Do you invest in real estate?
Are you in the stocks?
What's your favorite thing
to put your money into right now?
I don't invest in stocks,
although I do have people set up
fake profiles of me
and offering stock tips.
I say, I don't invest in stocks or cryptocurrency.
I love real estate.
That's where I
park most of my wealth.
So my formula is pretty simple.
I always say,
wealthy people, entrepreneurs, should invest.
I believe in making money with your business,
also with your skills,
I call them high income skills,
and then you put into your high return investments.
Right.
I have a framework I gotta teach.
Yep.
So, real estate I love,
because it's something that you have control.
Exactly.
Right? If I invest in a stock,
I can't call up the CEO,
the chairman and say,
hey I don't like the way you are managing the budget.
That's right.
I don't like the way you are doing things.
But when you own a property,
you know what?
There are a few things that we could do.
There are a lot of things actually
that we can do.
To force appreciation, right?
That's right.
Or, we're in control.
So, what kind of real estate are you--
Commercial.
Same.
Mutli-family.
Okay, cool.
So, I own in Pennsylvania.
Nice.
You own in Vancouver?
Vancouver.
I also have a lot of stuff out in Asia.
Now I'm at a unique advantage,
because I live in Canada, obviously.
I have my Canadian citizenship.
But, I also have my Hong Kong citizenship.
Nice.
So I've got them both, right?
Nice.
One thing about Hong Kong,
we are a city with no rent control.
Oh, wow.
They have no rent control.
That changes the game.
That changes the game a lot, right?
So they say,
tenant sign a, whatever,
three year, five year lease.
By the end of their tenancy,
if I wanna increase the rent,
I can double, triple it,
if the market would sustain it.
Exactly.
They could.
We could do that, right?
So, it's pretty powerful.
That's great.
Talk to me about your investment philosophy.
Yeah, I mean,
It's pretty similar honestly.
I'm in media because it's
high revenue generating, Right.
high margin. Right.
You know and I take it,
and I also invest in real estate.
I think the one difference
that we have in our formula is
that I have a venture capital firm.
Correct.
So, I invested my own cash
until I built a reputation. Yes.
And then my team went out to the market,
and raised capital. Nice.
So now we're investing
our capital plus our investor's capital.
Nice.
And writing a $50,000 check
is way different
than writing a million dollar check.
100%.
So, we're at scale in venture capital.
In real estate,
I'm looking to do the same thing.
My first acquisition was a 10 unit property.
The next one, seven.
That's what I have presently,
I have 17 units.
My goal is to get to 500 units in three years.
I think it's perfectly doable.
And I remember,
this is an interesting moment for me,
when I got into real estate,
I spoke to a guy.
We spoke on the phone,
he said, Hey John, "I have 65 units."
I said, "Wow, that's great."
And I said, "How long you been doing this?"
He said, "I've been doing this for 20 years."
And all of a sudden,
that seemed way less interesting.
Because I spoke to another guy and he said,
"John, I have 1,000 units."
I said, "alright, how long will that take you?"
He said, "10 years."
So, it took him the same amount of time,
or half the time to get
Way more units.
Way bigger.
Yes.
And immediately I realized,
this guy knows something
that this guy doesn't.
Okay.
What does this guy know? Yes.
That enabled him to get to that scale?
Yes.
Then I learned the power of leverage, right?
It's like,
there's a time and a place
to use leverage.
I think its very smart to use debt.
Yes.
Use debt especially if it's cheap.
Lever up to buy something
that you couldn't afford
on your own. Correct.
And as long as that asset pays off its own debt,
and then pays you some,
that's a winning formula.
So two different investors I assume,
I don't know the story,
but the first one probably invested
with his own money. That's right.
The second one is putting together
some kind of a pool of investors?
That's right.
Is it like a syndicate?
A syndicate.
A syndicate, okay.
And then he will invest
alongside with different investors.
That's right. That's very awesome.
Real estate,
I love real estate, man.
It's my favorite asset class.
Which then you can also leverage
your personal brand.
Yes, absolutely.
Right, to do both, right?
Absolutely.
Now I wanna take it to the next level.
How can I push the bounds on
infusing personal brand
with my business shit?
Meaning,
up until now,
because personal branding is relatively new,
at least in a social media context.
Yes.
Most people have it siloed out,
meaning like,
okay here's my personal brand here,
then I do this,
then I do this.
I wanna know how
much can you cross the lines
between all three.
Then that way,
you know,
you can't tell where one begins and one ends.
For instance, as an example,
I'm gonna make a prediction.
I'm gonna predict that I'm gonna get
a major brand deal with Home Depot.
Home Depot is gonna
finance an entire renovation
for one of my acquisitions.
So I'm gonna buy a property,
call it $700,000,
or a million dollars.
It's gonna be $200,000 in renovations.
Instead of it coming out of pocket,
or instead of me having to fund it,
Get a brand deal.
Brand deal's gonna finance all of it.
