 What's up everybody? Ricky truth here. Welcome back. So today I got Brian Castello with me out in California. What's up, Brian? Rick, thanks for having me, brother. What's going on, man? I'm excited. I'm excited. Ready to go. We're, you know, we're doing a lot of stuff. I just signed actually to a new office. So we're in the process of next two weeks. We're just moving everything over. Got a bigger space, you know, newer building. So we're excited, man. Absolutely, bro. Are you? So tell me about this heat wave over there. What's going on with that? Crazy, man. You know, we've had some a little bit of drizzle and rain, you know, in the morning and then it gets hot, but that's the craziness of SoCal, you know? So it's pretty much sums up the area. Yeah. So, man, look, you know what I love about you? Consistency. Like I watch you, I watch you do your YouTube videos and they're consistent and I watch you on Instagram and you're consistently putting stuff out there and that tells me that you're just a consistent person. You're a dependable person. You're a hardworking person, you know what I mean? And like seeing it from afar, like I don't know the deep philosophies behind what you're doing. I don't know what you teach exactly in your coaching programs and all that stuff. I know everything works. It doesn't really matter what you what you do. You have to work. You have to be consistent. You have to be dependable. So that's one thing that I just me observing you as one thing that I've noticed is that you're consistent. You know what I'm saying? You can't lie about where you are. You might can lie on social media about how you feel, what's going on in your life, but you can't lie about what you're doing or where you are. You know what I mean? So I think that I think that's like 90% of it and the other 10% is whatever you make of it. But for the few of my subscribers here that don't know anything about you, give me just a little background. Sure, man. BC, Brian Cassella, Southern California ex athlete. I played professionally basketball overseas for a couple of years after my second ankle injury. I decided to hang up the sneakers and had to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I went through like a one year period where I was lost, borderline depressed because I dedicated about 15 years of my life to just the sport. And suddenly all those dreams were gone, felt sorry for myself for about 12 months. Then stumbled across the opportunity of getting into real estate to make the story short, met with a broker, sat down with him for about two hours. He gave me the rundown and I immediately just made the connection. I said, man, this is a great opportunity. This is a profession where I don't get paid per hour. I get paid per performance and I don't have to climb up some corporate ladder. I can just learn the trade, get some skills, be consistent like you just said. And you know, I can make some moves really quickly. So I got into the business officially, I believe it was August of 2013. And I've been selling real estate ever since in the last couple of years. It's been kind of a social media craze, but you've been a part of it too. So you know all about that. So you're your solo agent. You have a team. How do you operate? Small team. After about two and a half years going into my third, I brought Lloyd on my girlfriend. And then from there, I've been slowly building it. You know, we just hired a full time admin because we had a part time one. So we had to upgrade and it's been a slow process of building my team. I want to keep it smaller. You know, I don't want to have a 20, 30, 40 percent team. I'm pretty good with about three or four agents. I think that's perfect. And I want to focus on getting each agent's production up to a good number. What is your primary focus as far as new business? Primary focus right now is a lot of expired listings. We've been seeing that increase a lot, especially the last year and a half, especially the last year because the market's been adjusting here, at least I know. Big one is agent to agent referral, especially through social media. We've gotten a ton. I believe just sending out referrals this year. We've already closed six and receipt of referrals. We've closed seven so far this year. Besides that, it would be sphere of influence referral and all the business that I created from the beginning, meaning all the people that I contacted and added to my database, cold calling, door knocking, they're now starting to convert. So basically you've built your spirit, but door knocking, cold calling, all that. And you have this big sphere and then you have the referrals coming in, coming and going. And then as far as new business today, it's just basically strictly expired. Yeah, pretty much. Or the cold calls, a good source for us has been absentee owners as well. I hit those a lot early in my career and we still get, you know, we pretty much get like one or two a month between the expires and the absentee owners, then everything else is pretty much just icing on the cake. Do you buy leads? No, we don't. The only thing we've done is put a little bit of money to social media, especially on Facebook