Welcome back to the Payneless Wholesaling Podcast where we talk about real estate and how my goal is to try and make Wholesaling Payneless for everybody that’s watching and not only wholesaling real estate but doing real estate in general, the goal is to make it as painless as possible, because we all know that if you don’t know what you’re doing real estate can be very painful. I just had a painful experience that I made a video of earlier that I had I had painful experiences still even though I tried to make it not painful. So anyway, that’s why we’re here and we have an awesome guest today we got Mike what’s going on Mike?
Hey, Nathan, what’s going on brother? I’m I’m doing awesome right now. How are you doing, man?
Dude, I’m actually doing great and I didn’t want to butcher the last name but it’s we save for me Mike
Smith. Don’t kill Kava.
Joni Kava. Joni. I liked that. Man. I like that. What is that like? Origin in that last name?
Italian Yeah, northern Italy.
So I assumed Yeah, but I didn’t want to assume wrong. You know, I didn’t want to be like, you know, Italian you say like something else. But let me ask you this. Have you been to Italy?
I have been to. I’ve been to Sigonella which is actually Sicily and then also Naples.
Wow. What is that because of family or just for fun?
I was because of the Navy. When I was still in the Navy. Yeah. So just just short visits.
Wow. Okay. Well, I meant for the for the people that might not know who you are. Well, you kind of give us a short 32nd Intro to who you are. And I definitely want to ask about the Navy but kind of let us know who we’re talking to.
Sure sounds good. I’m originally from Long Island, New York. currently living in ever Beach, Hawaii, served the Navy for 20 years. I’m a licensed Realtor, associate financial coach, real estate investor. I run a podcast editing business and I’m the host of the top 1% Rank podcast the average Joe finances podcast. That’s me in a nutshell.
My goodness, man, you just hit me with a lot of stuff right there. And what would you say is your favorite thing to do?
Absolutely. 100% the podcast?
Really?
Well. Yeah, I love it.
Could the podcast take over all those things you could do? Just do the podcast and survivor. I don’t really know I have a pocket. But I don’t know if like, at what point it gets where it’s like, that’s all you can do. You know, for for your work.
You can I don’t I’m not there yet. I’m at a point my podcast makes money. I have sponsors and stuff, but it’s not. You know, it’s not at a point where I feel like I would be comfortable doing just that. So you know, the other things still come into play as well. And then real estate, you know, that’s, that’s the bread and butter man. I mean, that’s, that’s what set me up for my financial future in general, where I can live comfortably. So the podcast for me, it’s just, it’s more therapeutic, you know, I get to talk to some really amazing people. And, to me, that’s what matters. That’s the value I get out of it. It’s not necessarily the monetary value that I get from it.
So it’s not necessarily like a vision, or a goal to just be like, Hey, this is all I want to do. And right like you,
you know, yes. I mean, yeah, that would be great. But the goal isn’t to make it that the podcast is the thing that’s keeping me afloat. The goal is to I’m just doing just the podcast, because everything else is covered. And this is all I want to do.
Yeah, that’s sweet. I like that. So tell me, how did you even get started doing a podcast? How did that get started?
Oh, funny thing is, everything started because, you know, when I first moved out to Hawaii, my wife and I, we we were working on paying off all of our debt. We had a lot of debt at the time. And it all stemmed from a 2007 purchase of a single family home in Waynesboro, Virginia, that we had to short sell a couple years later, because you know, the the market crashed back then very painful experience. I actually stayed away from real estate for a while because of that, you know, limiting beliefs and all that all that good stuff. But I kind of embarked on this journey to pay off all of our personal consumer debts, you know, credit cards, personal loans, all that good stuff. And in the process, I said, You know what, I’m going to start a blog and share with other people like what I’ve been doing, and just searching for domain names, average Joe finances was available. I said, boom, that’s the name of it right there. My middle name is Joseph, I got a claim to the name. So we’re good. And that’s how average Joe finance is started. So started as a blog. And then I A buddy of mine, who started a podcast on personal wellness and resiliency, right? He had been through some pretty rough stuff in life. And he’s like, Hey, man, he’s like, I think you should start a podcast because you know, podcasting is going to be huge. And this was about two and a half years ago. And I was like, Ah, maybe maybe when I get out of the Navy, I was like, you know, I’m gonna retire soon. Maybe after that. He’s an old man. Just do it. Now. Just do it. Now, even if it’s one episode a month, I said, Fine. You know what, I’ll do it because I like to talk. I’m from New York. I like to talk to people. It’s just, you know, let’s go. So I said, but if I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna do one episode a week. And that was a pretty tough commitment to set at the very beginning, but I stuck with it. And now I do two episodes a week and it’s evolved into this own self governing system writes with with editors. And I have a team that takes care of everything. I basically I’m now at the point where I just record the content, upload it to my team, and then they take care of it. Wow. So that’s that’s kind of the story there.