I'm gonna raise the value of the property,
refinance it and pull my cash out.
So, but it's a win win win?
Cause it's a win for you,
a win for Home Depot, right?
Yep.
And you know what Home Depot's gonna want?
They're gonna want me to vlog it,
and create a ton of content out of it,
Yeah, document the whole thing.
Exactly.
So now I'm gonna be getting paid
to use my media savvy to build my assets.
And for Home Depot,
it's basically investing in an influencer.
It's influential marketing.
Exactly.
I love it, beautiful. woo-hoo!
That's a good prediction.
I love it.
So, there you go.
Brand versus sales, right?
Executive of Home Depot,
if you're watching this,
you know what to do.
Ding!
Contact John.
I think it's beautiful.
And so many other things too.
That's right, that's right.
It's funny, cause I came from
a direct response background.
My friends know where
it is all about
making a sale right?
It's about, we even have a term,
the "ugly sales."
Forget about logo or anything like that.
You're selling something.
Back then when I started,
we're talking direct mail.
Remember, John? Like, direct mail.
Like envelope,
I've done a few of those.
Like actually sending out
a physical letter to people.
Even earlier,
like broadcast facts.
Wow.
That's how early it was, right?
Broadcast facts.
It was about a editorial headline,
copy, bullet points.
And we have this school of thought,
where it's like direct response.
And anything outside of direct response,
is like evil all of a sudden.
Exactly.
Oh, we don't do the branding bullshit.
That's for big corporations,
like Coca-Cola.
And I thought to myself,
okay, if you guys are right,
how come the biggest companies
in the world,
Aren't doin' it.
Aren't doing it.
These guys they have successful,
profitable businesses.
That's right.
But maybe a few million,
maybe even tens of millions,
but not like, billions.
Yeah.
So I thought to myself,
there's something that they know,
you guys don't.
Exactly. Right?
And I'm like okay,
is there something like a
happy middle?
Right.
Where you combine the branding,
but also very effective direct response
human psychology, persuasion,
this with this. Right.
And that's what I did. Yep.
And I combined the two and it worked.
So I like that,
because you had a moment where you thought,
wait a second.
They say Warren Buffett reads
six hours a day, right?
And then people are like,
cynical people say,
well yeah, he can afford to,
he's a billionaire.
And I think, nah,
he's a billionaire because he reads.
Because he reads, yep.
So, you saw the same thing?
Yeah.
Oh they're a brand,
they're corporate,
so of course they could afford branding.
No, they get to that level
because they invest in the brand.
100%.
So I see this whole school of,
even marketers online,
internal marketers of this school.
And then you have the other school,
which is all branding and no sales.
But I think something in the middle,
that's what works.
Cause then you're generating sales as you go,
but you're also building long-term equity.
That's right.
You're building their fan base.
Cause these guys have no long-term equity.
They're always basing on
the next sale I'm gonna do,
the next launch I'm gonna do,
but merged with this.
Put it this way,
It's almost,
the way I see this,
you are doing sales all the way,
when you're making money now.
Yep.
I categorize it.
Money now, money future, money monthly.
That's the way I see it.
Monthly money, baby.
I like that.
So you're creating revenue right now,
money now which is nice.
Yep.
Brand is money of the future.
That's right.
The big Home Depot deal.
The brand deal. Exactly.
That's all nice, right?
And you have money monthly,
which could just be reoccurring revenue.
It could be through membership,
That's a good formula.
Right?
Money now,
Money in the future,
money monthly. Money monthly.
So then the way that I structure it.
If you have way too much money now,
it means you're too reactive.
Exactly. Right?
Or maybe-- And it can go away.
It could go away.
Or maybe you're burning your list,
cause you sell too much.
Exactly.
If all your money is money of the future,
you probably can't pay the bills.
Exactly. Right?
Which is where I found myself.
I went too heavy in money future.
Yes, right?
And then I had to find the balance.
And then money monthly,
that has to do with the business model.
What kind of recurring revenue that you have?
Which I'm all about,
recurring revenue.
The way I that I structure my business,
I'm all about recurring revenue.
The money now pays for
the ads.
Right.
It pays for the advertising.
But really, it's this.
And the funny thing is,
once you have this,
the brand,
the brand is almost like a byproduct to me.
Now I'm reaching more,
but it's a byproduct.
I strategize around it,
but my intention wasn't,
I'm gonna build this--
Brand.
Brand, right.
Then when you reach enough people
you naturally have a brand.
You build a brand.
So we came at it from the opposite.
And they both work right?
Cause my entry point
into the whole game was sheerly brand.
Yes.
It was like I built so much brand equity,
that it got me some
so it got me some money future, right?
Yes.
I worked backward,
got the money monthly by buying real estate.
Now, working backwards,
and making money now.
Yes.
(laughs)
That's interesting, right?
But this is a good
It was literally, ooh!
Ooh, right.
It's a good formula.