dealz Podcast audience at his disposal. 

Elliot and Tucker walk through setting up your business and your team for success, what to worry about and what to hold off on, hiring team members from overseas, and growing a business to scale, not fail.

In This Episode We Cover:

• What to look for in a business partner/what to look for in an existing partnership
• How to “dummy proof” your business
• Managing, paying, and hiring workers that are overseas 
• How to have better cold call conversations that secure leads
• Setting out to become the best of the best in your industry 
• Trusting your partners and letting them show their strengths when working together
• And So Much More!

Links from the Show

• BiggerPockets Real Estate Show
• BiggerPockets Podcast 381: 5 Rules for Investing in a Down Market with Tucker Merrihew
• Marketing Machines, Spec Houses, Flipping & Wholesaling | Podcast
• BiggerPockets Podcast 255: Six-Figure Real Estate Investing in Just 20 Hours a Week with Elliot Smith
• BiggerPockets Podcast 394: Making a 25 Deal/Year Business (and Marriage) Work… Together! with Elliot and Chrissy Smith
• Apple
• Tesla

Check the full show notes here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/bizshow95

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What does humor and business have in common? At first glance, not much, but after digging a little deeper, there’s quite a lot that humor can teach us about business. Peter McGraw, behavioral scientist, author of Shtick To Business and The Humor Code, and host of the Solo Podcast kept wondering why we find certain things funny. He decided to put it to the test in his lab, HRL, the Humor Research Lab.

Peter discovered that we often find things funny when they’re wrong, but okay. Threatening, yet safe. Things that make no sense, yet make perfect sense. Most importantly, you don’t want to be the person who thinks they’re funny, but actually isn't it. You have to think funny, not just be funny. You have to fight the status quo constantly, to make material that people will find outlandish, but true enough to laugh at.

But how does that relate to business? Peter brings some great business examples that followed the same flow of most comedy writing routines. Take AirBnB for example, when they first launched the idea, most people thought they were crazy. I mean, who would want to sleep in someone’s spare bedroom or mother-in-law suite for a weekend? It turns out, almost everyone in the world would.

These kind of outlandish but great ideas come through a process that Peter calls “Sh*t-storming”. Contrary to regular brainstorming, sh*t-storming is when you throw out crazy ideas, and sometimes, something will come out that is so crazy, it actually works. Besides AirBnB, Peter relates this to Tim Ferris’s cold calling method and the P90x workout system as just a few examples.

Comedy and business aren’t that far apart in the idea creation stage. Follow Peter’s advice and your business won’t get laughed out of your next meeting!

In This Episode We Cover:

• The underlying theme of humor and why we find things funny
• How writing jokes and creating businesses overlap
• Fighting the status quo to create something that is great
• How to create a “chasm” so your customers love you and you’re haters don’t
• The importance of keeping an idea journal to write in
• Saying yes to happiness, regardless of the financial outcome
• And So Much More!

Links from the Show

• Peter McGraw's TEDx Speech
• Joel Osteen's Church
• Tony Horton's Website
• Jerry Seinfeld: 23 Hours to Kill 
• Airbnb
• Tim Ferriss's Blog
• Barry's Bootcamp

 Check the full show notes here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/bizshow94

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

An author, a CTO, and a champion ballroom dancer walk into a podcast...it’s Mark Herschberg! Mark is a man of many talents, graduating from MIT, becoming a champion in ballroom dancing, and later becoming a COO and CTO for multiple startups. How does someone do it all, and do it all so well?

After college, Mark was working in computer science and began having to hire new team members on board for the companies he worked at. He realized that many new hires had technical skills, but didn’t have skills that correlated to becoming better leaders or teammates. Mark saw that there was a whole realm of soft skills that weren’t being taught to graduates coming into the workforce. So he partnered up with MIT to develop a course on acquiring these skills and became a lecturer. He’s been teaching this material for the past two decades!

As the classes went on, Mark decided to write some notes that every student would be able to use throughout the class. After writing close to 100 pages, Mark realized that this wasn’t just a set of notes, this was a full-on book. This became The Career Toolkit and taught Mark not only how to write, but the challenges of publishing and marketing a book.

If you’re a solo entrepreneur, a CEO of a startup, regular employee, or still looking for career opportunities, Mark advises that you create a career plan, outlining what your life, career, and future will look like. How can you accomplish the goals you’ve set and what do you have to do to put yourself in a beneficial position?