How long has it been? Have you been running the average Joe podcast?
Now? Two and a half years?
Where are you at right now? Could you believe like where you’re at like that? I guess? What’s the best way to word that? Yes. Your journey where you’re at right now. I mean, it must be interesting to see how far you’ve come. I don’t know too much about your your viewership has it? Like, can you can you disclose like what you’re doing? Yeah,
I mean, so I’m sitting. I have over 150,000 downloads right now. And I’ve got maybe between 10 and 12,000 downloads a month I get right now. But it took a while to get there. The first six months, I was questioning if I should even do this, because I was getting you know, 20 to 40 downloads a month. And I’m just like, I’m not sure if this is worth it, you know, and then I sat and I thought about it. And actually a buddy of mine pointed this out to me. He said, Hey, Mike, think of it this way. 20 to 40 people in one room picture that. Yeah, so that’s like a classroom. I was okay. So you know, there’s there’s some impact there. But it wasn’t until I actually like really took it seriously. And I decided to put a little more skin in the game and put some money into the podcast. You know, that’s when I hired the editing team and started outsourcing a bunch of stuff. And having people helped me with my social media. Once I started doing that, I’m like, Okay, this is this is starting to look a lot better. And that’s when the numbers really started to increase to where they are today. It was consistency, man, just consistency.
So you’ve been pretty consistent with one one a week and then eventually went to two.
Yeah, once I hit Episode 100, I started doing two episodes a week, I released an episode every Sunday and every Wednesday like clockwork,
Is that in time? Sorry? Is the analytics. Is that why you chose those times? Because you saw like most people are listening, or did you pick that random?
So Sunday was always for me. I always like Sunday, because I follow like a lot of the other bigger podcasts like I was watching, I always listen to bigger pockets and stuff. And their new episodes would always come out on Sundays like back then. And I was like, oh, it’s perfect. Because you know, when I drive into work on Monday, what’s the first thing I do as I put on a bigger pockets podcast while I’m driving to work on Monday, right? On Tuesday, it’s another podcast on Wednesday. It’s another podcast. So it’s it was certain days, right? But Sunday always felt like a good day because it was you know, the the weekend closed out. So people were either going to the gym that day, and they’re they’re listening to the podcast, or they’re driving to work on Monday, and they’re listening to it the next day. And then Wednesday, I felt like I wanted to split them up and have them like have a break in the middle of the week. And I’m like, well, Wednesday is you know, Hump Day, halfway through the week, that’s when I should have the next episode come out. That was pretty much the logic behind it. And I said, I’m just gonna be consistent with it. Release the episodes, I always do it at midnight, Hawaii time. So it’s either gonna be five o’clock in the morning on the East Coast, or six o’clock in the morning on the East Coast when it actually comes out depending on daylight savings time, because we don’t do that here in Hawaii.
Wow. So you’d like to have it come out right in early for those early birds?
Oh, absolutely. You know, because a lot of my listeners are military. And I know out here when I was still in the Navy, I was getting up at 430 in the morning to go to work and everything. So I wanted to make sure that average Joe finances was available and ready to go.
So let me ask you about that. Do you still work wake up at that time?
No, absolutely not.
Do you wake up now?
