Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
She didn't know that
I had hired your company, though
, and so she's like it was likea really basic real.
She sends like a text like,look guys, we got like $30,000,
whatever.
Yeah, so I'm like, oh, aboutthat.
Welcome to Now.
(00:35):
Making Moves in Real Estate,episode 45.
Our guest today spent the firstdecade of his professional
career building Heartland Foods,which was acquired by a private
equity firm in early 2022 afterthe company generated just near
$87 million in gross revenue.
Now he helps individuals andbusinesses start and build their
brands on social media which ishow I met him Monetize and
(00:57):
drive revenue.
As VP of sales at KearnsMarketing, he's also the sales
director for Dr Rewire, helpingbusiness owners rewire their
brains for financial success andabundance, which we are all
about that.
As an investor and hedge fundmanager, he has a diversified
portfolio with positions inmultifamily and single family
(01:18):
projects, late state pre-IPOprivate equity and oil and gas
projects.
So please help us.
Welcome Justin Freshdatt to theshow and I said that correctly,
right.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Hey, you know, at
this point I'm not even really
sure how to pronounce it myself,so let's just go with that.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Okay, cool Sounded
good.
Yeah, nice to see you againWelcome.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah, happy to be
here.
I'm excited to dive into thisthing.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Let's do it.
Tell our listeners all aboutjustin man, where should we
start?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
how far back should
we go?
well, you were born, you're eastcoast guy yeah, I was born in
washington dc, the armpit ofamerica, and um grew up all
around the Beltway area, so justnorth of DC, and Maryland
that's where I grew up Playedhockey.
(02:10):
It's all I wanted to do was goplay in the NHL and then that
dream eventually died in college.
But you know, you learn a lotfrom sports and I guess what I
learned about myself in thattransition was is I needed a new
game to play?
Right, I was never going to bea guy that could just sit at a
desk or, you know, work for afixed rate salary.
(02:32):
So it would.
The natural transition was allright.
I got to figure out how to finda game in the business world,
which for me at first was justknocking doors, direct sales
which if you haven't done thatand you want to build some thick
skin, I recommend everybody dosome door-to-door sales, because
if you can survive that, youcan survive anything in the
business world.
I feel like it only gets easierfrom getting homeowners cursing
(02:55):
you out and slamming doors inyour face, things like that.
So that's kind of how it allstarted.
And then I just got obsessedwith that game and then I think
the biggest thing from there isonce you get excellent, you need
to kind of understand thatyou're topping out.
I think most people.
They want to get to that placeand then they want to be the
cool guy in that pond that's atthe top of the game, when in
(03:17):
reality, the more times you canabandon that to a new game and
keep leveling up and keep beingthe smallest person in the game
is how you end up playing biggames.
So that's kind of what'shappened since then speaking of
big games before.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
I meant to say in the
intro or right now, um, that
you are going to offer a specialoffer to our listeners, um, for
your savvy services, at theconclusion of our show.
So I won't give up what that is, I just want to put people on
the hook to listen, because I'veonly been using your
introductory services for ashort period of time and so far
(03:53):
I'm very happy.
So I want everybody to staytuned and so tell our listeners
what it is that you're doing onsocial media programs.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
The social media
thing started for me.
I'm going to say, around thepandemic, it was kind of.
You know, I saw all these kidson social media that were 10
years younger than me makingmillions of dollars from their
phones.
I'm like there's something tothis, right, because I'm 37.
So we didn't really have socialmedia for the first business
that we built.
So I kind of had the real worldexperience of everything from
(04:23):
call centers to direct mail,running Facebook ads, google,
seo.
I've done all the traditionalstuff and I was kind of late to
the social media game.
In my opinion, which changesover time, you always feel like
you're late when you show up tosomething.
So I started a Facebook groupfor all of our clients at
(04:44):
Heartland Foods.
That's how it kind of started.
I would go live in there.
I was terrible on camera, I washorrible, but for whatever
reason, I did it anyways andthen it turned into okay.