to promote, you know, the real estate side, but all of its active marketing, making calls, going door to door, building the database and that kind of stuff. Did you ever at one point buy Zilla leads or any kind of online leads? Never. Yeah. Never. I tested it when it first came out. I did it for like three to six months, something like that. And I realized really quickly, this was not, this was not efficient, you know, and so, of course, I'm a single agent. I'm a complete single agent. So it's a little bit different ball game. I mean, there's guys out there crushing it, you know, with like a big team buying Zilla leads and all that. Like I say, man, everything works. You just got to figure out what works for you, how you can put it into a system that generates, you know, what you feel is the best situation for you and you like the growth. I mean, that's what the bottom line is. So I love your structure, small team, expireds, absentee owners, sphere. So you're really going deeper and deeper with your sphere. Like that's one thing you really concentrate on. Absolutely. The one mistake I can say I made in the beginning was I was very hardcore Mike Ferry, because that's like what I was taught and person like the only person I could find in the beginning that was like a coach. And so I was out hunting every day. And I kind of neglected that in the beginning. I was making great contacts, looking for business and getting some. But I was just wasting a lot because instead of taking the extra couple seconds or minutes to capture people's information and build my my backend system and my database, I was so hungry for the next deal and just wanted that commission check that I'm like, okay, you're not ready now, forget it. I'm on to the next. And about six months or a year in it dawned on me, I said, Hey, you know, I'm going to be in this business for for some time, I need to start building this I've probably already missed 100 or 150 people, solid people that I could have added to my database. That's going to, you know, bite me in the rear end in a couple years. I really did a buckle down on that. And after about two and a half or three years when I made the transition to start building my team, I really started seeing, you know, the benefits of all that work that I put in the first two years start to bear fruit from building your database. So what do you do for your database? You get them, you talk to them, you create the relationship, you get that going and then what like how do you what do you do to stay in front of people? Great question. We do once a year we do a client appreciation parties. We do weekly weekly emails. I do I have them split up into two categories. I have the A team, which is people who I've already done business with who are also like close personal friends or people I know very well. I give them a text message video usually and a call every four to six weeks. And then we have the B team, which might be people who I met doorknock in a cold calling. They know me, but it's not too good of a relationship yet. They still get those weekly emails, but I give them a buzz and a text every eight to about 10 weeks. Beautiful, man. Like I had no idea anything about your business. So I really like what I'm hearing to be honest with you. I built my entire business on a weekly email, like just straight weekly email. That's really all because like where I'm at. It's a lot of absentee because I'm selling gold front condos. They live all over the country. So my sort of customer appreciation party doesn't work because everybody's in different states. So of course, doesn't work really well. So the weekly emails, what's kind of carried me through. So if you're talking to an expired or an absentee owner, I know those are two different scenarios, but let's say an expired says, you know, I don't want to I don't want to sell it anymore. I want to hold off. What's our response? Well, usually I'll get into the situation. I'll say, look, I get it. You're on the market six months. I'd be frustrated to how was the process? Right? Like I know you had Bob as your agent. How was the communication with him and what was his feedback throughout the six months that you were on the market? And that's how I started. And they'll tell me, well, he didn't communicate. And I don't I think the biggest mistake people make is right in the beginning, they're like, well, you know, hire me and in 30 days or less, I'll get the home sold. It's too aggressive too soon. Right. When I call somebody, I know they're already going to have a shield up because they're like, who's this guy? He's the fifth agent to call me today. So I kind of want to backtrack lower my tone a little bit, find a little bit more about the situation. If I can, they give me that five seconds on the phone and then work it in from there. It's more of a longer game now. You know, in the beginning, like I said, I was very hungry. Hey, you know what, we can list your home and 30 days and sell it very Mike Ferry, like I said, which has its moments for me. But most of the time now I ease my way to conversations more and we kind of just go back and forth. And it's a dialogue, not just me hammering them on the phone. You know what I mean? So have you learned a lot and really changed up your game in the way that you approached new clients and stuff since you started YouTube coaching, talking agents all over the country, stuff like that. Has your game changed? Has your game elevated since you started all this? Absolutely. 