Now it’s now it’s between six and seven. So early? It depends. I set the alarm for seven. I’m usually up before that. It’s like an internal clock. I was thinking about switching back to the 430. I’m not sure if I want to do it. But maybe five o’clock will be the earliest I go.
The reason I asked you that is that recently I just started maybe about it’s been about three months now. I’ve been consistently waking up at 430. So I’m able to get in like some more reading doing some more stuff. It’s been really helpful. But the only way it’s possible is if I go to bed at like 930 10 anytime after that’s very difficult. So I’m assuming when you write went to sleep earlier?
Oh, yeah 100% 10 o’clock was cut off time for everything no matter what. Oh, so guaranteed. It still takes me a little while to fall asleep, man. And I was getting between four to five hours a night. So Wow. Okay, no, if I could do that anymore. Now I’m getting too old for that. For sure.
Well, that’s awesome that you did it. And you definitely, if you want to go back to you definitely can. So let’s talk about the podcast a little more. I know the the title of what we wanted to talk about or that we named this video was why every real estate investor should get a podcast. So kind of you want to kind of elaborate on that.
Yeah, 100% man. So I actually gave a talk on this not too long ago at a real estate meetup. And some of the things I like to highlight about why podcasting is important is the actual networking side of it. Right? I don’t think a lot of people think of that they they look at Oh, yeah, you interview somebody and you ask them a couple questions. Cool. Whatever. The other piece of that is, you have to think about the power that comes with that right? When somebody’s coming on your podcast. They’re coming on your podcast to promote themselves. That’s essentially what it is right? You’re a sounding board for that guest so I don’t know, you know, on my podcast, I always give and you hear this on pretty much every podcast you always give the guests a time at the end to kind of plug themselves their website whatever, right? So it’s just a way to reach more people and reach more impact. So by bringing people on your show and giving them the the reins to your audience, right, you’re giving them that that viewership right outside of their normal scope, or probably some of the same people have listened to them on other shows as well, right? Because the same circle, kind of it’s very tight knit, right. But the thing is, like, with my guests, I always keep in touch with every single person that comes on my show, we exchange contact information. I mean, I get deal flow in my inbox, like something ridiculous, I get over, you know, I wake up in the morning, and I’ll have 175 unread emails from that, you know, that’s coming in just that morning, because here I am in Hawaii, you know, and I’ve got a bunch of people on the East Coast that are just feeding me stuff all the time. So it’s amazing, but it’s sometimes it’s a little bit painful, which is why my VA cleans up my my inbox for me. Absolutely awesome. But yeah, so you know, with that came a whole bunch of other pieces of like task management and other things that I had to figure out as my guest list got longer. And I was keeping in touch with more people, you know, CRM systems and things like that, a very important piece of this because you you don’t want to just keep in touch with somebody, you want to actually build that connection. And that’s another thing I’d like to talk about too, is like when you’re networking besides the podcasting piece, when you’re networking, you want to build a genuine connection with somebody, not just oh, yeah, I know that person. I know their name. And I know their phone number. You know, oh, yeah, they’re cool. Whatever. No, I want somebody to remember me like, oh, yeah, Mike, that’s the guy. Oh, yeah. He was he called me up about my kids soccer game, you know, and ask, ask, ask how Timmy did in the tournament, right? Those are the type of things and you know, one of the most powerful tools you can use is this thing right here, you have an iPhone, you, you save a contact on here, you can put notes on that person, important dates, everything. It’s one of the best CRM systems that’s right here in your pocket, and you don’t even know about it. So that’s one of the things I like to do with my podcast is use it as a networking tool. So not only my networking with my audience, but multiple people that reach out to me, but I’m networking with my guests. And one of the things that’s beautiful about that as if they have a large following as well, when they start sharing Oh, yeah, I was on the average Joe finances podcast. And here’s what we talked about, because I give them clips. I’m like, here’s an audiogram. Here’s a social media caption video. Here’s the full video if you want to take any bits and pieces out of it, go for it. I give them everything. Yeah, right. And it has been one of the biggest pieces of the growth of my podcast, I believe, is thanks to my actual guests, sharing it with their audience. 100%
That’s amazing that that’s all wealth of knowledge right there. Because I mean, I can testify to what you’re saying to be true, because I have also seeing that I started podcasts. I was just doing YouTube, right. So I was just doing stream yard and then I was putting the podcasts on my YouTube channel, which YouTube is not necessarily built for a podcast model. Right. It’s more video.