Now I got to build an Instagramand I did it all for organic
food, health and wellness hadnothing to do with how my brands
transitioned over time.
So the biggest lesson forsocial media is everybody wants
(05:06):
to start it after they've donethe thing.
It's the opposite you want tostart it when you haven't done
anything and let everybody seethe journey you go through on
the way to that thing.
So when we eventually sold thatbusiness which came out of
nowhere, by the way the pandemichit.
We were in organic fooddelivery.
It was the perfect industry.
Business blew up.
We were able to sell it to aprivate equity firm.
(05:27):
So overnight I had to reinventmyself and I had started
building this brand already.
So I was like, okay, I got toreally dive in on this and
whatever I do next, I want touse this thing.
So I hired the guys who I'm nowpartnered with at Kearns
Marketing to build my brand, soI'll give them all the credit.
I've learned everything aboutbranding and social media from
these guys and they're literallyseven, eight years younger than
(05:50):
me, and it's kind of a weirddynamic when you get to the age
where you can listen to youngerpeople, which has been great.
So I think just having no ego,looking at who's actually
killing it and just listening,the amount of people that push
back on me when I tell them howto win, that have done nothing,
is just mind-blowing to me.
So that's the lesson from that.
(06:11):
But I took it and then said,okay, I'm going to have a health
coaching company.
It was the natural next stepfrom organic food that did
pretty well on social media.
But then I'm looking at thecapital world.
I've been investing privatelyin projects for a long time and
I wanted to get involved in thatbecause I saw how big the
margins are and, when thenumbers get bigger, how
lucrative it is, and so Istarted raising capital for
(06:33):
hedge funds and real estatesyndications, whatever I could
partner with to leverage mybrand to raise money, and that
turned out to over 10 millionraised in the first year doing
it, and I never spent a dollaron ads.
I did it all through guerrillamarketing on social media.
So it can absolutely be done ifyou need to be realistic with
(06:53):
yourself on where you are in thefood chain.
If you got 10, 20, 30 grand amonth to spend on ads, cool,
let's do that.
If you don't, this is the wayto do it.
You got to do a grassrootsbrand, build and monetize
through DM outreach.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
I was telling you
about the DM outreach, which we
do ish right, talk about that,the DM outreach.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yeah, it can be used
for tons of different things,
right?
So when I'm raising capital,the way you would think you
would send DMs is let's finddoctors, lawyers, rich people
and send them DMs accreditedinvestors right, that's not what
I did, Because, taking somebodycold from a social media DM to
(07:40):
hey, it's 100, I leverage otherpeople's stages, people that
have invested millions ofdollars into their brands, their
podcasts, and bring in warmnetworks through long form
content.
So I just did mass DMs to everypodcast in the country that had
anything to do with real estate, crypto trading, infinite
banking, life insurance.
(08:01):
If it was about money, I wantedto be there because that's
where the people I wanted tomonetize were, and by doing that
, it also allows you to networkwith the top people in your
space, and then it's.
What else can we do together?
Speak on my stage, come to myevent, do my podcast.
Right, and before I knew it, Ihad so much content all over the
(08:22):
internet and people watching mylong form leveraging other
people's stages that I had somuch content all over the
internet and people watching mylong form leveraging other
people's stages that I hadenough inbound leads coming
through my Instagram to raiseall that capital so impressive,
wow, yeah, I mean in a year.
You did that in one year in 11months and I'd never done it
before oh my gosh right.
(08:45):
So then we're like, okay, that'scool, right, when we raise
money for late stage privateequity.
Right last year we did roundson spacex, flexport.
These are some of the bestinvestments in the world, but
that that money goes in.
You raise the money and now yougot to wait for IPO.
So we're looking at two, three,four, five years until a
liquidity event where we canactually get paid on it.
They're monster paychecks, butthat doesn't help you with your
(09:06):
cash flow.
So we needed something else touse the social media to get paid
today.