Maybe you’re shy or introverted and find it hard to talk to partners, maybe you want to know how to network in a post-COVID world, or maybe you want to know how to manage teams and lead a company to optimum efficiency and employee satisfaction. Mark does a fantastic job of answering these questions and more in a succinct and relatable way.

In This Episode We Cover:

• Developing your soft skills like leadership and teamwork 
• The skills all entrepreneurial endeavors require
• Why you need to stop treating your 1000th customer like your 1st customer
• Creating a career plan (regardless of if you work in corporate or work for yourself)
• Building your network and creating reciprocal benefits 
• Networking in a digital age and why you should always have business cards on you
• And So Much More!

Links from the Show

• Cognosco Media Resources
• LinkedIn

 Check the full show notes here: http://biggerpockets.com/bizshow93

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Negotiation is all around us, whether we see it or not. Whether it’s a business negotiation, an argument in a relationship, or convincing your child to eat their greens, you’re always negotiating. With us on today’s episode is Kwame Christian M.A. Esquire, host of the Negotiate Everything podcast and author of Finding Confidence in Conflict.

Most people think you have to be a lawyer to be an expert negotiator. Kwame argues that this isn’t true. Since we are constantly negotiating every day, we have the ability to level up our skills to become experts in debating and negotiating. He stresses that winning a negotiation doesn’t mean beating your opponent so they’re embarrassed at the end. It means giving you AND the opponent the ability to walk away from the situation with a win.

Kwame preaches “compassionate curiosity” as one of the best ways to research how an opponent may answer questions you present to them. Tie this with some creative problem solving, and you’ll come out of the debate a winner.

As real estate investors, this is especially key to our line of business. We’re constantly debating with sellers, buyers, appraisers and more to get outcomes that benefit us. But how can we suggest an outcome that makes the negotiating partner feel good and presents us with future opportunities? You’ll have to listen to find out!

In This Episode We Cover:

• Why negotiating isn’t just arguing and how to find wins for both parties
• Using “The Empathy Loop” as a tactic to have the other party feel heard
• The 3 pillars of negotiation, and keeping them in mind when we debate
• The biggest mistakes people make when negotiating
• Research vs. preparation (when to use which for what)
• Compassionate curiosity and seeing your opponents point of view
• Maintaining your “form” throughout negotiation
• And So Much More!

Links from the Show

• Previous BiggerPockets Business Episodes
• Finding Confidence in Conflict | Kwame Christian | TEDxDayton
• American Negotiation Institute Guides (Gift)
• Virtual Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Handbook (Gift)

Check the full show notes here: http://biggerpockets.com/bizshow92

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

If you’re a new entrepreneur, it may seem like a dream to sell a business for millions of dollars. People like Chris Younger, make that dream a reality. Chris founded Class VI Partners, an investment bank that helps entrepreneurs plan and prepare businesses for sale. Chris will be the first to admit that selling isn’t an easy process, it takes time, patience, and a lot of documentation.

Chris compares selling your business to running a marathon: you need to be in it for the long haul to finish strong. He helps owners reach a price point that works for their future, and helps create the processes around selling that enable a new owner to carry the business to new heights. For many owners, success in selling comes from doing the hard work upfront, not putting it off for your future self (and employees) to deal with.

So why would an entrepreneur want to sell? Maybe it's personal timing and they feel like they’ve given the business as much as they possibly can. It also could be business timing, the business may be seeking a new change in direction. Or it could be buying timing, a buyer comes in with the right offer, the right ability, and makes the sale.

Whatever a reason for selling a business, a business owner needs to be prepared for their business to sell at some point. So even if you’re just starting out, hearing words of wisdom from Chris may net you a few more million dollars!

Check the full show notes here: http://biggerpockets.com/bizshow91

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You may own a small business, some rental properties, or are just tinkering with a new idea. Regardless of where you’re at in your entrepreneurial journey, you’re most likely trying to make something that will not only resonate with customers, but allow them to solve a problem in their life. So how do you make a product that accomplishes this to the fullest extent?

Today we talk to Ben Foster, founder of Prodify and Chief Product Officer at WHOOP. Ben has been in this space for a long time, working with big names like eBay and Opower. After his initial success at corporate he founded his consulting firm, Prodify and has since then worked with 70+ different companies all tackling a common goal: make a great product.

If you’re just starting out in your business, you may think the best course of action is to tack on as many useful features as possible into one product, but Ben warns against this. Companies that tend to do well with products are the companies that have a core competency and then build out from it.