So there’s other getting there. They’re working on it right now.
But I recently I’m getting coached by Tom Kroll I don’t know if you know that is but he’s did wholesaling, Inc. He told me he’s like, Dude, you gotta start an audio podcast. So I started with like, two, I just took all my files that are already there audio from streaming, I put them into my podcasts like two months ago. And it’s it’s amazing. Like what what I’ve seen, I was putting out a podcast every day, because for the last year, I had about 54 episodes. So every day, and I don’t know, I can’t read the data very well. I don’t really understand it. But I have we have like 1000 downloads in like 10 followers, which I don’t know if that’s good or not. I think it’s it’s better.
You started two months ago. Yeah, it’s crushing it, man. You’re crushing it.
And it’s exciting. Because from what you’re saying. It’s fun to look at the map where where people are listening. You’re like, Oh, dude, there’s some dude in Belgium listening to me. That’s, that’s interesting. But the other thing that’s more exciting is the networking bro, like me and you talking we would never have met, right? Like, you wouldn’t be able to tell my audience how important is to have a podcast and say with an authority that I would, I wouldn’t be able to say with authority you can because I mean, I don’t know. But you’re doing it. And I know what you’re saying is true. I just got a text from my buddy who’s got a podcast and he’s like, Hey, I just saw you on Devon’s podcast, you want to come on mine. So they see you on other ones, they invite you on yours, because they actually can see that. Maybe if they didn’t trust you, if you were legit, now they see on others and like, Okay, I’ll bring you on, you know, so it’s really cool.
This, this probably isn’t the right word, but it’s very incestuous. Right? You know, there’s a lot of, Oh, I’ve seen you with this person on this show. And now Hey, come on my show. And there’s a lot of that trading back and forth. I get emails all the time about, Hey, you wanna do a podcast swap? And like, yeah, why not? You know, but there’s also a lot of folks that try to come on the show that after I review their stuff, and like, probably not a good fit, right. And that comes with the territory, but you’re gonna notice, Nate’s and as you keep going, you’re gonna get to the point, you’re not going to actively seek out guests anymore. Like I do not actively seek out guests. They just email me right and I usually just send them to my VA I say, hey, email this person. And then she sends over the application. I have it in Take form, we review that, and then she’ll vet it and then send it to me. So she says, hey, you know, they pass the sniff test. And then I’ll look at and say, okay, cool, book them, and then she’ll send them the booking information. And then another thing for me too, is like, I only booked 45 days out, because I’ve already gotten to a little bit of trouble with the wife in the past where I had something booked 60 days out. And she was planning a trip for the family. And I was like, Oh, I gotta move the stuff around. And then it got complicated. She’s like, No, no, it’s fine. And I’m trying to say, no, I’ll cancel. And now you know, it gets into that whole thing. And I’m, like I said, you know, what, 45 days, at the most, I always tell her, Hey, always plan a month and a half out, no, or further. And then that 45 days is my window, where I where I bring people in, and then I only do every other week, I only do every other week I do Mondays and Thursdays, two interviews each day. That’s it. Otherwise, my backlog gets so ridiculous. I got tired of telling people even after I started doing two episodes a week, I was still telling people, yeah, your episode have come out in five, six months. That’s how much backlog I had. So I actually took two months off, I took November and December often do any interviews to get caught up a little bit. And now I’m at this three month window. So now pretty much everybody interview no matter what your episode comes out in three months. But the other side of that what’s frustrating is I’m constantly getting emails saying, Hey, Mike, I’ve been trying to, you know, book on your on your show, and there’s no availability for this month or next month. And I’m like, Yeah, I do 45 days, I’ll have to explain that every time. So now now I got like this little email script that I just copy and paste that I send to people. Yeah,
I’m sure you get hit up a lot by I think it’s podcasts. booking.com. I think that’s like a service or something.