And that's why we're like allright, we've been doing this
successfully.
Nobody else is doing this model.
So on January 1st of 24, thisyear, we launched the social
media marketing company and,organically, again, no ads.
We've done over a million insales this year and that's our
(09:32):
vast money engine.
So this strategy works.
We've done it for tons ofdifferent industries.
I'll give you another example.
Right, like roofers, we've gotroofers and they wait for storms
.
Right, because the insurancecompanies will pay for the roofs
.
So it's like a free roof, so wewait.
Big hurricane comes throughFlorida or through Texas and
those clients.
Now we're going to mass DM zipcodes where there's damage from
their big brands.
(09:52):
These guys cleaning up hundredsof thousands, millions of
dollars in a couple month periodthrough Instagram.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Wow, so with your
company it sounds like there's
different levels of services.
What are some different thingsthat you do?
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Yeah, there's people
who spend $500 a month with us
and there's people who spend$100 grand a year, right?
So it really depends.
Back to the food chain thinglike where are we starting from?
Do you have a big business orare you just getting started?
So most people that we workwith are in that solopreneur ish
phase where a big ad spendbudget just isn't isn't there.
(10:32):
So step one is building thebrand.
How do we do that?
We need to get a big following.
The vanity metrics matter.
I don't care what anybody says.
You can argue I'm not gonnaargue with you about this stuff.
Like people are like I'm justgoing to post for the next 10
years and hopefully it works.
Like you're going to lose tothe people who know how to do
this.
It just doesn't matter anymore.
Everyone's on the platform, thesaturation is is, restoration
(10:53):
is there and Meta wants you tospend money with them.
So if you're not going to put aton of money behind that boost
button like good luck goingviral unless you get really
lucky and you're the hot tubagirl of this month, right, it's
just not going to happen.
So how do we fix that?
Right?
So we're going to leverage otherbig brands.
Last month we did acollaboration with Cardi B.
This month we're doing one withKhloe Kardashian.
(11:13):
She one with Khloe Kardashian.
She's going to put up a post.
It's going to have a bunch ofYSL bags, louis Vuitton, and
it's going to say hey, one of myfollowers is going to win all
this.
All you have to do to be entered, to win is go follow this list
of accounts, right?
Those are accounts that arepaid spots that we steal the
following essentially from thatbrand.
So anybody who goes into acampaign like that is going to
get 50 to 100,000 followers overa two to three week period
(11:35):
after she makes that post.
So that's how we leverage it.
We do smaller campaigns withmid-tier influencers every month
.
That'll get 10 to 20,000followers.
But you can build a brand likethat overnight, right?
It doesn't mean you're going tomake money with it.
It doesn't mean you're going tomonetize those followers.
That's not the reason to do it.
You want the brand credibility.
(11:55):
So then we can go to targetedDMs and pull the right avatar
into your brand and when theyland on your page, you are the
industry answer because of howbig your brand is built.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Okay, that makes
sense, because when you were
first saying that I'm like, yeah, but they're not, maybe not the
followers that you want, youknow your avatar and then you
just explain.
That's how we now me Right.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
And then you're the
perfect example, right?
My VAs are sending out 30 to 50DMS a day.
They're looking all overInstagram for people who are
paying for a blue check, 10,000followers or less low engagement
, and they are creating content,they're investing in their
brand and they don't haveresults.
So I'm the answer to that,right?
So all we have to do with theclient is say, okay, who's the
(12:38):
person you help, how do we findthem?
Right?
And we pull them into a bigbrand.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Video message.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Yeah, Taking the time
to do a selfie.
All the difference in the world.
Nobody does that right.
There's look there, and I knowthat everybody listening to this
you probably get 20 DMS a weekat least of people trying to
sell you likes, comments,followers, all this stuff.
Why do people do business withus?
Because we're not slinging botsin your face like these people
are, and I'm not trying to sellyou in the first message.
(13:07):
I'm actually trying toestablish a relationship.
I follow you first.