100% Rick. And, you know, when I started, I just had that one reference, one school of teaching one technique, you know, through my own studies as well and studying different people. I've gotten more perspectives and more information. And I've been able to, you know, pick certain pieces and then grow my own type of style where I can be more like a chameleon, you know. Some people I might have to be a little bit more aggressive with them. Some people I have to hold their hand and take it step by step and go very slow. And the more I've studied communication and people, it's really up my game a lot because now I've had so many types of clients, different ages, different ethnic backgrounds, different diversity as far as, you know, income levels from somebody who is barely making any money to multimillionaires. So it's almost forced me as well to really become more versatile when it comes to communicating with people. Absolutely. Yeah, it's like, it's like most of the training out there puts us in this scenario where we're supposed to handle every situation the same. When every situation is different, you have to play have to fill it out and see what's going on. So how would that differ from differ from talking to an absentee owner, right, who wasn't on the market? Is there any difference there? Are we doing the same thing or we're just getting into these conversations and seeing where they go? You know, my approach with the absentee owner, I typically have the approach of saying, have you have you been following the market, right? Because a lot of them there, they typically have more money. They're a little bit more savvy. And they'll tell me, well, no, I haven't. And I'll say, look, I'd be keen on giving you maybe a CMA to see where the value is at. And if the conversation opens from there, I'll throw something like have you considered maybe doing a 1031 to get into something more lucrative so you can get more cash flow. Most of the ones that I'm calling and talking to want to hold because of the rents. So my angle is if I can increase their cash flow or get them into something more lucrative for their bottom line, they might consider it. But if I ask them straight out, do you want to sell? They're going to tell me no. So I kind of created that based on the scenarios that I was getting because my initial approach was, are you thinking of selling? And 90% were like, well, no, I want to hold on to it and keep building cash flow. So I kind of had to create that different angle to go in to see if I could open up the conversation. Right, right. That's good. So you said the market has kind of turned. There's more expires now than there were a year ago, 18 months ago. The markets changed here, too. Like total, total shift, complete shift over the last 18 months. I saw it happening last February. And then I started to change my game plan up. So what are you guys seeing over there in terms of the market changing over the last 18 months? What's happening? And what are you doing to make adjustments? Yeah, I mean, I kind of called it July or August of last year because around the time that you mentioned February, March, I noticed like, especially the luxury market here started seeing more inventory and a slow down. And I said, well, that's going to trickle down to the regular market here pretty soon. So starting July, August, I saw that. And really, one of the immediate things I saw was the listings that we were getting weren't getting, you know, five, 10, 15, sometimes up to like 1820 offers in two days. It was taking a week or two to even get that first offer or a month to get it under contract. And I had a little powwow with my team and said, whoa, we really have to focus now on pricing homes properly. You know, for a couple of years here, you could just slap a home for sale and the demand itself, even if it was a little bit high or even kind of crazy high, people would still come in and make offers. And we're seeing now with a little bit more inventory, I think it went up on average, I think about 7% inventory like relatively quickly within a few months, bars are being a little bit more picky. You know, the end of last year, we saw the interest rates go up a little bit. So everyone kind of took their foot off the gas. And it really caused us to, especially with our database, Rick, to educate them more and say, hey, this is where it's at. You're getting mailers still and messages that the market's on fire and this and that. Look, this is the real deal. The market's been adjusting and you need to be abreast of what's going on. And so you can plan accordingly, because if you're in the market, the next three to six months, you need to know this. So I would say our biggest shift was the open discussions with new prospects and with our database was really focusing on educating them and keeping them up to speed