Great products also take market input from the customers that matter most. That doesn’t mean only the top 10% of users for an app, that means the bulk majority of customers who use the app. This is where many product teams get it wrong, and as you’ll see in the interview, there are a lot more caveats in product management than originally meets the eye.

If you’re interested in product marketing, engineering, management or anything else related to building a great product, check out Ben’s book Build What Matters and of course, listen to this episode!

In This Episode We Cover:

• What product management really is (and what the goal should be for teams)
• The difference between products for sale and product management
• What makes a great product team 
• How to achieve (and go after) product market fit 
• When to release the initial version of your product
• Which opinions matter most when collecting customer data 
• Building an infrastructure so products can succeed from the start
• Bad product traits to avoid when building out your product
• And So Much More!

Links from the Show

• Opower
• E-bay
• Dropbox
• Mint.com
• Intuit
• WealthFront
• Microsoft
• Amazon Hello
• Polar Watch
• Garmin
• LinkedIn
• Tesla
• LeapFrog

Check the full show notes here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/bizshow90

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

For the first episode of 2021 we have David Greene from the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast! We’ve heard from David before on a couple of past episodes, but today he goes over something a bit different: how he successfully scaled his real estate business from being a sole agent to a team doing $90,000,000+ in transactions a year!

This didn’t happen overnight. It took David years of trial and error to find out what really works in real estate, why most agents fizzle out in the first 5 years, and how to bounce his team members off of each other to generate more sales and higher commissions.

David has strategies and advice not only for real estate agents, but also for business owners that want to build a business that has the ability to scale. In 2019 David’s team did $26,000,000 in transactions, in 2020 they did $90,000,000 and in 2021 they’re planning to hit $150,000,000. We’re sure David will fly past that milestone as well!

You’ll hear why David became an agent in the first place, why marketing is key to real estate (and almost every other business), how to gauge motivation from clients and prioritize accordingly, and some lead generation strategies David’s team uses.

Real estate agent or not, this is some great information that big and small businesses can take to heart and put into practice right away!

In This Episode We Cover:

• Why you should read David’s new book, Sold!
• The difference between an average agent and a great agent
• Why 87% of agents are out of the business within 5 years
• How to market your products and services
• Top lead generation strategies for real estate agents
• Understanding your skills/weaknesses so you can build a team to compensate for them
• The importance of “baseline adjustments” when talking to clients
• Why a W2 mindset doesn’t work in a 1099 career
• And So Much More!

Links from the Show

• BiggerPockets Business Podcast 20: The Questions You MUST Ask Every Potential Hire with David Greene
• BiggerPockets Business Podcast 88: What’s Your Special “Cut”? Why Brandon Turner and David Greene Doubled Down on Theirs in 2020
• BiggerPockets Podcast
• BiggerPockets New Books
• GoBundance
• Keller Williams
• Coldwell Banker
• BiggerPockets Forums

Check the full show notes here: http://biggerpockets.com/bizshow89

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

If you’re a fan of the BiggerPockets Business Podcast, you’re probably also a fan of the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast. Lucky for you, we’ve got a combo of these two shows on today’s episode!

Joining us from Maui are the co-hosts of the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast, Brandon Turner and David Greene. Both Brandon and David are known for their persistence and ingenuity in business, this is cemented in the fact that both of them made huge leaps forward in 2020, while many other businesses fell by the wayside

Both Brandon and David realized earlier this year what their “special cut” was, and how to use it to scale their businesses faster, and with less effort from themselves.

Both of them started adjacent businesses to what they were currently doing, only to find that their success grew even faster when they bounced businesses off of one another. They also got more comfortable with hiring, making executive decisions, and as Brandon likes to put it “being the general of your own life”.

But how do business owners persist to strive for success, even when the odds are stacked against them? Brand and David also have an answer for this as well, and it comes in the form of morning rituals, community, coaching, and perseverance.

This isn’t an episode about real estate. This is an episode about how you can take the losses or wins from 2020, and turn them into something bigger and better than you ever imagined...

In This Episode We Cover:

• What Brandon and David have been working on this year
• Finding your “Dr.Ozd Cut” and how that enables you to grow your team
• How to provide value to a mentor or business professional you’d like to work with
• The top trends of successful real estate investors and businesspeople
• How adjacent businesses allow you to expand your reach and use your existing resources
• How to “be the general of your life”, specifically with business
• Brandon’s morning ritual for success 
• How to find the right business and performance coach (and why it’s worth the investment)
• And So Much More!