I like your stuff, I comment onit, I go through the stories.
I make sure I'm supportingthese people before they do
business with me.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
How many people are
working with you in your
business, like if someone signsup, are they working with you
directly?
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Are they working with
a team?
How does that work?
Yeah, so, regardless of thepackage you sign up for, you
come into the mastermind groupon WhatsApp.
We do a coaching call live onZoom once a week on Tuesdays, so
anybody can show up to that,ask questions.
Uh, we have a different topicevery week.
Uh, we basically just give awaythe social media game for free
and then say you know, do it onyour own or, if the time is more
valuable, hire us to do it.
(13:47):
We're not.
We're not gatekeeping anything.
We want to see everybody win.
And, um, what was the originalquestion?
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Uh, if they're
working with you, or how many
people are on your team thatyour clients are.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yeah, yeah, so they
work directly with the person
that brings them in.
It's either going to be me,sergio or cody.
Those are um are.
We're the three partners inthis business.
But um, it depends what theservice is.
We have over 20 editors onstaff.
So if, if we're doing yourcontent creation, we use
mondaycom for deliverables,you'll see all your reels
(14:21):
getting uploaded in there andthen you give feedback if you
want it to be re-edited or anytweaks.
If you're working with thefollowing and the engagement,
it's automatically attached toyour page.
So the second you post a reel,it's API dropped into our groups
and you'll see a ton ofactivity flooded to your posts
in the first 15 minutes.
So the idea with that is cool.
(14:42):
We got a big following number,but if the engagement doesn't
match it, everybody thinks it'sfake.
So we need to have congruency onthe brand and the way we do
that is we have thousands ofpeople in these different groups
that have different jobs, soone of them is the second you
post.
They're going to go to yourcontent.
They're going to watch it allthe way through because
Instagram's algorithms lookingat watch time.
(15:03):
They're going to like it,they're going to comment
something relevant, they'regoing to hit the share button
and then you're going to watchyour stuff go through the
explore pages, through thealgorithm, much more efficiently
than it would have if you postit so you can look at the
results.
You can talk to any of ourclients.
Your stuff's going to catchtraction when you kind of, you
(15:25):
know throw a ton of engagementat it in the first 15, 20
minutes.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Well, I've seen it
online so it's, and it's only
been I don't know how, and Iknow when we first talked it
wasn't like.
The package I signed up isn'tnecessarily designed to drive
following, it's the engagementso, which is working, and some
interested to learn about thatnext package on driving
(15:51):
followers?
That was where you did a clap,basically yeah Well, that one is
pretty expensive, so I don'tknow that.
I think there's something inbetween.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Yeah, the big tier
celebrities are going to be
expensive.
They're anywhere from five to10 grand to get into those
campaigns, but you'll get 50 to100,000 followers.
So if you divide that down,it's like a thousand bucks for
every 10K.
Is, you know, a little bit moreexpensive than our normal
campaigns, but the quality ismuch better.
Right, we can do mid-tierinfluencers.
(16:22):
Um, you know, those are 500bucks to get 10 000 followers,
so it's not not crazy expensive.
It's about and I and I want tobe clear about something
strategy wise it's not about howmany followers you have.
It's about making your onlinebrand match the player you are
in the real world.
If I had 5 million followers,it would be kind of silly.
(16:44):
I'm not that famous, right.
So I, I look at, okay, who arethe players in my space?
Who's doing a hundred millionin sales?
Like that's to me for what I do.
I think I'm around 100,000follower, 200,000 follower guy,
right, you got to figure outwhat that is for you and that's
the.
You know the number, the metricyou want to achieve, and then
(17:06):
you pull back from thosecampaigns and that's why we do
everything month to month orquarter to quarter, with no
contracts.
Because we need to change yourpackage depending on what the
brand needs at any given time.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Because we need to
change your package depending on
what the brand needs at anygiven time, which I like.