on what's really going on versus letting them just find out themselves versus the media. You know, I love it, man. That's how you make it do a crash. Like you just flip over from sell, sell, sell to educate, educate and see what you could to help people because closings are going to continue to happen. So so days in the market are up, inventories up, you know, there's more expires, things are hanging on the market longer, expiring off the market, not selling. You aren't getting the offers that you were getting 18 months ago. Interest rates went up. Now interest rates are going to come down, they say they can't, they can't figure it out. Right. But hopefully that will strengthen us. Hopefully we'll see a little pop here at the end of the year. If they start lowering the rates and everything. What? And I never try to predict the market. You know what I mean? I got in trouble doing that back in 05. What? What got you into the coaching, the YouTube being the, you know, the influencer side of things? Because I mean, you know, real estate is tough. I mean, it's a full-time gig. I mean, now you're going to distract yourself from something already really tough or something else that's really tough. Yeah. You know, what was the thought there going into that? Yeah. Great question. You know, in the beginning, my focus was just kind of documenting my journey and letting people know what I was doing. So back, you know, 2014, you know, March, February when I started making videos, I was posting just one video a week saying, Hey, I'm Brian. I'm out here in Southern California. This is what I'm doing. And every week was, Hey, I'm going through this situation. This is how I handle it the next week. Hey, I read this book. It gave me some great information regarding mindset in this situation. So it was more just like a personal diary, we can say, like a video blog of what I was doing. And after about a year, a year and a half, you know, I'm going to other, you know, my fairy events and other real estate events and people are like, Oh, hey, Brian, I watch your videos like, and I kept hearing that over and over. And I'm like, dude, I have like a thousand subscribers like not that many people know me. And it got to the point where people just started asking, Hey, man, do you coach? Hey, do you sell any products on door knocking or cold calling? And after hearing that 50 100 times, I said, Well, maybe people need some help. You know, after I started putting out a lot more educational videos for realtors, and I had brokerages, a lot of them from overseas saying, Hey, man, is it cool if we use some of your videos for our training? That's when the light bulb went off. I said, Whoa, this training that I thought was standard in this industry apparently is not. And a lot of people are out there lost. So that's one of the things that caused me to ramp it up on YouTube and continue making more videos because I knew more people needed to see it because I don't know. I'm sure you're on this because I get this feeling from you, Ricky. We want to help raise the bar in the industry. You know what I mean? Not everybody has to sell 100 homes a year like you or be a mega superstar, but to at least raise the average. So we're working with competent agents who are working hard and who know their stuff. That's been one of them. But the second one with the coaching was just a demand. And I just I was getting DMs and messages on my YouTube and Facebook and Instagram. I said, well, maybe I should put something together so I can share some more intimate stories and other things that I've studied and learned throughout these years. And it'll help people. And that's kind of what we're at today. I think my modern success program is floating between like 280 and 300 people the last month or two. So that's what we're at with that. But it literally was almost by demand. We can say that, you know, all of that stuff started. Yeah, man, like in as far as I'm concerned, I'm just trying to help people not have to quit. Like, like, I don't want to see people get in because the people that get in the business are really good people. Like they really want it. They work hard, all the stuff, but they get led down the wrong path so quickly. And their bills start piling up on them so fast that before they know it, they're in this dark, deep, dark hole that they can't get out unless they they just have to go get another job and try to figure out, you know, how to survive. And I'm sitting here like, man, that was such a waste because if they would have just known a few key principles, you know, and just known these easy little things that are so easy, then that person would have made a really good agent and they would have been able to live a much better life, provided a much better life for their family, for their kids, for their co-workers, for everybody. Yeah, that's the vision I have. I mean, my mission is to reduce the failure rate in the industry. One agent at a time. So when did you so when did you get into like stepping it up to speaking because I saw you were in Australia with Glenn and did a couple other events and stuff. When did when did that break out? Well, originally, I knew