I get a whole bunch of agencies, man, it’s great agencies.
I got hit up by one the other day, it’s pretty interesting, because I got hit up by one that represents the guy who does AdWords nerds, which runs Pay Per Click advertisement. And I actually when I started, I used he was like, help his service helped me get one of my first deals. So it’s like, oh, wow, his agency hit me up to come on my podcast. So I’ll tell him that when we talk, you know,
it’s great. That’s cool, man. That’s really cool.
Yeah, it’s interesting. But yeah, so what advice would you give to listeners that, like, want to start a podcast, but have no idea how to start?
Well, definitely, you know, there’s so many ways to get started. I mean, if you need a place to start your podcast and host it anchors free, and I think they’re changing into like, it’s gonna be called Spotify studio now or something. I saw some email about that. I used to be on there. Now I’m on Buzzsprout. Because I just I love the way that it’s set up. But that cost money, right. But like I said, anchors free. You can do it on your phone with some headphones. It’s pretty nice. I mean, you can record stuff directly to it. If you want to do like a solo podcast. If you want to interview guests, I recommend you probably do that on a computer, like on a laptop or something. Do it over zoom, save it, you know, zooms free for 45 minutes, I think still. I pay for zoom business. But yeah, you can use Zoom. You could use Google meats, which I think is also free. You got Zen caster, you got Riverside, you got stream yard, there’s so many different ways to actually record the episode. And there’s a lot of free ways to do it too. Right? So you have the freeways, you have the paid ways you’re gonna get better quality if you pay, right. So that’s, that’s the big thing. So just keep that in mind. And then you could buy yourself like a cheap mic. I mean, there’s there’s USB mics out there for like 3040 50 bucks. I started off with this mic called the Blue Yeti. It’s like 100 bucks. Yeah, it was a USB mic. It was great. The only issue I had with it is because of you know, it was a condenser mic, right. So not a condenser mic. It was a having a brain fart here, whatever. The USB mics usually pick up every little sound, right? Unless something like that. Yeah. So now I got my I got this Sure. My two which was also a USB mic. I started with this because I didn’t have an audio interface yet. But when I bought this mic, I’m still waiting for my road caster Pro to come in. Once I got the road caster Pro, I got the XLR setup, and now my audio quality is like 10 times better than what it was before. Right?
Do you feel like they instead of using the USB? What did you call it the auxilary? Is that what you said? It’s an XLR cable? Or do you feel like that’s improved versus the USB?
100%? Yeah, like 10 times 100 times honestly, just the audio quality. And then because I can control it for my interface, I can lower the mic output that’s going out if I’m sounding too loud. And I also hear myself in my headphones, right? So I can I can get a good gauge of how loud what my audio sounded like as I’m talking and there’s no gaps or delays, right. It’s not like I’m hearing myself echo, I just hear it as I’m talking which is pretty cool. That’s it’s pretty cheap to just start I mean, you can start for free. If that’s the route you want to go and then you know, just start reaching out to people, Hey, I’m starting a podcast talking about ABC or D I’d love to have you on my show. Go to Facebook groups, find the people that actually own those groups, you know, like different real estate groups or something like that, or whatever your niche is gonna be and just say, Hey, I just started this podcast, I would love to talk to you about you know, what are your top 10 reasons for doing what you do or whatever, right whatever topic you want to do, and most likely because people like the clout or the attention or whatever they gonna say, yeah, yeah, I’ll come on your show. And then you interview them and then share the stuff with them. Let them share it with the group right now you’re not breaking anybody’s rules or anything. Yeah. And, and you start building an audience that way. And that’s one of the first ways I started, you know,
that’s a great idea with the Facebook group, because they can put it to their audience. Yeah,
I learned that from another podcaster. Man, I’m gonna I’m actually in a podcast mastermind, and one of the guys in the group is really good at this stuff. And that was one of his ideas. And I think this is awesome. Phil, Phil better?
Do you know who Darren Bentley is?
No, no, this familiar.