That too, yeah, not like a yearcontract or a six-month
contract or quarterly, or youknow.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah, my opinion is,
if you have the results, you'll
get the retention you don't needa contract.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
That's a breath of
fresh air.
All of it was a breath of freshair.
That's why it worked.
I was like, oh, why not?
Why not give this?
I'm not locked in, it's notcrazy expensive.
I got to meet you.
We hit it off, not just from thesocial media thing, but also
your investing side.
You know what I mean.
We had conversations aroundthat.
So you're I'm like, well,there's just, like you said,
(17:54):
we're hit up with a lot.
Like I got your messages andtotally blew you off.
I was like you know anotherspam or whatever, because
there's so many out there it'shard to know which ones are
legit, that really do what theysay they're going to do or going
to move the needle for you onwhat you're trying to achieve
with your own goals.
So it's nice to have someonethat's already been vetting you.
(18:17):
Here you go everyone listening,michelle's been using them.
It's working.
Also, I just see the value inlike.
I want to know more.
Like.
I touched on our podcast.
Like we want to grow ourpodcast.
We haven't even had aconversation on like.
How can you help us do thatRight?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Yeah, some of the
biggest podcasts in the world
that you know charge five to 10grand some 20, 30, 50,000 to go
on them have built their brandsthis way Right.
So for and this is for forpeople who want to go on
podcasts think about it this wayIf you invest 10, 20 grand in
your brand, now all of a suddenyou're being invited onto the
podcast where normally it costs$20,000.
(18:58):
A lot of building a brand isthe access it gets you with
people, but also the money youwon't have to spend to get in
those rooms, to get on thosestages wow, yep, mind blown a
little bit here.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Can we circle back
around a little bit on a
different note with yourinvestment side?
Right, because obviously we, weboth invest and a lot of our
listeners are realtors.
Tell us a little bit more aboutthat yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
So I started
investing first in single family
homes.
That was you, you know, my wifeand I.
We were broke.
The first thing we did we hadnegative net worth.
She's going to school, I'mknocking doors.
Our first thing was we got toget the first property so
naturally, and I think it's agreat strategy for anybody who
doesn't really want to be aninvestor but wants to have
investments.
Buy whatever you can afford, golive in it for a year.
(19:50):
It's going to be on a primaryresidence rate, right.
Investor rates are going to behigher.
So you live in it for a year.
You save up all the cash youcan.
You eat peanut butter and jelly, like this is all stuff we did,
right, like drive a 20 year oldcar, like, if you have the
vision, make those sacrificesearly and then you buy the
(20:11):
second one, you move out, yourent that one out right, that
that's what we did to get ourfirst few properties.
You let time take care of it.
Those properties are worthdouble what we paid for them 10,
10 years ago, right, and thenit was okay.
I want to graduate to biggerunits.
I'm not, you know that savvy.
I don't want to be an operatorin multifamily.
So it was okay.
Who can I meet and partner with?
(20:32):
That's doing bigger deals.
That's how I got involved insyndications and you just keep
putting the inputs work on yourprimary business.
Now you got all this extra cash.
Then you make the investmentright, which then turned into
okay oil and gas deals.
Like going to all theseinvestment groups, I would spend
five, 10 grand to be in a roomfor a weekend to meet all the
(20:55):
people that are now my partnersin business.
If anybody sends me a messageof like I give you this much
money, what do I get?
I'm like you already lost.
The best investments I've madewere on blind faith where I had
no clue what was going to happen.
You've got to be okay withlosing a lot to get the home run
(21:15):
.
So that's not your mentality.
Like just go get a W2.
Don't even go into this gamebecause you're going to lose a
whole lot more than you're goingto win.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
So why don't you tell
our listeners what, um, what
you're going to offer them?
Um, if you know the specialthat you sent me, you, you give
it up yeah, so 20 off anymarketing service at kern's
marketing.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
So, um, whatever the
first thing you do with us,
we'll, we'll shave 20 off.
That's my piece.