that I did Toastmasters for two years. A lot of people don't know that. So I worked on my public speaking skills kind of behind the scenes for a long time. I mentioned it, but in those videos in the beginning, those have, you know, two or three hundred views. I'm not that many people saw it. So, you know, you fast forward today. After about a year in Toastmasters, I said, you know what, a lot of people that I'm contacting and having conversations with seem to be moved by what I'm talking about. Maybe I can offer myself for free to some local boards of realtors, some other companies, and, you know, give them a lunch and learn or a 30 minute or an hour talk on whatever it is mindset, cold calling, door knocking sales. And I did that a lot. I think I tallied it up. I did over 90 free just speaking gigs, you know, locally here. And then sometimes if I was out of town visiting a friend or going to an event, I would set it up with another company in that city to go speak while I was there in town. So it started like that. And what I noticed speaking in person was the impact it had on people, you know, they can watch your videos in my videos all day. But when somebody comes in person, even if it's for free, and they finally hear you speak, I think it hits them at a completely different level than just watching us on video, you know what I mean? And I saw that right away, you know, people would come up to us after the event like, oh, man, thank you so much. And I'm so glad that I came here. You taught me so much. And you're like that one positive voice that I have, everyone around me is doubting me. And I have all this negativity. And once that switch went on, it was very easy for me to go forward. At that point, I had built kind of a repertoire. I put out a lot of stuff. And, you know, Glenn, through somebody else started contacting me, I started going to the Bay Area, California, Vegas. I mean, I'm going to Florida here in August to do a tour with the Florida Association of Realtors. It's just one of those things that I think a lot of the free stuff that I did got out enough that people just started coming to me and requesting. And now it's, you know, one or two a month. I'm speaking at a non real estate event this weekend in Hollywood, right? And I have one like every week or two now. So it's really expanded a lot. But I think the original foundation for that was just doing it for free. And then everything else kind of attracted itself. Yeah, yeah, Toast Masters, free boom. Yeah. So what's next for Brian? Like what, like where are you going from here? Do you like what seriously? What is your goals for like, you know, the next two years, the next 10 years? Like what's on your radar? Man, so much, you know, I actually had the pleasure of one of our clients. We sold them a new construction home that's not done yet. And I created a great relationship with him. I've always had a dream of opening either one or multiple sports bars, right? That's just kind of been my thing when I was younger. And I always had that thought and he happens to be in that business. So me and him are going to power out together. And I think within the next two to three years, we're going to partner up and open one here in Southern California. So that's definitely on my radar to do in the next two or three years. Obviously, my team, I want to maybe add one more agent and really work on my newer agents to increase their per agent productivity, obviously, because I don't want a big team. So the goal for us is to get our gross commission up to 1.2 million. I really want to hit that mark as a team. Additionally, the speaking I want to create and it might not just be me. I might partner up with other people kind of like we're doing our event in Dallas in September, kind of like create a tour where you know, maybe me and you do one section and then we have other people come in too. So that's a vision of mine to create like this tour that could be for real estate but maybe outside of real estate where maybe once a quarter, we're hitting like the United States, you know, Europe, Asia, you know, Australia, New Zealand, and start something like that. Aside from that, it would really be to start also increasing my investment property portfolio. I currently own five properties and I want to double that within the next five years for sure. So I can cash flow some more. Nice. Nice. Those five properties. Are they like multi unit or they just single family or what are they commercial? One duplex here in LA and four single family resonances that I bought at the tax deductions in Houston. Nice. Nice. I've got six doors and I just I have a fourplex under contract that I just did inspection on today. So I'm trying to get to 10 and then I want to I want to kind of build from there. It's a lot. It's a long game. You know what I mean? I mean, like pays for itself pays itself off. You know, you deal with the little problems here and there and you know, but at the end of the day, you know, you get enough of them. Then, uh, then it works out in the end. So speaking of the speaking of the event in Dallas, I'm pretty excited about this, bro. For real. Um, Danny Morel, you know, Joshua