Links from the Show

• BiggerPockets
• BiggerPockets New Books
• BiggerPockets Podcast 423: Who Not How: Stop Doing the Things You Hate, Free Up Time, Be Happier and Richer with Dan Sullivan
• GoBundance
• BiggerPockets Business Podcast
• BiggerPockets Podcast 398: 22 BRRRR Properties in Under 10 Hours Per Week with Tarl Yarber
• BiggerPockets Podcast 427: The 12 Week Year and The Danger of Long-Term Goal Setting with Brian Moran
• BiggerPockets Podcast 425: Focusing On Your $10,000/Hour Tasks (And How to Outsource the Rest!) with Benjamin Hardy
• BiggerPockets Business Podcast 06: How to Manage Your Time Like a Millionaire With Jay Papasan
• BiggerPockets Podcast 362: Big Goals? Here’s How to Get Your Spouse or Partner on Board with Jay and Wendy Papasan
• BiggerPockets Podcast 113: Becoming a Millionaire Real Estate Investor Using The One Thing with Jay Papasan
• BiggerPockets Podcast 403: Developing a Millionaire’s Mindset and Overcoming Limiting Beliefs with Performance Coach Jason Drees

Check the full show notes here: http://biggerpockets.com/bizshow88

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You hear the word “franchising”, what’s the first thing you think of? For many people, they think of selling hamburgers, sandwiches, or opening up convenient stores. To franchise matchmaker and consultant Jon Ostenson, that’s just the surface level. There is a whole world of franchising that many entrepreneurs and business professionals don’t know about.

Jon started out working in consulting for Fortune 1000 companies and was slowly introduced to the concept of franchising. Jon found franchising incredibly interesting, as a cross between new business ownership and existing systems/infrastructure. The business model purely made sense. 

Now as the CEO of Franbridge Capital, he works with entrepreneurs and franchise owners as a matchmaker, seeing who would work best with which franchise, and vice versa. 

Jon walks through some of the key benefits of franchising that other business models don’t have, and some of the dangers for interested entrepreneurs. He also goes through the different franchise business models and some franchise examples that you may have never thought of.

How much risk is in franchising? Does franchising produce better ROI than other businesses (even real estate)? What are the opportunities in 2021 for franchising?

Hearing Jon’s answers may present a whole new world you never knew about, and might even get the ball rolling for you to become a partner in a franchise yourself!

In This Episode We Cover:

• The different types of franchising businesses
• The key benefits of running a franchise
• The dangers of franchising that entrepreneurs should know
• What type of profit margins you can make with franchising
• How territories work when buying into a franchise
• Taking over an existing franchise or starting a new one yourself
• How to fund franchises (even with retirement accounts!)
• The industries where franchises could be taking off in 2021
• And So Much More!

Links from the Show

• BiggerPockets
• Subway
• Entrepreneur's Organization

Check the full show notes here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/bizshow87

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jonathan Wasserstrum, founder of SquareFoot likes to say that he was working in PropTech before PropTech was a thing, and he’s right! For the past few decades, many industries were seeing expansive growth, new ideas, and upgraded technology. One of the industries that didn’t see that tech growth was real estate.

Jonathan found that many commercial real estate customers were looking for a consumer-facing option to view commercial spaces from the comfort of their own homes. Why were there so many residential real estate sites, but no commercial real estate sites? That’s where Jonathan’s company SquareFoot came in!

SquareFoot took off and over time was becoming a staple product for those looking for commercial real estate spaces. Due to its success, Jonathan was in a great position, which allowed him to become an angel investor for real estate deals and different startups, passing on his knowledge and capital to other new businesses!

Jonathan talks syndications, funds, and investing as a whole. For any investor who wants to see their industry grow and advance forward, Jonathan is a great success story showing you have the power to change your industry for the better!

In This Episode We Cover:

• How to start a self-funded venture, even at a young age
• Why real estate is such a great industry (residential and commercial!)
• Why startups have such a high mortality rate
• Why PropTech is so important to investors, tenants, and all real estate professionals
• Why “flexibility is the future”
• The difference between syndications, funds, and more
• Why investing can make you a better business owner
• How angel investors think when investing in a new business
• And So Much More!

Links from the Show

• BiggerPockets
• Redfin
• Uber
• Zillow
• AngelList
• Sequoia
• Airbnb

Check the full show notes here: http://biggerpockets.com/bizshow86

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.