So I'll give you a free monthand, uh, and, if you want, um
with dr rewire, um, the programthat I have with him is about
sales, driving revenue.
Between the two of us.
We have over $150 million insales and we teach it and we
have a weekly call.
(22:00):
It's a one-year program, abunch of modules.
It's a great mastermind thatthere's a strategy session.
It's 45 minutes.
So, whether you sign up or youdon't, I'll give you a free
strategy session for that.
So, at the very least, you know, we, I can, uh, you know, give
you 45 minutes of my time I lovethat.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
That's great, all
right well, how do our listeners
find you?
Speaker 2 (22:25):
instagram.
You know what's so crazy.
I literally I deleted my website, don't even want it anymore
just funneling all through yourinstagram yeah, when I meet
people in person like leverageyour brand the first thing I I
say is hey, what's yourinstagram?
Like if they try to give me abusiness card, I'm like cool,
but what's your instagram like?
(22:47):
Business cards go to diesomewhere.
You'll forget.
You'll never even know you metthat person.
You get their contact.
It goes to die in your You'llforget.
You'll never even know you metthat person.
You get their contact.
It goes to die in your contacts.
But if we can follow each otheron social media, you're going
to see me every day.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
You know, I realized
that on like second to last day
at a conference I was at.
I'm like, oh my gosh, I do mydigital business card, but still
a business card.
And finally I'm like, what am Idoing here?
Scan, but still a business card.
And finally I'm like, what am Idoing here?
Scan this.
Go to my instagram page.
I wish I had thought of it,yeah, like five days earlier.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yeah yeah, yeah, I
mean it's look, it's a game
changer for your in-personnetworking, especially after you
build the brand.
You just casually say, hey,let's follow each other.
And they see your brand likewatch it, their eyes light up.
Next thing it's like they'rejust locked in right like how do
I learn more from you?
How do I do business?
What can we work on?
It's instant credibility, likeyou need that when you meet
people wow.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
yeah, well, it's so
great I know I'm gonna take
advantage of your 20 off steel.
Yeah, so justin sold all right.
Well, thank you, justin, withsuch for hopping on I I
appreciate it and I'm lookingforward to continuing to build
my brand, our brand, and helpour listeners.
In fact, we just had a callwith an agent in Texas and he
(24:00):
was like I need help on socialmedia and I was like listen to
our podcast, yep.
So I think it's a common thingwith realtors.
A lot of realtors hate doingtheir social.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
So they need.
Well, that's the number oneindustry that um needs it.
That is resistant to it,doesn't want to listen to me,
thinks they know everything andthey put no effort into you know
, into into their pages.
They just I'm just gonna saylike I'm not even like hiding
where it's.
It's literally the hardestconversations I have are with
realtors.
Right, because they're doing areal world thing.
They don't want to put effortin this online thing.
(24:34):
They don't know the power of itbecause they haven't done it
yet.
But if you can build thebiggest brand in your community,
you're gonna crush it when youthink people, when they're
looking at realtors, don't golook at your social media, like
you're losing business to theperson who has a bigger brand
than you.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
I promise but they
could believe that even bigger
than that, though, like.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
These are some of the
capabilities, like once you
have the brand built like we, wecan scrape following lists, we
can mass dm zip codes.
We can make you dominant.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Every single person
in your area will know who you
are well, I don't know if weshould actually share this um
episode.
Maybe we just keep all thesegold nuggets for us I'm just
kidding.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
It's okay, because
the reality of people is there's
one out of a thousand that willactually do something with it.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Right.
Well, and they think, oh, I'mjust going to make a little
Canva template here and pop thaton and I'm good Like.
No, you're not.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
No, actually what it
is is you're spamming.
Yeah, Like all you do is poston social media and you're not
being social with other people.
You're spamming the platform.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Good way to look at
it.
Yeah, all right.
Well, thank you, justin.
We appreciate it and more tocome in our relationship working
together.
I'm super excited and we'lltalk to you later.
Yeah, thank you, justin.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
My pleasure.