I’m sure there’s quite a few guys out there that specialize in the podcast, you know, building it. So I’m writing this down, because this is good stuff. This is a will for me, too. So reach out to Facebook group owners, and then any VMs that were saying,
check out the mastermind to man I facilitated with Phil, it’s called pod the pod mastermind.com.
So let me ask you this. I’ve definitely checked it out. But I want to know when do you ever interview anyone outside of the realm of real estate? Or do you try to keep it within that niche?
Yeah, so I do interview people outside of real estate, but it’s everything for me is all financial literacy based. So you know, the reason why I interview real estate investors is because of the financial literacy side of it, literacy side of it, and, you know, gaining financial independence. That’s like the whole focus of average, show finances, but I brought people on that are day traders, I brought people on that are strictly, you know, just an index funds and ETFs. I’ve brought people on that are in the fire community. I brought people on that do crypto and NF Ts and I still don’t know anything about that stuff. Even after asking them all the stuff that I needed to know to make myself smarter. I feel like I still don’t know a thing. But yeah, I like to just keep it in that realm.
So I, my computer is about as bad out. But I figured we could talk for another 10 or 20. Because I love this topic. So let me ask you this. Do you help people like let’s say somebody that’s watching this wants to wants to do this? We need some help? Is that? Do you provide anything like that for people?
Yeah, so I do. I do podcast coaching as well. Besides the financial coaching, I didn’t really put that in my background. But I’ve helped a couple people, but I usually refer people to the mastermind, because there’s it’s just a group of folks that really bring in some great ideas. And it’s actually cheaper than using me as a coach, honestly, because you know, I have to charge for my time. But yeah, I do. I do help people with this. I do have like a free checklist. Like how to start a podcast. It’s like 20 steps, you know, soup to nuts, everything. So yeah, I offer all that I’ve got a couple free resources, that resources that I offer. So if people want to check that out, I could definitely you know, send it over
in your mastermind or what you’ve learned from Do you feel like having one one thing you really push like a podcast versus like a YouTube channel podcast, a Facebook group and all this other stuff? Do you feel like having one is more efficient and better? Or do you feel like it’s okay to have multiple platforms that you push
on all of them, brother, you got you have to be? It’s about presence, right? My YouTube channel probably doesn’t get as much views. I think as my podcast does, although it’s starting to even out they’re starting to catch up to each other, right? But the thing is, like, I look at that, and I’m like, Well, if I add these numbers from YouTube to my, my podcast downloads, like I’m, I’m doing significantly more, I’m reaching more people than I really thought I was. So that’s the other thing you got to look at too. And then like your social media posts, how many people are seeing those clips of you talking about it, they might not necessarily click the link to go listen to your podcast, but it’s going to be stuck in their head. And now you might get a new follower, or I’m gonna go subscribe to that podcast, and they might listen to future episodes. So those are the things you got to think about.
That’s true. And I am on all but I just didn’t know if it was better to push one if you’re really trying to go in. Last thing I want to ask you before we wrap it up, what what is what is one golden nugget? What is one thing you’d like to leave the listeners with? You want them to remember you buyer than to know.
I would say that no matter what you do, even if you don’t start a podcast, even in this, this is also related to real estate, is consistency is the biggest piece of whatever you do, if you’re chasing down leads to try to get that next deal. Consistency is going to be your biggest partner, right? If you’re trying to grow a podcast consistency, getting those episodes posted on the same same time, same day, every day, you know, whenever is going to be your biggest asset to helping you grow. If you’re trying to grow your social media consistency, right, you’re posting every day and this and that, right? Those are the things that gonna help you grow, you know, and I believe almost in any prospect of life, right is consistency. So that’s, that’s what I’ll leave you with.
I love that message. And I agree consistency is the key to everything. Well, Mike, appreciate you having me on here, man. And I’d love to go on yours. I don’t know if I’ve scheduled the time to go on yours. But
yeah, I think I think we’re I think we have it on the schedule or we’re working it out so
well. I know you’re booked up brother. But hey, I can’t wait to be on the average Joe’s podcast right? There Amen All right well if you need anything let me know I appreciate it and we’ll catch you later all right sounds good brother Aloha