Smith, Chaston Jay, Colton, you me, some other pretty pretty interesting names. Um, what do you think? Like, are you just straight stoked about this 100% man? And it's so unique to because all of all of us, you know, whether you go from the bottom to the top, we're working in the business and we're doing well, but we also are doing well on social media. So I think Colton on our call earlier, he really said it well when he said, you know, it's the old and the new mixed together and we're doing it. And that in itself is very unique. And if people can grab that concept at the event, which they will because they're going to hear from all the speakers, that's huge because you have to still be able to do the traditional stuff like we're doing. But, you know, we have a new wave being ushered in that I think people are still kind of sleeping on and they're trying to ignore it when it's a free platform that all of us can put our stuff out on and build. I've built my brand for free, you know, like people don't don't get that. I haven't done the Zillow stuff on the real estate side. I haven't done like paid ads to grow my stuff on Facebook and Instagram yet. But I've just grown it organically through collaborations and just putting stuff out. So if people can really understand that and, you know, I highly recommend they come to the event. It's going to be a game changer for sure, dude. So this is going to be the first of many and I have a feeling that this is really going to blow up and like huge huge. Oh, yeah, dude. I like, I know it's going to blow up, but I like the concept there. I've said this in videos that there's agents that are only focused on the new school stuff. They're only focused on social media and tech and all this. And then there's agents, older agents that are only focused on the old school stuff, post cards, phone calls, stuff like that. I feel like I'm the most dangerous agent out there because I'm the Ex-Lineal. I'm right in the middle where like I got in real estate with no social media, right? Had to build it with emails, phone calls, postcards and letters. And then boom, I'm still young enough to know how to use technology to build my brand. And so if you really will do what Brian's talking about and take, take both, both and find the balance between both, you know, like, I like to do the three by three. I don't know what your thing is with phone calls, but I like to do three hours, three days a week, Monday through Wednesday, you know, as a goal. And then if you have time Thursday or Friday, let's make some more, but mandatory three by three. And then nine hours a week, like if you do that consistently, you're going to crush it. If you have the right intent, if you're really doing it, if you're making the calls, you know what you're supposed to do. And if you'll take some of this other time and devote towards building your brand, I think that's where it's all going, personal brand, you know, personal brand is where the entire world is going. I mean, I still believe that the big box, I mean, I'm still with remax and I still believe in those brands as well. I believe that they carry their weight for sure. But at the same time, I'm nothing if I'm just a nobody at remax, I have to build my brand together with remax to make it work. So and you're with the XP, right? Yeah, I'm with the XP. When did you go there? It's been 14, 14 months, I think we went here. Let's say you're at Keller Williams. Yeah. And then you just basically went they had a better setup for the the the cap and the recruiting and all that just look better. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I think they're a great company. I did a couple videos on them. I didn't go because, you know, it's just what it's not for everybody. Yeah. But I think they're an incredible company. Like I really believe in them. I think they're going to go really far. Cool, man. I want to wrap it up. Anything else you want to say to anybody connecting with my audience, so on and so forth? I appreciate you, man. This was fun. I'm definitely looking forward to Dallas. If they want to check me out at Brian Caselo is my handle for Instagram and everything else. If you put me on Google, you'll find me. But I appreciate you having me do this is fun. Absolutely. Yeah. More to come and I'm putting a link below for the for the event in Dallas. And there's a coupon code there that's good till July 1st. I've also got Brian's YouTube channel link there and you guys can find him on Instagram, too. And if you guys need anything whatsoever, reach out to me or Brian. If you heard something here, you got a question, hit us up on Instagram. We're answering all our DMs and doing everything we could do to help you there. And basically the bottom line, what I got out of this today is that me and Brian just want to see you guys succeed. That is it. You know, if you come to us and say, oh, I enjoy the interview deal with Brian so much, man. What can I do for you? Nothing. Just take something that we said and use it to go succeed. I just don't want you to have to quit real estate. That's it. So with that, we'll see you guys later. Thank you so much. And we'll talk to you soon.